site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I talked to some french relatives and they said that plenty of the RN candidates just are embarrassingly incompetent and that plenty of them were publicly humiliated in debates and such in the run-up to the election by the candidates of the more established parties.

I don't speak french or paid much attention to the election so I don't know how true this is but similar things are true in Sweden where SD has reasonably competent top leadership but many of their candidates (especially on the local level) are abject clowns who survive electorally not in small part due to not being directly elected.

In Poland actual far-right also has share of extremists (actual monarchists, supporters of theocracy, Russia and people who want to ban woman from voting).

And clowns. And people unusually incompetent, even by standard of politics.

And people who prefer to produce Tik-Tok materials over achieving anything, see Braun with fire extinguisher.

plenty of thr RN candidate just are embarrassingly incompetent

I wonder how much is boosting them and hiding the same from other parties and how much RN having much smaller pool of candidates and how much is RN being structurally stupid.

There's a genuine structural factor. For example, in the European Elections, Finns Party refused to accept one of their MEPs, Teuvo Hakkarainen, as a candidate again, because he was a pitiful drunken failure and a national joke. The said MEP went on to be a candidate for a minor fringe party and got absolutely nowhere, but there was also a fair amount of comments around social medias from Finns Party supporters going "They didn't take Teuvo so I don't trust them any more, they've become too elitist and not for normal men of the people any more". Clearly the party's supporters pay close attention to stuff like this and this limits the party's opportunities to clear away chaff, even if they had to do it in this instance.

and a national joke who views

what does it mean?

This was intended to continue with other stuff that was probably inessential. Fixed.