site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If I had to try to steelman him, I'd say that:

At some point, in my opinion, violence against not just the government doing it and the private people joining the violence but the soft-target think-tank, media, and academic aparatus that empowered it becomes morally and philosophically justified.

has a certain amount of wiggle-room, in that he's not saying shooting up think tanks right now is morally justified, but that it could become morally justified at some future point (presumably when people are actually being rounded up and herded into camps). And, I guess I can follow his reasoning - if you really believe we are on the verge of becoming a Nazi dystopia, and then we really do become a Nazi dystopia, sure, I'd probably agree that all bets are off and anyone who was complicit is fair game.

Of course, I do not believe we are about to become a Nazi dystopia, and I do not have confidence that if someone really did go shoot up a Federalist Society meeting right now, White wouldn't making hemming and hawing noises about reaping what you sow, etc.

I think Ken really lost it about the time that Clark backstabbed him during the whole Vox Day contratemps.

The thing is that once you're being herded onto the trains trucks (do you think we're Europeans or something?!) the think tanks are already superfluous to the ruling power, and the more independent-minded might already be waiting for you at the wall-building camp.
So if it's not ok to shoot them first, and too late to shoot them after, there's never actually a good time to go murdering intellectuals, or advocating for it.

The dedicated violence advocate has to go with either "preemptive mass executions" (hard sell, but I'm doing my best) or "can't wait to shoot down Biden UN super-predator stealth drones with my trusty hunting rifle unless they ban it first" (cope)