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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Wow, that's an awkward interjection of a tired conspiracy theory for a pet topic. Really couldn't hold it in, could you?
For your parallel to hold, you'd have to change some things- like that instead of a Chinese politicians staging a coup in Canada to get a pro-Chinese government, it was the American president bribing, sanctioning, and then successfully pressuring the Canadian Prime Minister to start shooting supporters of his own government in the street, only to find that the Toronto Mayor wasn't willing to go along with a lethal party purge and then the Canadian PM fleeing the country for the United States before he could be impeached.
And then the United States conducting an invasion of one province, and then astroturfing an insurgency in another in an effort to start a civil war, and then having to intervene to sustain the insurgents when they start to fail, and then maintaining a frozen conflict for half a decade while attempting to coerce the Canadians into changing their constitution in a way to give the American proxies veto-authority over Canadian foreign policy but empowered them to have their own foreign policy with the US.
And then giving up, calling them all Nazis and not a real country anyway but actually American and outright invading with pre-made plans for all the pro-Canadian and anti-US advocates to go to the torture sites and mass graves.
'Tired conspiracy theory'
Are you seriously suggesting you'd not be blaming Russia for January 6th had one of their foreign policy officials gone there and was photographed being nice and chummy with the insurgents ?
Sure. Not least because January 6th didn't have insurgents.
If you have to invent alternate history comparisons- twice- to validate your conspiracy theory parallel, that in and of itself is indicative of the quality of the original metaphor.
High ranking foreign policy officials greeting and handing out cookies to actual insurgents - people in armed militias engaged in violence against the state, not just 'pretend' insurgents who are there to create a spectacle..
Yes, perfectly normal, in no way was it a message to the militias that they had official support of the White House because no diplomat or foreign policy official would ever meet publicly, on camera, with armed resistance without an official blessing. Unless he wanted to get shitcanned spectacularly and probably charged with something the next day.
You know, you're not a weird person. You seem more like an NPC.
And here we are appealing to more alternate history caricatures, for a third time. That bored with this timeline, huh?
Feel free to keep on. I promise to go 'Uh-huh' for any more efforts.
Uh-huh.
Alternate history caricatures? Was Nuland not a highly ranked state department official ?
Were the people she was seen with handing out cookies not armed militias ?
Characterizing the Euromaidan protest groups as an insurgency would be the caricature you're painting, yes.
A useful pejorative for an alternate history, but still an alternate history given it's reliance on twisting the conventional usage of active revolt or uprising. Particularly in the context of 2013, when the Syrian Civil War, Afghan War, and even the Iraq Wars were the contemporary standards of what an insurgency entailed. Truly, the battlefield of Independence Square could be fairly compared with any of these.
While seeking the categorical equivalence would be useful to those who want to exaggerate the Euromaidan protests, just as calling January 6 an insurgency (or a coup, or an uprising) is useful to those who want those categorical insinuations, such claims remain false and their usage appeals to historical fanfiction.
Armed clashes between protesters and government culminating in the militias invading parliament and forcing government MPs to dissolve the cabinet do not count as 'insurgency'?
And thus we go back to your history by caricature and alternative contexts.
Like, say, how the armed protestors, government security forces, and significant parts of the cabinet being in concurrence rather than in opposition when a minority of the cabinet- including the President and the pro-Russian wing in control of the FSB- granted themselves the right to shoot opposition forces after the sustained lobbying of said foreign power. Leading to the breakdown of the cabinet when the parts of the cabinet not on board with such a policy had their own supporters being shot by snipers, and were being accused of supporting the same sort of sniper attacks on the police in a week that led to triple-digit deaths. Or the general stance of the parliament on the power play of an unfolding attempt by the government to purge factions of the government without parliamentary approval, particularly when many of them were associated with the parties to be purged. Or that the security forces on the ground really didn't appreciate being sniped at with the same sort of weapons as the FSB snipers that the government denied were present even as they were being broadcast on international media, even as the government insisted it was totally the protestors who had suddenly escalated to sniping the police and other protestors.
It would certainly be a more convenient historical narrative if the government was on board with shooting protestors after months of not, but it wasn't, hence why the career communist official balked on joining Yanukovich's crackdown and withdrew the riot police. And it'd also be a more convenient if the government and the opposition were different sides of the government-non-government line, but they weren't, because Yanukovich had already created a unity government that included opposition figures. It'd even be good for the narrative if Yanukovich's Cabinet could be presented as a united force behind him... but it wasn't, hence why the pro-Russia wing was isolated when it called for a crackdown and the rest of the government didn't want to support.
But an unsanctioned purge of the opposition- even thought that is 'an armed clash between protesters and government'- is not an insurgency, even when it fails so badly that the instigators lose the support of the rest of the government and flee before they can be tried and sentenced by the legislature.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link