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So, a couple of months ago (I think - time is a flat circle), there was a conversation and some slight complaining about how center-right parties in Europe never work with "far-right" parties, and how that's proof that the elite are against the votes, etc. and it's actually unfair the center-right aligns with the center-left instead of the far-right and there was even some talk it was somehow undemocratic.
Well, I just saw a poll about voting preference for Kamala Harris among German voters that shows something important about the underlying feelings of actual electorate-
https://x.com/ElectsWorld/status/1818288736549159376
% who would vote for Vice President Harris (D):
Grüne: 99 %
SPD: 92 %
CDU/CSU: 89 %
FDP: 85 %
BSW: 52 %
AfD: 26 %
Forsa, 26/07/24
Obviously, the SPD, Green, and AfD numbers all make sense. For those unaware, BSW is the new anti-immigrant economically left-wing party recent created by a former prominent Die Lienke member, so they're sort of cross-pressured on this, ironically.
But, the important number to show is the CDU/CSU & FDP numbers. This is why these center-right parties end up aligning w/ the center-left because on the big issues of the day, the CDU/CSU & FDP voter is closer to the SPD or Green Party than the AfD
Obviously, yes, the chances are some of that 15% in the FDP or 11% in the CDU/CSU will eventually also move to the AfD and obviously, another chunk of the voters if they actually lived in the US would end up voting for Trump the same way a lot of normal Republican's who have voted for Republican's their whole life end up voting for Trump, but this isn't a case of some Elite spitting in the face of their voters and aligning in some globalist conspiracy against the voters.
No, the voters are with the leadership for the most part on this. This isn't going to be correct for every country, but this is also why most of the center felt closer to Communist's than the former National Front in the French parliamentary elections as well. As I've said before, people want harsh immigration policies, they're just not willing to accept the rest of the right-wing culture war and lack of competence that comes with it when it comes to current far-right parties like the AfD.
If you truly think Muslim immigration is the worst problem facing Europe, then that person needs to accept LGBT rights, a massive welfare state, supporting Ukraine, and so on, and you might get somewhere.
As a dissident rightist I’d offer a different point of view.
It’s not only that center-right parties in (at least) France and Germany (in this context) never work with far-right parties; that’s just the less important half of the story. It’s that they’re willing to cooperate with any sort of left-wing extremist groups – i.e. withdrawing their candidates in the 2nd round and calling on their supporters to vote for the leftist bloc that includes those extremists, for example – in order to keep the far right in a political quarantine. Again, I’m sure there’s a lot more delicate context to this whole issue and I’m not well-versed in these political events anyway, but that appears to be the crux of the issue.
If these trends continue, and I see no reason to believe that they won’t, we’ll see situations where center-right parties enter governing coalitions with Islamic fundamentalists, Trotskyites, hard-liner Greens, Maoists, various Communists and whatnot just to maintain this political line.
This, in effect, is the mirror image of the Communist argument that imperialism/fascism is capitalism in decay i.e. that the capitalist class will sooner side with literal fascists than to cede power to their class enemies when their regime enters a crisis.
On the flip side, I think the reason there's so much appetite for shunning the AfD is because a lot of center-right voters and politicians have left and joined AfD, so what remains of the center-right has shifted to the left.
That's my guess, anyway.
I think it's a chicken and egg problem. The regime is set up to ostracize and otherwise punish anyone to the right of the center-right, which statistically means there'll only be one prominent party there, which in turn will be the only one that dissident right-wingers will gravitate to.
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It is worth noting that other right-populist parties have joined in shunning AfD. They were kicked out of the right-wing Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament (which is dominated by Marine Le Pen's RN) for being too tolerant of actual brownshirts-and-swastikas neo-Nazis.
Less obnoxious right-populist parties like the Dutch PVV are in government.
Ah.
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But there's been several countries where center-right parties have worked with far-right parties? They're in the same government in Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland, at least, right now, and in a support arrangement in Sweden. In the past the nationalist parties have been in government in Austria, Greece, at least, and that's just going by Western European countries. If you mean Germany and France, it's probably better to say just Germany and France - plenty of countries in Europe besides of those.
(edit: and even there, Macron has never claimed to lead a center-right party - the actual center-right party, ie. the Gaullist remnant LR, split between those who outright allied with Le Pen and those who declared neutrality in the conflicts between the left and Le Pen, ie. did not withdraw candidates.)
When it comes specifically to the question of whether Europeans would normally prefer Harris or Trump, no shit they're not going to prefer the guy whose agenda is basically "Everything for the US, nothing for those outside of the US", and who specifically has multiple times challenged the current NATO arrangements and cast doubt on whether he'd prefer the US to actually intervene if there's a conflict between European NATO countries and Russia.
Being bullied by the US isn't a good policy for Europe. American meddling is terrible for Europe. From the loss of culture to being dragged into forever wars the US creates constant headache for us. The US makes the rules, we follow the orders is a sad arrangement for Europe. With the US becoming more diverse, more divided and increasinly dysfunctional it is high time to move on.
"American meddling in Europe", as a whole, is not going to change, no matter whichever candidate wins the election. The methods and goals might vary a bit, though.
It's possible, of course, that Trump would screw up the elections so bad that Europe would finally cut the strings, but that's still not a particularly likely scenario.
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"Who would you vote for in the elections of another country with a 2 party system" seems like a pretty weird way to measure that. If the results were saying the opposite (CDU/CSU + FDP leaning Trump, or AfD being more 50/50 like BSW) would you then go on a rant saying the elites are opposed to the people?
What does "LGBT rights" even mean? The distance between Trump and Harris isn't even that big, so I have no idea what's supposed to be the winning position here. As for Ukraine, Germany was pretty pro-Russia for decades. When Trump visited Europe and was warning about dependence on Russian gas, everybody on the mainstream was calling him an idiot. I've seen enough major shifts in which positions make you "literally Hitler", and denounced politicians suddenly rehabilitated without changing a single opinion, that the whole idea that the mainstream might treat you with respect if you take any particular policy positions strikes me as absurd at this point.
If "Pro-war, pro-LGBT, anti-immigration" is supposed to be the winning ticket, the fact that none of the major parties want to take that position is itself proof that the elites are opposed to the interests of common people.
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I don't think these particular numbers really need to show much other than that the US Republican platform, as well as Trump's aesthetics, are fairly unpalatable to most German voters. 74% of AfD voters and 48% of BSW voters saying Trump here might just as well that these people have gotten the universal culture war toxoplasma and are saying Trump for no other reason than that it maximises aggravation to their outgroup (which in turn has caught invasive TDS through the internet). If presented with two policy programmes slightly adapted to the local context and asked to choose one without linking it to the people or country, I would expect many more AfD voters to go for the "Kamala" option, simply because they are unlikely to take particularly well to the pro-business (the canonical anti-tax/regulation party is actually the FDP, and it earns them ~5% sheepish finance bro votes and lots of ridicule) and the guns'n'Jesus part.
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Germans care particularly about maintaining the integrity of NATO and the European Union. Trump, if not explicitly anti-NATO, at least wants its members to “pay their fair share” regarding military expenditures. And Trump appears more conciliatory towards Russia, which still poses an economic/geopolitical threat in the minds of many pro-EU Europeans. Harris, on the other hand, represents more of the same for Germans: an easier, more prosperous life nestled under the pax-Americana security blanket, where Americans pay for your defense and guarantee your freedom so you can use more of your money on butter, not guns.
Why wouldn’t a German vote for Harris over Trump, given that choice??
The EU I believe, but NATO...I think the story is more complicated. Germany has just now gotten around to maybe meeting its 2% spending commitment, and (it seems to me) played both sides by buying Russian gas and "buying Ukraine time" in negotiations with Russia until the US forced it to jump onboard the NATO bandwagon after Russia went into Ukraine. Even now I think that Germany is acutely aware that they're going to have to live with Russia permanently and are hedging their bets.
I agree that Germany sees NATO membership as in its interests, but in a paradoxical sort of way I think that "easier, more prosperous life nestled under the pax-Americana security blanket" undermines NATO by creating the free-rider problem (or, more charitably, perception) that allows Trump to, well, argue is a bad deal. On the other hand, if Germany and the other NATO states had actually spent their 2% GDP as recommended since the fall of the Cold War, it seems less likely that they would need American backup: the EU has a larger population and is wealthier than Russia.
But complicating the paradox, a militarily-independent EU is not what is in American interests (we fought a couple wars over there before putting the boot on the German neck and we haven't removed it since). Everything that's happened recently (coincidentally or not!) has been pushing Germany back towards the Pax Americana safety blanket you describe: Nord Stream exploding, yes, but also the US leaning hard on Germany to deplete its own defense stocks while its economy wobbles. Now with the new understanding that, win or lose in Ukraine, the future of Europe is going to involve a very angry Russia with a larger, more experienced military, and with many of Europe's nations having given away significant amounts of their already-too-paltry defense stocks to Russia...well, who are they going to turn to for security and supplies? That's right, the US Army and Lockheed Martin.
At the end of the day, Russia is largely a threat to the United States via its nuclear arsenal. There are only two powers on Earth that can threaten American maritime dominance, and one of them is China. The other is a united Europe, and America has done a good job of preventing that. And Germany, precisely because of their lack of commitment to NATO, has made NATO all the more crucial.
But, in my opinion, if Germany was really committed to NATO in an...honorable sense, I suppose, they would have met their defense spending benchmarks, maintained their military (which is supposed to be in a sad state) and avoided giving the only real NATO adversary economic leverage.
Buck-passing is dangerous because, in the moment, you actually think you're being clever. You're saving money, you're avoiding a needless arms race.
America can't really take too much credit for the consequences (beyond maybe making it clear the left wing of the establishment wouldn't cooperate with Trump on NATO).
EDIT: Pre-war anyway. Nordstream, whatever happened there...
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I started writing a similar comment but i think you said it better.
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Absolutely not, the polar opposite. A few years ago an Afghan migrant stabbed 8 people in a town not to far from where I live and essentially nothing happened. If the king had brought in a bunch of Afghans into that town in 1900 and the Afghans stabbed people they would have been kicked out. If anything it is doubtfull whether a bunch of Afghans would have been allowed in at all. While today's elite hide in suburbs far from problems the aristocrats of yesteryear would have been sent in first to deal with problems. I worked in a tech park in which thousands of tech workers worked and a few gangs of youths terrorized the place. It would have been completely unthinkable that a group of muslims in the past could have terrorized an area with thousands of men and nothing would have happened.
The issue is not migration, the issue is atheism, no-fault divorce, LBGT, obesity, lack of classical architecture, consumerism and hollywood. The issue isn't migration, it is a symptom. Migration happened because countries are weak and won't be reversed until countries heals. In many ways migration might actually be highly beneficial. We need muslim migrants to act as battering ram to deal with the welfare state and pride. Islam might very well be what saves us from diversity.
More LGBT and Ukraine flags means weaker people and more migration.
Divorce rates actually peaked before the introduction of no-fault divorce. No fault divorce isn’t a law I particularly like, but ante hoc ergo propter non hoc.
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Wouldn't many of those things also be symptoms?
Lack of classical architecture, really? Maybe a change in architecture is a symptom of cultural decline, sure, but it does not seem to function very well as an explanation. Likewise I suspect something like obesity is more of a symptom than a cause.
Things like LGBT acceptance always involve some element of atomizing hostility towards traditions that bind people together. They cause their own dysfunction.
So maybe a bit like the cold that kills you after AIDS.
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I am curious why you think that support to country in a serious war, defending against more powerful invader is somehow indicating being weak.
To select this one: surely it is also symptom, not a root cause?
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Another possibility is that Europeans want fewer immigrants, but they are unwilling to actually do anything about it.
If the modal European could wave their hands and stop immigration they would. But if they see a picture of a crying child they will cave every time.
I'm not sure these beliefs are as foundational as you think, given that they are of such recent vintage. As always, signalling has much more explanatory power than principles. The issues don't matter. Tribes do.
I honestly think, if that happened today, people would be tapped out on sympathy. But, as with the homeless problem in some parts of America, it just doesn't seem to matter what they think.
You'll get sucked into a loop of activists, judges and feckless government decisions (the latter always blaming the first two) and by the time you realize what's going on the people who should have been deported haven't been for years and nothing has changed.
They're the new foundation. The old one was exclusionary.
Which has some implications for adopting it as a way to keep out migrants.
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Bleeding hearts cave because they think their social circles will cave as well. It is a self reinforcing cycle by which everyone presumes social sanction from their peers for not abiding by the presumed moral diktats of their community.
In small groups Europeans, even ostensibly liberal MNC civil servant types, will sotto voce voice their concerns that the muslim population is not in fact responding well to 'integration' overtures, and that the community regularly displays antisocial behavior. More daring ones would explicate a desire to remove the problem, but everyone has this shadow of Respectability hanging over them preventing voicing out of concrete solutions. At every level there is this presumption that voicing out objections will lead to an institutional witch hunt from a media ecosystem eager for scalps. Just look at lemonde for examples of how it is impossible to speak negatively of migrants.
This brings back the main issue of who is benefitting, and the reality is that small town girls stabbed by rwandan migrants or blown up in a concert or stabbed in parks or raped by the thousands does not affect the urban PMC. The urban PMC needs to capture the levers of power and influence, and the current holder of that lever is the centre right normies. Their suffering means nothing to the left. Look at how Novara Media or Owen Jones talk about the grooming gang scandals. The enemy must remain the racist and the normie, because the muslim is a pliant pawn the left can exploit fearlessly eternally.
This is of course wrong, and literally every arab country shows their socialist-islamist alliances dissolve when the islamists get a whiff of power and execute their socialist allies in the street. The left does not seem to care about its suicide as long as it can destroy the right, for it seeks just that brief moment in the sun where it can scream 'SEE REAL COMMUNISM CAN WORK'
I think it's just pure arrogance; it's not gonna fail, it can't fail.
Western leftists are acting as if this is the height of empire and no foreign threat matters as much as their fellow whites on the wrong side of their feud. The Muslims who are not assimilating are just harmless compared to some football hooligans carrying the wrong flag being proven right about the ray guns. That is intolerable and dangerous.
It's fascinating to watch. All of the arrogance and narcissism of arch-imperialists with none of the in-group preference or survival instinct you need when you actually are trying to conquer people.
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not really? On Eastern border wall is build and maintained, EU is bribing countries across North Africa so they will keep migrants away (including shooting them as needed, though that part is left implied). Organisations picking up migrants from human traffickers near Libyan shores are being hit by annoying regulations, disrupting their activities (as is the EU way).
I met some people annoyed about both and their "picture of a crying child" strategy is not too convincing.
Bar may be on the ground or buried, but it is quite ironic that fundamental border controls that are somehow controversial are actually done in EU.
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