site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Yes, compulsory preferential voting means that elections are decided by fighting over the middle, which means that both major parties have strong structural incentives to moderate and focus on the swing voter.

Possibly something like that is what they're up to now - Labor pick a fight with the CFMEU, who are traditionally their allies, on the logic that this will sway centre-right voters, and lefties who flee to the Greens are going to preference Labor above the Coalition anyway, so maybe it will all work out? But given their dismal primary vote, I really doubt Labor can afford a strategy like that for long, especially after the last few years have been disastrous for them both in terms of big symbolic actions (the Voice) and in terms of kitchen table issues (they just don't seem able to beat cost-of-living). I really would not like to be in the Labor party room right now.

The weird bit for me, as a libertarian/alt-lite, is that the outcome I really, really don't want is specifically the election landing in the middle; I do not want a Labour minority government with the Greens, because lol the Greens are now enemies of liberal democracy (they want hate speech laws and to ban a couple of political parties for opposing SJ). Labour majority isn't too bad, and Coalition majority isn't too bad; I just don't want Labour minority.

I can't disagree with that. The Greens have always been fruit loops, but they've gotten significantly crazier lately. The chance of them controlling the balance of power is terrifying.

I used to be a Greens voter, actually; it's only lately that they've lost me (both because I've swung toward conservatism and because they've gotten into SJ). Prior to SJ, and in the 90s/00s when great-power conflict wasn't such a big deal, their big policies amounted to environmentalism (which I mostly agree with), social democracy (which I agree with) and marijuana legalisation (which I agree with, although I've never used it personally). But yeah, wanting to ban opposing parties (even if for now it's only minor ones; come on, we've all read that poem in school) is an immediate "welcome to just above the bottom of my preference list, right above single-issue parties whom I think are pushing the wrong way on that single issue (e.g. the Animal Justice Party, since I oppose animal rights)". I was already pretty cross with them over their peacenik tendencies (they're opposed to our alliance with the USA, basically hoping to let the US do the dying for our freedom in WWIII, and I think that's dishonourable), but wanting to ban opposition parties is "no way, no how, this risks irrevocable harm" territory.

I think I preferenced the Greens once in the mid-2000s, in one of the first elections I voted in, but I went on from that to be a pretty consistent Labor voter, and only over the last few years I am drifting towards the Coalition. The thing is, in the 2000s the Greens genuinely seemed credible - anti-war looked great when Iraq was still going on, environmentalism is a concept that it's easy to have warm and fuzzy feelings around, and their stance on social issues at the time was basically secularism and gay marriage. Of course, I may also have been fooled or just an idiot back then.

Now, though, I feel more aware that they're just, well, kind of nuts. They're currently all-in on Gaza, they're demanding rent and price controls, they're the loudest supporters of the Voice and treaty, they oppose the US alliance, and they suck up to China as well. Pieces like this are pretty eye-opening for me.

I just don't want to let those people anywhere near the levers of power.

Pieces like this are pretty eye-opening for me.

*looks into recent Greens actions*

Oh Jesus, what the fuck? I haven't been paying enough attention to domestic politics; we had our own Parliament invasion?! And this China article is a lot crazier than I was crediting them with being; I was talking about this interview years back, where he at least does agree that the PRC is doing terrible things but thinks that talking to them is going to make them stop and implies we want to sit out WWIII. Outright pro-China rhetoric... well, that raises some ugly possibilities, most notably "the Greens may have been bought" and more generally an upward adjustment in P(organised sabotage campaign|Australia joins WWIII).

There is some diversity - a few months ago they wanted to raise human rights abuses in China. However, they do remain strongly opposed to the US alliance in a way that I think rounds out to giving China what they want - it feels like they think it's the Cold War still. And just today we've seen Greens MPs attend and encourage that rally against the arms expo in Melbourne. (Sorry for the poor quality article, but others don't seem to be up yet.) I remember interviews like this as well - I think the Greens at this point are functionally isolationists.

Suffice to say I think that isolationism in the face of Chinese hegemony in Asia is not a wise move for Australia.