site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30056 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 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.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think Harris will continue our inflationary money-isn't-real spiral into economic doom, hand out more gobs of cash to whatever identity group is most effective at yelling and screaming, and I think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will roll her like a floured chicken breast.

Don't forget the millions on millions of unvetted foreigners allowed in, allowed to stay, and who will drop anchor babies. Just look at this. It's obscene. One candidate is very clearly trying to ethnically cleanse me, my family, and my children. The other one isn't, and is instead saying "send them back." Mass deportations are a topic of conversation. As dumb as the talking point is, one wants sex changes for male prisoners paid for by the state, and the other doesn't. One wants boys in girls sports and men in women's sports, and the other doesn't.

who I believe actually loves America as much as I believe he goes to church on Sunday and has ever read the Bible in his life.

I think you're wrong about this. He's been clear for decades that, if not loving America, he identifies with it and takes it personally when we are taken advantage of (trade, NATO) and made the fool.

I've never before voted for either major party in a Presidential election, but I am this year, and it's an easy choice, and I feel better about that I do about Jorgensen or Johnson or Stein. I'm still partial to my Nader vote, though.

One candidate is very clearly trying to ethnically cleanse me, my family, and my children.

This isn’t ethnic cleansing. She’s not deporting white Americans. She’s not forbidding white Americans from marrying other whites. She’s just importing lots of people for deficit financed cheap labor. This is bad, but words have meanings.

If the Plantation of Ulster (where my ancestors on my Dad's side were sent to settle North Ireland to displace my ancestors on my mother's side) is widely considered ethnic cleansing then this sure as hell is. Unless you think the Paddies were just being a bunch of whiny babies.

As an Ulsterman myself, you do have to point out that this was a forcible relocation though as in the locals where literally forced off the prime land and onto less desirable land so that my ancestors could take it. In Springfield 30% of the population had gone for entirely unrelated reasons prior to the later immigration.

Even if we consider the Plantation of Ulster as ethnic cleansing (and we probably should) it is very very different than what is happening with immigration now. No-one external is forcing America to take immigrants and put them in places that have been depopulated by de-industrialization, they are doing so of their own free will because they think it has benefits to them.

Now not all Americans want them, but that still doesn't make it ethnic cleansing, any more than me immigrating to the US from Northern Ireland was, or lots of Irish people who moved to England were ethnically cleansing the English in vengeance.

Calling that ethnic cleansing is similarly wrong, and for what it's worth the Wikipedia article on it does not seem to contain the word "cleansing". I googled for the combination of the two terms, and the first two relevant-seeming hits I found are from Quora and some book on Amazon containing wording such as

The Irish were simply to be pushed off to poorer, less desirable parts, in a sort of early version of ethnic cleansing.

and

It was, beyond doubt, ethnic cleansing, but not of the worst kind because the Irish were made to leave rather than killed on spot.

If anyone thinks that it was ethnic cleansing on the basis that the Irish were forced out of the most desirable locations in favour of the Britons (so it was... ethnically cleansing the best parts of Ireland only?), I guess that's fair, but this is a premise that is also not present in the US immigration case - there is no forcing of the current population to relocate to less desirable areas, and in fact the new immigrants tend to cluster in the least desirable ones.

If anyone thinks that it was ethnic cleansing on the basis that the Irish were forced out of the most desirable locations in favour of the Britons (so it was... ethnically cleansing the best parts of Ireland only?)

Most of the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans after the breakup of Yugoslavia was similarly just forced relocations (deaths were in the tens of thousands vs. over a million forcibly relocated).

I guess that's fair, but this is a premise that is also not present in the US immigration case - there is no forcing of the current population to relocate to less desirable areas, and in fact the new immigrants tend to cluster in the least desirable ones.

State-subsidized relocations into areas drive housing prices up and wages down (along with all sorts of other first and second order effects) and the state subsidized part makes it literally impossible for the native population to compete. Coupled with refusals to enforce the law against the new population, and an overbearing willingness to enforce it against the native population if they try to fight against the resettlements, makes it very much done under the threat of violence and actual violence from the state and the migrants.

The stories that are commonly related as evidence of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans all involve mass murder, though (Srebrenica etc.); the usability of Yugoslavia as evidence for natural usage of the term is also further complicated by a fat US foreign policy goal thumb on the scale (compare to how the media would even have evacuation of orphaned children from captured parts of Ukraine by Russia count as genocide).

State-subsidized relocations into areas drive housing prices up and wages down (along with all sorts of other first and second order effects) and the state subsidized part makes it literally impossible for the native population to compete.

What's a concrete example of an area that you believe was ethnically cleansed in this fashion?

Brampton, ON? So far as I can tell, the place seems to be 100% Indian nowadays.

In the adjacent district to my part of London (and I won’t tell you which bit sorry) all the street signs are now in Arabic. I walked through and didn’t see a single white person.

Springfield, OH is one of the more obvious ones. Rotherham in the UK is another. The process is still ongoing in both of those locations though.

From a quick look, Springfield, OH housing prices look about the same as those in any small northeast US metro area I've seen, and well within the margin of what one can afford with a $20-30k/year salary.

Deliberately working to reduce the White share of the population is called...what exactly? I like my words, what words do you use?

“Replacing” you? It’s a traditional complaint, even.

I guess I wouldn’t mind “supplementing,” either. It’s more accurate.

Foreigners drive down native birth rates. Diversity drives down White birth rates. It is replacement, and it's genocide, and it's ethnic cleansing.

Supplements are not the majority, and if they are, they are no longer supplementing. It's less accurate, but it's more palatable to your sensibilities.

I wouldn't be saying this if it were truly supplemental, and the nation were 85% White, 10% Black, and 5% Supplements. Did you notice that the numbers are far from that? Or are you just ignoring it?

Dandelions aren't supplementing my lawn any more than grass is supplementing my flower beds. And Morning Glory, no matter the location, needs to be uprooted in any civilized state yard.

Foreigners drive down native birth rates. Diversity drives down White birth rates. It is replacement, and it's genocide, and it's ethnic cleansing.

Actually, in the US, white birth rates are highest in three areas- those with high percentages of religious minorities(ex Amish country), deep rural areas, and heavily Hispanic areas.

those with high percentages of religious minorities(ex Amish country), deep rural areas, and heavily Hispanic areas.

Not foreign, few foreigners, and are the Hispanics counted as White? I would bet on it.

Foreigners drive down native birth rates. Diversity drives down White birth rates.

[citation needed]

The lowest birth rates are found in very homogeneous countries such as South Korea and Japan. In spite of all its diversity, the US white (non-hispanic) birth rate is still greater than that of comparatively homogeneous countries like (much richer) Norway or (barely) (much poorer) Hungary. What gives?

"Diluting" seems like a more accurate and value-neutral verb.

The lowest birth rates are found in very homogeneous countries such as South Korea and Japan. In spite of all its diversity, the US white (non-hispanic) birth rate is still greater than that of comparatively homogeneous countries like (much richer) Norway or (barely) (much poorer) Hungary. What gives?

Multiple factors?

Number 1 result when I searched that exact phrase, which references this study.

Now that I've cited it, you'll concede the point, right? Otherwise what is the point of asking for the citation?

Thanks for the citation. It's a bit of a rough read, being a working paper (which also means it has not fully gone through peer review), but if I read it correctly, Table 5 suggests that with sufficient controls, diversity drives down other races' birth rates by at least about as much and in many cases more (Blacks, East Asians) than those of Whites. This makes your gloss of it rather tendentious. Who is being genocided here again?

(Assuming the rest of the paper is sound, I would take it as evidence for a more general point along the lines of "diversity drives down birthrates".)

diversity drives down other races' birth rates by at least about as much and in many cases more (Blacks, East Asians) than those of Whites.

Who is being genocided here again?

The ones who are being subjected to migration in their homelands. Niger isn't getting diverse, and neither are India or China even if Nigerians or Indians or Chinese are also negatively affected by diversity.

More comments

If these people weren't "deficit financed" maybe. But that's not the situation. There is no level playing field here. There is a scheme to undercut the labor market of legacy Americans, so that the company no longer needs to pay a living wage, and the government subsidizes these people to live there.

So you lose your job because these people can be paid less. Your taxes go to paying for them. All your institutions (schools, hospitals, policing) are overrun by them such that the services you can derive from them are greatly diminished. Landlords kick out their tenants because why rent to 1 legacy American family when you can collect welfare checks from 5 third world families.

Yes, they are replacing white Americans. This isn't just a "git gud" or "sucks to suck" argument where Whites have sour grapes about foreigners outcompeting them. The thumb is on the scale so fucking hard it's impossible to survive, except to accept living in third world conditions or leaving.

Or being killed in the ongoing pogrom.

"supplant", possibly. Increase the supply of workers and the mid-to-high iq whites are forced to move to lower crime and higher-pay, yet lower birth-rate cultural and physical zones.

In 20 years we can check back in on these towns that had 50-100% of their existing population in "deficit financed cheap labor" airdropped on them. Assuming the <70 IQ third worlders stay, I'm pretty sure with the crime and destruction of institutions, along with the total deafness the political class has towards the legacy population's suffering, the area will be 75-99% ethnically cleansed.

And yes, words do have meaning. This is every bit an ethnic cleansing as the Jewish Pogroms in Russia, as the Goths or the Huns invading the late Roman Empire and pillaging the provinces (often under a fictitious appellation from the Emperor as the new "protector" of that province, even as they pillaged it and put it's natives to the sword or torch). It's every bit an ethnic cleansing as the "illegal settlements" in Gaza or the West Bank.

There are ways to remove populations from their ancestral ground short of putting them on trains and gassing them. Or putting them on a death march to a reservation. Just because it falls narrowly short of the worst ethnic cleansings in history doesn't mean it's not at least meeting the standard of several others which are widely considered ethnic cleansings.

it's not at least meeting the standard of several others which are widely considered ethnic cleansings.

Name them.

I’ve said before that I don’t like Haitians, if they were dumped in my neighborhood I would call my reps to demand that El transportador moved them somewhere nonspecific. But moving them in is just retarded, not ethnic cleansing.

The Plantation of Ulster

Thank you, that seems to fit.

As an Ulsterman I would say it does not fit, because while that was an ethnic cleansing (in my view) that is because the locals were forcibly removed from their land and forced into the worst areas with significant violence. In Springfield and other areas 30% or so of the population had left prior to any immigration, and weren't forced from their land as happened when my ancestors colonized Ulster. If anything it is the other way round, where they are being put in the undesirable areas, rather than taking the prime land forcibly from Americans.

Thank you for the context. I’m more or less unfamiliar with the history except for ulster as where the scots-Irish came from.

moving them in is just retarded, not ethnic cleansing

If the Left would call the same thing an ethnic cleansing if it were anyone but them perpetrating it, I think calling it an ethnic cleansing is justified.

But it’s all just who/whom at this point. The intent is the same in either case; and is ignoring what the people responsible say openly.

They cry and scream about it all the time when China imports Han Chinese into Xianjang to displace the local minorities there. Or when Israel does it in the West Bank.

I, uh, think there’s some other stuff going on in Xinjiang.

Name them

Jesus I thought I did.

This is every bit an ethnic cleansing as the Jewish Pogroms in Russia, as the Goths or the Huns invading the late Roman Empire and pillaging the provinces (often under a fictitious appellation from the Emperor as the new "protector" of that province, even as they pillaged it and put it's natives to the sword or torch). It's every bit an ethnic cleansing as the "illegal settlements" in Gaza or the West Bank.

All of those examples involve people literally getting expelled from their homes and forced to leave. There is basically none of that in the idiotic open borders policy.

White flight? Sure it’s “voluntary” but it’s still coerced expulsion

If you look at the national level, it would seem that white emigration from Zimbabwe and South Africa fits this description, but I doubt anyone would describe it as such in polite company.

Read about the Jewish Pogroms in Russia. There was no program to forcibly expel them. Rather the government plugged up their ears and closed their eyes when a smattering of Jews got assaulted or sometimes murdered, and the Jews self-deported fearing for their lives and sensing which way the wind was blowing.

What is happening to towns across America is absolutely as bad, if not worse, than the Jewish Pogroms in Russia.

I’m sure you can point to pogroms in the heartland? Like there is a problem with undocumented immigrant crime but as far as I can tell they’re not particularly more likely to get off than native citizens.

Aren’t illegals pretty explicitly ethnically cleansing blacks on the West coast? Granted that’s not who OP is concerned with, but it’s similar

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2013/01/15/latino-gang-leader-convicted-la-ethnic-cleansing-campaign

More comments

Also essentially what happened in the Rhineland Massacres. Yeah, sure, the Church and local nobility said it was bad for the crusaders to kill a bunch of Jews on their way to the holy land, but they didn't do anything to stop it (and the call to join the crusade is what created the conditions for the massacres in the first place).

If I actually believed Trump would or could accomplish any of the things he says he will (from calling up Vlad and "ending the war with one phone call" to deporting all the illegal aliens), I would consider voting for him. Since we saw how well he did as President already, I have no reason to think this is the case. (And no, I don't buy "That's because the Deep State was against him but this time he'll know how to fight them.") I think his followers who expect This Time It Will Be Different are being taken for a ride, like last time.

You don't have to believe he'll accomplish them to be able to tell that one person says "mass deportations now" and the other has let it happen.

I'm not holding my breath that we'll get the necessary 10 million foreigners per year deported, but I know which one will move the needle more. Also, just look at the graph. Obama had the uptick, Trump was a reversion to form, and then Biden opened the floodgates. He doesn't have to deliver on much to be better than the worst President of all time, who has enabled the likes of Cuban-born Jew Mayorkas to facilitate an invasion of my homeland, and who thinks an unrelenting stream of immigration is a good thing.

I've said recently there's only one difference in politics today, and that's the issue of migration. We at least have two people on opposite sides of that issue, and I'm voting for the one who is on my side, and hoping for the best.

We haven't even mentioned RFK, or any potential role for him in the administration. The same man who, in an open convention, could very well have been on the top of the ticket today. The man who I would have been voting for, maintaining my third-party voting streak, if he had not endorsed Trump.

"ending the war with one phone call"

Amusingly, this is pretty much the one thing that I think could happen (which is not a claim that it will). We frequently reference a left/right divide on "violence as a continuum/switch", and the piecemeal "escalation" we've seen from the Biden administration is very much on the continuum side and pretty clearly doesn't really scare totalitarian despots. Viewing it as a switch, and then credibly threatening to throw the switch if necessary seems like it would be more convincing: "Come to the negotiating table and accept my minimal terms, or I pull out the Gulf War playbook and destroy all your remaining Soviet stockpile. Tanks are already staging in Poland."

Is there a danger of nuclear war there? Maybe. But if you let that spectre drive all your decisionmaking, you'll find yourself cosplaying Neville Chamberlain in pursuit of "peace" all the way to a world war. I don't like war. It's terrible. Always has been. Always will be. But eternally shying away from it has its costs too.

The problem is that the United States and NATO armies are in shambles already, and wouldn’t be able to credibly threaten that kind of conventional war. Hell, I doubt the US has the ability to do a 2003-style thunder run against a country like Iraq anymore. Ashton Carter absolutely gutted the military under his watch. He got high on Francis Fukuyama and assumed that the United States was the one remaining superpower and would only be doing goat herder wars for the next fifty years. So he got rid of all the programs that would allow the United States to fight conflicts against peers and went all in on COIN stuff. A NATO expeditionary force in Europe would have enough shells to last for about three days. And modern air defenses are outpacing offensive air capabilities, so the Air Force probably wouldn’t be able to get level of air superiority that NATO combat methods require. Which would mean Ukraine war style meat wave offensives with insufficient artillery support. How are the American people going to react to taking 19,000 casualties in two weeks? Because that’s what the the Army War College is estimating. How is the army going to replace one fifth of it’s combat troops in that time frame? What happens when China and North Korea take the opportunity to go for it the second America is tied down elsewhere?

NATO is even worse. Poland ran the numbers, and their war games estimate that the nation would last about 48 hours in the event of a war with Russia, which is why their bellicose rhetoric suddenly got real quite about a year ago. Britain would have serious problems getting even a single combat deployable division ready, and that would probably take months.

Which candidate is mostly like to effect the end result of deporting aliens? The one who talks about how terrible mass migration is, or the child-of-immigrants who celebrates indigenous peoples’ day by talking about how America was founded on genocide?

If you genuinely care about effecting an end to illegal migration, then there’s an obligation to vote for whoever moves the needle on effecting that change. Trump didn’t succeed in building a border wall but he did smash the borders of acceptable speech on illegal migration.

As long as birthright citizenship exists illegal immigration will continue without clear end. Since there is no viable plan to end birthright citizenship none of this really matters at all.

The viable plan to ending birthright citizenship is to reexamine the legal definition of natural born citizen in light of earlier British jurisprudence which, in some cases, mentiins that the father must also be a natural born citizen. This is the kind of originalist legal argumentation that we find among Heritage Foundation guys and their SC picks.

We can do that, and then we can just restrict how many people can come in. Do a pregnancy test on women who come in. Lots of simple stuff. This issue is a failure of political will, not political thought.

The viable plan to ending birthright citizenship is to reexamine the legal definition of natural born citizen in light of earlier British jurisprudence which

There's no need to have motivated semantic arguments about what is a "natural birth" and what isn't (what about those born via Cesarean section??) because it's totally irrelevant to the constitutional language. The fourteenth amendment is extremely clear and unambiguous:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

How many members of the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court do you believe would vote categorically against birthright citizenship?

If they can be persuaded that what the founders intended precluded the children of non citizen fathers, then maybe all of them, why not?

The whole point of the 14th amendment was to grant citizenship to the freedmen, who had no legitimate descent from any US citizen. (Slaves not being citizens, as an obvious statement of fact). If a citizen parent was a requirement to benefit from the 14th, then it wouldn't have done what it was supposed to do.

birthrate citizenship

Is that like, whoever raises the birthrate the most gets to become a citizen? That’s certainly one plan for dealing with the problem.

Yeah I’m just mildly dyslexic, sadly. I edit a lot of ‘writes’.

I don't have an obligation to be a single-issue voter, nor do I have an obligation to vote for anyone.

Why would you consider voting for him if he 100% ended illegal immigration, but not if he merely increased the chance of ending it? This applies to your other issue (ending war in Ukraine).

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats