site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   9028 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 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.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Palestinians are completely justified in having armed resistance and participating in an armed conflict.

And this is why there's always a distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Palestinians might have very good reasons to go to war, but they also break the rules of war seemingly as a hobby.

The question of what makes a terrorist isn't whether they're right to start a war, it's how they conduct themselves in one. Palestine has been breaking pretty much every rule, at every opportunity. Fighting from sanctuaries, fighting without identifiable uniforms, attacking targets with mass civilian casualties being the entire strategic point.

There is no special terrorist clause in the Geneva convention.

No, but there are clauses for unlawful combatants, which "terrorist" is a normie-comprehensible shorthand propaganda term for. Palestine fights its fights via unlawful combatants all the time. And unlawful combatants have very little in the way of protections, because they undermine everything else in the rules of war.

And this is why there's always a distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Palestinians might have very good reasons to go to war, but they also break the rules of war seemingly as a hobby.

Not really, they are engaged in classic guerilla warfare. They are far, far more well behaved than the "moderate jihadists" that the US and Israel supported in Syria. They are fighting a cleaner war than Israel.

Under traditional international law, it's illegal to engage in "classic guerrilla warfare" if by that you mean "not wearing uniforms" or "wearing the uniforms of the enemy," which are both traditional guerrilla war tactics. (The latter was a big sticking point during the US Civil War, as Confederates would sometimes wear captured uniforms.)

I'd need to dig more into how this applies in the Israel/Palestine conflict (especially given Palestine's ambiguous status), but the whole "not wearing uniforms" was something which lots of combatants in the GWOT did. There's a reason that, AFAIK, none of the people who were getting waterboarded were surrendered Iraqi POWs was because the people who were getting waterboarded weren't part of a traditional lawful combatant and thus arguably not protected by the laws of war – my understanding is that that was the logic used by the GWB administration.

I'm not saying waterboarding was the correct decision, but there was a legal reasoning behind the decisions the Bush administration made. They didn't just decide "well we don't have to obey the law because our enemies are evil."

NB, there's provisions in the Geneva Convention, IIRC, for spontaneous resistance to an occupying force.

Technically the rule doesn’t say uniforms, does it? It says ‘recognizable emblem’.

I believe the standard is that combatants must "clearly identify themselves as such"

I believe something like a green cloth armband fits the standard, for pseudo-militaries that can't do better

Yes, I believe that's the case in modern international law.

This was notably the case in the Winter War in 1939 when Finland was so poorly resourced that many soldiers couldn't be equipped with proper uniforms. They used their own clothes and were only provided with a belt and a hat with the official emblem sewn on.

NB, there's provisions in the Geneva Convention, IIRC, for spontaneous resistance to an occupying force.

Right, that provision provides as follows:

ART. 4. — A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
...
6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory who, on the approach of the enemy, spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

Hamas and Hezbollah emphatically do not qualify under this paragraph, as they are pre-existing organizations which do organize themselves into regular units, e.g. Hamas's "Qassam Brigades" and Hezbollah's various specialized units such as the "Radwan Force," yet still engage in combat without uniforms or otherwise making themselves distinct from civilians, among other violations. Also, they aren't spontaneously taking up arms because they're drawing from long-established and disguised central arms depots, in a conflict they started.

Yeah, it seems like the clear implication here is that such forces are supposed to convert themselves into regular armed units in a timely manner. So in the GWOT context, it seems very clear that insurgents operating 5 years into the war, dressing like civilians, hiding their weapons, and not conducting themselves as a "regular armed unit" aren't conducting themselves as expected by the laws of war.

And from the context of Hamas and Hezbollah, it seems to me that (for the reasons you describe) there's no excuse for their forces not to conduct themselves as regular armed units (to whatever extent that they do so) except that it's inexpedient for them, which isn't a justification under the laws of war.

(I should note that I'm not necessarily claiming the Geneva Convention is 100% aligned with morality – there might be instances were guerrilla warfare, like spying, is morally acceptable. But if you're a spy, and you get caught, and executed, you can't very well complain about it – you knew the risks when you signed up. I'm hardly a fan of Hamas or Hezbollah, but my fact claims about the customs of war are just that.)

Right; the Geneva Conventions aren't meant to turn men into angels. They're supposed to be clear rules of the road so that everyone knows what to expect if they behave in a particular way. If people elect not to behave in the specified ways, they don't get the benefit of those clear rules. It's really simple at root.

Remember also that the Geneva Conventions are from a time when war was still something peer nations did.

The world has changed, as has the ways wars are fought- Hamas operates the way it does to exploit the fact that everyone else in the West adheres to obsolete and incorrect ideas of what modern warfare is and are very uncomfortable with reality (example: are women who make weapons for men legitimate military targets?).

Ironically Hamas has done what liberal Westerners only ever dreamed of- they made the average Palestinian women just as capable a fighter as the average Palestinian man (with respect to how their enemy limits itself).

I dunno. Some of the international customs, though, for instance around executing people out of uniform, not conducting false surrenders (and respecting noncombatant status of POWs) predates the Geneva Conventions considerably. The Civil War, for instance, is full of screeching about international law – the North threatened to hang Southern privateers as pirates, for instance, under the logic that the Confederacy wasn't a real state. And guerrilla combat was part of the Civil War (and many wars before that).

Even during the Second World War – which was the birth of the modern Conventions – partisans and guerrilla fighters were very commonplace. So while I agree that the world has changed – it might not be the world the Conventions anticipated – a lot of these problems are very old and in fact predate modern international laws.

classic guerilla warfare.

Yes, and the traditional penalty for guerillas, francs tireurs, and partisans is summary execution without benefit of trial.

They are fighting a cleaner war than Israel.

How do you figure that? Was October 7 a clean act?

Yes, they attacked military outposts engaged in acts of war against them. That a few drugged out hippies were still partying the next day and got blasted by the IDF who started firing indiscriminantly is unfortunate but the civilian casualty rate was still well under what many other military operations have.

"Drugged out hippies" is unnecessarily inflammatory and derogatory, and while you can feel how you feel about your outgroup, you need to inject some civility into how you describe people, whether you feel civil towards them or not.

"Got blasted by the IDF" is a claim that contradicts pretty much all reporting (and my own lying eyes, since I saw the videos) on the events at the Nova music festival. I'm aware there are claims that civilians were accidentally killed by the IDF on October 7, and probably this did happen, but your description is such an extraordinary and inflammatory claim that the requirement to Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be applies here.

Generally, your participation in this thread is bad. It's bad because once again you can't contain your hatred of Jews, which leads you to write inflammatory polemics that contribute nothing but seething and spittle.

Because hating Jews and siding with Hamas is not against the rules, we've given you a lot of slack, but you still do not get to write posts about how your enemies have it coming as you make up fictional narratives, and you have been warned before and last time you were told you'd start earning tempbans.

Banned for three days. When you come back, if you want to write Israel Delenda Est posts, you need to put more effort and a lot more civility into them.

Seeing as how Functor is getting banned and won't be able to provide any evidence, I'd like to share this report which provides evidence for his claims: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-07/israel-hannibal-directive-kidnap-hamas-gaza-hostages-idf/104224430

The ABC is a major, mainstream media organisation and this reporting includes quotes from multiple Israeli news sources as well. He's straightforwardly correct when he says "got blasted by the IDF who started firing indiscriminantly" and this is the view of multiple Israelis, not just internet nazis. To be perfectly honest I find it a bit ironic, given that when functor said "is unfortunate but the civilian casualty rate was still well under what many other military operations have." he was actually trying to defend the IDF - only to get accused of hating jews and siding with Hamas even as he tried to defend their actions while stating a view which seems to be common knowledge among Israelis themselves.

So going door to door and executing civilians is actually "attacking military outposts"? Or was that also the IDF?

I don't think underaged suicide bombers is anyone's idea of "classic" guerrilla warfare.

That is two attacks in 15 years, both rather small.

Wikipedia reports a lot more than that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_child_suicide_bombers_by_Palestinian_militant_groups

Have they done so yet in this war? All the Wiki examples are from decades ago.

Not that I'm aware of. But I don't think this is to Hamas and co 's credit: I just think the security apparatus Israel installed in response to suicide attacks have been effective enough to essentially nullify it as a tactic. Perhaps they've tried doing it in Gaza to attack IDF troop patrols, but I haven't heard anything to that effect.

This article from December last claims that terrorists have blown themselves up in Gaza to attack the IDF, but doesn't specify the perpetrators' ages.

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