site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 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.

Candace Owens is into the weirder end of YEC.

I believe there's nothing genuine at all in Candace Owens' public persona, no genuine belief to analyze there at all.

She suddenly appeared as a "personality" during Gamergate when she tried to claim some ground on the anti-Gamergate side, found herself run out of it after encroaching on another leftist grifter's turf, realized that there's much more alpha in being a black woman right-winger, so after a week she came back as a pro-Gamergate grifter instead.

Someone genuinely moving from one side to the other is certainly possible, but I'm deeply suspicious one would do it within a week. It took me years. Hence since then I just dismiss her as an obvious grifter.

She made some high-commitment lifestyle changes since then, though. Someone in her position getting into YEC esoterica and Holocaust denial out of general historical revisionism is basically what I would expect if those changes were genuine. She’ll be tweeting about ancient Atlantean colonies on mars any day now.

She married a handsome Englishman with a big country house and a hundred million dollar inheritance coming down the pipeline. I suppose that counts as “high commitment”, but my guess is that both the before Candace and the after Candace would have taken that deal, politics aside. The Holocaust denial, YEC conspiracies and extreme esoteric weird online stuff seems more a consequence of being at home in a foreign country with a phone and babies for company; even her father in law denounced the antisemitism quite publicly, so I think it’s more on her than on her tradcath milieu for now.

The Holocaust denial, YEC conspiracies and extreme esoteric weird online stuff seems more a consequence of being at home in a foreign country with a phone and babies for company;

Man, when did kids go from asking why is the sky blue to "I don't get it, mama, how can you dispose of so many bodies in such short time? They didn't have enough crematoriums in Auschwitz, it makes no sense, mama!"?

Funny, but you know what I mean, she was already a clearly ultra-online person and in my experience new mothers at home with babies often go even deeper into whatever very online space they were in before they gave birth. Usually this is just celebrity gossip, astrology woo, fanfiction, a video game, whatever, but in Candace’s case it was clearly the schizo side of DR twitter (presumably she avoided the mainstream side because of racism) which intersects heavily with the Alex Jones verse, which itself intersects with YEC, David Ike lizard people, flat earth etc.

I totally believe this but she’s also buying into the kind of schizophrenia you get in the actual IRL tradcath esoteric paranoid schizo verse, very specifically.

Wait, you're telling me Cadence Owens is with the Schizocore Hyperboria video crowd now?

tradcath esoteric paranoid schizo verse

Any rec's on twitter accounts or blogs I can follow for lulz. This is kind of turning into my soap opera stand-in.

This stuff spreads in person as much as through new media- the q boomers’ll have lots of it if you can sit through the real life political posting(and subsequent Jew posting). The old cranks sitting in the corner swapping actual physical copies of samizdat spread it.

Funny, but you know what I mean,

Yes, but I like my version better.