site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 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.

Israel is not committing a genocide in Gaza, they’re winning a war in an urban environment.

It’s really not that different than anything Russia did in Grozny or Aleppo. And it’s definitely more humane and circumspect than what America did in Dresden, or Hiroshima, or Pyongyang, or Hanoi, or Cambodia. Although many (though certainly not all) strong supporters of Israel will weep bitter soyjack tears when such tactics are used by any other party in any other situation.

strong supporters of Israel will weep bitter soyjack tears when such tactics are used by any other party in any other situation.

It is more often the inverse in my experience.

Maybe it’s just the sites I go to but what I mostly see is:

Pro-Israel/Pro-Ukraine (“I am an Eglin Air Force Base shill-bot”)

Pro-Palestine/Pro-Ukraine (“I support the Current Thing at my Ivy League university”)

I think there is a faction of Pro-Russia/Pro-Palestine third-worldist tankies (“GLORY TO COMRADE DOLEZAL! GLORY TO R/STUPIDPOL!”), but those are considerable rarer.

I’ve literally never seen a Pro-Israel/Pro-Russia poster in the wild, probably because those people are all posting on Hebrew or Russian language websites.

Pro-Israel/Pro-Russia poster in the wild

I don't track individual poster opinion enough to say if any individual person fits this bill on the Motte, but that is close to the vibe of this place. The Motte is heavily Jewish and overwhelmingly pro-Israel outside of a few dedicated posters like SecureSignals that even the mods are palpably hostile to. The Motte isn't exactly pro-Russia but it is more willing to view the conflict with Mearsheimer-style nuance than normies, along with a dedicate subset of outright pro-Russia posters.

I take this as the Motte being largely composed of disaffected American blue-tribe contrarians. If the blue tribe/college standard is Palestine/Ukraine by virtue of being contrarians the Motte will naturally gravitate more towards Israel/Russia

My impression is that being Pro-Palestine and Pro-Ukraine is the standard woke PMC intellectual (or as you put, it "current thing at ivy league") take while supporting Isreal while being somewhere between ambivalent towards and supportive of Ukraine is the default/normie position.

Meanwhile supporting Russia while hating on Isreal seems to be the majority opinion here because this space defines itself in large part through its opposition to/hatred of anything "woke" or "normie". We are very smart dont you know.

Supporters of both Russia and Isreal are what we call "principled libertarians" but there are maybe a dozen of them in the whole world and they are surrounded by witches.

I see a fairly large amount of criticism of Israel here, but it seems like about a 70/30 ratio of Ukraine supporters vs Russia supporters. Sometimes even as high as 80/20.

Normie cons are pro-Ukraine because they find their situation sympathetic, and pro-Israel out of some combination of Islamophobia and alignment with US foreign policy.

I’ve literally never seen a Pro-Israel/Pro-Russia poster in the wild, probably because those people are all posting on Hebrew or Russian language websites.

I’ve seen them before. They’re usually conspiracy theorists who don’t like Muslims.

I’ve literally never seen a Pro-Israel/Pro-Russia poster in the wild

Common enough on the non-antisemitic far right, though maybe that's a bit of a niche...