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.

how oppressed they’ve been

It's not 'how oppressed they've been', per se, so much as 'how likely are they to be oppressed in the future'.

The former is largely relevant as evidence of the latter.

I am happy to support the Jewish ethnic homeland exactly to the extent that they support mine

This would be reasonable if there were a danger, supported by historical precedent, of your ethnic group, if a minority in every country, being declared unwelcome in your country of residence, denied admission to other countries, and then targeted for mass murder. (I don't know what ethnicity you are, so I cannot say for certain that that is not the case. If it is, than your group would also be justified in wanting its own country in which it is the majority. 'White people', on the other hand, do not fit this criterion; if that were to change, then you would have an argument for wanting to live in a white-majority country.)

I mean, do you really think there’s going to be another Holocaust? Antisemitism is a joke among westerners who matter; you’d be surprised how quickly attendees at E Michael Jones lectures drop it at the slightest excuse.

Iran officially calling for another Holocaust is an irrelevancy. Jews will be safe in the west for the foreseeable future, at least as much as ‘white people’(and BTW I agree with you that ‘white people’ are not a group that has a solid argument in favor of needing an ethnostate, although I suppose some white ethnic groups probably do, but not whites as a whole).

do you really think there’s going to be another Holocaust? ... Jews will be safe in the west for the foreseeable future ....

In 1900, would anyone have thought the Shoah would have been started by Germany?

If you brought someone forward from that era, told them that there would be a persecution and mass murder of Jews on an un-precedented scale, and asked them to guess what country it would come from, I suspect most people' first guess would be Russia, possibly followed by France.

I would’ve guessed Russia or the Ottoman Empire was fairly likely to do mass killings of Jews in 1900 and that Jews living in the pale of settlement would be at risk due to a continental war between Russia and Germany, which is predicting that Jewish genocide might be a thing. I wouldn’t have guessed ‘camps run by Germany’ but it’s kind of irrelevant whether totenkopf or Cossack does the mass murder; the point is ‘Jews in Eastern Europe having near to mid term future genocide risk’ was foreseeable at the time.

On the contrary, there is not a major jewish population with a foreseeable near or mid future genocide risk today(you can, I’m sure, name one that not-delusionally-histrionic-about-antisemitism people can agree is in danger or genocide or ethnic cleansing if you disagree).