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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
On one hand, allowing countries to subvert foreign elections seems obviously bad [1]. On the other, throwing out election results based on foreign social media posts seems liable to create a valid threat of a denial of service for elections absent something like The Great Firewall (which is itself a potential threat to open society).
I see why both sides would presumably be frustrated by this, but I don't have a real Platonic ideal of an alternative to suggest. Governance, at least good/fair/democratic governance, is hard.
There's also the reality of the diaspora. There's no way to avoid foreign thought in elections when so many voters live abroad. There would need to be a like mandatory "homecoming" of the diaspora (~9 million Romanians, for instance) before being allowed to vote on anything.
What percentage of that diaspora is gypsies, though? I observe that at least here in America, if you hear that somebody is “Romanian” — and in America, this is almost always in the context of learning that law enforcement has broken up some ring of professional thieves comprised of “Romanian immigrants — Romanian nearly always means “Roma” and not ethnic Romanian-speakers. My understanding is that this is mostly true throughout Western Europe, although I have no doubt that some reasonable number of actual Romanians also emigrated, particularly during the Ceaucescu years.
There's a lot of actual Romanians who've immigrated. You don't notice them because like eastern european immigrants in general, they're largely functional educated middle class people, and most Americans just think they're some kind of slav(they are not). I've met plenty of people from Romania, who identify as Romanian, would find a confusion with gypsies very offensive and often insist that roma be referred to as gypsies to avoid confusion.
In Western Europe they're a bit more visible because Romanian immigrants to Western Europe are more likely to be working class, although still usually non-criminal. There are a lot of them. Romanian immigration(and my understanding was that this is actual Romanians who took normal working class jobs from normal working class brits) was one of the complaints from the Brexiteers. Again, you're more likely to see a news story about a specific "Romanian" or group of "Romanians" who are actually gypsies, but that's because gypsies are all criminals that no sane person wants in their country, so they get arrested a lot.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why shouldn’t I be able to vote based on rhetoric from Russian bots? What if they make better arguments than the domestic media? Why is my vote illegitimate because I’ve internalized a truth that came from a source you don’t like?
“Sounds like someone controlled by an oligarch to me…” (sarcasm)
But seriously, this is a major shift in Cthulhu swimming leftwards and making people go insane. If every right-wing win is de facto evidence of Russian election interference and every right-wing loss is a victory for democracy, the rules-based world order is screwed.
Did you mean to say ipso facto (by itself/automatically)? De facto is used more like "essentially" or "more or less", which, while it works here, seems a bit unidiomatic.
Why? Right-wing movements in many places have come to oppose American globalist hegemony recently, and "rules-based world order" has always been politics speak for "obey the American globalist hegemony". If the people internalise what you said and consider anti-$thing wins to be tantamount to [enemy action] and pro-$thing wins to be tantamount to [cluster of positive affect], this seems pretty good for $thing.
I was speaking in a right-wing dialect, with brevity, and with the contrast between the two definitions above in mind. You're right that I was not clear because de facto is probably the worse usage here. I'll restate it: "If every right-wing win is assumed to be evidence of Russian election interference and every right-wing loss is declared a victory for democracy, the rules-based world order is screwed because WWIII is inevitable."
More options
Context Copy link
...?
The phrase 'rules-based international order' grew in prominence in international affairs literature as a consequence of the American invasion of Iraq, where it was a form of criticism of the US (for not relying on UN Security Council approval). It was later adopted by the Obama administration during the American-European post-Bush reconciliation to distinguish itself from its predecessors, and later was repurposed against Obama's successor as a condemnation of Trump's willingness to break with various institutions, including the WTO, the Paris Climate Accords, and the JPCOA.
In so much that 'rules-based order' is used in regards to Americans, it has consistently been an anti-hegemonist critique of the Americans, not a hegemonist call to obedience to the Americans.
There's no visible spike in ngrams around 2003; in fact it starts growing around 2000 and grinds to a halt around 2006. You could maybe argue that the later growth was due to the Obama administration's use against Bush as you posit, though it seems that the graph starts growing a bit late for that. A search for opinions on its usage in the wild before Russia/Ukraine mostly brings up references to Australia using it with respect to China (example). I also tried to search for the phrase filtering for things up to 1/1/2014, and the top results that were dated correctly are about the ICC ("only for Africa and thugs like Putin"), a paper that flat out only has the phrase "American liberal hegemonic order" in its non-paywalled part, and a Clinton speech referring to the US as the cornerstone of "rules-based international order".
I think the problem is not so much how the term "rules-based international order" is used with respect to the US, but that the term is basically not used with respect to the US at all, except by a few low-agreeableness cranks who can't read the room. German newspapers can barely publish a single article about what Russia or China do in their neighbourhood without referring to the "rules-based order" or adjacent terminology such as "war of aggression" ("Angriffskrieg", a German favourite), but either of those things is hardly ever mentioned when discussion the wars of the US or Israel at all. The other "rules" are evidently also only for Africa and thugs like Putin.
If someone creates a set of rules for you to follow (and the ones that created them were American institutions, which many of these articles are not shy to brag about) but does not need to follow the rules themselves, to follow the rules is to accept their sovereignty over you.
More options
Context Copy link
One way to put this is that it's an example of the classic political debate "must the King obey the law?" In a "rules-based world order", the hegemon can still make the law, but they also have to obey it. This is, of course, good for the nobility (State Department, UN, Davoisie, etc.) and bad for a maverick King (Bush, Trump, etc., though one was too hawkish and one is too dovish), so one's position on the issue tends to be defined by who you support in that power struggle. Very few people in high places want a revolution that breaks both the Crown and the Court, but that sort of multipolarity is popular with outsider critics.
The issue with this metaphor is that the nature of international law is that it quite often isn't.
As a project, international law theorists spent a good part of the 90s/early 2000s trying to build / impose an expectation of abiding by certain premise that others hadn't agreed to, and then using the non-compliance as a lever against those who had never consented, even though on a legal level international law rests on the consent of the states who choose to take part in elements of it. Sometimes states are agreeing to things they don't consider an objection at the time- see UN charter law- and sometimes violation of laws they have agreed to is a worthy tool- see nuclear non-proliferation violations- but in other cases international laws are used by select in-group members as a diplomatic cudgel against those who never consented to them in the first place.
The Rules-Based-Order rhetoric regularly invokes the later category, which tends to be more obvious whenever international law institutions like the International Criminal Court are invoked against non-members. It's not that the law was made but its makers refuse to follow it- it's that laws are made by and for some groups who then go on to demand that others must obey, or that customs that aren't common laws are insisted as universally applying as a matter of law.
So in this metaphor, this is more akin to the nobility of one Kingdom, let's call it Aporue, writing laws to govern the conduct the kings of Acirfa and Acirema. Some of these laws even give them the right to try and imprison the kings and nobles of these distant lands. If those other Kingdoms agree to adopt such laws... great! Fine and dandy, assuming all other things are fair. But if they don't, and Aporue tries to impose them regardless, this is less a political debate about the King following their own laws and more an attempt at a political imposition against the laws of the other Kingdoms.
That actually fits even better into a feudal metaphor - a potpourri of overlapping contracts and privileges, such that the Bishop of Israel cannot be tried in a lay court, that the Free City of Moldova may have elections free from the meddling of the Duke of Russia, that the Emperor is obliged to varying yearly gifts of aid, that the Peace of God obtains here and here, but not here, and so on. Rule over a feudal realm and over a world-system looks pretty similar, because they both come out of attempts to realistically and multilaterally negotiate in a state of anarchy.
Alternatively, that's an even worse feudal metaphor because that wasn't how feudalism worked, nor does or did the US rule over a world-system.
There are substantial differences between 'a complicated mess of formal hierarchical relationships' and 'not in a formal hierarchical relationship at all.'
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What does "Subvert" mean.
People can learn things and share opinions with those they talk to. That's how we arrive at decisions about who to vote for. Without a great firewall no election can truly be safe from foreign influence, because individuals will always internalize the influence of their foreign friends.
I think that means I agree that this is a tough nut to crack. I'm not sure there's a hard line, we might have to choose somewhere on the gradient and draw one.
Hopefully we'll all arrive at some agreeable middle ground. "rules of honorable culture war"... Perhaps something where you're allowed to influence online friends but to do so with a government backed media campaign is a culture war crime? (this is just a spitball in the direction of the vibe... I doubt the UN would actually pass this.)
Of course I say "we"... but I'm not Romainian. I merely say "we" because... its a nut America has yet to crack as well. It's something every country needs to figure out.
It’s not a line that should be drawn. Theres no way any government should be allowed to simply set aside election results. It just opens the door to a government deciding that Theres interference any time that they don’t happen to like the results. And given that such things would be hard to prove or prevent, there’s no way to 100% defend a fair election from those kinds of accusations. Maybe people wanted Trump, or maybe it was secretly Russia! And since it was secretly Russians the vote would be set aside.
I... think I agree with this. Though I'm not certain. It might be possible to come up with a plan that would convince me otherwise. No, I don't think we should simply set aside election results. Ideally whatever method we use is entirely prior to voting, (as a great firewall would be) without being... the great firewall. I can't think of a solution I fully endorse.
It's a bit of a paradox under my value system in the first place. Reconciling the need for shared values and the need for individual liberties I mean. Coordination of wills and individuation of wills trade off closely with one another.
Even this would be fairly dangerous, because you essentially have to curb free speech during an election, as it’s unlikely that you’re going to be dealing with a manipulation scheme that is stupid enough to not VPN at minimum and probably at least be able to spoof IPs in the country if not create a network of servers in the country to post from. It’s unlikely that you can thus tell the difference between native crime-thinkers and a network of agents from Kazakhstan trying to influence the election. And even if you could, again the temptation to simply label messages that go against the doctrine of the cathedral as “interference”, “misinformation”, or “disinformation”, not because they’re false, but because it’s an easy win. You get to hobble your opponent by blocking messages in his favor while you can get your message out easily.
Again, these types of decisions are effectively attacks on democratic principles because it allows for the ruling party to simply declare the other side to be cheating, and thus put a strong thumb on the scale in favor of the ruling party.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There is no way such a rule would be backed by the Western countries unless they could get reassurance that it would never be applied against them in the court of public opinion. A quick search reveals USAID spent $63 billion in 2024, and this is not counting other allied financial moves like the EU's offer of more than 10% of Moldova's GDP as a loan to help the pro-EU candidate. (Imagine the pandemonium if Georgescu's campaign had a promise of a $35B loan from Russia attached to it if they leave NATO!) Then, there is the circumstance that Western culture is "Universal Culture". The West out-spends and out-memes its adversaries on its periphery regularly; losing one rare match is not a good reason to throw a tantrum and quit the game.
The EU financed and even gave weapons to the revolutionaries that overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014, installing an EU-friendly government instead of the previous government, which was oriented towards Russia. That kicked off the current Ukraine situation.
There isn't even a veneer of fair play and there hasn't been in a long while. To be fair, I would not expect fair play from Putin. But the EU as an institution is converging towards the same kind of thing, in the name of "defending democracy" to boot. I don't like either, but I have to live in the EU and Putin is far away, so one of them I hate theoretically but the other one I by now hate viscerally.
One might have imagined that the Russian-advocated attempted self-coup the preceeded the culmination of Maidan (and, of course, the reversal of the EU association agreement that preceded the Maidan political crisis) might have had something more to do with kicking off the current Ukraine situation, but I am glad to see a non-American attribution for once.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I agree with you. So I'm not sure how things will be resolved.
Personally I never liked this game though. Win or lose the culture war is emotional hell on earth.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
From the POV of western empire it's hard to argue this though. With examples like Georgia where earlier this year they voted to limit and track foreign NGO funding and this was met by western backed protests. Now that a non western government got elected the west is full tilt on propaganda and encouragement for violent protests and overthrowing the elected government.
Had something similar in Hungary as well where they tried to limit foreign NGO funding and this was met by mass tantrums from the EU who said it was contrary to European values. So apparently European values are that they get to influence others thinking and no one else does.
Looks at last few thousand years of history. The answer has pretty clearly been yes until maybe 1945. And even then, I'm not completely sure whether that was a change in values or just the rhetoric used to express them in polite company.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If the American people weren’t so aggressive and well-armed they definitely would have done that in 2016, regardless of how ineffective the influence campaign really was.
More options
Context Copy link
Is there a steelman for simultaneously believing that a) we should have relatively porous borders and lax immigration controls, and b) foreign interference in domestic elections in the form of social media posts is a bad thing? Because surely there are many individuals who have expressed support for both positions.
If the Russians first crossed the southern border illegally and then started trying to drum up support for right wing populism, would that be ok and democratic? Now they're just undocumented residents instead of foreign nationals, right? You could say "no that's still election interference", but then it just seems like you're saying "advocating for the side I don't like is election interference", which is a bad look.
We also don't have any jurisprudence I'm aware of on how rules for "foreign propaganda" mesh with the First Amendment. Could FDR ban publishing Der Stürmer by German sympathizers in 1942? That looks a lot like an act of Congress restricting the press, but honestly you'd have trouble getting me to march in support of the publishers. What about in less-declared conflicts? Did the Soviets ever try to just publish Pravda above-board in America?
We actually just had a minor development that is sort of on this front in the DC Circuit with the TikTok divestiture case. I haven't yet actually read the case, just some excerpts from Volokh, but it's likely to be influential.
More options
Context Copy link
Uh, FDR did a lot of stuff like that. He may not have banned Der Stürmer but he wouldn’t have been stopped from it by constitutional concerns.
More options
Context Copy link
FDR wiped his ass with the Constitution. I don't think he cared one bit what it did or did not allow him to do.
More options
Context Copy link
Could FDR? yes... Of course he could. The constitution wouldn't matter.
He had the Espionage and Sedition Acts and the Office of Censorship and the public trusted him. Had he told them we were banning publishing Der Stürmer the courts likely would have deferred to him during wartime.
Note that the internment of the Japanese Americans involved:
This wasn't just a violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments but an assault on the very concept of equality under the law. The Supreme Court upheld internment in Korematsu v. United States (1944).
And FDR just unilaterally did it. With an Executive order.
Long story short, constitutional rights can be expected to become elastic during wartime.
Pretty much, and this is the reminder to the American audience that many Europeans feel they are in a war context due to the nature (and the justifications) of the Russian war in Ukraine. One can disagree with it, but the European geopolitics is reflecting the sort of balances and compromises that come with significant geopolitical insecurity.
In a way, this is what the birth of a more strategically autonomous, multipolar Europe looks like. The Europeans are following in the footsteps of the American policy transition of the early cold war, when covert actions and interference rose as way to address concerning developments near home and further abroad.
Where are you getting this from? I never heard anyone say this, so while there might be some people believing it, I wouldn't call it "many". In any case canceling elections due to a "war context" without a formal declaration of war seems like shameless authoritarianism.
...from various European diplomatic and government reporting, many of which have been posted in The Motte over the years, as well as personal engagements?
I call it a war-context rather than simply war because while there are no direct European Union/NATO-member involvement in combat operations, it's not exactly hard to find acknowledgements of the contextual perceptions on views of the Ukraine War (explicitly noted as a reopening a war in Europe to change territorial borders) with demands for reshaping the European security order (with pre-war terms that would only be achieved by war), reasonings for why supporting Ukraine is important for more than moral reasons,, the Russian gas cutoff that accompanied (the fulfillment of long warned/disbelieved geopolitical hostage taking and an understood consequence of a war), Russian-associated sabotage efforts (of which there was just a naval vessel standoff in the Baltic), the perceived role and purpose of Russian information activities (to influence election results) and political-ally cultivation in European politics (including support for Russia-amiable leaders like Orban who then go on to develop their own more authoritarian shifts), beliefs that Russia has attempted direct coups of European community members (especially Moldova), the reasons why Trump's NATO non-support threats are so concerning (because the perceived need for NATO has overwritten nearly two decades of increasing NATO skepticism), and various others.
If you do not believe many Europeans view themselves in a major geopolitical conflict with Russia which includes stakes of state and governmental survival, we will have to disagree. If you think that this conflict is unfair to be described as a war-context despite much of it happening in the context of the Ukraine War, I am open to other terms. I would support some varient of 'Cold War,' but the cold war was a war context in many ways, so that would confudle the distinction.
I would still maintain the point that many Europeans do not share an American-centric perspective of Russia as a not-really-significant threat, and view the Ukraine conflict's greater context (as in, the context that led to the Ukraine conflict rather than Ukraine itself specifically) with far greater concern. This greater concern, in turn, drives decision making and value-compromising that would not occur in less concerning geopolitical contexts.
And I am not trying to dissuade you from that perception. Instead, I am trying to make a point that the lack of shame is driven due to the perception of necessity in geopolitical conflict.
'We are afraid of Russia' is not a mere figleaf excuse insincerely held to justify self-interest by people who are not afraid of Russia.
Geopolitical fears, in turn, drive the substitution of value/rule-prioritizing deontological ethics in decision makers with more utilitarian/consequentialist models, particularly due to increasing the dependence on institutions biased towards more consequentialist professional ethics (i.e. military and intelligence services) and partly because the raising of stakes can lead to belief that failure will see the losses of action occur regardless. (i.e. the cold war fear that letting a Communist foothold solidify would lead to a different authoritarian of worse geopolitical effects than your own supported strongman).
What we are seeing by and from the Europeans is sad, but very much consistent with shifts from when stakes are perceived to be low (and thus deontological consistency has lower costs) to a higher-stakes competition perception. We know that the EU leadership elite has a capacity to accept the elections of governments that they strongly dislike- see the Poland PIS and Orban- and we are now seeing differences in behavior that correspond in differences to attribution.
This is a perception difference that creates a gap with many Americans, who do not view the stakes of the Russia conflict as particularly high-stakes outside of nuclear escalation risk, which itself is a reason to de-prioritize the other elements of the conflict. Which, in turn, feeds into European leadership perception on the need to act for themselves, contributing to the cycle.
The consequence of fear-driven actions, however, is that much as it's hard to make someone understand that their paycheck depends on them not understanding, it's hard to find shame in people who believe what they are doing is necessary to avoid worse outcomes. Shame for these sort of things comes later, when the sense of urgency has faded (and often retroactive information consideration makes past dilemmas seem obvious), or from outside, by people who didn't share the context-perception in the first place.
Some Europeans, especially in Eastern Europe, are genuinely concerned by Russia. Others (including many politicians and newspaper writers I read) are blowhards who switch seamlessly between "Ukraine is losing, we must send missiles so they can resist" and "Ukraine is winning, we must send missiles so they can finish the job" depending on the latest reports. The idea that Russia is about to sweep Europe is ridiculous.
Personally, I think there is a pretty sizeable contingent of Europeans whose performative fear of Russia is driven by the usefulness of being able to suppress dissident parties and call local dissent 'Russian misinformation'. It may well be that they have convinced themselves, of course. But in my personal circle (UK) anti-Putin sentiment is driven far more by disgust than fear.
They most certainly do not.
We are now seeing increasingly bald authoritarianism due to their failures to destroy right-wing governments in more subtle fashion - financially and procedurally. Plus the looming threat of populism in their own countries driven by their absolute failure and arrogant incompetence.
I mean, in my personal bubble anti-Putin sentiment is driven by straight Russophobia of the they’re all Mongolian savages, non-western barbarians invading Europe type. I wouldn’t oversample too much.
More options
Context Copy link
Fortunately I did not making an argument premised on that idea, having mocked the premise myself in the past, nor do my characterizations depend on people subscribing to that idea.
Your personal circle is, notably, located on an island that chose to not self-identify so much with the European identity, and whose strategic perspective is arguably even more influenced by the Americans.
In fact, Brexit helped contribute to the current norms of Russia thinking in Europe by taking out a counter-point against it. Rather than Continental Atlanticism, where the purpose of US-European ties is the security climate in Europe, the UK-American strategic culture has always been more globalistic view that prioritized further off areas of interest (Asia, the Middle East) far more than many continentals, and as such also discounted various concerns on Russia. With Brexit, a significant globalist perspective that would have countered Russian-centric thinking left the European elite community, and took with its the values and norms its leaders might have contributed (such as a stronger British political tradition of adherence to democratic practices at governing-party expense).
They most certainly do, because they did.
They disliked them, they tried to restrain them in various ways, they will be happy to see Orban go, but even the EU was able to acknowledge free elections it disliked.
What has changed is not that values has changed, or even the key actors in many cases, but the geopolitial contexts within which those values and actors operate.
If you think I am making any sort of moral defense on the ethical quality of the Europeans, don't. Most people are values-first deontologist until they are in a context where consequences encourage otherwise, and that is not a compliment.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link