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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20931 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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New Year, Same Old Culture War

At least 10 killed in New Orleans after driver ‘intentionally’ rams into crowd on Bourbon Street (CNN)

Apparently, "FBI Special Agent Aletha Duncan said the Bourbon Street attack is 'not a terrorist attack' in comments delivered after the mayor spoke." But then, later:

New Orleans mayor declares 'terrorist attack' on Bourbon Street, FBI confirms investigation (Fox)

Coulter's Law appears to be in force. As a reminder:

The longer we go without being told the race of the shooters, the less likely it is to be white men.

And indeed, this was a shooter, who died in a gunfight with cops... but so far it appears the ten deaths and dozens of injuries were vehicular, not firearm-related. Over on 8chankun (warning: images of death) it's claimed that "FBI Director Kash Patel states killer was 'Middle Eastern Descent'" but I don't see a link to direct evidence of that. I will be interested to learn whether it is a disinformation thing, or whether 8chankun is just better at reporting news than multiple multi-million dollar corporate news media outlets. Can a failed shooting preceded by successful vehicular homicide be used as ammunition (hah) in Second Amendment debates? Probably! Apparently at least one "explosive device" was also found?

There is something to be said for "wait and see," and indeed I expect to hear much more about this attack in the near future (unless, of course, we simply don't). Though clearly Special Agent Aletha Duncan did not seem to think there was any reason to "wait and see" when declaring, contra the mayor, that this was not a terrorist attack.

In unrelated news, Stocks just did something they haven’t done in nearly three decades--and in case you are unimpressed with CNN's clickbait headline,

back-to-back gains of over 20% is the best performance for the benchmark index since 1997 and 1998

Everything old is new again.

I went into the shop this morning and rolled my eyes when the front page of the Irish Independent referred to the perpetrator as a "Texas man". But later in the sub-heading he was mentioned by name. The online version of the article even refers to him as an "Islamic State-inspired killer". Perhaps, in Irish journalism, nature is healing?

I guess, to be fair, he really is a Texas man rather than someone from Saudi Arabia with thin ties to Texas. Details are still emerging, but this is an African-American born in Beaumont that served in the US military and was later converted to Islamist ideology. He is probably also a literal crazy guy. I'm as quick to blame Islam as just about anyone and I'll certainly do so again here, but it isn't misleading to refer to him as a Texas man as long as you also include the ISIS information alongside it.

Served at the same base as the Vegas bomber too.

Reminds me of when I heard that Sabrina Rudin Erdely was in the same journalism class as Stephen Glass.

it isn't misleading to refer to him as a Texas man as long as you also include the ISIS information alongside it.

Exactly what I was getting at. The average Irish person, upon hearing "Texas man", thinks "white, God-fearing GOP voter, probably living on a ranch which contains a small arsenal of firearms". Upon hearing "Texas man commits terrorist attack", the average Irish person would probably assume that such a person committed a Dylann Roof or Timothy McVeigh copycat crime. Mentioning him by name later in the sub-heading immediately disambiguates this (I'm not saying it's impossible that a white man might convert to Islam and change his name to "Shamsud-Din Jabbar", but such a sequence of events certainly sounds unlikely), and emphasising that his attack was inspired by ISIS disambiguates it further still.

Such honesty and forthrightness is to be commended from the Independent, considering that they published an entire article about the stabbing in Dublin in November 2023 without once naming the assailant or mentioning anything about his ethnic background.

I wonder if there's some kind of geographic component to Coulter's law: maybe Irish journalists are willing to specify the ethnicities of criminals who commit crimes in far away countries, but are reluctant to do so when it happens at home (or in neighbouring nations). Or perhaps not: the New York Times is no less cagey when reporting on the Dublin riots, refusing to name the perpetrator and continually referring to "unconfirmed" reports that he's Algerian (by which they mean "unconfirmed at the time the riots unfolded" - by the time this article went to press it had been conclusively established that the perpetrator was Algerian).

This is a trait endemic to journalism as a whole; 'Lying via omission' is a well-worn skill that allows Journalists to selectively leave out information while allowing themselves to claim 'At no point did I give false information or lie.'

There are reasons why the public opinion on Journalism is so low.

Oh of course, I'm well aware. It's one of those things I never stop being appalled by no matter how often I encounter it. I guess it must work on a majority of their readers or they'd have stopped by now.

I think it takes seeing malicious reporting on a particular issue either close to the reader or that's something they happen to know a lot about in order for someone to stop trusting most journalism by default. I think most people just haven't been black-pilled in that way yet.

It'd be interesting to do some kind of academic research into this: what concentration of inaccurate or knowingly misleading reporting, in what timeframe, must a reader be exposed to before they apply healthy scepticism to a) that journalist in particular; b) that outlet in particular; and c) mainstream journalism in general? What is the level of bullshit you must be exposed to in order to overcome Gell-Mann amnesia? We could call it "Gell-Mann saturation point", where more naturally sceptical/distrustful people have a lower GMSP than more naïve or trusting types.

Uh, does the tendency for African Americans to convert to Islam, is that widely known in Ireland? Like the phrase ‘Texas born shamsud Al-din’ makes me think of a local black convert, very possibly having spent time in prison, almost certainly with ties to antisemitic black nationalism. Does an Irishmen get the same impression?

I find it very hard to imagine an Irish person hearing the name "Shamsud-Din Jabbar" and picturing a white man. Trying to put myself in the shoes of an Irishman less terminally online than me, I imagine such a person, upon hearing his name, would assume he was a first- or second-generation immigrant from the middle East or North Africa, and would probably not assume he was a black convert. I've had to explain the concept of "Yakub" several times in the past year, and without exception, no Irish person I've encountered was familiar with it or the Nation of Islam. (Funnily enough, I did once find a discarded Black Hebrew Israelite flyer on the largest street in Dublin.)

I find it very hard to imagine an Irish person hearing the name "Shamsud-Din Jabbar" and picturing a white man.

Arabs are white. Not politically, but physiologically. Both 19th century scientific racists and modern scientists with access to DNA tests will acknowledge this, at least in the middle of long academic monographs.

Way to miss the point, Arabs are not "white", Arabs are Arabs. Physio-capitalism, Bio-leninism, or whatever the queer autists on on X are calling it this weekend is completely irrelevant.

Moderns Arabs have material sub-Saharan African admixture. They also exhibit substantial inbreeding, so their psychological and behavioral characteristics are likely "worse" than one would expect.

Some Arabs are pale enough they could pass as southern Europeans, sure, but the average one doesn't look caucasian to me.

Actually as far as I’m aware, citizens of most Gulf Arab countries have a non-negligible amount of African admixture from the days of harem slavery. African female slaves were not made infertile the way African male slaves were. I think in places like Yemen in particular the African admixture is particularly significant.

Second gen MENA immigrant sounds not implausible to an American but I suppose the weird interplay between Islamic and black culture that makes it not my default assumption is less known about overseas- by all appearances this guy was an actual Muslim and not part of some weird heretical cult.

Yes, I think many if not most Irish people are wholly ignorant of the role Islam plays in black American culture. To the extent that they are aware of the role of religion in the culture, it's limited to black gospel churches and so on.

Funnily enough, I'm reminded of a joke in an Irish sitcom which riffed on this. Dan and Becs was a short-lived sitcom about a young Dublin couple: Dan, an aspiring writer-director who works for the national broadcaster; and Becs (Rebecca), an aspiring actress/model. At one point Dan tells Becs about a concept he's come up with for a film revolving around a female Islamic suicide bomber. When Becs asks if she can have the lead, Dan tells her he thinks the role calls for a MENA actress. Becs is outraged, and says something to the effect of "Who says an actor has to be the same race as the character they're playing? Will Smith played a Muslim!" (A joke that instantly dates the show to the late 2000s: Becs is exactly the kind of spoilt privileged middle-class Anglophone girl who, if the show had come out eight years later, would have been horrified at the concept of a white actor playing a non-white character).

I think for a lot of Irish people in particular (and Western people in general), when they hear "Muslim" they immediately think "MENA". I've encountered many people who seem genuinely flabbergasted upon learning that there are plenty of Muslims who aren't MENA (Indonesia, Chechnya, Bosnia etc.), and plenty of MENA people who aren't Muslim (and not just apostates but e.g. Palestinian Christians).

I mean ‘Muslim=Arab’ is pretty ingrained in western culture, but I think most Americans are well aware that Arab Christians(or ‘middle Eastern Christians’ if they’re still in the old country) are a thing- most Americans would stereotype them as either hardworking small business owners(if they’re in the US) or oppressed foreigners we don’t do enough to help(if they’re in the Middle East).

The idea of not-Arab Muslims isn’t anyone’s assumption but it doesn’t surprise anyone here- people know lots of black Africans are Muslim, Pakistanis are just like Indians but Muslim, the more in the know might be aware Indonesians are, etc.

It's time to start telling people to trust Trump's appointed law enforcement and national security experts. Sometimes you need to put civil liberties aside and trust the experts.

  • -22

Low effort sarcasm communicates nothing but disdain and is not appreciated here.

I assume there's some joke I'm missing here, but you're aware that Trump is not the President at the moment, right? Personally, I think it would be good if we appeared to actually have a President at the moment, but we don't.

I think that was specifically in reference to Kash Patel

The FBI is now saying they don’t believe the driver acted alone; IEDs have been found in multiple other locations in the French Quarter; the FBI is searching for 3-4 additional suspects that were seen on security camera footage placing explosive devices.

This has been unconfirmed AFAIK

Is there any news on whether the explosion at Trump Tower in Las Vegas is connected, or is that just a regular electric car fire?

Edit: I’m seeing new footage that seems to indicate that the Tesla Cybertruck explosion was an intentional suicide attack.

Edit: ABC News says that authorities are investigating the Trump Tower explosion as “a possible act of terror”

Edit: Massive police response to reported hostage situation in Las Vegas

Cybertrucks are expensive, aren't they? Whoever the bomber was, they had money, they weren't some broke lowlife or refugee.

It was a rental, pretty clearly chosen for the political salience. The news is reporting that they loaded it with gas canisters and large firework-type mortar shells. Amusingly enough, I'm reading reports that the stainless steel panel construction of the truck contained and directed the blast, greatly minimizing the harm that might otherwise have been caused. It's notable in the "after" photos how little damage the truck's body sustained; I guess that's also evidence that firework mortars and gas canisters aren't that effective as car-bomb filler.

It is truly dark days we are living in if the average American (or Jihadi for that matter) doesn't know how to build a proper IED. The quality of education has clearly fallen off a cliff. What are we even teaching kids these days? 😉

I wonder if maybe the national response to Timothy McVeigh's bombing actually made it significantly harder to build an IED in the US. I wouldn't know though, I don't know much about weapons.

Yes, though it's less about weapons than regulation affecting coordination.

Timothy McVeigh's truck bomb was made with large amounts of agricultural fertilizer, diesel fuel, and other elements, many of which would normally be seen together. It also occurred in 1995, where the internet was reaching a point to facilitate cross-country and cross-agency coordination, which is how an 'untraceable' purchase- the anomalous cash purchase of his vehicle- became the investigation's cue that he was a primary suspect (as opposed to someone whose vehicle might have been stolen for the plot).

This applies to other examples and cases, including drug processing. As a result, it's a pretty common practice internationally that stores that carry regulated materials of interest (ie truck bomb or illegal drug precursor inputs) have to maintain and report transactions of even legal/unrestricted items at certain thresholds. When certain thresholds or combinations are met- say you start buying tons of agricultural fertilizer when you aren't in the business of farming- then a system flag registers and later a regulator and/or investigator comes to ask a few questions, possibly with a warrant if you aren't feeling cooperative.

What this means for terrorism is that would-be terrorists have to resort to less and less capable alternatives to avoid automated detection thresholds, as the things more capable are also more regulated and easier to detect. Hence our fireworks car bomb rather than a fertilizer car bomb, or Britain facing knife-attacks rather than gun attacks. But these alternatives are less regulated precisely because they are less dangerous, and you get to a point where even actual IEDs- like to pressure cooker bombs used in the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 kill fewer people (3) than just driving a vehicle into a crowd.

This is a similar effect from the role of domestic surveillance technologies used to limit the ability of terrorist cells, and leading to lone wolf terrorism.

If you can monitor mass communications, you can pick up the coordination messaging between group members.

If group members can't coordinate, either they find more secure forms of communication- losing the benefits of the higher-tech comms (such as coordination over distances, access to experts/advisors)- or they decrease the number of members in a group (fewer members = fewer potential comms).

Since the lowest number of members is 1- who by definition has no need to actively coordinate with anyone else- this makes that person very hard to detect in the coordination phase. Typically reports of found would-be lone wolfs either find them in the radicalization phase (where you watch whose talking with radicalizers), or in the preparation phase (where they get caught due to poor tradecraft due to not having the coordination with advisors on what to do and how).

Start stacking these effects together, and gradually you go from 'a group of middle eastern terrorists coordinating how to hijack a series of airplanes simultaneously' to 'guy rents truck.'

Oh, that makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying.

Amusingly enough, I'm reading reports that the stainless steel panel construction of the truck contained and directed the blast, greatly minimizing the harm that might otherwise have been caused. It's notable in the "after" photos how little damage the truck's body sustained

Perhaps that makes up for the time the window smashed during the initial showcase. I don’t know how you could market it though.

That's the cybertruck that also appeared to have been filled with fireworks, right?

Video of the incident

Looks like fireworks. Some commenters wonder if this is the way exploded car batteries burn.

Some commenters wonder if this is the way exploded car batteries burn

No. Lithium-ion cells tend to "vent with flame" -- that is, the burning electrolyte shoots out of an engineered weak spot (or a damaged spot) in the case, with flames and a lot of white smoke. More like a rocket than a bomb. There are lots of videos on YouTube, and I've accidentally lit one off myself.

If the latest news from the past few minutes is accurate, the driver indeed turns out to have a Muslim-sounding name, and online Noticers were correct in identifying the wrapped up flag as an ISIS one:

The suspect accused of plowing a truck through a crowd on Bourbon Street is 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar, according to a law enforcement source.

The source said he was carrying an ISIS flag in the truck.

There’s also at least one photo of the man lying dead in the street, and he does appear brown (or black American convert, as some commenters claim?) and bearded.

Right on cue is a Reddit comment to the tune of “that’s what upsets me most about an Islamic truck-ramming, backlash against peaceful Muslims”:

Damn. My heart to all middle-eastern/south-asian folks today who will bear the racist fall-out of this mad man’s evil move.

Roughly +15 net upvotes. A pesky wrongthinker asks:

I mean shouldn't you heart be with the victims?

Someone else replies:

Some people have enough heart to go around.

I’m not sure I can figuratively roll my eyes any harder.

And, of course, lots of seething about Trump, Vance, racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, MAGA, Fox News, etc. in that thread.

To quote myself:

I distinctly recall seeing, on the same day of the stabbing [in November 2023 which precipitated the Dublin riots], a commenter on the /r/ireland subreddit saying something to the effect of: "Imagine hearing about a horrible crime like this and your first instinct is to wonder what colour the attacker's skin is. Despicable." You mean, exactly like you're doing right now?

Rather amazing that after supporting jihadism since 2003 the US hasn't been hit harder than it has. The US meddling in Syria and the war in Iraq are directly to blame for ISIS, especially combined with operation timber sycamore with the US arming jihadists.

These terrorist attacks have nothing to do with middle eastern conflicts, although I know leftists are desperate to draw connections between the two in order to say Americans deserve it somehow

Seriously, how does some guy driving a car into a crowd end up being connected to some resistance groups being given guns? If anything the jihadists would be grateful to America, if they weren’t under the influence of a monomaniacal death cult

ISIS wins in Syria and that inspires Jihadists in the west. Just like in Syria unlike under Assad, secular education that respected Christians is replaced by Islamic education, likeminded people become more brazen in the west as well.

There is a connection with helping destroy Christian people in middle east and helping inspire the same fanatics to harm Christian people outside the middle east.

There is also a connection between inviting these kind of people in your country as legal migrants. This terrorist was even an educated person IIIRC.

These terrorist attacks have nothing to do with middle eastern conflicts, although I know leftists are desperate to draw connections between the two in order to say Americans deserve it somehow

You are treating the victims of terrorist attacks who certainly don't deserve it and the immoral American foreign policy establishment who isn't the one dying, as being on the same boat here. If the foreign policy establishment is to blame the American victims are also their victims. This establishment could deserve to be blamed while the victims definetly don't "deserve it"

Regarding blame.

Of course there is a relation between populace in general and governance to a degree but to be fair it isn't as if the average American has that effective control over whether America funds jihadists or not. The American establishment kind of does as it wants. In certain periods the American public was willing to support regime change in Iraq, and so they aren't blameless for the consequences of regime change in Iraq but for the most part the American elites do as they please without the average American deciding about putting troops in Syria, training Jihadists, or not.

Or take the Pakistani rape scandal in Britain. The British establishment and parts of population have a responsibility there for allowing this, and their logic of "antiracism" leads to monstrous abuses. But this is different than blaming the victims. Rather the society has harmed part of its own people by allowing monstrous foreign child rapists gangs.

If anything the jihadists would be grateful to America, if they weren’t under the influence of a monomaniacal death cult

If you help a wild dog and he ends up killing people who you are responsible for, you kind of have your own responsibility. The American (foreign policy establishment) love affair with Jihadists including Osama Bin Laden in the 1980s, in the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, and of course in the Syrian war has its consequences. If Jihadists are ungrateful immoral fanatics, then you are doing something very wrong if you support them. To allow them to ruin other countries because you are in favor of them weakening those countries it is pretty awful on its own right too. But blowback is another consequence of this.

There have been almost no Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States since 2017 compared to the 20 years before that. It could be a coincidence that we get the biggest one in 10 years immediately after Assad's Syria falls, but I have suspicions.

I mean, the jihadists(or at least their western followers) are clearly batshit crazy, so maybe stop trying to ascribe logical and rational motives.

Islamism is internally consistent, not crazy, it's just evil.

Western blacks who convert to Islam in prison (not sure if this is the case here, but it seems quite likely) generally didn't pick up the internally consistent version of Islam. Batshit crazy is a better model than smart-evil or intellectually-coherent-but-wrong for that group.

IIRC their hostility to America started with an Egyptian named Qutb who came to America on scholarship, and basically was an incel who hated that Americans dated and danced and listened to jazz music.

All of these things are arguably or not so arguably literally condemned by Islam, though.

And thus he could have simply concluded that Muslims shouldn’t be in the West and banned his followers from using Western media or visiting the west. I mean a lot of the Woke stuff is anti-Christian as well, and most serious Christians avoid exposure to that kind of media and so on. They don’t drive through crowds.

I mean a lot of the Woke stuff is anti-Christian as well, and most serious Christians avoid exposure to that kind of media and so on. They don’t drive through crowds.

Christianity also gets pissed on and blasphemed in its home countries a million times a day in media and culture, nobly turning the other cheek year after year as it shrinks. I'm not religious myself, I'm just saying it's not totally inscrutable why a fanatical Muslim might not consider it an example to emulate.

These terrorist attacks have nothing to do with middle eastern conflicts

How would fighting multiple wars in the middle east not be connected to blow back? Having large well organized and well equipped jihadist groups can very well cause terrorism in other countries. 9/11 wouldn't have happened without the CIA-asset Bin Ladin, multiple attacks in Europe have been conducted by people trained in the middle east. The ideological inspiration, propaganda and connections between jihadists in the middle east and the west do exist. Terrorism increased markedly in Europe during ISIS hay day in Syria.

The neo-con project, mass immigration and terrorism are intertwined.

There is quite literally a direct line of causality between deBaathification in Iraq and ISIS. Purging the Iraqi military and public service resulted in thousands of professional soldiers and officers as well as otherwise peaceful professionals like graphic designers, accountants, intelligence analysts, etc being unemployable overnight and so they joined up with fledgling ISIS and that's how it became such a competent organization so fast. This was even predicted by US analysts and foreign policy writers at the time, but Rumsfeld et al proceeded any way and only rescinded after most of the damage was done.

So "otherwise peaceful" but now unemployable Baathist graphic designers, accountants and intelligence analysts just naturally sign up with ISIS because, well, what else would they do?

Shouldn't we be thinking of people like this in similar terms as we might view southern Confederate sympathizers during and after the American Civil War?

just naturally sign up with ISIS because, well, what else would they do?

Why don't you try to consider it from their perspective? Almost overnight, their careers are ended and are made unable to support themselves and their families and their own government and fellow people subjected to tremendous violence and destabilization more or less for no good reason. Why wouldn't that radicalize a person?

This was both the anticipated and actual outcome of deBaathification.

Shouldn't we be thinking of people like this in similar terms as we might view southern Confederate sympathizers during and after the American Civil War?

You mean we should have extended them a blanket pardon conditional on an oath of loyalty? Yes, I think that would have been the ideal outcome and may have stopped Iraq from sliding toward Iran puppet-state status by having continuity and more robustness in its institutions.

Some people have enough heart to go around

Of course redditors would immediately understand the problem with this if after Dylan Roof’s shooting you had said “Damn. My heart to all White men today who will bear the racist fall-out of this mad man’s evil move” Most people just lack any self awareness or non-object level reasoning ability.

Edit: I know this is a lame boomerism “Imagine if the situations were reversed” but I can’t help it

"Another mass shooting, law-abiding gun owners hardest hit" is something that you do kind of hear in the right spaces, and is also pretty true...

Earnestly, it'd be nice to see the US improve vehicle-pedestrian safety standards more like those of Europe.

More tongue-in-cheek: we need to ban assault cars! Anything with a higher top speed than 85mph (fastest posted speed limit in the US), better zero-to-60 speed than a Honda Civic (7.5 seconds), or dangerous cosmetic features (spoilers, racing stripes, red paint). Or anything over 3000 pounds. Whoops, most vehicles fit at least one of those.

“Ban cars” or the like is indeed a common in-joke among crimethink corners of interweb whenever some Truck of Peace makes incidental contact with pedestrians.

For much of today, the top thread (other than stickied ones) on the New Orleans subreddit was calling for cars to be banned from the French Quarter.

To the extent it's lame, it's only lame because progressives insist it's lame, nor do they have a counter for it beyond "it isn't the same... because it just isn't, okay?!" and just-so explanations. A related example would be "one joke."

Even for chronic Problematic wrong-thinkers like me who are well-initiated and relatively inured to this stuff, it can be jarring to see what sentences look like when they get "find and replace"'d for Who? and/or Whom?

Here's another one:

To add, in light of this I hope that people will be kind to their Arab and Muslim neighbors in the NOLA area.

If the Dylann Roof incident had happened recently, without prompting it wouldn't occur to me to make Norm-pilled jokes along the lines of:

in light of this I hope that people will be kind to their White neighbors in the Charleston, SC area.

Yet people say this kind of feel-good, hugboxxy shit in earnest. Reality defeats parody.

A major problem with this madlib is that the second one about being nice to "white neighbors" is somewhat nonsensical because it is now unclear who exactly "people" are. In the one about Muslims, "people" is clearly everyone non-Muslim (probably mostly presumed to be white); but in the one about whites, it is exactly these whites who are the main target audience, i.e., normal "people". A better madlib might be regarding Republicans in the aftermath of the Charlottesville riots or police officers in the aftermath of some shooting controversy. For me, it is ultimately glib rather than pithy.

As I wrote, the second one would be a joke, but even if playing both statements straight I find your quibbling to be unconvincing.

A major problem with this madlib is that the second one about being nice to "white neighbors" is somewhat nonsensical because it is now unclear who exactly "people" are

Sounds like an isolated demand for gerrymandering. Why not "people" being everyone, or at least "people" being presumably white Americans as in your non-Muslim specification? I suppose it may indeed be too tall an ask for black or latino Americans to be "nice" to white Americans when it comes to crime, rhetoric, etiquette, net-tax transfers.

There are tons of self-hating white Americans who simp for non-Asian minorities, or at least those who exhibit racial out-group preferences.

To the extent it's lame, it's only lame because progressives insist it's lame, nor do they have a counter for it beyond "it isn't the same... because it just isn't, okay?!" and just-so explanations. A related example would be "one joke."

I have felt a bit "yeah yeah, same old hypocrisy as always" when encountering one of these situations in the past, but a) I agree that the complete neutering of it as a meme feels astroturfed, in the sense that I question the loyalties of those who are most vocally opposed to it and b) I have come to the conclusion that if I have to notice this shit, so does everyone else.

The reason "imagine if the situations were reversed" is lame is that it's impotent, not that it's wrong.

A dose of reality is never "impotent".

No, it’s useful to occasionally shake one back into objectivity and away from the prevailing frame.

There is a Youtube channel under that name and he does seem to be a black American convert, rather than an immigrant.

Thanks; found it. It’s a beehive of activity in the comments section of his one video.

Top comment:

Who’s watching in 2025?

🤣

Other amusing comments:

0 comments in 4 years. 1000 comments in 30 minutes. Gotta love the internet.

Fastest growing YouTube channel of 2025.

just subscribed can’t wait to see your future content!

Yo Shamsud, why haven’t you returned the truck yet?

“Fierce negotiator”

I find the finger-pointing about who called it what kind of attack and how quickly certain details when out in the several hours immediately following a shooting like this profoundly petty and mean. Once people are actually awake and have had a little while to sift through some reports, there is often plenty to criticize, but it's tautologically true that you would always be able to criticize the first few reports for being incorrect about some details and/or too reticent.

You right that when something like this happens, people rush out their hot takes and are frequently wrong, and it would behoove everyone to wait and see what the facts are.

That said, it's hard not to Notice which facts are very hastily suppressed. I mean, the people on the scene presumably saw the guy who did it. It appears the authorities quickly wrapped up the ISIS flag so it couldn't be photographed. And the FBI hastily issued it "Not terrorism" report without, apparently, waiting to see if this was accurate. I can kind of understand this - if it turns out the guy was an American convert with no actual connection to ISIS, for example, we don't want everyone screaming "ISIS attacked us!" But it sure does feed the Coulter's Law narrative.

It appears the authorities quickly wrapped up the ISIS flag so it couldn't be photographed.

Alternatively, the guy himself covered his flag to conceal his intentions on the way in, and then neglected to unfurl it in the heat of the moment.

it's tautologically true that you would always be able to criticize the first few reports for being incorrect about some details and/or too reticent

I'm less interested in the incorrectness per se, than in the directionality of it, and what that tells us about the people involved in supposedly reporting "facts." Time can lend clarity to matters like this, but it also gives people opportunities to seize the narrative, sanitize it, build consensus, etc. I don't see any clear way to get the benefits of immediate versus eventual reporting both, without also taking on some of the drawbacks of both.

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!


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