site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Then you're just wrong I am afraid. Just to point out, I am not endorsing these things as good, but I am telling you as someone who was there that this IS part of the explanation.

I worked closely with the police in adjacent areas in this time frame. This IS what they were like and why.

If you want to say they still should have done better, and that there should have been much better oversight, I agree!

But this is how a combination of systemic and personal biases and experience enable terrible acts. Moloch in action. Because the people doing them don't see them as evil. They see the 30th underclass drug addict they dealt with this month and their reserves of caring in the slightest are gone. They are jaded and developed emotional callousness to protect themselves. If some underage skank wants to trade drugs for sex, why bother stopping her when she'll just have another "boyfriend" or go back to this one tomorrow? Just stop whatever nonsense is going on right now the easiest way possible.

Read the case studies about 14yo girls who ran away from home to be with their older Pakistani "boyfriends", every time they were brought home, they ran back to them again even though they were abusing her, and pimping her. They reflect from an older age that they thought they were desperately in love, and would do anything to be with him. Thats what the grooming part gets you, you see.

So after you drag back the same girl 5 times, you start to wonder, is it worth it? She just goes back again. If she wants it why are you bothering wasting your time. You're already underfunded, you've got real crimes to deal with, not stupid sluts who run back everytime. If she wants to sell herself for drugs, why then why the fuck should you care? Why should anyone?

Its so easy to slide though that thinking. Hell we see it here where people call immigrants or Indian lower classes or whatever vermin or animals. Kulak talking about they aren't even people really. Its so insidious once you start thinking that way. They're scum, they don't matter, in fact you'd be better off, no, they'd be better off if they didn't exist. And most people here are not even dealing with those underclasses day in day out!

Let me put it this way 2rafa lives in England now and has for a number of years. I not only lived in England for decades I lived in the Midlands through the 80s and 90s, and worked for the local government, alongside with the police, not very far from Rochdale, Telford, and Rotherham. if we are both telling you, who doesn't live in England, that this is part of why this happened, then shouldn't that be some level of evidence?

The Jay report also makes the exact same points. How the police referred to these girls as undesirables and up until 2007 seemed to be not really bothered if girls were underage as long as they claimed it to be consensual. Have a look at page 75 where it gives a list of excuses the police would give for not taking action including, how the victim dressed, that they used alcohol or drugs and were therefore sexually available, that it was a relationship therefore a willing partner, that children can consent. Indeed she covers examples where detectives AT child safeguarding meetings argued that the 12yo girl did and could consent. You can read the case studies starting on page 38 for more examples.

Notably it was Kier Starmer who listed all these excuses that had actually historically been used in order to debunk them as part of his revamp of tackling CSE as Director of Public Prosecutions in 2013. You can also find more criticisms of the police on page 84 and beyond, again reiterating what I am telling you. ""Seen by the police as being deviant or promiscuous. The adult men with whom they were found were not questioned." "Some, especially the Police made personal judgements about the young women involved"

This combination of factors, alongside the racial factors that most of the perpetrators were Pakistani IS why these gangs got away with it for so long.

There are also other reasons, interagency squabbling, higher ranking police officers siding with their beat officers rather than detailed reports about the abuse and so on, then people trying to cover their own asses and the like, but attitudes towards the victims and attitudes towards the perpetrators are the two biggest.

The Jay report is very thorough and covers many of the contributing factors. But at 153 pages with some harrowing examples it is not exactly light reading I concede.

Again I want to point out i am not saying that these factors are good, or that officers and workers acted well or in the best interests of these children. Just that being aware of how this malpractice comes to pass is important in stopping it happening.

What am I "wrong" about, if all I'm doing showing how even if you're 100% right about the mentality of the police / socials workers / etc., there are still specific points that move this from "ho hum, it's just Moloch moloching around, what can you do" to it being a deliberate action against the people of Britain in violation of the trust put in the public officials? None of what you said addresses my points. It doesn't matter if the girl will return to the brothel the next day, it doesn't matter whether she's a druggie habitual liar undesirable literal goblin, you don't answer the call of the brothel owners to arrest the father that's breaking her daughter out. It doesn't matter that the public workers did not see their own actions as wrong, if that was a valid argument, we need to throw the entire legal code and stop arresting criminals. It doesn't matter whether or not your lived experience counts as evidence, because nothing you said addresses my points.

What is your point? What does a deliberate action against the people of Britain mean beyond what i have said?.

It's deliberate certainly, the people involved are making decisions. They weren't accidently not doing their jobs. They were making awful callous choices.

The people affected are definitely primarily British ( though at least 15% of the victims were British Pakistanis, and some small number were Eastern European immigrants).

I guess i'm confused as to what you actually mean beyond that. I'm not arguing this was accident. I'm explaining why they did what they did. None of that suggests people should not be held responsible.

Well, it's pretty simple. I'm more interested in what they did. For example, even now you insist on calling it "not doing their jobs", when it is clear they were actively and deliberately aiding rapists and harming victims, which they continue to do even now, as they try to intimidate them into silence.

The question of why might be interesting in it's own way, but it feels rather academic at the moment.