site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Uh, Russia has the world’s highest abortion rate and IIRC there is no mainstream political party which sees it as different from normal birth control. The American religious right by and large actually practices their Christianity; Russia has a church attendance rate which is lower end of average for Europe. It’s true that Russia is homophobic and transphobic, but a bunch of that is the probably-accurate view that LGBT advocacy groups are vectors of American influence.

I’m not going to claim Russia is progressive, but it’s not a based conservative country either. United Russia may have slightly more in common with the GOP than with the democrats, but at the end of the day this is a corrupt imperialist power giving special rights to minority groups to keep the peace and operating off extreme centralization, state owned companies, and militarism.

If you want to see actual social conservatism in europe, look at certain Celtic regions(Hebrides, northern Irish Protestant bastions), Georgia, and the byzantine Catholic belt in the Carpathians(mostly western Ukraine, but also parts of Poland and Slovakia).

Russia has the world’s highest abortion rate

It's not true and haven't been for a long time. Just look at the current data.

Abortion isn't end all be all of being conservative. Plenty of prolifers argue on that basis that abortion "is racist because blacks have more if them", "is eugenics", "targets vurnerable women" and other such leftist pablum.

United Russia would take a strong pro-life stance if their ties to Orthodox Christianity(which has identical views about abortion to the RCC) were genuine; their rhetoric on race/ethnicity is 'woke' and they have enacted strong hate speech laws. This isn't some kind of consistently conservative country even before you get to commie nostalgia.