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 -
This has been my stance on Israel for the entire time I’ve been politically aware. I almost wish there had been some sort of Ashkenazi European equivalent of Joseph Smith, who could have come up with some compelling theological innovation to get some number of Jews to reconceptualize Eastern Europe as the actual (or, at least, divinely ordained) site of the Promised Land.
There’s a tinfoil hat theory on the counter-semitic hard right about Khazaria, the supposed medieval Jewish nation which existed somewhere in modern Ukraine; the conspiracy theory is that (((they))) engineered the Russia-Ukraine conflict in order to depopulate that part of Ukraine in order to make it a viable alternative homeland should Israel fall. Maybe the hypothetical Jewish Joseph Smith could have built something around a mythical vision of Khazaria.
I’m not sure about this. Now, my stance toward Jews is that, in the fullness of time, I would like them to lose their distinctive identity — built on a sense of separateness and specialness — and to become absorbed into a conglomerated elite world culture. For Jews to just become one of the constituent ancestries of the new dominant world ethnicity which is only just beginning to be forged. This will require the end of Israel as a sovereign entity, but I don’t think it will mean a decline in the overperformance of individuals with Ashkenazi ancestry. (If anything, it will help spread Ashkenazi ancestry even wider, albeit in an admittedly diluted form.)
In five hundred years, I can imagine the esoteric right-wing androids will promulgate knowledge of haplogroups, treating Ashkenazi ancestry as a somewhat-tongue-in-cheek badge of honor, the way right-wingers crow about their R1b ancestry nowadays.
More options
Context Copy link