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The woke are not on the rope. They have not even begun being dislodged. What has happened is the start of some setbacks for them. It is fine to admit you don't want them to be dislodged, which is what will happen if victory is declared already.
Non anti woke liberals support censorship and woke agendas. They support doing it on progressive grounds and zionists on zionist grounds.
There isn't this movement of moderate, centrist liberals out there, because mainstream liberalism shares the pathologies of anti white racism, virtue signalling authoritarinsm, hatred of dissent, distorting things in favor ,progressive political corectness over what is true, obviously it is part of patronage networks and corruption where money is directed to them and their client groups. Are definetly nationalists for their favorite demographics and are definetly motivated by hostility towards the continued existence of homogeneous ethnicities of their etnhic outgroups and want to replace and end them both for ideological and ethnic hatred and to gain an electoral advantage. They see fascism in the existence of european ethnicities which is very extreme, and also treat with fanatical hostility those dissenting with them on such issues.
And so, I don't think from the depths of such hostility that you can have people who respect freedom of others. Nor are all freedoms equal, the freedom of totalitarian tyrants to impose their struggle sessions on their ethnic and ideological outgroup is not equal to the freedom of not having this imposed against you and suppressing political commissars who demand that you hate your group. The liberal war on all sorts of isms leads them to support cancel culture constantly and with intensity.
National freedom necessitates keeping out extreme foreign nationalists or Communists for example, that favor your nation destruction and subjucation out of ethnic hostility or ideological hostility to your nation, or both. That liberals blacklist those who don't share their extreme ideology, in addition to discriminating against white males, is something that can't be forgotten, since we can't have institutions be controlled by people who abuse their position.
This isn't to say that those who claim to be anti woke can't be for censorship either on progressive, which is most common, zionist, or even right wing grounds.
There is also the question of what measures are necessary for a good public morality. I doubt the Trumpian right which is authoritarian on criticism of Jews and Israel, is going to ban porn. Authoritarianism in line with the same old establishment ends seems more of a threat than genuinelly right wing cultural authoritarianism.
Personally, I would rather people who tell the truth and care about what works well, are promoted, while those who lie, censor, are suppressed. And the first get rewards and praise while the later get scathing criticism and lose opportunities. And there are some general ethical priorities too. People who care about their own nation's well being, and therefore can't be for maximizing individualistic hedonism, but are honorable in their dealings with rest of the world. I don't believe you can have every institution this idea of "everything goes". Discernment inevitably will exist, and it should weight against the Walter Duranty characters but in favor of the Gareth Jones type of characters. Instead of letting the Walter Duranty types of the world as it happens today, to cancel the Gareth Jones types of the world. https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/news/a-tale-of-two-journalists-walter-duranty-and-gareth-jones/
Now, as far as liberalism goes, it falls in the Walter Duranty side rather than the Gareth Jones side. Cancelling their patronage network hasn't even started happening and would be welcome news.
To the extend one can identifie a pervasive liberalism that differs from a pervasive "woke", it will still share most its pathologies, with the woke are just even further extreme on the same direction.
My view of the matter is that it does not make sense to pretend of a center left that doesn't exist, because far left policies is the behavior of the mainstream left, and of mainstream liberals. Extremism is what the supposed center left is about. This pretension just ends with the far left doing far left things while those who aren't them, we let them and are asleep. It is just a big myth to justify their anti right wing extremism and their far left politics.
That liberals who think the right which hasn't even started doing things, should stop, is part and parcel of the extreme ideology against the right wing doing things which has lead to things being so far left to begin with. It is obligatory for right wingers who have started changing things to not listen to liberals who oppose them from doing so, and see them as part of the entrenched far left. The far left has become such a big problem while there has been countless rhetoric of liberals downplaying the problem of far left extremism and exaggerating the problem of right wing extremism during that time. In response the right wing has started to evolve, and these tactics no longer work anymore.
I'm not sure why I should invest in responding to one of your typical walls of text if you start out by assuming that I am basically a leftist, which in fact I am not except from your sort of pretty far-right perspective on the political spectrum, and that I wrote my comment because I want to stop people from further attacking the woke, which in fact is not why I wrote my comment.
I see you as a far leftist who defines as far right people who disagree with you and defines yourself incorectly as centrist. Since this is a very common tactic of the left to win, I think it is an important issue.
You can fit into what is tried to be presented as mainstream center left and disagree with people further left than you and still be sufficiently far to the left to qualify as far left though. Because the mainstream left is far left in its agenda. Same applies with the establishment agenda in institutions that you declare has already changed too much, even though it has not. It is a woke agenda that hasn't been dismantled and so it is obviously reasonable to question whether your self identification is inaccurate over what you actually support.
You might even honestly define yourself incorrectly as more moderate than you really are and others as much more extreme than they really are. I understand why far leftists who constantly do this tactic don't want to explore this issue, but they are actually the aggressive party, defining everyone who doesn't share their radical ideology as far right. The common principles of the mainstream liberal ideology are a far left radical ideology and you personally have fitted sufficiently with this ideology with your sentiments of insulting on people on the right who oppose for example the great replacement and aren't liberals. Again what you promote fits with wanting wokeness to remain entrenched which is an obvious point that you could have addressed directly.
It is only fair after you guys constantly try to aggressively label and marginalize others, to accept people who disagree with this and see you as the radical extreme faction. Sorry but you can't just win unopposed by just incorrectly labeling others inaccurately and labeling yourselves inaccurately, and after labeling others that you can't complain for others who disagree with your labels. Feigning neutrality while doing far left things is the tactic of far left 101 that it has constantly done.
I even worked to break down how some of the principles of liberals are extreme. That I don't just lazily label you is not the advantage that you think you are. Nobody forces people who don't want this to read only shorter posts. Let me do this again.
The truth is that if we are to put ideologies into circles, if your circle does not have shared ground with what you call far right, on nationalism, you are far left. And the reason you are far left is that your ideology is too extreme and hostile against a group and proposes a radical destructive vision, and shares within it hateful intolerant authoritarian perspective. If your ideology is a radical ideology that says that your ethnic outgroup should go extinct and be happy to do so, including the demographics that historically made a big part of a nation, that is very radical. It actually fits within treasonous hetoric in many countries, even within the text of their constitutions. It is even more radical if it is within your own nation. It isn't far right to be hostile to this ideology, but far right is a self serving arbitary label to justify this extreme agenda. In fact it is an element of the extremism that people want to label others as far right for opposing it.
If we are to put a line from anti white to pro white for example of one issue, you and mainstream liberalism will be on the far left. Or consider heteronormativity, or fertility rates and whether it makes sense to be dogmatic for liberal dogma. Or intersexual relationships and feminism vs more conservative norms. What is called far right for being too pro white for example often encompasses more moderate space than liberals. By the principle that to be too extreme in one category makes one far right, then liberals should be considered far left. Or take conservatism. When it comes to social behavior, the liberal typically is not a moderate who combines conservative with non conservative notions at least the non left wing sense, and what is called far right tends to encompass those who are more synergistic in combining conservative and some elements of social liberalism in less amount than the liberals. Or take censorship, you try to present non woke liberals (which should include neocons who are not conservatives but a form of the tribe of iberals) as betters for censorship but the discussion had various people who others wouldn't label woke, who supported this guy being fired after being doxed for his more right leaning non liberal views. A position more extreme than Vance's which was that he disagreed with him but he shouldn't be fired, because he might be good in his job and that this was the result of left wing doxxing.
If we are to analyze ideology through circles that encompass ideology, purity spiraling means to really avoid to have any shared ground with others on the areas they aren't wrong. This is a central aspect in what the space complaining about far right does on issues of nationalism, social liberalism vs conservatism, interethnic relationships. The position of the mainstream establishment fails to be at all a reasonable synthesis, or compromises in line with Aristotle's approach in Nicomedean ethics that seeks a moderate virtue that contrasts two extreme vices.
Beyond the liberals declarations of others to be far right, and for the liberals to represent some sort of reasonable center lies begging the question and purity spiral dogmatism. It is one of the biggest myths and assumptions that must be challenged and reexamined.
If people don't want to bother with doing that because it isn't in their advantage to do so, it is expected. If you want to be lazy about it, then posting that, just sounds like an excuse to avoid confronting the argument and to dismiss the other party. I think to an extend liberals have grown entitled due to expectations of censorship, allowing them to get away with just labeling themselves and others and win, without examining in the substance, if what they support is actually good and reasonable and to dissent is to be an extremist as they present it. That, and because of previous march on institutions and authoritarian measures and stubborn zealotry in repeating such associations, to an extend it has stuck and even people who oppose liberals to an extend sometimes adopt their terminology. It hasn't stuck with everyone thankfully and it is arbitrary self serving propaganda that is meant to help a political faction at the expense of any opposition, and what is true and good. That is because you are willing to label too positively untrue and destructive agendas and label too negatively true and moral perspectives.
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I might be misreading you, but while I think you nailed most of this post chum, here you are wrong - there is, it's called the maga movement. Also I think actual moderate centrist liberals are definitely nationalist, it's the natural cultural foundation.
I agree that within the american political system, MAGA is more centrist than liberals and neocons. But not sure that it is a centrist liberal movement. And in practice it doesn't seem to be a break from neocons sufficiently. For one, it is willing to champion foreign policy moves and rhetoric that does not fit into that. Like Trump's rhetoric about annexing Canada.
I don't think liberalism is a good thing and a centrist movement would not be liberal but not totally exclusionary of liberal notions. It would be a synthesis of some liberal notions, with conservative and nationalist, with even some dose of internationalist. Like I am a family first type of person but try to treat people outside my family with honor, provided they do the same.
Liberalism in practice is the purity spiral dogmatism. Historically there have been some people more in line with what I favor that might have called themselves liberals as within the national liberalism ideology but they lost and have been overwhelmed by the new left type which is the dominant and representative of the historical trajectory of liberalism. This includes the people who call themselves classical liberals. What they want is new left liberalism with its dogmas and consensuses.
And so I am against it. Only in lower amounts and on specific issues is it valuable. To go with zero liberalism and adopt a purity spiral as liberals do towards conservatism and nationalism (for their white ethnic outgroup, they are more supportive of nationalism for ingroup), would lead to abandoning good things. I like liberal opposition to war crimes for example but then there is a liberal tribe that is also for war crimes. While liberals fail to do this as a tribe, liberalism is to an extend related with concept of political impartiality which is valuable again to an extend. Liberalism in practice fails to even follow its supposed virtues but while I would abandon liberalism, I wouldn't abandon anything related to it. Trying to avoid the same folly that liberals war on "fascism" that leads them to support the extinction and second class status of white people and to aggressively hate those who think otherwise.
The purity spiral to be part of the dna of liberalism and how it developed, but within the views, principles that are associated with liberalism there is some value to be extracted. But to be a liberal is to adopt a framework that will lead you adopt dogmatically too much the new left agenda.
To give it as an exercise: Homosexuality is not illegal but society promotes heteronormativity and champions nuclear families and tries to promote more pro natal monogamous ideology and social mores which is reflected in the media. Promotes its historical reBecause the current situation is actually too unbalanced against heteronormativism and healthy social mores and fertility.
Such society, does not present homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality since the later is both more normal and useful for society, and less related % with other even nastier sexual behavior that to an extend appears as more prevalent with LGBT groups. And there is a patronage network to promote this. It bans surgeries that mutiliate people and doesn't accept trans ideology. But it also doesn't try to aggressively humiliate homosexuals for example.
It is nationalist and pursues its own interests, obviously tries to maintain its ethnic community and promotes some level of pride and self confidence but is honorable in its dealings with other nations. It would never side, support or allow its people to act like some other groups that engage in rape gangs and then close the wagons, or try to convince ethnic groups that they should have no national identity, self hate, and go extinct and be replaced by them and would never tolerate people doing this to them. So this is a synthesis but of course fits well outside what liberals would accept.
Seems to me that decentralizing liberalism from the way we identify is important to having a vision that manages to synthesize important things that both liberals and liberalism are found in opposition to. Since liberalism fails to be a synthesizing reasonable vision, why treat it as a category that we, or the MAGA movement must fit into?
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The MAGA platform is bog-standard populism: pro-government-intervention for their side of social issues. That’s not centrist. Especially not given the OP’s argument that the mainstream left can’t be centrist because it gives too much time to the extremists!
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MAGA is an archetypal national-liberal political movement. Down to even the McKinleyite foreign policy. It's made up of a lot of people who don't like or care about liberalism, but there's the irony of our current situation for ya.
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What would you say is a natural right-wing movement, if MAGA isn't it? Religious fundamentalism? Ethno-nationalism? But then what would be left to count as far right? (This is a genuine question, not an attempted gotcha.)
The original right wing, per the defining of "left" and "right" in the seating organization of the French National Assembly during the revolution: Throne-and-Altar Monarchy and hereditary aristocracy.
As far as I know, I am the only De Maistre-ian social conservative(you know this is a different thing from nrx, right?) on the motte. If even on the motte you can only find one of us then there are not enough to occupy a meaningful part of the political spectrum.
Absolutely; there's a reason I break with most of the NRX guys when they go from diagnosis to providing solutions (because Yarvin's CEO "king" is absolutely nothing of the sort, and as a "De Maistre–ian," you should understand why).
Yes and? Just because a space is (presently) mostly unoccupied, doesn't mean it's not part of the political spectrum, particularly when you stop focusing on the present moment, and consider larger history. Why should our divisions of the political spectrum be constantly moving (this being an instantiation of left-wing ideas of "progress"), rather than fixed to long-term historical standards (in keeping with the right's focus on eternal verities and principles handed down from time immemorial)?
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Outside of Moldbug's wildest dreams, this is not a position that meaningfully exists in America, nor is it likely to within our lifetimes, or our children's, or our children's children. I don't see why we should skew our common-sense political terminology just to leave a whole quadrant permanently unoccupied.
And I don't see why we should shift our political terminology with the times, as opposed to maintaining a fixed position, even if that means portions are left mostly empty due to centuries of drift in one direction (see my reply to /u/hydroxyacetylene above). I'm fine with saying there's no "far right" in America, or even much of a right wing — America is a fundamentally left-wing country, because the Founding Fathers were a bunch of left-wingers who inscribed their (18th century) leftism into the country's founding documents.
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It's a tough subject to tackle, because as the battlefield currently lies yeah, it's right wing. But if there is any objective basis to the political axis at all (a big if) I think it's hard to call the party that unites the likes of Rubio, Vance and Gabbard anything other than centrist. And like Igi says it's goals are the archetype of the national-liberal. I don't know what a natural right wing party looks like to be honest, I only know there hasn't been one since I became politically active.
This is not a "no one is right wing enough for me" argument btw, I am on the Trump train precisely because of this. Like @aquota mentions elsewhere, I also want an equilibrium between the right and the left. Further though I believe the most stable equilibrium puts the right in charge with the left as counterbalance, due to the personality types each side attracts.
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