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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33246 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Perhaps there’s a simple reason for this anti-British deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Philippe Sands and Lord Hermer, are both Jews. You even mentioned that Lord Hermer harbors anti-British sentiment. Subversive Jews are trying to undermine the UK’s geopolitical power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Starmer, though not a Jew, fits the role of the useful idiot here.

Since you’re looking for possible explanations for this seemingly irrational behavior, I thought I would supply an explanation.

  • -11

This isn't a simple reason at all. You're supposing the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy to explain an odd policy decision. You're raising more questions than you're answering. That's the opposite of an explanation!

You really don’t have to reach for antisemitism to explain left-wingers doubling down on doing stupid things. It’s like Ford Prefect about vogons- ‘the scary thing about vogons is their absolutely mindless determination to do whatever mindless thing they’ve mindlessly determined to do’. The tories pulled out because it was an obviously bad deal. Now labour wants back in because ‘fuck tories’, and they’re not going to reconsider their course of action because left wing parties don’t do that- and Mauritius knows it and is using the opportunity to try to grift, they know Trump won’t shut the base down no matter what some courts say. They might as well try to get something out of Britain while they’re at it.

You're breaking so many damn rules in one comment I'm mildly impressed. You have not proactively (or on demand) produced any evidence to suggest a conspiracy of the Jews. Or that they have anything to gain from weakening the British state. Inflammatory, boo-outgroup, throw it all in, toppings are free with this sandwich.

You've been warned in the past, and I'm giving you a short ban so you know they have teeth. Even our most fervent anti-semites hustle to meet posting standards, and I'd advise you do so too.

You're breaking so many damn rules in one comment I'm mildly impressed.

'Perhaps there's a simple reason for this anti-America deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Alice and Bob are both radical leftists. You even mentioned that Bob harbors anti-America sentiment. Subversive radical leftists are trying to undermine America's power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Biden, though not a radical leftist (I know, I know), fits the role of senile idiot here.

Since you're looking for possible explanations for this seemingly irrational behavior, I thought I would supply an explanation.'

Surely the above would just be Tuesday at the Motte rather than a banworthy post, no? I'm fairly confident I can find a number of comments like the above with minimal effort. Posts without any evidence to suggest a conspiracy, things that are inflammatory and boo-outgroup, etc.

The Jew-haters' brigade is right, tbh. Their comments mostly aren't treated the same. I just happen to think that's a good thing and think you should just ban anything that crosses the line to clear anti-semitism, while they don't.

Tongue-in-cheek suggestion: Replace janitorial duty with an AI that flips the political valency of a given comment before someone is asked to judge it. Bonus points if you can train the AI to learn a given user's ideology. If we manage to abstract reality enough, it's the first step towards black mirror!

The Jew-haters' brigade is right, tbh. Their comments mostly aren't treated the same. I just happen to think that's a good thing and think you should just ban anything that crosses the line to clear anti-semitism, while they don't.

Should we also ban anything that crosses the line to clear racism, misogyny, *phobia, etc.?

You should:

  1. Yes. Safe space. I think we all know the failure mode of this one.

  2. Double down on your commitment to free speech. Let the Jewposters have their say, and treat them like anyone else. If they're polite and they bring receipts, who are we to judge their speech any more than judge those who hate democrats or think that mandatory schooling is the greatest injustice of all time? You'd win my respect, although we probably also all know the failure mode of this option too.

  3. Give me the satisfaction of admitting to ourselves that we're basically reddit with a rightward slant and that free speech maximalism is dumb. Moderation (heh) in all things.

  1. No.

  2. I disagree with you that we treat Jewposters differently.

  3. No.

Saying that groups are conspiring to do the thing that the group would describe themselves as doing is different from accusing them of an unrelated conspiracy. For instance, stating that groups of Jews are plotting to enjoy Passover is, I would hope, uncontroversial. Similarly, stating that groups of Communists are plotting to abolish the private ownership of capital is also uncontroversial. All accusations of conspiracy fall somewhere on this scale but accusing self-identified left-wing people of wanting to do left-wing things (even uncharitably) is definitely different from accusing Jews of wanting to do things unrelated to Judaism.

I assume this is the more detailed reasoning for why one claim is considered inflammatory without sufficient evidence, while the other wouldn't be.

Saying that groups are conspiring to do the thing that the group would describe themselves as doing

I had said:

'Perhaps there's a simple reason for this anti-America deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Alice and Bob are both radical leftists. You even mentioned that Bob harbors anti-America sentiment. Subversive radical leftists are trying to undermine America's power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Biden, though not a radical leftist (I know, I know), fits the role of senile idiot here.

Radical leftists is usually a stand in for anyone who voted blue in the last election cycle, and I doubt that any significant number of democrats would describe themselves as being anti-Americans trying to undermine America's power.

Saying that 48% of the US electorate are "radical leftists" is more controversial a statement than saying radical leftists are anti-American.

We definitely also mod stuff like that. The ceteris is never paribus, sure, but it’s still against the rules.

I recognize that we don’t see or choose to act on everything.

It would be helpful to understand sometimes why you don't mod particular posts, such as this one. Reporting, most of the time, just feels like a waste of clicks these days; raising a stink in a comment sometimes attracts a statement, but between poisoning the atmosphere (you can't really publicly call out a comment without it coming across as a personal attack) and most likely putting whatever moderator chooses to respond on the defensive from the outset, it's also not really a good way to go. Would it be possible for the mods to aim to make a public statement on every post that receives more than a certain number of reports, even if just to explain why they disagree with the reporters' view of it violating rules?

(I don't think "you are the only one who reported that particular post though" would be a slam-dunk retort; if you look further downthread, there were definitely more people who were unhappy with it, so if this didn't translate to reports that is just a sign that this part of the community has given up on the reporting mechanism)

I feel called out at the moment, so, first, my mea culpas.

@Amadan I am aware that being a rightist partisan is not very conducive to the kind of space that the moderates wish to nurture. I, myself, personally moderate spaces where I have to manage people being political. Knowing this makes my behaviour even more unacceptable, and for that I apologize. I don't really have an excuse for my rhetoric, for liking the heat instead of the light. But I am not a passing internet troll, or fishing for responses from outraged liberals. I have been here in one form or another, and I actually like being here.

Moving forward, I will try to not clog up your moderation queue with my hot takes. I'll try.

@4bpp I disagree with the notion of reports as an enforcement mechanism because it is trivially easy to game, if one is a motivated bad actor. If an individual post is bad, one can downvote it. If it annoys one sufficiently, one can rebut it (although I concede the effort may not be worth the squeeze in nearly all cases.) Reporting is the tool of last resort, when something is noisome and of no value whatsoever.

But you report so much that the lack of response feels like a waste of effort?

I can't recall the last time I reported anyone. That's how little I use the feature. Do you want to be a moderator? You have a thousand posts... a lot more than me. Obviously you have opinions on what the Motte should be. But the demos has an opinion, too. Expressed through upvotes. Metathoughts about the pernicious nature of such social media systems nonwithstanding, is that not the fairest way of determining the merit of what someone is saying?

(I admit that the proposition of 'being maximally evil in posture to EA people' is horrifying, but no more so than the people who constantly talk about 'race realism'.)

I am also aware that the Motte has problems with ideological diversity. But that isn't my fault, that those on the left evaporatively leave. It's not like I'm running around conspiratorially reporting the TracingWoodgrains of the world. They left. Cannot I talk to those of a similar ideological bent? It's not like I'm pretending to be objective or anything. Am I being asked to keep it down to make sure the last leftists don't just pull up stakes and leave, leaving the Motte a witch-chamber?

I've been on a hot streak of hot takes recently, so I'll probably take a step back for a while. But if you have a problem with my posts or you believe that I don't belong here, you can say so. You don't have to write me up in a post complaining about moderation. That's all I have to say.

@Amadan I am aware that being a rightist partisan is not very conducive to the kind of space that the moderates wish to nurture.

We aren't trying to nurture a "moderate" space. I personally am a moderate, but many of the mods are not and being "moderate" is not the Motte's ethos. We have lots of rightist partisans here (and a few leftist ones). The problem is not being partisan; the problem is being antagonistic and inflammatory just to dunk on your enemies.

In what way are reports an "enforcement mechanism"? They do not enforce anything - unlike votes and comments, they don't even leave a public record. Reports are a mechanism for drawing the attention of moderators, and nothing else.

I do not come here for a discussion that is curated solely or primarily by the demos, as defined by everyone who has an account and bothers to click arrows getting a vote. There are plenty of spaces like that all across the internet, many with bigger crowds, and they generally don't work, or at least they don't work to produce a space in which political discussion that is worth reading can be had. An internet forum, in its natural form, is an island in Scott's meta-libertarian archipelago, not a community of people who are chained together by birth and geography and are thus compelled to organise in a way that to them feels fair - it is easy to join, and fairly easy to leave. The appeal of the archipelago is that any island can offer whatever it wants, be it democracy or compulsory-two-buckets-of-shit-a-day Soviet hell; and if you don't like it, you can just leave for a different island, or go and create your own and hope that the customers will come. The Motte's pitch was not a democracy, but a carefully tended autocratic garden with a particular prominently stated set of rules. If it devolves into a democracy, and if these rules are being enforced selectively or not at all, then in the best case it is simply because its operators are inattentive, in which case reporting helps draw their attention to the right place. In a worse but more realistic case, they are failing the criteria they promised to uphold due to bias or the human fear of social censure, as hinted at by @Amadan in his parallel response, in which case reporting serves to convey my disapproval, thus levelling the social censure incentive landscape a little. In the worst case, they are simply committing sticker fraud. I cling to the hope that that is not the case, because exit, while cheap, is not free, and the archipelago is actually finite and shrouded in a fog of imperfect information.

On top of this, on the object level, the main signal that our demos sends by up- and downvoting is "we want more content that helps the right wing". I can see that from my own posting history easily enough - I generally make posts in a fairly narrow range of length, type and sophistication, and the only ones that reliably get over +20 upvotes are those that contain strong unhedged defenses and concurrences with right-wing talking points. Conversely, any attempt to directly argue against right-wing positions is capped at +10, and without careful hedging and gratuitous but-of-course-leftists-also-bad disclaimers it's easy to land in the negatives.

I can't recall the last time I reported anyone. That's how little I use the feature.

That's perfectly consistent with a scenario in which the community heavily leans towards your preferences, and you trust that the mods will take care of it when it doesn't even without your prodding.

Do you want to be a moderator? You have a thousand posts... a lot more than me. Obviously you have opinions on what the Motte should be.

At this point I am so exasperated with the moderation that the answer to that is "yes", which of course categorically disqualifies me. So, reinterpreting your question, the reason I am reporting is not that I want to be a moderator. If I were to aim to become one, what I did (picking fights with and getting myself personally loathed by most of the current staff, antagonizing the ideological core of the community and saying we actually need more of that, ...) would be among the dumber approaches - I should instead have made a point to defend the mods in public, posted solidly right-wing but slightly more thoughtfully and measuredly than everyone else, and perhaps helped Zorba with backend work at some juncture.

I am also aware that the Motte has problems with ideological diversity. But that isn't my fault, that those on the left evaporatively leave.

Of course it is also your fault. When you make posts that are actively unpleasant to a class of readers, such as ones that are pitched to rally your tribe to bring about their defeat or ones that say it's "always acceptable to [engage in the act of harassing, intimidating, or abusing them, especially habitually or from a perceived position of relative power]" (circumscription courtesy of dictionary.com) (here), you encourage them to leave. The obvious mirrored example is unfortunately not so effective because American online right-wingers have all grown a thick skin out of necessity, so maybe try to imagine how inclined you would feel to stay in a forum where a bunch of Mexicans are circlejerking each other about plans on how to illegally immigrate into the US and defraud dumb gringos out of their money, or Russian soldiers planning torture of American volunteers they caught in Ukraine if you want an even more colourful example.

At this point I am so exasperated with the moderation that the answer to that is "yes", which of course categorically disqualifies me. So, reinterpreting your question, the reason I am reporting is not that I want to be a moderator. If I were to aim to become one, what I did (picking fights with and getting myself personally loathed by most of the current staff, antagonizing the ideological core of the community and saying we actually need more of that, ...) would be among the dumber approaches - I should instead have made a point to defend the mods in public, posted solidly right-wing but slightly more thoughtfully and measuredly than everyone else, and perhaps helped Zorba with backend work at some juncture.

Why do you think the current staff loathes you? I have no negative feelings about you. Your record is 2 AAQCs and no warnings! You're a good poster. You're just on the left which means you get downvoted a lot. Sorry about that, but that is how the community is, as you've observed.

Whether or not Zorba uses his "doge" mechanism next time he needs new mods, the way to become a mod is not by kissing our asses.

Well, the times I have butted heads with you and naraburns (and that's just the recent ones I remember) over moderation still stand out to me as the most hostile interactions I have had on here with anyone. Of course this could just be a consequence of everyone who is not a moderator routinely keeping their offense at me and others to themselves for fear of the mods above, so the level of anger I felt from your responses in those contexts was actually below the ambient SNR...?

Two AAQCs seems like something a monkey on a typewriter prompting ChatGPT should have outperformed in expectation over the course of >1000 posts. I'll take my "upstanding mediocrity" achievement, I guess.

Whether or not Zorba uses his "doge" mechanism next time he needs new mods, the way to become a mod is not by kissing our asses.

Eh, that just makes it into a countersignalling game. The way to most any favour is to kiss ass in such a way that not even the target realises; as a system designer the duty falls on you to achieve alignment between your system's value function and easy entryways for ass-kissing ninjas.

At this point I am so exasperated with the moderation that the answer to that is "yes", which of course categorically disqualifies me. So, reinterpreting your question, the reason I am reporting is not that I want to be a moderator. If I were to aim to become one, what I did (picking fights with and getting myself personally loathed by most of the current staff, antagonizing the ideological core of the community and saying we actually need more of that, ...) would be among the dumber approaches - I should instead have made a point to defend the mods in public, posted solidly right-wing but slightly more thoughtfully and measuredly than everyone else, and perhaps helped Zorba with backend work at some juncture.

It doesn't disqualify you, and none of that would have helped you. If you want the job, I'll be more than happy to vote for you if I'm nominated for nominator the next time around.

Thanks for the sentiment, but - no, there's something to be said for "don't pick people who are too interested in the job" as a perfectly reasonable heuristic for any sort of policing/powertrippy occupations. Also, it seems far-fetched to not expect people to consider personal affinity and vibes in picking future colleagues, and their use as a criterion is easily steelmanned. Moderators are people too. Amadan all but stated that his modhat actions are constrained by his aversion to "getting flack" in public for unpopular decisions. It presumably wouldn't exactly help him moderate if he already had to engage with individuals he finds aversive at the backchannel stage that seems to precede every mod action.

Also, cities like NYC pick Chinese beat cops to deploy to Chinatown etc. for good reasons.

More comments

Would it be possible for the mods to aim to make a public statement on every post that receives more than a certain number of reports, even if just to explain why they disagree with the reporters' view of it violating rules?

Fuck no.

Well, maybe if someone else wants to do it. But no, we get enough flack when we do mod posts and people are unhappy about it; now you want an open forum for people to bitch every time we don't mod a post? Fuck if I'm going to explain myself for every post I mod or don't mod. (As for "a certain number of reports," it's pretty rare for a post to receive a large number of reports and not get modded. Usually those are unambiguously pretty bad.)

Look, I think we are pretty damn transparent. We usually explain ourselves, we let people argue with us, we engage civilly on threads where people are calling us shitty mods. Sometimes we are too transparent, because it just invites ankle-biting and rules-lawyering. I go through phases where I will patiently explain to someone why I modded them and let them argue with me for an entire thread, and phases where I just say "Banned, bye" because I feel like it's a waste of time explaining things to bad-faith grudge-holders who don't really care about our reasoning, only that we didn't mod the way they think we should.

We do read every single report. Including yours. I would guess we actually act on about 5% of all reports.

Why does any particular mod not mod a particular post? It might be because the mod thinks it's okay, it might be because it's borderline and the mod isn't sure whether they think it merits action. It might be because the mod thinks it merits action but doesn't want to be the one to make the call, for various reasons. I will frequently look at a mod queue full of "borderline" posts and think "I don't want to deal with these right now." Maybe I don't have time to think about them, or maybe I'm in a bad mood and am afraid I might be too trigger-happy, so I will hope some other mod makes the decision. Then maybe I see three days later no one has made the call and it's still in the queue, and I sigh and approve it because clearly no one felt strongly about it and I'm not going to come and ban them three days later.

As it happens, that particular post by @crushedoranges was discussed in the mod channel. It was definitely borderline. We were split about 50/50 between "It's a bad post but not a rules violation" and "This deserves a warning." In the end we defaulted to no action. On a different day, a different mod might have warned or banned him. @crushedoranges posts a lot of crappy comments like that so he's on thin ice, but this time he skated. Does that mean we are not always 100% consistent and that sometimes a much worse comment will pass while a less bad comment earns the poster a ban? Yes, yes it does mean that! Yes, that definitely happens!

So it goes.

This is a false equivalence.

First of all, "Radical leftists want to undermine America" is itself a bit more Fox News than I think we normally go. I would probably say something more like "The left wants to weaken America's military, so of course they support closing overseas bases." I think a lot of leftists would actually agree with my framing, and would disagree that closing bases counts as 'undermining' America. They would probably say that America should spend its money on welfare rather than overseas bases, and that closing bases actually strengthens America in all the ways that count. Thus, they don't want to undermine America, they just want to close bases.

The Jewish conspiracy angle leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I do not actually accept the reasoning that Jewish people want to undermine the UK any more than I accept the reasoning that the American left wants to undermine America. I think that the thing you most need to justify when making that argument is the premise. Any time anyone posits a Jewish conspiracy, they never explain the alleged motivation of the alleged Jewish conspiracy. I believe that the American left wants to close military bases, because it makes sense according to their goals (spend less on military and more on welfare). I do not believe that British Jews want to 'undermine the UK’s geopolitical power when the nation is weak and vulnerable' out of sheer evil Jewishness, because that is not a real motivation.

I think if someone went around suggesting that the Vegans were the masterminds behind every Islamic terrorist plot, they would be banned in short order. The problem with the Jewposting isn't the form, it's the sheer nonsense of it. You can't post crazy gibberish and expect to be taken seriously.

The Jewish conspiracy angle leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I do not actually accept the reasoning that Jewish people want to undermine the UK any more than I accept the reasoning that the American left wants to undermine America. I think that the thing you most need to justify when making that argument is the premise. Any time anyone posits a Jewish conspiracy, they never explain the alleged motivation of the alleged Jewish conspiracy. I believe that the American left wants to close military bases, because it makes sense according to their goals (spend less on military and more on welfare). I do not believe that British Jews want to 'undermine the UK’s geopolitical power when the nation is weak and vulnerable' out of sheer evil Jewishness, because that is not a real motivation.

Au contraire, I can promise you that we have some very elaborate explanations for the motivations of the Jewish conspiracies.

Paging @SecureSignals - What do you think?

I doubt that there is a 'Jewish Conspiracy', but if it exists, its motive is probably something along the lines of 'not being murdered or driven from their homes.'

The mods are very clear that single or few-issue posters are treated much more harshly for completely reasonable reasons, namely that they end up using the community as their soapbox for their ONE thing. It happens that floating around right-leaning forums with lenient speech policies are a not insubstantial number of people for whom their One Issue is the Jews. The main reason treatment of secure signals actually improved recently is that he decided, in a welcome shift, to start discussing other things in addition to his single issue.

Unless this is someone's alt, doesn't look like they're a regular Jewposter.

Anyways, object level aside since obviously I don't like the people obsessed with Jews either, this is just a much less lofty expression of free speech ideals for a community to follow. What @self_made_human articulated was more or less reddit with a right-shifted Overton window, but not far right enough (yet) to tolerate regular Jewposting. What's the difference between 'we treat anti-semites more harshly because our userbase finds their opinions inflammatory' and 'we moderate conservative opinions much more harshly because they're just sealioning single-issue posters?' There's plenty of garbage posts here with nary a fact in them and packed chock-full of opinions I find plenty inflammatory (and even articulated in a much cruder and more inflammatory way than the Jewposter!), and the only difference between them is the opinions of the majority.

Sure, if the mods make enough unpopular decisions the community dies. Sure, nobody can reach some platonic ideal of objectivity or impartiality. But abandoning the pretense so easily is a bit of a letdown.

What @self_made_human articulated was more or less reddit with a right-shifted Overton window, but not far right enough (yet) to tolerate regular Jewposting. What's the difference between 'we treat anti-semites more harshly because our userbase finds their opinions inflammatory' and 'we moderate conservative opinions much more harshly because they're just sealioning single-issue posters?'

I will push back against this claim. The Motte isn't just reddit with a right-shifted Overton window.

Our Overton window is wider. Enormously so, though not as unique these days as Twitter competes in terms of permissivity if not quality.

There are very few topics that are outright verboten on this site. Most of them would be spam, harassment and the like. You can just about advocate for any viewpoint as long as you do it politely and with enough explanatory force behind the views you endorse.

There's plenty of garbage posts here with nary a fact in them and packed chock-full of opinions I find plenty inflammatory (and even articulated in a much cruder and more inflammatory way than the Jewposter!), and the only difference between them is the opinions of the majority.

Report them! Few of us mods have the time to read each and every comment posted on the site. I once did, when I was rather underemployed, but if something doesn't show up in the report queue, it is much less likely to be moderated, at least promptly.

It's inevitable that unpopular topics will get reported more often, and will thus be moderated more often, even while holding the quality of the comment equal.

For this particular one, the volunteer janny system flagged it as a bad comment, it had multiple reports to boot. We take that into account when making moderation decisions, but it certainly isn't the only thing that matters, our discretion overrides it if we deem a comment to be within the rules despite people (rarely) reporting on vibes rather than the merits of a comment. There are users so consistently downvoted that they'd never leave the filter queue if we didn't override it. This place isn't a majoritarian free-for-all, we do our best to accommodate unpopular viewpoints.

Cirrus had multiple warnings, and was hit with a ban for a single day. That's a slap on the wrist as punishments go, and he is welcome to reframe the same point as long as he meets our other guidelines.

You're correct that that hypothetical comment wouldn't be moderated, even if it's not quite the level of quality we hope users aspire to.

If you had to ask for my rationale in not moderating it, my reasoning would be along the lines that it is a far less inflammatory claim. It doesn't take much effort to show a dozen examples of far-leftists strongly advocating for the death of the American Empire. I'm sure if we asked politely, we'd find a few on the site itself!

Our rules about inflammatory comments and evidence implicitly assume a subjective reference frame. That is sadly unavoidable. Someone advocating for the death penalty for pedophiles and rapists would be treated very differently from people saying that miscegantors and homosexuals should be put to death, in the former cases, the arguments being made draw on significantly more cultural consensus and common-knowledge (implicitly). We allow the latter class of argument, you can call for homesexuality and race-mixing to be made illegal, we demand additional explanation and rigour to your argument even if it bottoms out in subjective personal beliefs.

Speaking ill of the Jews is allowed, or else Secure Signals wouldn't be posting here. That he is, is a sign that he (usually) meets our standards of discourse.

It would be too much to expect that we can keep everyone happy when it comes to our judgement about what counts as inflammatory and needing justification versus what is a clear and self-evident Truth™, but that's unavoidable, and we try to find a balance.

The comment isn't especially rule-breaking on any of those fronts. It brought useful context to the original post. I learned something from it. If there were a top-level post about, say, people behaving in a strikingly unruly manner in public, and a reply added that they were black as a partial explanation (and obviously it could only be a partial explanation), there is no way that would get modded, let alone as casually as this. Just like the ungovernable black, the far-left Jew who loathes his host country's past glories and dominant ethnic group, and is politically engaged enough to act on it, is a recognizable type. Both Jews and gentiles have been writing about it for over a century, sometimes sympathetically. It shouldn't be necessary to break out the stats/conspiracy board every time one wants to gesture at it (and doing so would probably only derail the conversation and make the pile-on worse).

I'm mostly a lurker here, but I've noticed that when I do find the motivation to post, it's often to defend others from anti-anti-semitic dogpiling and mod action. Maybe this is my own bias talking, but it seems to be the one topic where The Motte loses all reason in its eagerness to shut down conversation, and the quality of the responses drops off a cliff. Besides the ban itself,

@2rafa

If he is interested in advancing Jewish interests, he is doing a very poor job of it [by opposing Israel]

It's common knowledge (I hope this point is simply consensus so that I can't be accused of building one) that far-left, white-hating, anti-colonial Jews are often, perhaps usually, also anti-Israel. Obviously this would make it hard to argue that Hermer and Sands are part of a conscious international conspiracy to promote Jewish world domination or whatever, but @Cirrus said no such thing. While, if Cirrus took your rebuttal on board, he might have to posit a more complex motivation for the antagonists in this story than raw will to racial supremacy, that is not really a problem for him, as highly prominent Jewish public figures are obviously smart enough to have more complex inner lives than that (that still, demonstrably in some cases, reserve a place for hating white gentiles). For me, learning that both the key figures in the Chagos story happened to be Jewish had the total effect of minimizing the cognitive dissonance/surprisal/confusion I had on first reading OP, and learning that Hermer favors Palestine did little to increase it again.

@Quantumfreakonomics

This doesn’t even make sense from an antisemitic standpoint. If anything Jews want English-speaking nations to dominate geopolitics because they already have ready-made English-language propaganda infrastructure

OP established that whether or not it has anything to do with their Jewishness, Hermer and Sands appear to be acting against national interest, even out of contempt for the English people, as some have alleged. So taking that as given, do you think it is more natural that they should be ethnically English or Jewish? Of course there are many self-hating English people as well so it's not a slam dunk, but I think the point stands. I might have predicted that Hermer and Sands were Jewish on first reading the story, and although I can't honestly say the thought occurred to me, I attribute that to being less vigilant than I could have been (to be honest "Phillippe Sands" should have been a dead giveaway). Thanks to Cirrus' comment I am less slightly less likely to miss such details in the future.

@TitaniumButterfly

Random accusations toward Jews

"Random accusation" would be if the key figures in the story weren't literally Jewish.

@jeroboam

There are people who are obsessed with Jews for some reason, and this is one of the few places that won't immediately shut it down so we get all the witches.

It's honestly not even offensive, just boring and annoying.

It's not that that aren't any decent anti-Jewish takes. It's just that the ones we tend to attract are low-IQ by the standards of this forum.

You're a thoughtful poster most of the time, but here we go with the anti-anti-semitic tropes. It's always the same "low-IQ" verbiage.* What's conspicuously low-IQ about his comment, of all the comments on here? It is at least coherent and well-structured (though short), and it contains no spelling or grammar mistakes. Most commenters who can meet those standards don't have to worry about being tarred as "low-IQ", at least not based on a single post. Admittedly it doesn't take a very high IQ to google someone's ethnic background, but the same goes for any low-effort reply that just serves to add context. "Low-IQ" is boo lights for any criticism of Jews that falls below @SecureSignals' standard of eloquence (which is met by maybe two or three other posters forum-wide).

For every "boring and annoying" antisemitic post on here, there are 10 NPC-level rebuttals. I urge all of you anti-anti-semites to consider if the fact that every drive-by post like this spawns a chorus of affronted Jews yelling "Shut it down!" helps your case.

*I saw a lot of this in the weeks after Oct. 7: according to several prominent internet Jews, not supporting Israel makes you "low-IQ" of all things. Other positions might be perverse, misguided, unsound, averse to facts, ideologically motivated, evil, even dumb, but somehow the word cloud for opposition to Israel and other positions that are facially unfavorable to Jews usually contains "low-IQ". What seems pretty plainly to be going on is that these Jews are leveraging their reputation for high IQ to give their attacks on the "low-IQ" extra bite. After all, they are the final authority on IQ.

It's common knowledge (I hope this point is simply consensus so that I can't be accused of building one) that far-left, white-hating, anti-colonial Jews are often, perhaps usually, also anti-Israel

But are they then distinguishable in any way from non-Jewish far-left white-hating anti-colonialists? If not, then what explanatory power does harping on about their Jewishness bring to the equation?

I urge all of you anti-anti-semites to consider if the fact that every drive-by post like this spawns a chorus of affronted Jews yelling "Shut it down!" helps your case.

Very few of those people are Jewish at all. The majority of Jews on this board just don’t engage with those posts except occasionally.

which is met by maybe two or three other posters forum-wide

Not a bad writer but ridiculous suggest only two are three are on his level (many more are better).

that is not really a problem for him

That is kind of the point, the argument is so poorly made that it doesn’t exist, it’s noooticing with no backing, it says very little. If the argument is some KMac group evolutionary strategy, Hermer has clearly acted against Jewish group interests by using his extremely prominent position in what is still a major nuclear power to relentlessly and publicly bash the only Jewish homeland. If it’s that there some progressive and powerful Jews (for relatively dull HBD reasons especially overrepresented in wordcel careers like law) who fully buy into anti-colonialist ideology, then sure, although there is absolutely no shortage of those among the native population. But it’s not really clear what he’s saying, beyond saying nothing except that he can look someone up on Wikipedia, then click early life.

Very few of those people are Jewish at all.

I at'd 4 people. You are Jewish, and unless you are including yourself in "those people" you must know at least one of the others to be Jewish. In which case that's half.

I'm sure The Motte has a fair number of Jewish users, and given the highly disproportionate reaction every time a Jew's being Jewish is brought up, it seemed reasonable to expect Jews to be amply represented in the pile-ons. I didn't seriously mean to suggest it was all Jews.

But it’s not really clear what he’s saying, beyond saying nothing except that he can look someone up on Wikipedia, then click early life.

Well, his post (unlike all the replies to it) was an observation about the topic at hand. It wasn't about how finely wrought a theory of Jewish group behavior he could shoehorn two relatively obscure public figures into (and again I don't think Motte users would actually appreciate every throwaway antisemitic comment turning into a paragraphs-long screed about group evolutionary strategy and so on). As a reply, it was up to par. It reduced perplexity. I can see why it would be annoying to be faced with refuting a direct association between an isolated fact and a statistical pattern without any mediating causal link. That said, I feel like that's not an uncommon form of argument around here, so if you don't dispute the pattern (i.e. that Jews are overrepresented compared to non-Jews in radical left-wing/anti-white politics/culture production, and more overrepresented than can be predicted from their verbal intelligence alone), you could just let it go.

For every "boring and annoying" antisemitic post on here, there are 10 NPC-level rebuttals that add no substance.

This is why boring and annoying antisemitic posts are strongly discouraged -- maybe the antisemites should try posting something interesting?

Like, SS is not my favourite poster (and I hate to encourage him), but his holocaust denial posts do bring in some interesting history at times -- I don't believe that a meticulously researched post about the connections these two Powerful Jews have to the International Zionist Conspiracy, and the specific actions they took to broker this ridiculous deal; maybe wrapping up with the was in which the ridiculous deal makes these Jews more Powerful and will enable the IZC to take over the UK -- would face mod sanctions.

It would probably still get a lot of pushback, but steel sharpens steel, right? Have at 'er.

I agree with this, but I also had the impression lately that these rules have become much more relaxed when its not about the Special People.

Eh, I’ve gotten banned for ranting about Haitians.

Do you have concrete examples in mind? I don't think we treat Jews any different, it's just that they're probably the ethnicity most singled-out by our resident witches. I'm pretty sure we'd at least warn if not ban for similar comments for other groups that don't meet our standards for effort or pro-active production of evidence.

If you can look up what I got in janny duty the last few days, there where a few in there that I didnt recognise a distinguished comment responding to in modlog now. But I dont remember in particular - I kind of thought this is just the new standard until now, so I didnt make a note of them. I guess I will going forward.

I don't have any way to do that, though I think Zorba might. I recall there was a measure of how close someone's volunteer janny choices correlated to final moderator action. It's just not exposed with my current privileges.

Do you have concrete examples in mind?

our resident witches

This is a good one. Scott's Seven Zillion concept has normalized deprecatory terms towards those people that would be auto-banned if used against other groups.

Do you think Cirrus is a witch?

I'm a witch. Or a principled libertarian advocating for free speech, if one cares to split the difference.

The Motte grew out of a desire for more free speech, including speech on topics that are/were verboten on most of the internet. There is absolutely no pejorative intent, we invite all comers as long as they're polite about things. https://www.themotte.org/post/1657/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/293159?context=8#context

You happen to have a quasi-ideological dispute going here, but I must remind you that this place is a watering hole for heathens and witches, and often all we ask is that we don't bare wands or claws at each other. Even if someone pisses you off, especially so

There you go. I'm on record saying the same thing with a mod hat on. It's a term I use with pride, and if it's deprecatory, then it must be conceded that it's also self-deprecating. Ever wonder why the volunteer janny page uses a picture of a quokka?

That's fair. A Yankee-Doodle style "We are taking it back" approach to has been successful in the past for sure.

See "Keep Your Rifle by Your Side" for the modern version.

If Ubisoft didn’t want us to identify with it then they shouldn’tve made it such a banger.

In the original metaphor, libertarians or principled free speech advocates were explicitly distinguished from witches. The witches are posting here because they can post things that are banned for ideological reasons elsewhere- HBD advocates, the pedo guy, securesignals, etc.

I think most of us who considered the original metaphor have realized that, whatever label we might prefer to apply to ourselves, we are in fact witches by the lights of the other side of the culture war; that is, we are not at risk of being targeted because of a mistake or a misunderstanding, but because those doing the targeting wish to target people with our actual views. We are not temporarily embarrassed members of "polite society". We left "polite society" behind a long, long time ago.

I've argued at length against the HBDrs and race-essentialists and white-identitarians here. All the same, here at least, I've long ago bothered arguing over the label "racist"; the people using it know what they mean, and I know what they mean. We both agree the Progressive definition of Racist applies to me, and there's no amount of MLK quotes that will change their mind.

The whole concept was a transparent ploy to build an unprincipled exception.

"We're so committed to free speech, but there's these yucky witches taking advantage of how nice us quokkas are. Boy if only there was a firm leader who could purge the witches in a reign of terror. BTW everyone who isn't a bay area leftist is now defined as a witch"

It was just a disgusting mix of self-flattery, catty backbiting, and rationalization. And Ben Garrison, 4bpp, Chrisprattalpharaptr, netstack, and amadan are doing it all over again here.

More comments

The rules are as equally enforced and many recent bans for vulgar racial hatred haven’t been for antisemitism iirc.

No mod hat?

Oops. Thanks for the reminder.

As a side note, I moderate less than I could because I have to switch themes every time, and the default white flashbangs my eyes. Trivial inconveniences stack up :(

Lord Hermer is a hardcore very pro-Palestinian Jew, though, who has implicitly (not explicitly, since as AG that would contradict Starmer’s own position) defended the ICC’s warrant for Netanyahu among other things:

In May 2023, Hermer was amongst many lawyers who signed a Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights letter addressed to Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, which called on the government to constructively participate in the International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the legal consequences of the actions of Israel in occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem.[15] In July 2023, Hermer stated that he believed that the "continued Israeli occupation of the West bank" was "unlawful, deeply damaging to the interests of Israel and wholly contrary to the values of tikkun olam" which Hermer grew up with and continued to be guided by.[2]

In October 2023, Hermer was amongst eight prominent Jewish lawyers, which included former Supreme Court President Lord Neuberger, who signed an open letter to call on Israel to follow international law in its response to the 7 October attacks.[193] Later that month, in an interview with LBC whilst speaking to Sangita Myska, he said that it was "impossible to conceive" how Israel's siege was "in compliance with international law".[194] He went on to say that "for a very long time" Israel has had "effective control" over the borders of Gaza, which he said was reliant on the "need to have electricity, water and food coming in"; and that the "cutting of that off" was "very, very difficult to reconcile with obligations of international law" and described that as a "deliberate understatement" from him.[194]

If he is interested in advancing Jewish interests, he is doing a very poor job of it.

As an aside, international law is a dumb concept when it obligates you to actively help your enemies in a war. It is one thing to say “don’t aggressively torture PoWs.” It is another thing to say “power your enemies stronghold.”

Can not the international law types see the obvious futility of demanding these kinds of “laws?” They invite contempt and thereby prove out the weakness of international law as a concept.

I'm pretty sure that's specific to Israel. The theory is that Israel isn't at war with Gaza, they're an occupying power with responsibility to their population. This is a stupid theory, of course, but twisting international law into pretzels to reach the conclusion that Israel should assist its own destruction is pretty much par for the course. Fortunately for Israel, Netanyahu isn't Keir Starmer.

This doesn’t even make sense from an antisemitic standpoint. If anything Jews want English-speaking nations to dominate geopolitics because they already have ready-made English-language propaganda infrastructure

Why would Jews want to weaken British power? England generally stacks up in favor of Israel and/or Jews, does it not?

Anglos aren't ready for ethnic cleansing. They are convenient allies but the strings attached to their aid are a nuisance.

A Jewish hegemony would put their vassals only in the position of following and giving tribute, not complaining.

So the best way to do this is by making the UK look dumb and kneecapping American power in the Pacific so that the United States is more likely to lose a war with China, making it more likely to pull back its Middle Eastern commitments, including the missile shield that's been protecting Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles and the foreign aid they've been receiving ever year?

I don't think that this conspiracy is likely or that anything is so rationally planned, but Israel might prefer a more multipolar world. China doesn't care which tribe occupies a particular piece of land or how it governs it, so long as it's pliant to China's national interests. A realignment with China would mean much less finger wagging, no threats of boycotts, no constraints around solving security issues. It's not altogether clear that access to weaponry would even suffer too much, especially a decade from now (and if Israel's primary problem is controlling an insubordinate population, China already has the US beat there in technology). And, if nothing else, Israel could play the US and China against each other, hoping to get the best deal from both. The only big question is whether Israel can offer more to China than China's Middle Eastern allies can (which seems unlikely, but maybe China could find a way to thread the needle and work with both).

Uh, Israel has strong interest in a world police existing, and china’s local Allies are firmly anti-Israel.

China is relatively pro-Palestinian and long had been. Not to the extent of actually becoming involved in the conflict or ending diplomatic ties with Israel (at least since they were established in 92), but it was part of the general anti Israel shift observed in the communist world from the 1970s onward. In addition, the useful Chinese diasporas in Malaysia and Indonesia, which China has worked hard to build ties with and be seen as defenders of, are dependent to some extent upon Islamic tolerance.

Which nations are ready? If Jewish interests are in line with Israeli interests, then seems like they should push the West towards more revanchist focus, assertive actions, and more power. Then these nations have fewer reasons to denounce actions of Israel abroad. If Israel does want to commit an ethnic cleansing. If Jewish interests are separate from Israeli interests it would make sense that Israeli policy would be a focus rather than irrelevant Britain.

Random accusations toward Jews seem to have become commonplace enough that I just sorta started screening them out. So what occurred to me as odd here is the idea that any organization with that sort of capacity would be so bothered with the UK. Pretty sure it's at the point where you could just leave it alone for a couple/few more decades then come back and declare victory.

My biases would have been much better-flattered by a tenuous insistence that this is some sort of Chinese plot.

Random accusations toward Jews seem to have become commonplace enough that I just sorta started screening them out.

Agreed. There are people who are obsessed with Jews for some reason, and this is one of the few places that won't immediately shut it down so we get all the witches.

It's honestly not even offensive, just boring and annoying.

It's not that that aren't any decent anti-Jewish takes. It's just that the ones we tend to attract are low-IQ by the standards of this forum.

"When they send their anti-semites, they're not sending their best."

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