site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is the Revisionist position.

As @johnfabian said, you must think we're complete fucking mongoloids if you expect us to buy that.

Contemporary articles have Sir John Simon and Anthony Eden both drawing parallels to Napoleon and the 30 years war in thier opposition to appeasement, and you can find speechs from Churchill about the German/Nazi Menace going back the early 30s. There's also the 390 years of observable foriegn policy between the end of the English Civil War and the start of World War Two.

The idea that the war was justified because contemporary articles compared Hitler to Napoleon is just absurd, as absurd as all the contemporary articles you can point to which endlessly compare X with Hitler to justify some war, whether it's Ukraine (with both Zelensky and Putin invoking Hitler to justify the war effort on the other) or Iraq or Iran. Britain lost its Empire, Europe was destroyed, tens of millions dead, half of Europe gifted to the Soviet Union including Poland.... oh but contemporary articles said it had to be done because of Napoleon, right.

The idea that the war was justified because contemporary articles compared Hitler to Napoleon is just absurd

That wasn't the claim, the claim was that the British having a long-standing foriegn policy of countering any individual continental power that got too big was a "Revisionist position".

That it is relatively easy to find examples of the British government and it's officials citing this policy and acting upon it prior to 1939 is proof to the contrary.

Might makes right, i dont think the historical semantics really matter. Who ever won the conflict would have gone down in history as the "justifed" one.

Might makes right

That's the bone of contention isn’t it?