site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   33233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

a foreigner owned most of their land’s resources via corruption, to launder to his own people thousands of miles away

How would it be different if a true-blood ethnic Ukrainian who could trace his bloodline hundreds of years through Galician Cossacks or whoever owned most of Ukraine's resources through corruption and laundered it to his billionaire friends thousands of miles away (at their mansions on private islands)?

The comparison with SS is entirely valid when you shrug at "hyper-rich corrupt monopolists who don't give a fuck about the common people" but it's suddenly worthy of attention when they happen to have Israeli citizenship. One wonders what the chances of you Noticing ancestry of any other ethnicity would be.

When foreigners raid your country’s resources with their own paramilitary forces, and arrange for people to become president, you don’t have sovereignty.

You, as in a common citizen, don't have sovereignty and it's not your country whether a "foreigner" or a co-ethnicist (his tribe is hardly the same, just like Red Tribe and Blue Tribe aren't the same) does that.

In my first comment I point to how Kolomoisky doesn’t simply spend his ill-gotten funds as the prototypical prodigal son, but instead very meticulously allocates his resources to help his own tribal members. The 100 million dollar Jewish center may employ hundreds of Jews, may give out scholarships, etc. It gives aid to the ultra-orthodox to ensure a high birth rate. There’s the Chabad donations, donations to Jewish educational media, to “Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS”. This isn’t a billionaire who wants to live and let live, this is someone who is fundamentally transferring the resources of one people to another. It’s pure tribalism: exploit the resources you have momentarily seized, and then give those resources out to thousands of Jews across the world, in the form of enormous endowments and donations.

Florida, with $11 million in donations over a dozen years, and New York, with $10 million, are the focal points of their Jewish giving. But the pair has also given money to Jewish organizations in Connecticut and Canada, Massachusetts and Montana, Denmark and Jerusalem. They give to synagogues, to schools, to summer camps and to Zionist organizations, with individual grants ranging from $180 to more than $1 million.

Got it, so he's not just the same as a regular corrupt billionaire, he's better.

Regular corrupt billionaire: donates mostly to his family, I see none of it even if he happens to have the same haplogroups as I.

Jewish tribalist billionaire: donates to Jews, I see none of it but the Jews who intersect with me in a non-ethnic grouping do.

I would agree with the point you are making if I believed that a Russian would be just as corrupt as Kolomoisky. But I don’t think this is true. A Russian would be corrupt, yes, but probably not as corrupt. And a Russian who is spending lavishly on prostitutes and vodka is at least keeping resources within the economy. If I’m not mistaken, the consensus is that Putin has the oligarchs under control.

Why, yes, I do believe that a Jewish oligarch does not have some inherent drive to be more corrupt than a Russian one. Russian oligarchs are known to have, to a large extent, either gangster or nomenklatura origins, they're not some sort of wholesome old money gentlemen who rule like benevolent if somewhat venal nobles.

And a Russian who is spending lavishly on prostitutes and vodka is at least keeping resources within the economy.

You're under the impression that they would be so rubeish as to purchase Russian prostitutes and vodka?

If I’m not mistaken, the consensus is that Putin has the oligarchs under control.

If I'm not mistaken, the consensus is also that Putin controlling them does not mean he's going to channel their riches towards the good of the countrymen, merely that he won't allow them near the levers of power.

Kolomoisky was considered a notoriously corrupt oligarch in a country that is known for both corruption and oligarchs. So what is your evidence that a Russian in this industry would be just as corrupt? There’s at least one Russian oligarch, Vladimir Potanin, who intends to donate most of his wealth to charity when he dies. And Alisher Usmanov has donated to philanthropy in the tens of billions.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats