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 -
I don't think this is accurate at all, though though I can see how such a claim would be convenient for those wishing to push identity politics.
As much as the terms get abused both in general and on theMotte in particular, I still think that the terms "right" and "left" point to important differences in philosophy and political approach. Allowing the pro-IdPol crowd to redefine Left and Right along tribal lines requires us to com up with a new name for the existing split, and seeing as IdPol seems to be particular to one side of that split I'd rather just push back against the redefinition.
Having read a lot of history, and not just history but old history, IE stuff from when a lot of the events described were still within living memory. It seems obvious to me that there are two distinct intellectual traditions/schools of thought that arose in the aftermath of the 30 years war, with the followers of guys like Calvin, Hobbes, and Montesquieu forming one and the followers of Locke, Kant, and Rousseau the other. While these two schools of thought might correlate to tribal affiliation with different groups showing an affinity for one or the other. However the match is far from 1 to 1. What they do match almost 1 for 1 though which side someone finds themselves on during the French Revolution, or English Civil war.
So in short, I reject your framing.
Democrats are not anti-white so much as they are pro-identity politics. Ditto Republicans are not so much pro-white so much as the are unabashedly "Nationalist/Pro-America". That "the only valid form of Nationalism is Ethnonationalism" and that "America = White supremacy" is a load of bullshit pushed upon us by woke propogandists and their allies on the alt-right who both dream of overturning the existing constitutional order in favor of a system of racial spoils.
I, in turn, reject your framing. I, too, have read a lot of history, including plenty of contemporary historiography. I agree with you that
And that works for upper class educated white Christian men during those times in those relevant places. A hypothetical neutrally situated free man who reads Hobbes and reads Locke and decides which he likes better, that might well predict
But of course, most people aren't neutrally situated, most people find themselves on one side or the other of the Revolution because their family or their friends or the other men in their town joined that side and they followed along. You might later take up the ideology associated with that side, but you were a Cavalier or a Roundhead before you knew why. I'm going to cite some historical fiction, because it's a fun scene in a classic movie. In Master and Commander where Jack Aubrey is getting his crew hyped up for battle against the French ship.
It is blindingly obvious that nobody on that ship besides Aubrey and the Doctor has serious opinions on Rousseau and Calvin. Maybe some of the other officers are aware, at a sixth grade level, of the ideology involved but it is highly doubtful they'd have seriously read about it. But there all the men are, shouting about the guillotine and Napoleon, as though it all means something to them. Their position on those questions is more tribal than intellectual.
So on a spectrum between our hypothetical neutral educated man, and the illiterate cheering crew on Jack Aubrey's ship, where do we put everyone else?
If we're going to argue that political ideology has any kind of genetic or heritable aspect, which I'm not sure I agree on, it can only work when examined fully in context. It makes zero sense to say that one has an inherent genetic predisposition towards Marxism, or an inherent genetic predisposition towards Milton Friedman, without considering how those economic ideologies are going to impact your actual life. A rich man who is a Marxist would probably be exercising a different genetic pathway than a working man who is a Marxist. That's the point, if we're going to talk about a gene or a set of genes that impacts both your facial/physical structure and your ideology, it's a different set of genes depending how you are situated.
Consider this quote from a South African radical:
As you say, the alt-right and the woke left have a lot in common, they know their side. But more than that, your white Proud Boy and your Black NFAC have a lot in common. And your white guilt wokies and your Republican Stepin Fetchits have a lot in common. If there's anything genetic to politics, I'd look at that similarity before I'd look at how people read Hobbes and Rousseau.
Which, to come back to the question of the Finnish MPs, is the point: you can't translate "Oh, dudes who become leftists will be like ____" to other countries and other contexts without thinking about race, religion, class, history, regionality. Those all determine whether High T or low sociability men will be rightists or leftists.
Sure, I would even go so far as to suggest that it is unlikely that anyone on the ship other Doctor Maturin has more than a vague idea of who Rousseau and Calvin were, much less what they were about. On the flip side I think it is equally blindingly obvious that most of the named characters have very strong feelings about loyalty, discipline, personal responsibility, the natural state of man, the fundamental role Government, the burdens of Command, etc... And that there the real substance of what I'm talking about. It's not about whether one identifies as a Hobbesian, Rousseauan or whatever, it's about where your priorities lie are when the chips are down.
Amusingly your own comment illustrates a lot of those differences.
Your assumption that "what works for upper class educated white Christian men during those times" is going to be fundamentally different from what works for any man in any time is perhaps one of the first and most obvious.
You say "I'd look at that similarity before I'd look at how people read Hobbes and Rousseau." and that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm observing that the ideological distance between the white guilt liberals, woke progressives, alt-rights ethnonationalits, and Landian-accelerationists is tiny compared to the differences between any of them and the median Republican. Furthermore I'm making the observation that one's assumptions about loyalty, discipline, personal responsibility, the natural state of man, the fundamental role Government, the burdens of Command, etc... is a major component of that distance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Pro-identity politics for everyone except for white males (especially heterosexual white males), who are expected to be universalist.
No it's pro-identity politics all around. Have you not noticed that the most vocal "white-nationalists" (Spencer, Yiannopoulos, Fuentes, Yarvin, Et Al) always seem to be former marxists from schools like Berkeley and University of Chicago? This is not a coincidence.
They're now heretics, though, not Democrats. They learned the lesson without the appropriate exceptions.
Heretics they may be, but they till have more in common with their fellow democrats than they do anyone outside the party.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link