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 -
As somebody from a European country that never came under communist rule, this doesn’t seem at all accurate.
The communists lost that round of the culture war so thoroughly that literally everybody, including those few who still consider themselves socialist, will fervently, absolutely condemn everything that has to do with Soviet and Soviet collaborators in the west.
I honestly just don’t buy that it would really be any different in the US, and if your experience says otherwise then I think you might be living in a bubble.
McCarthyism did have the inadvertent effect of making US communists seem as victims, and thus as at least initially sympathetic to most of the American left. They won't defend Stalin, but they will portray pro-Stalin communists as victims of an oppressive US security apparatus. Communism did not become popular in the 1960s, but anti-anti-communism became very widespread, especially among boomers.
That's why Bond films had to be rewritten from the books to stop the Soviets being the bad guys. Making Bond someone hunting down and fighting against Soviet spies/sympathisers would make him instantly uncool.
See also the portrayal of communism in pretty much every good anti-establishment comedy of the period, e.g. Monty Python. It's not communist, but it is always anti-anti-communist:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VEy5vIWCJLQ
Eventually, boomers became the establishment. Anti-communist Democrats like Lyndon B. Johnson or Harry S. Truman became anachronisms. Worrying about communism became a way of signalling that you were a hopeless and contemptible square - a Dan Quayle type:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=83tnWFojtcY
Thankfully, there was nothing to fear from Russia, or from socialist regimes where people would have to line up for toilet paper amidst shortages.
More options
Context Copy link
There might be a more thoughtful contingent of people who will argue that any Communist regime that has bad consequences was corrupted by the human weaknesses that Communism was meant to overcome (IMO, the fatal flaw of Communism), but most people don't think that deeply about it. The Communists lost the short game but won the long game, by spreading Communist ideas through academia and, downstream of that, civil rights movements, and downstream of that, entertainment and news media. That these ideas aren't directly associated with Communism any longer are part of its victory. But, for the most part, in the US at least, Communists were (ironically) "free speech" martyrs who were oppressed by the omnipresent fascism of big business and right-wing political leaders, or they were liberators of dispossessed groups in the U.S. globally, from labor to minority racial groups. It was a very smart strategy, and it divorced the incremental steps from the ultimate goal in the minds of the short-term activists.
More options
Context Copy link
...Then why is Elizabeth Gurley Flynn getting a marker? Like, if what you say is true, how do you explain the event this entire thread is about?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link