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 -
You are missing the point of Galeev's parable, I'm afraid. Far right dissidents are not representatives of their states, nor do they recognize the legitimacy of incumbent representatives. Of course the specific project of European identitarianism (or local populism) was still doomed, but the idea of shaping conditions for sovereignty via alliances of convenience with repulsive outsiders is well-supported by historical track record in the Old World. Indeed it's not even reputationally costly – you can fight for communist tyranny and then become heroes to some of the most anti-communist people on the continent, to have wistful songs composed in your honor. (Or you could fight for Nazis, so long as you have some cute songs to the effect that Fuhrer sucks). How does that work? A Russian pig dog slave won't understand, this is very subtle stuff. Freedom is best, and hard choices, after all. Unironically.
If anything, DRs are unusual in their tendency to justify their allies and sponsors ideologically as well, and to sincerely buy and propagate those excuses; it took the war to snap them out of it – incompletely, at that.
It’s because DR vision isn’t just about mercenary funding; if it was that then they might as well seek it from China and yet, with the occasional Spandrell exception, they hate China. The vision is that they are obsessed by the insecurity that there is not one huwhite country in the world that is led according to their general ideological impulse. This is not in itself an insurmountable problem, in 1917 communism had existed for 70 years but had only ever been tested for a very short period in the Paris commune (and then only partially). But it is irksome. Orban is about as conservative as someone on the right wing of the British Conservative Party, much as Dreher wants to pretend otherwise, and is in general primarily devoted to enriching his friends from his home village. And Hungary is also very small, it’s like progressives pointing to Luxembourg or libertarians to Monaco or something.
The Russia obsession was more about trying to imagine baste Putinist Russia as white rightist country (even though, as you made clear, it never was) to prove ‘it’s possible’. Any material support was secondary to the psychological support.
Ah, yes, I missed that.
It's more than irksome. Communism inherently sells itself as the vision of the future, only ever an experiment at attaining perfection (even though I agree with Shafarevich that it's a millenia-old failure mode, a sort of naturally occurring cancer, equipped with the evergreen pretense at having noticed the skulls); reactionaries are, well, drawn to tradition. Russia the third Rome, Russia the eternal based no-nonsense Czardom, Russia the bulwark against degeneracy, the shard of the right-thinking world that had been, a living link. Was silly in Nietzsche's time, vastly sillier now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link