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 -
The obvious response is that this guy is voicing an unusual/contrarian view among people who vocally complain about left-wing internet censorship, most of whom believe that internet companies getting to control what political views/information people are allowed to express is bad in general.
The more complicated response is that there is a false-dichotomy between SJWs and a subset of right-wingers as the relevant comparison. Traditional mainstream right-wingers don't even tend to be particularly vocal about left-wing censorship except for when they're censored personally, and there's a bunch of Republican congressmen who were shadowbanned on Twitter but have still never mentioned the issue. Youtube censored a mainstream pharmaceutical company at the behest of a NYT journalist because it was being used as a counterargument to an attack on Trump, and I don't think Trump mentioned it once. This is of course a dichotomy that SJWs very aggressively foster themselves, and anyone sufficiently loudly opposing SJWs tends to be tarred as "far right" and kicked out of any left-wing institutions (and lots of neutral institutions, and plenty of right-wing institutions). But the fact that mainstream right-wing institutions seem more prone to believing SJW claims and caving to SJW demands than anti-SJWs (including anti-SJWs who may qualify as left-wing or moderate in their general political views) seems like an illustration of why this isn't the actual axis. Marjorie Taylor Greene recently called for the censorship of Kiwifarms, does that mean "both sides" are pro-censorship or that the line doesn't really run from SJWs to MTG? And once you're considering the SJW/anti-SJW axis, remember that anti-SJW communities like /r/tumblrinaction (now banned by Reddit) are the ones who popularized "horseshoe theory" to describe how they considered SJWs the other side of the coin from groups like the Moral Majority.
For example the Gamergate surveys showed GG to have strongly left-wing demographics - but who would you trust to not fire you if a media campaign was screaming about how you were a racist, a group of Republican activists or a group of Gamergators? And this combination of views is pretty common with anti-SJWs, including the most common views seen in surveys of TheMotte itself. SJWs would of course say that pro-GG people are right-wing regardless of their votes for Obama or views on gay-marriage/abortion/government-spending, but you can't have it both ways. Either the anti-SJW and pro-free-speech people are right-wing, in which case it seems like the contingent of right-wingers most vocal on the issue are pro-free-speech. Or they're left-wing/moderate/oldschool liberals/etc., in which case this isn't about "the liberal left" vs. authoritarian right-wingers.
Now, once you get into political alliances and self-identification this gets more complicated. Undoubtably there are an increasing number of people who consider themselves "right-wing" precicely because they oppose one or more SJW doctrines or behaviors. This is understandable, since SJWs have rapidly progressed from co-opting groups like the Something Awful forums to co-opting groups like mainstream political parties. Lots of those people are going to place more trust on right-wing sources and be sympathetic to whatever they consider the right-wing position on any issue they don't have another reason to care about. And of course few actual politicians care about free-speech, or many of the issues relevant to the SJW/anti-SJW axis, so when SJWs do something unpopular enough that it shifts votes to Republicans the politicians aren't going to be perfectly responsive to their new voters. There have been a couple attempts at some sort of bill modifying Section 230 to get sufficiently-large internet companies to not arbitarily censor their political opponents, but they haven't gone anywhere. Politicians seem not to regard it as very important, unlike those in the trenches of social media, though that might eventually shift after enough big incidents like the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Politics is chaotic and it's hard to guess how things will go. But it's not uncommon for relatively small groups of invested people to end up dictating policy, and in regards to internet censorship those most invested in the issue seem to be those sincere in their opposition.
This is an astute observation. I think there's a tendency amongst a lot of people from progressive backgrounds to equate opposition to the "woke agenda" with being right-wing, and are thus annoyed, and maybe feel a bit betrayed, when they find out that much of the wider "right" has their own priorities and isn't as concerned the controversy of the day as they are.
I joke about it but...
"I'm a gay polyamorist furry who works for apple and is very concerned about HBD and Demographic decline, please subscribe to my substack"
followed by...
"Conservatives need to do more to cater to the preferences of gay polyamorist furries"
really is becoming something of a cliche' at this point.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link