site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Whites have no understanding of malnutrition, poverty, hostile climates, lack of access to healthcare, lack of social safety nets, nor lack of generational wealth.

That's because whites abolished those constraints. Whites made the bulk of global wealth and the intellectual property (artificial fertilizers, vaccines, medicine) that sustains the 3rd world. In 1950 the population of Europe was double that of Africa. Today it is half and shrinking.

new victimhood narratives

Whites exported all this intellectual property (often at subsidized rates for poor countries in the case of medicine). Whites provided trillions of dollars in economic aid and opened markets to 3rd world countries, opened borders to accept immigration, accepted the loss of our own local industries due to cheap competition...

Whites could've just stolen the Middle East oil - we chose to pay for it. Whites could've rained down incendiaries and atom bombs upon anti-colonialists - instead we chose to incinerate those states who had an actually oppressive vision for the 3rd world - Germany, Italy and Japan.

I don't begrudge poor countries from playing the game, yet accusing us of a victimhood narrative is a complete reversal of the facts. In the case of Rotherham, whites covered up the rampant sexual abuse of their own children by 3rd world immigrants lest it seem 'racist', suppressing reports for years. There is a huge diversity apparatus across the Anglosphere that deliberately sabotages my (white) employment prospects in favour of non-whites.

Accepting as true the progressive axiom (as I take it) that equitable outcomes - as in uniform distribution of resources, wealth, and otherwise, across all racial demographics - must be achieved, I have no problem with systematically disadvantaging whites in order to effect a rebalancing of resources across said demographics.

I don't know but I'm guessing that both of our socio-economic positions are well above the global average, given we speak very good English and post on this forum. Do you truly see it as good for a large chunk of your wealth and income to be transferred to others? I certainly don't. I believe in property rights, the legitimacy of nations and meritocracy. I don't want my wealth or income redistributed. I want to live in a nation-state where the nation's collective interests are defended, since this is the most harmonious and stable kind of governance. And I want meritocracy within that nation-state for efficiency.

I fully suspect that you don't actually believe in 'equitable outcomes', you're just prepared to use the idea for as long as you think it's advantageous. You seem to dislike the other aspects of progressive dogma, yet embrace this part.

my position is that having abolished such constraints within their own societies, whites have been insulated from the very constraints that they have abolished and have now been disconnected from the material realities that they have, in generations past, laboured to reduce.

I agree here, there is certainly an element of weakness and passivity that you see in a late Roman Empire or a decadent Caliphate soon to be razed by some Central Asians. Precisely because of this weakness I am uneasy about creating the conditions for new and exciting ethnic conflicts. You say 'the West's problems are due to becoming lazy, feckless soyboys', I say that the West should be very careful about immigration and diversity. There's no serious contradiction here.

literal genocide (and not just in the sense of "people used the incorrect pronouns" on Twitter) and street executions are taking place overseas in literal warzones

Street executions and ethnic cleansing is not isolated to the 3rd world thanks to the work of progressives, as they admit themselves: https://twitter.com/GodCloseMyEyes/status/1414619671056297984#m

Forget bitching about pronouns or latinx (which I never even mentioned), this stuff is serious. Enormous amounts of wealth is being taken and redistributed. The people being victimized here are white, whether that's in terms of job opportunities transferred by diversity commissars, jobs transferred out of the West by excessive trade liberalization, actual people murdered or raped by hateful and ungrateful 'Syrian refugees' or other non-whites. Now you might say 'that's your own fault', I dispute that - our leaders whose incompetence and malice exceeds historical comparison are to blame. Who voted for mass immigration, a huge diversity apparatus or nonsensical wars in the Middle East?