site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Recently a man was found guilty of wearing an offensive football shirt (a reference to the Hillsborough disaster over 30 years ago).

Huh? Care to elaborate please?

The disaster occurred when fans without tickets stormed the stadium, there was a crowd crush and 97 people died. The tabloid 'The Sun' famously blamed the disaster on the fans, subsequent investigation found that the police official in charge on the day made numerous mistakes and that various safety procedures were not followed. This turned into a 30 year saga in part because of a wider 'culture war' between what was perceived as the Northern working class (associated with coal miners, unions and the left, and with the city of Sheffield where the disaster occurred and with Liverpool, where the victims were largely from) and the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher that was in power at the time, associated with the police (to whom she gave huge above-inflation pay raises) and the South. By this point Thatcher had had the police fighting the miners for 10 years and had largely won against them. The disaster thus became a political culture war topic for many years and countless expensive investigations were conducted, especially after Labour won again in 1997.

The man wore a shirt that said "97: Not Enough" on it. He was sentenced in part because there are special rules and laws governing behavior at soccer games in the UK because of longstanding issues with hooliganism. His sentence was a £1,000 fine and a ban from football games for 4 years.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, although for the sake of those who know nothing about this tragedy, I'll point out that it's slightly misleading to state that fans "stormed the stadium". But anyway, my point isn't that, it's that this incident with the T-shirt appears to be rather different from the other ones listed in the original comment. After all, surely working-class Northern English football fans don't count as a protected group.