site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 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.

If her accusation was false, you would have expected her to make the accusation at the time, rather than only revealing it when interviewed by a journalist years later.

Would you? I would expect a false accusation to come up later than a true one. Someone who cares about getting justice would have DNA evidence logged immediately and start the process while the incident is fresh in mind, while someone who was making a malicious accusation might wait until there's something in it for them, or for favourable conditions for success (say, a global movement valourising and promoting the infallibility of self-identified victims?) and until the memory of what exactly went on that night has likely faded from their target's mind somewhat. It's unlikely someone will be able to recall where exactly they were and what they were doing all day on a specific day many years ago, let alone have held onto any evidence of that.

Accusers can also build up what happened in their own minds over time, embellishing the actual events through faulty or motivated-faulty recall. I think we all saw this with the Kavanaugh circus.

Did you read the article? Do you think that this is what happened in this specific case?

I know that the Kavanagh hearing was an utter travesty, but simply pattern matching between those accusations and these accusations isn't going to get us closer to the truth about Russell Brand.

It’s surely different than BK. But…apparently the investigative reporter was doing this for a very long time and gave Brand 8 days and anonymized the alleged victims? Seems like that isn’t really truth seeking.

The victims are only anonymous for us. Brand obviously knows who these women are. One was 16 years old, one has provided text exchanges between herself and Brand, one met him at an AA meeting, and the fourth lived with him for several months. The accusations are extremely specific. If he wanted to rebut them specifically, he could do so easily.

UK libel law isn't like the US, it's much stricter. If a civil court found any of these accusations to be false (on the balance of probability) Brand could sue the Times for millions. Whether they are false or not, the editor at the Times clearly believes they are and is willing to risk his career on it.

This is worlds away from Kavanagh, which was a show trial based on constantly changing, ludicrous testimony from decades ago.

The article stated that the alleged victims were anonymized when provided to Brand. So it isn’t clear what exactly he has been provided