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 -
Should TheMotte add a rule against advancing any form of slave morality in general?
Calling it slave morality misdiagnoses the problem.
It is more racism for Jews by either Jewish supremacists who are Jewish racists, or non Jews who are racist supremacists for a foreign ethnic group. And same in general for the progressive stack.
These people with this mentality are not pushovers. Oikophobia relies on pushovers as well to take root, but the faction on the offense are more direct racists, rather than those who are impotent to oppose them. It is an alliance of different extreme tribalists than just a pathology of everyone being a pushover.
And such behavior of enforcing consensus that the Jewish outgroup is always at fault and Jews always have it worse and admitting no fault, and how any dissent is antisemitism which should be shut down is behavior that is utterly ridiculous and rule violating and inconsistent with any serious and respectable way of exploring history, or ethnic issues. Just onesided racist propaganda. So is more sneaky ways of doing this like just always talking about jewish victimhood.
This authoritarian racist propaganda should not be tolerated anywhere, including in universities, media, etc. by just enforcing what current rules ought to be or were, but not the hidden rules that are about the progressive stack and respecting the tribalism of Jewish supremacists. Is it possible to shut it down, but have some sensitivity to not censor the rare case that Jewish victimhood is brought up if there isn't an agenda to overly promote it? Yes it is possible indeed to do that and distinguish the weaponization of history, with the even handed exploration of it.
I have a problem with the slave morality concept since those who bring it up seem to use it to pathologize both being a pushover and moderation. I favor groups having self respect, and standing up for themselves against malicious racists. I don't want them to have a mentality that everything is ok and permitted and that they should abuse others.
There is a sweet spot between pushover, ultranationalist oppressor and it does involve a healthy level of intolerance towards foreign racist supremacists and the locals who align with them. That sweet spot is what I favor, of not tolerating this bullshit, but also not doing it to others neither.
The reality is that if western civilization and countries, when the Frankfurt school, ADL, weathermen underground and third world marxist nationalists were pushing their extremism decades ago, shut these groups down and didn't let them march in institutions, the world would be in a saner and more moderate place today. Same for other groups which shared this extremism and authoritarianism but were somewhat more sneaky about it like the neocons.
And make no mistake, these groups did shut down opposition.
Now things are in a worse spot, but you still got to not tolerate such viewpoint if you have any rules of conduct and standards. Its not that we don't have rules in institutions but its that evenhanded application of rules has been eroded over being at this point even overt supremacist in the progressive stack manner. And there are also those who are aligning with its agenda but aren't going to admit this even though it can be surmised by their behavior.
So do we have a general problem of quokas? Not exactly. Racist supremacists for progressive stack identities are racists who promote tolerance for their own racism and in bad faith promote that their outgroup should be pushovers and have no tribalism. These people are not really quokas but are authoritarians.
This isn't done in good faith against tribalism since they promote it for their ingroup and oppose any right wing criticism of excessive tribalism. Moreover, there is a direct connection between becoming a pushover and eventually becoming a racist supremacist for a foreign tribe and not just an enabler. Since the vacuum of your own lack of tribalism can be filled by identifying with the tribalism of another group where tribalism without limit is tolerated and where you can virtue signal.
A society that was dominated by "slave morality" promoted towards everyone would look quite different. I think a mutuality of restraint is part of international justice but again restraint does not mean tolerating everything. Restraint is different than concern trolling the victimized party to be pushovers or else they are dishonestly slandered by the actual racist supremacists as nazi antisemites, who just coincidentally never show the same intolerance both in terms of unpleasantness, hostility and also in terms of outright banning and restricting the most pervasive type of progressive supremacists who actually do pass hate speech laws and manage to get governments promote their narratives.
Of which Jewish supremacists are obviously part of promoting the same ideal of their group doing nothing wrong and western civilization oppressing them among others. If anything, they seem to be the most authoritarian racists and the issue where their supremacist ideology is enforced most viciously and ruthlessly.
Governments abandoning ridiculously one sided definitions of antisemitism and outright condemning the weaponization of history to portray Christians as permanent oppressors of Jews or anyone, would be a move forward. Same with the narrative of europeans as oppressors, or even of western civilization as oppressive. As well as condemning one sided depictions of the past and promoting in influence figures like Helen Andrews and more who have promoted truth and nuance and this as the official approach.
The lobbies which made these racist blood libel laws reality should not be allowed to continue to have influence and organizations can easily be banned. Indeed, like a police department raided ADL offices for a criminal investigation in the 1990s, banning political commissar state within a state powerful totalitarian racist supremacist organizations while investigating them for crimes like extortion, spying and more, is definitely feasible.
In Poland they criminalized blaming the Poles for the holocaust, which is part of the reason the Polish succeed in defending themselves from this to some extend. Prohibition which does not necessarily require outright criminalization on goverment level of this one sided promotion of guilt on continuous nations, religions, based on one sided propaganda ought to be the end point. People who are being racist pricks against groups today by weaponizing history promoting them as permanent past, present and future oppressors should be more afraid of engaging in that behavior, than their victims of resisting it.
As we can see you can incentivize and keep out ideologies without outright banning them. But it would be less extreme for countries to restrict the more dominant type of hate speech that shits on their people that laws in line of this ideology. Like this ideology rose in influence it can decline. And then I would have less supremacists to be complaining about since there will be less people holding that ideology once it is repressed instead of promoted. Which is fine my me.
It really is especially insulting to see people in other occasions be intolerant to this type of behavior but either engage in it themselves when it comes to the Jews, or tolerate it as uniquely defensible. It isn't and the way forward is to not tolerate it anywhere.
At the heart of the impotence and extremism lies the same fallacy about how we should defend this kind of extremism because the radical right oppose it, which could be used to justify, and has been used to justify all type of far left extremism. What is wrong about racist supremacists is in fact imposing on other groups a violation of their rights. Its not in fact extreme to oppose this being done to you.
So it is both disappointing and illuminating that we are dealing with people who we shouldn't take as credible just because they might have more correct takes on other issues, when they show this extremist prejudice in favor of the Jews and against Christians, Europeans and other non Jewish groups. It isn't really that complicated, don't tolerate this movement, which is good while behaving with standards of behavior that do in fact differ from the supremacists which you don't tolerate and criticize. Remember that being too much of a pushover towards them is not being sufficiently different and is letting them impose their evil on the world.
If I were to quantify it, I would say that enforcing an ultranationalist ideology with worldwide ambitions is evil. It makes sense for nations to have some bias in favor of themselves in their own borders. Focusing more on your own history is part of this. While focusing on your history is one thing, even there some restraint on how one sided you present history and the world is good. Some evenhandedness. But this should count 100 times over if you are trying to promote a vision of history to a different ethnic group. That we reached the point where ridiculous Jewish supremacist racist propaganda is being adopted by different non Jewish countries is both a tragedy and a farce.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link