site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 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.

As I understand it, the recently concluded €50 billion aid package for Ukraine that was voted through the EU parliament needs unanimous consent from all governments and the election of someone like Fico obviously raises the specter of that aid package either not being approved or at least watered down significantly. It is no secret that many larger EU countries (e.g. Germany) want to change this rule of unanimous consent into a qualified majority, which would allow them to steamroll smaller countries like Slovakia.

Until that changes, however, the voice of the smallest countries still matter greatly which is why whoever controls the governments of those countries in turn also matters. Hence the censorship law, which would help put the thumbs on the scale.

It is a little bit more complicated. While Robert Fico won the election, his party got 42 seats. Together with Slovak National Party (SNS) who is also pro-Putin and "anti-war" who got 10 seats he only got 52 seats. He requires at least 76 seats but more realistically 80+ in order for his government to be stable. The issue with SNS party is that there is only one person who actually is a member of the party, the rest were internet celebrities who got enough personal votes to get into parliament. It is hard to see how SNS will be unified platform with so many idiosyncratic people in there to put it mildly.

Nevertheless Fico needs another party into the government, the Hlas party created in 2020 by former Smer (Fico's party) member, one Peter Pellegrini. Despite his party only having 27 seats, Pellegrini is now the kingmaker between Fico and anti-Fico bloc led by Progressive Slovakia. Pellegrini now positioned himself as he is in the middle of this conflict, playing potentially for both sides. However he is not only kingmaker, he requires that he himself will be prime minister despite his party having third largest number of seats. And the thing is, that Pellegrini wants to be viewed as a "standard politician" not pro-Putin but also not pro LGBT in order to keep his image. So I doubt that any government with him in it (which is basically 99% chance at this point) will change the stance too much.

Also just as an afterthought, I have to rant a little bit. Fuck Ukrainian government for their immense stupidity - and I am talking as somebody who supports the Ukrainians financially and who is not squeamish to buy guns by my personal donations. Literally days before the election in both Slovakia and Poland, Ukrainians decided that it is a good time to sue both countries for agricultural export/import issue. Of course this was picked up by all anti-Ukrainian parties where now they were the protectors of small farmers against Ukrainians and so forth. What a misstep - the glorification of the literal SS-man in Canada was also played on social media. So what I am saying is that there was no need for disinformation, all that was needed was for people to put together real compilations of how Ukrainians mean harm to Slovakia and how members of PS want to trans your kids and so forth. Who needs disinformation if information is damning enough.