site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Coz Meloni recognizes she's looking at extinction-tier fertility rates in the native Italian population.

What is she supposed to do? Who's going to pay for the upkeep of all these aging Italians?

While it may be in vogue to treat people as fungible, it is unlikely that mass migration will result in these problems being fixed.

As to what to do, at the very least it would be nice to open a proper public debate about it. If Italians decide they don't want to reproduce and prefer to be replaced by immigrants, at least it will be their explicit choice, and not this "it's not happening, and it's a good thing that it is" nonsense.

I suspect sub-Saharan Africans and Arabs aren't as capable as Italians in maintaining an advanced industrial economy.

Ok, but that's not answering the question of what Meloni's course of action should be. If Africa is the only place with a booming population, then that's where the immigrants are going to come from.

If even a quasi-fascist like her did the numbers and saw this as the only option, what alternatives do you recommend?

I mean offering citizenship to Hong Kong or even Chinese citizens would be prefereble to sub Saharan African migration. You could even just move Taiwan to Italy (which would solve some geopolitical issues). Those places do have the city-state vibes of the renaissance.

Those are people capable of maintaining Italy as something.

Of course boosting native births would be preferable.

You could even just move Taiwan to Italy

While we're engaging in this level of fantasy, why not just import a bunch Numenoreans instead? They're importing Africans because they're the ones with excess population to spare and high fertility rates.

Again, I'll ask why you think a right-wing, nativist government isn't considering all these alternatives you guys are coming up with.

If even a quasi-fascist like her did the numbers and saw this as the only option, what alternatives do you recommend?

If the continuum for number of African migrants accepted is just a heuristic for "fascist", then I guess I would say that "quasi-fascist" isn't far enough on the continuum.

Perhaps the actual situation is that "fascism" (real or imagined) isn't really the determining factor for immigration policies though.

In 1992, Meloni joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist political party founded in 1946 by former followers of Italian fascism. She later became the national leader of Student Action, the student movement of the National Alliance (AN), a post-fascist party that became the MSI's legal successor in 1995 and moved towards national conservatism.

If it's a continuum, she's a little further along it than those who don't happen to find themselves in fascist movements.

what alternatives do you recommend?

Some problems cannot be solved but only managed. I don't have any good (realistic) solutions - if we define solution as actually solving the issue once and for all. But that isn't an excuse for passivity and resigned fatalism. There are certainly things that can and should be done to manage the issue, e.g. making citizenship harder and akin to the Gulf model, rewriting asylum laws and possibly removing asylum courts. Making controversial practices such as pushbacks legal. Ban certain NGOs who engage in smuggling. And so on.

These things would make matters better but they would not fundamentally solve the underlying issue, which you alluded to (demographic disparities, who are only getting wider). People want easy solutions but I don't see any here, but at the same time it seems to me that the old very generous asylum model has to end.

Having a two-tiered society where the ones shut out of everything are much younger and increasingly more numerous is a recipe for disaster. You ironically need the Roman model, where the peoples subsumed by Rome came to view themselves as Roman.

You ironically need the Roman model, where the peoples subsumed by Rome came to view themselves as Roman.

This has been the standard policy for the past 50 years and I don't think it has worked well. It may be different in the US since most immigrants either come from a Westernised background (Latinx America) or are from the upper elites of Third World countries, which tend also to be fairly Westernised. Europe gets neither.

I agree that a two-tiered system is probably untenable in the long run, but this goes to my point about some problems not being able to be solved but merely managed. Besides, it also depends on the willingness of natives to enforce it. Gulf Arabs do it just fine, but I suspect Europeans are too soft. OTOH, the current status quo is a massive failure too. No easy answer here.

What is she supposed to do?

At the very least, she shouldn't do something she based her entire campaign on opposing!

Who's going to pay for the upkeep of all these aging Italians?

Germany, unless the EU disintegrates. But either way immigration isn't actually a solution to this problem any more than taking out another credit card to deal with your problem of too much credit card debt is - migrant fertility rates revert to the native mean within a generation or so. Instead you just pay a bunch of money to "integrate" them, pay more in policing costs, depress wages, increase real estate costs (further damaging native family formation), impose the various other costs of diversity (lowered social trust chief among them) and in exchange you get a few unqualified workers and a lot of dependents.

and in exchange you get a few unqualified workers and a lot of dependents.

You forgot the most important thing, which is that depressing wages and increasing real estate costs are things that affect the middle class of the nation disproportionately, and erasing them is just what the powerful naturally do.

The best time to form a bulwark against it was when the middle class was at the height of its political power but the fact they couldn't or wouldn't is kind of what makes the middle class the middle class.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats