site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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.

33
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Whats the alt right? Personally I would include the motte as alt-right. I thought the alt right included a lot of groups and not just the bad Charlottesville hard core racists. I’ve always included the pick up artist community in the alt right for example.

The premise of alt-right is that the non-alt Right, with its dictums of sovereign individual, race-blindness, low taxes and such, does not represent them and has no incentive to, and is particularly disinterested in addressing their collective existential concerns – chiefly anti-white racism spanning the spectrum from zoological prejudice to nuanced denunciation of white-coded but not clearly ethnically contingent cultural traits and value systems, pro-immigration policy driven by this same anti-white and anti-Republican sentiment, and «Weimar-style» social decay aggressively promoted by mainstream Democrats mainly due to nudging from ever-changing, hard to pin down ideological movements on leftist fringes labeled as Frankfurt school, something something Marxism, CRT, whatever. In a sense, alt-right was an intuitive attempt to emulate such dynamics on the right, only starting with grassroots.

The overwhelming majority of those who got dragged by the alt-right/dissident right wave around 2016 were not edgelords by their nature, and did not wish to go to the extremes: they were disaffected Republicans. Their inchoate sympathy for designated enemies of the liberal West (Putin, Kim, Orban) was also informed by this disaffection. The edginess of firebrands, too, is nothing unusual historically: new European Right is the same, as have been dozens of radical movements in Israel, where the preoccupation with existential threats and liberal traitors carrying water for committed enemies is embedded deep into the collective psyche. In Europe and more so in Israel, however, there exists an explicit way of negotiating a compromise. It's called parliamentarian democracy.

In the US, these people were offered a cope-out in the form of Trumpism and, seeing as he was recognized by both wings of the Establishment as a threat, gladly accepted. Now that this attempt has failed and Trumpism is discredited, they're being sold on DeSantis.

I’ve always included the pick up artist community in the alt right for example.

But why?. The mayority may lean right in the politics spectrum, but there must be a sizable left population in that community, right?.

They popularized females as having I guess you would call it a hive mind. They promoted gender differences an alt right position. And found females to be psychologically pliable.

They might not be right on say abortion or taxes etc but in terms of gender differences they are extremely alt right.

By those terms, feminist professors declaring their undying hatred of men but who disagree with transgerism would also be included in the alt right.

(And they are. I have heard more than one young feminist describe ters as alt right or far right.)

They promoted gender differences an alt right position.

Do you mean sex differences here? because gender differences or differences in gender roles is a mainly Leftist Idea, so it reads really weird if you mean that.

No clue what your talking about. Left seems to promote that there aren’t gender differences. Right promotes things like male masculinity and female staying at home etc.

why are you conflating sex with gender (Gender roles)?

Just proved my point.

From the rules:

Make your point reasonably clear and plain. Try to assume other people are doing the same.

When dealing with sensitive topics, people often veer into sarcasm and mockery, or rely on insinuation. These do not carry on well to written text (even more so with people with a different outlook), and make your point harder to understand, which leads discussions to spiral off into confusion. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and when in doubt, err on the side of being too explicit. Thought experiments are fine, but mark them as such.

Please flesh out comments like this a bit before making them; this isn't meant as a place for low-effort dunks.

Can you answer my question instead of saying meaningless pithy remarks?

Aren’t they the same thing

More comments