site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Discussions of white nationalism do not always feel the need to mention rejecting violence. Just go to 4chan, you will see plenty of people calling to forcibly expel and/or kill non-whites.

White nationalists who are a bit more peaceful-minded probably often feel the need to distance themselves from that crowd and also distance themselves from the common public stereotypes of what white nationalists are like. And many of the white nationalists who are violence-minded feel the need to pretend to be peaceful-minded in order to argue successfully "in polite company".

One problem with many (though far from all) white nationalists is that that they both believe that whites have certain characteristics that make them superior to other races and also believe that whites should act more like those other races act. It is a bit contradictory to have the mindset of "we are better than those savages but you know what, we should act more like they do when it comes to matters of race and immigration!"

Liberalism is largely a white invention, I would say one of the greatest of all white inventions. It is great not just by ideological standards, but also by pragmatic standards. I cannot imagine whites having had the enormous success that they have had for the last 500 years had they not become liberal and cosmopolitan. Capitalism itself is liberal by nature, it is the social mode of cosmopolitan traders, not of ethnic chauvinists.

Today's liberal white cosmopolitanism opens itself to all races, but I think that one can trace its roots to the nature of the cosmopolitan community of white Christian Europe hundreds of years ago, when an upper class white would freely travel from one European capital to another, having more in common with the upper-class white men of other countries than he had with the lower classes of his own country. Not that there weren't similar things in Asia and the Muslim world, but Europeans really took that ball and ran with it. They coupled the cosmopolitanism with the scientific/technological revolution, and each of the two amplified the benefits of the other.

If one takes the long view, one can argue that nationalism was actually a brief aberration in European history, one which lasted roughly from the French Revolution until the end of World War 2. The more common social pattern of white people, going back to the the times of Greek trader colonies, Hellenization, ancient Rome, and so on, was a far-flung cosmopolitan imperial pattern, rather than ethnic separatism.

One paradox of white nationalism is that to cast aside liberalism is to cast aside one of the greatest achievements that white people have ever made.

Liberalism is largely a white invention, I would say one of the greatest of all white inventions.

Would you say that the invention of liberalism would make one people 'supreme'?

It is a bit contradictory to have the mindset of "we are better than those savages but you know what, we should act more like they do when it comes to matters of race and immigration!"

Conversely, isn't it a bit contradictory to have the mindset of "we are better than those savages who did not invent liberalism and live violent, backward lives filled with sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, but you know what, we should let them all in and then complain when they act exactly like they did before we invited them in"?

Oh and one more "we are better than those savages who do not believe in liberalism (white nationalists), therefore we should ban them from participating in all the liberal institutions".

This converse you are talking about is not the position of the liberal consensus that white nationalism is up against, though; rather, it sounds like some form of straw "anti-white nationalism". Consensus liberals reject the idea that liberalism or other desirable qualities have anything to do with racial or genetic background at all, and instead consider them entirely cultural, and moreover believe in the missionary quality/persuasiveness of their own viewpoint. Admitting people from illiberal cultures into their midst of therefore good, as it will make it likely that those people or their descendants will convert to liberalism; also, shunning white nationalists is good, because these people carry some rare set of memes that evidently conveys resistance to conversion despite exposure to liberal ideas.

Compare how medieval Christianity, despite being convinced of its superiority, travelled around the world and sought to deepen its relationship with pagan peoples (whether by trade or colonialism), effectively bringing them into its cultural fold, while at the same time treating internal witches and heretics harshly.

I think you're referring to Roman Catholicism, not Christianity which was able to live along with Muslims, Jews, pagans in relative peace for centuries and still to this day in the Middle-East.

Liberalism is a product of Roman Catholicism, or perhaps the new version of it, in which propagating the imperial ideology is more important than each individual's actual salvation/well-being.

these people carry some rare set of memes that evidently conveys resistance to conversion despite exposure to liberal ideas.

Is that the actual liberal position on white nationalism?

As a Roman Catholic, I'll concede that you're not wrong, but also feel the need to quibble.

Modern Liberalism is more accurately understood as an offshoot of Protestantism, specifically the Calvinist school of Protestantism, that was in turn an offshoot of Roman (IE Western) Catholicism.

Modern Liberalism is not an achievement of white people and is infused with racist authoritarian far leftism and the legacy and influece of marxists but also of black and Jewish identitarians and groups that identified with their sex and other minorities. The anti-tribalism of liberals is a falsity since they promote racist policies and entrench hate speech, while pathologilizing all opposition.

The reality is that the enlightnement in addition to promoting good things, also promoted the Jacobin mentality. There is a legacy of modernity of far left extremism that is negative and destructive from the french revolution to today and which also enabled and sided and used by foreign ultranationalists.

Also, while it preexisted the enlightenment, the enlightenment produced also nationalism as an ideology. It really hasn't just produced only one thing.

Things associated with liberalism can be good when they coexist with conservative and native nationalist principles. And that has been the historical west. A society that enforced conservative moral mores but also that coexisted with some liberal mores. That promoted its own native interests but also there was an internationalist ideal.

Liberalism absent the restraints and influence of conservatism and pro native nationalism with the double standards of the left, becomes the far left. And that is the agenda that modern liberalism promotes.

An agenda of treating white people and other groups as pathological and other groups as groups that can do no wrong and whose tribalism should remain entrenched and not questioned. Part of the hostility to white identitarianism has to do to its opposition to excessive tribalism for non white and its opposition to anti white racism. And part of it also has to do with a nation destroying agenda that destroys something good, oppresses good people and results in the Trotskyist mentality of the destroyers who believe that they the people of revolution can do no wrong.

No, the people of this mentality are not "goodguys" as they believe, but the opposite.

So in conclusion, liberalism is flawed, but also deeply erroded by far leftism and today's liberalism is an ideology that isn't consistent about antitribalism but concern trolls and marxist and liberal nationalism and tribalism for left wing associated groups and the progressive stack is the dominant aspect of modern liberalism in both rhetoric and deed. It is an act of siding with this to pretend otherwise when only criticism can save modern liberalism from itself. The legacy that made the west great has not been liberalism but the coexistence of liberalism, or rather aspects of liberalism with other ideologies like conservatism, religious morality, national consciousness. However, the mentality of purity spiral in the liberal and left wing direction lead to utterly terrible ideologies getting influence which are destroying the west in a manner that we see play out. Indeed becoming South Africa is an obvious end point of modern liberalism. Although things could progress even worse than that. To make the west great again, removing far left extremism from institutions and fixing the dominant ideology to not include the extreme elements of liberalism is the way to go.

One of the key problems of modern liberalism is the fanatical purity spiral idea in favor of its own legacy and intolerance to what is valuable outside liberalism that liberalism can lack. Even more so when talking about modern liberalism which really has been erroded too much by far left and is inconsistent and lacks even the virtues of liberalism. Modern liberalism is not an ideology that promotes equality under the law, neutrality, objectivity, and certainly while it can be flawed, to an extend some lack of tribalism can be good (but too much is bad). Modern liberalism does not do that. It is a dishonest ideology which is about being racist for your favorite tribes but pretending to be antiracist and concern trolling your ethnic outgroup. To the extend it affects people to have this preference at the expense of their own group this is to such an extreme degree to be fair to consider it to be promoting the treasonous mentality. Its a destructive ideology for the civilizations that are cursed by fate to be ruled by it.

again, don't feed the troll.