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 -
While I agree that one can be pro white without being a white nationalist, I strongly disagree with many of your other claims.
One could claim that anyone who supports anything that is destructive for a group, "cares" actually.
The reality is that people who particularly dislike intensely a group and it comes part and parcel with such dislike, tend to support its demographic replacement and abolishment/extinction. This is because it is genuinely harmful to the group as a group to become a minority in their own homeland, or go extinct. When Noel Ignatiev is saying that "abolishing the white race is so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that anyone other than committed white supremacists would oppose it." he was infact an anti-white racist. And this is me understating it. His agenda was genocidal.
If someone cares about a group but supports something that is genuinely destructive for them, we should consider whether it matters how much they care. It could also be the case that they aren't honest.
Conversely, people who support a group and are part of such group tend to oppose such replacement. Because it is beneficial to a group to not become a hated minority in its own land, or go extinct.
This way of thinking is definitely able to be understood when it comes to other ethnic/racial groups, and how colonization by foreigners or their replacement or even possible extinction is bad actually.
As for white nationalism in particular. The reality is that it is the boogieman, not because we have a rational society reacting to the greatest threat of racism by white people, because we see the dominant rhetoric and policy to be of an anti-white form, and president Biden to have made comments more in line with Ignatiev's comment than against it. Comments about how mass migration should happen to replace white Americans. The threat of its extremism is used as an excuse to promote an anti-white agenda and part of the denouncements have to do with fear and a desire to prove to be one of the good ones and not be cancelled and slandered. And it is in fact the case that a society that is hysteric no matter what about X group nationalists, tends to be racist against said group. More so the case when that group is actually mistreated in policy, and denounced in rhetoric. When it doesn't have representative organizations.
In reality, unconditional limitless nationalism for any group can be immoral and therefore white nationalism can be immoral in this manner but also a lack of any nationalism comes along with said ethnic group being oppressed and mistreated. It is a common aspect of the worst mistreatment and destruction of an ethnic group to attack its nation and denies its existence and legitimacy. To disallow it national self determination and to promote the tyranny of being governed without its interest being represented. Another aspect of this is toleration of other nationalisms to excess, and this is also something that is happening.
So if one group rights should ideally end where another group right's begin this necessitates a general broad quite different and more qualified and nuanced take on white nationalism, over the approach of treating it as the worst nationalism ever which brought things in the current anti-white racist situation. Nor should the correct approach be unconditional support of anything that could be pro white and anti non white groups and constant double down in that direction in a limitless fanatical manner.
The preferable way to frame things and a workable system for different groups is one of international justice that recognizes the reciprocal rights and limits of different nations, including white and not white nations.
Certainly there can be forms of white ethnostates that are analogous to zionism in behavior, and there can be imperialistic white nationalist behavior that can be rightfully opposed but the existence of european countries that wanted to remain european has a) been the dominant model b) population where political class moved away still support this in many cases like in France where they oppose the replacement of French by non French, including presumably non french whites c) we still have some white countries that the political establishment supports remaining such.
The change in attitude is recent. Even in the USA is from a couple of decades.
The idea of opposing being replaced is certainly less controversial than zionism in that it doesn't step over the rights of others in the way zionism did.
And has been treated as less controversial in general outside of the movement that Ignatiev represents. Ironically, allowing mass migration in turn made the accusations of racism more of a reality that the opposite. I would argue that opposing your own extinction and your nation's colonization is opposing anti native racism and in line with international justice. While having an agenda in favor of whites not having any homelands represents a very extreme form of racism.
This is in fact compatible with european countries not having their own people going extinct and a minority, but remaining majority, and the USA as multiethnic but again opposing mass migration explicitly because it is immoral for the white Americans who created historical USA, to become utterly disminished in the country they created and dominated. Although under this framework it was legitimate for Americans to have made a choice in the past to not open their borders to the rest of the world.
As we see with the results today, such migration was an important factor in the rise of anti-white racism.
If I could tinker with history, I'd really love to see what would have happened had Thomas Jefferson's early-1780s plan to free the slaves and then repatriate them all to their African homelands been adopted.
I'm picturing a time-traveler handing out to Southern (and other slaveholding) members of the Continental Congress Civil War histories and copies of Gone with the Wind , accompanied by unvarnished descriptions of the nation's demographics and race relations circa 2023, how they are viewed even by their own descendants, some footage of the 1992 Rodney King riots, and possibly selected clips from gangsta rap.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link