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 -
I am amazed that you don't think WWII is considered sacred and an unambiguous moral conflict in America. There is -zero- ambiguity in the mind of the public regarding that war, and the role of the United States in it, as anything short of a heroic salvation of the entire world, not just Europe. And that is foremost due to the gas chamber story everyone has been inundated with their entire lives in school, movie theaters, etc.
Even in this thread you have many people who refuse to accept that if Great Britain had remained neutral in Poland or Soviet war, there would have been no war in Western Europe. Even they cannot come to terms with the ambiguity of the decisions of the Western Allies to wage the war. They view it as inevitable when it was not.
The Western front is. All these heroic movies full of dead Nazis are set there.
Not the Pacific war (it is seen now as brutal white lynching of innocent Asian people), and definitely not Eastern front.
This thread was explicitly about Eastern front, and no one in mainstream media sees Soviets as the "good guys", no Hollywood movies celebrate heroic Red army mowing down these nasty Nazis. Today, most of Westerm normies are unsure if Russia took part in WW2 and on what side.
The entire Holocaust extermination program is said to have taken place on the Eastern Front in territory conquered by the Soviets. It's fair to say the gas chamber extermination program is the only thing the mainstream public actually knows about the Eastern Front. If you take that away, then the Einsatzgruppen reprisals, the mass resettlement of the Jews has a horrific basis of comparison with the Soviet conquests and massacres. Or the Allied Firebombings of civilian population centers for that matter. Nobody bats an eye at the firebombings of Berlin or Dresden, because the alleged extermination of millions of people in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms inside secret camps stands head and shoulders beyond all the other horrific realities of the war. It's an outlier, which should make one suspicious of its veracity.
The resettlement of the Jews, the Einsatzgruppen reprisals, the concentration camps... the firebombings of major civilian population centers, the nuclear attacks on Japan, the mass executions and mass rapes by the Red Army. There is actual ambiguity if you take that all in. But the public only really cares about the Gas Chamber claim, it cuts through all the other issues. And that's by design, and was accomplished by the conjugation of Hollywood and the apparatus of Stalinist propaganda. Without it, there actually is ambiguity on both fronts, not just the Eastern front.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link