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 -
Zoom in a little. Muslim immigrants are not homogeneous. Persians might well be a net positive for their host countries. Pakistanis, in the aggregate, very much aren’t. Most other nationalities fall somewhere in between.
In the US, Persians definitely are a net positive.
Iranian brain drain selects for the talented and secular.
I wholly agree, and chose to make a weaker statement because I’m not familiar with the Persian diaspora outside the US.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It’s more about the class of immigrant. Compare American vs British Pakistanis and British vs German Turks.
American Pakistanis largely come from the upper-middle class, do well financially and are often relatively secular. The San Bernardino attack is the major Islamist attack perpetrated by Pakistani-Americans, but most of the others like the Boston Bombing and Pulse nightclub weren’t (afaik). British Pakistanis are much poorer and more religiously conservative because they almost all hail from the small rural city of Mirpur and the surrounding area of Azad Kashmir in Pakistan.
The same dynamic plays out with Turks between the UK (and US) and Germany. Anglosphere Turks are largely secularized middle class immigrants who - in Turkish elections - overwhelmingly vote for secular candidates. German Turks are descended from poor Anatolian peasant laborers, and overwhelmingly vote for the Islamist Erdogan.
It’s less about country of origin and more about class of origin when it comes to Muslim immigrants.
And all are actually ethnic Greeks.
It’s surely more accurate to say that Greeks are either Slavs or ethnic Turks, as @Pasha suggested last week.
That’s not what I was suggesting. I was suggesting Greeks are culturally and politically Balkan/Anatolian people pretending to be Western Europeans.
Ethnically the comment above has a point in that when you get down to it people of Turkey are not very ethnically Turkic. It’s more accurate to say some locals of Anatolia and balkan converted to Islam and admixed with genetically small amounts of steppe ancestry. They didn’t even necessarily speak Turkish. Then they found their way to modern Turkey either during the many population transfers of Ottoman administration or through the ethnic cleansings of the modern era (for every Turks ethnically cleansed this and that peoples story, there is usually a comparable group of Muslims being ethnically cleansed into Anatolia around the same time. Balkan and Caucasus didn’t end up so homogenous by accident).
So yeah, if you have a Quick Look at higher echelons of secular Turkish society it’s typical to find more white/slav/caucusus/greek ancestry people as they always had a more secular culture. Atatürk himself was a blond blue eyes army officer whose family was ethically cleansed from Macedonia and Thessaloniki. That doesn’t make them any less Turkish
More options
Context Copy link
It’s not much actual Turkic ancestry. My understanding is that there is a huge genetic overlap between the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey, and the latter two try to pretend otherwise.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8433500/
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link