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 -
Spencer was an editor at The American Conservative in 2007.
Yarvin was a libertarian before he was a reactionary.
Ron Unz ran for governor as a republican in 1994 and was "He was publisher of The American Conservative from 2007 to 2013". "He ran as a conservative alternative to the more moderate Wilson and was endorsed by the conservative California Republican Assembly"
Sailer "Earlier writing by Sailer appeared in some mainstream outlets, and his writings have been described as prefiguring Trumpism.[2] Sailer popularized the term "human biodiversity" for a right-wing audience in the 1990s as a euphemism for scientific racism.[2][12] "
As far as I can tell, you are just factually wrong. These people were not pushing 'DEI' during the 'bush administration'. Which is what you claimed. And their ideology before being reactionary seems to have mostly been conservative.
Even if you were right about those people, it wouldn't matter because you claimed "I don't think it's a coincidence at all those who were pushing DEI back during the Bush administration have transitioned to pushing HBD now". If that was true, then there would be around 50x more people pushing HBD. A lot of people were pro-diversity two decades ago.
Also, people change ideologies sometimes. Reactionaries have to come from somewhere if there were fewer of them 20 years ago. But a lot of them seem to have come from conservatism.
And before that he was a student at UC Berkeley and also a self-identified Marxist, ditto Yarvin. The whole "Black Bloc kid gets mugged and starts posting hitler-memes" is such a common origin story amongst NRxers and the dissident right that it's become a meme on conservative forums. It is this archetype that I am referring to when I say that sometimes they are literally the same people.
No he did not. Unz ran as a third-party candidate against incumbent Republican Governor Pete Wilson on a "revenge of the nerds" platform and he lost.
Between this and the "race norming" post up-thread where you conveniently pretend that the NFL hasn't been collecting Wonderlic scores on every new player as they enter the league since the late 70s your claims made throughout this thread have just been consistently factually wrong and it is this sort of aggressive confidence in one's own ignorance that typifies the HBD discourse here on theMotte and makes it so insufferable.
curious if you can reply to my comment on your post here? if i'm wrong i'd like to know i'm wrong but i cant find the evidence for your claims
More options
Context Copy link
I do not see anything about UC Berkeley on his wikipedia page. I see
Can I have sources for Spencer and Yarvin being self-identified marxists in college? I searched for a bit and was unable to find anything for either. If Yarvin used to be a communist then I definitely should've known that. It's not implausible for Spencer, but
Wikipedia directly claimed that "He unsuccessfully ran for governor as a Republican in the 1994 California gubernatorial election and for U.S. Senator in 2016" and then
Do you disagree with that?
I believe they ended up using the same baseline assumed intelligence for black and white players, not individual historically collected scores?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link