site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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.

An oft-banned user who enjoying posting provocative posts, heavily reliant on quoted content, designed primarily as bait.

I don’t think the vast majority of Jews act with or have any substantial ‘anti-white’ animus; otherwise intermarriage rates with gentile whites wouldn’t be well over 50%.

I think Jews embraced liberal ideas with great zealotry on account of perceived and real prejudice toward them in many traditional European societies. This affinity for liberalism continues today.

But liberalism was invented by white gentiles, and through much of the last 200 years the majority of its destructive impact on aspects of Western societies has been imagined, implemented and supported by gentile whites, and that includes things like mass immigration to the US, championed by gentiles like Phil Hart, Ted Kennedy and so on as well as by some Jewish activists, and the sexual revolution, whose clear champion was one Hugh Hefner.

But disproportionately buying into the ideals of their host society is not a crime, and the most Jews can be accused of (as a group, I mean) is for believing too hard in the principles of the gentiles who themselves adopted the ideas of equality, universality and democracy that their own people created.

The modernity you decry is a predominantly gentile project in which Jews played a substantial-but-supporting role, in part because the goys really seemed to know what they were doing. Nobody deserves to hang for that, although it is true some people have a curious inability to look inward for the cause of their people’s misfortune instead of blaming everyone else; we’ve all been there.