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'm not actually familiar with the entire American media landscape, but certainly if you look beyond America, there are plenty of Chinese-owned newspapers, some intended for general consumption and some that specifically appeal to members of the Chinese diaspora. But again, so what? I'm not even sure what you're talking about now. I thought we were talking about The Atlantic, and The Atlantic is not a newspaper. Now, I'm sure you can find in Western media, if you look, articles by ethnically Chinese people that are sympathetic to the PRC, but that's just what we ought to expect.
You return to this "vertically integrated propaganda apparatus". That's a conspiracy. Let me present an alternative hypothesis - you are likely to find Jewish authors independently, without any particular coordination or malice, writing things relevant to them, which, yes, includes concerns about anti-semitism. There doesn't need to be a grand plan or a racial animus to explain the observations that Jews oppose anti-semitism and that Jews tend to be pro-Israel, and that writing by Jews in the media sometimes touches on those themes.
You say that this "presents ethnic advocacy as journalism", but as I said, The Atlantic is not a newspaper. Theo Baker's article is not presented as neutral journalism - The Atlantic doesn't even do that. It's an opinion piece, and its editorial line - anti-semitism is bad, Stanford students are being unfairly hostile to Jewish students, Jewish students are legitimately afraid - is not concealed. Baker's perspective is obvious.
Is this 'advocating for Jewish nationalism'? I mean, it is taking the strong view that being a Zionist or supporting Israel shouldn't be reason to be bullied or harassed. Is that Jewish nationalism? It relates to the Jewish nation, I suppose. Baker makes zero attempt whatsoever to convince people of Zionism, or to argue that people should be supportive of Israel. He actually is moderately sympathetic to concerns about Palestine, and regularly presents his preferred goal as being open and free dialogue, diversity of opinion, and so on. If this is Jewish nationalism, it's a really poor effort. I mean, read the damn thing. This is his position:
This doesn't read like Jewish or Israeli nationalism. This reads like, "The world is complicated, it's not all black-and-white, so please acknowledge that there's nuance here and don't attack or harass Jewish students." That is a plea for tolerance and understanding.
Now, sure, the article is written to influence public opinion - that is by definition true of all articles. That is the point of any article. There is no visible unique Jewish malice here.
Look, if all you were saying was, "For so-and-so historical reasons Jewish are disproportionately present in media and journalism" (which is true), and "Jews tend to care about Jewish issues, such as anti-semitism or Israel, more than other people do" (also obviously true), and therefore "media and journalism tend to give greater prominence to anti-semitism or Israel than they would otherwise" (seems a reasonable conclusion), I'd have no issue. I myself regularly complain about the media's monomaniacal focus on Israel - a brief comparison between October 7 and the invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh is instructive, where Western countries were hugely-focused on Gaza while ignoring the other, much more successful genocide occurring on the other side of the Middle East. The obvious reason for that is that lots of Americans care about Israel whereas not very many Americans care about Armenia, and yeah, that probably has to do with the fact that there are lots of American Jews and Jews are a historically successful group in America. They have a louder voice. Meanwhile there aren't that many Armenians in America, and they're a less wealthy group, so even if they wanted to, they would have a hard time telling their story.
But that's not in fact what you're saying. You are saying, as far as I can see, not just that Jews tend to be interested in things that affect Jews, but that Jews are this inherently untrustworthy manipulative group who should be automatically assumed to be lying unless there is strong evidence otherwise, and you specifically attribute this to 'HBD', i.e. some racial difference inherent to Jews.
More options
Context Copy link