site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   25443 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

are not really interested in having a real debate - they want to proselytize

This is not the case for SS, who I see entering into cited discussions with critics who usually do not bring citations.

The actual challenge is that Holocaust deniers are a very highly motivated group of people

I think they are highly motivated because the holocaust is one of the central events of the 20th century which they believe has false historiography. If you go to a Christian forum you will see no shortage of debaters who only care about the Trinity or an Atonement theory because, being central elements of their topic of interest, they consider the correct interpretation to be important. I mean jeeze, “faith vs works” which be the whole forum posting history of a given online Christian debater. The typical holocaust denier has far less interest at stake than, say, the typical online Israeli or Zionist. One of them believes something is wrong, the other’s identity is at stake. I know that it’s popular wisdom that holocaust deniers are really, strongly motivated by hating Jews, but I think that is imputing on them a baseless and primitive psychology. “They hate them because they are more successful” — do you see Protestant whites online dedicating their online presence to hating Catholics or Chinese, Harvard grads, AP students, tall people? I personally do not subscribe to the “spontaneously generated hatred” theory of holocaust denial. It’s more like moon landing denial, the passion for which is motivated by clarifying a central narrative in the popular psyche. Are these people going to be a bit nuts? Yeah, probably every historical revisionist regardless of topic is a bit nuts. (If you want to see this in the wild, there’s a forum called EarlyWritings which focuses on early Christian historiography, and you see posters whose whole posting history centers on a conspiracy involving Marcion or Valentinus etc. And they are clearly not motivated by hatred.)

If we had really shitty and annoying holocaust posters I would say ban them all, but SS posts are IMO interesting, well-written, and novel. Actually, he may be the best of his kind on the whole internet! When was the last top-level post he made on this, like two months ago? However I agree with mod note that he needs to be more clear in the title about his intentions. But let him make a top level post like ever 2-3 months IMO.

I am completely against banning Holocaust deniers for being Holocaust deniers. I'm not even in favor of SecureSignals' temporary ban, despite the fact that his posts are pretty tiresome to me. My comment that you are replying to is in the nature of a vent about my experience with Holocaust deniers, and it is also my trying to say that, while I am staunchly in favor of free speech, this place would also probably degrade if let's say 30% of top-level posts were by Holocaust deniers. My solution to that is not to ban Holocaust denial. I 100% support Holocaust denial being allowed here. But I also personally find most Holocaust deniers to be ridiculous people. SecureSignals makes some good points but he is so utterly convinced that the Holocaust didn't happen, as opposed to being genuinely open-minded, that arguing with him is similar to arguing with a religious fanatic.

I've not got a survey of all Holocaust deniers (or revisionists, if you must) on the internet, but at least in places like the Motte, I do seem to notice a correlation between Holocaust denial and a strong interest in Jews?

This conversation started out concerning SecureSignals, and the common theme in SecureSignals' posting history is not deep and pedantic historical analysis that leads him to question established wisdom on a wide range of issues, wherever he sees anything that seems off-kilter, of which the Holocaust is only a single example. The common theme in SecureSignals' posting is Jews.

He makes a lot of posts about Jews that do not involve the Holocaust. He does not make a lot of posts about historical population movements or statistics that do not involve the Holocaust. The theme is Jews.

So just as an explanation, I feel like "SecureSignals hates Jews" seems to fit the evidence better than "SecureSignals has an extremely high regard for historical rigour". Hell, I'll be gracious here - maybe he doesn't hate Jews. I don't know the inside of his heart. But he seems to really want to talk about Jews, in contexts that seem to me to portray them negatively.

I do seem to notice a correlation between Holocaust denial and a strong interest in Jews?

You would expect this in all places which allow the topic, not just here, because a natural question as part of digging into the "Holocaust conspiracy" is why it exists. For that, the answer (Edit: given by revisionists) is Jews as well. At the very least, I know SS has talked about Elie Wiesel in the past, who is a Holocaust survivor. Wiesel is also an activist who has been tireless in promoting the Holocaust as an act unique in its depth of immorality. From Wikipedia:

In 1982, at the request of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Wiesel agreed to resign from his position as chairman of a planned international conference on the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. Wiesel then worked with the Foreign Ministry in its attempts to get the conference either canceled or to remove all discussion of the Armenian genocide from it, and to those ends he provided the Foreign Ministry with internal documents on the conference's planning and lobbied fellow academics to not attend the conference.

Or, we can talk about the supposed 11 million killed in the Holocaust - that number is actually a fabrication by a Jewish Nazi hunter named Simon Wiesenthal. From the Jewish Virtual Library:

Five million is frequently cited as the number of non-Jews killed by the Nazis. The figure is inaccurate and was apparently an invention of famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. According to historian Deborah Lipstadt, he began to refer to “eleven million victims” of the Holocaust, six million Jews and five million non-Jews in the 1970s. Wiesenthal later admitted making up the figure to promote interest in the Holocaust among non-Jews. Lipstadt, says “he chose five million because it was almost, but not quite, as large as six million.”

None of this would matter if Jews didn't disproportionately occupy positions of wealth, status, and power. None of this would matter if the Holocaust wasn't seared into our moral memory. But since both have happened, it should not surprise anyone that anyone interested in Holocaust denial is basically guaranteed to also talk about how Jews control non-Jews at the detriment of the latter.

Edit: To be clear, I don't agree with the revisionist position, I am only explaining why you would naturally see people go from revisionism to focused on the Jews.

This describes my anger about the cynical exploitation of the killings, and the conflation of genuine historical study with a politicized made for TV mythology.

I think that's the defensible stance, in the sense that it doesn't indicate anti-Semitic beliefs. But "Jews have assigned the Holocaust a unique position in Western history" is a far weaker stance to take, imo, that most revisionists don't seem to hold. If they just hated how the history was distorted, I think there would be fewer revisionists overall - there's simply less of an axe to grind.

I think SS and the revisionists do genuinely hate the Jews. Not in the childish sense of "look at this bitch breathing", but in the sense that they think it's acceptable to declare a heuristic like "Jew? Morally suspect, opinion discarded".

I mean, it seems like mostly you just agree with him, do you think the holocaust happened as we know it?

I know that it’s popular wisdom that holocaust deniers are really, strongly motivated by hating Jews, but I think that is imputing on them a baseless and primitive psychology.

If I said that there were people who just hate white people, I think you would agree that such a motivation is entirely plausible, even if they say that they're just interested in questioning the mainstream narrative which casts white people in a fairly well-off light. Why can't the same hold for Holocaust deniers?

Those who hate white people are those who have been ideologically captured by a popular narrative; this would also account for some holocaust deniers, but their narrative isn’t popular except in small corners and it comes with no social benefit (actually negative social benefit). I don’t actually believe there are people who hate where people apart from ideological influence. I also don’t think you see amateur anti-white historical research online. Your typical anti-white twitter poster isn’t going through old books and articles and tomes to revise how some moment in white history was fabricated. I mean historians might do this, but that’s because they are in an institution that rewards status from it. Who is doing it anonymously of psuedonymously? I personally have not seen that, which makes holocaust denial unique.

but their narrative isn’t popular except in small corners and it comes with no social benefit

Humans are largely interested in the status games they partake of, not the ones they don't. It doesn't matter if it's only popular in their small corners if they don't care about status outside it. Except to the extent they have to be a part of that broader society, of course.

Your typical anti-white twitter poster isn’t going through old books and articles and tomes to revise how some moment in white history was fabricated.

The people on the fringe of society have to do more work to make their points palatable to the public, that doesn't mean they can't be motivated primarily or solely by hatred.

The typical holocaust denier has far less interest at stake than, say, the typical online Israeli or Zionist.

Yet the typical online Zionist posts about other things than just Zionism.

If a poster is generally good but when they post on topic X they suck and to stop posting about X, then that is a good way to balance banning the poster and banning discussion of X.

SS was found to be obnoxious and failed to heed the warnings.

We don’t want the same characters clogging up the feed with the same tired topic. If SS had made the post he did about current events and say linked to a past expose on the holocaust, then he would have been able to get his message across without being quite so goddamn annoying such that he got modded.

The issue is not that he posts a lot about it or only about it or anything like that, it's that there's a distinct feeling of a missionary attempting to convert the ignorant heathens. Same talking points over and over again in a somewhat different garb, strict keeping to apologetics considered favorable to one's cause and handwaving or ignoring of those who don't fit the narrative (such as there is), eventual fading away and restarting of the same cycle some time later. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The HBD and trans stuff pops up regularly because it regularly is of direct, current relevance to a variety of political issues. Moreover, there is new evidence coming out on those questions.

Debating whether Eisenhower ever mentioned the holocaust doesn’t have the same relevance.

If we had a flat earther or moon landing skeptic in here who also made good posts they would still be pretty annoying when they posted about obvious nonsense to rehash tired debates.

There are others here with a lopsided posting history. No one is going after @Stefferi for being a single-issue Suomiposter

I post about a variety of other topics. Neither of my March AAQC's, for instance, were related to Finland.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats