Kulturkampf

[benji]

I've heard of something like this before and for some reason it gets rewarded.

I remembered this from the OG thread and tracked it down, turned out it was you who had posted it:

But that actually wasn't the article I was thinking of, trying to find that article I found these that contain some more hilarious examples:
https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-debate-community-is-an-insane
https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-national-debate-tournament-as

But this was the one I was thinking of:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/how-critical-theory-is-radicalizing

However, in recent years, many debaters have decided to flat-out ignore the assigned topic and instead hijack the round by proposing brand new (i.e., wholly unrelated to the original topic), debater-created resolutions that advocate complex social criticisms based on various theories — Marxism, anti-militarism, feminist international relations theory, neocolonialism, securitization, anthropocentrism, orientalism, racial positionality, Afro-Pessimism, disablism, queer ecology, and transfeminism. (To be clear, traditional feminism is out of fashion and seen as too essentialist.)

These critical theory1 arguments, known as kritiks, are usually wielded by the negation side to criticize the fundamental assumptions of their affirmation side opponents. Kritik advocates argue that the world is so systematically broken that discussing public policy proposals and reforms misses what really matters: the need to fundamentally revolutionize society in some way. For example, if the topic was “The U.S. should increase the federal minimum wage,” the affirmation side might provide some arguments supporting this policy. But then the negation side, instead of arguing that the government shouldn’t raise the minimum wage, might reject spending any time on the original resolution and counter-propose a Marxist kritik.2 Here’s an example of how the negation might introduce this kritik:

Revolutionary theory is a prior question — the aff [proposal about raising the minimum wage] is irrelevant in the grand scheme of capitalism... [You as a judge should] evaluate the debate as a dialectical materialist — you are a historian inquiring into the determinant factors behind the PMC [first affirmation speech] — The role of the ballot is to endorse the historical outlook of the topic with the most explanatory power... Vote negative to endorse Marxist labor theory of value.