Botond173
1yr ago
Everybody always brings up the Charlottesville rally in this context, but nobody ever brings up the Pikeville rally, which happened a few months earlier, with pretty much the same political groups present on both sides. Which is understandable, because nobody remembers it. Down the memory hole it went, because there were no deaths, no altercations, no incidents at all. You know why? Because the riot police was deployed, and was actually ordered to do the one job they have, which is separating groups of violent protesters from one another. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the political reality of the Charlottesville rally.
Botond173
2yr ago
"callous discussion of ideas" is just a hilarious phrase. CALLOUS DISCUSSION! Clown world indeed this is.
Botond173
3mo ago
Writing in The Guardian, Lucy Mangan stated that Adolescence was "the closest thing to TV perfection in decades"
This statement alone should make everyone rather suspicious about the series.
On a different note I'd like to mention that Brianna Ghey's murder had nothing to do with either transphobia or misogyny, as the Wiki article makes it clear.
Botond173
4mo ago
A couple of months ago @Goodguy left the following comment here:
I think that in modern society the opinion that men should have more control over women's sexual decisions, other than potentially in the one case of abortion (because that one has potential moral implications beyond the woman) is just fundamentally loser-coded because the Internet has made it pretty clear that the majority of men who want to police women's sexual decisions are doing so out of sexual frustration. Of course there is a small minority of rationalist-types who genuinely care about the impact of women's sexual decisions on fertility rates or social cohesion out of a detached interest in supporting pro-social policies, but the modal guy online arguing for controlling women's sexual decisions is, assuming that he is not a genuine pro-lifer, pretty clearly doing it because he isn't getting laid as much as he wants.
I tried to initiate a discussion about this without success, with my argument being that single men „policing/controlling” the sexual decisions of single women (I'm including „slut-shaming” in this category) has actually only been a social reality in the minds of feminist culture warriors. It was never implemented as a tool of women's „oppression” anywhere. To the extent that such „policing” existed (if we want to call it that), it was mainly done by other women, mainly due to the simple and understood fact that it's such policing that serves the long-term sexual interests of women as a whole. And the men that did engage in this were mostly fathers with daughters, not single men in the current sense of the word. (One can argue that in traditional patriarchal communities it was normal for single men to band together and remove outsider single men through threats or force; I guess this may count as indirect policing, which isn't saying much.)
I'm open to reading any counterarguments but anyway, this is not the subject I want to address here. I think Goodguy touched on something rather important which didn't occur to me at first, namely that society used to have a different attitude regarding this issue before it became modern. There actually used to be a group of men who were basically deputized by society to morally shame women in certain contexts despite being technically single (as I alluded to this above): priests and monks. (And this doesn't just apply to Christendom.) They were also voluntarily celibate, which is another category that disappeared with the rise of modernity. (The cultural memory of this lingers on though, otherwise the people who came up with the „incel” label would simply have called themselves celibate.)
As I was pondering this issue, it also occurred to me that secularization meant that Western societies did lose something significant not just in this respect but others as well. It appears to me that secular society and the churches/denominations used to exist in a symbiosis with the terms never being openly stated. It's well-known that Christianity used to be in a culturally hegemonic/privileged position. But it's also true that the churches basically volunteered to take care of those social groups that nobody else wanted to look after because they're socially a pain in the neck:
-
singles who can't or won't get married (see: priests, monks, nuns)
-
generally adults lacking social skills to such an extent that they become shut-ins without outside assistance
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sick/diseased people unable to pay for treatment
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children sired by men who can't or won't become husbands and providers
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poor people that are so helpless and lacking in agency that they die from poverty without the charity of others
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children of married couples too poor to pay for any schooling
I think atheists and people hostile to religion in general emotionally get hung up on the former and lose sight of the latter. Some of them who did not lose sight of it came up with the doctrine of eugenics as a solution, but we know what reputation that has today. Instead we expect the state to pick up the slack and look after all these unfortunate groups, which only results in a multitude of horror stories about police departments, child protective services etc. being a useless bunch of uncaring buffoons.
I wonder what the rationalist point of view on all of this is.
In last week’s thread Cirrus addressed the gerontocracy that is due to characterize the upcoming presidential elections (and characterized the two latest ones) in the US, and drew obvious parallels with the late history of the USSR. This reminded me of a comment by phoneosaur on the old subreddit 4 years ago, which I found fascinating enough in order to save it. Either way, this generated a bunch of replies last week, but I think some relevant points were not made.
First I’d bring up the following argument from the old comment:
My hunch is that the "establishment" in each era resorted to increasingly elderly candidates because the pipeline of ideologically reliable young people stopped flowing. The establishment become reluctant to hand power to a new generation when that generation has ceased believing in the legitimacy of the power structure.
Cirrus mentions something that might first read like the opposite, but pretty much seems to point out the same problem:
I don’t think it’s a stretch to compare those Accords with modern-day Wokism currently afflicting Western European culture. The older generation of leaders will roll their eyes. But they signed on to it. The next batch of younger idealist leaders—the Gorbachevs of our future—will take Wokism seriously to the detriment of our national integrity.
I think both of them are definitely onto something, so I’d draw a different parallel to illustrate what I think is going on. In the USSR, what Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko all had in common was that they lived through Stalin’s terror as youths, and the Great Patriotic War as young adults. They had multiple common points of reference, which all made them politically cautious. They remembered the horrors of the past, and had understanding of the limitations and problems of the regime they served. Sure, they repeated the usual platitudes about the final victory of socialism, the supremacy of Marxist-Leninist thought, proletarian solidarity etc., but they didn’t take most of this seriously, and were wary of appointing younger cadres – after all, they, not sharing the common understanding and experience of the elders, not being humbled by terrible past events, and potentially being real believers or, alternatively, heretics, may end up enacting reforms that destroy the system, doing things that just don’t work out, being naïve idiots, or hotheaded, or just selling everything out to the enemy. This is just speculation on my part, admittedly – anyway, we know that the gerontocratic party leadership did eventually appoint a younger reformer of “merely” 54 years of age, when the economic and social crisis of the system became obvious.
In the US, the people in the highest political positions are mostly Boomers who lived through the political upheaval of the Johnson and Nixon years and the pre-1973 era of prosperity as young adults. (The Senate’s median age is above 65 years, and has been steadily rising for a while.) For them, these years, the good times, are basically a point of reference as a period of normalcy, and they remember the activities of revolutionary leftist movement as something to be avoided. And they are probably nostalgic for the Reagan/Clinton years. They will, of course, repeat platitudes about civil rights, restorative justice, empowering minorities, the future being female and whatnot, but they won’t tolerate anything that directly disturbs the peace of middle-class suburban normalcy, and won’t give power to true believers of social revolution. After all, they don’t want to rock the boat.
This reminds me of a different observation I’ve seen here from a Gen X-er (I can’t find the comment), namely that X-er voters are reluctant to vote fellow X-ers into political power, because there’s too high a chance that they’ll turn out to be dangerous radicals and true believers. So this isn’t a sentiment limited to just Boomers, probably.
All in all, it seems that in periods of political and economic uncertainty and stagnation, the elderly can remain in power easily, because people will want to stick with the Devil they know, and not risk future upheaval and collapse by giving power to politicians that are untried and untested.
Botond173
1yr ago
In last week’s thread, @greyenlightenment made the following observation regarding the evergreen subject of the sex recession:
It's interesting how some on the right has shifted from decrying how there is too much promiscuity (pre-2021 or so), to now from a trad-perspective decrying how young people are not having enough sex and lowered fertility rates.
As far as I can tell, this almost counts as a recurring theme among online leftists (not that I consider @greyenlightenment to be one in particular), one that serves as an ideological cudgel and also as a short cautionary tale with a “careful what you wish for” message. But I certainly don’t think it’s baseless, which is the other reason I think it merits more discussion here.
I happen to have vague memories of various conservative arguments I encountered after discovering Townhall and other similar right-wing sites in the early 2000s, and one thing they definitely liked to address regarding sexual mores was the embarrassingly high teenage pregnancy rate in the US. Well, I’m no sociologist but I suspect this statistical anomaly was and is(?) largely explained by the presence of large African-American and Latino ethnic minorities, plus the presence of large numbers of Scots-Irish with low impulse control, but of course mainstream conservatives were not going to point that out, opting instead to use this as a lame argument against encroaching sexual licentiousness or something.
Other than this, I’d not say it was too much promiscuity as such that conservatives decried, to the extent they even bothered, but the apparent push to normalize and sanitize female promiscuity in pop culture. I specifically remember the 2004 romantic comedy The Girl Next Door, for example, because multiple conservative commentators pointed out that its depiction of a supposedly average porn actress living the dream without suffering any social or psychological consequences of her career choice is misleading at best. There was also Sex in the City as well, obviously.
Anyway, this was all a long time ago, and I only brought up these two off the top of my head to encourage others here to bring up similar memories of their own.
On a different note, I don’t think it’s difficult to see how and why poking fun at old conservative fogeys this way is rather dishonest. After all, yes, surely they are happy to see teenage pregnancy rates and STD rates falling, for example, but they also surely never wanted any of this to happen as a consequence of social atomization and the overall atrophy of socializing itself, which is something that clearly contradicts conservative ideals.
Also, let’s not forget that teenage delinquency in general was generally seen as a big problem back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and not just by conservatives. Back then it was obviously very difficult to foresee a future where average parents actually wished that their teenage children went outside and hanged out at the park, the mall or the arcade.
Botond173
10mo ago
The patriarchy's social norms regarding modesty, although never stated openly, functioned in effect as affirmative action / a safety net for ugly/fat/plain etc. women, basically as a treaty of nonaggression and voluntary disarmament among women, with a net benefit for all women and society as a whole. (Men used to have something similar, but that's another matter). When such norms are dismantled in the name of liberty and happiness, it contributes to a sexual arms race among women where they are given various socio-cultural incentives to pander to the sexual whims of the top 5-10% of men. This takes place in parallel with the erosion of other patriarchal norms, which results in women in general gradually losing their ability to elicit long-term commitment from the men they're attracted to, which in turn fuels the said arms race even more. This is a net negative for society, but once this said female cartel is gone, it'll not be replaced, because any woman who wants to dress modestly in effect opts out of the arms race and loses.
Botond173
1yr ago
A week ago, in the context of a discussion on some NYT article, @2rafa commented that “there is an unstated (on the progressive side) premise among all people that casual sex is a bad deal for women and devalues or dishonors them in some way”. It generated a few replies but basically no further discussion, even though I’m sure it’s worthy of further discussion, and here’s why: as far as I’m aware, it’s certainly not the case that progressives had this attitude from the beginning of the Sexual Revolution, which is what the context is here. Obviously they used to have a different view in general, but sometime along the way, they changed their minds, because things turned sour, essentially.
Before continuing I think it’s important to qualify, as 2rafa also did, that other ideological groups also share this basic view, but the two main differences are that right-wingers tend to state this view openly, whereas progs are usually reluctant to do so, and that they do so on religious and moralistic grounds, whereas progs concentrate on women’s individual long-term interests, not on any other considerations.
So anyway, I said to myself: surely these people, being progressives, believe that the Sexual Revolution, while a laudable event, went haywire at some point, and didn’t bear the fruits it was supposed to. And I can tell that this is a relatively widespread view, because I can see it expressed in various online venues all the time, not just this forum.
What went wrong then? What did the Sexual Revolution basically promise to average progressive women, and why did that turn out to be a lie?
I’d argue that the more or less unstated promise of the Sexual Revolution to young single women was that: a) they will be sexually free without inviting social shame i.e. normalized sexual experimentation and promiscuity on their part will not have an unfavorable long-term effect on men’s attitudes towards them, and women will not sexually shame one another anymore b) they will be able to leave their constrictive gender roles to the extent they see fit, but this will not lead to social issues and anomie because men will be willing to fill those roles instead i.e. men will have no problem becoming stay-at-home dads, nurses, kindergarteners, doing housework etc.
And none of that turned out to be true.
Am I correct in this assessment?
Botond173
5mo ago
As usual Andy ngo is the only person talking about the case at all,
I'm sure I'm not the first one to notice that this has usually been the case from the beginning. Apart from obscure conservative or alt-light-adjacent sites and blogs, nobody reports on antifa activities or portrays those in the most favorable light possible.
Botond173
1yr ago
It's actually worse than all that.
Due to demographic implosion, families and friends' circles are smaller, so your friends and their friends have fewer or no sisters, nieces, cousins and other friends to introduce to you even if they want to help you out. Also, boys who have no sisters and no female cousins will tend to develop dumbass ideas about girls because they don't see how they actually behave normally as humans. It also happens with the sexes reversed, I assume.
Widespread use of social media abetted the decline of nightclubs in general, which the COVID lockdowns also heavily contributed to.
Strict enforcement of the 21-year drinking age means that young people over 21 and those under 21 have basically no access to social venues where they can interact.
Atomized societies normalize heightened social mobility for young singles, which means you'll pretty much lose your entire social circle if you have to move to another town after graduation to get some job.
I was effectively shunned from an entire community and industry for the crime of politely asking a girl if she wanted to get coffee sometime and I'm still mad about it - anyone saying "just ask her bro, the worst she can say is no" is full of shit.
To be fair, it's not full of shit as long as there's no overlap between your social circle and hers.
And yet quite a few of them suggested that if a random guy started talking to them in an elevator, they would be weirded out.
Well, duh. If you ask them about a RANDOM GUY, of course they'll react like that, because they don't see 'random' guys as attractive.
Botond173
1yr ago
I'll also chime in by utilizing the Akshually... meme unironically, by pointing out that Japan was also under de facto, and is under practical US occupation, and yet mass acceptance of immigrants and refugees never became the norm there. More or less the same applies to South Korea and Taiwan.
Botond173
1yr ago
I've read the discussion on the destruction of General Lee's statue in Charlottesville in last week's thread. I got the impression that many commenters here are prone to come up with explanations why the official removal of the statue was at least unsurprising or objectively justified from a culture war perspective, and I get that. But it seems they aren't focusing on the palpable difference between legally removing a statue and destroying it in a furnace. Because as far as I'm concerned, it's a big step from one to the other.
I'm reminded of the political transitions that happened in Central Europe in 1989-91, because many local monuments to either Soviet politicians/soldiers or local Communists or Marx/Engels were officially removed as a result. Anyone can correct me if they can, but I think all those new political systems were content with just removing the statues and putting them in "museums", which in most cases basically meant that these statues were put in open-air storage in remote and mostly abandoned memorial parks to just wither away, but not destroying them, cutting them up, melting them down etc. This hasn't even happened to Stalin statues in the Baltic states, for example, even though local anti-Soviet sentiment was definitely the strongest in the entire region, not something to understate. You can still find and visit those statues today.
And in this case, even this relatively close parallel doesn't really work, because it's not like there was a fundamental regime change in Virginia since the statue was erected.
And what happened to Lee's statue certainly cannot be explained by financial considerations either, as I'm sure that whatever arrangement that was on the table for putting it away as a museum piece was cheaper than melting it down in a furnace.
The only fitting parallel that comes to mind is Napoleon ordering captured cannons to be melted down to build a gigantic iron monument in Paris dedicated to the victory at Austerlitz. But again, I'm sure I won't have to explain in detail how that political context was completely different from this, even though I'm aware there are many hardline leftists today who would've preferred the evil Confederacy to be publicly humiliated in such ways back in 1865.
In the end, the only sufficient explanation I can come up with is that local authorities were afraid that Lee's statue, no matter where it were to be placed, was likely to become a site of pilgrimage for right-winger heretics opposed to the culture-warring leftist interpretation of race relations in the US, hence the statue's destruction.
Plus, and this is just pure speculation on my part, I think General Lee was such a perfect personification of the Southern patriarchal ideal of gentlemanliness that he invites leftist hostility like no other figure in US history. Plus, he had the cheek to candidly express views on slavery and the innate characteristics of Africans that are, from a leftist perspective, uniquely horrible, just too painful, and cutting too close to the bone, as they say.
Botond173
10mo ago
This particular phenomenon was noticed in the Manosphere at least as early as 2011:
I wont say that I don’t admire Mona for having the courage to write a less than favorable critique; particularly one that points the blame back on a feminization that enthusiastically looks to reinvent it’s own social conventions in order to rationalize away the post-Wall dire straits women like Bolick are finding themselves in. However, is anyone really surprised that it’s now women receiving public recognition for acknowledging psychological and sociological principles and dynamics that the manosphere has covered for over a decade now?
I’m glad to see it getting the publicity, but ONLY a woman could write this without suffering fem-screech backlash accusations of misogyny. This is the environment we’re in today. I have no doubt that Ms. Charen will receive her share of frothing hate from ego invested Jezebels, but at least her critique will register for them. No man could write this critique and be taken seriously, and therein lies the danger in women co-opting the message the manosphere has been compiling for 12 years now. The environment is such that anything remotely critical a man might offer is instantly suspect of misogyny or personal (‘he’s bitter”) bias, however, couch that message in a female perspective, play Mrs. Doubtfire, and you’ll at least reach the audience beginning with something like validity.
https://therationalmale.com/2011/11/08/could-a-man-have-written-this/
Botond173
1yr ago
These people fundamentally see Hamas' attack as legitimate and Israel's response as illegitimate, because they see Israel itself as illegitimate, and they see Israel as illegitimate because it's a Jewish country. It's as clear and simple as that.
No, not at all. It's because it's a colonizer country created by Western imperialists. These same protestors have the same attitude towards any colonial or post-colonial system. I guess you did notice that earlier, it's just that it didn't bother you maybe, as the target of their protests were white gentiles, not Jews, I don't know.
I've posted this before here, and it bears reposting here, with some edits meant as improvement:
This whole thing reminds me of the news stories about the children's mass grave in Tuam, Ireland, and of supposed mass graves in Tulsa, Oklahoma where racist mass-murdering demons buried the victims of the 1921 "race massacre", or so we're told.
When I try looking at these affairs without bias and prejudice, I try putting myself in the shoes of the average Western middle-class suburban white normie NPC, and frankly I realize that, unless some heretic specifically makes an effort to educate me on this, I'll probably have zero understanding of the following hard facts about the bygone days of the West:
1/ It was normal to bury people in unmarked individual paupers' graves, or even in unmarked mass paupers' graves (in the case of, say, an epidemic or some similar catastrophe) if nobody claimed the corpse, or if the relatives were too poor to, or unwilling to, afford a proper burial. This, in fact, was not rare.
2/ Back when national economies were yet too undeveloped to produce a surplus to be spent on, frankly, luxuries, there was exactly zero public support for spending tax money* to improve the material conditions of single mothers so that they have the same prospects in life as married wives**.
*Keep in mind, please, that, unlike today, milking the impregnators for child support under the threat of imprisonment wasn't an option either in most cases, because they were either dead, or already in prison/workhouse, or too poor to be milked for money.
**Again, let's be clear about this: back in the days of benighted Papist Ireland, or in any similar patriarchal society, I can assure you there were probably zero housewives willing to tolerate the spectre of the government basically confiscating a given % of her husband's income and giving it to unwed mothers in the form of state handouts. The extent to which Christian societies in such economic conditions were willing to go to look after the downtrodden was basically to shove them onto the Church and leave them to hold the bag. In the same way, the Church was basically expected to sweep up a portion of single men and women that were unmarriageable for whatever reason and train them to be monks, priests and nuns, so that they were no longer a problematic pain in the butt to their own families.
3/ Also, a society that poor is also unable to pay for lavishly equipped, professional, extensive police forces. This means extrajudicial punishment, communal vigilantism and mob justice was seen as normal and necessary by most people, at least to a certain extent.
4/ Stray dogs were normally slaughtered and their cadavers/bones were used for producing animal glue and other similar products, because you could be sure absolutely nobody was going to contribute material resources to founding and running comfy dog shelters. (I know this has nothing to do with these manufactured scandals, but I included it because we know that white liberals just love dogs.)
Botond173
4mo ago
The reason is simple, Europe has picked a side in the American culture war, and it is the far left side.
That accusation is a bit rich, because the causation is the other way around. It's not like a bunch of Blue Tribers somehow appeared in Europe and decided to pick a side in the US culture war. What in fact happened is that the Global American / Globohomo Empire poured lots of money and influence into its causes in Europe (among other places) through non-profits and NGOs which in turn recruited, trained and indoctrinated, directly and indirectly, the local cadre of Blue culture warriors and their sympathizers in Europe, all of whom incidentally consume no cultural and ideological products other than that produced by the US Blue Tribe, and adopt their talking points accordingly.
Botond173
2yr ago
But let's not be magnanimous when it's not warranted.
The sheer extent of social and economic destruction all around the Western world caused by long-term lockdowns will probably remain incalculable for years to come, provided that anyone even dares to calculate it. Will anyone have the courage to hold the feet of avocado toast people to the fire for what they have supported?
Botond173
1yr ago
Are these women incapable of picking (understandably less attractive) simp/soyboy/nerdy men (perjorative terms used to denote an archetype succinctly) who would be flattered by any female attention and very likely take it slowly with sex?
These women are very unlikely to put themselves in social situations where such a man takes the initiative, and they themselves obviously won't take the initiative with any man.
Botond173
2yr ago
Well the results for 2022 have just been released and people who answered "not at all" for trust in mass media is at 38%.
What are those 38% going to do about this though? Vote for a dissident candidate in the presidential election? That was already tried before, with zero results. If they voice their views openly, they'll get dismissed as QAnon cultists, potential terrorists, Nazis etc. They may get doxxed, their bank account frozen etc., and they know it. This is what it means to be ruled over by your enemies. And yet you claim that "progressives are running scared"?
Botond173
2yr ago
My view is the SJWs should try creating their own cultural products and see what response they get instead of expropriating and ruining the works of others.
Botond173
1yr ago
Honest question:
let's suppose you're an average internet user who was either too young to comprehend what Gamergate was when it was happening, or you're just unaware of it all for any other reason, you just weren't following it etc. You fire up your browser and start looking up information.
Is there any realistic chance that you'll find any description, interpretation or commentary that is not written by the ideological allies and sympathizers of Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu?
Botond173
1yr ago
The issue of modern divorce was discussed here last week in the context of yet another round of wider discussion about the Sexual Revolution. (It's pretty much becoming tiresome at this point, but anyway.) Everyone who bothered to chime in seemed to agree with the notion that divorce is usually a net negative for the wife, both romantically and economically. It appeared to me that there's mostly a consensus about that here.
Fair enough. However, I've seen online data indicating that a) roughly 40% of all marriages end in divorce b) roughly 80% of divorces are initiated by the wives c) in cases where the wife is college-educated, that figure is 90%. In other words, in cases of marriages that fail, modern women are more likely than not to voluntarily put themselves in a disadvantageous life situation.
So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?
Botond173
1yr ago
I know it’s sort of pointless to expect even relatively grounded arguments to be found in such a comment section, but still, I can’t help but virtually don my fedora as a garbage human dudebro and notice some gems like:
• The implication that you as a woman are completely safe from domestic violence in a lesbian relationship (as far as I know, the opposite is in fact true on average, not to mention the higher levels of emotional blackmail, drama and manipulation that lesbian relationships entail on average)
• The assumption that forming a relationship with a man of your age automatically entails you having to take care of him (it doesn’t even occur on the radar that it may also happen the other way around?)
• The idea that 75% of domestic violence is committed against women (this sounds rather fishy; maybe it’s true in the case of childless cohabiting partners, or households where a single mother and her children cohabit with a new man – a scenario which, as far as I know, carries the highest average risk to women of domestic abuse, and coincidentally also is a situation these women voluntarily enter; I mean, I’m sure it’s not standard practice on the part of sneaky, manipulative, shitty men to invite single mothers and their children to live under his roof)
• The unstated assumption that women on average do know men’s bodies and how to please them, but not the other way around (questionable at best)
• The assumption that single older men would never in a million years visit museums, travel, read, hang out with their bros and have hobbies in general (I mean…really??)
Back when MGTOW online forums were not yet nuked and purged, I used to check them out after reading shrill complaints about them on the normie internet, and while some of the content did appear unhinged and extreme, I don’t remember ever coming across such utter bullshit like this.
So apparently there’s some online strategy game called “Civilization VII” scheduled to be released next year (I’m not terribly interested in the entire subject of such games) and there’s an ongoing drama on Reddit and other venues due to the creators adding Harriet Tubman of all people as a playable political leader.
This rang a bell for me because I was reminded that there was some sort of political campaign a long time ago to replace president Andrew Jackson’s portrait on the $20 bill with hers, because he was a slaveholder genocider racist and so on. I looked this up on Wikipedia and it seems that this has merely remained a plan so far.
Anyway, concluding that she must be some relevant figure in the US culture wars, I looked around on the SSC and Motte subreddits, plus this site, but I found that there has never been even one discussion on her so far. I looked up Askhistorians and other similar subreddits and concluded that any discussion on her life is resolutely suppressed by the mods (all dissenting comment chains get deleted basically).
Being a dissident rightist this obvious case of information suppression piqued my interest, so I looked up John Derbyshire’s website because I’ve usually followed his work. I found this rather hilarious piece of information (emphasis mine):
We have very few facts about Tubman's life and activities. Most of what people think they know comes from her own testimony, as narrated to friends after the Civil War. There are two problems there.
First problem: Tubman, who escaped from slavery in her mid-twenties, was illiterate all her life. She left no paper trail in the way of letters or diaries. Until her forties, when friends started taking down her reminiscences, we have only her word for the events of her earlier life.
This wouldn't matter so much if we didn't know she had brain problems: narcolepsy, delusions, apparently epileptic fits. Tubman acknowledged these problems, saying they were the result of a blow on the head she received in childhood. Perhaps they were; but again we only have her word for it.
Whatever the cause of the brain problems, they surely weren't Tubman's fault. They weren't my fault either, though, nor yours, nor Andrew Jackson's, and they do cast a cloud of doubt over her stories.
Second problem: Tubman's friends got Sarah Bradford, a successful fiction writer, to produce Tubman's autobiographies. This was after the Civil War, but the tradition of abolitionist propaganda, whose greatest success was of course Uncle Tom's Cabin, was still alive, and Sarah Bradford likely saw herself in that tradition, as the literary heiress of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Tubman then sank into obscurity until leftist writers of the 1930s took an interest in her as part of their general critique of U.S. society, which they compared unfavorably with the new system of justice and equality being established, according to them, in the Soviet Union.
In short, the Tubman story originated with her own unreliable recollections, and was then promulgated by people all of whom had agendas.
Harriet Tubman may have been — on the scattered evidence we have, probably was — a brave and resourceful person. Still, her story belongs much more to the realms of myth and propaganda than to history.
I found this mildly amusing. And on a scale of 1 to 10, the level of my surprise is maybe 3.
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