OliveTapenade
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User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
It seems to me that it's worth bearing in mind that Trump lost the popular vote both times. 'The populist threat of the voters getting what they vote for' doesn't seem like a good description of Trump, since both times he ran for office the popular majority was against him.
There are cases where I think you can convincingly point to a Blue elite stepping in to overrule the clearly-expressed democratic will of the majority - Proposition 8 is an ageing example but a good one - but Trump, a candidate who has never commanded majority support, seems like a bad example of one.
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
Sure?
It's not news to me that the Palestinians hate the Israelis. Even well before October 7, I am confident that it would be suicidal to walk down the street in Gaza City wearing a kippah, or bearing any sign of either Jewish or Israeli identity. The Palestinians have never liked or empathised with the Israelis.
I expect anti-Israeli feeling to have only intensified as a result of October 7 and the aftermath - so these sets of figures don't surprise me.
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
Mainly at the level where I think, boy, it'd be really nice to read the Motte without the same two or three people every time yelling about the Jews.
Could we maybe have a few days' break from people repeating their theory that everything bad that has ever happened is due to the Jews? Oh no, I stubbed my toe, those damn Jewish elites! It's worse than incorrect - it's boring.
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
Haven't you noticed by now?
Anything done by anyone Jewish, or any cause that might be interpreted as positive for Israel, is inherently sinister and evil.
It really is quite tiresome.
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
It's all very well to claim to be above such tribal or social associations - but I very much doubt than anyone here is. I know that there are people interested in the Motte's ostensible purpose but who have quit the community because it contained too many witches, and was going down a groupthink-y hard right hole. The Schism is the most obvious example because it's a public community, but every individual who quits and doesn't advertise it adds to the count, but does not leave an obvious record to point to.
All humans are social animals. If you want to recruit exclusively from people who don't care about social associations, you're going to get only the tiny proportion of weirdos who don't care and the people who genuinely like the social associations here (i.e. the witches). It is not at all clear that the resulting community is going to be one that's maximally open to the discussion of interesting ideas.
OliveTapenade
10mo ago
Well, sure, but I would have thought that the name of a city by itself wouldn't be enough to make him identifiable, and since the content of the post is a complaint about his local neighbourhood, I feel that knowing where that neighbourhood is, at least in very broad terms, is relevant to understanding the complaint.
What explosion would this be?
Googling around, combining this piece and this piece, I get about about 8.1% of public school students were ELLs in 2000, 9.2% in 2010, 9.5% in 2015, and 10.3% in 2020. That seems like a quite slow and gradual increase over the last twenty years - hardly worth being called an 'explosion'.
There's more data here - the vast majority, over 75%, of ELLs are native speakers of Spanish, which suggests to me that we're mostly talking about migrants from South and Central America. I'd guess that the slow increase in English language education is probably just a result of the rate of immigration from Latin America increasing.
I see no evidence that the very modest increase is driven by second-generation immigrants living in ethnic enclaves and refusing to learn English. It seems entirely understandable if it's all first-generation.
EDIT: Wait, let me get this straight.
First person makes a huge and unsupported claim in one sentence.
Second person questions that claim, providing hard data that seems to contradict it.
The result is that the first person is upvoted, and the second person downvoted? What? What happened to rationalism? I don't think I was rude in any way - I was asking for evidence for a claim.
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
Well, yes, if you change the statement so that it's asserting something else entirely, it is no longer obviously false. That's straightforward enough.
OliveTapenade
3mo ago
I mean, I don't think I'd ever heard the word 'zyklon' in my life before I visited the Motte. I just wasn't told a specific story about how the Nazis murdered the Jews, beyond maybe a vague "they gassed them".
So I guess I'm completely unmoved by the idea that there might be a valid historical debate about the exact methods. Heck, the Nazis weren't the most scrupulously organised group in the world and the camps were mostly destroyed, so I would not be surprised if a range of techniques were used in different places. So I have no sense of there even being a tall tale.
What I remember from my childhood is that Hitler was bad, basically. I did units in school on the lead-up to WWI and then on the rise of fascism, but ironically I never actually did the wars. They weren't offered - we skipped from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand to the Treaty of Versailles, and then spent a semester on Weimar Germany and Hitler's rise to power, and then we skipped the war itself and came back the next year with the WWII peace settlement and the beginning of the Cold War. Presumably it was felt that there was no particular need for kids to understand all the military maneuvers; and interested kids (like me) would just go to the library and read all the military history books and pore over the maps (which I did).
I don't remember ever doing anything about Stalin, since he leaves the picture fairly early in the Cold War. There was a very common unit in Australian high school history about the Russian Revolution, though, which I didn't do (I had a different course), but presumably would have covered that. So most of what I got was that Hitler is bad and Nazis are bad, and they came to power in such-and-such way, and these are the sorts of things we should look out for in case it happens again, but the blow-by-blow of the war itself was not covered. That also meant that the logistics of the Holocaust were skipped entirely.
It's not as though we did nothing about the Nazis and the Jews - I read The Diary of Anne Frank, and I remember watching and writing about the film Au revoir les enfants, though those were in English class and French class respectively, not history per se. But the emphasis in works like that is much more about the breakdown in social trust and solidarity, people informing on their neighbours, and so on. I don't mind that particularly, because I think that is in fact the most important lesson to take from the Holocaust.
Anyway, I suppose it's possible that if you were taught very specific details about the death camps and sacralised those details, then learning that they might be incorrect or debatable would be challenging? But that sounds like a very different form of education to the one I received, and to be honest one that seems to me to have quite strange priorities.
OliveTapenade
10mo ago
I was thinking of a particular city or region.
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
When was the last time a billionaire white nationalist or Nazi was punched? The infamous 'Nazi punch' was one guy and it set off a whole debate on the left about whether it was acceptable. Meanwhile of course Jews get attacked sometimes - the ADL (I know you may not trust them, but I doubt they're all completely fictional) cites 161 violent assaults in 2023.
But I guess beyond this I'm not particularly sure why you're focusing on white nationalism? Yes, white nationalism is an extremely hated and ostracised position in the US. I agree that white nationalism is more hated as a position than Zionism is. What is that meant to show? The fact that there exists an ideology more hated than Zionism does not mean that Zionism isn't hated.
Is your point just that you'd like for white nationalism to be at least as acceptable to argue for in public as Zionism?
In that case - great, good for you, but I hardly see how that reflects badly on Zionists. You can just advocate for white nationalism. No need to bring Zionism in at all.
(Unless the implication is that the reason white nationalism is widely hated is the Jewish conspiracy to destroy white culture and so on, but at that point we're just right back into the tiresome nonsense that I was sick of seeing in the first place.)
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
Oh, I have no doubt that it's true that wealthy individuals pressured Columbia in this way, and the fact that the individuals in question were disproportionately Jewish is unsurprising, since for very obvious reasons Jewish people are disproportionately likely to support Israel and to oppose the Palestine protests.
But I'm not blind. I can see the way that coffee_enjoyer specifically framed this around Jewish billionaires, and given that he is one of the small group of people on the Motte obsessed with Jews, the implication is not exactly subtle. In the top-level post he quite explicitly presents this as support for alt-right theories about secret Jewish power manipulating Western civilisation and so on.
I'd just like to maybe go a week without a bunch of people blaming everything on the Elders of Zion, you know?
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
Define 'intelligent and controversial'. As I just noted, there are certainly people I would describe as intelligent who cut down on their engagement with or quit the Motte as a result of the last year or two's decline.
It's possible to redefine 'intelligent' on the fly, such that everyone the Motte lost was a thinker not worth keeping. But I would say that's inherently a value judgement, and a very questionable one to boot. It's possible to define the Motte's Overton Window in a way that excludes, say, the Schism crowd but keeps the white nationalists and anti-semites. It's also possible to define it in a way that includes the Schismers but excludes the white nationalists and anti-semites. But it may not be possible to define it in a way that keeps both.
OliveTapenade
2yr ago
I suppose I'd say that seems like a rather arbitrary place to draw the line, and it would make me suspicious of the complainant's motives. I can't recall any requirement that everything at a coronation must meet some standard of Britishness, and neither do I know how you'd define Britishness in this sense anyway. Indeed, it seems that previous coronations have often included elements we would associate with other countries, most famously France.
And it seems as though Charles III and his household should have the right to select the music they wish at their coronation. The gospel music was skilfully performed and appropriate to the gravity of the occasion.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
This is pretty much my take on 'HBD' or what I might term the 'neo-racialists'. It is no doubt true that there's genetic variation, on the population level, across the human race, and these variations to some extent correlate with racial categories. I can't really argue with that. However, the HBDers routinely outrun that observation and draw massive, sweeping conclusions about the desirability of using race as a proxy for a huge number of other issues, and therefore organising society, or even treating individuals, on the basis of race. The whole thing is just a motte and bailey.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Im sorry, but i dont see how anyone could reasonably engage with the work of current conservative thought leaders like Victor Davis Hansen or Thomas Sowell, past leaders like Limbaugh, Brietbart, and Buckley, or old lions like CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, Douglas, Burke, Smith, Et Al. and come away with the impression they lack "ideology, vision and a moral compass"
Those people do, certainly, but none of those people seem remotely represented by what currently calls itself the conservative movement in the United States. Limbaugh, maybe.
But if I compare MAGA to, well, Lewis, Chesterton, Kipling, Burke, or even old Adam Smith, I doubt you will find much ideological overlap, if any at all.
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
Firstly, because nothing actually lasts forever, so I think that where there's a burden of proof, it's on people asserting that nothing can possibly change.
Secondly, because the only way to effectuate change is to first believe that it is possible. So it is usually for the best to operate on the assumption that positive change is possible.
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
Surely the only way to increase the enforcement of the rule of law is to... increase the enforcement of the rule of law? I very much understand and support advocating for the full rule of law in all spheres of life, but if you want to do that, you should, well, do that. Which would include advocating for it here. It's not hard.
OliveTapenade
3mo ago
Another way of putting it would be that Schmitz and company care about what fatherhood does to the father, as well as to the children.
A Motte poster defended Musk to me on the basis of outcomes for the children - "the goal is to raise the next generation of adults", and insofar as Musk has provided them with sufficient material abundance and with sufficient mentoring, he has discharged his duty and everything is all right, from a traditional perspective.
My reply to this was snarky, but I think substantially correct. From the traditionalist perspective, you do not only take into account the results for the child (they will argue about the child's welfare, but as you say, that's at least partially ablative), but also the results for the father. Fatherhood is meant to be morally forming, even educative, for the father as well as the child. The discipline of raising a child well should make you into a better, wiser human being.
Your mention of "perpetual boyhood" is a good way of putting it. Musk is a failure of masculinity because he's avoiding growing up, becoming responsible, disciplining himself, and so on. He is failing to learn the proper lessons of fatherhood. No amount of material provision for children can compensate for that.
OliveTapenade
9mo ago
Oh, I'll happily grant that the term 'cultural Marxism' has referents. When someone like Joy Pullmann says 'the cultural Marxists', I know who she means and what they believe.
I don't think it's quite the same as the Mormon case, because Mormons do claim to be Christians. I don't think Mormons are Christians, but if I say that where a Mormon can hear me, I know they will disagree. So I and a Mormon will have a debate about whether 'Christianity' is the right word to use for what Mormons believe.
By contrast, most of the people identified as cultural Marxists don't claim to be cultural Marxists. In fact, they mostly decry the term and claim that it's a conspiracy theory. Some claim to be (generic) Marxists, but most do not. We might still have a debate about whether 'cultural Marxist' is an appropriate word for what they believe, but the direction of that debate will be different.
If those debates happened, I'd insist on the Mormon/Christian distinction because as a Christian I feel I have an interest in policing the boundaries of orthodoxy - essentially I want to clarify that Mormons aren't affiliated with me and I lend no support to their beliefs, which I consider wrong. I would not, I think, insist on 'cultural Marxist' as a label because it's not a label that achieves any of my goals re: the discussion of social justice or wokist politics. In fact I think it muddies the waters by confusing wokist beliefs with Marxist beliefs, and another term would be more clear.
They would probably then also disagree with being called 'wokists' or 'SJers' or whatever other term I came up with, but we have to use some label, so, well, that Freddie post. You know how this goes.
OliveTapenade
9mo ago
I think this is largely correct, yes. We're dealing with a problem of shifting labels - some small number of people have used the term 'cultural Marxism' to self-identify, but almost none do today, the term 'cultural Marxism' today is used extremely broadly to identify ideas or movements with nothing or almost nothing in common with classical Marxism, and ultimately I think it's become a term that obfuscates rather than illuminates. The term 'cultural Marxism' does not reveal anything useful about the people it is applied to.
I don't think I quite agree with the debate about Mormonism and Christianity, because that usually is couched in specific claims about what 'Christianity' means, and what's required for something to be meaningfully 'Christian'. The facts about Mormonism aren't particularly in dispute - Mormons sincerely claim to be followers of Jesus, but they are outside what all historical Christian creeds would have regarded as the bounds of orthodoxy. The issue at hand is simply whether or not one accepts those historical creeds as authoritative.
OliveTapenade
10mo ago
Nothing in the top-level post indicates he's in the United States - I don't even know which country he's talking about.
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
There are absolutely places where being a Zionist will get you punched.
No, it's not as radioactive as white nationalism, but so what? There's plenty of room for Zionism to be unpopular and provocative and something that might make Jews afraid without it being exactly as bad as the worst thing in modern politics.
The fact that Zionism is not yet as universally loathed as Nazism (though, again, there are certainly crowds people who think it ought to be) doesn't seem to prove anything, to me. Unless you're asserting that it should be?
You're also equivocating a bit between 'Jews' and 'Zionists', so I suppose I'll ask directly. Do you think that Jews should get punched just for being Jews? Or Zionists just for being Zionists?
(And to pre-empt any attempt to turn it around, no, white nationalists or neo-Nazis should not be punched either.)
It seems to me that by any reasonable standard Zionism is quite widely and publicly hated. I mean, anecdotally I know Jews who have been taking self-defence classes and buying more home security and avoiding wearing any outward signs of Jewishness in public because they're afraid of being harassed or possibly attacked. Some of those fears are exaggerated, in my view, but they're not totally unjustified.
OliveTapenade
1yr ago
I'd largely agree with this when it comes to identification and advice, actually?
The claim that different selected groups of humans have some genetic variation between them seems obviously true but also not particularly interesting. Yes, there's some minor genetic variation across the human race as a whole. So what?
The interesting and controversial part is the answer to the "so what?", and the problem I have with so-called 'HBD' is that their answer to that question, as far as I can tell, firstly massively outstrips the evidence they refer to, and secondly frequently appears to be both malicious in its intent and destructive in its policy goals.
Are there people who identify with HBD who aren't malicious or destructive? Sure. No group is homogenous. But it seems to me that enough of them are, that the general direction of the vague group of people that we refer to here as 'the HBD movement', is such that for as much as the motte is apparently true, the bailey is such that we should definitely avoid it.
Nara Burns makes a fair point about individuals below. I'm not going after Charles Murray or anything. But when he says that he has "never personally encountered" a person who advocates HBD with racist goals, I'm just confused, because, well, I've read the Motte.
On a somewhat meta point, this isn't the first case of a low-effort repost of some white nationalist rant on the Motte, is it? I'm starting to feel a little concerned that the Motte has been identified as a possible recruiting site by people in that sphere.
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