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		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
On the surface, what differentiates humans from the stigmergic organization of ants is the influence of culture on behavior. Ants release pheromones, which are involuntary excretions determined by the genetic coding of the ant within its environment. These pheromones coordinate the behavior of the colony.


Humans, on the other hand, are influenced by their culture, their religion, and their art. Let's take the recent episode over the reaction to the Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to the Ukrainian SS volunteer:


The universal condemnation and political fallout was not coordinated by a conspiracy. The reaction to the scandal was self-organized. On the other hand, the self-organized reaction to the scandal was directed by public consensus and perception of the Second World War. Contrary to the ant which releases its pheromones to coordinate behavior, we must ask if public perception of the Second World War, the pheromone so-to-speak, is itself the product of stigmergy or conspiracy. There is no conspiracy needed to understand the reaction to the scandal, but we get closer to a plausible conspiracy when trying to understand why the public at large's perception of WW-II is such that they are unable to appreciate any level of nuance in the allegiances of Eastern Europe during that conflict. The reason, of course, is because their perception of that conflict was generated by Steven Spielberg, to slightly oversimplify.


We get closer to plausibility for "conspiracy" because there are undeniably many institutions, lobbying groups, influential individuals who overtly coordinate in order to establish a public perception of that conflict. But what is the impetus for the behavior of those organizations coming together? You could then, at the next level, attribute stigmergy to these influential individuals and groups coordinating their behavior because they, for example, share a common religion. But where did their religion come from? It came from prophets, from mythmakers and storytellers. Were they influenced by stigmergy or conspiracy?


The optimistic view is that the public perception of WW-II has been established by a conspiracy. I say this is an optimistic view because it implies, as you said, mens rea, a guilty intent. That makes it a more tractable problem. This is the Plato's Cave model of the problem of human behavior as stigmergy in terms of its determinacy by culture. But culture itself is being directed by conspiracy according to this model.


The pessimistic view is that even these levels of culture-generation which appear conspiratorial are emminently and absolutely stigmergy. The pessimistic view is that a Steven Spielberg film is not very much different from an ant releasing a pheromone to coordinate the behavior of the colony: at the end of the day it's all genes reacting to stimuli in their environment, in the creation of a signal that coordinates the behavior of the colony.


Humans are not pack animals, we are a hive mind. It does matter whether it's conspiracy or stigmergy, and if Culture is directed by stigmergy rather than conspiracy that has implications which are far too important to ignore.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
My hot take is that he deserves a standing ovation for fighting for his nation.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
Pre-history was a violent time, Western Hunter Gatherers were likewise displaced by the early European farmers. It's pretty tone deaf to compare school shooters to the migration of pre-historical population groups and subsequent violence, which was a pretty common experience across the world. The sheer scale of the IE conquests is what makes it stand out especially.


The Corded Ware culture is the common ancestor to Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and Indo-Iranian languages. That makes it a candidate for the most important culture in world history, as far as "what did they accomplish", any reasonable perspective would likewise attribute the accomplishments of these cultures, in some degree, to the genetic and cultural contribution of their common IE ancestor.


Corded Ware was itself only 60% Yamnayan and most of the remaining European farmer, the synthesis is an indispensable part of the story of the European. But Khan's "imagine what the European farmers would have achieved if they wuzn't interrupted" is what I am challenging here.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
I'm not suggesting every single group with greater Yamnayan ancestry has greater achievement than those with less. I am suggesting there is a relationship in the split between Northern and Southern Europe, broadly speaking, that is partially explained by differences in genetics. Key features of Northern European civilization, like the industrial revolution emerging in the North Sea area and colonial ambitions, are also reminiscent of the I.E expansions. Attributing those accomplishments solely to neolithic European farmers is unlikely and self-serving, given those accomplishments and behaviors seem most concentrated where I.E left the greatest genetic legacy.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
Facing Facts, even fraught ones: the quest for proto-Indo-Europeans in 2023


The old belief regarding the Aryans, which preceded the Nazis, was that the Aryans (now called Proto-Indo Europeans) conquered Europe and down through Iran and India. There were different theories about the Urheimat of the Aryans. German nationalists thought the Aryan homeland was in Germany, and Indian nationalists would say it was India. In the post-war period, politically correct archaeologists insisted that the Aryan invasion theories were wrong and that Indo-European languages spread through non-violent "cultural diffusion." But this has been definitively disproved by recent genetic evidence. The old story was essentially true although it seems the Aryans most likely originated from the Russian steppe. They had several important technological advantages like domesticated horses, the wheel, and bronze so they pretty much conquered everyone and replaced a large fraction of the males over a wide territory.


Proto-Indo European studies has rapidly changed in the past 10 years as emerging genetic evidence has confirmed the old story and disproven the theories of cultural diffusion and the assertion that the Indo-Europeans left no significant genetic legacy. Razib Khan's article traces the origin of the "lost knowledge" of the Indo-European migrations and its rediscovery in the face of new evidence:




In vast regions of Northern Europe, the Bronze Age steppe herders replaced earlier farming societies, the invaders unceremoniously sweeping away all before them, which often meant the extermination of indigenous male-dominated elites (ancient DNA studies show that Neolithic farmers too structured their societies around male kin-groups)...






Nevertheless, these analyses buttressing the idea of migrations out of the steppe fell out of fashion after the mid-20th century. Not, crucially, because they were systematically discarded based on evidence, but because they grew irredeemably stained by contemporary politics. Philology was highly concentrated in the German-speaking world; in addition to Müller, the list of Germans in the field includes Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacob Grimm. This led, in the decades before World War II, to the fatal confluence of the study of Indo-Europeans, German nationalism and eventually National Socialism. Between 1900 and 1930 the philologist and archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna hypothesized that the Corded Ware archaeological culture of early Bronze Age East-Central Europe was instrumental in the spread of Indo-European languages, and these ideas were taken up and popularized by the Nazis after he died in 1931. Because the Corded Ware Culture (CWC) flourished in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and Kossinna connected Indo-European theory with the rise of the Germans, Hitler’s annexation of these two nations was justified partly by the presumed proto-Germanic character of the CWC once indigenous to that region. Beyond Kossinna, the whole field of Indo-European studies was tainted by Nazism’s radioactivity and its repugnant social and political implications. Any model of prehistoric migration had to reckon with widespread scholarly suspicion about the concept after reflexive aversion from any thought favored by Hitler’s regime.




Steve Sailer, for his part, suggests that the rise of neo-Nietzscheans on the Dissident Right is due in part to the confirmation of the earlier, quasi-mythical stories of continental conquests by chad steppe warriors. Anecdotally I see this to be the case, with DR Twitter accounts heavily invested in Indo-European studies who closely follow the work of those like Harvard geneticist David Reich, whose lab in practice has probably done more than anyone to confirm the old story with genetic evidence.


So, is that it? Is the 1930s German model of European pre-history essentially confirmed? Not so fast, according to Khan, who tries to tackle that historical narrative from a different angle:




Despite accumulating victory upon victory,  the Indo-Europeans were not, crucially, civilization-bearers. Their pastoralist world flourished atop the smoldering ruins of worlds lost, cultures that left behind hulking rough-hewn stone monuments and the faint outlines of vast villages that were once the loci of sophisticated civilizations. The early Indo-Europeans were barbarians par excellence; their arrival ushered in an age of animal competition, kill or be killed...






They emerged out of darkness, beyond the view of history, and they brought darkness to many lands they conquered, a process only finally reversed by civilization’s creeping spread. More than 1,000 years after Neolithic Europe and its grand megaliths fell to the barbarian nomads, the two traditions would fuse to set the stage for the eventual rise of Greece, Rome and the world of the Celts.




To summarize, at a high level, all indigenous Europeans are basically a genetic combination of three population groups:


    

  1. Proto-Indo Europeans - steppe pastoralists closely associated with Yamnaya culture
    2. 

  2. Neolithic European Farmers who migrated across the European continent thousands of years before the Bronze Age
    3. 

  3. Eastern/Western European Hunter-Gatherers
    4. 



Khan's position goes, the Proto-Indo Europeans and their descended cultures (i.e. Corded Ware, the common ancestor of the Italo-Celtic, German, and Balto-Slavic languages) were barbarians par excellence and destroyed the fledging civilizational potential of the Neolithic farmers, a potential evidenced by their construction of megalithic structures and farming mode of societal organization. He claims that the proto-Indo Europeans, in contrast, were "not civilization-bearers", they actually hindered civilization until some vague, exogenous "civilization's creeping spread" brought civilization in spite of the Proto-Indo European conquests.


Thus, Khan presents a novel Aryan-skeptic position: dropping denial of the Völkerwanderungs due to its untenability in the face of recent genetic evidence, but challenging the presence of a civilizational quality to the Proto-Indo European people.


One point Khan makes, which I certainly agree with, is that the Aryan is a synthesis of the three aforementioned population groups, as Khan states "the two traditions [Indo-European and Neolithic Farmer] would fuse to set the stage for the eventual rise of Greece, Rome and the world of the Celts." But this position is actually not much different from the 19th century German pre-history model of Europe, as described by a speech made by Hitler as chancellor of Germany:




The German people came into being no differently than almost every truly creative civilized nation we know of in the world. A numerically small, talented race, capable of organizing and creating civilization, established itself over other peoples in the course of many centuries. It in part absorbed them, in part adapted to them. All members of our people have of course contributed their special talents to this union. It was, however, created by a nation-and-state forming elite alone. This race imposed its language, naturally not without borrowing from those it subjugated. And all shared a common fate for so long, that the life of the people directing the affairs of state became inseparably bound to the life of the gradually assimilating other members. All the while, conqueror and conquered had long become a community. This is our German people of today ... Our only wish is that all members contribute their best to the prosperity of our national life. As long as every element gives what it has to give, this element in so doing will help benefit all lives.




The operative difference, here, is that the German school of thought assigned the civilizational quality of the people foremost to the Bronze Age conqueror-elites whereas Khan assigns that quality to the conquered. Civilization followed in spite of Indo-European legacy according to Khan. Who is correct? We likely won't see serious academic study of this question, but looking at the big picture we can see hints.


There is no person alive today with 100% Yamnayan ancestry. According to David Reich:




the population that contributed genetic material to South Asia was (roughly) 60% Yamnaya [my note: European steppe ancestry], ~30% European farmer-like ancestry




The invaders of India who called themselves Aryan were already the product of this aforementioned synthesis, and today the Aryan people most closely resemble genetically Northern European peoples.


In contrast, the Sardinians provide insight into the pre-Bronze Age farmer populations, as:




Sardinia appears to harbor the highest amounts of Neolithic farmer ancestry and very little of the pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer or Bronze Age pastoralists ancestries.




Khan's thesis doesn't pass the sanity test, the broad-range correlation in Europe appears to follow: population groups with greater Indo-European ancestry trend as nations with higher technological innovation, economic status, empire-building, and global colonization, all of which follow the modus operandi of the Indo-Europeans. The Aryan is absolutely the synthesis of all three groups, but the claim that the "Indo-Europeans were not, crucially, civilization-bearers" doesn't hold any water. Classical Greece, Rome, India, Persia, were all spawned from Indo-European cultural, genetic, and linguistic legacy after the Bronze Age invasions.


I.E studies is going to likely remain a growing area of interest in the DR. It combines genetics, history, and mythmaking in a way that fosters a positive sense of identity and aspiration for pan-European camaraderie among the right wing. It tracks with the DR model of 20th century intellectual movements as subversive towards white identity and obscuring "forbidden knowledge".


The glorification of the Indo-Europeans on the right wing also marks a shift from a liberal/conservative "white people didn't do nothing" opposition to progressive racial narratives, to a Nietzschean glorification of a Bronze Age spirit.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				


Local law: You are responsible for complying with applicable local laws and regulations while earning revenue on X.




Musk has appealed to this provision to justify cooperation with EU wrongthink laws, meaning Tweets that would be legal in the US but not in Germany are not protected by TOS- X can and has cooperated to help legal authorities punish those who engage in that even if it were completely legal in the US. I don't think this provision has ever been used to refer to behavior outside of Twitter.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
The Armenian genocide holds basically no cultural significance in the United States, it's not taught about at all in schools and holds no influence in the literature and film used to 'educate' children. So, I simply do not know much about it. Reading a couple of articles, it looks plausible to me and appears void of the fantastical claims you will find in Holocaust literature. If there are claims of mega "factories of death" where a million Armenians were killed inside some makeshift contraption in a precisely known location, I would expect that claim to be substantiated with documentary or physical evidence, but so far I don't see anything that resembles that sort of claim. The Armenian genocide seems to tragically track with other ethnic cleansings in history: more decentralized, dispersed, it involved many more people in the killing, the people weren't allegedly killed with absurd contraptions like gas chambers disguised as shower rooms...


There is no claim that, like, 200 Ottoman officers alone knew about secret orders and carried out this secret genocide death-factory program with some ridiculous contraption. The Army went around and killed a lot of people, deported them, and they died. Prima facie it's far more plausible, and it's far closer to the Revisionist theory of the real events in Eastern Europe during WW-II than the official narrative of what happened during that time.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
It's amazing how we all have such amnesia that we can't remember how invincible the internet felt not even 10 years ago. Who could censor the Internet?! The ADL boasts of training every single FBI agent, and by its own description has its tentacles in every significant platform that draws any sort of engagement: YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Fortnite, any major platform you could think of...


The ADL has enormous power, and the minor cost of that power is validating the perspective of an extremely small number of so-called 'anti-Semites'. But, as @Conservautism shows, the average person isn't even capable of comprehending the possibility that the so-called 'anti-Semites' kind of have a point, he just assumes there must be some other explanation for why their model of the world is clearly proven correct for such an influential Jewish organization.


The UN Human Rights Chief denounced the Twitter/X #BanTheADL campaign by name! That doesn't happen without an enormous amount of power and influence, the notion that it's just some 'terrible' progressive organization grifting for money doesn't hold any water, that explanation is only clung to because the alternative explanation is so taboo.


Edit: One more thing worth mentioning. The ADL was founded to defend the legacy of the child-rapist murderer Leo Frank, who was beyond any doubt guilty. But as a 1915 Life Magazine article documents:




There is little to convince a dispassionate inquirer that Frank did not get justice from the Georgia jurymen. What stirred race feeling was not Frank's crime, but the organized effort of the Jews of the United States to get him off. Rabbi Price bids his brethren to take no further action in the Frank case as Jews. He justifies the Jews of America in their defense of Frank, but he does not like the results of it. His advice is good.




It wasn't the fact that Frank was Jewish which was the major issue, it's that Jewish organizations circled the wagons to get him off the hook despite how clearly guilty he was. This was the context in which the ADL was actually founded, writing it off as a progressive org grifting for money is just so fundamentally incorrect.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
Is identification as indigenous as lax in Australia as it is in the US? I saw this article on the "first indigenous female surgeon" in Australia awhile back and it made me wonder exactly what they consider indigenous over there.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
Per Paul in 1 Corinthians 8, Christians are allowed to eat meat that has been sacrificed as an offering to pagan idols, so I think there's more latitude than you would expect on engagement with pagans. The rationale being, "we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God" and so the pagan worship has no power, but it should not be indulged if it emboldens those with a "weak conscience."


Of course you can say that the Pope is emboldening those with a weak conscience, and of course that's a bigger deal than the actual pagan ceremony.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
I don't think it's possible to make a real difference on the blood-and-soil nationalist spectrum anymore, the world has moved beyond that. I think the only solution is to think at a global pan-European scale, although it's understandable why an Irish nationalist would find it difficult to embrace that. It's contrary to the nationalist struggle they identify with. It's my main disagreement with Keith, and that ideological difference ultimately led to his falling out with Richard Spencer.


It's telling that Keith's influence is mostly related to American politics, although he did make some waves recently regarding the Irish hate speech bill.


The blood-and-soil nationalist type versus the Spencerian globalist type is going to be one of the biggest rifts on the DR. Keith is on the former, I fall more on the latter.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
If there's relevant CW topics like the Indian Reservation excavations, or this controversy between Musk and the ADL, I'm going to post about it, sorry. If you're going to perma-ban me, then whatever.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
Yes? Adding it as a comment to more of a roundup thread is less risky than a top-level thread, I received a 7-day ban for my last one.




The OP hewed pretty close to bare links, so I can’t really blame you for taking your own spin.




The thread is "Time for some links about breaking and not so breaking culture war news" and my reply is contributing to that.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
I'm not looking for a perma-ban for "single issue posting".


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
The biggest story of the week within the Dissident Right is the war between Elon Musk and the ADL. Quick rundown:



I'm skeptical there would be any sort of lawsuit, but that discovery would be very interesting to see the way ADL communicates with advertisers. But this week has been stacking wins for the Dissident Right, it's basically more engagement in the public sphere than the Alt-Right ever had.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				


"forced into gas chambers one way or the other, with maybe a fig leaf of plausible deniability to make it easier to control the victims".




If Treblinka "witnesses" were to be believed, they genuinely believed they were taking a shower. One of the few witnesses to Treblinka, a Jew, testified that he gave haircuts to the Jews inside the gas chamber and they didn't know they were going to be killed. Does that make any sense at all? No, but it's what he claims.




It is harder to believe that the Allies would have bullshitted about something the scale of the Holocaust than that they would have bullshitted about something like supposed German atrocities in Belgium during WWI.




We know Soviet investigators bullshitted 1.5 million people murdered at Majdanek in 7 gas chambers, months before they rolled into Auschwitz and made the exact same claims with the exact same body of evidence.


We know the Americans bullshitted about gas chambers at the Western camps they liberated. The Americans brought in Hollywood directors to film concentration camp footage, and in the film they submitted as evidence in Nuremberg they bullshited a homicidal gas chamber at Dachau. To the minimum credit of the Western Allies, they soon after abandoned all claims of gas chamber extermination in the camps that they liberated, and those claims only persisted in those camps liberated by the Soviets, where Western observers were denied access for investigation. Though, for years, the Dachau museum had a sign that bizarrely read "gas chamber disguised as a shower room -- never used as a gas chamber."


We can even see here that Simon Wiesenthal bullshitted about 5 million non-Jews being murdered in the Holocaust, in order to psychologically manipulate Gentiles into caring about Jewish suffering.


All of the things you have said the Allies wouldn't do, they absolutely did, and you grossly underestimate the capacity and motive for mass deception.




The German public were largely anti Jew as far as I know, but many would have been outraged by the idea of literally killing all of them. Also, Hitler was constantly hoping to reach a peace agreement with the Western powers, which would have been complicated had his solution to the Jewish question become unquestioned international knowledge.




These are also both points against a motive for the alleged operation. In Germany the euthanasia program was abandoned because of public unpopularity. The story goes, the Germans carried out their secret gas chamber extermination program purely out of racial hatred, at great risk during a time it was fighting a war for its own survival, and against all logic. Revisionists contend the "Final Solution" was the deportation of the Jews from the European sphere, and there's no real reason why they would have switched from deportation to secret gas chamber extermination. There is certainly no documentation pointing to a change in policy, and there's no strategic reason for it, and many strategic reasons it would have been a very bad idea.




whether a random peon or a member of the elite, just genuinely does feel that Hitler's government was more morally outrageous than the Kaiser's government.




You think the cart is driving the horse? Public opinion is molded by these grand narratives, and the Holocaust and gas chambers disguised as shower rooms is the biggest grand narrative to come out of WWII. That would be consistent with my suggestion that Holocaust Remembrance has been sacralized, in part, to prevent historical Revisions that would give a more balanced perspective of that conflict, and dare I say, attribute a measure of war guilt to the United States and Great Britain. That narrative was an essential part of de-nazification and it continues to be considered an important narrative in preventing re-nazification, at least according to its most zealous proponents.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				


The Nazi regime, which openly hated Jews and praised political violence, and which was known for killing even their own former political comrades sometimes (the Night of the Long Knives), actually did wipe out much of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe during the time that they occupied those territories.






The Nazi regime did not. The US and USSR and various European governments cooperated to create a hoax and perpetuate it all through the Cold War, and the various supposed witnesses are largely lying.




If you are trying to assess the prior probability you would want to consider the fact that the "official narrative" claims what were without a doubt the most unusual events in WW-II and perhaps the most unusual series events in all of human history. Sure, there has been "genocide" before, but the claims about millions of people being transported across a continent so they could be tricked into gas chambers on the pretext of taking a shower, then gassed with Zyklon B, then buried, and then later unburied and cremated on open-air pyres within a few months, then reburied... It's hard to believe when you think about it fairly.


Or, this narrative was coarse atrocity propaganda, like the nearly identical "German corpse factory" propaganda in WWI. In contrast with that earlier atrocity propaganda, which the British admitted was a lie and apologized for after the war, Hollywood and the apparatus of Stalinist propaganda joined their efforts in engraining this atrocity propaganda as a quasi-religious, modern-day Exodus narrative exploited by the US for the purposes of denazification, the USSR, and of course above all the Jews.


To me, #2 seems much more plausible, and the lack of contemporary documentary evidence and physical evidence makes it much more so. The reliance on post-war witness testimony as evidence should be highly suspicious to anyone who appreciates how unusual the actual claims made by Holocaust historians are.


Witness testimony is notoriously unreliable, over 50% of the accused confessed in the Salem Witch trials and almost all who confessed were spared execution. The lack of documentary and physical evidence for these extraordinary claims is too glaring to be ignored by any reasonable person.


Edit: One more thing I want to add. An observation made by A. J. P. Taylor in The Origins of the Second World War discusses how in the immediate aftermath of WWI, the prevailing narrative placed singular war guilt on Germany with no room allowed for nuance. But, over time as tensions cooled from the immediate aftermath of the war, there were many historical revisions within the perspective of the causes for WWI that shifted far away from that original post-war narrative to where it stands today, which does not place all the war guilt on Germany. Taylor notes, in contrast, the narrative that congealed in the immediate aftermath of WWII remains completely unchanged decades later.


I find it believable that, in the same way there has been no revision to the completely black-and-white anti-German perspective on the origins of WW-II, there has likewise been no revision to the atrocity propaganda that is foremost used to justify that perspective. They are inexorably tied together. My point is that there were many incentives for the Holocaust narrative to take hold, and many incentives for it to remain, lest the perspective on the origins of WW-II become revised along a similar trajectory as our understanding of the origins of WW-I.


Moldbug said recently, paraphrasing, "everything you have been told about WW-II is a lie, except for the Holocaust." What are the chances of that statement being true? Very slim.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				


@DoW's point was that 2, 4, or 6 million would still be genocide. A Holocaust. A deliberate campaign by the Nazis to murder as many Jews as they could. We're quibbling about just how successful they were and/or how many Jews there actually were to begin with.




You are still begging the question. It's the official narrative that claims there was "a deliberate campaign by the Nazis to murder as many Jews as they could." Revisionists claim that there was no such campaign, but that's not to say no Jews were killed. The Allies killed many German civilians before and after the war but it wouldn't be accurate to say they waged a campaign to kill as many as they could. Instead, they had actual policies and strategies, including ethnic cleansing and strategic firebombings of civilian population centers, that resulted in many civilian casualties. But if I were to claim they had a campaign to kill as many Germans as possible I would need to provide strong evidence that such a campaign actually existed. Revisionists claim there was no such campaign, which is why it's a salient issue.


Do you think it matters if the claim you have made, that there was a "deliberate campaign by the Nazis to murder as many Jews as they could" is true or false? Do you think it matters if it turns out no Jews were murdered inside homicidal gas chambers diguised as shower rooms?


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
Partisan warfare, what we call terrorism when deployed against US troops occupying the Middle East, was considered a serious offense, and reprisals against civilians were legal according to international law within some guidelines. IIRC those reprisals were not even tried as a war crime at Nuremberg for this reason. Partisan activity was devastating to the German war effort, there is documentary evidence of killings of Jews as partisans or as reprisal for partisan activity.




Killing Jews, irrespective of whatever irrelevant "partisan" activity, was the explicit goal.




I don't think you know what "explicit" means, the documents show the killings explicitly pertained to partisan activity, and that pretext makes no sense if we assume that there was a secret, general order to exterminate all the Jews. Of course such an order has never been found because it did not exist.


Lastly, it should be noted that all sides were guilty of intentionally targeting civilians for mass murder, it's only the claim that the Germans gassed millions of them on the pretext of taking a shower that stands head and shoulders above all the other conduct in the war, and of course that's the claim that Revisionists refute.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
Keith Woods earlier this week got #BanTheADL as number 1 trending on Twitter, with even Elon Musk responding positively to Keith's posts and others from right wingers like this.


The ADL has gone too far, and I don't think the rank-and-file Left is going to go to bat to defend the ADL. The ADL have too contradictory of an ethos, being highly Woke when it comes to the West but radically right-wing and ethnonationalist when it comes to Israel. It opens them up to credible criticism from the Right with a Left that is not going to be eager to go to their defense.


Basically, the problem is that the behavior of the ADL opens them up to highly credible criticisms from both right wing and left wing anti-Semites, so their list of ideological allies is going to continue to grow thin.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
You could have replied in the original thread.


First, it is incorrect to say the 1.5 million figure was "never taken seriously". It was widely published in international newspapers. For millions of citizens internationally, they were hearing for the first time about "death factories" with gas chambers and crematoria where millions were murdered at Majdanek. And these weren't rumors or second-hand clandestine reports, they were claims that had been ostensibly proven by allied investigators after they conquered the camp. The entire narrative found believability with these 'investigations' from Madjanek, which preceded all others.


Secondly, as I've said, these reports and figures were submitted as evidence at the Nuremberg trials by Soviet prosecutors. So we can dismiss the claim the figures were "not taken seriously" , they were taken seriously in the international press and in the most important phase of the war crime trials. Majdanek guards were also indicted, convicted, and executed based on these wildly inflated, false claims.


The Soviet investigation of Majdanek, which claimed astronomically inflated death tolls and 7 homicidal gas chambers, stood alongside other Soviet-submitted investigatory reports on Auschwitz and the Katyn massacre at Nuremberg, the latter of which produced an investigation and eyewitnesses (!) that falsely blamed the Germans for the Katyn massacre. It so happens the signatories to the Katyn investigation were the same as the Auschwitz investigation, with the addition of the biological quack Lysenko as signatory to the Auschwitz "investigation."


The Biden Administration's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism is Deborah Lipstadt, who is one of the most high-profile holocaust 'scholars' alive today. On the left is a 1944 New York Times article about "1.5 million murdered in Majdanek" and on the right is Deborah Lipstadt - in 1982 in the LA Times- claiming that the remains of 1.7 million Jews were found at Majdanek (note: she is actually endorsing the 1944 article in her own column). While you are completely wrong that "historians have never taken seriously the Soviet claim that 1.5 million people were murdered at Majdanek", you are correct that the claims have wildly varied - and precipitously declined throughout the decades. This is the consequence of an initial, false campaign of psychological warfare falling apart in the face of the documentary and physical evidence which was left behind at Majdanek, evidence which Revisionsits were able to point to in order to prove their case.




Of the latter, the most prominent if Rudolf Hoss' memoir where he writes about the use of gas chambers. This was long after his alleged mistreatment (which is also wrote about) in captivity, so it's hard to conceive of a reason why Hoss would lie.




Hoss's testimony was extracted through torture. He was in custody when his memoirs were written, and his memoirs were published by his captors. He also testified to things we know are completely false, like the claim that 4 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, which also stood as official "history" for decades until it was revised after the fall of the Soviet Union - with no impact whatsoever on the "6 million" number. The lack of contemporary documentation indicating any campaign of mass gassings is legendary, no documents have ever been found. Post-war "confessions" like that of Rudolf Hoss, extracted under torture by British interrogators, have been used as a substitute for contemporary documents, and it should be noted that your comment references no contemporary documents, whereas if such evidence existed you would surely cite that instead of the post-war confession of a witness who was subjected to physical torture.




In addition to two gas chambers in which Zyklon B was used




It would be helpful if you could cite any evidence that shows those two gas chambers were used to murder inmates with Zyklon B. The inconvenient fact for the Majdanek Museum is that all the witnesses cited different structures as being the center of gas chamber extermination, like the bathing facility which the Museum has now admitted conducted no homicidal gassings. So there's really no evidence at all for what you are claiming.


Lastly, you are ignoring the co-dependence of these claims. The Soviet investigations claimed 7 homicidal gas chambers, and witnesses pointed mostly to a real bathing and delousing facility as the center of mass murder. So 5 of those 7 are now admitted to have been false, including the facility which was the centerpiece of the original claims made by 'witnesses.' Any reasonable person would be suspicious that the final 2 are likewise false, and he should expect a reasonable amount of evidence to believe they were what the Soviets claimed. If I claim that 7 people were killed by a bear, but then I was exposed as lying about 5 out of 7 of those people, I should be expected to provide strong evidence that the last 2 people actually were killed by a bear.




Because the camp was so hastily abandoned in the face of the Soviet advance, the Nazis did not have as much time to destroy the camp as they did Treblinka, for instance.




And this is the only reason Revisionists "won" Majdanek. The evidence was captured largely intact, allowed Revisionists to find original construction orders and documents proving their theory. They were able to visit the actual structures and point out the impossibility that they were used for the purposes claimed by historians. It is notable that the ease with which Revisionists prove their case is proportional to the amount of evidence that is left behind, whereas unrevised claims about 900,000 deaths at Treblinka are only maintained because of the basic lack of any sort of contemporary evidence. If Majdanek were as thoroughly destroyed as Treblinka, it's likely the original Soviet investigation would remain intact as it has at Treblinka.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
Gas chambers are not "besides the point", the claim is that about half of all the Jews killed were murdered in these makeshift contraptions. There is no mainstream authority whatsoever that allows you to affirm "the Holocaust" without also affirming the gas chamber story, that story is an indispensable pillar of what constitutes "the Holocaust".


Yes there were communities that were killed, i.e. there were widespread reprisals against Jewish civilians in response to partisan activity, which was tragic but considered legal at the time. There were likewise Russian and Ukrainian and Polish and German communities that were wiped out and ethnically cleansed before, during, and after the war. We are told Jewish suffering is special because there was a specific policy to secretly exterminate them all, a claim which Revisionists refute, and that millions of them were herded into shower rooms and then gassed. "The Holocaust" as such absolutely depends on the truth of those claims, if those claims are false then the Holocaust narrative is also false by the definition put forward by all of its proponents.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				
It is not simply a matter of revising the death toll downwards, it's a demonstration that Revisionists are correct about the fallibility of the body evidence that has been used to "prove" the extraordinary claim that millions of people were murdered inside makeshift gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. Revisionists contend that this narrative was psychological warfare, similar to the psych warfare that produced the most infamous propaganda in WWI about the German "corpse factories".


The Holocaust is not simply the claim that there were some killings of Jews, as that is a claim Revisionists do not contest. The Holocaust includes the claim that there was an official policy to exterminate the Jews and that millions were murdered in makeshift gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. Those are the claims Revisionists contest, and Majdanek is not simply a revision of the death toll, it's a demonstrated case of the Revisionist model of the narrative being proven true for one of the 6 alleged "extermination camps." It's a case where, as Revisionists say, Soviet investigators, witnesses, courts, and historians all colluded to perpetuate an entirely false narrative that became "history" for decades, until Revisionists did the archival research and proved their case such that even the Majdanek museum could no longer hold the narrative together without abandoning the vast majority of it.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				


You can point out places where the initial investigators were wrong




Of course this is not a case of initial investigators being wrong, this is a case of investigators, courts, witnesses, and historians being systematically and insistently wrong for decades upon decades, including to this day. It's not a "potshot" to point to precedent for Revisionists being proven correct, especially since you have claimed they "came up with nothing". There is precedent for their case against the "gas chamber" narrative being proven correct at a formerly alleged "extermination camp", and the very first one in the historical timeline at that.


Census data is noisy, especially in the context of this topic. But if you are claiming that something specific happened, like a million people were brought to this exact area, killed, and then buried, it's pretty disingenuous to accuse Revisionists of taking "potshots" for critically analyzing the veracity of those claims.


			

			

					

						

							
						

					


					
				

			
		


		

	


		
		
			

		
	










	
	
		Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
	








	
		

		

			

		

	

		


			

				


and perhaps most importantly, there is a small army of people dedicated to poking holes in all of this who have come up mostly empty.




This is not true at all. There are many examples, but one of the most significant that comes to mind is the revisions to the alleged Majdanek "extermination camp". The Soviet prosecution submitted into evidence the claim that 1.5 million were murdered in a "Huge Death Factory of Gas Chambers and Crematories." Official Soviet-Polish investigation concluded there were seven gas chambers, a claim which stood as "history" for decades.


In the 1990s Revisionist scholars including Carlo Mattogno visited the archives and discovered original construction documents and work orders proving the hygienic purposes of the facilities which were allegedly homicidal gas chambers- including real shower rooms, laundry facilities, and delousing facilities. They disproved the technical possibility that the alleged structures could have operated as homicidal gas chambers. They also concluded a tragic but more realistic death toll of around 42,000 at the camp mostly due to catastrophic hygienic conditions and disease like epidemic typhus.


In 2005 the Majdanek Museum conceded most of the revisions pressed by Revisionist scholars, including revising the claim that 5 out of 7 of the alleged "gas chambers" served that purpose and revising the claimed death toll to 78,000, a 95% decline from the figure reported at Nuremberg by Soviet investigators.


The Revisionist research and methodology has proven to be true for Majdanek, and most sources including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum no longer even consider Majdanek an "extermination" camp after these recent revisions. The position of Holocaust Deniers is that a similar revision is needed at several other camps, where nearly identical claims of "factories of death" have been made with wildly exaggerated death tolls by Soviet investigators and eyewitnesses based on very thin evidence.


This revision is especially significant since Majdanek was the very first alleged "extermination camp" conquered and investigated by the Soviets in late 1944. The Soviets lied about a grand factory of death, crematories, and gas chambers in 1944 well before they liberated Auschwitz where they made precisely identical claims including the exact same accusation of the method of mass murder. The disproven claim made by the Soviets that the SS men climbed onto the roof to drop Zyklon B through the ceiling in fact made a public debut at Majdanek in 1944, and the same claim was later made at Auschwitz in 1945. The fact that the 1944 "investigations" have been disproven by Revisionists, even conceded by mainstream sources, shows that suspicion should be cast on identical claims made by identical investigators after Majdanek, which includes every camp.


Majdanek proves it is possible for an extermination camp to be "proven" by courts, witnesses, and historians, only for Revisionists to debunk the consensus with a proper historical and scientific methodology. The only question that remains is, were Revisionists only right about Majdanek, or are they also right about the other alleged camps? My position is that the revisions which they forced at Majdanek are also required at several other camps, where identical claims have been made by identical investigators and witnesses. But it's not correct to say they have "come up empty." They have disproven an entire "extermination camp".