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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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Erik Prince was on Tucker Carlson. It was nearly two hours, and I enjoyed most of it. They talked about Ukraine, the CIA, republicans, Afghanistan, drone warfare, surveillance, smartphones, and much more.

https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1792963714779426941

https://rumble.com/v4wl5or-erik-prince-cia-corruption-killer-drones-and-government-surveillance.html

Also youtube, somewhere.

I wanted to transcribe this part, and talk about it. Approximately 1:09.

EP: There's a lot of people that are considered American citizens that probably shouldn't be considered American citizens.

TC: I agree with that completely, but an actual American, someone who grew up here.

EP: Fair. But the left has devalued American citizenship, it should mean something to be an American. I mean, a Roman citizen: it meant something.

TC: I mean a Venezuelan gang member who's here illegally is every bit as American as you, who was born in Western Michigan, so yes, I'm quite aware of that.

EP: Anchor babies, birthright citizenship, all of that must go.

TC: Yeah, you wonder if we've reached where that is impossible for the country to act in its own interest just because of the changes due to immigration.

EP: I read a lot of history, and I know that things have been a lot worse in certain societies, and corrective events can be shocking and traumatic to people but it's still possible.

I have not been shy about voicing my thoughts on citizenship, so to hear them echoed in some part on a platform like this was interesting and unexpected.

What other societies is he talking about? I am most familiar with the Reconquest, where the mohammadeans were driven out of Iberia over centuries. That fits pretty well with what Prince is saying. I'm less familiar with the partition of India, by religion, then the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan. This seems less relevant. What else is there? And what would that look like in the USA and Europe?

There's plenty to talk about from this conversation. The parts on drone warfare were particularly interesting to me, but didn't seem to fit with the rest of this post. And I'm out of time, so I post this as-is without any further commentary.

I really don't get why people go straight to ethnic cleansing. It's a political non-starter for one unless we're on the brink of collapse, and there is several steps in-between here and there that are much more reasonable. Every single larger european country used to be multiple regions & ethnicities that didn't really identify as one, and there are quite a few accidents of history which would have led to a very different structure; Burgundy as an independent entity, or a much larger (or smaller, or integrated) Austria, or a mostly-unified Scandinavia, and so on. That the current shape feels so "solid" was the result of a deliberate process of propaganda and suppression of minority identities. The only reason why we nowadays can be so laizze-faire with european minority identification is precisely because of this process. My mom didn't speak high german for example, only low german, but was bullied in school even by the teachers until she could speak "proper" german. My parents only taught high german to me. And this obviously was toward the far end, both in time and in tameness, of the process.

There is so much we can change; We can tie welfare to much more stringent requirements, enforce a common language, or for a more extreme option we can require extensive civil/military service with explicit statements of loyalty. And there's even some "positive" actions still lacking; For example, I personally know an arabic guy who fell into alcoholism bc he was literally not allowed to work for multiple years due to his legal status, and he wasn't willing to engage in illegal work (in itself a laudable quality, even if it arguably was wrong in this case!). Many of the more extreme options will probably result in some levels of emigration, but that's still very different than forcibly removing people of which a decent percentage would likely have been willing to adjust.

The issue here and where the anti-immigration people will fundamentally disagree with you is you assume the issue with immigrants is mostly cultural assimilation and not biological assimilation. It’s assuming if you suppress minority culture they will turn into good Protestant Americans. Biological assimilation is still possible but requires even more extreme measures. Germany is quite dull today. We wiped out an entire generation of their fighting men. Central America similar went thru a big filter with the Spanish. I believe England was executing something like 1% of their lower class for a long time. One theory of Ashkenazi is the ethnicity faced strong selection pressure for entering the merchant class and thus selecting for IQ. There are processes to biologically assimilate a people, but in the modern world that is an order of magnitude more extreme. The U.S. too this day has failed to assimilate the African American population.

Genetic engineering could be a potential solution in the near future.

The U.S. too this day has failed to assimilate the African American population.

Americans spent centuries taking strong and specific action to keep the races separate and thus specifically prevent assimilation. The Latin American countries were considerably more successful in assimilating the slavery-descended populations to the general population.

Americans spent centuries taking strong and specific action to keep the races separate and thus specifically prevent assimilation.

And then when they stopped trying to keep them separate, whites were ethnically cleansed from the centers of what used to be world-class cities. Assimilation did not happen, but ethnic cleansing of white people did.

Buying mansions in the DFW suburbs is now considered ethnic cleansing? Also, there are tons of white people walking around Manhattan. The whites seemed to have rebounded well from the genocide.

  • -11

This has some excerpts from Kevin Purcell's book. There used to be a more complete version online but I can't find it any more.

https://www.dismantleacademia.org/life-and-death-in-philadelphia.html

It's the story of his childhood in Philly where it started as a the type of streetcar suburb that everyone on youtube wants to build these days. It's walkable, there are parks and playgrounds and groups of neighborhood kids stay out playing baseball until well after dark. As black people start to move in it becomes less and less safe. At first they have to go to the parks in groups to stay safe and then later it's not possible to go there at all. There are gangs, break ins and eventually murder. His parents sell their house at a loss to move the kids somewhere safe.

And, key to the ethnic cleansing claim, the authorities let it be known they've been told not to stop the violent blacks from terrorizing the whites.