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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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I just read Kulak's review of "India: The Worst Country on Earth" on his Substack, Anarchonomicon. https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/film-review-india-the-worst-country

I had never heard of this film and haven't seen it, but I have read other stuff from Kulak. While there are definitely points I take from his posts, I do not consider myself a confederate and find his takes to be pretty divergent and extreme from my own. His writing is solid enough I don't get bored so I consider him an example of "what a reasonably intelligent far-right person has to say." He might not be far-right, but I think that's how he identifies. I'm certainly no expert, I've read maybe 4 or 5 articles and I seem to remember him from Reddit...maybe? I would be glad to hear other opinions/warning/lauds.

In his review he claims the film is

  1. true and accurate (from use of primary source online material)
  2. a perfect piece of right-wing propaganda
  3. unwatchable by almost everyone (4-chan trolls are the exception) beyond the 16 minute mark
  4. An important film that forces Jeffersonian "All men are created equal" types to reformulate their world view

Now that I know the film exists, will I watch it? No, I think it's unlikely. I don't really harbor Pollyanna-ish views on India that need to be rewired, but I also don't get into watching death, rape and destruction in my free time. I find it psychically damaging and can admit I prefer ignorance to knowing the true depth of human depravity. The review reminded me a lot of how people would describe "Faces of Death" back when I was a kid--another film I never had any interest in watching and remain largely ignorant of, aside from knowing it's just watching an endless string of people getting horribly killed.

I would like to know if people here are familiar with the film and what their general impressions are. I would also like to discuss some of the following:

  1. Is it true? Can a feature-film length series of horrible phone videos give us an accurate view of what India is really like? I have no experience with the country beyond discussions with people who have been there or come from there and some low-level Youtube vids. Is this really the worst country on Earth? If so, what's the deal with the subcontinet? Is this level of degeneration directly tied to IQ? If not what caused India (I think there's some talk that Pakistan and Bangladesh are in the same boat) to be like this? If this is human degeneracy, what keeps a society from degenerating? Are we degenerating? Is India the future for everyone?

  2. Is it perfect RW propaganda? Kulak's point is that it is so disturbing it forces Westerners to adopt an "Ohmygod the West is so much better than this I'll defend it with my life," attitude. I would suspect that hardcore universalists and "brotherhood-of-man-types" would find ways of countering the narrative, but I wouldn't be satisfied with, "it's just nasty fascist racists," if the truth content is high. Bad people can have high signal-to-noise ratio content even if I don't like it.

  3. Is it really that bad? The horrible deaths and mutilation parts I might be able to stomach, but the accounts of the varieties of rape and abuse had me squirming just in their retelling. The scenes of ecological devastation and anti-sanitation sound almost as bad. Is India truly this decrepit and insane or is it just a white-power-washing of a place I'm meant to develop a revulsion towards so I have the correct opinon of H-1B visas? would watching the film bring me closer to understanding or just turn me into a gibbering racist? Should I go to India and see for myself? People I know who have gone there tell no happy tales so I'm biased toward believing it's as bad as they say.

  4. Is it important? Will this film actually pin itself to history? It's hard to claim that "Faces of Death" was an important series of films from any kind of cinematic or virtue position, but it did make an impact and we remember it. Is it possible that even as pure culture-war propaganda, it's message might actually help people, either by protecting themselves when they're in India or forcing the country/global community to force some changes on the culture? Does something like 'India:TWCoE' need to happen to turn the ship? Does the left need far-right propaganda thrown in their faces from time-to-time? Does the West need to understand how terrible things could become if they don't reverse their own degeneracy? Is this an argument for AI control of humanity or will we necessarily revert to the mean where we use warfare, colonialism and slavery to force the best genes to emerge...like, are we simply doomed?

Anyway, these are just some initial thoughts, but it seems like pure, uncut culture war and I thought y'all might have more perspective on this than me.

Kulak is somewhat hyperbolic in the film, it's most likely sikh or Pakistani propoganda by some diaspora dweller, any non subcontinent person knowing this much about disgusting Indian videos has to have some major issues. The movie also singles out Hindus which confirms my suspicions.

The one good point he made was about India, castes and class

They cannot do what Hundreds of millions of high caste indians and upper class third worlders do every day: Stop Empathizing.

Stop looking on them as your fellow man, and instead look upon them as revolting stupid bottom feeding animals, akin to diseased racoons or possums…or various mamilians who wallow in their own filth, or seek their missing nutrition in the droppings of more noble creatures such as the bovine.

For to stop empathizing, so the western thinks, to stop believing “there is only one race the human race” or “that all men are created equal” would be to abandon all that is good and true and transcendent in this world.

Further continued

One need only speak to people in commonwealth countries to see many of the most opposed to mass immigration are earlier waves of Immigrants who had to pass a higher standard and were of that aristocratic upper class, and now don’t want the people they’ve escaped following them to the west.

Nothing in this film is surprising or horrifying to anyone from the Third World… many from the upper third world might say India is uniquely bad, one Chinese man described it a “4th World”, but most upper-class third worlders are very aware of what goes on in their slums. There might be some Indian Ultra-Nationalists on 4Chan or Twitter who REeee that Thames has laid waste to their “India is the Next Superpower” cope… but that’s an intra-4Chan turf war only amusing in that an internet argument so insignificant might have been ended in a final move so vastly more significant

This was astute, you have people use words like waiters, drivers, servant as slurs openly here and the contempt they have towards them is very real. Society here has been running on fumes since forever. What is funny is that kulak got these talking points from Jayant Bhandari on twitter who left India after he saw how decayed everything was.

The movie is extremely gory and exists as agit prop, it's not meant to be enjoyed and is not surprise to anyone frankly. The only people who will watch it are 4chan freauenters.

Most of the world is completely aware of how bad, dirty, scammy the subcontinent is. The movie is not that deep, kulak just read too much into it since he's aware of India and Jayant Bhandari.

I'm an Indian living in India for context, people live in enclaves, you have zero hygiene, open natural spaces, clean air, water or even morals in most parts here besides the lack of iq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are even worse.

The movie exists to facilitate dunking on Hindu far right users more than to be a real work of art or a thought out commentary. Skirmishes between pajeets of various kinds are a daily occurrence online. All sides picked up internet lingo and try to make themselves look better than their neighbors, you're better off just turning it on for 5 minutes and never thinking about it again, ever.

I was hoping to get your feedback @mrvanillasky as I was aware you live in India and have criticisms thereof.

The movie... exists as agit prop Most of the world is completely aware of how bad, dirty, scammy the subcontinent is. The movie is not that deep, kulak just read too much into it since he's aware of India and Jayant Bhandari.

My sense, and I think something Kulak tries to say in his review is that the film is aggressively agit-prop, the AI prompt-maker "Thames" is actively trying to make something racist. Yet another reason I will avoid the film. Still...sometimes there's signal in the noise.

The movie exists to facilitate dunking on Hindu far right users

American far-right dunking on Indian far-right? to what end? "We're the true Aryan race!" kind of stuff? I would agree that this would appeal only to 4-chan-types--I can't imagine anyone I know on the Left watching this, let alone even hearing about it. The problem is that as much as everyone wants to put 4-chan in the garbage, it's got lasting power and some of the stuff on there become common knowledge 10 years later. As a "normie" it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

One thing I'm really interested in is the 'big picture.' It's been pretty clear to me since the 90's that American culture and IQ have been dropping like a stone in the Mariana Trench. At 50 I have the perspective to see how much worse things are at a baseline level. Is India just the destination for any human culture that doesn't have perpetual warfare, slavery, famine, etc.? Is there any solution that doesn't require a "Final Solution", i.e. genocide? Do Indians have any sense that the situation can be repaired? I presume a leftist POV would be that education and female empowerment will reduce birth rates and boost the lower caste. The right..I don't know, they seem fine with dehumanizing the low-caste/class and forcibly sterilizing them. One can have empathy but what's the right amount necessary to fix the problem of human devolution?

I was hoping to get your feedback @mrvanillasky as I was aware you live in India and have criticisms thereof.

Thanks, I also understand it better than everyone I know since I went from trying to seek cooperation on the internet to seeking just truth

American far-right dunking on Indian far-right? to what end?

No, pajeet far right, sikhs or muslims, both hold a seething resentment against Hindus, upper castes like me in particular for hbd and historical factors. No one who is boilogically a real anglo would ever care ebough.

"We're the true Aryan race!" kind of stuff?

Indians, the subcontinent is not aryan anymore, has not been aryan for a while and sikhs and muslims especially are even less aryan as they are mostly from middle castes, you still find traces of aryan character and changes in physiognomy in some members of the upper castes but it is closer to 1 in 100 or 1000 or maybe more. Consider this, I am paler than almost every single girl I have met here, skin and hair wise despite being a guy and I am not really pale lol. Stuff like this is very trivial but unfortunately people really care way too much about it.

Is India just the destination for any human culture that doesn't have perpetual warfare, slavery, famine, etc.? Is there any solution that doesn't require a "Final Solution", i.e. genocide?

Pajeet twitter jokes about a pajeetocide regularly and the place is beyond fixing, you have lost the smart people and put people shown in the documentary in charge who are the majority here.

Do Indians have any sense that the situation can be repaired?

No, and they have a massive inferiority complex about the world, so you cannot give them a real answer. You had people from India making claims about calculus being stolen or the Brits stealing more money than there are atoms in the solar system from the nation to avoid accepting that this is a high civilization that fell, where the fall coincides with the decimation of human capital.

I presume a leftist POV would be that education and female empowerment will reduce birth rates and boost the lower caste.

And the Indian TFR is below 2 now, the people with the most kids are lower castes, muslims and middle castes. Upper castes have given up, the impotent rage they display by calling whites name is projection since people here cannot deport their problems away.

The right..I don't know, they seem fine with dehumanizing the low-caste/class and forcibly sterilizing them. One can have empathy but what's the right amount necessary to fix the problem of human devolution?

No one is forcibly sterilizing them, you just have worse people and institutions here. There is not much that can be done now, go spend half an hour on caste twitter and then half an hour on Nick Lands account, whilst he was working on xenosystems, caste twitter was still stuck in pretending that their race is "European" because 2 guys won a noble prize, whilst italians and Spaniards have not, hence they now outwit the Japanese and Scandinavians on a per capita basis, statements so stupid that it would not surprise you to know that these are the same people who got kicked out of Punjab by khalistanis. Some from my caste are no better, claiming that top 1 percent of upper castes is smarter than any in the rest of the world, the level of dishonesty here makes you question ones sanity, self-identification being made a factor of hbd means people fucked up and have to find rationalisations forhaving basic human sentiments but the inherent identity that they had was depedent on being slightly better than village dwellers of India.

There is no saving from terminal cancer, so why should anyone want to save people where the upper end is busy indulging in mental masturbation of the kind where their worldview is composed a glaring inferiority complex they can never let go of?