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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44928 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Cross post: (rdrama):

Title: Most r-slurs still don't understand one of the central points of rick and morty.

THEY ARE ALL UNLOVABLE ASSHOLES! YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO ROOT FOR THEM! (Spoilers ahead)

  1. Jerry - would likely sacrifice his family to save himself. Had no trouble abandoning his original family to live with his accidental dimension family. He also crashed a plane full of people in that one episode. He is a stupidity based WMD who doesn't even realize the damage he caused.

  2. Summer - Pretty much a sociopath. Only cares about family to a degree, would gladly perv on hot guys. Has no qualms killing aliens. Doesn't care about how much destruction Rick has ever caused. She got high on planets that were about to die. Her whole personality is saying," whatever." Then stabbing you with a kitchen knife before going back to texting on her phone.

  3. Beth - If Summer is a wannabe sociopath then Beth is a legit sociopath. Only thing maintaining her humanity is likely her family. As a child she only ever had Rick make things for her that would hurt other people. Is self centered and will accept anyone in the world who will kiss her ass and flatter her. Hasn't been seen actively murdering anyone so far and is likely the most normie competent person in her family. Still shrugged off her planet getting destroyed. Wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice Morty to save Summer.

  4. Morty - Over the seasons he grows more psychopathic every season. He has destroyed at least two alien civilizations on screen that I remember, and likely has caused way more suffering off screen. Every season his conscience grows smaller when it comes to anything that's not his family. Will definitely murder you in your sleep for Rick. No longer hesitates when murdering people who cross him. Never came back to save his Cronenberg family. Only Jerry survived and Survivor Jerry called him out on it.

  5. Rick - Rick the worst of them all. Left his entire planet on groundhod day settings but forgot to turn off aging. Accidentally got back and was at least decent enough to end their suffering before leaving. That's Earth one he killed. In season 1 or 2 he accidentally cronenberged another Earth before leaving. That's two Earth's destroyed. In the latest season episode his little experiment got released and destroyed the entire Earth. That's three Earth's he has destroyed due to his fuckups. This isn't even counting all the countless planets, species, and probably even universes he has destroyed. Rick is basically the closest thing to an Eldritch abomination in human form any media has ever had. His morality has zero connection to other humans, he sees things on a scale so huge that entire realities become irrelevant. He is an inventor who could create anything but his final legacy is that of destroying realities. Multiple hell's have overflowed with the number of dead his actions have sent there. Rick is a pure evil to anyone who experiences his touch that is not a friend, a group of friends that are barely a dozen lifeforms against the trillions he has likely killed so far easily.

Every season they make the family do even more horrible things, and each time the r-slurs and spergs cheer. At this point it's as if the creators are just trying to see how fucked up and cruel they can make the actions of the family before the audience finally decides that yes, these are clearly not rolemodels or anybody to look up to, but that moment never comes. That moment likely will never come, because for that moment to come there has to be some self awareness, some capacity to self reflect, and perhaps the success of Rick and Morty for all the wrong reasons is the final proof, that this country has lost its way, and there is nothing left except mindless consumption followed by death.

  • -39

Ok but what about Mr. Poopybutthole?

Friends with Rick, bad by associating with terrible people.

Are they still saying r-slur instead of retard? I thought the reason they left, other that the admins neutering the sub, was so they didn't have to resort to euphemisms like r-slur

Edit: Turns out it's a macro. I should have expected it from the drama mods

Could you explain please, I do not understand.

Why do you think people are rooting for them?

Because the show keeps on selling.

Do you think the success of the American psycho was because Patrick Bateman was seen as a good person? The shows makes it pretty clear that none of the main cast are virtuous. This is not unusual in fiction, after all, All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Happy is boring.

I would not be surprised if there was a noticeable minority that unironically like the main character in American Psycho. As I understand it the actor who plays the titular character had to go on camera to explain to the people that you aren't supposed to root for the main character. Add in the fact that the main character does reflect a form of masculinity that from his own point of view makes him a tough person, and one can see where the fans who like him genuinely come from.

I have met people in real life who would admit they thought the character of the main psycho was a horrible guy but also a chad.

We've moved into "noticible minority" as a size estimate here and you agree that main characters don't need to be virtuous to be interesting. Is it magnitude thing? How much of the r&m fan base needs to think Rick is an admirable character for you to use the popularity to make your prognosis of society?

more than 10%. I assume if you have more than 10% sociopaths in your society then its likely gonna collapse.

Rick never pays a meaningful price for being a sociopath or has his sociopathy treated as seriously bad by the show so it's easy to root for him. Plus he's smart and powerful and does cool things. "Watch these sociopaths do cool stuff and be rewarded" is basically the value proposition if the show.

Exactly. You get it.

Whoever wrote this copypasta is terrible at tolerating ambiguity. It reads like a kid throwing a temper tantrum because the guests at his birthday party aren't eating pizza the right way. No consumption is so mindless as letting someone else understand it for you. If adults are looking for role-models in cartoons they've got more pressing worries than people watching Rick and Morty wrong.

No consumption is so mindless as letting someone else understand it for you

I disagree. Consumption can be mindless if it's only providing you satisfaction but at the cost of so much of your time or effort that overall you are worse off in life by the time you are done consuming.

Example - heroin addicts.

I have never watched this cartoon, I have no intention of watching this cartoon, and the only mentions I've seen of it have been online. And certainly not anyone over on the original Motte ever discussing this.

I think you are addressing the wrong audience: I don't know if there are Rick and Morty fans here, but I've never seen anyone praising it as a great show and we should all emulate them. Is it because it is supposed to have a reputation as 'the smart person's show' and so you think if Mottizens all (think they) are smart people, this must be a favourite show on here?

Not really, I just wrote something I liked and it felt partly culture warry so I shared it on the culture war thread. Nothing deeper than that.

Why do you assume nobody else gets this? I know a lot of people who like rick and morty and our biggest argument is whether they are satirising depression or narcissism. I don't know anyone who thinks rick is a role model, the closest are friends who wish they were like detoxed rick or morty or who fear they would become like rick if they were omnipotent.

As for this being the final proof this country has lost its way, or we are overrun with stupid, no. This isn't even new. Did you know that people used to throw things at and spit on actors who played villains on tv? They'd organise letter writing campaigns to the network to get them fired because the character they played was too mean. Some of the actors playing bad men and women in old soap operas got death threats daily. A guy shot Reagan to impress Jodie Foster's character in Taxi Driver. Those people have always existed and they always will.

Those people have always existed and they always will.

Appeal to tradition fallacy.

  • -24

You may have the wrong impression of this forum. Argue like you are talking to another person, like you are sitting down and having a conversation about it. Don't just namedrop a fallacy. I rambled quite a bit and I demand the same. Especially when you are missing the point - I don't care if it is an appeal to tradition, half the planet has less than 100 iq. Have you ever seen a juggalo gathering? Or a tailgate at a kid rock concert? Or at almost any concert or event? Rick and morty fans aren't even a drop in the ocean. People have been stupid forever, so unless you are suggesting looking up to rick is stupider than any of that?

Also you didn't address my anecdotal fallacy.

I think nobody else gets this because of how famous Rick and Morty continues to be among the zoomer generation and the fact as you pointed out yourself that most of society has a lower than 100 iq.

I actually like Rick And Morty for similar reasons to Bojack Horseman. It's about watching a broken person who isn't in control of their own life, who is kinda legitimately trying, and who is actually learning and getting better, the question is just whether they'll figure out how to be a good person before the weight of all their past bad decisions catches up with them.

This is just a heartwrenching scene.

I think you are downvoted for referring to people as retards and spergs. The substance of your post is otherwise not bad (Rick & Morty was meant to illustrate bad people and bad behavior, this was lost on the public, which in turn illustrates badness of public).

I’m going to hijack your post make an unrelated one on television. I was watching LOTR and the racial diversity stuck out to me in a negative way. Is this because I’m racist? No, I don’t think my racism has anything to do with it. See, humans can naturally tell apart members of one tribe from another by appearance. I can tell French phenotype from Icelandic, Irish from Italian, Baltic from Russian. When people mate together in insularity over hundreds of years, then barring a caste system they generally begin to look the same. So when I see a whole bunch of dwarves living in a rock together, and then a token black dwarf is highlighted by camera, this throws off the believability of story. Because if the dwarves were one community, you wouldn’t have such variability in phenotype. I would prefer all the dwarves to be black, or all of them mulatto, then this weird hodgepodge of different phenotypes. If the dwarves are one people living together over thousands of years, then you really ought to cast them as one people, whatever shade of humanity you want.

Then there’s the question of the black elves, but I’m not sure if Middle Earth is ready for this discussion. The elves were always depicted as very Northern European, with a sort of pacified and peaceful temperament. The inclusion of even Southern Europeans sort of violates our intuition here, and yes I know Orlando Bloom is Southern European but that’s why they changed his hair color and skin tone and such. Speaking as someone with Southern European blood/family there are real differences in temperament.

I was watching LOTR and the racial diversity stuck out to me in a negative way

Is this because I’m racist? No

That seems like a contradiction.

humans can naturally tell apart members of one tribe from another by appearance. I can tell French phenotype from Icelandic, Irish from Italian, Baltic from Russian.

Yes but the show is not in any of those places.

When people mate together in insularity over hundreds of years, then barring a caste system they generally begin to look the same.

Those are elves, dwarves, and hobbit which were initially created with singing if I understand my LOTR lore correctly. Is it really that hard to believe that the LOTR equivalent of God built the species with multiple skin colors that could mix as they wish and still keep going like that?

So when I see a whole bunch of dwarves living in a rock together, and then a token black dwarf is highlighted by camera, this throws off the believability of story.

I can believe in dwarves but not black dwarves is pretty much a racist argument.

Because if the dwarves were one community, you wouldn’t have such variability in phenotype.

Why not, it's a planet made with magic, why should the same phenotype rules apply to a mystical fantasy land.

I would prefer all the dwarves to be black, or all of them mulatto, then this weird hodgepodge of different phenotypes. If the dwarves are one people living together over thousands of years, then you really ought to cast them as one people, whatever shade of humanity you want.

I disagree, maybe they just had a white or a black mutation break out in the community via natural mutation. Some people living in lactose intolerant community randomly developed lactose tolerance, some black humans had a random mutation and we got white humans. These are real world cases where one group emerged from within another insulated group.

Then there’s the question of the black elves, but I’m not sure if Middle Earth is ready for this discussion. The elves were always depicted as very Northern European, with a sort of pacified and peaceful temperament. The inclusion of even Southern Europeans sort of violates our intuition here

It doesn't though. I can watch the show and my intuition is not violated, they are all elves made with magic. Maybe it's because I come from a non-white culture so I am more used to seeing mixed color groups of people in real life.

So when I see a whole bunch of dwarves living in a rock together, and then a token black dwarf is highlighted by camera, this throws off the believability of story

I feel the same way about seeing model-thin women throw around male stunt actors who would crush them. It's obviously nonsense on if you have even a basic understanding of biology but it represents the priorities of the existing society/creative class (female equality, validating America's immigrant makeup)

I've taken a sort of blase "every society has its utterly unrealistic myths". More importantly: most Americans seem to accept this manifestly unrealistic take (and some apparently have come to actually believe it tracks reality). In fact: I would be the misogynist for insisting the girlboss utterly lose (which she should).

Of course, I'm probably not consistently sanguine on this and most people likely aren't either, especially as the nature of the myth changes.

LOTR is a fantasy genre, most of those thin women movies are action movies or thriller movies. I would argue that one requires a higher standard of realism than the other.

And that entire idea is just another societal construct.

There are action movies that have more ridiculous things than more grounded fantasy movies and what's fantastical about fantasy obviously varies by society (many societies find magic far less fantastical than Westerners do, and total female equality more fantastical)

then I would argue that we should accept both black elves and skinny women in our lives.

It says nothing about you, society, morals, what fictional characters you root for. Or what music you like. Pretend you’re a genocidal genius or a vicious gangster, it has no moral relevance. Self-reflection just gets in the way of fun, people can only enjoy things “ironically” now. Or they have to condemn the characters before they watch, like a hayes code era title card ‘these are bad people, don’t try this at home’.

And Assholes fucking up is more entertaining than watching good people prosper. You could apply this rant (and people did say the same things) about seinfeld or breaking bad, any show worth his salt. Maybe the little house on the prairie is good, I wouldn’t know.

That's pretty much arguing that your thoughts have no influence on your actions and I disagree with that notion. Otherwise any mental abuse isn't real abuse.

Thoughts and desires are unlimited and uncontrollable. What prevents us from acting on them is downstream from the chaos, and it is only there that we can control it and assign moral responsibility.

What is mental abuse? Clear-cut, garden-variety example.

Mocking the mentally ill or looking down on everyone around you.

So by despising others, you telepathically harm them? That clears it up, I don't think mental abuse is real abuse.

no but nobody can spend their whole lives with their thoughts and opinions about someone desynched from how they treat them there will be leaks.

It says nothing about you, society, morals, what fictional characters you root for

Yet somehow people usually root for the underdog, the one saving the helpless maiden, the main character, etc. Also, stories are literally ways of communicating societal morals, and have been since we could talk. Stories and words evolved to communicate things, goals, and ... stories communicate them.

What does this even mean? Why are you rooting for a character if it doesn't mean anything?

Because it's fun, it enhances the proxy experience to be emotionally involved, like picking a sports team.

This is not a high-quality contribution.

Can you give me the standard that defines a high quality contribution? Thank you.

I've watched a lot of R&M, but only because my enjoyment just barely outweighs my disgust for the show and its characters. And even then not always, there are times when I've had to turn off the TV because the episode was just too disgusting/crass/ugly/nihilistic.

Every season they make the family do even more horrible things, and each time the r-slurs and spergs cheer. At this point it's as if the creators are just trying to see how fucked up and cruel they can make the actions of the family before the audience finally decides that yes, these are clearly not rolemodels or anybody to look up to, but that moment never comes. That moment likely will never come, because for that moment to come there has to be some self awareness, some capacity to self reflect, and perhaps the success of Rick and Morty for all the wrong reasons is the final proof, that this country has lost its way, and there is nothing left except mindless consumption followed by death.

I don't think it's because people don't have the capacity to reflect. They can, they just subconsciously stop themselves from doing it because people under 40 are heavily irony-poisoned and can't handle sincerity. One hypothetical reflection could go something like this:

  1. Rick is an immoral, egotistical, cynical nihilist

  2. It's a bad thing to be an immoral, egotistical, cynical nihilist

  3. Immoral, egotistical, cynical nihilists are not role models or heroes; we should not emulate them or cheer for them

  4. All the R&M characters are like that

  5. Why am I watching this show about evil depressing people

  6. I'm going to watch something more edifying

I don't think most viewers can get past step 1 because step 2 requires making a judgement which it totally lame and uncool and, why are you taking it so seriously bro? And anyway (here come the rationalizations) it's just a cartoon, and what's wrong with portraying imperfect and broken** people? Aren't we all broken to some degree? Should we only portray normal and healthy people?

I have an undeveloped thought about how a lot of modern TV is just the evil twin of 1950s black hat/white hat cowboy movies. Back then the good guy was squeaky clean and always beat the bad guys by virtue of his superior courage and moral rectitude. It was all very "just world." But now, with shows like R&M and GoT it's not more nuanced, it's just an inversion of "just world" into "unjust world." Everyone is evil, sadistic, cowardly. The good are crushed by the bad. Fans try to tell me that it's full of nuance, but I'm sure you could tease nuance out of a John Wayne film if you tried hard enough.

**I can't stand the word "broken" the way it's used to describe moral failings or "traumas," but that's a rant for another post.

I appreciate you taking the time to send the reply. Thank you.

I'm sure you could tease nuance out of a John Wayne film if you tried hard enough.

Have you ever watched The Shootist? Wayne's last film, and since he was more or less typecast as an actor in/for Westerns early in his career, despite trying other roles, you can't really blame him for sticking to what worked.

I haven't, thanks for the recommendation.

the r-slurs and spergs cheer

First off you need to write like you want to include everyone in the conversation, which... shibboleths like this aren't an egregious violation, but they are still a violation of that rule.

The more serious violation, though, is that you're deliberately picking on a very general group, here. The real point of your post is not, it seems, to explain Rick & Morty--which would be fine!--but to dunk on "spergs" because they don't enjoy it on as many levels as you do.

So, don't do that.

Acknowledged. Be more clean in language used.

You're getting clowned by dramatards, just ban on sight if it smells fishy for a while.

I disagree, I may have immigrated from rdrama but my efforts are genuine.

I would even liken your stance to the equivalent of saying those people who just got off the boat don't sound like us, send them back to where they came from.

Give a chance to assimilation.

I disagree, I may have immigrated from rdrama but my efforts are genuine.

Who speaks like this? Firstly you know in your heart if you are trolling or not, you can just say "Yes/No I am trolling", its not a debate for you. Also you know if you are from drama or not, why are you saying you are "maybe from drama or not"?

Basically you sound like someone trying to play innocent.

Give a chance to assimilation.

Uhh no, read the rules.

You are expected to familiarize yourself with them, or lurk until you do.

As many others have said, even if you are posting bait, ultimately if it gets good conversation, some people might not mind having you post them around here.

So just make good posts if you are not trolling.

I may have come from means I come from. I believe that's a colloquial phrase?

I did familiarize myself with them, do you expect a baby to walk perfectly with its first step because you showed it a diagram and gif of how to walk?

last line acknowledged.

I mean it really makes no difference for me if someone follows the rules or not. I just gave you a heads up because the mods will inevitably ban someone if they don't do it a sufficient number of times. Actually I gave the mod a heads up because I browse rDrama myself and saw people talking about "invading" the motte.

For what its worth, the mods here are a lot more lenient than most mods on reddit, and maybe even in rDrama, I doubt many "edgy" places online have the stomach to discuss HBD and other topics discussed here on the regular without getting their panties in a knot. It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. I have been banned from multiple places that throw around the words 'retard' and 'faggot' with reckless abandon, when I actually brought up some juicy topics to talk about.

But anyways, don't let the down-votes discourage you, keep on posting, eventually you'll find a way to get your ideas across in a way that people here are receptive to.

Could you tell me what is HBD?

Thank you for the encouragement.

HBD is an acronym for 'Human biodiversity'.

It's the opposite of the blank slate theory. Proponents of HBD argue that the intelligence, personality, temperament, and a lot of other psychological/psychometric factors are genetically determined/influenced. Believing this leads you to a lot of inferences/conclusions that are very controversial to say out loud in polite society.

More comments

But it does matter if the OP is a troll. There are rules for a reason. No matter how many insightful, wholesome, galaxy-brain responses get made because of this bait, it’ll still be a turd on the doorstep.

I am not a troll. What would assure you of the same?

"Sir, this is a Wendy's Culture War thread"

Maybe next time post something about the Culture War?

I thought I did. My bad.

I do think opening your post with "crosspost from rdrama" should be an automatic bonk. We may be using their codebase, but that doesn't mean we need to accomodate their userbase.

Why? It was an effortpost on rdrama, why can I not reuse the effortpost?

Allowing that this is valid: where did those Jews go, in your opinion?

I understand the «not a deliberate extermination, typhus/starvation due to Allied bombing etc.» Revisionist cluster somewhat (and «deliberate extermination not to the extent claimed» cluster I understand better). But the question of total death toll is different. In the end, there are some fairly good records on pre- and post-war demographics. People had to go somewhere.

There are two points here:

(1) Okay, suppose we say that the 6 million figure is wrong, and only 1 million Jews (ignoring the Roma, etc.) were killed by the Nazis. They still killed 1 million people, on racist grounds. That's the important part here.

(2) "Don't you care about truth and accuracy"? Yeah, I do. And funny that you should invoke the Kamloops residential school graves, since I'm Catholic. We have our own version of this here in Ireland about mother and baby homes and accusations of mass graves, etc. Now, if they could prove that there were indeed graves of murdered children in Canada or wherever, I would not be nit-picking over "they claimed it was 1,000 graves but it was only 100", I would be angry, ashamed, and looking for heads on pikes. But too often the "querying were the numbers inflated" is not about establishing accurate data, it's to deny anything bad ever happened. No Jews were killed, if any died it was down to natural causes of disease, they were transit camps, the Germans never did anything wrong at all ever.

Which brings me to my conclusion: I don't care. I don't care if it was really 2 million not 6 million. I care that 2 million people were murdered because of their religious/ethnic background, and that is a stain that can never be washed away by any "I calculated the square volume of the claimed number of graves and it is vastly greater than the total acreage of the camp" playing with numbers.

So this is my question to you: why are you asking this question? Is it because you really do want only to calculate a tidy, accurate number - or do you want to say "Hitler and his administration never did anything wrong and the Jews were and are wreckers and fifth columnists"?

1 million dead Jews would be less than Holodomor or dozens of more recent genocides....

Imagine finding out the legitimacy of America's and Israel's moral narratives rested on fewer dead bodies than America's interventions against Iraq or Vietnam.

People have been arrested and imprisoned for questioning the holocaust narrative, lives destroyed... the regime has gone to really fucked up propagandistic ends to protect the post-war order's founding mythology, and I'm someone who doesn't contest the figure.

If you could actually show Hitler killed fewer Jews than Lenin killed Russians 20 years earlier.... Then why the fuck was the US and UK backing the USSR vs. Germany? Both of them invaded Poland. That was a cooperative effort. By rights Britain and France should have declared war on Russia in addition to Germany in '39...

Could it be the great powers motives for the second world war was just as cynical and suspect as the first, and the entire post war order founded on misrepresentations of the war and Churchill's and FDR's motives for killing a generation?

That's the logical conclusion that's been drowned out in national myth-making and the obscene parading of dead jews, gypsies, and other victims...

The Holocaust wasn't even begun until '42, America and Britain justify their war with events that happened after they declared...

But if it became public knowledge the Holocaust was grossly overstated (I doubt it was)... All of a sudden the last unifying pro-regime narrative dies.

There'd suddenly be entire schools of thought arguing Hitler was doing what was necessary to contain genocidal bolshevism... Swastikas would become accepted political kitsch for angsty teens just like hammer and sickles are.

"Rage for the Reich" would start playing sold out shows.

.

I doubt there's anything really there in holocaust revisionism... culture shifted fast between 45 and 65...I imagine something would have outed if it was bunk...

But man, to think the question doesn't matter? It sure matters to every grade school and high school history teacher when they preach the good word of how Anne Frank gave her life so that the rest of us might live under US Global Hegemony.

Imagine finding out the legitimacy of America's and Israel's moral narratives rested on fewer dead bodies than America's interventions against Iraq or Vietnam.

Not anymore - WW2 as whole is fading into background.

See, for example, tally of holocaust movies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_films

and you will see that peak holocaust interest was in late 90's- early 00's.

"moral legitimacy" of today's US+allies is based on democracy* and human rights, especially black and LGBTQ+ rights.

US embassies everywhere are flying rainbow flags, not Israeli flags. Big multinational corporations are declaring "Black lives matter", not "Jewish lives matter".

*Unlike Cold War One, "freedom" faded into background too. When was the last time US was talking about "free world", when was the last time US president was called "leader of the free world"?

The Holocaust wasn't even begun until '42, America and Britain justify their war with events that happened after they declared...

This is post war justification, way post war. In the actual war time, Nazi propaganda was nothing than "JOO JOO JOO", while Allied (and Soviet) was absolutely silent about Jews.

I won't say that this is a troll, since themotte has seen real people with such an opinion and it doesn't matter that someone is a new user when the entire site is new. On the other hand, this is certainly an inflammatory post without evidence, and doesn't belong here for that reason alone. Even though it does show some "evidence", the evidence is for something extremely narrow; the general claim

The answer is that excavations would be extremely hazardous to the false narrative that's been created and weaponized,

makes a very broad inflammatory claim that is not supported by the evidence provided, even if you were to assume it's true.

(And Nazis tend not to report evidence accurately anyway.)

I think the problem is that thanks to certain disgruntled former Mottizens and some other interested parties, there's a reputation floating around that the Motte is a refuge for right-wingers (and this means far-right, Neo-Nazis, etc.) so that anyone who is inclined to the far-right, Neo-Nazi, "Holocaust never happened", "HBD is real science that proves some populations are the natural inferiors to white people", types think that this is a refuge that will welcome them rocking up with "hey, anyone run the real numbers on the claimed death camps? you'll be surprised!"

It's the witch problem, as has often been discussed.

(Re: disgruntled former Mottizens, there's a certain person who hangs around on /r/Drama who likes to give their take as to why they were run off the Motte for bravely standing up to the right-wingers, instead of 'how I flounced off in a huff', and according to them this is a wretched hive of scum and villainy that probably at least hums the Horst Wessel Lied under our breath as we post).

Which guy is that?

Biggest flounce I remember was iprayiam, but I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple.

If you remember a certain someone who was constantly predicting that this time Trump was going to jail for sure. I think, but I am going on shaky memory, that the final flounce was triggered in part by a prediction that "within two weeks Trump will be in jail" and of course, longer than two weeks later, not at all, and a lot of people were asking this person "remind me again, when is it Trump is going to jail?"

But the retconning over on /r/drama is fun to read, even if it's not quite how I remember things going down. Definitely still has an entire apiary of bees in the bonnet about the motte.

Sounds like he’s talking about Impassionata.

Obligatory disclaimer 😁

refuge for right-wingers

I mean it kind of inherently is, due to the overton window for most of Reddit being like 90th percentile Left to 40th percentile Left, which also produces a lot of the 'I was kicked out of the Motte for speaking truth to grotty Right Wingers, but can't possibly be wrong since the rest of Reddit agrees with me' dynamics.

For instance, I think the Lynn/Vanhanen IQ map is for the birds, especially since the 2012 version had to do some tidying up re: Irish IQ jumping up from 90 to 100 (the mainland still remains that bit smarter, even with the new colour codes however, Rule Britannia!) because the data is lousy. Lynn relied a lot on "I don't have IQ test results for this place, but the archipelago near it has this result, so that's close enough" and fudging bad studies.

So while HBD may exist, I think a hell of a lot of the conclusions drawn are jumping someplace that is not steady ground. Are African nations that naturally low in IQ, or is it test-taking ability? Are some of the results (e.g. China) cherry-picked because they only let their brightest take the tests? Do we have any reliable modern data?

We also put a lot of our eggs into the basket of "More IQ means better all round", when we're measuring mathematical ability mostly or solely. Being a whizz at maths does not necessarily mean this is the guy to run the country.

I think the issue is that IQ is measuring how intelligent one has managed to become. But racists like to use it to determine what one is capable of becoming. There was a very interesting case of the Dan Everett and the Piraha amazonian tribe (I can't find the article now, I believe it was in the Times or similar but it was more than a decade ago). He claimed that the tribe had no numbers in their language (only "many", "few") etc. and were completely incapable of learning to count.... if they learned after about 16 years of age. If they learned before then they could count just fine.

Of course there is much more evidence than this about forming connections before a certain age, etc. My point is that even if Africa truly has "naturally" low IQs, this is almost certainly do to with education and if that were fixed the IQs would rise. So again, the issue is that certain people try to look at IQ and point at something genetic but that's not remotely implied by IQ unless you could ensure the study group had the exact same education as the higher groups.

It can't have been much more than a decade ago. I'm failing to find it too, but I did find a 2005 paper where Everett still says "if I am correct that the Piraha˜ cannot count (something that will require much more experimentation to determine)".

He also recounts his wife attempting to teach counting to eager Piraha students over eight months of daily classes without success. If it turns out that their adults are so hopelessly innumerate but their children can learn then that's got to be one of the most amazing facts (whether about brain plasticity or Sapir-Whorf, either way) I've ever heard.

These days, we prefer the name "linguistic relativity hypothesis". Sapir-Whorf has some ugly ties to the Nazi's: they incorrectly used the theory as evidence for Aryan superiority (which is silly if you know German and some other language). Their usage was ridiculous but, like pedophiles, just the mention of their name taints the subject, hence the name change (and, of course, it more accurately states what the theory is about).

I should do a better job of keeping various articles that discuss the theory as it's kind of a pet favourite of mine. In my own life I've noticed Swiss-german native speakers tend to have a problem distinguishing smell and taste. They use the same word for both.

Sapir-Whorf has some ugly ties to the Nazi's

... and the plan is to ameliorate that with a damnatio memoriae on an ethnically Jewish scientist?

I'm not trying to shoot the messenger, thank you for the information ... but I do really hate it every time I see a bit of evidence for the conspiracy theory that modern anti-racism is hopelessly infiltrated by 4chan trolls.

I agree with the criticism of Lynn's IQ measures, but the "More IQ means better all round" has held up pretty well, at least as far as "better intelligence" is concerned.

Rather lazily copy-pasted content from an old /r/CultureWarRoundup post as well.

It's all the very fine people from /r/drama.

The other day someone asked if Holocaust denial was off limits, so when Zorba replied with "not per se...", it was only a matter of time before someone tried to push the limits.

Nah, being fair to /r/Drama, they have a certain style that is identifiable and it's not this guy.

Yeah, because the whole comment has been copy-pasted. Pretty sure dramanauts know ho to use CTRL+C and CTRL+V.

Just plain copy-paste wouldn't be enough for a dramanaut, they would need to spice it up.

I mean are the figures correct is a fair argument. Does Israel used the holocaust as a political weapon to defend it's actions is also a fair question. Did the holocaust occur at all is an unfair question. The top comment seems to fall within fair but misguided or very likely incorrect.

As I age, I find myself slowly converting to something resembling Hlynkaism.

I mostly agree with you, hell I'd go even further, in and of itself, I don't think it's all that wrong to debate whether it happened at all or not.

But that's missing the point: what sort of person posts something like this as his opening move, on the day we move offsite?

Edit:

This account is private

This user has enabled private mode to cloak their posting history.

Very "well meaning, but misguided" vibes from that one.

eh who cares. I am not here for the quality of the people I am here for ideas that I wouldn't here in the main culture sphere and then to process those ideas on my own terms to come to my own conclusions about them. Between you and me, I think the majority of this sites membership is made up of very bulliable people. Yet I shall be polite, for I come here for ideas, not the people's natures.

I'm sorry, an internet person talking about how bulliable people are is a bit much.

Hey I never said I was an exception to the rule, i am just further proof of the rule being true.

All right, I concede. It's a troll.

(I don't actually disagree with Hlynka all that much, though he seems to hate me for some reason.)

It's all the very fine people from /r/drama.

No, that guy wasn't one of us. The rdrama style is pretty distinct, feeding off of people's preconceptions and leaning into the absurdity of modern discourse. It also features plenty of coded language, which I see none of here.

Actually I don't think I've seen anyone from there trolling since the initial launch, only people participating in good faith, which is interesting to see. Our style really works best on people who don't think too hard about what they read, so I think you guys are mostly off the hook.

The style that rdrama posts and then upvotes internally so it's visible may be distinct, but there's an obvious selection bias here in that the poster may very well just have been a low-quality rdrama user.

For all we know there could be a bunch of crap posts made by rdrama, like potentially this one, that just never rise to visibility there - resulting in a massively inflated view on what stuff actually gets produced.

I don't really know how to convince you guys that this isn't the case, but it isn't. Call it a woman's intuition, or at least something like that.

As others pointed out, the comment has been copy-pasted from another sub, so appeals to style make no sense here.

You're just gonna have to take my word for it, that isn't how rdrama operates. As a subject matter expert, I know that guy wasn't one of us. Whether or not you decide to believe me is up to you.

According to your fellow drama appreciator, there's a guy over there with an axe to grind, who's pastime it is to convince people, that everyone here is a nazi.... I might need a bit more than "trust me, bro".

Could also be sneerclub, but I don't see what they'd get out of it now that we're off redit.

I can't really say more, sorry. Trade secrets.

I suspect some dramanauts are already pissed at me.

No, it's not even that person, because they have a unique style and cannot resist poking the bear. If they were doing it, it wouldn't just be straight up copy and paste, it would include some bait to get us all going so that they could then snip out reactions out of context and run back to show everyone their bouquet of wild flowers.

I think the case for the Aktion Reinhard camps as killing centers is pretty straightforward.

  1. As a matter of historical record, millions of Jews were transited to Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka from '42 through '43.

  2. The vast, vast majority of these people subsequently disappear from the historical record. If the AR camps were simply transit camps to "the east" as deniers claim, there ought to be at the very least thousands (more likely tens or hundreds of thousands)of Jews post-war who recalled being shipped through the AR camps on the way to Minsk, or Riga, or Kiev, or wherever. As far as I know there are no such people at all.

  3. Post-war, everyone who had been at Treblinka, guard and inmate alike, said it had been a killing center for the Jews. To the best of my knowledge not a single Treblinka guard or inmate ever said, "these are all lies, no one was gassed at Treblinka."

  4. Goebbels outright says in his diary that Odilo Globocnik, the man in charge of AR, is "liquidating" the Jews of the General Government.

Post-war, everyone who had been at Treblinka, guard and inmate alike, said it had been a killing center for the Jews.

Which post-war accounts? You have a couple of accounts from former Jewish prisoners working with the Polish underground which are not at all plausible or reliable. The other accounts did not come until decades later during the Treblinka trials of the 1960s, well after the Treblinka narrative had already been created. The basic facts of the extermination narrative had already been established in court, and the broader narrative was subject to judicial notice, so "it didn't happen" wasn't a defense available to them. The former guards and even commandant all received very light sentences, either being acquitted or subsequently released from prison. If these guards had denied the Nuremberg narrative they would have been treated in a harsher fashion.

The case is not straightforward at all. The claim is that upwards of 2 million Jews were murdered at these "Aktion Reinhard" camps, and their remains were buried in precisely known locations. How many mass graves have ever been excavated at these known locations? Zero. An alleged 2 million murders and 0 mass graves ever excavated. You have a couple of witness accounts from Jewish sources that informed the conclusions at Nuremberg (Treblinka was barely discussed at Nuremberg) followed by the confessions decades later in the 1960s which earned the guards very light sentences. But ultimately, if you are claiming that 2 million people were murdered and buried in a known location, but you come up with all these excuses for why nobody should actually excavate to try to find these remains, you do not have a straightforward case.

To emphasize just how not straightforward the case is, notice how you spell the name of this operation- "Aktion Reinhard." This is the preferred spelling for the operation among mainstream historians, which according to mainstream historiography, is supposed to denote the secret plan to exterminate the Jews in the General Government of occupied Poland. The story goes, Reinhard Heydrich was given the honor of having this secret extermination named after him due to his assassination (though Heydrich had no role at all in the operation itself).

But, in fact, the operation was spelled Aktion Reinhardt (with a 't'), which, along with other evidence, ties the naming of this operation to the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Finance Fritz Reinhardt. Why the hubbub over whether it was Reinhard or Reinhardt? Because the former is used by historians as circumstantial evidence tying the operation symbolically to Heydrich, to imply a secret murder operation. Whereas the reality that the operation was named for an economist in the Finance Ministry does not at all fit that narrative. This corollary is conceded by mainstream historians, by the way, but they just use it to assert that it could only have been named after Heydrich and not Reinhardt:

/5. It does seem inherently unlikely that a murderous operation of the complexity of "Aktion Reinhard" would be named after an economist. The implication of naming the "Aktion" after Fritz Reinhardt is that the prime motivation was the expropriation of Jewish property.

So the implication of accepting the actual spelling of the operation (not the spelling you use) is that the operation was not what mainstream historians say it is. Aside from Revisionists, even some mainstream historians accept that Aktion Reinhardt was named after Reinhardt, like Joseph Poprzeczny in his 2004 biography on Globocnik:

In fact, the term "Aktion Reinhardt" was originally the codename for the seizure of Jewish wealth and property... I accept that the name was taken from Fritz Reinhardt, a Reich Finance Ministry official, not from the SS-Gruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, as so many contend.

So you have a murder case with 2 million victims and no bodies- and the main victims have used their considerable influence to avoid any excavations of the supposed mass graves (sounds a lot like a recent case in Canada). Even the spelling you used of the supposed murder operation is controversial, with mainstream historians again misinterpreting history in order to support their pre-canned narrative. Nothing about this is straight-forward, it is all highly unusual.

Edit: BTW, I don't know who is reposting my comments here. Probably a bad actor?

Which post-war accounts? You have a couple of accounts from former Jewish prisoners working with the Polish underground which are not at all plausible or reliable.

Yes, the witness accounts are full of exaggerations, contradictions, probably fabrication, etc. This is true for much history. In his Treblinka book Mattogno makes much out of these inconsistencies. This one said there were ten gas chambers, this one said there were twelve. This one said they were 7x5 meters, this one said 7x7. This one said it was diesel, this one said it was gasoline. This one said it took a half hour to die, this one said twenty minutes. It is mostly nitpicking, and really, discrepancy can be a marker of truth, because witnesses often misremember details.

They all describe pretty much the same thing, i.e chambers of roughly the same size, construction, and operation being used to kill deportees by the thousands. I don't see why I should expect prisoners to have an intimate grasp of the workings of the extermination facilities, anyways.

The former guards and even commandant all received very light sentences, either being acquitted or subsequently released from prison.

Kurt Franz and Franz Stangl both got life in prison. Franz was indeed released after thirty years imprisonment as an old man. I'm not sure I'd call that a "light sentence." Notably, Franz denied that he had actually commanded Treblinka, insisting he'd been in a subordinate position. But he didn't deny the gassings.

If these guards had denied the Nuremberg narrative they would have been treated in a harsher fashion.

Franz and Stangl would have gotten harsher sentences than life imprisonment? The BRD had abolished capital punishment by the 1960s.

all these excuses for why nobody should actually excavate to try to find these remains, you do not have a straightforward case.

I don't have any excuses. As far as I'm concerned, they can go ahead and dig up Treblinka. But I can understand why modern-day Jews would be loathe to do this in order to appease a handful of neo-Nazis.

Reinhard v Reinhardt

I don't care to take a position on this, I don't think it matters.

I'm curious as to why you think Irving, Cole, and Weber accept mass killings at the AR camps. They're pariahs at this point. Irving in particular is "the Holocaust Denial guy" as far as most people are concerned (they even made a movie about it), and he gives interviews where he says things like this so I think it's fair to say he's not very concerned with his mainstream reputation. Do you think they're lying? That they haven't actually looked at the evidence?

Yes, the witness accounts are full of exaggerations, contradictions, probably fabrication, etc.

Indeed; and in the mainstream scholarly view, three unreliable witness accounts full of exaggerations, contradictions, and fabrications yield a reliable account when the inconvenient parts are ignored and the somewhat-compatible pieces can be fashioned together (and expunged when necessary, like the embarrassing, former consensus that diesel exhaust was used to gas millions of people in the AR camps). Such was the logic used in hundreds of witch trials and in the Court of the Red Tsar, where witnesses attesting to supernatural occurrences and confessions extracted under duress were considered sufficient in lieu of concrete evidence.

Earlier, you allowed that one could be skeptical of such confessions extracted from the NKVD:

There were also trials in the USSR, where the same basic story was maintained, but you may be more skeptical about confessions obtained by the NKVD.

But let's take stock of the most major players in the Holocaust, and what they had to say:

  • Himmler: Died in Allied custody

  • Globocnik: Died in Allied custody

  • Christian Wirth: Killed by Partisans

  • Göring: Denied any plan to exterminate the Jews, and explicitly denied ordering Heydrich to exterminate the Jews (contrary to scholarly consensus). And then died in Allied custody.

Göring is particularly notable because he was the highest authority in General Government, where these AR camps existed. There is no doubt that if there was such a secret extermination program, he would have known about it, and he explicitly denied it. So either he was lying or Revisionists are right. For that matter, Göring affirmed the Revisionist historical interpretation of the "Final Solution" as such:

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Will you please answer my question. Do you still say neither Hitler nor you knew of the policy to exterminate the Jews?

Goering: As far as Hitler is concerned, I have said I do not think so. As far as I am concerned, I have said that I did not know, even approximately, to what extent these things were taking place.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You did not know to what degree, but you knew there was a policy that aimed at the extermination of the Jews?

Goering: No, a policy of emigration, not liquidation of the Jews. I knew only that there had been isolated cases of such perpetrations.

Of course, the keystone of the entire Holocaust narrative, including the AR camps (which did not receive so much as 30 minutes of attention at the Nuremberg Trials), is the confession of the former commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss. His confession was extracted from the British, not the NKVD; but Revisionists had for decades pointed out the absurdities and contradictions in this confession which led the court to conclude that 4.5 million people were murdered at Auschwitz. Of course, that number was reduced to 1.1 million after the fall of the Soviet Union, but like water off a duck's back, it didn't motivate any sort of scholarly skepticism over the reliability of other court findings at Nuremberg, or at the subsequent trials which were downstream of this keystone confession.

It wasn't until a 1983 when a book by Rupert Butler, Legions of Death, audaciously bragged about how the confession of Höss was extracted after days of torture. The prime British-Jewish interrogator, Bernard Clarke revealed "It took three days to get a coherent statement out of [Höss]":

The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pyjamas ripped from his body. He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to Clarke the blows and screams were endless.

Eventually, the Medical Officer urged the Captain: "Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse."

A blanket was thrown over Höss and he was dragged to Clarke's car, where the sergeant poured a substantial slug of whisky down his throat. Then Höss tried to sleep.

Clarke thrust his service stick under the man's eyelids and ordered in German: "Keep your pig eyes open, you swine."

...

"They brought him to us when he refused to cooperate over questioning about his activities during the war. He came in the winter of 1945/6 and was put in a small jail cell in the barracks," recalls Mr. Jones. Two other soldiers were detailed with Mr. Jones to join Höss in his cell to help break him down for interrogation. "We sat in the cell with him, night and day, armed with axe handles. Our job was to prod him every time he fell asleep to help break down his resistance," said Mr. Jones. When Höss was taken out for exercise he was made to wear only jeans and a thin cotton shirt in the bitter cold. After three days and nights without sleep, Höss finally broke down and made a full confession to the authorities.

There are a lot more details in the article, like his statement was written in English and then translated into German in an attempt to make the latter appear as the original. This confession is the wellspring of the entire narrative and all subsequent trials, as the defendants were not permitted to dispute the findings of the Nuremberg trials. Earlier you also remarked:

In short, "they didn't bother to contest the charges, because they knew the Jews would railroad them anyway." Personally, if I was being accused of complicity in the murders of hundreds of thousands of people, and it was a lie, I think I would maintain my innocence for the sake of my conscience.

Hard to say what you would do if you were suffering these same conditions, isn't it? There are of course those who did maintain their innocence, and they were found guilty and executed anyway. Again, not the NKVD, but Revisionist research has provided great insight into the tactics of these War Crimes investigations: incompetence, dishonestly, forging documents, witness intimidation, suppression of evidence.

For context, Bruno Tesch was accused of knowingly supplying gas chambers and Zyklon B for the purpose of exterminating human beings, a charge for which he was clearly innocent. He maintained his innocence, and that the entire extent of his work and that of his gassing technicians was for delousing purposes only. As just one example, this Revisionist researcher found that the original German transcript of the interrogation had been marked for modification in the official English court interpretation. Here's an example of a passage from the German interrogation that was deleted in the official English version, where a Sergeant Freud threatened extradition to the Soviets for not getting answers he wanted:

Q. ... I thought you would like to speak, but as you are not doing that, we must proceed differently with you; for we want to know what the firm had to do with the gassing of men. You know the firm's position today, as well as yours, and that of the other gentlemen, Dr TESCH and WEINBACHER? Your sphere of activity was mostly in the East, such as AUSCHWITZ, RIGA, LUBLIN, ORANIENBURG, and all those places are now under Russian authority. We shall be forced to pass you on to the Russians who now deal with such cases and probably employ other methods to make you speak.

A. I cannot make any other statements. I can only assure you that my tongue has been loosened and that I will tell you everything.

Q. Until now you have not told us anything.

A. I must adhere to my statement that only after your victory did I hear that men had been gassed in the concentration camps...

"At the time, there was still a realistic possibility that Tesch would be turned over to the Russians, and Freud took the opportunity to threaten that because of the 4.5 million people he had killed, the Russians would rip out Tesch's [finger and toe] nails.

They still maintained their innocence:

Both stated that they knew nothing about Gas Chambers, but had been engaged in 'delousing' only. It is practically certain that they had been `briefed' in what they should say when questioned, as they both professed ignorance of the simplest things. It was only after having been spoken to sharply that the above was wormed out of them.

They maintained their innocence- and they were railroaded, found guilty, and executed. If they had spun a story to Sergeant Freud about how they received an oral order from Himmler at some date then they would have been treated with more leniency. Instead, they were threatened with torture and executed anyway even though they were clearly innocent. This wasn't the NKVD. It was the Western Allies that did this.

As far as I'm concerned, they can go ahead and dig up Treblinka. But I can understand why modern-day Jews would be loathe to do this in order to appease a handful of neo-Nazis.

It is not acceptable that they proclaim that their suffering was so profound that it transcends the most minimal standards of scientific and criminal investigation. An investigation of a single murder would yield an order of a magnitude more forensic investigation than was done for the alleged murder of up to 2 million people. Particularly given that the original extermination narratives in the Western camps, Auschwitz, and Majdanek have fallen apart over time and after Revisionist scrutiny.

The AR camp narrative remains the most unscathed precisely because it has the least amount of evidence for Revisionists to scrutinize (and that evidence was in the custody of the NKVD, who knows what exculpatory evidence has been hidden or destroyed). It behooves them to keep it that way by avoiding excavations, because more evidence has only made the work of Revisionists easier in their study of the other camps.

Indeed; and in the mainstream scholarly view, three unreliable witness accounts full of exaggerations, contradictions, and fabrications yield a reliable account when the inconvenient parts are ignored and the somewhat-compatible pieces can be fashioned together (and expunged when necessary, like the embarrassing, former consensus that diesel exhaust was used to gas millions of people in the AR camps).

This is how history works. When a variety of independent accounts coincide on certain points, elevated confidence in the points of coincidence is warranted. It helps that they are backed up by the confessions of the perpetrators.

The Nazis got much propaganda mileage out of Bolshevik atrocities in the east, much of it fabricated or exaggerated. This does not mean Bolshevik atrocities didn't happen.

Of course, the keystone of the entire Holocaust narrative, including the AR camps

The confessions of Rudolf Höss, who if I recall correctly said he had visited the AR camps once, is not the keystone of the evidence for AR. It's significantly less relevant than the testimonies of the actual staff and inmates of the camps.

Of course, that number was reduced to 1.1 million after the fall of the Soviet Union, but like water off a duck's back, it didn't motivate any sort of scholarly skepticism over the reliability of other court findings at Nuremberg, or at the subsequent trials which were downstream of this keystone confession.

Gerald Reitlinger wrote in his book on the Final Solution that less than a million people had died in Auschwitz. It's not true that 4 million was agreed upon until the fall of the Iron Curtain, at which point it was shamefacedly revised. Hilberg also has a number of c.1 million in his book, also well before the fall of the USSR.

(which did not receive so much as 30 minutes of attention at the Nuremberg Trials)

What's the relevance of this? Lots of different sorts of people died at Auschwitz. AR was Jews only. Most Allied propaganda downplayed the issue of the Jews to avoid playing into Nazi charges that it was a "war for the Jews."

Hard to say what you would do if you were suffering these same conditions, isn't it?

We were talking about Treblinka, weren't we? Wrt to your digressions about Höss and Tesch, your argument is, what, that if the Treblinka guards in West German courts in the 60s hadn't gone along with the party line they would have been tortured by US troops and/or deported to Russia? Or perhaps it's a weaker argument that such past treatment created a chilling effect that frightened these men into compliance twenty years later despite the lack of any immediate threat of torture/deportation. I could buy that, maybe if some had confessed and others hadn't. Not for all of them. That's not even to mention the SS men who confessed outside of courtroom settings, like Franz Suchomel in his interview with Claude Lanzmann.

Speaking of paucity of evidence for a narrative, where is the evidence for the "Treblinka transit camp" narrative? There is plenty of evidence people were sent to Treblinka. Revisionists agree on that. There are train schedules, internal Nazi communications, eyewitness reports from Jewish transportees, eyewitness reports from railwaymen and locals, eyewitness reports from guards. But there are no train schedules for trains from Treblinka and to the Soviet east, there is no testimony from Jews transited from Treblinka to the Soviet east, there is no testimony from Nazi officials in the occupied territories receiving transports from Treblinka, there are no transport lists, there are no records of the massive logistical effort that would have been necessary to settle and supply these massive numbers of people. There is ample evidence that hundreds of thousands were sent to Treblinka, and none that they left.

Thomas Kues wrote three massive articles on CODOH supposedly demonstrating the "presence of 'gassed 'jews in the occupied eastern territories." He managed to do this without providing evidence of a single AR victim "in the occupied eastern territories." Because there isn't any. To give a more specific example, according to Kues ~70,000 Dutch jews (I believe lower than the 'mainstream' number, but I will go with it) were deported east from Holland in '42-'43. Kues thinks they were sent on to Belarus, the Baltic, and the Ukraine. His evidence for this is wartime rumor, second and third-hand hearsay, and reports in foreign papers. Wartime rumor, second and third-hand hearsay, and reports in foreign papers are course worthless when they talk about extermination facilities, but evidential gold when they talk about resettlement in the east. Apparently not one of those 70,000 Dutch Jews ever wrote anything down or spoke to anyone, before or after the war.

What do you make of Goebbels' statements in his diary, on Globocnik's operations in Poland? Revisionists often bemoan a lack of written documentation wrt to the murder of the Jews, yet there is a frank admission on the part of one of the Nazi elite that Globocnik is "liquidating" 60% of the Jews of the general government. Everywhere else in Goebbels' diaries where he uses the word "liquidation" to refer to human beings rather than a party or an institution or something like that, he plainly refers to killing. He even explicitly differentiates between "evacuation" and "liquidation" on at least one occasion.

This is how history works.

It is not at all how history works. Witness accounts are treated as a single dimension that ought be corroborated with documents and physical evidence, particularly when the witnesses involved have a motive to lie, and they attest to extremely unusual events. The lack of documents is well known and has long been admitted to by mainstream historians, like Léon Poliakov in 1951:

As regards the conception properly called of the plan for a total extermination, the three or four principal actors committed suicide in May of 1945. No document has survived or perhaps has ever existed.

No documents, no mass graves; a tortured confession with known errors and exaggerations, is the basis for the entire narrative which was already considered "history" well before the Treblinka trials in the 1960s. Renowned historian A.J.P Taylor acknowledged:

The evidence of which there is too much is that collected for the trials of war-criminals in Nuremberg. Though these documents look imposing in their endless volumes, they are dangerous material for a historian to use. They were collected, hastily and almost at random, as a basis for the lawyer's briefs. This is not how historians would proceed. The lawyer aims to make a case; the historian wishes to understand a situation. The evidence which convinces lawyers often fails to satisfy us; our methods seem singularly imprecise to them. But even lawyers must not have qualms about the evidence at Nuremberg. The documents were chosen not only to demonstrate the war-guilt of the men on trial, but to conceal that of the prosecuting Powers... The verdict preceded the tribunal; and the documents were brought in to sustain a conclusion which had already been settled.

Surely you are aware that the defense at the Nuremberg trials only had available to them documents which had been selected by the prosecution as relevant to the case. This is not how history works, this is how show-trials work.

The confessions of Rudolf Höss, who if I recall correctly said he had visited the AR camps once, is not the keystone of the evidence for AR.

Oh it's even better than that. Höss's statement said:

I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time, there were already in the General Government three other extermination camps: Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek.

Other than the fact that Wolzek was not a camp, the even more glaring problem is that it is universally agreed by historians that Treblinka did not open until July 1942 and received its first transport later that month. Some historians try to place a different year for Höss's order and visit to Treblinka, but none of the proposed timelines work. Every proposed timeline is contradicted by another part of the story. There is in fact no evidence at all that Höss visited Treblinka, so where does his descriptions of the gas chambers and such come from? Probably from the published accounts from Wiernik, Grossman, Rachman, etc which would have been known to the interrogators. In the same way the interrogators tried to lead the defendants in the Tesch Trial to admit to the "gas chamber disguised as shower room" scheme, which they never did. The fact is, even if you try to torture Höss's statement, there is no internally consistent account of his supposed visit to Treblinka.

This is of course not the only continuity problem with the Treblinka story. Revisionists uncovered a newspaper clipping from the Polish-language London newspaper Dziennik Polski which reported on alleged extermination actions at Treblinka a whole two weeks before the camp even opened. How does an international newspaper report on an extermination camp weeks before it even opened and received its first transport? It turns out that's not even the only apocryphal rumor of a "Treblinka extermination camp" published before the camp even opened. As early as May 1942:

At that time, i.e. in late May and early June 1942, the clandestine press published reports on two camps in Treblinka: the labor camp and the death camp. The first reference to the killing center there is to be found in a text by Gutkowski entitled ‘The Scroll of Agony and Destruction,’ which probably constitutes the draft of an Oneg Shabbat press bulletin. In the entry dated May 29, 1942, we read: ‘There are two camps in Treblinka: a labor camp and a death camp. In the death camp people are not murdered by shooting (the criminals are saving ammunition), but by means of a lethal rod [in the Yiddish original: troytshtekn].’ This item, without mention of the ‘lethal rod,’ was printed on June 2, 1942 by the newspaper Yedies. The next issue of that paper, dated June 9, 1942, carried an article entitled ‘The Death Camp in Trenblinka [sic]’ In it we read:

‘A Pole who managed to bribe his way out of the camp relates: 'I worked with the German personnel of the labor camp. The Poles present there were assigned the task of digging huge pits. The Germans brought a group of about 300 Jews every day. They were ordered to undress and get into the pit. The Poles then had to cover the pits with soil, burying the people there alive. After they finished their work, they were shot.’”

Again, it is unanimously agreed that Treblinka did not open until July 1942 and received its first transport on 22 or 23 July 1942. So how is an international newspaper talking about gassings in Treblinka before the camp was open?

But there are no train schedules for trains from Treblinka and to the Soviet east

The entire body of evidence was in Soviet custody. If there were exculpatory records, do you trust that the Soviets would have introduced them as evidence as they were building a case against the Germans? Keep in mind they accused the Germans of conducting the Katyn Forest massacre, which they were guilty of. A lack of records is indeed suspicious, but that suspicion can be cast in multiple directions.

I could buy that, maybe if some had confessed and others hadn't. Not for all of them.

The extermination narrative at Treblinka was not even in question at the trials in the 1960s. The only question was of the guilt of the alleged perpetrators. "It didn't happen" was not a defense they could have used. Take Lambert for example, who was found guilty of constructing the gas chambers at Treblinka. What exactly does he "confess" to? He confesses to a construction project, but denies involvement or knowledge of the alleged murder operation. He got time served for minimizing his involvement that way, and he would have faced a much harsher punishment if he tried to deny the entire basis for the trial. Even Kurt Franz, the commandant of a camp that allegedly murdered hundreds of thousands, was released from prison after a long sentence. Franz Stangl died in custody while awaiting his appeal, so it's also disingenuous to mark him down as purely a confessor given he was challenging his conviction. And, as already mentioned, key figures like Goering and Hanks Frank did deny all knowledge and involvement even though they would have been in a position where they must have known, if it had happened.

Famously, 54 of 180 of the accused witches admitted guilt in the Salem Witch trials. 19 who refused to admit guilt were executed. Confessions extracted in military tribunals, after the alleged war crime had already been purportedly proven, is not a good way to do history.

Kues thinks they were sent on to Belarus, the Baltic, and the Ukraine. His evidence for this is wartime rumor, second and third-hand hearsay, and reports in foreign papers. Wartime rumor, second and third-hand hearsay, and reports in foreign papers are course worthless when they talk about extermination facilities, but evidential gold when they talk about resettlement in the east.

Add to that postcards which deportees sent to Warsaw after their transit. Historians say that these were forged by the SS as a ruse to lure more Jews onto trains. Tracking the whereabouts with that level of granularity is basically impossible given the circumstances of the war. Even more so given the entire custody of the evidence was in the hands of the Soviet Union. Ultimately, historians are the ones who claim to know the precise remains of every single one of these people, but the evidence for their conclusion does not hold up to scrutiny.

If you accuse someone of having murdered and buried a busload of people in his backyard, it would be nothing more than a desperate attempt to reverse the burden of proof to demand that the accused must locate the people who were on the bus if he wants to dispute the claim. You're the one saying the busload of people was murdered and buried in the backyard, where's the evidence for that? Not a single grave has ever been excavated. It's a desperate strategy for an extraordinary claim that lacks evidence.

What do you make of Goebbels' statements in his diary, on Globocnik's operations in Poland?

His statements are vague, which is why Holocaust historians find it necessary to rely on them. Excavating alleged mass graves? Nah. Vague diary statements? They make reliable evidence because you can just work backwards and fill in the blanks with your preferred narrative.

You're referring to Goebbels' vague statement on March 27, 1942. Earlier that month, March 7, 1942, he wrote:

There are about 11 million Jews in Europe. Later it will be necessary to concentrate them in the East. After the war some island such as Madagascar can be assigned to them

Like other leaders, Goebbels expected a reboot of the Madagascar plan after the war, not some extermination plan.

It is not at all how history works. Witness accounts are treated as a single dimension that ought be corroborated with documents and physical evidence, particularly when the witnesses involved have a motive to lie, and they attest to extremely unusual events. The lack of documents is well known and has long been admitted to by mainstream historians, like Léon Poliakov in 1951:

There are documents concerning the transport of the Jews to Treblinka. There is eyewitness testimony, of both perpetrators and victims. There is physical evidence. The Łukaszkiewicz report, which you cited in the OP comment (or rather, the comment cited by the OP comment) as having failed to find any mass graves at Treblinka, excavated near the site of the old gas chambers (i.e, where the mass graves were reported to have been), and reported "a large quantity of ashes as well as human remains," in the pits they dug. This sounds like a mass grave of cremated remains to me, exactly as would be expected from the witness accounts. Not even to mention the 2 hectares of ground covered with human ash and bone Łukaszkiewicz found.

Other than the fact that Wolzek was not a camp

The Wolzek blunder is a point in favor of Hoess' testimony, not against it. Prior to giving the "Wolzek" statement, Höss was interrogated once before, and when asked about the three AR camps he named them as "Treblinka, Belzak near Lemberg and the third one was 40 kilometers in the direction of Kulm. It was past Kulm in an easterly direction." So for whatever reason it is clear Höss did not remember the third camp as well as the other two. Yet Sobibor just so happens to be ~40km northeast of Chelm by rail. Why he ultimately called it "Wolzek," I don't know, but it seems highly unlikely that Höss would make up a nonexistent camp that just happened to share a location with Sobibor. Apparently Höss had a bad memory, which would explain some of the other errors he made as well.

Hoess' statements are hardly critical to the AR story anyways. Apparently Kues agrees, since he believes Höss' confession was entirely cobbled together from previous testimonies. After all, Höss was tortured and spent only hours at Treblinka, so his testimony is significantly less valuable in this regard than that of the Treblinka guards, who were not tortured and who worked there for months.

This is of course not the only continuity problem with the Treblinka story. Revisionists uncovered a newspaper clipping from the Polish-language London newspaper Dziennik Polski which reported on alleged extermination actions at Treblinka a whole two weeks before the camp even opened.

The start date of Treblinka's operation is not as set in stone as Kues has it. At least two witnesses (Ryszard Czarkowski and Jan Sulkowski) testified to transports coming to Treblinka before 22 July. With that in mind it seems perfectly possible that the gas chamber was "tested" before the large transports began arriving regularly from the Warsaw Ghetto. Such happened at Sobibor and Belzec, which had been operational for months at this point.

The entire body of evidence was in Soviet custody. If there were exculpatory records, do you trust that the Soviets would have introduced them as evidence as they were building a case against the Germans? Keep in mind they accused the Germans of conducting the Katyn Forest massacre, which they were guilty of. A lack of records is indeed suspicious, but that suspicion can be cast in multiple directions.

Why do you find "the Soviets destroyed all the evidence" any less risible than "the Nazis destroyed all the evidence" (not that they did)? And of course it's not just documents. We're talking about 1,000,000+ people supposedly deported to the east (where in the east?). None of these people survived the war? None of these people told their stories after the war? None of these people talked to anyone else who might've told their stories?

The extermination narrative at Treblinka was not even in question at the trials in the 1960s. The only question was of the guilt of the alleged perpetrators. "It didn't happen" was not a defense they could have used.

Legally, maybe not, which is not what I claimed anyways. But none of them denied in their personal lives? None of them denied it to friends or acquaintances? On their death beds? Not one of these dozens of people--particularly those like Stangl and Franz who received the maximum sentence, anyways--decided to stand up, in court or elsewhere, and say, "to hell with this sham trial, I'm telling the truth"?

Even Kurt Franz, the commandant of a camp that allegedly murdered hundreds of thousands, was released from prison after a long sentence.

Yes, he was released as a sick old man in the early 90s, to die shortly afterwards. I would hardly call his sentence "mild" as you originally did.

I am not sure where Lambert denied any "knowledge of the alleged murder operation"? It doesn't seem to say that on the page you linked. What do you think the guy from Aktion T4 was building at a transit camp? For that matter, most of the Reinhard staff were former T4 men, why were they of all people put in charge of this "transit camp"?

Franz Stangl died in custody while awaiting his appeal, so it's also disingenuous to mark him down as purely a confessor given he was challenging his conviction.

Did he challenge his conviction by denying Treblinka's status as an extermination camp? I don't believe he did.

Add to that postcards which deportees sent to Warsaw after their transit.

I'm familiar with the claim from this IHR article. All of the cited sources (footnote 47) were luckily available online, so I checked them, and not one offers the actual name or identity of a person attached to one of these supposed post cards. In fact one of the cited ghetto diarists explicitly says that no matter how hard he tried, he could never actually track down one of these elusive postcards or letters from the deportees in the east. Every lead he chased ended in a rumor.

If you accuse someone of having murdered and buried a busload of people in his backyard, it would be nothing more than a desperate attempt to reverse the burden of proof to demand that the accused must locate the people who were on the bus if he wants to dispute the claim.

I would compare it to a man kidnapped by two of his mortal enemies, bundled into a car in full view of dozens of witnesses, and then driven out into the woods. Later the kidnappers come back alone and the man is never seen again. Later still one of two kidnappers (the other one swallowed a cyanide capsule) confesses, "we shot him and buried him in a ditch." But you say in fact the victim was sent to live on a farm upstate.

His statements are vague, which is why Holocaust historians find it necessary to rely on them.

It isn't vague at all:

Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor. The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is to carry this measure through, is doing it with considerable circumspection and according to a method that does not attract too much attention.

Does "considerable circumspection and according to a method that does not attract too much attention" really sound like "a train to Riga"?

Or how about Jurgen Stroop's report, even clearer if possible, where he refers to a transport of a few thousand captured rebels from the Warsaw ghetto, that he's sent to Treblinka to be "destroyed." What's the sense in sending a few thousand people to a transit camp to be killed? Why not shoot them in Warsaw? Strongly suggests there was something special about Treblinka that made it ideal for the elimination of thousands of people in short periods of time.

The start date of Treblinka's operation is not as set in stone as Kues has it.

Yes, it is. It is universally agreed that gassing operations began with the transports from Warsaw on July 22. Can you cite one historian who places the beginning of gassing operations before that? There's also the July 7th letter from the first Commandant of that Treblinka camp, Irmfried Eberl, which states that the "Work Camp [Arbeitslager] Treblinkla" will be ready on July 11th. But by July 9th there were already reports, published by the London-based Dziennik Polski:

We provide here data [dane] on the state of affairs in Poland, presented the day before yesterday [i.e. 9 July 1942] by Minister Mikołajczyk to British and foreign reporters at a press conference held by the British Ministry of Information... All children aged 2-3 years from the orphanage, who numbered 108, were sent away from the city along with their nurses and murdered. Altogether 2,500 people were murdered that night, while the remaining 26,000 were sent to camps in Bełżec and Tremblinka... Reportedly in Bełźec and Tremblinka the killing is going on with the help of poisonous gas [za pomoca gazów trujacych].

Of course, that CODOH article shows even more rumors of an extermination camp in Treblinka going back to May 1942, where the original method of mass murder was described as "lethal rods." That was only the first of many variations of alleged method of mass murder. By November 1942, less than four months after the camp was open, the Warsaw ghetto resistance published claims of 2 million deaths by steam chamber in Treblinka (German disinfestation chambers during the war were often operated with steam):

The ghost of death in the steam chambers would stand before the eyes of the whole Polish people... we all have become aware of Treblinka. Over there, people are boiled alive.

Eberl's letter is also interesting because he refers to Treblinka as a work camp, not an extermination camp. It's not the only instance where an AR camp is explicitly identified as having a non-homicidal function. Himmler's 5 July 1943 directive for example reads:

"The Sobibór transit camp [Durchgangslager], located in the Lublin district, is to be converted into a concentration camp. A dismantling unit for captured enemy munitions is to be set up in the concentration camp."

And Osawld Pohl (head of SS-WVHA and camp system) replies:

"According to your above instructions, the Sobibór transit camp [Durchgangslager] in the Lublin district is to be converted into a concentration camp. I have discussed this with SS-Gruppenführer Globocnik...

There's a third document where Himmler's assistant referred to Sobibór as a transit camp. How do historians explain these documents? They say that the SS were using camouflage in their communications in order to maintain the utmost secrecy in their extermination operation. That's especially ironic given a London newspaper blew the lid on the Treblinka extermination camp before it was even operational. Historians don't even acknowledge these contradictions, they just act as if they don't exist because Revisionists are the only ones willing to point them out and show that the historiography does not explain the known evidence.

By the way, Oswald Pohl himself worked closely in Operation Reinhardt with both Himmler and Globocnik. He and the rest his SS-WVHA denied any knowledge of an extermination operation. He would have known if Operation Reinhardt was an extermination plan, and he denied any knowledge of that.

Hoess' statements are hardly critical to the AR story anyways. Apparently Kues agrees, since he believes Höss' confession was entirely cobbled together from previous testimonies.

Heoss' statements are critical precisely because they were clearly cobbled together from previous accounts. The significance of Hoess is that having the story come from a camp commandant gives it a lot more credibility than a story said to be written by anonymous escapees.

The credibility of Wiernik for example has always been enigmatic. Imagine if Wiernik really did witness everything he claimed, and planned the great revolt and escaped after heroically killing a Ukrainian guard with an axe. Why wouldn't he be an international superstar and why would his account be virtually unknown? You cannot even buy A Year in Treblinka on Amazon despite the importance of his remarkable, first-hand account of the single most unusual event in WWII.

Goering, Hans Frank, Oswald Pohl; that is a notable list of top leadership that would have known about this extermination operation in General Government, but they maintained their denial through the end. Heoss gave credibility to these tall tales by recycling them under duress, but he was never in Treblinka; and historians can't even "choose their own adventure", as they so often do, and a pick a date of his visit that's consistent with the rest of the timeline.

The Łukaszkiewicz report

The case is so straightforward that you are reduced to contradicting the conclusion of the report you are citing. "Łukaszkiewicz found mass graves!" According to Łukaszkiewicz, he did not. The murder, cremation, and burial of upwards of a million people would leave metric tonnes of evidence. Why are you reduced to these sorts of appeals for something that ought to have an enormous amount of physical evidence that should have easily been found at any point since 1945? Because the claim is extraordinary and the evidence is very weak.

Why do you find "the Soviets destroyed all the evidence" any less risible than "the Nazis destroyed all the evidence" (not that they did)?

It's a matter of the quantity and quality of the evidence not measuring up to the extraordinary nature of the claims. You are claiming that upwards of a million people were murdered, cremated, and buried in this small camp, and that all these cremations happened in about 120 days (with zero contemporaneous reports of such an enormous, non-stop cremation operation). The lack of evidence is the problem, and the reasons for the lack of evidence could be multiple. But ultimately, "it didn't happen" is the only plausible explanation for why such an allegedly enormous operation like this would have left behind so little evidence. And what little was left behind was in the custody of the Soviet Union, which denied access to outside investigators and even modified structures in existing camps to advance the gas chamber claim.

Reinhard staff

You've already dodged a defense of the official narrative regarding "Operation Reinhard". To answer your question, you first have to understand what Operation Reinhardt denoted, which was not what historians claim it denoted. Why are you so interested in the "Reinhard staff" if you aren't even interested in what Operation Reinhardt actually was? The reason is that the Revisionist interpretation of Operation Reinhardt fits the evidence far better than the mainstream story of a secret extermination plan named in honor of the Hangman Heydrich.

Did he challenge his conviction by denying Treblinka's status as an extermination camp? I don't believe he did.

Stangl died under suspicious circumstances before his appeal was heard. We cannot say how it would have unfolded if he had not died in custody like Himmler, Globocnik, Eberl, etc.

It isn't vague at all

Actually "considerable circumspection and according to a method that does not attract too much attention" is vague. You are starting with your own preferred conclusion and filling in the blank. But Revisionists claim that this was referring to the liquidation of the ghettos where Jews were indeed rounded up, robbed of their possessions, and deported. The Revisionist interpretation of these events explains both the March 27th entry and the March 7th entry which discusses a continuation of the Madagascar plan after the war. Your interpretation may explain the later but it does not explain the earlier entry. The Revisionist interpretation explains both entries.

I would compare it to a man kidnapped by two of his mortal enemies

This is the exact same logic used to hoodwink an entire country into believing atrocities that never happened, like the so-called mass graves at the Kamloops Indian Reservation schools. "The Catholic Church kidnapped those children in order to genocide their culture. You are a genocide denier if you think these GPR results aren't good enough to conclude that this is a mass grave of victims of the Catholic Church!"

In any serious investigation, witness testimony would be followed by excavations to try to identify remains, determine cause of death, and conclude if that evidence coincides with the various accounts. This has not happened in Kamloops and it has not happened in Treblinka.

It did happen in the German investigation of the Kayn Forest massacre. When the Germans discovered the mass graves of the Katyn Forest, they invited international observers and even released American POWs to monitor and report on the investigation to Western authorities. They (NSFW) excavated the remains in the mass graves, conducted autopsies, identified the remains they could, tried to determine cause and time of death, and documented everything. And the Germans were still accused of this crime by the Soviet prosecution at Nuremberg, and the truth was denied until the fall of the Soviet Union.

Not a single iota of similar investigation has happened for the alleged murder of around 2 million people in the so-called AR camps. Contradictory witness accounts and confessions extracted in tribunals are not a substitute for a minimum level of investigation that any reasonable person should expect in order to believe these extraordinary claims.

More comments

It's still entirely conceivable that the 750,000 figure is bogus.

Besides, is it really abnormal for large numbers of people to simply disappear from the historical record?

Besides, is it really abnormal for large numbers of people to simply disappear from the historical record?

According relevant Nazi documentation, as of December 1942 1,000,000+ Jews had been sent to Belzec, Sobibor, or Treblinka. More were sent later, ultimately around 2,000,000. The standard denier argument, as put forward by people like Carlo Mattogno is that the AR camps were simply transit camps, from which the Jews were deported to the Soviet east. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single example of an individual Jew who reported being transited through any AR camp to the Soviet east. Considering how many Holocaust survivors told their stories after the war, you would expect a large number to have had this experience. Not to mention if this huge number of people was sent east, they would have had to have been housed in ghettos, or labor camps. They wouldn't have been turned loose to roam freely in the middle of the war, since the Nazis considered Jews in the east equivalent to partisans. Yet there is no record of AR deportees arriving en masse in any eastern settlements. In other words, ~2,000,000 people are sent to Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, and then vanish off the face of the earth.

Perhaps this wouldn't be enough to prove genocide on its own, except there are also the testimonies of dozens of both former AR guards and inmates that the AR camps were murder centers. A while back I read (chunks, because it is about 1200 pages long) of Mattogno's The "Extermination Camps" of "Aktion Reinhardt", which is his massive long-form response to his critics, and his explanation for why not a single AR guard ever maintained the falsity of the charges was pretty pathetic. In short, "they didn't bother to contest the charges, because they knew the Jews would railroad them anyway." Personally, if I was being accused of complicity in the murders of hundreds of thousands of people, and it was a lie, I think I would maintain my innocence for the sake of my conscience.

It's also worth noting that David Irving, Mark Weber, and David Cole, probably the most prominent 'revisionists' of the past several decades accept that Jews were killed en masse at the AR camps (not to mention shootings on the eastern front). They just deny that they were any gassings at Auschwitz. The usual denier line of "the historians are too afraid to contest the narrative" hardly works with regards to those three, because their professional reputations are shot anyhow, and acceptance of Aktion Reinhard isn't doing anything to rehabilitate them.

why not a single AR guard ever maintained the falsity of the charges

Just to clarify: are we here talking about the Treblinka / Sobibor / Majdanek / Belzec trials in West Germany?

Otherwise, point taken, thanks.

Just to clarify: are we here talking about the Treblinka / Sobibor / Majdanek / Belzec trials in West Germany?

Yes.

There were also trials in the USSR, where the same basic story was maintained, but you may be more skeptical about confessions obtained by the NKVD.

And this is exactly why free speech and open inquiry is so important. Had we just banned the topic, I would have never stumbled upon someone with the patience and knowledge to take revisionist accounts to task. This way, I actually learned something (and, if it matters, have now even less doubt in the facticity of the Holocaust than before).

Alright, I'm gonna chime in here.

@Jiro points out, correctly, that despite there being a lot of words here there isn't actually much evidence. A rule:

Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.

Also known as the "hot take" rule.

If you're saying something that's deeply out of the ordinary or difficult-to-defend, the next person is going to ask you to explain what you mean. You can head this off by explaining what you mean before hitting submit. The alternative is that the first half-dozen responses will all be "can you explain in more detail", which increases clutter and makes it much harder to follow the conversation.

Are your statements accurate? Are you just making it up? Fucked if I know! But if you're going for straight-up "the holocaust was a fake" then you damn well better be bringing some serious ammo to the table.

You should also be pre-emptively answering expected responses, and you're not really doing this. @To_Mandalay has a good example of such responses; you've chosen instead to fling out stuff like bloggers "desperation descending into madness". One of our rules is:

Be charitable.

Assume the people you're talking to or about have thought through the issues you're discussing, and try to represent their views in a way they would recognize.

and this is a good example of not doing that.

Next, @Aransentin points out that this is just copypasted from another site. Good chance you're not even the author; you didn't even include all the links!

Finally you've made no effort to actually respond to this, choosing instead to go ask someone their thoughts on HBD.

This might not be a troll, but it sure is acting like one, and I'm just gonna ban you for a few days here.

I recall some past cultural war posts from this year discussing Joe Rogan. In that vein, I came across a video (https://youtube.com/watch?v=RZFApIBGQAg), via Keith Woods, discussing Jewish overrepresentation among his political guests. By his estimation (and he's provided an accompanying excel sheet with the data) at least 42% of all political guests since the inception of the podcast have been Jewish.

Now, I'm not sure this means much of anything, but I thought an interesting question was posed: should we be concerned that one particular ethnic group is exercising this much influence over one of the most watched political podcasts in the world?

I'm not entirely convinced by his argument, but it feels like a question worth asking.

  • -23

IF there really is something that makes jews have 'subversive' or 'unrooted' or 'psychologizing' traits, can you argue for that?

The HBD response is: jews are smarter, good genes, and intelligence is useful. same reason nobel prizes, same reason so many famous jewish musicians and poets. Is that the whole story?

Not really no unless they are specifically speaking about jewish representation in the world or something specific to their culture each time which would make the podcast a weird boombox for the jews specifically. Beyond that if they are just talking about their work then their jewishness has nothing to do with it. Look at the details not the blanket view.

That is literally the nature of market dominant minorities. Should we be concerned that South Africans replace white rulers with indian ones. Should we be concerned that every success of Malaysia and Indonesia is from East Asian descent? And that every big tech company in the states de facto run by Indians?

Well everyone in South Africa and Malaysia is. Is that because they don't know what a market dominant minority is? Because to be honest I'm not exactly clear on that myself.

It’s worth noting this over-representation simply to defend the large population of basic white people who do not have the same privileges but are continually smeared in newspapers as being privileged and over-represented. That’s really the most important bit for me and why I care about it. It is the easiest and most efficient argumentative tool for deconstructing affirmative action / privilege discourse. I do not think that I would actually want any form of affirmative action that reduces Jewish percentage in institutions, except perhaps national security positions related to the Middle East.

But yeah, the absence of noting has damaged some conversations. Weinstein and Epstein and Maxwell were not just basic white people, they had strange relationships with well-connected AIPAC lobbyists and Israeli politicians and at least one victim testified to anti-gentile comments. But no one noted this. Basic white people are under-represented at Ivy leagues and have been for a while, but no one notes this (except for on themotte, by like, me and two others), and this is important to note when discussions on Ivy League representation is had. It’s actually important; not edgy, to note this in certain discussions.

Uh, weinstein/epsein/maxwell being jewish isn't at all surprising, and proves nothing about how common sexual abuse is among jews with power, if the OP's claim about so many politics people being jews is true. Then you'd expect there to be a lot of jew sexual abusers even with no relation to jewishness. While the 50% clearly isn't true for politics overall, the same applies, and there are plenty of non-epstein cases of sex weirdness in politics.

Their social sphere (access to important members of Jewish community, Israeli politicians and spy agencies) were elements of how they gained influence and went unpunished. Both had connections to a former Israeli PM, Epstein’s original financial backing was from a heavily pro-Jewish billionaire (Wexler), and Weinstein had an Israeli spy agency he used to spy on victims. We’re not talking about religion here but an affiliative culture.

Okay but how is that different than any other influential community having social connections?

The influential community is far more influential, has far more social connections, and a relationship to a sovereign ethnostate that has a reputation for foulplay

Agreed. Progressives like to get very granular with much of their idpol classifications but not THIS granular. Just as the HBD folk like to say that evolution does not end at the neck, racial classification does not end at White People.

One way of undermining the woke stack is to deny any of it matters, perhaps ala official colorblind civic nationalism, and deliberately obfuscating. Another way of undermining it is to say that every kind of ethnicity or racial classification matters, massively muddying their methodological waters.

You can sound kind of moronic and simple if you take the former tack. But if you actually appreciate what the civic nationalists aim for, might maintain a sophisticated credibility by going far beyond what the progressives do. Hopefully exploding their paradigm, provoking exhaustion, and falling back on civic nationalism by default.

The overrepresentation of jews is explained by HBD, I find the conspiratorial angles on boring.

Doesn't have to be conspirational. You may want less jews for the same reason you might want less white men on a board representing a diverse city, or more support programs for underprivileged black youth. Sometimes being from the same ethnic group results in similar experiences which may blind one to the experiences of other groups.

You may want less jews for the same reason you might want less white men on a board representing a diverse city, or more support programs for underprivileged black youth

i don't think many people here do. this is 'dems r real racists' / 'affirmative action for whites' tier

No, I clearly mentioned wanting less whites on a board how have you equated that with affirmative action for whites?

But do you have an argument against it "dems r real racist", or is simple mockery supposed to be enough?

Both democrats and republicans are deeply committed to anti-racism, the very notion of racism is something they deeply despise, they dream about all races being brothers in harmony and happiness, et cetera. Yet, intelligence is deeply connected with human experience and will, and those who are more intelligent should live and reproduce more than those who aren't. This doesn't align very well with race at all - but the impulse for the former is the same as that for hte latter.

This conversation sure took an unexpected turn!

Allow me to paraphrase to make sure I understand you: Deep down we all want racial harmony so neither side is racist. It's just that we all believe intelligent people should reproduce more, which may come into conflict with racial harmony, and may cause either side to appear racist?

I'm not sure how intelligence and reproduction enter the picture, or if the majority of people agree with the 'ought' you put there.

the first sentence is a description of most peoples' views. the second sentence is my claim, a rather right-wing claim, clearly one that very few people share. the two aren't at all related, and that wasn't clear in the comment.

I'm of the opinion that caring about ethnicity is something that can't die out soon enough. HBD is, to me, a tool to this end. For representing a diverse city I'll take the white guy who grew up in a the south side of Chicago over a black guy who grew up in the gold coast or north shore if diversity of experience is important but I refuse to believe melatonin content is a prerequisite for empathy and understanding. I'm well aware that a lot of people have a high IQ than me, the ethnic breakdown of that population is of no interest.

May I know your skin color as I consider it relevant to this discussion.

I am a large brown bear as my profile picture shows.

melatonin content

Melanin?

Yes, but this is one of those things I'm consistently unable to remember. I'll leave it because it's funny.

Literal wokeness, perhaps.

Hot take coming soon: "Wokeness caused by lack of melatonin"

I'm not entirely convinced by his argument, but it feels like a question worth asking.

Golly, we've never seen this pattern before, doesn't seem at all familiar.

Since you don't have to police your words as much here as you did on reddit (though as @ZorbaTHut, said, that doesn't mean you can go full mask-off "Raar Da Jooos!") why don't you be original and instead of JAQing off with this phony "I dunno guys what do you think?" schtick, actually state your own thoughts? What is Keith Woods's argument? Why do you think it's a question worth asking?

It seems fine to ask questions without explaining in fully your own opinions in other contexts. The reason it seems wrong here is because you believe (probably correctly) that OP is concealing problematic beliefs. I think your real issue is with what you believe that he thinks. As distasteful as the analogy is, “JAQing off” seems fine.

I think that it’s okay for Jews to be overrepresented on JRE. They’re overrepresented in intellectual movements. What matters is the content of what they’re saying rather than them being Jewish.

You're almost correct. It's not that he's concealing "problematic" beliefs, it's that he's concealing his beliefs. I dislike Dark Hinting (and consider it a violation of the Speak Plainly maxim) because it's trying to cloak one's true intentions. It's sleazy and dishonest. The OP did not come here "not entirely convinced," the OP came here hoping to start a discussion about the JQ while pretending he's Just Asking Questions.

Gee I dunno my man. Looks like a clear cut case of the huwhite man keeping everyone down again. :^)

The Motte is no stranger to the JQ. You do not need to waste your time pointing out the basic statistics: we've seen them, we've discussed them, and we've had far longer and nuanced discussions on the topic.

Or, to put it in a way you'll understand: Lurk more. The "hey I just noticed this thing about Jewish overrepresentation..." skit makes you stick out like a lamppost.

You're not wrong in general, though I think the steelman goes something like: the overrepresentation is not just in excess of what you'd expect given equal IQs between groups; it also goes beyond what you'd expect given the actual measured IQ differences between the groups.

Fair enough. I have, but I can't remember exactly where.

(At any rate, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I am nowhere near good enough at maths to test the hypothesis)

Yes. Jews always over represent in all online communities. Overrepresent in academia and creative arts. I’ve just accepted Jews are smarter than the average white person probably thru centuries of being banned from manual labor and thus breeding higher intellects.

Well, how close is that to an actual distribution of political pundits in the US, or any other group of which Rogan's political guests ought to be an ethnically unbiased sample?

should we be concerned that one particular ethnic group is exercising this much influence over one of the most watched political podcasts in the world?

I chuckled.

Incredible that in 2022 we still have those sorts of videos on Yutube.

I thought an interesting question was posed:

I've seldom seen "just asking questions" done more directly.

Is Biden the enemy of the people, as has been claimed by Trump?

I wouldn't like to take such an allegation lightly. But I have to admit, there's something to be said for recognizing a spade as a spade. It's impossible to talk about in leftist controlled spaces, but woke politics does sometimes act like this higher-dimension being which occupies minds and turns them towards the possession of power in the service of ritual idealism.

This country is divided and maybe it's time to recognize those divisions more openly. Maybe those who have been forced to keep mouths shut for fear of being attacked or losing jobs need to stand firm.

Maybe conservatives need to hold on to the right to speak about demographics in a straightforward fashion.

Maybe it's better to hold onto the strong fighter you have instead of indulging in the hope that this time there might be a compromise, even as history shows the limits, even pitfalls, of such willingness to come to the table.

I wish I had more of a firm argument to submit, but I can only ask the question and see what the responses stir in my mind...

Your thoughts?

  • -21

woke politics does sometimes act like this higher-dimension being which occupies minds and turns them towards the possession of power

Do you think that anti-woke politics doesn't "occupy minds" and "turn people toward the possession of power"? Which conservative figures do you think aren't looking to acquire power?

This country is divided and maybe it's time to recognize those divisions more openly. Maybe those who have been forced to keep mouths shut for fear of being attacked or losing jobs need to stand firm.

Like gay and trans people and minorities?

In many parts of America, right now. Gay kids still get disowned by their parents and so on. Don't confuse the fact that Blue Tribe has dominant media control with the idea, that all of the older more traditional mores, especially in rural more religious areas have suddenly vanished. I don't tell my neighbors I am an atheist for example. The social stigma for being gay or non-religious is still very much existent in many places in the US (and indeed the UK, one side of my family back home would definitely be considered rednecks in the US, one uncle has disowned his gay son, the other is very clear he wouldn't hire "a poofter" in his business).

It was legal to fire people for being gay or trans just a few years ago. A lot of them are still scared about being discriminated against under some different name. Are you really sure that with how trans people are treated by society today that they shouldn't be worried about losing their jobs? Many of them don't even feel safe in public.

EDIT: Like, guys, it's not a contest. OP makes it sound like these social justice types are coming for your jobs and we're all power-hungry lunatics. But lots of conservatives are power-hungry too and lots of gay and trans people are scared about being fired.

You say this because you've never had a social justice type mistake you for a bigot. The false positive rate for witch hunts is too high.

I've seen both, to be honest.

This is indistinguishable from /r/politics fare, except from the right.

Based on what I've seen, it's my opinion that Biden is explicitly a figurehead, and holds almost no actual power. He's struggling with dementia, seriously. But in terms of the actual people running the white house, particularly Harris and the cabnet, I think their actions are in oposition to the freedom and wellbeing of the American people.

I'm not sure who's really doing what but everything I hear and see about Harris, she's even less competent than he is. I doubt she's allowed to even be involved in any meaningful decisions.

Does Biden credibly strike anyone as individually competent enough -- to the extent possible in a society as complex as this, meaning, as a uniquely competent leader -- to actually fulfill that requirement?

I took that as just tit-for-tat; Biden does a speech calling MAGA supporters the biggest threat to democracy since the last biggest threat, Trump retaliates by calling Biden an enemy of the people. Just standard political mud-slinging especially with elections coming up.

Is Biden the enemy of the people, as has been claimed by Trump?

A year ago I wouldn't have said yes.

That said, a year ago no sitting president had ever threatened my livelihood to try and make me submit to a forced medical procedure.

Among other problems, what counts as "the people"? Do "the people" even have a coherent enough viewpoint for someone to be their ideological enemy?

No. Biden isn't particularly woke by most metrics, he's more of an old-fashioned Democrat. He pays some lip service to the wokist side of the Ds, but there's a reason why they're upset with him.

He's the enemy of SOME of the people -- the MAGA Republicans -- he's said as much. Exactly what that group is, is somewhat disputed. Biden claims it's not a majority of Republicans, but I think the majority of Republicans don't believe him.

This country is divided and maybe it's time to recognize those divisions more openly. Maybe those who have been forced to keep mouths shut for fear of being attacked or losing jobs need to stand firm.

It's too late for that by many years. During the time for that, all the so-called adults in the room told the hotheads who saw what was coming to just shut up and endure. And allowed or participated in their firings or other unpersonings if they didn't. By now, those so-called adults are converted to wokism, revealed to have been woke all along, or have been pushed out themselves.

Biden claims it's not a majority of Republicans, but I think the majority of Republicans don't believe him.

Why should they? Republicans live in occupied territory: a foreign government blasts its propaganda on their airwaves.

During the time for that, all the so-called adults in the room told the hotheads who saw what was coming to just shut up and endure.

I wish I'd listened a little more. Now it feels like the only person I've been able to rely on to take the fight to them is old and discredited. Whether or not Trump is right that Biden has become the enemy of the people, it doesn't matter that he's right.

He's done a far better job of standing up to the wokes than any other politician if you ask me.

he's been an utter failure. Maybe apart from appointing SCOTUS justices.

And that one notable success was the result of Trump delegating SC nominees to the swampiest establishment Republicans. Trump strengthened the process with his refusal tro cower in the face of outrage, but he succeeded here by essentially doing nothing.

He was widely seen as being responsible for the rise of Ron DeSantis in Florida, which counts for something. Moreover, Trump was a brick through the Overton window.

Absolutely this. Trump talked a good game but when it came to actually governing he operated like a disorganized generic Republican. There were some limited executive orders and some ineffectual actions like the Muslim ban, but as for major priorities he only really accomplished tax cuts for the rich and appointing SCOTUS justices who thus far have been more focused on abortion than stuff like Affirmative Action, free speech on social networks, etc.

Didn't he get Mexico to agree to hold asylum seekers until their cases are adjudicated? That seems like a pretty big one that I'm not sure a generic republican would have done.

Maybe apart from appointing SCOTUS justices

It's weird you just toss this seemingly self-refuting statement in there. His SCOTUS picks yielded a conservative win that they've been working on and spending inestimable resources on for almost 50 years in Dobbs. And there's at least an outside chance that affirmative action could take a hit in the upcoming SCOTUS slate.

He only did what any other Republican would have done though. He didn't need to be Donald Trump to make safe SCOTUS picks.

To the contrary, other Republican presidents have been famously bad at picking justices, having them often as not join the liberals in landmark decisions, from Warren Burger to Souter, Kennedy, and Stevens.

Okay, I accept that you are Very Smart and Understand Statistics and I am dumb. I really am dumb when it comes to maths.

The rest of your post is just a way of saying "I am very superior stock, science proves it, why is the stupid dumb underclass still allowed to live and why am I not king of my own realm?"

Yeah, well, there's where we part company.

Yeah, it's weird to talk to a 130IQ far-right person who claims "HBD! IQ is everything! White people are 100IQ in the US and black people are 85. The race is all that matters." (not that you can directly compare a "30 point iq difference" and a "15 point iq difference" using '15 * 2 = 30', it's just a rank order turned into a normal distribution, but the difference is significant). However, this just makes the 'problem' worse

Who have you seen saying “IQ is everything!” and “The race is all that matters”? I don’t actually see that attitude from people who talk about this. Perhaps you’ve seen different people from me. I’ll take your word for it. But I want to mention that often I see people say “IQ is very important” and that is strawmanned as “IQ is everything.” I see “IQ is highly heritable” become “IQ is genetically determined.” I just don’t see this among the more sophisticated people talking about IQ. Maybe it’s common among people I don’t interact with.

Oh, I'm talking specifically about a specific segment of the far/alt-right, i.e. open nazis, who claim those things, hence "far-right person", who do that. It's not at all common view on a population basis, and even most HBD people won't claim that. But a lot of white nationalists will. (When pushed, they'll either claim asians/jews are low iq for various poor reasons, or something like how asians are selfish communitarian insects)

I don't mean to quibble with your otherwise fine post but this part is a bit confusing

I want to start with HBD. How many people can actually understand it?

Doesn't this study only show how popular beliefs about genes and racial differences are, rather than raw ability to understand them? I'd expect a lot more people to answer affirmatively if it wasn't thoughtcrime and was instead actually taught in respectable institutions.

-1 troll.

IQ is perceived as a themotte subject by the sneerclub crowd far more than it really is. A long IQ post, especially if it mentions HBD (a term that a random person would not use, but that Sneerclub is aware of), is probably fake. Nobody actually discusses IQ like that.

Also, I absolutely don't believe that post was written from scratch to post here.

Understanding of stats or HBD is irrelevant. The strongest opponents of HBD tend to be people with above average abilities, at least from what I have observed.

Publicly stated opposition, at least. In private, they tend to go for other people with above average abilities. That tendency is even stronger when they're e.g. choosing anonymous donors from a sperm bank.

Publicly stated opposition, at least. In private, they tend to go for other people with above average abilities

As groups sort on IQ, they are creating their own sub-cultures, and this means they have an incentive to "go to other people" within their own group (just like all groups do). This should not be seen as evidence of a private or even implicit belief in IQ.

When you say in private in response to stated opposition, it suggests that they privately admit to this. But they don't even do that in private, in my experience. But they do often behave as if they believe it, yes.

tendency is even stronger when they're e.g. choosing anonymous donors from a sperm bank.

i ... doubt you've seen sperm bank statistics for "high IQ people who are committed opponents of human biodiversity", so this is just using a general population statistic to against a small subpopulation, which isn't that useful.

In private, they tend to go for other people with above average abilities

and in public, just because if you're doing statistics on iq tests, even if you're doing them poorly to get antiracist results or whatever, you're going to be around higher iq people! that doesn't mean they think IQ is genetic, or that IQ <-> intelligence, they may also think it's mostly environmental / random, or not ponder that at all.

Obviously there are few to no statistics on "people who are strong opponents of HBD." The population I was referring to isn't strong opponents of HBD; the population is people of above average abilities.

They comprise the majority of sperm bank clients. And sperm banks put a very high premium on sperm from elite universities, which only makes sense if most clients use university attendance as a proxy for intelligence and think intelligence has a genetic component.

Yeah the liberal democratic political formula really unravels once you start to seriously ask yourself how all the rubes turn into informed thoughtful statemen through the mystical power of the ballot box. Especially when those invoking the wisdom of crowds are quick to guard against populism whenever things go out of their control.

Mosca is right, in practice you don't elect politicians, politicians have themselves elected by you.

But it's a well worn road at this point, modern criticisms of democracy are plentiful, Hoppe is probably the most popular on the right but the left has no shortages of noticers that public opinion is a massive sham (presumably orchestrated by the liberal bourgeoisie, which was at least originally accurate).

No the real mystery here is what to do about this. Because any attempt to replace the formula drawn up so far ends up looking wacky as fuck, impractical to the extreme or straight up tyrannical. I guess it's to be expected when one proposes political alternatives. Republicanism must have felt wacky in it's time.

But the question remains. Once you know democracy is a bunch of bullshit that masks an oligarchy because the voters so obviously don't decide what's going on, what is there even to do about it?

Seconding @daezor.

Democracy is most useful as a safety valve for unrest. Removing an executive peacefully is much more efficient than burning down the Reichstag to gain power. We get to funnel our tribal lizard brains into flag waving and campaigning rather than murdering our neighbors and taking their stuff. The longer we hold on to the rule of law the better.

Using the “wisdom” of the crowds as a hedge against certain sorts of bullshit...it’s a distant second.

Yeah the liberal democratic political formula really unravels once you start to seriously ask yourself how all the rubes turn into informed thoughtful statemen through the mystical power of the ballot box.

Liberal democracy has a solution for this: checks by experts and judges. The senate wasn't supposed to be elected.

The problem is that, if you drive this too far, you can actually encourage the very enervation of the democratic energies of the average voter.

Why care if judges and bureaucrats will decide everything? Why care if there's no fundamental belief that a citizen must maintain a good understanding of their polis but instead is free to do whatever they like and pursue happiness however?

Seems like the whole ideology is trapped on the horns of a dilemma.

I'm sure "do nothing" is technically an option.

But if you need political power to be secure, which in our increasingly acrimonious times is unfortunately required, it isn't.

The desperate reach for populists like Trump even though they realistically stand no chance to drain the swamp as it were is there for a reason. The checks and balances are having fewer and fewer effect as all the actors of the system have slowly adapted against them and consolidated themselves and the compromise the formula stands on looks less real every day.

But yeah liberal democracy is inherently trapped in the contradictions of it's own myths such as the idea that the State could be neutral or that powers can be meaningully separated without converging together eventually.

It pains me because I like the liberal political formula a lot, but I don't really see how you could solve the insecurity without jettisoning it altogether. Even if we pretend the bureaucrats would let you tweak it.

The whole point of democracy is that the rubes and idiots do have a vote, because they're still our fellow citizens (even if we don't like the idea). I support the disenfranchisement of felons, but by the God who made me, I'd change that to giving guys still in jail for selling meth to six year olds not alone the vote, but five votes sooner than go to 'let's drop the pretence and just rule by oligarchy'.

We take away the vote from felons because, by breaking the laws of society and causing harm to their fellow-citizens, they have deprived themselves of the right to be part of the polis. Now you want to take away the right to vote from citizens merely for not being as smart as you are? To give up the governance to an elite?

G.K. Chesterton has an essay about choosing juries, and while he pokes some mild fun at the process, he comes down in the end of the side of yes, the ordinary man-in-the-street:

The trend of our epoch up to this time has been consistently towards socialism and professionalism. We tend to have trained soldiers because they fight better, trained singers because they sing better, trained dancers because they dance better, specially instructed laughers because they laugh better, and so on and so on. The principle has been applied to law and politics by innumerable modern writers. Many Fabians have insisted that a greater part of our political work should be performed by experts. Many legalists have declared that the untrained jury should be altogether supplanted by the trained Judge.

Now, if this world of ours were really what is called reasonable, I do not know that there would be any fault to find with this. ...The Fabian argument of the expert, that the man who is trained should be the man who is trusted, would be absolutely unanswerable if it were really true that a man who studied a thing and practiced it every day went on seeing more and more of its significance. But he does not. He goes on seeing less and less of its significance. In the same way, alas! we all go on every day, unless we are continually goading ourselves into gratitude and humility, seeing less and less of the significance of the sky or the stones.

...And the horrible thing about all legal officials, even the best, about all judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and policemen, is not that they are wicked (some of them are good), not that they are stupid (several of them are quite intelligent), it is simply that they have got used to it.

Strictly they do not see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is the usual man in the usual place. They do not see the awful court of judgment; they only see their own workshop. Therefore, the instinct of Christian civilisation has most wisely declared that into their judgments there shall upon every occasion be infused fresh blood and fresh thoughts from the streets. Men shall come in who can see the court and the crowd, and coarse faces of the policemen and the professional criminals, the wasted faces of the wastrels, the unreal faces of the gesticulating counsel, and see it all as one sees a new picture or a ballet hitherto unvisited.

Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

The appeal of democracy makes a lot more sense when you think of it as civil-war-by-proxy rather than as a method for harnessing the "wisdom of crowds" to achieve some idea of good government. The whole reason we do politics in the first place is precisely because we don't agree on what a good outcome would be. We therefore try to create a system that roughly reflects what would happen if we did fight a war over every issue, without actually having to do so.

But a problem arises when reality marches on and the proxy doesn't catch up. Take for example the English Civil War: the actual power of the monarchy had already declined relative to that of the parliamentarians due to economic and military developments, but on paper the king still had all the powers of his medieval predecessors. Eventually, a few centuries of war and struggle reduced him to a mere figurehead.

In our own time we may see the emergence of a "technocratic ceremonial democracy" where appealing to popular sovereignty is as quaint and absurd as appealing to the Divine Right of Kings in the UK today.

I don't think this is a good methodology. Understanding HBD at a functional level doesn't require you to actually be able to plot out the curves or anything. You can understand the basics of compound interest without being able to actually calculate out how much more you'll end up paying over the term of the loan by hand.


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