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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   35562 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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He would simply point out that there is no example in history, with the exception of the few brief periods in which Israel has existed as an insular sovereign political entity, in which Jewish people have had the power to openly privilege themselves as a dominant racial group at the expense of other groups. Whereas there was a period of several centuries wherein white people — conscious of their whiteness and the way it made them different/better than other people — had both the means and the willpower to travel around the world establishing states in which they were made the supreme/privileged race and others were treated as less-than as a result.

And even people who weren't white nationalists could look at that and say "motte and bailey".

He can claim that abolishing whiteness is a technical term that doesn't imply any racial hostility. But saying "I don't really mean X" when there are plenty of people in your coalition who do mean X is indistinguishable from giving them cover and encouraging them even if you pinky swear that that isn't really what you mean.

But saying "I don't really mean X" when there are plenty of people in your coalition who do mean X is indistinguishable from giving them cover and encouraging them even if you pinky swear that that isn't really what you mean.

Right, so, I acknowledge that this is by far the largest problem with Ignatiev’s beliefs. Again, I don’t think people should agree with him, I comprehensively reject his political project, and I want him to fail miserably and to die knowing that his entire life’s work was a pointless, cancerous failure.

There is a way for naïve white progressives — even ones who are as clearly maladjusted and full of spite as Noel Ignatiev — to be reintegrated back into a politically healthy discussion, but only once they have persuasively demonstrated that they understand the extent to which they’ve directly empowered the most worthless, destructive, spiteful, irredeemable elements of our society. Since that’s not happening any time soon, we can keep trying to crush the Ignatievs of the world. I just think we can do so without calling them liars and hypocrites.

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