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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   31808 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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The remarkable predictive accuracy of Nick Fuentes on the Israel Conflict

I'm sure most here have heard of Nick Fuentes, maybe seen clips where he's said something funny or outrageous. I do not consider myself a follower of Fuentes, I have my criticisms of him and his movement, but I have to give credit to Fuentes for churning out consistently correct predictions.

When it came to the Israeli-Gaza war, Nick Fuentes registered these predictions in this short clip, in summary from just the first 60 seconds:

  • The Oct. 7 attack is going to be the tripwire that enables Israel to finally solve the Gaza Question with ethnic cleansing.
  • Israel is going to conduct a "brutal campaign against Gaza" which they "know Iran has to respond to."
  • In doing so, their retaliation against Gaza will knowingly provoke a retaliation from Iranian-backed militias against Israel.
  • This will give Israel an excuse to widen the conflict and "to do what they always wanted to do, which is bomb Iran's nuclear program".
  • This will initiate war between Iran and Israel, and Israel will draw the United States into the war with Iran- Israel brings in the United States to "put Iran in check."
  • This will culminate in an end to the regime in Syria and an end to the regime in Iran.
  • This is the big play Israel is making.

Nick Fuentes registered these predictions on October 8th, less than 24 hours after the Hamas attack on Israel. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Fuentes may have registered the best predictions out of anyone in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7th (feel free to keep me honest here if you think someone else was even more on the money).

Hindsight bias being what it is, the accuracy of Fuente's predictions may seem less impressive than they actually are. But I still remember the huge amount of uncertainty leading up to the Gaza campaign, including a high degree of uncertainty over the strength of Israel's retaliation against Gaza- whether they would show restraint or even put boots on the ground in the first place, and even if they put boots on the ground would it be a relatively short and mostly symbolic campaign. Certainly at the time "Israel is going to ethnically cleans Gaza, provoke escalations from Iranian militias, and widen the conflict to try to draw the US into war with Iran" was a prediction registered by not very many people.

Fuentes drew a huge amount of criticism for vocally opposing Trump's campaign due to his belief that Israel would draw Trump into war with Iran. A lot of that criticism comes from the "Bronze Age Pervert" sphere, and BAP is a sharp critic of Fuentes for Fuente's low-IQ obsession with da Joos. But we can contrast Fuente's sober-minded and accurate predictions with BAP's own incoherent analysis of the conflict he published last week, chalking it up to some old-man syndrome while remaining baffled as to why Israel is pursuing the strategy it has engaged in since the beginning of the conflict.

Nick Fuente's live-stream on Rumble in the aftermath of the US bombing campaign against Iran had something like 66,000 live viewers, with overall viewers on that VOD now around 530k, putting his viewership on par with Ben Shapiro despite the fact Fuentes is banned from YouTube so his content is relegated to a much less mainstream platform.

One of the most remarkable parts of the Ted Cruz / Tucker Carlson debate was that Ted Cruz:

  • Said one of his primary motivations to become Senator was to be Israel's greatest defender.
  • AIPAC is not a strong enough lobby.
  • Said that his support for Israel is personally motivated by God's command in Genesis that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.

And then, just a few minutes later, Ted Cruz accused Tucker Carlson of being "obsessed with Israel" for Carlson's pointed questions on AIPAC as a foreign lobby. The turnaround of why are you so obsessed coming from someone who just said God has commanded him to support Israel is just a discredited attempt to derail the conversation.

Fuente's obsession with Israel appeared to result in what is perhaps the most accurate prediction of the series of events following Oct. 7th among anyone else.

The Oct. 7 attack is going to be the tripwire that enables Israel to finally solve the Gaza Question with ethnic cleansing.

Has it? Was Israel unable to, before? Are 18+ months later, is Gaza being ethnically cleansed?

Israel is going to conduct a "brutal campaign against Gaza" which they "know Iran has to respond to."
In doing so, their retaliation against Gaza will knowingly provoke a retaliation from Iranian-backed militias against Israel.

How is this different than the pre-October 7 Iran-backed terror attacks?

This will give Israel an excuse to widen the conflict and "to do what they always wanted to do, which is bomb Iran's nuclear program".

Was the stated motivation state-sponsored terrorism, or progress towards nuclear weapons?

This will initiate war between Iran and Israel, and Israel will draw the United States into the war with Iran- Israel brings in the United States to "put Iran in check."

Bombing initiating war isn't much of a prediction, so let's focus on the US - was the US drawn-in by Israel or self-motivated and seizing an opportunity?

This will culminate in an end to the regime in Syria and an end to the regime in Iran.

When did the bombing occur, and when did the regime in Syria end?

This is the big play Israel is making.

Are we going back to the theory that Israel deliberately let the October 7 attack happen, to use it as justification for war in Gaza?

You can bet on Conservative inc ( yes even Trump) doing Israel's bidding and you'd be right 10 out of 10 times. The level of influence AIPAC has over the us is disgusting, especially when contrasted with the histrionics we got from the left and the media for 4 years alleging all sorts of non-existent bullshit wrt Trump/Russia. At one point they were throwing a hissy fit about Russian citizens existing in the vague proximity of Trump.

I count 3/8 accurate predictions.

◪ Non-meaningful prediction to say Israel would respond to Oct 7

☒ "Solve the Gaza Question"

◪ Non-meaningful prediction to say anti-Zionist militias would continue fighting Zionism

☑ Iran has to would respond, but splitting hairs

☑ Israel, Iran exchange strikes

☑ Would precede (US) strikes on Iran nuclear program

☒ Initiates war between Iran and Israel

☒ US drawn into war

☒ Syrian regime fell, but not as consequence of US-Iran war

☒ Iran regime change†

†Fuentes' predictions conclude it from a US-Iran war; it might happen as a result of the instability from Israel walking all over the nation's ADS and domestic security apparatus.

The meaningful prediction is strikes on Iran's nuclear program, except it was the US and not Israel, and it didn't start a war. Trump's already joking about it, and there's this meme.

You don't count that conflict as war between Iran and Israel? That's just bad faith. Even Trump is lobbying to call it the "12 day war." America undeniably was drawn into the war, both defensively and offensively. Syria falling was directly related to the conflict between Israel and Iran's proxies, Hezbollah in particular.

"Solve the Gaza Question" is undeniably underway, he didn't say it would be resolved immediately he said the attack gave the Israelis cover to solve it, which is ongoing. Basically Iran regime change is the only thing that hasn't happened yet, even though that was clearly an objective of Israeli aggression.

Concur. He legitimately got his first and most important prediction wildly incorrect.

As far as punditry goes, he was right on the money and deserves credit where due. Whatever that is.

Fuentes being in the ballpark of accurate wouldn't be a big deal, given how much pundits talk, except calling attention to this instance drives a lot of people towards needless argumentation and grievance. I'd be interested to hear what people want to be said instead, and by whom, in contrast to what Fuentes is saying. Given he can drive up so much ire even when apparently accurate.

In doing so, their retaliation against Gaza will knowingly provoke a retaliation from Iranian-backed militias against Israel.

Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia, began attacking Israel on 10/8 though, before Israel did anything.

Nasrallah characterized it as follows:

“Some say I’m going to announce that we have entered the battle,” Nasrallah said Friday. “We already entered the battle on Oct. 8.” He argued that Hezbollah’s cross-border strikes have pulled away Israeli forces that would otherwise be focused on Hamas in Gaza.

I am not watching the video, but I notice that the tweet said:

It will draw America into a war where they finally decapitate Iran and Syria.

The Assad regime did not end because Israel drew the US into a regional war. The US did fuck-all to bring about its end. In a nutshell, Israel took out Hezbollah, Turkey sponsored the Jihadists who defeated Assad and Russia did not offer less than usual military support to their ally because they were otherwise occupied.

My continual take away is that I don’t like war being called ethnic cleansing.

It’s just war. It’s even a just war based on any literal thing I can think of in our psyche over the last several decades, much less the last two thousand years.

My prediction is Iran squirreled away its nuclear stuff and they’ll bomb a few bases and we’ll all call it a day - no idea if the regime is falling or not.

And I’m sure Israel wants leaders around them in various countries that don’t want to slaughter them completely.

Fighting Hamas is a just war. Reprisals against civilians, on the other hand, are broadly prohibited. Since Hamas has a vested interest in entangling the two, it is very hard for Israel to keep its hands clean.

The strongest criticisms of Israel involve the parts of it which appear profoundly uninterested in doing so. There are more of these than I would like.

Regardless of intent, every dead civilian lets critics pattern-match to My Lai. That’s the kind of event which shaped the antiwar psyche.

The strongest criticisms of Israel involve the parts of it which appear profoundly uninterested in doing so. There are more of these than I would like

That's basically the first example Bryan Caplan gives in missing moods about why he doesn't trust the war hawks defense of civilian death.

What he expects is more like "It's a sad but necessary drawback to the messy reality of war that sometimes peaceful civilians are swept up as collateral" and yet instead often sees stuff more like "Hell yeah let's wipe them out, the only good [nationality] is a dead one!"

I've always been very ambivalent on the 'missing mood' argument.

On the one hand, if someone's explicitly-stated argument seems like it implies a particular emotion, and the person making the argument lacks that emotion, that does seem like a good sign that the argument is not motivating for them. The argument is excuse or justification, rather than the real motivation for the position.

On the other hand, taken too seriously, the missing mood argument also sounds a lot like, "You don't feel the way that I imagine you ought to feel - therefore you are not serious." But human psychology is extremely diverse and unpredictable, the way people express their deep emotions varies very widely as well, and you should not typical-mind. Caplan summarises it as, "You can learn a lot by comparing the mood reasonable proponents would hold to the mood actual proponents do hold", but the phrase "the mood reasonable proponents would hold" is doing a lot of the work there. What is the mood reasonable proponents would hold? Are you sure? Is there only one such possible mood? How confident are you of what's going on inside another person's head?

I suppose I think missing moods can be a weak piece of evidence, which may suggest that we ought to look more deeply into a person's agenda, but nothing more than that. Unfortunately the actual examples Caplan gives in his piece are unconvincing and suggest a lack of moral imagination on Caplan's own part. Other people don't appear to feel what Caplan thinks they should feel, so he concludes they're insincere. But maybe Caplan is just wrong about they ought to feel. Maybe he's assuming that they accept facts and moral principles that Caplan himself accepts, and if he looked closer he would realise that they don't.

I think the examples from Caplan are more like

"Ok I can just consider that it's the morals that we disagree with, that they are just people who I find to be monsterous in ethics but just assuming "disagreement = evil" is bad, so I should look at the logic I expect from aligned morals making that argument and see if people are doing that"

Unfortunately the actual examples Caplan gives in his piece are unconvincing and suggest a lack of moral imagination on Caplan's own part. Other people don't appear to feel what Caplan thinks they should feel, so he concludes they're insincere. But maybe Caplan is just wrong about they ought to feel. Maybe he's assuming that they accept facts and moral principles that Caplan himself accepts, and if he looked closer he would realise that they don't.

Well that's the question. "Do people disagree because of a different logic or evidence base, or do they disagree because they genuinely just do not care about or actively want to harm other people, which I think is a Monster behavior"

He looks at it and says "huh, this isn't what I would expect if they weren't monsters, this is behavior I expect if they were. Oh god, these people seem like Monsters"

I can think of examples, I suppose, where mood is a relevant piece of evidence for judging a person's sincerity.

Suppose I'm favour of stronger welfare policies and more generous handouts for people in poverty, and I'm arguing with a person who believes that, however well-intentioned, public handouts like this are bad. They disincentivise people working to better themselves, they involve the government in what ought to be private charity, and so on. The state providing free welfare for the poor is ultimately detrimental both to the poor and the state. I suggest that their position is heartless, and they protest, "Not at all! My heart goes out to the poor as well. I really care about their plight. We just disagree about the best way to help them."

Suppose I then discover this person cheering as people get kicked off the dole and laughing. I would probably conclude that they're insincere and that their real motives are not empathy. Even if they sincerely think the dole is bad, mockery of desperate people is a cruel thing to do, and unlikely to coexist with genuine empathy. Alternatively, suppose I instead discover that this person volunteers at the soup kitchen run by their church. I would probably conclude that they are sincere, they really do empathise with and want to help the poor, and that they realy do believe there's an important moral distinction between public and private interventions.

I'm sure you can think of lots of examples like that. The key there is that the person presents as having certain motives, but behaves consistently or inconsistently with that motive.

The typical case is when someone neither particularly hates or helps the poor. But the missing mood test looks at how things are framed and at superficial elements. So if he thinks the dole is good for the poor, he doesn't need to prove himself, because the belief itself already says that he "wants to help the poor". But if he thinks the dole is bad for the poor, he faces an uphill battle. The problems with this are obvious.

This also leads to moral busybodies. How exactly do you know that someone hates the poor privately? Well, if he's a friend or relative, maybe you know him. But if he's a politician or someone else you don't know personally, this is an incentive to dig up ten year old Twitter posts out of context to "prove" that he's cruel so you can dismiss his beliefs.

And then there's the situation where someone who thinks some policy harms themselves always fails the missing mood test. After all, they aren't showing concern for the other people who are helped by the things that harm themselves. (And "I think my harm is more important than someone's benefit" is selfish, so it doesn't count as showing concern even if you acknowledge that someone benefits.)

Caplan isn't that much older than I am, so he's mostly seen the same wars I have. These have been predominantly wars in Islamic countries, where his argument doesn't hold much grip on reality. We are talking about Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, now potentially Iran. These are territories where "Death to Israel" holds 90%+ popularity and "Death to America" is only a few clicks behind.

No, that's just how human psychology works. Earnestly keeping in mind the pain suffered by the innocent in the prosecution of a just/necessary/Good war is just asking for your enemies to act like puppy-killing utility demons. That's what dehumanization is for, so you can fight and win without being hobbled and cripped (and eventually, raped, murdered and genocided) by your own suicidal empathy.

It's the same reason conservatives post Ghibli memes about crying deportees. They are no longer willing to give a shred of concern or credibility for crocodile tears of the people who caused the situation on purpose. Accusations of cruelty are met with mockery, because if you give an inch they'll let in another 50 million unvetted randos.

It's the same reason progressives never, ever, ever express any concern about the feelings and harm they may cause to their outgroup. It's the same reason no one is even bothering to try to use anything like this argument on Hamas or Iran, or their supporters in the US.

Just round the situation off to "blame goes to the aggressor" and win the damn war.

No, that's just how human psychology works

If he says "X happens", a response of "Yeah that's how people work" is an agreement that X happens, is it not?

Earnestly keeping in mind the pain suffered by the innocent in the prosecution of a just/necessary/Good war is just asking for your enemies to act like puppy-killing utility demons. That's what dehumanization is for, so you can fight and win without being hobbled and cripped (and eventually, raped, murdered and genocided) by your own suicidal empathy.

That can serve as an explanation for why they do it, but it doesn't dispute Caplan's claim whatsoever then, it's in agreement with it! That instead of taking a somber "sad but necessary" view, they appeal to collective guilt and laugh about it.

You frame your comment like a dissent, while the actual substance is the same just under a different framing.

A: "Why is this marathon runner sweating so much? I would expect them to not want to be sweating. Do they not realize that sweating is unpleasant?"

B: "They're sweating because they are running a marathon. The sweat is an adaptive strategy that makes them better at running marathons. If they did not sweat, they would be worse at running marathons, and probably not be able to do so at all."

A: "Isn't that what I just said?"

B: "No. It really isn't."

Bad analogy.

Caplan points out that they aren't somber about civilian deaths, but instead often cheer it on/laugh about it.

An explanation why that happens isn't a dispute if it is happening.

Nope, you and Caplan are both just wrong about what the "reasonable hawk" looks like. You are the ones missing a mood, namely "competing when the stakes really, really matter". Actively hemming and hawing over the acceptable costs of a desired, good outcome is retarded and maladaptive. The overwhelming majority of human beings, even highly intelligent ones, are not psychologically capable of the the level of sociopathic, rationalist autism required to attempt his "reasonable hawk" nonsense - and even one of those 0.0001% decouplers would rapidly find themselves dehumanizing the enemy because it's just wildly more efficient in terms of mental load.

Worrying about the feelings of a lethal, intractable enemy is the sort of luxury you spare for things you outclass on the same level that we outclass wolves and bears. And even then, the people who actually live in areas with wolves and bears are less sympathetic about it than urban fools.

Even though they're outlawed and abhorrent, reprisals are still a frequent though unfortunate part of war and occupation. They have happened in many cases without a significant genocidal or ethnic cleansing objective.

True, but they don’t help beat the allegations.

It would be much harder to accuse Israel of genocide if they studiously avoided anything that hit the general populace. Water, power, etc.

But of course that would come at some cost in Israeli lives. Understandably not popular in Israel.

It didn’t help them in previous wars. No matter what Israel did to avoid casualties, it either wasn’t enough, or it was considered evil. I think this is why they’ve been so gloves off this time. The gloves are pointless, as any sort of fighting back is demonized as apartheid or genocide. So, rather than risk their soldiers to prevent such war crimes, just go for it.

It would be much harder to accuse Israel of genocide if they studiously avoided anything that hit the general populace. Water, power, etc.

I really don't think it would. I would describe their current conduct as studiously avoiding the general populace, but the nature of the place of combat means even an 'A' student is going to kill or injure a ton of "civilians" (a term I hesitate to use when the population has elected Hamas, and the only people who would have a chance if another election were held were people calling Hamas too soft on killing Jews).

It would be much harder to accuse Israel of genocide if they studiously avoided anything that hit the general populace. Water, power, etc.

Sure, and then they couldn't hit Hamas. This is the same Hamas that builds command centers under hospitals, then accuses Israel of war crimes when said command center gets bombed. Anyway, the various violations Israel is accused of are typically either nonsense (that is, there's no such rule in international law) or they are violations of treaties Israel has not agreed to, such as Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Convention.

It would be much harder to accuse Israel of genocide if they studiously avoided anything that hit the general populace. Water, power, etc.

I would say that Israel is not treated quite fairly here. Russia is way more indifferent to civilian casualties, they hammer the energy infrastructure of ukraine more, blew up a fucking dam and so on. And yet no one is seriously accusing them of being genocidal.

Israel decided instead of doing the fast, cheap and easy way - cover from end to end with napalm and throw a match, to actually put their men in street and urban fights. And also why no is accusing Egypt of starving Gaza when there is another border there. And in theory this is Egypt territory. And they didn't just throw some dry ice or lpg in the tunnels. Now probably not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they care of PR and anyway they are paying the price of a genocide anyway.

And yet no one is seriously accusing them of being genocidal.

I think "no one" is excluding a lot here: the governments of several NATO member states have made such claims, and the ICC (which admittedly isn't held in the highest esteem everywhere) has issued arrest warrants for Russian leaders on genocide or genocide-adjacent charges.

I'm not suggesting you have to agree with those descriptions, but I think it falls well short of "no one."

Probably I didn't phrase it well. Because those are performative pearl cluthing mostly. I don't believe that anyone smart and informed sincerely believes Putin wants or is committing genocide.

I think Putin's stated goals of destroying the idea (the meme as it were) of a distinct Ukrainian identity is, under the more expensive definitions, considered "genocide", but I will concede that it's a much less central example than "industrially kill them all" or just "evict them from their lands and ignore the obvious implications" that people would typically point to in WWII.

no one is seriously accusing them of being genocidal.

Ukraine's population is 20x the size of the population of Gaza, but the civilian death toll in Ukraine is 3x lower.

So on a per capita basis, Gazan's are dying at a per capita rate of ~42x higher. My incredibly rough math has 1 civilian death per 3,158 Ukrainian citizens (using 2022 population) versus 1 death per 74 Gazans.

Couple of orders of magnitude there.

Ukraine's leadership has a vested interest in protecting its citizenry, while Hamas has an official policy of intentionally putting Palestinian citizens in harm's way. Hamas and the Arab world have continually refused to allow Palestinian refugees safe passage into neighbouring countries.

I'm not saying the manner in which Israel is prosecuting this war has nothing to do with the rate at which Palestinian civilians are being killed, but suggesting that they are solely responsible for the level of civilian collateral damage is literally falling for Hamas propaganda hook, line and sinker.

You're absolutely correct

What’s the civilian death rate in Bakhmut/mariopol/etc? Ukraine’s land area is pretty big, and life in Gaza and life in bakhmut or chernihiv might be a one to one comparison but live in lviv definitely isn’t.

Also, as I understand it, the government of Ukraine doesn't make it a deliberate tactic to hope their own population gets killed so they can get PR wins which bring international pressure on their behalf.

My continual take away is that I don’t like war being called ethnic cleansing.

Yeah that’s one of the obnoxious aspects of the post-WW2 mythos.

Stop trying to guilt trip me into seeing one side or the other as intrinsically righteous. Everything has to be a “genocide” or an “ethnic cleansing”. Why can’t it just be a fight? Men fight with each other. Always has been always will be.

The difference being Israels exceptional brutality, their politicians using references to biblical genocides and the high civilian death toll.

High Civilian death tolls according to whom.

I have such a hard time determining anything accurate here b/c both sides have major pressure to lie. And very early on Hamas got caught in an apparently blatant lie about a Rocket hitting a hospital, leading to civilian casualties. Note that Gazan authorities ALSO misstated the number of injured and dead!

So now I have to take all their claims with a veritable pound of salt.

Whoops.

And of course the October 7 event was specifically a bunch of Hamas warriors attacking, massacring and kidnapping civilians. So I'm pretty inclined to say "A pox on both your houses" for the duration of the conflict. Yes, I am aware that U.S. tax dollars and weapons are streaming to the Israeli side of the fight.

Finally, the incidents I CAN generally verify include a dude in the U.S. Setting Jews on Fire and another shooting two unarmed Jewish Embassy staffers.

Don't know of any incidents in the U.S. going the other way.

So these Hamas rockets that have barely been able to kill anyone leveled an entire hospital during Israeli bombing. Seems like something AIPAC cooked up.

As for October 7 Israel was engaging in military operations against Gaza, they had murdered hundreds of civilians and taken thousands of hostages.

There war a roughly 50% civilian death rate on the Israeli side. Is 1 civilian death for every military death acceptable or not? Why isn't it terror when Israel kills more than one civilian for each military casualty?

According.

to.

Whom.

So these Hamas rockets that have barely been able to kill anyone leveled an entire hospital during Israeli bombing. Seems like something AIPAC cooked up.

There were ample photographs of the rocket impact site

It didn't even hit the hospital proper. By most appearances, it landed in a parking lot and set a bunch of cars on fire. Even the trees in the immediate surrounding area are still intact.

It was the Gaza side that was alleging it was a mass casualty event at all.

So yes, this absolutely looks like a Hamas rocket flew off course, set things on fire, and Hamas decided to cast blame away from themselves since this would inevitably make them look like idiots.

If you're suggesting that the war in Gaza is a genocide because half of all deaths in Gaza were civilians rather than combatants, that would imply that virtually every modern war was a genocide, as many wars had a vastly higher ratio of civilian to combatant deaths (as high as 9:1 in some cases). If you're happy to call the Korean war, the Gulf war and the 2003 invasion of Iraq genocides, all well and good, just as long as we're consistent.

There is also a point of comparing Gaza to other cases of dense urban warfighting where the millions-scale civilian population is stuck in the dense urban area. There aren't many other examples, but in the closest analogs (such as the fall of the ISIS caliphate), the casualties are pretty analogous when controlled for time.

Turns out, urban fighting is dangerous for attacker, defender, and bystander alike. Who would have guessed?

There is a difference between men fighting one another (Hamas vs. IDF) and men fighting unarmed civilians (Hamas vs. Israelis; IDF vs. random Palestinians).

As much as I would prefer the former, it’s not on the table. Hamas can’t stop hiding behind civilians without getting slaughtered. Israel can’t stop killing civilians without giving Hamas opportunities to slaughter Israelis. Neither side is willing to let it “just be a fight.”

So yes, it’s teetering on the edge of ethnic cleansing. Not because of a psyop to claim righteousness, but because all the remaining options look an awful lot like killing noncombatants and driving them off.

Neither side is willing to let it “just be a fight.”

I don’t understand this perspective. Obviously the fair fight is Hamas/palestinian army versus IDF, and Hamas are the ones who refuse to fight it. Therefore, the blood of civilians is entirely on Hamas’ hands.

If throughout history's wars the defeated party's army said ‘we’re not surrendering, we’re just going to do terrorism in civilian clothes now’, genocide would be the routine consequence.

I more or less agree, but I was trying to argue against @Mihow and @Primaprimaprima’s complaint about the term “ethnic cleansing.”

If Israel is fighting a just war, then it has a legal war goal which isn’t ethnic cleansing. Therefore activists who insist otherwise are being disingenuous.

If Israel isn’t fighting a just war, though, its war aims might include things like killing all Palestinians. This is verboten in the post-WW2 world. Naturally, Hamas has made it impossible for Israel to fight without killing some noncombatants and, in doing so, casting doubt on its war aims.

My point is that calling it ethnic cleansing isn’t a sign of mindkilled bad-faith partisanship. It is an intended outcome of Hamas’ strategy.

Has Gaza been ethnically cleansed, or is this ethnic cleansing ongoing? If so, that's news to me.

Gaza is already ethnically spotless; it's basically all Palestinian Arabs, and all Sunni at that, with few exceptions.

Ethnic cleansing, as a distinct concept from genocide, has traditionally involved there being a territory where the population being cleansed is cleansed to. Thus far, Israel has not succeeded in finding such a territory.

Under a very loose definition of "ethnic cleansing", the IDF forcing Jews out of Gaza in the 2005 withdrawal (in some cases unwillingly) fits the definition, but is hardly the central example you're looking for.

I think what's actually going on with Fuentes is that he's alienated with what he sees as the low-class nature of modern conservatism. Here for instance he attacks conservatives for being "openly hostile to all the good things about liberals" and being "low-IQ hillbillies who take pride in being simple and hate the rich:"

https://x.com/FuentesUpdates/status/1908187813117411525

The problem with populist political movements is that the people who rise to the top tend to have psychological traits more characteristic of elites, intelligence, drive, and ambition, which wind up alienating them from the populist masses.

Ah, yes, notoriously high class… Nick Fuentes?

Bold of you to claim that intelligence, drive, and ambition, are qualities incompatible with being a populist.

You, Fuentes, and Hanania are all coping hard. If somone disagrees with your takes it must be because they are stupid and lazy not because of legitimate differences.

That said, congratulations to Fuentes for being the first gay man invited to speak on Iranian State TV.

At the risk of sounding, I dunno, petty? Did Fuentes put any money on the line, did he find someone to take the other side of his position, reduce the bet to fairly specific terms, and have someone willing to judge who won by a given deadline?

Bryan Caplan puts money on all of the bets he makes and chronicles them in a wiki he maintains. He's got a great record against some very smart people.

There's specific lose conditions, plus incentives to be accurate/not bullshit.

Fuentes also didn't put any specific confidence estimates on those bets, so he can always walk back the ones that were off base if he wants "oh that was a long shot anyway." Well you never said if you thought it was a 10% chance of a 90% chance, so I guess you can retroactively change that belief.

This is how pundits operate. Throwing a bunch of vague predictions against a wall, phrased to feel specific and of course they never let someone take up the other side of the position who can then call them out later.

Like when I was talking about how Tariffs would play out I really tried to be specific enough that I can be judged wrong and lay out a strict 'I was wrong' scenario.

Speaking of, looks like the time is ticking down for some more 'permanent' deals to be worked out in the next month or I'll have missed the mark on the most recent extension.

Edit: And I'm still confident (80% to be specific) that they get it done soon. 20% is reserved b/c we're in a time where crazy events can happen in short time frames.

EU is allegedly pretty close:

https://archive.is/WmZRp

As is India:

https://archive.is/1An8l

Caplan's record, as he readily admits, is somewhat less impressive when you account for the fact that he wins by consistently betting in favor of consensus and the future being like the past. He's not successfully predicting black swan events, but arbitraging others' overestimation of the frequency of black swan events.

Yes.

My point is he records everything and has a clear counterparty rather than just spitting predictions with no skin in the game and crowing that he was right when a few of them land.

But Fuentes ain't predicting black swans either. "Israel and Iran will try to hurt each other" is a generally reliable prediction at its base.

And once you've been given the information "Hamas just killed a bunch of Israeli Civilians, in Israel" there's a few straightforward guesses from there RE: Israeli response.

I'll say there's zero chance I would have correctly predicted the Pager operation, even in the broad "Mossad wipes out Hezbollah's entire command in a single attack" strokes.

But "Hezbollah gets decimated by Israeli espionage" is not a wild, out there guess by any means.

If Fuentes was specific enough to say "The U.S. drops bunker busters on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities" as a likely outcome I'd start to give him credit.

These predictions are pretty damn weak, man. Fuentes isn't making any good predictions. "The terrorist attack on Israel will encourage Israel to attack back!" is not prescience. Nor is proclaiming that this is what gives us license to attack Iran's nuclear facilities; we've been dealing with their attempts to go nuclear for years and years at this point.

Predicting retaliatory violence after an attack isn't foresight.

In that case it should be easy to provide an example of others that made the same predictions.

Sure, I personally responded to October 7th with "oh, damn, Gaza's gonna get fuuuucked."

Didn't we all? One only needed to have looked at the Palestinian-to-Israeli death ratio in any given scuffle to have known how this was gonna turn out

"The terrorist attack on Israel will encourage Israel to attack back!" is not prescience.

Not very many people predicted the extent of the destruction of Gaza, not to mention that escalation path that would ensue from that response. Many here were consistently underpredicting the Israeli response every step of the way.

People were protesting and demanding ceasefires almost immediately after October 7. I assume this was because they expected destruction.

At least on the left some personalities like Cenk Uygur - whose geopolitical acumen I don't value particularly highly - were explicitly condemning Hamas because they thought Israel would just absolutely wreck Gaza in response. (This bit faded as Oct. 7 became more distant and now it's mostly Israel criticism)

A lot of these people overestimated the damage (they assumed much heavier starvation much earlier on) they didn't downplay it.

The Israeli response has been quite measured -- Gaza still exists, and its population has even climbed, last I checked. They should go harder, but they seem unwilling.

Fuente's obsession with Israel appeared to result in what is perhaps the most accurate prediction of the series of events following Oct. 7th among anyone else.

They're still not accurate. You snuck in there "enables Israel to finally solve the Gaza Question with ethnic cleansing" as a "successful" prediction. It's actually a failed prediction.

"Knowingly" and "will give Israel an excuse to" are not successful predictions either, unless you can read minds.

Both the US and Israel have at this point made it clear the Gaza population is going to be deported and not allowed to return. It hasn't happened yet but both Trump and Israel have stated this position. Gaza is completely destroyed, even if they wanted to keep the Gazans in Gaza it's hard to see how that would be possible at this point even with a good-faith effort. But the overtures from both Trump and Israel is that the population is going to be deported; sorry, "allowed to leave."

"Nobody is expelling any Palestinians," Mr. Trump told reporters.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-gaza-war-not-expelling-palestinians-egypt-post-ceasefire-plan/

Gaza is completely destroyed, even if they wanted to keep the Gazans in Gaza it's hard to see how that would be possible at this point even with a good-faith effort.

If nobody will take them, then they will remain in Gaza. There's an entire wall around the place.

They are going to couch it mostly as voluntary emigration, but if you blockade a region and completely level the cities and make intolerable conditions, and then set up offices to facilitate "voluntary emigration" that is an expulsion as far as I'm concerned. The extent of the destruction of Gaza doesn't point in a different direction with respect to longer-term plans.

That is called a siege. It is a legitimate military tactic, albeit one that Israel has not employed in this current engagement.

Of course this is going to end with Iran conducting a nuclear test. You know that, right? The ayatollah will take a break from tweeting out relationship advice and repeal the fatwa(or reinterpret it) and Iran will launch a volley of conventional missiles which get through and then conduct a nuclear test.

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