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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

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Never half ass a genocide. One of the most important lessons of history.

I know you're tongue in cheek with this, but man I don't like that the lesson being taught internationally right now is: "If even a single member of a particular ethnic group survives, and your ancestors did something oppressive to their ancestors hundreds of years ago, they will use this to extract reparations from you in perpetuity and will never let you forget what happened."

Similar logic for why, if you depose a monarch, you have to kill off their entire extended family, lest some loyalists later track down their teenage second cousin thrice removed and try to restore them to the throne.

We have a few social techs for allowing non-genocidal acclimation of oppressed populations but when they can all be trivially overridden by the logic that "any observed inequality in outcomes is proof positive of ongoing oppression which must be rectified" then guess what comes back on the menu.

Perhaps we can counter that logic by pointing out that whatever mechanism allows guilt to flow forward in time should also allow credit and pride to flow forward. So sure, maybe my great great great grandpappy beat some villagers that one time, but my family saved an awful lot of drowning children over the years too, so maybe it balances out.

The real lesson is actually 'if you oppress a group of low performers you must never stop. If you grow tired of oppression then leave no survivors, but only if they are low performers. It's fine to just liberate Chinamen or Ashkenazim because they'll catch up without really needing the help their more unhinged activists demand.'

No that is not the lesson, there is nothing to fear from a "low performer". What you need to fear is the person or group who you dismissed as low performing but have the potential to not be, because if you fuck em there is a good chance they'll fuck you back and you will deserve it.

They mostly have not done this. The black and indigenous minorities who are poor performers have tried; the once-oppressed Chinese have been content with their rising standards of living.

Have not doesn't mean they will not.

I mean, I can envision an America where Asians run black-like racial advocacy. It's just not very plausible.

Its just the racial meta. If Asians could only play that game, they would, but they can play the competence game and achieve greater outcomes. The sympathy game is a means of last resort, played only because there are no other cards to play. Nigerian immigrants in Virginia can play both sides of the fence till BLM figures out a way to kick them out fully and get ADOS as a special protected class without the inconvenient racialization allowing actual high performers to cosplay as oppressed.

In my experience it's Indians who do far the most racial aggrandizing of the Asians about 'India would be hovercars and perfect development without the Raj' topics and the everpopular riffs on 'descendant of top caste complains about anglo oppression whilst having to leave India for better opportunities due to intense affirmative action for the people they've historically oppressed' though I've generally found Indian Idpol actively contradictory and absolutely insane.