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On the sidebar it says "This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases." In this thread, it is claimed "the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here."
After my ban for this comment, it's hard to take that seriously. It did not include personal attacks, name-calling, strawmanning, or attempting to enforce ideological conformity. It "spoke plainly" and provided evidence. Yet the mods banned me for it, saying I was being an "immense pain in the ass."
I think the mods, and most people here, believe that they want this to be an open discussion forum with people of many different viewpoints, but when they're actually confronted with it, they feel it's an "immense pain in the ass." They called me an "obnoxious trolling shitstirrer." Yes, I am a shitstirrer in the sense that I say things that go against the dominant ideological viewpoint here, and I know in advance that hostility is likely to result. But isn't that what you want here, rather than another online echo chamber? I'm sure many of you have experience being "shitstirrers" in online spaces where you're in the ideological minority, now the shoe's on the other foot.
The mods accused me of "snarling" at my enemies, which gets to the meat of the issue: do you want an ideologically diverse forum or not? I freely admit I have a contempt for forms of conservatism and white nationalism I see as third-worldist. (Anti-vax, raw milk, conspiratorial, superstitious, fetishizing low-skilled manual labor, etc.) That's why I disagree with you guys and don't identify as part of your political tribe. If you think I'm a "leftist," try talking to a real one, the kind who uses terms like "patriarchy" or "heteronormativity" non-ironically. They do NOT like you. They see you as a malignant, cancerous influence on America. If you don't want to have a discussion forum with people who dislike you, change your rules to state that they aren't welcome. If, on the other hand, you want people from other tribes to be in this "jury," then you've got to accept them as they are rather than the imagined versions who disagree with you but like and respect you and never come around to actually posting here.
It seems to me that what some people here want is a forum with "left-wing" equivalents of David French. For the unfamiliar, David French is an allegedly "conservative" columnist for the NYT whose articles are just one after another telling liberals they're right and that conservatives are gross and mean and only ever making "we need 50 Stalins" criticisms of the Left. Thing is, French doesn't play this role for free. And you should be glad you don't have David French's, as I suspect that they have had a detrimental impact on the Left's electoral fortunes. If your only exposure to "conservatives" is people like David French, you're going to get a warped view of American politics that will lead to bad election strategy.
None of this is to say you should get rid of your rules against shaming, strawmanning, name-calling, etc. Maybe a new rule should be "be as polite as possible without being insincere." I admit that this is a tough balance to strike, I just think that right now the Motte is too far toward forced politeness leading to ideological conformity.
Welcome back.
I like this a lot. Politeness is a good proxy for a bunch of our ideals. I might even argue that it’s implicit in our rules about kindness, charity, and especially antagonism. It signals willingness to play the classical-liberal game, and it makes it significantly harder to get that cheap thrill of tribalism.
Not impossible, of course. You’re also almost certainly correct about the subset of this board which wants, at most, a French-style controlled opposition. That contingent is not in charge.
The moderation remains opposed to the capture of innocent leftists for our nature preserve. We only collect injured specimens who are at risk in the wild. Upon making a full recovery, they are released to Substack.
But I digress.
We moderate on tone because hostility invites tribalism. Closing ranks. Soldier mindset, whatever you want to call it. Maybe the audience feels vulnerable: “they hated Jesus because He told the truth!” Other times they just suspect bad faith. What matters is that any chance of a decent conversation goes down the toilet.
Politeness is one of our best signs that someone is willing to play along and avoid these failure modes.
Or if they go too insane to keep safely in the preserve, surely?
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While I think a 1 week ban might be a bit excessive for that post alone, I can not say that this was a high quality post.
Your whole first meandering paragraph reads like a strawman to me. If you really described "new narrative on the Online Right", you could have linked and quoted them directly. Then I would know that I am looking at a weakman instead of a strawman at least.
Then you treat HBD (including scare quotes) as a synonym for white supremacy. Guatemalans are ethnically a mixture of Hispanic and Mayan ancestry. I do not know a lot about Latin America, but I think the Mayans had one of the well known pre-European empires, and probably had less of a link between violence and reproductive success than the Aztec. At least provide a link to some self-professed HBD proponent claiming that Guatemala is a ""third-world s***hole"" due to their genetic makeup.
Your post was bad for reasons which are totally orthogonal to you being anti-HBD. If you had started
and then proceeded to present a strawman of free trade proponents, that would likely have netted you less downvotes, but it would have been just as bad.
It is well known that this is a forum where the majority of people are witches, which means that they get away with being snarky sometimes when they really should not. Sure, being extra-snarky, getting -39 downvotes (but also 12 upvotes) and a ban is very theatrical, but not constructive. Instead, I would prefer if you reported comments stating pro-witch opinions which were inflammatory and poorly sourced.
Guatemalans are pretty heavily Mayan, to the point that describing them as ‘mixed’ is a bit of a stretch- most Latin American countries are indeed mostly mestizo, but Guatemala is mostly Indio- in the sense of still living in villages.
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I'm not anti-HBD. I'm anti third-worldism.
Youve never plainly stated what that means.
Principled opposition to neutrality in the socioecopolitical conflict between the United States and Russia?
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You're arguing about the moderation of the forum, and the Motte's very ethos as a forum. This is neither interesting or productive. I'm certainly not aligned with the moderators in everything, but I didn't come back guns blazing, hot off my ban with a chip on my shoulder. What are you trying to prove? That we're all a bunch of chuds?
Well, let's say you proved it. Do you have anything else left to say?
I do indeed want ideologically diverse discussion place, but I don't think you're the person that fits that bill. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.
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This isn't what the 'woke right' thinks. Firstly the people who believe in HBD or racialism are in a different group to the generic MAGA or tariff enthusiasts. Secondly, they don't want more of their people digging ditches. Maybe they want their enemies digging ditches once their overpaid email jobs get vaporized. Maybe they want mechanized fruitpickers. Maybe they want higher wages for locals to do those jobs as redistribution from rich to poor.
You can say 'tarifffs done in this way are retarded and a bad way to achieve these goals' and nobody will ban you. You can say 'HBD is overrated compared to historical/economic practices in determining the fate of nations' and nobody will ban you though some will argue with you. You can't make up some strawman of what other people believe, provide no evidence that they think this and then sneer at them.
The mods were enormously generous letting you back onto this forum after such intense and vehement mischaracterization.
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This is why the whole Elite Human Capital thing has already flashed in the pan and gone as a memetic trend. There's no register used by its proponents other than shallow antagonism towards broad swathes of (usually caricatured) outgroupers. Beyond Hanania's mild advocacy of orthodox liberal/libertarian economics, it's incredibly rare to find any positive platform whatsoever buried in all the mud-slinging - as shown on this forum by the complete confusion of many posters as to what positive ideas you actually believe. Out of politeness, I'll refrain from speculating on the psychological motives or personality types involved. But I suspect there just isn't any positive platform because, when people are motivated by one, they're usually excited to win others over, to learn how to convert with argument and rhetoric. If that's what you're trying to do, rather than sling insults because they feel good, then I suggest revising your approach.
On the other hand, if you're looking to antagonize people, here is a guide on how to do it while being as polite as possible.
Strength. Health. Beauty. Intelligence. Fertility. Truth. Reason. Vitality.
Terry Hogan
Hard to demonstrate exceptional health, but I haven't seen a conspicuous lack of health in the Trump administration.
Natalie Winters (and in fact the beauty of a number of MAGA women, at least by DC standards, has been noted elsewhere)
J.D. Vance, but also Terry Hogan and Tulsi Gabbard and RFK and most of the rest. There are few dummies.
Elon of course. Trump. RFK Jr. MTG.
Ah, alas, this is politics.
Vance
Trump, Hogan, MTG, Winters, others.
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Cool, now elaborate on what you mean by those, and how do you achieve them, and we might have the type of conversation that's actually encouraged here.
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Elite human capital is pretty clearly code for Bush era democrats with moderately libertarian economics. They're very concerned about increasing religious right influence(lol, LMAO even), and think constantly sounding the bugle on it is a necessity. They support gays but not trans, may have some skepticism of- but mostly a vague idea about- US foreign policy. They're very pro-abortion, very concerned about conspiracy theories. Compared to current day progressives they don't seem to care much about drugs or criminal justice much, they might even be (moderately)conservative on the issue, it's hard to tell.
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No Alex, as I have told you over and over and over and over and over and over again, what people want is to argue against your perspective. Not defend against your strawman of their perspective. Certainly not defend against your strawman of what Richard Hanania told you is the perspective of people they are aligned with on one issue. When you aren't writing sentence long sneers you constantly structure your posts like a smack down - but for Twitter arguments, not anything said on the motte. But nobody gives a shit what you saw someone say on twitter. Go argue that shit on twitter already.
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I did not find your original post to be plainly spoken. Actually, I'd like to get into it.
You talk about your evidence, and you did provide some, but it was all in support of the things that didn't need supporting. I would be willing to take your word for it that blacks are more likely to die of opioids than whites, or that most men have jobs. These aren't exactly extreme claims in need of reams of supporting evidence. I would be willing to accept them for the sake of parsing the rest of your argument even if they weren't true.
Here's an example of a part of your post I would have liked to see some supporting evidence for:
The new narrative according to whom? Since when? This is a rather extreme claim, made right at the start, and the structure of the post is essentially arguing that this narrative is hypocritical. And yet you advanced this argument yourself. You aren't arguing against someone else making a coherent argument, you're assuming someone believes this thing and arguing against what you think they must think. So, the part of your post I would most need to see evidence for is that this "narrative" is actually a widespread belief, and you provide none.
I agree with this take.
In my experience, the people who are really worried about decaying former company towns are also worried about places like Detroit, which used to have a higher proportion of functional, employed black men with families (they say, I'd be open to an argument that this is a myth I suppose).
The people who are really worried about good New York schools crowding out white and Asian kids in favor of racial quotas because of disparate impact are different people, much more likely to go on about "HBD," but they're probably just as upset about being yelled at on the subway by black, white, or hispanic druggies. I think these are the ones who are tired of trying to solve the druggies' problems for them, and would like them to be locked up or denied expensive, repeated medical care, and would be completely unsurprised at the stats about their average demographics.
Crime actually started rapidly increasing during the era of high manufacturing employment in Detroit (even if it peaked shortly after the oil crisis) and is correlated much more with the great migration than the subsequent decline in manufacturing employment.
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Although that is not an official rule, that is encouraged, yes.
As for you, I'm not going to argue with yet another person who comes back from a ban to complain about how unfair their ban was. You know what you're doing.
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I didn't report it and have mixed feelings about the ban, but it wasn't a good top level post.
What was wrong with it?
It was putting words in the mouths of a large, vaguely defined political movement which you associated those you disagree with on the forum with.
I wouldn't have banned you for it- although if I made all the mod decisions you probably would have been banned at the time you posted it for one of the personal attacks you got a slap on the wrist for- but it wasn't the post we'd like to see more of. I think you could have written a better version of that post; goodness knows we have enough discussion on native white men and the economy.
We have conservative posters who whine about the mods oppressing them, too. I generally say the same thing to them.
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It's a really dense mishmash of a bunch of different things, any one of which might be interesting to explore, but together just kind of form an overcooked soup.
It would be much, much better with one or two concrete rightists as a foil, especially since the people who are worried about disparate impact keeping their kids out of medical school or Yale or something are in a coalition with, but distinct from, the people who are worried about their depressing rust belt family members failing to #learntocode. An adversarial but earnest take on Vance, for instance, would be more interesting.
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I would not have personally banned you and I don’t think you’ve ever posted anything banworthy.
But @netstack was correct that based on your comment record, you’re here to pick fights rather than engage in constructive dialogue. Like everywhere else in the world, we have multiple competing values that we want to balance: we want a diversity of viewpoints represented, but we also don’t want people who are just here to pick fights.
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The mods are only human. I haven't dived deep enough to evaluate the merits of your particular ban, but for what it's worth, I've been banned several times. I don't hold any grudge against the mods for that. My bans were generally in the nature of "I got emotional and I started to really lay into my political opponents in an obviously angry and uncharitable way". I do sometimes get annoyed by the fact that I feel that people on this forum often break the "Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity." rule by assuming that social conservatism is good, without actually justifying it. But I don't feel that this happens because the mods are ideologically biased. I think it happens because I think that this forum has more social conservatives posting (though not necessarily lurking or voting) than social liberals like myself, so social conservatives just create more content for mods to address than social liberals do. Certainly there are plenty of snarky posts and consensus-building posts here by conservatives that don't get modded, but I don't feel that the mods are trying to support conservatism, it's just that there are a lot of snarky and consensus-building conservative posts to go through compared to snarky and consensus-building liberal posts, so it's very easy to find examples of the former that slip through the net.
While this forum leans right, I often see posts of mine that are left of the average get upvoted by quite a bit. You might be surprised how receptive you find some people here if you argue for your political opinions plainly and calmly, laying out arguments for why they are accurate and/or beneficial, rather than with anger. I extend this appeal, also, to some of the more snarky and angry right-wingers here: please put aside the emotional fervor and try to just argue for your political opinions plainly and calmly, rather than in a perpetually angry and conspiratorial mode.
Best analysis of the situation I've seen yet
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As somebody way to your right, this is encouraging to read.
I agree that the Motte has moved somewhat right over its existence as society has moved left. While the median Mottizen has long been unwoke, some posters have moved to assuming an antiwoke consensus, and that is unfortunate.
But I think that there are some social dynamics that make the Motte appear further right than it is. Every time somebody has collected data on this, it has turned out to be so. If you polled Mottizens on, say, gay marriage, I am confident that you’d find a supermajority in support even if you only polled posters. We socons are more comfortable casually expressing our views than social conservatives were back in the /r/SSC culture war threads, but we’re still a minority.
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If you want to understand the position of HBD enjoys better, you are perfectly allowed to lay out your current understanding of the HBD viewpoint and then ask about the parts that you think don't make sense.
Instead you post: Acktually, if HBDers really believed what they say, they "would have to conclude that whites are an inferior race."
Who is "you guys" and who is "your political tribe???"
What I actually said was:
Maybe the problem here is you reading things that aren't there, not my writing.
In my experience, when I believe I have been misinterpreted, it is much more conducive to understanding to rephrase my claim to attempt to address the misunderstanding than just to direct others to reread.
While the fault may be theirs, it may also not be, and even if one is sure it's on them, grace and magnanimity (in extending others a hand even if you think they don't deserve it) goes a long way.
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What you actually said:
You're quoting me out of context to make it seem like I'm saying the opposite of what I'm actually saying:
You are comparing some subset of Guatemalans to some subset of US Whites. Also you conveniently forgot to mention that Guatemalans might come to US by foot only because OTHER US Whites, not rust belt whites, are helping them to do so.
How so?
Interestingly, if you want to seach on how migrants are helped to travel to US border, use something different from Google, which avoids showing you these results. Yandex definitely doesn't have a leg in US culture war so it's fair here.
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There are organizations helping them with food, shelter. maps etc., some of these organizations partially or fully funded by tax money.
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I don't think the extra context actually does change the meaning at all. I'll apply some simplification to distill the meaning of the full paragraph:
Summary: The "narrative" (as you put it) conflicts with HBD because...
Summary: HBD would require you to see whites as an inferior race...
Summary: They (here now referring to believers in your "narrative" rather than believers in HBD) see whites as a weaker and nobler race, much like the Noble Savage myth portrays American Indians...
Summary: But American whites aren't American Indians so the comparison is weak (then why did you make it?)
It seems clear to me that this is actually two statements without much connection between them.
Statement 1: If you take HBD seriously then you should see whites as an inferior race.
Statement 2: "Narrative" believers see American whites like Noble Savage-fans see American Indians.
To be clear, I never thought you were claiming that white people are racially inferior to Guatemalans. You say so in the very first sentence of the quoted section - this is what you believe to be the logical conclusion of HBD, not what you believe yourself. The context is there.
Everyone has understood this from the beginning, including the person you responded to. We know what you meant, and what you meant is precisely what we're objecting to.
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What did you mean when you said "This worldview would seem to conflict with HBD theories. Indeed, one would have to conclude that whites are an inferior race. "
Who would have to conclude that? Under what suppositions?
Don't insult my intelligence. I know exactly what you're trying to insinuate. You're quite straightforwardly saying "If you assume X, then Y is a logical conclusion. Since X-supporters don't believe in Y, they must be either idiots or are lying." Of course you're wrong about that, but that's besides the point because you just go "tee hee that's not what I meant XP" instead of defending your position.
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