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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31773 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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A recent event that I’m sure fully counts as culture war is the official removal in Odessa of the monument to the city’s founders, mainly Catherine the Great. The justification, which is rather easy to predict, is that Catherine was a perpetrator of Moskal imperialism who repressed Ukrainian patriots (supposedly they already existed back then), committed cultural genocide and erased Ukrainian nationhood (which obviously we’re also supposed to believe existed back then). There isn’t much to comment on this, I think (though I’ll again point out that Odessa would never have existed in the first place without Catherine), but an educated redditor was eager to point out* the curious fact that the removed monument is actually a replica erected in 2007, largely as a response to the events of the so-called Orange Revolution, as the original was removed (and supposedly destroyed) by the Soviets in 1920. So yes, it was originally removed as an imperialist relic, by powers that the Ukrainian authorities claim later perpetrated genocide specifically against Ukrainians because they were Ukrainians i.e. it was an incident between opposing factions of Ukraine deniers. This is where we’re at, which actually doesn’t surprise me that much because I believe we’ve been in a clown world for a long time.

*https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/zyccgk/catherine_the_great_statue_taken_down_in_odesa/

I am mildly interested in how the quest for Ukrainian nation building will develop my lifetime. Right now they manage to co-opt two very opposing sets of political and philosophical schools, largely due to wartime mobilisation censorship and patriotism. On the one hand the Ukrainian identity is being based on 19th/early 20th century style blood and soil rhetoric. The defenders of white Christian (even pagan) Europe against eastern orc hordes. Unspoiled real Slavs against the crypto-Tatar Muscovites. Real European Christians unlike those Eastern Orthodox peasants. On the other hand their only hope for national survival in this day and age is to tightly integrate with the “GAE”. So the Ukrainian army puts up EU flags in newly reconquered territories. Their parliament is busy rushing through gay agenda bills. Their politicians are making deals with Blackrock and learning the ropes of the WEF circuit.

But when the war ends these two stories cannot coexist for long. You cannot arm neo-nazi battalions while going through the EU integration process. You cannot outright ban one of the largest churches as well as the linguistic communities in your country and try to enter the Schengen area. It’s not for nothing that half the EU funded ads targeted to my demographic on social media has some visible minorities (ie blacks) posing as proud Europeans. The nationalist Ukrainian state, if it ever stops being such a poor corrupt shithole and enters the EU, will have to cope with millions of African/South Asian/Middle Eastern immigrants as well as the European Court of Human Rights rulings which will not tolerate the blood and soil rhetoric in practice. It’s ridiculous contradictions all over and makes me profoundly sad that so many young brave people are dying for a political project doomed to fail if it ever succeeds.

Something has to give in at some point. I don’t know what but I am not very hopeful about the results.

On the one hand the Ukrainian identity is being based on 19th/early 20th century style blood and soil rhetoric.

Look to Ireland for how the transition from ethnonationalism to nationalism-allegedly-but-also-globalism-and-multiculturalist-rhetoric works.

My view of it is that nationalism is still used to make demands against the current or former overlord as suits you (e.g. Scotland as well) while, at the same time, its concrete tenets get hollowed out by the adoption of the inimical ideology of the dominant states nations want to suck up to (e.g. the large settler state to the West whose companies find their way to Ireland)

And somehow this incoherence just...continues.

I agree that this is a relevant parallel, as I agree with the view that Irish identity, as opposed to Scottish or Welsh, is almost entirely oppositional in nature, and therefore unravels easily:

https://affirmativeright.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-baby-killing-vote-and-loss-of-irish.html

Scottish or Welsh, is almost entirely oppositional in nature, and therefore unravels easily

I don't know about the Welsh, but why do you think the Scottish nationalism today is stronger? To me it looks like it is today indistinguishable from some blend of pro-EU and anti-Tory sentiment. It doesn't have anything particularly Scottish about it at all.

Good explanation. Often it’s easy to forget most political movements originate from quite absurd and contradictory sentiments.

I agree with most of that, but with a few pedantic points:

the last time the Tories won in Scotland was 1951

Nearly. 1955 in seats, 1959 in the popular vote.

The referendum in 2014 was closer than expected and energized the SNP, while the Tory government nationally allowed them to find their place politically as a kind of nice, “European style” social Democratic Party that wasn’t as anti capitalist as Corbyn’s Labour but also much more progressive than the Tories. So they did very well in 2015, and have maintained that position since.

Ed Miliband was leader in 2015. Plausibly, the SNP did well in 2015 because they were seen as more left wing and anti-Tory than Labour.

I also think it helps to distinguish Scottish nationalism and the SNP. Scottish nationalists I know are often cultural nationalists, though not ethnonationalists: they love the trappings of Scottish language, music, customs, and so on, and want them to be preserved as much as possible, but they'll very happily accept an Englishman or a Zulu who comes to Scotland and tries to integrate into the local culture. On the other hand, the SNP has a significant contingent of voters who are left wing and not Scottish (10% of people in Scotland were born elsewhere in the UK and most of them are from England). These voters like the anti-Tory, anti-Brexit, and social democratic parts of the SNP programme, but any sort of thorough-going Scottish nationalism, even of a cultural sort, is likely to alienate them. I like to joke that Scotland, like Wales, has only elected Labour governments since devolution - just that more and more of Scottish Labour started wearing yellow rosettes in the mid-Noughties. So Scotland is a curious country with a lot of cultural nationalism, but no culturally nationalist party.

On the other hand, the SNP has a significant contingent of voters who are left wing and not Scottish

One might almost say that they are not true Scotsmen...

Yah isn’t one of the biggest ScotNat complaints is that they don’t get enough immigrants now that they’re out of the EU?

No?

What is this page referring to then?

https://www.snp.org/policies/pb-what-is-the-snp-s-policy-on-immigration/

Or this story?

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/796344881/the-scottish-national-party-is-espousing-a-multicultural-brand-of-nationalism

The SNP is a single-issue party insofar its voters vote for it as long as it promises independence. Mundane policy is an afterthought, and the SNP is fundamentally lazy about it: it just does whatever rightist Englishmen dislike. Certainly getting immigrants isn't 'one of their biggest complaints', and it definitely isn't the sorts of thing rando fractionist Scots would consider their biggest complaints, if you bothered asking them.

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Yeah I suppose that is the "best case" scenario, although I doubt your average Azov battalion is thrilled to die for that.

But there are some big deviations.

Ireland's former/current overlords are Anglo countries mired in versions of anti-colonial ideologies. So it is easy to make demands from them when you know how to push certain emotional narratives. Russia is unlikely to ever play along in that.

Also the world bank data shows that before the whole tax haven thing, Ireland was trailing the UK with around 65% of its GDP per capita. That is not a terribly poor country. The main period of their transition from nationalist/parochial to atomised West Europeans also lies during a period of still pretty high birthrates and global rapid economic development. Compare that with Ukraine.

In short I doubt that economically they could hope for anything better than what Bulgaria (or Romania tops) have achieved, even if they entered the EU in 2021, Europe had decades of strong economic growth and the war never happened.

Should also take into account that the next generation of Ukrainian nationalists are going to be very well armed, have enormous combat experience and corps d'esprit, and have massive expectations for the nationalist future in their mind after sacrificing so tremendously. I doubt that they will be so docile if they start smelling betrayal in the air. This video comes to mind: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rgkPpsyUFcM

Also the world bank data shows that before the whole tax haven thing, Ireland was trailing the UK with around 65% of its GDP per capita.

Small note here since I both work in finance and am Irish; this exagerrates the UK advantage since a large proportion British GDP also comes from financial/tex efficiency stuff. If you're going to strip out the Irish tech sector (which is both the largest employer and largest GDP contributing sector of the economy) on the basis that firms are only sited there for tax efficiency, then to do a fair comparison you'd need to strip out the UK financial sector too.

It's true that GDP isn't a good metric to examine Ireland; our central bank publishes a figure that tries to account for the distortionary effect of profit funnelling, and which puts us about on a par with France on a per capita basis. If we're talking salaries and cost of living, Irish salaries are higher than non-London UK ones, and slightly lower than London ones.

When I quoted 65%, I was looking at the 60s-70s parts of those charts. I presume neither country had such a magnitude of “fake” economy back then?

You're comparing Ireland with London though, instead of Ireland with the UK. For sure Ireland doesn't have a city to rival London; neither does any other EU country. Paris and Berlin are both a grade below it; the only Western city that genuinely rivals London is NYC. Losing the UK from the EU was whatever, but losing London was a real tragedy for us. No disagreement there.

If the comparison is nation to nation instead of nation to city though, our per capita results come out above the UK in a lot of meaningful metrics.

As for the breakdown of roles, yes, no disagreement: the "top of the pyramid" roles tend to be based in London as UK personal tax is lower (Irish tax on equities is fucking abysmal), pay for high-end roles is higher, and there are a lot more of them.

Some quibbles: quite a lot of sales roles are really based here. Speaking of Google for example, more than 50% of staff in Dublin would be in sales roles, albeit junior ones. A junior sales role at Google is still pretty good. Meta is similar, so is Salesforce, Microsoft et al.

And you'll be aware of course that, given the loyalist history of the institution, people who go to Trinity aren't really Irish. The most ambitious Irish grads go to the US, not the UK, because there are more hoops to jump through; just like the Canadians you meet in London being more impressive than those in Boston.

Pictured here, the somehow.

Ireland has benefited massively and materially from integration into the EU/Globohomo system. Ireland has gone from a place of poverty that threw off emigrants to the USA to a wealthy nation. If Ukraine can achieve half that advance after EU integration, the majority of Ukrainians won't be sitting around grumbling about Black people.

Hasn't Ireland benefited massively from having lower tax rates than most other EU countries and acting as some kind of tax haven?

Their 2018 law allowing abortion shows which kind of path they're engaged in after welcoming Google and Facebook headquarters in Dublin.

the majority of Ukrainians won't be sitting around grumbling about Black people.

Yes they can become massive movie stars instead!

We previously were kind of a tax haven, yes. That's no longer the case, and what keeps all the tech HQs here is a mixture of inertia, business-friendly climate, etc. These aren't letterbox offices: Google is the largest private employer in Dublin, tech is the largest sector of the Irish economy both in employment numbers and GDP contribution, most US tech companies you could think of (bar Amazon) have their European HQ here. When I worked in the sector it would often surpise visitors from the US that [company's] largest office and official HQ was in Dublin and not London or Paris.

If the boss doesn't come into the office, but instead works from his home, does that mean "the real office" is the boss's house?

Yep, higher-ups often choose to work from their home country. Check out average pay in the Paris office, or Zurich. Also both higher than Dublin. Doesn’t mean they are also headquarters.

Finally, I suspect that Dublin figure excludes equity, due to the ridiculous way it's taxed here.

An average of 140k euros is still a tremendously high salary isn’t it? That would be an extremely good software engineer salary in The Netherlands which is a very expensive country on its own.

Are they Google numbers or Alphabet numbers? DeepMind would drag the London average for Alphabet up quite a bit.

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