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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16265 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026

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A short introduction to Liberal Zionist rhetoric, and why they usually just keep quiet.

A day ago a very interesting interview between Krystal Ball and Rep. Adam Smith took place. The topic of contention was Israel.

tl;dr: Openly defending Israel as a jewish ethnostate is OK as a democrat.

The interview starts off cordial enough. Adam establishes himself as the typical neo-liberal everyman who can sympathize with the plight of the downtrodden AND the military industrial complex (What a guy!) whilst Krystal fronts the now typical faux radical left 'not everyone in the DSA is insane, actually. At least I'm not' media personality that goes hard on the issues that pull on the heart strings.

Where things go south unexpectedly is around the 11:30 mark. Krystal compliments Adam on his recent strong voting pattern against aid to Israel, specifically the Thomas Massie amendment, and asks him to explain his thought process and change of heart. Adam waffles on a bit about his opposition to the Netanyahu government, a typical Liberal Zionist talking point, but then suddenly veers off the rails:

So you know if you have a situation where Israel is threatened on all sides and, I know it's like well no it's not saying they don't have right to exist, just they have to let all the Palestinians back in and then effectively the Jews no longer control Israel. Okay.

This is not out of context, this is the argument. Yes, Liberal Zionists are democrats. Yes, they are against the Netanyahu government. Yes, they believe in the concept of Israel as an explicit ethnostate. He believes it is not possible for Palestinians to represent jews in Israel. Two ethnic groups can not coexist. They are definitionally in a zero sum game of survival. That's the establishment democrat Liberal Zionist view for jews in Israel.

Understandably, Krystal catches on to this Neo Nazi Zionist talking point that's somehow found its way into her otherwise progressive liberal leftist studio:

Well, I'm sorry, but don't you like equal rights for all ethnicities? Like, Something that you in theory support as a Democrat?

Adam replies, a little more flustered than before:

Well, well, well, sure, but, but the, the practical result of this is if you say there should be equal rights within Israel, but if Israel allows [equal rights] they cease to exist as a country.

Mein Kamerad... Krystal replies:

No, they cease to exist as a Jewish ethnostate. That's very different from ceasing to exist as a country.

To which Adam retorts:

Oh, come on, come on!

Which is the extent of his argumentation that isn't a soft recital of the many permutations of ethno nationalism argued for on the old /r/AltRight, RIP.

Krystal, to her credit as a host, tries to segue this into something else and asks why the US taxpayer should care about a jewish ethno supremacist project in the middle East, which Mike Huckabee would have been happy to answer. But Adam can't really seek refugee in the Scofield Bible so he doubles down on Neo Nazism Zionism for jews:

We, we, we, we got to, we got to drill down on that. Okay. Okay. All right. They cease to exist as an ethnostate. So basically, Jews would live in Palestine and be governed by the Palestinians, by the Arabs. Okay. And, and maybe that's just what has to happen in the minds of some people, but understand the consequences of it. Understand why Israel was created in the first place. So that the Jews would have some place to go. Okay. And to just blithely say, "Well, yeah, it'll go away and it'll be fine." So that's point.

Well OK.

To all the Adam Smiths of the world. Why is having an ethnostate good for the jews but not anyone else? Why don't jews benefit from diversity in their western style open democratic society like everyone else? Why doesn't the magic freedom dirt in Israel transform your third worlders into engineers and scientists like it allegedly does everywhere else in the west, who would be just as jewish as anyone else in a few years. How is it possible to represent anything the Democrats have represented the world over and then believe this for Israel in the back of your brain?

Adam arrived to this interview ready to earnestly make the point that ethnonationalism is good for jews. He wanted to say this and he did. And I get it. Because he's not wrong. It's just that he believes it's wrong for everyone else. Most Liberal Zionists must understand that this contradiction is impossible to defend, which is probably why they don't talk about it at all. Hell, I'm starting to believe they can't even conceive of it. The Dual Morality is so strong it probably doesn't even register as a contradiction. But to hear it from the horses mouth is flabbergasting.

When people argue for immigration restrictionism to Israel, they often specifically speak of Palestinians and/or hypothetical Muslim immigrants who are directly hostile to Israel. Why not third parties? Indians would love higher wages. The worst parts of Latin America have tons of people who want that too. Christian parts of Africa as well. If we do believe that good systems can produce productive people, which to a greater or lesser extent is a/the core belief of most moderate immigration supporters, than all of those people coming into Israel will quickly be value adds. If you have 30 million Israelis, the Palestinians just aren't a problem. At that point, you can likely start including them in the fold as well. Unless you think people named Juan, Mobutu, or Ramesh are inherently alien to your polity, this honestly could be a long term plan.

To speak plainly: I can see how even under standard liberalism, you can justify keeping Palestinians and certain openly hostile citizens of certain Middle Eastern states out of Israel. To have a conception of Israel that excludes the possibility of third parties like Latinos and Christian Africans coming and assimilating, at a greater or lesser rate, is exclusionary to the point that is outside the Overton Window of the left hand side of any western polity. Israel is considered a western polity, and liberal zionists certainly argue that it is, and them not being held to the standards of other western polities is what is causing the left to rapidly sour on them. Most modern leftists don't think that modern Jews get to claim an exception to the 'no ethnostates' rule.

To all the Adam Smiths of the world. Why is having an ethnostate good for the jews but not anyone else?

Easy to answer from liberal perspective, no doublethink needed.

LIBERAL IRON ZION MODE ON:

Ethnostate for Jews is tragic necessity in order to survive, not something desirable in itself. Israeli situation is unique in the world. Immigrants in our countries are people who are fleeing mortal danger and desperate conditions, and by their hard work make economy stronger and life better. Do you want the line to go up, don't you?

Palestinians are not like that, Palestinians are hardened blood drenched terrorists, all of them are taught to hate and kill since the earliest age. Palestinians do not want peace, they want to blow up themselves and cut off heads (while your new Latino neighbor dreams about cutting your lawn).

Under no modern liberal definition is the direct continuation of distinct ethnic groups genetic lineage necessary. Jeet and Muhammed can be trusted to carry out your traditions just fine.

Palestinians are not like that

This is just low brow racism. If you can teach them to hate you can teach them to love. Israel needs to open its borders, but most necessarily Israelis need to open their hearts.

How will we make that happen? As the morally good, we will implement desegregation and forcibly integrate the schools at gun point if need be. You will also share prisons overcrowded with Palestinians who will rape and torture you to death because it makes them feel happy but we won't make a big deal out of it or change anything because segregation and apartheid is the greater moral evil.

We will create media that promotes ethnic grievance directed against you to remind everyone of your physical and moral crimes. We will make media about how morally good and righteous Palestinians are. We will make media about how Palestinian men and jewish women are romantically made for one another. We will make vague pseudo-scientific genetic arguments about hybrid vigor and how mixed babies are superior. We will make pornography specifically depicting the act of copulation between the two ethnic groups and make it de facto accessible to children.

We will be lenient on Palestinian criminals who rape jewish women and children and outlaw media that tries to highlight or speak against this. And we will at every turn promote the idea that this is morally good, brag about the fact that we've done this and proclaim that any jew who thinks otherwise is a malignant tumor besieging society that must be ostracized, forcibly reeducated or otherwise destroyed. It's also actually a mental illness to believe any of this is happening, or that it's bad, planned or that you don't deserve it.

You fail the liberal test. Ms. Greddle would like to have a word with you after class.

We will make media about how Palestinian men and jewish women are romantically made for one another.

Why can't right-wingers talk about anything without bringing their anxieties about black dick into it?

BPC?

It's a universal principle for men that they don't like women of their perceived ingroup mixing with men of the outgroup. And whilst I appreciate having a black American taking the time to center another universal issue around their own identity, having a black penis does not, in fact, prevent one from feeling anxiety and insecurities over the outgroup taking ones women. Like the many 'bedwench' posts left by black men under otherwise happy mixed race couples on instagram demonstrate.

The dialectic surrounding outgroup competition for women between men has been had. No race of man wants to dig into whose hoes are the least loyal, actually. There are enough of them to go around. And ultimately, no one really wins by fretting about where other people manage to find love.

That doesn't change the biological fact that endlessly mixing populations together will ultimately and irreversibly change them. Which is why an other wise liberal democrat was making the ethnonationalist case for a population he actually cares about preserving.

I think a more interesting and expository question is why the left can't bring their own anxieties about black dick into anything.

Ok I'm gonna need a longer comment on your answer to this question.

From 1800 to 1919 there was a negligible amount of violence against Jews in Palestine while they comprised 4-12% of the population. There was probably more anti-Catholic of anti-Irish violence in America than anti-Jewish violence by Arabs in Palestine at this time. What got them all worked up was when International Jewry (in this case a legible entity) started seriously planning to settle en masse to Palestine and create a sovereign state there, and started doing so with foreign funding, etc. And their response to this was, if anything, an under-reaction to the threat that this movement posed to their homeland, in retrospect. Had they disposed of the foreigners immediately, they would still have their homeland. It’s weird that people look at what happened to Palestine and conclude “if only the Palestinians were more welcoming neighbors”! No, the plans for colonization and expansion were already in place before the various casus belli for cleansing happened.

From 1800 to 1919 there was a negligible amount of violence against Jews in Palestine while they comprised 4-12% of the population.

It's pretty dishonest to not include the fall of the ottoman empire in this analysis. A whole lot of events happened between 1919 and the nakba. The Jews aren't the only actors on the world stage.

Not sure what you mean. I was thinking in terms of Palestinian Arab x Jewish relations in Palestine proper. AFAIK there wasn’t a lot of violent animosity in this period, and even though there wasn’t a high population, we should expect more violence if the thesis “Palestinians will always be violent to Jews” were correct. Or do you mean that the Arabs would have been violent but the Ottoman Turks prevented it?

The Ottoman Turks ran the territory, not the Palestinians, and the whole mandate period was a question of precisely how that territory was to be handed off from legitimate British control to local management. The whole of the post-Ottoman territory was going through this proto-nationalist phase, the Jews were not uniquely trying to cut out a piece. Many of them were fleeing other previously Turk run territories going through their own nationalist movements. I'm not trying to say they behaved as angels or anything, there were lots of tit for tat escalations going on as different populations laid claim. But to just gloss it as "in the 1919 apropos of nothing the jews hatched a plan to conqueror the peaceful Arab land" is ahistorical. Much of the original land was bought from Arab landlords who were themselves granted ownership from the Ottomans as legitimately as such things were done back then. Which certainly sucked for the Arab tenants that the new Jewish land owners kicked off the land and I don't blame them necessarily for fighting back but you're putting a hell of an isolated demand for non-national sentiment on the Jews just after they watched millions of their brothers and sisters get slaughtered.

It still seems pretty contradictory to me. In particular this:

Immigrants in our countries are people who are fleeing mortal danger and desperate conditions

and this:

Palestinians are hardened blood drenched terrorists, all of them are taught to hate and kill since the earliest age.

Are the same picture. I suppose you could some "desperate conditions" are economic in nature, but a lot of the immigrants being shipped to Europe were/are from active war zones, with a culture and mentality bit that different from the Palestinian one.

Also when it comes to survival, I'd say the Jews as a coherent group have more years ahead of them then either of the Balts. And it's not even a factual disagreement, liberals usually just shrug at the prospect of any European-descended group being dissolved. It's seems to be a values disagreement, where they only care about one group surviving, despite their pretense of having universalist principles.

And it's not even a factual disagreement, liberals usually just shrug at the prospect of any European-descended group being dissolved.

LIBERAL IRON MODE ON:

If European groups are "dissolving" it is due to their free choice, not genocide. There are no concentration camps and mass graves in Europe. If Latvian does not want to be Latvian any more, this is his right.

And we are all for free choice, aren't we? (except choice to be bigot and hater, freedom to end freedom is no freedom at all)

If you support freedom, you would protect man from being murdered, while also protecting his option to access Canadian style health care if in the future he decided he is tired of life.

My sports car. Our credit card debt.

but a lot of the immigrants being shipped to Europe were/are from active war zones, with a culture and mentality bit that different from the Palestinian one.

Not a problem for an American then?

Who's building all those mosques on Texas, and electing Mamdanis?

Mamdani isn’t exactly a believing Muslim and won on a dsa platform by promising free shit. Hardly a ‘Muslim’ story.

He and his wife are hardcore anti-Israel and sympathized with 10/7, which helped a lot with the Muslim story.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but... are you sure? Being duplicitous isn't disqualifying for communists, and communists and Islamists alike share an interest in the destruction of the nation. Personally, I think it's likely that Mamdani is just keeping his Muslim status on the down-low.

Judging from what I see reposted about Mamdani, he could be elected solely by white atheist socialist-adjacents.

To all the Adam Smiths of the world. Why is having an ethnostate good for the jews but not anyone else? Why don't jews benefit from diversity in their western style open democratic society like everyone else? Why doesn't the magic freedom dirt in Israel transform your third worlders into engineers and scientists like it allegedly does everywhere else in the west, who would be just as Jewish as anyone else in a few years. How is it possible to represent anything the Democrats have represented the world over and then believe this for Israel in the back of your brain?

This is not only supposed contradiction in Liberal Zionist thinking, but for the rest of progressives as well. The thing is that much of their sociology is driven by ideas similar to that of W.E.B. Du Bois, author of The Souls of Black Folk. He invented the concept that progressives use even today when they talk about Black folk. He is an interesting character as he was a black man who studied in Germany in 1890s. The word "folk" in his book is literal translation of German concept of Volk of second half of 19th century German romantic nationalism. Volk is an organic group tied by language, blood and shared history, it together creates Hegelian Volksgeist - this Hegelian Geist is what Du Bois means by Souls. By the way the modern Zionism is literally a child of the same movement, it is literal national awakening similarly to what happened in Europe around the same time.

Progressives can be viewed as continuation of romantic national awakening movement, they just want to carve out different nations. You have Black Nation and Native Nation and Queer Nation, that is what they mean when they use the term community. They also use the rest of romantic vocabulary; these nations have their own culture: Queer Culture and Black Culture, they have their own art and history and mythology. If it does not exist, then it is fabricated in the same way romantic nationalists created creation myths for their own nations. Some if these identities are literally related to blood such as Black or Native in the same way romantic revolutionaries viewed that. Of course there are important differences: progressives are generally integralists as opposed to romantic revolutionaries, who were all about separation and creating state to serve their definition of nation.

But the thing is still there, they just combine this idea of various nations living under benevolent roof of multicultural imperial state - of course led by learned, enlightened progressive people like Krystal Ball - which protects and arbitrates between these various nations living under its roof. She is not there to deny existence of Jewish nation, she is there as a bureaucrat in court of Austrian Empire arbitrating disputes between Hungarians and Slovaks and other acknowledged Volk to uphold multicultural intersectionality, while Adam Smith is something like Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson who is there to fiercely advocate for Slovaks. But it is not exactly against the whole idea, there are many literal Black Nationalists inside progressive coalition with their own fierce advocates. They just have to know when to shut up and give authority to intersectionalist beurocrats if they clash with other nation - e.g. religious Black Folk with Queer Folk. Liberal Zionists are in the same situation, they are advocates of oppressed group and that is fine. However they should just read the room and see that powers that be decided, that now is the time for Palestinian Volk and that they should bow down and make concessions.

It seems contradictionary: you have imperialist ethnonationalist progressives? Come on. But it makes sense if you take their ideology seriously. Moreover, living with contradiction is part and parcel of this ideology, it is at its core a Hegelian project which loves contradictions, synthetizing contradictions via philosophical "revolution" in a spiral is the core of what "progress" means, how we achieve the ultimate synthesis of all contradictions in progressive eschaton of ultimate Social Justice and true voluntary equity.

As someone who knows a few hardcore liberal zionists, I think the answer is just that these people are living in another world, the two screen effect, or whatever it's called. Note: this is pretty directly about these few people I know, and those of their acquaintances that I've met, so maybe about 15 people or so. So take this with a grain of salt - I can't necessarily generalize this to all liberal zionists because I know just a few.

The people I know have such a strong victimhood complex, that it pretty much overrides just about anything. They believe so strongly that the Jewish people are about to go extinct any year now (hyperbole, but not as much as you'd think), and that it's the highest priority in the world to stop that from happening. And they recast any argument that maybe they're wrong about this or maybe what they're proposing is hypocritical, as simple antisemitism, with complete flat out refusal to even register that maybe the other side has a point. They are not stupid people, but have a bit of a willfully ignorant streak about considering the other side on these issues. They have a very simplistic ability to understand arguments like this and no real desire to understand - they'd rather just not even try because it preserves their worldview.

These people I know, there's really no arguing with them, you have to just accept that they are a little brainwashed and move on, or else you simply risk your relationship with them. And they'll go sending you petitions and articles every month or so that Absolutely Proves they're right, and you just have to nod along and not say anything.

the two screen effect, or whatever it's called

Two movies, one screen.

Two interpretations, two stories being told. One shared reality.

Krystal ball

Genuinely surprised that we never got a Metal Gear character with this name.

Anyway, I’m not really seeing the problem here. I don’t like an ethnostate. I think that claiming Israel is one but Palestine wouldn’t be is misguided at best. Therefore, I’m sympathetic to people who rank the current situation over the palette-swapped version. That seems to be Smith’s position.

Mind the usual motte-and-bailey about Israel though, with the motte being "Israelis have as much right to fight for their existence as everyone else, the alternative would be worse in every respect" and the bailey being "we have to provide Israel with unconditional material and political support". If the anti-Israel position were actually as extreme as it is being strawmanned, it would not stop at cutting support to Israel and maybe threatening to arrest Bibi if he comes to a Western country again; instead it would demand that the US and Europe redirect all those piles of money, intel and ordnance to Hamas, which is so far out of the Overton window that it doesn't even work as satire.

If the anti-Israel position were actually as extreme as it is being strawmanned, it would not stop at cutting support to Israel and maybe threatening to arrest Bibi if he comes to a Western country again; instead it would demand that the US and Europe redirect all those piles of money, intel and ordnance to Hamas, which is so far out of the Overton window that it doesn't even work as satire.

Which or whose anti-Israel position stops at cutting support, the Liberal Jew's position?

The Liberal Jew adopts this position as a matter washing our hands for moral hygiene. The Liberal Jew believes the avatar of Bibi can soak up all the animosity, pass out of view eventually, and with cessation of a few billion dollars of aid the Liberal Jew's coalitional partners will be satiated. The Liberal Jew can hold the line there, surely. Of course this is not how politics works. At least, I don't see a good reason why that is realistic expectation here. If America can detach politically, cease 4 billions dollars a year in military aid, then the other positions will push onward. These are more aggressive methods of moral hygiene.

The Liberal Jew can declare the matter settled until the cows come home, but he will still be flanked by Radical Jews and Global South aficionados on the upswing within the Liberal Jew's own coalition and social circles. Few advocate for arming Hamas, that is true, but they clearly want to advance towards divestment, sanctions, and imposed isolation. They want to Rhodesia Israel. This, I think, is not particularly controversial. The Liberal Jew hopes to budge Overton only a little until all these unpleasant reactionaries are out of power in the Holy Land, but the reactionaries are in power for reasons that do not seem to be changing, and the anti-Israel position/project has greater ambition or greater animosity even if they were change.

It's my position, it's pretty common among the politically engaged in my immediate environment, and I'm neither Jewish nor particularly interested in how Israel conducts itself internally as long as I don't have to be the one pushing the fat man off the bridge (there are plenty of other places in the world where people are routinely barbaric to each other and I'm equally comfortable leaving those to their own devices).

I do think your entire post registers as a less-than healthy degree of straight up projection, because you are painting this strangely elaborate and unhinged picture of your opposition as being obsessed with the minutiae of Israel's fate and situation when in reality it is clear that it is clear that nobody cares more than you do. A stalker may take the long list of incidents that you compiled to submit to police as evidence that you really do love them back, but in reality you will most likely be overjoyed to not have to spend a sliver of attention on them again once the restraining order goes through; likewise, here in the broadly anti crowd we have been forced to pay attention after decades of money extraction, conflict spillover and unsolicited interference with civic and political life, but outside of a few obsessives I really think that most people (here in Europe! I gather the US has the whole Protestant millenarian thing going on, so sometimes the stalkee really does love the stalker back?) would be quite happy to forget that the place even exists.

I am not obsessed with the minutiae of Liberal Jews, their political sentiments, or Israel's fate. I think my picture was more general than elaborate and I didn't disparage any of the groups mentioned to be seen as worthy of your stalker analogy. "Global South aficionados" could be considered pejorative, but no it is a real descriptor with real political force in the US and on the international level. As an American, I think your implied position is a perfectly fine one. A new configuration of US-Israeli relations which includes certain measures of decoupling to act more like relations with Saudi Arabia or the Philippines is a fine, defensible position to have. I don't find it offensive at all I just don't have any mistaken belief on the consequences somehow stopping conflict in your or anyone else's head. What does your country do for Israel that is so offensive? Are Liberal Jews a political force in your nation as they are in the US?

I really think that most people would be quite happy to forget that the place even exists.

Nonsense. People that want apathy can reach up today and grab it. Most people do. There has been and will be a genocide, bombing, intifada, or a new settlement to look forward to. There are entities and systems around the world that work to ensure you can't simply forget, including the Israeli government, and none of them are beholden to the constraints of your perfectly fine, defensible position. If your moral standards are met once once the US announces Israel must pay for all its bombs like anyone else and US-Israeli military cooperation is shoved into the dark, I predict you're going to be disappointed the noise doesn't end. If your standards dictate something more, then we're talking about something more than a normalized relationship between the US (or your nation) and Israel, aren't we? What might that be?

The only way you're not going to hear about Israel is if you decide to stop reading the news or a genocide is actually completed.

Smith realizes that an Palestinian majority in Israel would turn the country into a failed state and result in a genocide, but does not believe a third world majority in America will turn American into a failed state and/or result in a genocide.

He is wrong about the latter (on the first count if not the second, though it doesn’t really matter), but is this hypocrisy? If anything, it is the bigotry of unreasonably high expectations for the migrants, and for their countries’ assimilation of them, for the supremacy of their culture and political system.

This is underappreciated in analysis of the liberal defense of mass immigration, so often painted as simply self hatred, an unlikely thing because many progressives are the standard type of arrogant narcissist politician and they usually don’t hate themselves, not even deep down.

Most people like Smith do not actually believe that the immigrants will make the country worse, they think everything will be fine. They are convinced of their ideology. They are smart enough to know that ethnic and tribal conflicts exist in the world, but they don’t think it could happen where they live. It is not that they believe they deserve worse, but that they think they are better.

an Palestinian majority in Israel would turn the country into a failed state

What makes you say that? I know you're not into HBD, and Palestinians aren't a low-IQ population anyway – Palestinian Christians in Israel are more successful than Jews. If the concern is that they'd path-dependence their way into an Egypt/Algeria-type situation, presumably the preexisting institutions inherited from Israel would prevent that.

and result in a genocide

Can be prevented by an international peacekeeping force deployed to keep things in control until they stop hating each other.

Smith realizes that an Palestinian majority in Israel would turn the country into a failed state and result in a genocide, but does not believe a third world majority in America will turn American into a failed state and/or result in a genocide.

The problem is that Zimbabwe and South Africa exist. We have already seen exactly this happen twice already. The third world majority will turn Israel into a failed state, it will result in genocide, and the same will happen in America.

But that can't be said, because Rhodesia deserved it, and so did apartheid South Africa, in the liberal telling of things. That's why the accusations of apartheid against Israel: it is fundamentally a declaration that your government is illegitimate. Why this is the sole moral cause for state illegitimacy is left as an exercise for the reader.

Most people like Smith do not actually believe that the immigrants will make the country worse, they think everything will be fine. They are convinced of their ideology. They are smart enough to know that ethnic and tribal conflicts exist in the world, but they don’t think it could happen where they live. It is not that they believe they deserve worse, but that they think they are better.

The comedy is that Adam Smith is sounding more like Ian Smith than he'll ever admit. The tragedy is that he doesn't apply it to him and his like.

The U.S. is not likely to be a failed state due to immigration, however. Latins are perfectly capable of maintaining a functioning society- not as wealthy as the US, but nowhere is. Chinamen and Indians are too. The USA is not importing a billion African mud farmers.

That is not to say that continuing to import tens of millions of centraco laborers won’t make things worse. But ‘failed state’ isn’t a likely outcome.

Most people like Smith do not actually believe that the immigrants will make the country worse, they think everything will be fine. They are convinced of their ideology. They are smart enough to know that ethnic and tribal conflicts exist in the world, but they don’t think it could happen where they live. It is not that they believe they deserve worse, but that they think they are better.

This is just begging the question- why does Smith believe that though? His perspective was browbeaten into our collective consciousness with incessant moralism from motivated actors directing cultural institutions. If he believed otherwise with respect to mass immigration to White countries, he would be racist, which remains one of the most damaging accusations you can make against someone's political beliefs. This is why people like Krystal exist, she learned her lessons, and now there's a strong contingent of the left-wing that sees the strong contradiction between those values that constitute their moral consciousness and the Zionist project.

Liberal Values triumphed over South Africa and forced it into suicide, the notable difference being South Africa was a White country. So this isn't derived from some pragmatic analysis, modern "liberalism" means that Whites have to accept demographic replacement (otherwise you're racist) and oh yeah you have to support Jewish ethnonationalism (otherwise you're antisemitic).

I’m not saying it’s derived from pragmatic analysis, politics is always emotional. I’m saying that “we must have mass immigration to European countries even if it makes them much, much worse” is a poor way to frame the liberal position because broadly speaking mainstream liberals like Smith do not believe it is going to make these countries much worse. Elite American liberals are not unaware of tribal conflicts. They created Kosovo, they beat themselves up about not intervening more in Rwanda, they deal with countless tribal and religious conflicts in the State Department that they attempt to varying degrees of success to influence and where they regularly pick winners. They just believe in American exceptionalism. That it couldn’t happen here, in part because they’re in charge.

The people who believe we must accept the whole third world no matter what out of power and privilege even if it makes everyone’s life much more difficult tend to be on the radical left, de-growth types, ban new construction types, the oppressed are always right types, black and brown bodies types, Palestine flag / watermelon emoji types, people who hate Matt Yglesias (who again supports mass immigration out of a misguided belief in assimilation) as much as the right types. They are also almost always anti-zionist leftists of the kind you discuss, too.

America has already integrated a bunch of different nationalities and ethnicities into one country. We have done it successfully for 250 years. Successfully enough that we just lump "white" people into a single category. Europe has dozens of bloody and heated rivalries that were plenty active up until 50 ish years ago.

There is an argument to be made that we are no longer doing the things that allow for successful integration, but saying integration is impossible seems clearly wrong.

Successfully enough that we just lump "white" people into a single category.

I want to remind you that integration involves forced assimilation, suppression of native languages, strict discrimination, and sending the failures back.

That was how we barely assimilated the Catholics, and it also involved 40 years of closed borders. It involved the President of the United States saying things like the man who carries a hyphen carries with him a dagger with which to stab the republic in the back.

We don't do any of this any more. The machine is broken. The planes aren't coming back. The Mexicans are still Mexican, the Chinese and Japanese haven't even merged into Asian, never mind become American. And we're not even trying with the muslims. Why are there so many muslims now, and why in the last ten years only, and what, exactly, is your plan for integrating them into America?

I have a millenia of history showing me that muslims don't integrate anywhere they go. What's your evidence against?

America has already integrated a bunch of different nationalities and ethnicities into one country. We have done it successfully for 250 years. Successfully enough that we just lump "white" people into a single category. Europe has dozens of bloody and heated rivalries that were plenty active up until 50 ish years ago.

Yeah, if you account for actual civil war, forced boarding schools for natives and other populations, "educating" religion, culture and language out of their slave population, fierce fight against hyphenated Americans since WW1, it was remarkably successful.

USA is not exceptional in this sense, many other countries did the same forced assimilation, except we now use different words for those projects such as Germanisation, Russification, Magyarization, Italianization etc. If anything, there is actually a European "melting pot" project not unlike USA - France. In the past it was very diverse country of many smaller nations speaking different languages and having diverse histories: Occitan South, Celtic/Bretonian West, Flemmish and Germanic North East and various others. France pursued aggressive assimilation in form of forced secular republican tradition and generations of focused public school education. It worked beautifully so much so, that by 1951 French approved usage of local minority languages in schools, firm in their sense of victory after centuries of the project. It remains to be seen if it was not a hollow victory.

I absolutely agree that this works relatively well - although even there are many exceptions. There are some very tenacious ethnicities like Roma, or Basque etc. It however does not mean that it will work forever, there is equal number of examples of failed assimilations and ultimate splinter of states even in Europe.

Blacks remain meaningfully unassimilated after all these years, probably because of the many third world cultural and genetic traits they have. That does not bode well for the future. Assimilating whites and east asians is not proof that you can assimilate anyone.

Black culture is not very third world. It’s dysfunctional, sûre, but it’s the kind of dysfunction that the urban poor in developed countries exhibit, not the kind of dysfunction that tends to be more common in actually poor countries. They are also culturally quite similar to their white actual neighbors- not the well heeled ones from the other side of the city. Have you been around white trash? Being poor and dysfunctional is not the same thing as being unassimilated.

Blacks remain meaningfully unassimilated after all these years, probably because of the many third world cultural and genetic traits they have.

How are you defining "assimilation" in this context and what sort of evidence would you present to support this claim if asked?

My evidence would mainly be that for almost all immigrant groups they have followed a pattern of starting off relatively separate and economically down and then in a generation or two melted into the pot culturally and their economic results either hit around the median or even a little higher.

Blacks, despite being here longer than most of these groups and 70 years of actively tilting the scales to give them a hand up remain more culturally distinct and economically downtrodden. This pattern does not match to any European or east asian groups, but does map pretty well to third world migration, especially in Europe, where 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th generation think of themselves as GROUP first and NATIONALITY second (if that), are culturally and economically separate from the main body. Again, patterns that hold pretty well for blacks in America.

And they constantly bring up slavery as if it was just abolished last week, in all manner of crazy contexts. I've seen Los Angeles public transit buses called "slave ships", and the fucking Library of Congress referred to as "the plantation". They never get tired of their schtick.

I do not disagree with you that this issue is one of "GROUP first and NATIONALITY second" but I would urge you to notice who is promoting that distinction and why.

The scales aren't being tilted "to give them a hand up" as we can see how those that argue that the tilt is necessary react to those who are able to succeed on their own merit. No, the scales are tilted because the left needs that "GROUP first and NATIONALITY second" distinction to be maintained if they want to remain electorally viable.

Do we have large income gaps between black populations and non-black populations in the US?

If you spend enough time on Twitter you begin to realize any time some SES graph shows up by geography they all look identical. And they are all very similar to % black population. Whether it’s income, murder, life expectancy or whatever else you can think of that shows outcomes you see worse outcomes in heavily black areas.

Even if you do something like group white people versus black people by income you end up finding things like the children of the top 10% of black parental income have the same chance of ending up in jail as bottom income whites.

So basically you can do all kinds of statistical test by race and find huge differences. These things aren’t disputed by the right and the left. They dispute the meaning of these statistical tests. It’s also at the heart of disparate impact is proof of racism.

The lack of convergence to similar outcomes is the evidence for a failure to assimilate.

If you spend enough time on Twitter you begin to realize any time some SES graph shows up by geography they all look identical. And they are all very similar to % black population. Whether it’s income, murder, life expectancy or whatever else

Is this actually what we see though? About 1/3rd of Georgia's population is black and yet and it's GDP per capita (roughly $82k) is comparable to that of Norway and Switzerland. How do you explain that?

Personally, I suspect pretty much all scholarship on this topic to be an ugly mish-mash of academic bullshit and statistical ignorance.

I mean all of America is rich. So that’s not that surprising. And Georgia is a weird example for you to pick because it is known to be the wealthiest black community in America.

I’m not sure what you are arguing that the statistics aren’t correct. They are just statistics. Are you arguing that we don’t have things like a big wealth gap between white and blacks? The left and right agree this is true.

Would you prefer we compare Alabama to Germany? In either case I would argue that the point stands.

I'm not saying that wealth gaps don't exist, I'm saying that your claim that...

If you spend enough time on Twitter you begin to realize any time some SES graph shows up by geography they all look identical. And they are all very similar to % black population.

...would appear to be contradicted by the observation that there are multiple states with double-digit black populations whose outcomes are comparable or superior to those of "whiter" nations and states despite their alleged handicap. If the state of Georgia were isekaied into the EU, it wouldn't just be "the wealthiest black community" it would be one of the wealthiest communities in the EU period.

You can dismiss this as just "America being rich" but that just begs the question of "why?" because it sure as hell isn't because of racial purity.

The lack of convergence to similar outcomes is the evidence for a failure to assimilate.

The lack of convergence can be better explained by genetics than culture. Especially if you have black children of well off parents (who would be raised in a different culture) still reverting to the average of their race on a bunch of life outcomes.

If anything American culture as a whole has assimilated into black culture. Black athletes, pop stars, comedians, and actors have outsized representation.

People get culturally assimilated in the US, but not necessarily genetically assimilated.

When choosing immigrants you care a lot about outcome assimilation and that has not occurred likely because of genetics. Now blacks have a claim to America as their homeland because they have been here a long time but the lack of outcome assimilation is a strong argument against letting any group immigrate to the US.

And while American culture is a melting pot between Anglo and black culture it’s also clear that there is a culture gap between the two groups which probably does have a genetic component.

So while modern American culture is a combination of both groups we don’t really want to add more groups that can’t blend into existing American culture especially when a large part of that is likely genetic. It’s still a strong argument against immigration.

Full assimilation would be to not be able to find group differences between people of different ancestry so even if the cause is genetics the two groups haven’t assimilated by formed one society of distinct groups.

I believe that's only true of ADOS, who are functionally a different ethnicity and demographic to modern African migrants. First and second-generation African migrants today are very different and have assimilated more successfully.

This fails the test of high filtration. I do in fact have highly assimilated black ADOS friends. But it’s a small % of the population. The last cycle of African immigrants to the US were highly filtered.

The closest thing we have to unfiltered African population in America would be Somalis and they are not assimilating. And Europe is having similar issues with unfiltered African migration.

The only examples we have of mass migration in the west completely failed to assimilate over 100’s of years.

African Immigrants to the US with filtration also tend to get the benefits of being able to reap the benefits of programs that were aimed at advancing ADOS people and thus get a massive boost to their career and academic outcomes.

Sorry, I should have specified - recent African migrants to the United States. The European situation is different.

I agree that those migrants are heavily filtered. That's the point. It's like Indian migration to the US. You can selectively take motivated, educated, high-achieving migrants. The same thing with Asian migration, actually.

Yes but children regress to the mean somewhat even with highly-filtered parents, chain migration is going to be something that gets lobbied for exhaustively and without end and is closer to unfiltered. There's also a certain social effect where the children of people who had top 1% outcomes in life to get out of Bumfuckistan and get to the West, even if intelligent, will fall short of parental accomplishments/expectation and then blame it on Racism instead of recognizing their parental achievement.

This is particularly exacerbated in a decent amount of groups where the family that chose to remain in the country of origin are actually doing pretty damned well (since they're top 1%ers intelligence-wise in an emerging economy, a lot of which have gone gangbusters especially if you are in that 1%) and thus look back at their cousins who are still at home and see they've got insane luxury lifestyles whilst their parents choosing to bail on Bumfuckistan has earned them, the children, an upper middle class lifestyle. I grew up with a lot of Asian diaspora Western-born first generation immigrants where this theme came up a lot, where their parents looked like a genius fleeing Vietnam circa 1960 and yet circa 2020 the family (that was upper echelon enough to get the people that left the resources and education to leave) back home are 9-figure millionaires whilst the emigrant is a Doctor.

Then inevitably a torrent of bitching about 'wah my cousins all get random do-nothing sinecures and drive Lamborghinis around all day, it's the rice ceiling keeping me down in the West' when they should have just stayed in the initial country where they were of the upper crust.

children regress to the mean somewhat even with highly-filtered parents

If you select a subpopulation from a population, the children of the subpopulation will regress to the mean of the subpopulation, not the entire population.

this theme came up a lot, where their parents looked like a genius fleeing Vietnam circa 1960 and yet circa 2020 the family (that was upper echelon enough to get the people that left the resources and education to leave) back home are 9-figure millionaires whilst the emigrant is a Doctor.

Vietnam has spent decades rapidly climbing out of crushing poverty, yet the number of centi-millionaires there was still only 58 just a couple years ago. If you know close relatives of 2+ centi-millionaire families, your experience may not be statistically normal. I know it's easier for a whole family than for an individual to amass that total wealth, but even plain millionaire individuals number only in the few tens of thousands in Vietnam.

Qualitatively, though, I'd bet there is a "big fish in a small pond" effect that applies to many more people. PPP is an average over many classes of goods, and some things (real estate, anything Baumol-effected) are much more affordable to Vietnamese residents than to Vietnamese-Americans here.

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There are populations in Africa that are pretty smart. It is an oversimplification to talk about blacks. There are too many different populations.

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Yes but children regress to the mean somewhat even with highly-filtered parents, chain migration is going to be something that gets lobbied for exhaustively and without end and is closer to unfiltered. There's also a certain social effect where the children of people who had top 1% outcomes in life to get out of Bumfuckistan and get to the West, even if intelligent, will fall short of parental accomplishments/expectation and then blame it on Racism instead of recognizing their parental achievement.

They just join the mass of DSA failsons who are disproportionately white who blame the same downward mobility on capitalism.

It stands out because people hate this behavior more from foreigners (or "foreigners"), and the DSA-types know better than to appear as a movement of white failsons looking to loot others. Better to do it in the name of minorities.

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Provided you teach scientific racism in civics class. Otherwise society sees highly filter of “X” group being fine. So you loosen the standards. Then the existing group does chain migration and brings over wives and parents. And now you have a voting block to pressure government to let more of their people in.

I’ve had Paki friends shocked when they went to Pakistan and found out their country isn’t as smart as all the brown skinned friends in the states and had no realization of how highly selected for his father was.

So basically non of this works unless you teach racism in public schools.

I’ve had Paki friends shocked when they went to Pakistan and found out their country isn’t as smart as all the brown skinned friends in the states and had no realization of how highly selected for his father was.

That plus when they go home a lot of the time the family that managed to get their father out of Pakistan is in the top 0.1% in terms of resources and education so they are frequently living larger than the Father who went overseas and is now paying Western COL with Western Salary wages.

I mean, he's correct as to the issue there, right?

A one-state solution is impossible because nobody wants it. The Israelis don't want it, because they correctly believe that it would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state, and it is an explicitly-understood goal of Israeli policy that Jews must always be a dominant majority in Israel. That was the whole reason Israel was created in the first place - for there to be a Jewish state. This isn't a secret anyone is exposing - they say it explicitly. Meanwhile, the Palestinians don't want it, because... I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the Palestinians hate the Jews. They do not want to co-exist with them. One of the reasons why Israeli Jews don't want a one-state solution is because they - still correctly - believe that the most likely result of that would be a lot of dead Jews.

The people saying, "Why can't you just all be one state together with equal rights regardless of faith or ethnicity?" are either being disingenuous or stupid. It is obvious to anybody looking at the situation honestly why that cannot work.

Moreover, don't we allow other states to do this? Israel is not unique in holding itself to be the nation of a particular ethnicity, favouring people of that ethnicity, and making policy with a deliberate eye to maintaining that ethnicity's dominant status in its homeland. Japan is probably the most famous other one, and we generally accept that the Japanese have a right to decide how they want to run Japan. Most Middle Eastern countries are like Israel in this respect - just ask the Turks about nationality.

Israel is different to the United States in being an ethno-state, but ethno-states are common. The US is the weird one, not Israel.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians don't want it, because... I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the Palestinians hate the Jews.

The Palestinians' current hatred for the Jews is a product of Israel's actions for the past 80 years. In 1948, Palestinians were advocating a one-state solution, and the Zionists were opposed to it. There is no reason to believe anything bad would have happened to the Jews if the Palestinians had got their way, given that Arabs had already coexisted peacefully with Jews for over a millennium. The Zionists just wanted a Jewish state as an ideological axiom.

One of the reasons why Israeli Jews don't want a one-state solution is because they - still correctly - believe that the most likely result of that would be a lot of dead Jews.

It's doable with an international peacekeeping force to keep things in control until they stop hating each other.

The Palestinians' current hatred for the Jews is a product of Israel's actions for the past 80 years.

That's true, at least to within a certain approximation, but irrelevant. Today a one-state solution is impossible because the Palestinians and Israelis hate each other.

It's doable with an international peacekeeping force to keep things in control until they stop hating each other.

Whether that's true or not, it's also irrelevant because there is no such peacekeeping force, nobody appears to be willing to provide one, and even if they were, such a massive garrison force would destabilise the region (even more so than it already is) and be hated by all of Israel/Palestine's neighbours.

I just don't think there's any point either arguing would'ves and could'ves, or arguing for ideal solutions that have zero chance of actually happening. It isn't 1948, and there is no giant neutral army prepared to come in and enforce a solution. Can we please be serious?

'My fellow whites' is morphing into 'My fellow neo-nazis? Well, as a fellow neo-nazi, Of course he is right. I would welcome this brother with open arms into the pan-nationalist fold. As anything else? No, he's actually wrong in the most racist way possible. It's a declaration of war against modern liberal societies and their moral identity.

The ideological priors that underpin that identity are very robust and ubiquitous in western societies, from being taught in elementary schools to being depicted in pop media. There is only one race, the human race. We are all inherently good, of equal worth, moral character and our faults are only a product of environmental circumstance. Openness and trust good, prejudice bad. We can all learn and better ourselves if given the chance and resources. Immigration is advertised as a universal good. Economically, culturally, morally and to the exclusion of any preservative conception of an ancestral or genetic ethnic identity. It's actually a moral duty to improve the conditions of others to help elevate them to the privileged point you coincidentally occupy today and any conception of your ancestral lineage or future progeny or majoritarian ingroup bias that exists to the exclusion of others is the greatest moral evil in existence.

The people saying, "Why can't you just all be one state together with equal rights regardless of faith or ethnicity?" are either being disingenuous or stupid. It is obvious to anybody looking at the situation honestly why that cannot work.

'Anyone who doesn't functionally grasp and agree with the principles of Neo-Nazism is disingenuous or stupid'? Apologies if I'm misinterpreting this and you are saying modern liberalism is 'working' for the west. But regardless of that I don't remember anyone proclaiming modern liberalism needs to work to the benefit of ethnocentric jews in particular. We all have to share this earth. Palestinians and jews included.

Sure, it sucks jews are a global minority and will definitely go extinct under this paradigm, but that's the case for most peoples. We will all end up beige.

Israel is different to the United States in being an ethno-state, but ethno-states are common. The US is the weird one, not Israel.

We generally accept that democracy is good. Stating that non-Japanese people would be incapable of participating in it in Japan without destroying it for the Japanese is the most illiberal and racist thing I've heard in years.

Ethno-states can only be alleged to be common as a result of history and circumstance. But nigh every first world nation, including Japan, is transforming away from that. That is the direction of modern liberalism. Israel is unique in that it's demanding a different direction for itself for profoundly illiberal neo-nazi reasons.

Where are you getting neo-Nazis? Do you think that any group that wants to remain ethnically/culturally/religiously distinctive, in any way, is neo-Nazi?

I think a one-state solution in Israel is impossible for pragmatic, historically contingent reasons. This group of people and that group of people are unwilling to co-exist in the one state. You can judge one group or the other or both immoral, but I'm not making a moral judgement. I'm saying that, like it or not, you cannot jam Israelis and Palestinians together into the one state. Neither group will accept that.

I do not blame Jews (or members of any group) for not wanting to go extinct. No group has an obligation to embrace its own obliteration.

You then bring up 'democracy' for some reason even though I didn't touch on that in the slightest. I think that ethno-states are common, and I did not say that ethno-states are morally impermissible. I think that national communities have a right to self-determine and that includes the right to be an ethno-state. The Japanese people are morally permitted to constitute themselves as an ethno-state, for instance. This is a different and unrelated question to that of democracy. You can have a democratic ethno-state, a non-democratic ethno-state, a democratic non-ethno-state, and a non-democratic non-ethno-state. They are unrelated axes.

I don't think Israel is unique in being or wanting to be an ethno-state, and there are plenty of comparable nations. I just mentioned Azerbaijan, for instance. You can say that ethno-states shouldn't exist if you like - that's your own judgement. But I'm not forbidding that. Some countries are ethno-states and some countries are not ethno-states and I'm fine with this.

The case you are making for Israel is the case every neo-nazi has made for their own country. All of your assertions derive from illiberal worldview that is directly tied to the modern conception of neo-nazism. The idea of ethnostates as a coherent concept in the first place is going over the line, let alone that they could ever be good.

I do not blame Jews (or members of any group) for not wanting to go extinct. No group has an obligation to embrace its own obliteration.

You're not engaging with the contention. We can agree between the two of us to any illiberal view on the world for the preservation of our peoples and whatever else, but what's the relevance of that to the discourse relating to the reigning powers that be who are liberal and don't agree with us at all? Who'd denigrate the very idea that there are coherent and exclusive groups in the first place outside of the conception that the one that is better off should help the one whose worse off.

I don't think Israel is unique in being or wanting to be an ethno-state, and there are plenty of comparable nations.

I already explained why this line of thinking is invalid. Ethnostates can only be alleged to be common as a result of history and circumstance. But nigh every first world nation, including Japan, is transforming away from that. That is the direction of modern liberalism. Israel is unique in that it's demanding a different direction for itself for profoundly illiberal neo-nazi reasons.

To highlight this further with your example of Azerbaijan, if Azerbaijan was becoming an economic powerhouse, with opportunity that would make the life of foreign immigrants better, would they or would they not be obligated to open their borders to immigration under liberal priors? I'll repost them here:

There is only one race, the human race. We are all inherently good, of equal worth, moral character and our faults are only a product of environmental circumstance. Openness and trust good, prejudice bad. We can all learn and better ourselves if given the chance and resources. Immigration is a universal good. Economically, culturally, morally and to the exclusion of any preservative conception of an ancestral or genetic ethnic identity. It's a moral duty to improve the conditions of others to help elevate them to the privileged point you coincidentally occupy today and any conception of your ancestral lineage or future progeny or majoritarian ingroup bias that exists to the exclusion or detriment of others is the greatest moral evil in existence.

Which one of these do you disagree with? What do liberals call people who disagree with their core values? Who do you think you are to them?

The Palestinians and Israelis can make peace and if the neo-nazi conception of Israel has to perish for that peace to happen liberals have no reason to care. It's a process that's already ongoing in the west. Why shouldn't it happen to Israel?

The case you are making for Israel is the case every neo-nazi has made for their own country.

I don't think that's the case. Neo-Nazism is a much more specific, narrow family of ideologies than that. The analogy to neo-Nazism is not helpful or relevant here because neo-Nazism is obviously not the same thing as ethno-nationalism simpliciter.

You're not engaging with the contention. We can agree between the two of us to any illiberal view on the world for the preservation of our peoples and whatever else, but what's the relevance of that to the discourse relating to the reigning powers that be who are liberal and don't agree with us at all?

You're talking with me, though. I don't have an army of ghosts behind my shoulder, and I'm not going to take the heat for this imaginary audience you appear to be bothered by. It's not an argument against me if some other group of people somewhere else think ethno-nationalism is always wrong. I don't think ethno-nationalism is always wrong, clearly the Israelis don't think ethno-nationalism is always wrong, Americans who support Israel don't seem to think that ethno-nationalism is always wrong, and as far as I can tell a great many people all around the world don't think that ethno-nationalism is always wrong.

I already explained why this line of thinking is invalid. Ethnostates can only be alleged to be common as a result of history and circumstance. But nigh every first world nation, including Japan, is transforming away from that. That is the direction of modern liberalism. Israel is unique in that it's demanding a different direction for itself for profoundly illiberal neo-nazi reasons.

Well, I don't accept that Israel is unique in that regard - there are plenty of other nations that are ethno-nationalist, some in a quite assertive way. You just don't seem to think they count. At any rate, I think that nations may constitute themselves in an ethno-nationalist way if they want. That's true for Israel, Azerbaijan, or indeed Japan. Who cares about 'the direction of modern liberalism'? Okay, it's true, there are people and organisations in the world who think that ethno-nationalism is always wrong. But those people are not everyone or everywhere, they're not me, and they don't appear to be controlling the situation in the Middle East.

What more do you want me to say? If 'modern liberalism' forbids ethno-states, then modern liberalism is wrong. That was easy.

To highlight this further with your example of Azerbaijan, if Azerbaijan was becoming an economic powerhouse, with opportunity that would make the life of foreign immigrants better, would they or would they not be obligated to open their borders to immigration under liberal priors?

What difference does it make whether they're rich or not? That's not germane to the point under discussion.

Which one of these do you disagree with? What do liberals call people who disagree with their core values? Who do you think you are to them?

I'm sorry, is this meant to be a gotcha? I have said already that I think ethno-nationalism can be acceptable and that ethnic or national groups can set the terms of entry. That implies, for instance, that I think the statement "immigration is a universal good" is false. Certainly it means that I disagree with the statement "immigration should always be permitted". I think it is acceptable to have a preservative conception of an ancestral ethnic identity - come on, I just said that I think you can't blame Jews for wanting to maintain 'Jews' as a distinct ethnic, cultural, and religious group, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Should I keep going through it? I think you've come up with this aggressive maximalist, even strawman, conception of liberalism, and you're... uh... who are you disagreeing with again? You don't appear to be disagreeing with me.

You're clearly angry at someone, but that someone is not me and does not appear to be in this conversation.

If I'm clearly angry it's because you're not interacting with the topic on the level ideological priors that drive beliefs or tactfully sidestepping the factual points that don't line up for you. I don't buy the sudden 'ethnostates are OK, actually' now that the topic is Israel. Or the idea that, coincidentally, ethnostates have just happened to be bad idea up until this specific point. Or the idea that, just now, we're going to walk away from all the moral priors of the liberal world, including the belief that populations can change in their belief and behavior.

If that doesn't apply to you, and you're here as a non-biased rational actor who just judges things on thing at a time, with no moral code or overarching ideological view, fine. But I genuinely don't believe you at all. I think that if I bothered to walk through your comments I'd find a moral quandary where your disposition is the polar opposite to what it is in this case.

I mean, they are okay. It's just demonstrably true that there are a huge number of them in the world and even liberal Westerners treat most of them as legitimate.

I take the subtext of your complaint to be that you think the United States should be an ethno-state, and specifically a white ethno-state. It's true that most Americans don't want that. It's true that liberals generally consider the idea of turning the USA into an ethno-state to be grossly immoral. If you ask me specifically, I think the idea of making the USA an ethno-state is ridiculous - it requires going against the last few centuries of American tradition and it's extraordinarily impracticable.

Perhaps less centrally, maybe it's also that you think European countries should be ethno-states, and my view there is that some are, many are not, and I agree that institutions like the EU think that ethno-states are bad and that EU countries should not be that way. I also think there's a significant groundswell against that point of view, and over the next few decades I expect that groundswell to get stronger.

To get even more provocative, I think that probably you are a neo-Nazi, or at least neo-Nazi adjacent, hence your bizarre attempt to drag neo-Nazism into this discussion. The impression I get is that your worldview is that countries, especially white countries, ought to be ethno-states, that an international progressive liberal consensus forbids this, is gradually destroying the identity and heritage of white countries, and that this consensus treats Israel as an exception to the rule, because this consensus is heavily Jewish and Jews are hypocrites who promote their own racial welfare while undermining that of whites. I trust you don't need me to explain why I think that's wrong.

But ultimately going back to the top-level comment, my feeling is - you, me, and Adam Smith all agree that ethno-states are okay. It's rather bizarre of you to be angry that Adam Smith holds a perspective that you and I both share. I think your real complaint is this:

To all the Adam Smiths of the world. Why is having an ethnostate good for the jews but not anyone else? Why don't jews benefit from diversity in their western style open democratic society like everyone else?

In other words, this is just garden variety anti-semitic rambling about the supposed Jewish conspiracy.

The United States is not an ethno-state, and there is no plausible pathway to making it an ethno-state. This is not because of the Jews. They did not do this to you. America is not an ethno-state because Americans don't want it to be. It's not some sort of Jew-influenced false consciousness, and if you remove the Jewish influence the people will rise up, like what Marxists think will happen if you remove the capitalist class. No, it's genuinely that most of your countrymen disagree with you. Deal with it.

It's not a question about what the public wants. The moral order is dictated to the people and then the people vote for the speed by which the moral order will be implemented. Your object level analysis is just inaccurate and perfectly illustrates this.

If we broach the factual terms, such as the reality that the first immigration law signed in the US limited immigration to white men of good character, that's never been relevant to a modern liberal. Or the Hart-Celler act. Under your conception, the US was a white ethnostate until that point in the 1960's. Or how the majority of Americans have supported segregation or worse for longer than they have not. Modern liberalism just paves over that with propaganda about a nation of immigrants and an entire genre of diversity propaganda. And you're just blatantly dipping into that modern liberal framework when it's convenient.

But that's exactly the thing, that framework is universalist and totalitarian. It applies to all. So when a person like you or Adam try to carve out an exception that contradicts that entire framework on the basis that the survival of a specific ethnic group is actually super important, and they can't coexist with any other ethnic groups because those ethnic groups are unchanging in their hatred of them, then yes, I do wonder if this is not just the Dual Morality that's alleged to afflict many diaspora jews rearing its head yet again. What even else do you call this sort of thing?

Because it turns out that when the shoe is on the other foot and they are dealing with other members of their group in their homeland, they prefer the same thing I prefer for my group in mine. Even though that's what I've been told all my life is really bad and evil. They want segregation, all of a sudden, rather than to rely on the fundamental moral good of all people. It doesn't make any sense.

The case for open societies was never made on a case by case basis. It's an absolute and complete moralizing ideology. Saying that you believe in it for one case and not another doesn't work.

There's no explanation given by you or anyone else for this. You're just not supposed to notice.

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The rest of the States you mention are all outside of the liberal western world. Japan has one foot in but they are still have sovereignty outside of western society. No Western State has a right to ethnonationalism.

Says who? I don't think anyone out side the usual gaggle of pink-haired harpies would bat an eye if the Prime Minister of Finland declared Finland to be a Finnish state or Denmark a Danish state.

WWII Germany isn't hated for being an explicitly German state, they're hated for aligning themselves against the rest of Western Civilization and engaging in the industrial slaughter of millions.

“Says who”

  • The ADL had specific lists of every organization in western culture on who were the bad people promoting white ethnostates. They’ve been defanged now but for 30 years they carried a lot of power.

Currently there are zero white ethnic states besides Israel and one can say slightly Argentina. The fact none exists is a strong indicator it was being enforced though not absolute proof.

Well, firstly, Israel doesn't qualify, surely? Let's say that Ashkenazim are white, but Ashkenazim are, though dominant, a minority in Israel. The plurality of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi. If you count Israel as a white ethno-state, then I think you have to count pretty much every Middle Eastern country as a white ethno-state.

Secondly... no country considers itself a white ethno-state. Ethno-states tend to define themselves more narrowly than that. Russia is in a sense an ethno-state, but the dominant ethnicity is Russian. When you say 'white ethno-state', presumably you mean 'states that organise themselves around a particular ethnicity that falls within the broad category of 'white'', and some of those do exist? To pick the most infamous one at the moment, surely Hungary qualifies?

Israel definitely isn't a white ethno-state - they've gone to great lengths to enable black Jews to immigrate, especially when one commie junta prison country banned their emigration back in the early 80s.

It's not any other kind of pure ethno-state, either. I would argue that "Jewish" is a multi-racial ethnicity just like "Hispanic" is, but that's moot. Excluding Gaza and the West Bank, something like a fifth of Israelis are Muslim Arabs.

Would it be reasonable to argue that they're trying to be an "ethno-state with a grandfather clause", though? I've seen such a proposition in the American context, the idea that further immigrants from Africa to the US should be disallowed and "don't belong here" but ADOS African-Americans didn't choose to be here and absolutely shouldn't be "repatriated". This seems somewhat analogous to the belief that Arabs (including their descendants) who stuck with Israel through the 1948 war deserve full citizenship and rights while the ones who fled or fought Israel (or who were never within those borders) don't have a right to be in Israel proper. The big difference is that AFAIK (correct me if I'm wrong!) the US version is believed by only a fraction of the right wing and is well outside the Overton window while the Israeli version reflects the median opinion and official immigration policy.

I think that would be reasonable, though at some point we're just arguing about labels. I don't think we have a meaningful disagreement about what Israel is. Israel is and understands itself to be, collectively, the state of the Jewish people. This does not rule out the existence of some non-Jewish Israelis, but it is obviously essential to Israel's existence that it is majority-Jewish and it is run with specifically Jewish interests in mind. In a sense the state of Israel is meant to be a kind of servant of the nation of Israel, that is, the Jewish people as a whole. 'Jewish' is a category is a bit of an odd category that cuts across simple concepts of race or religion, but I think we have a rough idea of what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state.

The United States is not that kind of state. The United States is formally committed to both racial/ethnic and religious neutrality in a way that Israel is not.

I think there is a plausible argument to be made that the United States has implicitly been founded on certain ethnic, cultural, and religious assumptions. The US is the child of a kind of Anglo Protestant establishment. That may not have been written into law, and definitely the US has included other faith communities from day one, but the unspoken assumption has been that the mainstream would remain the mainstream. The US has been able to assimilate minorities that are compatible with those assumptions to an extent, but it has often been a rocky road - Catholicism is accepted in the US now, but it was a difficult process and Catholics themselves changed as well, to accommodate themselves to the country. I take some of the current distress to be about the sense that the implicit Anglo Protestant foundation of the US is falling away.

In that light whenever this argument happens, I think there's a visible envy of Israel. It's a pretty common observation that the most vicious anti-semites often seem to have an envy of Jews, or quietly feel themselves inferior. Sometimes I see something similar in the political realm. Israel explicitly names its religious and ethnic foundations. The United States does not, even though you can argue that the United States has religious and ethnic foundations no less than Israel. I can understand wishing that the United States would say something similar.

In practice I think it would be harder for the US, particularly because British-descended people and Protestants are both minorities at the moment. Maybe individual American states could attempt something like it. But I can understand the yearning.

Ethno-states tend to define themselves more narrowly than that. Russia is in a sense an ethno-state, but the dominant ethnicity is Russian.

Russia doesn't even define itself as an ethnostate. It defines itself as a multinational state.

My read on Russia is that it's a bit like China in that it is officially multi-national, but there is very obviously a single dominant ethnicity. If the Russian ethnos ever looked likely to cease to be the one in charge of Russia, much like if the Han looked like they might cease to be in charge of China, we would see that definition start to fade very rapidly.

Maybe Hungary. But to note that the EU has frozen funds to Hungary and did some Article 7 TEU thing. Plus LePen was banned in France.

Sure I guess you can argue Jews are not pure white. But it is a loosely genetically related ethnostate if you want to conclude the different Jewish groups are both only partially genetically related to the original inhabitants.

Well, I think the Israeli case is somewhat complicated, because Israel understands itself as the state of 'the Jewish people', and that category is somewhat woolly. 'Jews' as a category includes lots of people who are usually considered white, and also lots of people who are clearly not white. In a sense Israel isn't an ethno-state at all, but a religious state; but of course, Jewishness is both a people and a religion. The racist right generally wants to reduce peoplehood to genetics or descent, and that doesn't really work in the case of Jews. Jews are clearly in some sense a people or an ethnos, but defining them genetically or in terms of traditional racial categories is difficult. Aliyah includes everyone from Sephardic Jews in Spain to Bnei Menashe in India, from the obviously white Ashkenazim to the obviously black Beta Israel.

I find it helpful to compare Israel to its neighbours. Is, say, Saudi Arabia an ethno-state? Not... really? It sort of views itself as a nation for Arab people, but not all Arabs belong there. It imports a large non-Arab underclass while enriching its Arab citizens. It's also a religious state, to a higher and stricter degree than Israel is. Ultimately I'm not sure the word 'ethno-state' actually helps us that much. Compare, say, Azerbaijan regularly getting shirty about Iranian Azeris and saying that all Azeris ought to be part of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan clearly understands itself to be the national homeland of the Azeris, it encourages Azeris outside the country to identify with it, and it does horrible things to non-Azeris on territory that it thinks rightfully belongs to Azerbaijan. That seems a lot like Israel.

I think that Israel is a state founded upon a particular religion and a particular ethnicity, with the explicit goal of maintaining the supremacy of that one ethnoreligious group in a particular territory. In that light I don't think it's particularly unique; most of its immediate neighbours in the Middle East are similar. The clash with the Palestinians is notable because the Palestinians are no different to Israeli Jews in this respect. The Palestinian cause is that the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is firstly Arab and secondly Muslim. The Israelis are not unusual for their region, save perhaps in having more money and guns than their rivals.

I feel like this is the no-true Scotsman fallacy. Israel is not 100% Jewish and some of the groups within Israel have significant genetic differences but as far as I know all the Jewish groups still trade 40-60% of their DNA from the historical Jewish population and common ancestors. And the shared 40-60% of genetics is a key defining point of the States.

Calling Saudi Arabia not an ethnic state seems even flimsier because it rest on them having imported temporary workers who can not stay permanently. Even here they have some minor exceptions as I know a scientists whose Muslim but not Arab who accepted the Saudi bag and they let him get citizenship but that is extremely rare.

Well, I think the Israeli case is somewhat complicated, because Israel understands itself as the state of 'the Jewish people', and that category is somewhat woolly. 'Jews' as a category includes lots of people who are usually considered white, and also lots of people who are clearly not white.

I wouldn't say Mizrahi Jews are "clearly not white". As with other MENA populations, the 19th century scientific racists, the US census bureau, and model HBD-aware biologists would all consider them a white subgroup.

Ashkenazi-on-Mizrahi racism is a live political issue in Israel, but western anti-racists, even ones looking for an excuse to bash Israel, don't see it as the local Israeli form of white-on-non-white racism. And I'm not seeing western pro-white voices who make the distinction - either they see all Jews as white and love Israel, or they see all Jews as <insert anti-Semitic stereotype> and think Israel is ripping us off. So I think Mizrahi Jews count as "politically white" outside Israel.

In fact, the only people I see claiming Mizrahi Jews as non-white are people trying to disprove the claim that Israel is an ethnostate of a white ethnicity.

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It’s who/whom. The younger gen/DSA left simply doesn’t group Jews into a ‘historically oppressed’ bucket.

I don't understand what causes so many people to abandon what seem like their important principles when it comes to Israel. It is mystifying to me. My perception is that Democrats, especially younger ones, are becoming more consistent on that question which I think is overall a good thing.

I admit I am no scholar on these topics but "liberal Zionism" has always seemed to me like a contradiction in terms. Zionism, as I understand it, is very explicitly an ethno-nationalist movement for the creation, support, and maintenance of a state for people of Jewish ethnicity. Like, the orientation of the state should explicitly privilege people of a particular ethnicity and religion. The very premise of Zionism seems in contradiction with how I understand liberal principles. Regarding, like, equal rights. Religious tolerance. It seems like liberal Zionists primarily want to claim they support liberal principles... except one Special Exception.

I obviously come down on the "liberal" side here. I think ethnostates are bad. I do not find it at all hard to hold this position consistently, including with respect to Israel.

The problem Anti-Zionists have with Israel isn't really that it's an ethnostate. It's that it's a settler-colonial project that came into existence through the displacement of the native population. Just like the US, Australia, and South Africa.

It’s liberalism within Zionism. Just like the US was founded on Liberalism for white people but slavery for black people. Within the chosen people you do everything in a liberal way (free trade, free speech, free association etc). Within the tribe/species you give those within it liberal rights.

I don't understand what causes so many people to abandon what seem like their important principles when it comes to Israel.

It's because Israel is the ultimate pragmatic hard situation.

Anytime any country wants to kill a bunch of people and steal their stuff the Jews look like an appetizing target.

I don't find ethnostates great, but realistically if the arabs got control of Israel they'd probably end up killing a bunch of the Jews living there and chasing the rest out. Especially now after what has happened. This is what is slowly happening in South Africa.

I think Israel is going to be a ethno-state no matter what, the option is either a Jewish ethnostates or an Arab one. I think this will probably be the case for a lot of countries and places.

I wish there was more America for them to move to. The way to break up these conflicts seems to be having both people move as far away from the context as possible, wait three or four generations and then the only people that cared are dead or too old to fight and their children get to move on.

Like, the orientation of the state should explicitly privilege people of a particular ethnicity and religion. The very premise of Zionism seems in contradiction with how I understand liberal principles.

Does nationalism thus contradict liberal principles, as many progressives claim? After all, nations privilege citizens. I am just as American as any native-born, in terms of believing the creed! Why should someone else be favored above me, especially if it means I lose the right to freedom from want, fear, etc. ?

If so, there's nothing to do but bite the bullet and say that liberalism was always in a marriage of compromise with nationalism and other particularist ideologies for the vast majority of its history and that sort of liberalism is...fine, actually. It worked for everyone until recently. So what?

Does nationalism thus contradict liberal principles, as many progressives claim?

Perhaps it does, but I would argue that this more a knock against progressivism than it is against nationalism.

The rush from judgment can easily be read as a reductio-ad-absurdum progressive moralizing. If Muhammed dreams of killing Jews who are we to deny him the opportunity to follow his dreams and live his best life?

What I can’t tell is whether you are sneering because you think ethnostates are bad or good.

I'm just sneering for the love of the game.

I've heard other center-lib influencers like Destiny outright acknowledge the hypocrisy, but they say it's OK because of the Holocaust- Israel should be an exception to the principles they claim to care about when it comes to promoting demographic change in Europe and the United States, and the Holocaust justifies that exception for Israel.

The other uncomfortable side of that equation- why is it bad for Europeans and Whites to oppose demographic change from mass migration? That also reduces to the Holocaust, so even though we face an apparent contradiction it is coherently derived from the same mythological foundation.

The Holocaust mythos is the center of this dialectic. Holding Jews and Gentiles to totally different standards is a core feature of that dialectic and is not even a contradiction even though it appears that way on the outside. This is the Moral Order.

...huh, I was starting to think you'd left the Motte entirely.

The thing is, once again you're attributing a kind of unique malice and hypocrisy to Israel even though, er, there are lots of ethno-states? Most countries are more like Israel than they are like the US, i.e. they consciously understand themselves to be the nation of a particular ethnic group. This isn't Jews and Gentiles held to different standards. This is the US, and to a slightly lesser extent Europe, being weird, and that weirdness originates, I'd argue, in the liberal revolutions of the late 18th century.

The Zionist malice is unique, no other ethnonationalist movement has such prominence in our cultural and political institutions. No other ethnonationalist movement tells us we are evil for not wanting to be demographically replaced by the third world, but we are morally obligated to support their own ethnonationalist project. The Japanese don't do that, the Chinese don't do that. The Russians try to stir up a lot of trouble but they don't do that. It's only Zionist Jews that advocate for mass immigration and anti-racism in the United States while demanding support for their own ethnonationalist project.

Take the ADL as Exhibit A of the behavior I'm describing.

Well, at least this time you're admitting openly that you think that Jews are malicious.

It seems to me that you're taking a large and common sensibility that is shared across most ethnic groups in the US - that the US is not and should not be an ethno-state - and then implausibly blaming that entirely on Jews/Zionists. The causality here is not at all clear. It's true that Jews generally support Israel, and Israel is an ethno-state, but they are far from unique in that light (that is, people in the US being positively-disposed to a foreign country that they share heritage with), and it's also unclear that there's any particularly strong correlation between 1) supporting Israel, and 2) wanting the US to not be an ethno-state.

I would point out, for instance, that group in America that hates Israel the most is also the group most opposed to the idea of the US as an ethno-state. Support for third-world immigration is surely highest on the left, especially the radical left, and those are the people who hate Israel most.

You claimed Zionism is not unique among ethnonationalist states, I claimed it is unique due to its long-standing political influence and domestic activism in the US that consciously created the moral dialectic that Adam Smith is appealing to in this conversation: it's bad for Whites to care about race, but we should support the Jewish ethnostate.

The causality here is not at all clear.

It would be totally impossible to trace the origin of Tolerance Education in the United States in any other direction. The Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded in 1977, which Wikipedia notes is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating antisemitism, tolerance education, defending Israel, and its Museum of Tolerance.

Wikipedia describes the origin of the center:

The founder Marvin Hier was born and raised in New York City and became an ordained rabbi at the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School. At the age of 22 he moved to Vancouver, Canada, and became the rabbi of the city's orthodox synagogue. He became friends with the mostly non-Orthodox Belzberg family who would help him fund the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In 1977, he moved to Los Angeles and bought a building on Pico Boulevard using a $500,000 donation from Samuel Belzberg which was matched with another half a million from Toronto-based real estate maven Joseph Tannenbaum. In the building he founded a yeshiva, a religious Jewish school, today known as the Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles, and a small Holocaust museum, with Belzberg as founding chairman. Famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was convinced to bless the museum with his name. Edward Norden, writing for Commentary, dismissed the museum as "a low-tech affair fashioned by and for Jews and holding nothing against the Gentiles back—an outsized portrait of Pius XII was given a prominent place among pictures of those who 'didn't care.' The message was that Jews have enemies, murderous enemies, and should look out." Hier, a skillful fundraiser, networked with the Hollywood célébrité, local politicians, and businessmen and raised large sums of money which he used to expand his operations.

"Tolerance Education" in schools today is practically synonymous with Holocaust education, the Holocaust mythos formulates the center of this liberal consensus that White nationalism is the greatest evil but Jewish nationalism is something we all have to support.

Likewise the ADL was founded in 1913 and incubated by the American Jewish Committee and American Jewish Congress. The well-known Museum of Tolerance was opened in 1993. Speaking of the American Jewish Committee:

American Jewish Committee (AJC) is a civil rights group and Jewish advocacy group established on November 11, 1906. It is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations and, according to The New York Times, is "widely regarded as the dean of American Jewish organizations".

Besides working in favor of civil liberties for Jews, the organization has a history of fighting against forms of discrimination in the United States and working on behalf of social equality, such as filing an amicus brief in the May 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education and participating in other events in the civil rights movement.

The causality is clear, over a century of Zionist organizations fighting White nationalism politically and culturally tooth and nail every step of the way, while simultaneously demanding unwavering support for Jewish nationalism. That is a unique malice.

The entire reason Krystal is so scandalized by the concept of the ethnostate is because she internalized her Tolerance Education!

The idea that the United States is not and should not be an ethno-state predates 1977.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is in no sense responsible for American civic nationalism. What on Earth are you talking about?

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