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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   5778 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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From Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapter 111:

Slowly, Harry's mind tried to recover itself a final time. Very possibly final, if he was right about the Dark Lord killing him after this... though the Dark Lord had said that he would resurrect Hermione, which seemed pointless if that was true... was that simply the Dark Lord following through on a promise he would not otherwise have been able to make in Parseltongue... why had he not just shot Harry on the spot...

Seriously, some last functioning part of his brain said to all the other parts, this would be a good time to think of something, something that the Dark Lord has not already thought of, something we can do without our pouch or our wand or our Time-Turner, something that Professor Quirrell has not imagined we can do... think, think, pretty pretty please think of something? Don't shut down now, even if you're scared, even if we've never really really faced death before in the sense of being about to die in the next hour, THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO SHUT DOWN -

Harry's mind stayed blank.

Suppose, said that last remaining part, suppose we try to condition on the fact that we win this, or at least get out of this alive. If someone TOLD YOU AS A FACT that you had survived, or even won, somehow made everything turn out okay, what would you think had happened -

Not legitimate procedure, whispered Ravenclaw, the universe doesn't work like that, we're just going to die.

Someone realises we're missing, thought Hufflepuff, and Mad-Eye Moody shows up with a squad of Aurors and rescues us. I think the time has come to admit we're not more competent than the standard authorities.

The saving factor does have to be something we do somehow, said the last voice. Otherwise there's no point in our thinking about it.

Suppose a time traveler came back from the year 2100 and told you that, in his time, Britain (or Germany, or France) was 99% white and 94% Christian, the way it was in 1951. Unfortunately, before he could explain how such a thing came to pass, he gets hit by a lorry, dying instantly.

What would you think had happened?

Well, first, I would have been shocked that the singularity didn't happen, and that there were still biological humans walking around in 75 years' time. But leaving that aside...

I would not think that the remaining white population of Britain had woken up, voted harder, elected a right-wing government, and peacefully fixed their problems.

I would think that a far-right coup had overthrown the government, enacted martial law, and physically removed the Muslims, or something along those lines.

We are not voting our way out of this.

A large part of the decrease in the "Christian" share of the British population mostly comes from culturally Christian non-believers changing which box they tick on the census. It is not the case that 94% of British people believed in Jesus Christ in 1951 - in fact I would be mildly surprised if 94% of Anglican priests did. (It is also not the case that 54% of British people believe in Jesus Christ now - I don't, and I tick the CoE box on the census because it helps causes I like for the number to be higher.)

Suppose a time traveler came back from the year 2100 and told you that, in his time, Britain (or Germany, or France) was 99% white and 94% Christian, the way it was in 1951. Unfortunately, before he could explain how such a thing came to pass, he gets hit by a lorry, dying instantly.

Suppose a time traveler comes to 1920 and tells people that in 1944, there are hardly any Jews left in Poland. What do you think had happened? Do you think the gentile Poles (or even the Germans) thrived?

Generally, societies which are willing to enact ethnic purges are also shitty in a lot of other ways. You do not get to 99% white simply by removing the recent immigrants, you would need to round up Asians whose ancestors have lived here since 1970.

Likewise, unless Jesus starts granting his followers spell slots, I do not think that 94% Christianity would happen by organically. My read on the 94% is that in 1951, parishes filled important social functions and most people who had doubts about theism found it wiser to stay in the closet. It is hard to make parishes great again, but easy enough to drive the non-theists back into the closet, Cromwell could do that.

Repressive regimes do not go away simply because they have arrived at an ethnically homogeneous society. Any Britain which will go back to 99% white and 94% Christian will be orders of magnitude more terrible than 1951 was.

Also, one might wonder how a country would become more Christian while deporting or otherwise doing away with a substantial portion of the populace.

I don't think the proposals that would result in this outcome would be very Christ-like.

Suppose a time traveler came back from the year 2100 and told you that, in his time, Britain (or Germany, or France) was 99.6% white and 94% Christian, the way it was in 1951. Unfortunately, before he could explain how such a thing came to pass, he gets hit by a lorry, dying instantly.

What would you think had happened?

Timeline 1:

Second Cold War heated up, all sides built massive WMD stockpiles (nuclear, chemical, biological, AI) as they used to be at the peak or the previous round, kept them on hair trigger and then someone banged on the big red button with his shoe.

The (tiny numbers) of dwellers in the wastelands that used to be Europe are descendants of inhabitants of few rather remote villages, and they are praying really hard.

The Malevil future.

Timeline 2:

AI assisted bio and genetic technology delivers all science fictional promises and more. Human DNA is mapped and completely resolved, genetic engineering becomes as available and affordable as cell phones are now.

Everyone can now select their offsprings genes, and everyone excepting few weirdos selects white genes. Everyone always wanted to be white, and science and technology now made the dream possible. Just like viagra replaced rhinoceros horns, DNA editing will replace all existing skin lightening treatments.

In unrelated development, Christian religious revival powered by breakthrough in missionary AI sweeps the lands that used to be Europe, and everyone is now Christian (at least until Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu religious AI developers step up their efforts and close the gap).

Timeline 3: (doesn't quite work fast enough to get to 99.6% by 2100, but the overall mechanism is plausible and can be delivered by voting harder)

  • A right-populist government ends illegal and low-quality legal immigration, restricts legal high-quality immigration in ways which make the UK an unattractive destination for high-quality immigrants with options, and ends the bullshit which makes it advantageous to self-identify as non-white.
  • Non-Irish immigration drops to negligible levels
  • There is already no taboo on interracial dating in the UK, everyone is doing it except Pakistanis, and Pakistani parents are breaking the law in order to stop their children dating interracially. Laws against child abuse and forced marriage would probably be enforced by a right-populist government.
  • After a century or so everyone is mixed-race, and most people are mostly white given the starting demographics.
  • All the mixed-race people tick the "white" box on the census because there is no gain from identifying as anything else.

Is “White” really an important social division in Britain? It was useful in the colonization of the Americas since it was contrasted against Native Americans and Africans, but once the legal and practical realities of the colonization era ended racial identities tend to collapse with it. In almost all of modern Latin America you have a mestizaje identity that includes whites and your various mixed race people integrated with the national culture contrasted with small native and occasionally African diaspora subcultures as recognized minorities. You are even seeing this delayed process happening in the US right now.

If the right populists get their way, I can see Western European nations potentially going the way of a titular “mestizaje” ethnicity plus a few minority subcultures.

Is “White” really an important social division in Britain?

No. The ethnic cleavages that matter are "British and Irish vs wogs, who begin at Calais", "Muslims vs everyone else" and, in Wales, "Welsh-speakers vs English-speakers". But the British race relations industry is reading from an American script, so "white" is an important category for them. And of course also for intermeddling Yanks like Elon Musk or @erwgv3g34

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