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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9137 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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I am pretty sure the Janissaries are an example of people being compelled to become a different ethnicity; it seems like a strong argument against your whole line of reasoning here, in fact. Nonetheless, I will readily agree that it is, at a bare minimum, extremely hard to compel someone to be a different ethnicity; what I am asking for is evidence that you can compel people to stop being communists, because I cannot in fact think of any examples where this has successfully been done, and it is something I would very much like to know how to do. You are saying that it obviously can be done. I am asking for proof.

I think your example illustrates exactly my point: Ottoman and later Republican Turkey was mostly run by European-origin (white) Muslims precisely because race and ethnicity is important–in this case, because ethnic Europeans tend to be more capable at running large and successful empires.

Anyway, if you look at any Eastern Bloc state after the fall of communism you can see examples of former communists, the same thing happened in Weimar Germany, if you're interested in forcing people to stop being communist you could look at Indonesia. All of those Eastern European states are better off for having former communists around compared to the Western European version of having immigrants from the Middle East.

I think your example illustrates exactly my point: Ottoman and later Republican Turkey was mostly run by European-origin (white) Muslims precisely because race and ethnicity is important–in this case, because ethnic Europeans tend to be more capable at running large and successful empires.

While physiologically white, the Turkish elite of the Ottoman Empire were not European. The Ottoman Empire was founded in what used to be called Asia Minor and is now called Anatolia - i.e. on the Asian side of the Bosphorous. And the Turks themselves were descended from Steppe nomads who repeatedly conquered and then went native in Muslim Persia before moving west to take bites out of the Byzantine Empire.

The ancestral homeland of white people (defined by genetics and physiology) stems a long way into western Asia, and includes Africa north of the Sahara.

Anyway, if you look at any Eastern Bloc state after the fall of communism you can see examples of former communists

I can't say closely followed the lives of ex-communists, but from what I understand and recall after they've shed communism, rather than becoming hardworking patriots, a good chunk of them became corrupt politicians (and I mean that in the crass third-world way, not the western "velvet glove" corruption) with ties to organized crime (if not outright entering into it directly).

I can see the argument that it was better to have them around than a few million Muslim refugees, but I don't know if I could put these guys in the same tribe as myself in any meaningful way.

They're much closer to you than Arabs are and you do share a culture and background. That's my point, not that ex-communists are somehow amazing.

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