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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   25030 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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The scenario isn't some powerful European Caliphate, but Brazilification - corrupt, multiethnic special interest democracies - and if demographic trends hold, then eventual decline into a gaggle of yet-another-majority-muslim-multiethnic-shitholes like all the others.

Yes, and that’s the point. I don’t think there’s any likelihood of some highly functional multiethnic Muslim civilization state here, but at same time Brazil-with-low-key-sectarian-warfare is also like even worse than Brazil. Occasionally religious and ethnic violence compounds because nobody has anything in common with anyone else. The Christians loot the central bank, the Sunnis loot the finance ministry etc etc just like in Lebanon.

I think a core thing with Brazil, and the other unequal parts of LatAm, is that if you’re high enough on the totem pole that you pay both legal and illicit danegelds you can live a civilized and prosperous life. If you have high enough cultural acrimony, such as in Lebanon, or political tensions boil over to make everyone poor, like in Venezuela, you lose that ability. I think your point on worse than Brazil is accurate; LatAm has a lot of cultural and institutional antibodies, mostly via cynicism and low state capacity, that protect it, albeit imperfectly, from turning into Lebanon or Cuba/Venezuela. Even in places with higher ethnic acrimony, like Bolivia, I don’t think you have the hostility you see in Europe. Western Europe seems to have cultural and institutional feature that make Brazilification more, rather than less, painful.

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