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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31012 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Bring back the word Aryan. Using "white gentile" is so incredibly cucked, it would be like if you made the word "Jew" taboo so Jews had to just all refer to themselves as non-Aryan whites. You could nitpick that term, but the nitpicks of that term would apply to "Jewish" as well.

The problem with using Aryan is that you end up including Indian Brahmins, which, though they are rapidly growing in influence within the American (and British) elite PMC, certainly wouldn’t count as white in the way you’re intending it.

That is far from the biggest problem with using the word Aryan. The biggest problem is that approximately everyone will instantly pattern-match you as an anti-Semite at least, and a Nazi at worst.

Well yes, that’s obviously true, but I’m pointing out why @SecureSignals specifically, who demonstrably is not concerned with being pattern-matched as an anti-Semite, would still be better off eschewing the term for his own purposes.

Why would the word Aryan include Indian Brahmins? We don't call Mexicans Spaniards. Just because there was an Aryan invasion of India doesn't mean the caste with the most admixture remaining from that extinct ruling class are the same race as the invaders.

My understanding is that the Brahmin caste in India is directly descended from the Aryan overclass who ruled the Indus Valley civilization, although they have obviously taken on substantial admixture from the indigenous Dravidian populations in the intervening millennia. Certainly their religion, their cultural outlook - including their caste system - and their enduring position of prestige in India are directly continuous with their Aryan past.

As a follow-up, I came across a source I was looking for earlier:

David Reich described the Aryan invading population in 2019:

the population that contributed genetic material to South Asia was (roughly) 60% Yamnaya [my note: European steppe ancestry], ~30% European farmer-like ancestry"

And the remaining 10% was of West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer origin, a population which is similar to Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers.

That ethnic composition is nearly identical to modern Northern Europeans (note "Earthly Neolitic" == European farmers). Certainly Europeans have far greater genetic similarity to the Aryans than the Brahmin.

Even among the Brahmin, >70% admixture from the Indus Valley and the indigenous Andamanese.

That's not to understate the tremendous Aryan influence on Indian civilization. But the admixture profile of modern-day Northern Europeans is nearly identical to the Aryans- and even throughout other regions of Europe with relatively lower Yamnaya ancestry and higher European farmer ancestry, the ancestrial profile looks the same as the Aryans in comparison to the Brahmin.

cc: @BurdensomeCount

Interesting, thanks for this.

My understanding is that the Brahmin caste in India is directly descended from the Aryan overclass who ruled the Indus Valley civilization, although they have obviously taken on substantial admixture from the indigenous Dravidian populations in the intervening millennia.

The castes correlate with indo-european admixture, but it's still too low to resemble anything you would call a direct descendant, in the way you wouldn't call a mestizo a direct descendant of Europeans. It's a case of ethnogenesis. I haven't seen PCA/clustering with the caste systems compared to European groups but I imagine that would demonstrate this point as well.

It's also likely the caste system was created in response to racial changes among the ruling class, so substantial changes likely happened before the formalization of the caste system. Where are the conquistadores today? Even if a caste system were created in Latin America today, the upper castes would still have a substantial amount of indigenous admixture.

It's interesting to consider how the Spanish intermixed with the natives which the Anglos did not.

Where are the conquistadores today? Even if a caste system were created in Latin America today, the upper castes would still have a substantial amount of indigenous admixture.

Actually, from what I understand the political/cultural/financial elite in Mexico, Brazil, and the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) has very little non-European admixture at all. In Mexico they’re descended largely from conquistadors (hence Steve Sailer’s epithet “Conquistador-American” for people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), but in other parts of Latin America they’re just as likely to be of Italian and German ancestry. I can’t speak to the more undeveloped parts of Latin America.

but it's still too low to resemble anything you would call a direct descendant, in the way you wouldn't call a mestizo a direct descendant of Europeans

What does “it’s still too low” mean in this context?

It means it's a mixed population, at least in the present day:

To explore the impact of West Eurasians on contemporary Indian caste populations, we compared mtDNA and Y-chromosome ...variation in ∼265 males from eight castes of different rank to ∼750 Africans, Asians, Europeans, and other Indians. For maternally inherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%–30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypes belong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, the highest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternally inherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, the affinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans, particularly East Europeans. These findings are consistent with greater West Eurasian male admixture with castes of higher rank.

...

Our analysis of 40 autosomal markers indicates clearly that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians. The high affinity of caste Y chromosomes with those of Europeans suggests that the majority of immigrating West Eurasians may have been males. As might be expected if West Eurasian males appropriated the highest positions in the caste system, the upper caste group exhibits a lower genetic distance to Europeans than the middle or lower castes. This is underscored by the observation that the Kshatriya (an upper caste), whose members served as warriors, are closer to Europeans than any other caste (data not shown). Furthermore, the 32-bp deletion polymorphism in CC chemokine receptor 5, whose frequency peaks in populations of Eastern Europe, is found only in two Brahmin males (M. Bamshad and S.K. Ahuja, unpubl.). The stratification of Y-chromosome distances with Europeans could also be caused by male-specific gene flow among caste populations of different rank.

In that way modern western europeans aren't "Aryans" either, they have significant admixture from Anatolian farmers.

True, but the Yamnaya themselves had admixture from European Hunter-Gatherers and Anatolian Farmers (to a lesser extent). Norwegians/Finns have the most Yamnaya admixture IIRC (funny enough the Nazis were right about that).

But I'll fully admit that there's a mythological component to a name or racial identity. Modern Jews are admixed descendants (at best) from the Hebrews of the bible. I'm not adamant about the term "Aryan" but it contains the right ingredients of historicity and mythology to formulate a pan-European identity. If not that term, there must be a term that is better, but there is not so far as I can tell. "White" would be the closest but it has a lot of downsides. The biggest downside of "Aryan" is that that term is taboo, but that also gives it a sort of power. It invokes a feeling when people say it or hear it, and that might be the most important feature of the word.

I of course do not discount the Aryan contribution to Indian religion, language, culture, and civilization. Buddha is White by the way, don't @ me.

Except lots of American default whites are not aryan- even granting that aryan in racial use is kind of a fuzzy term, italian Americans and white hispanics are fairly large ethnic groups that most people would agree the term aryan excludes.

All racial terms are fuzzy, Israel manages to define an ethnic Jew in a way that works in practice. There should be some category to refer to "non-Jewish European-descended" and Aryan was used to denote that group historically. Italians were regarded as Aryan even by Nazi racial laws FWIW, the term wasn't nearly as exclusive as the post-war lore has made it out to be. White hispanics are more complicated because there are some with entirely European ancestry and some with much less.

All racial terms are fuzzy, Israel manages to define an ethnic Jew in a way that works in practice.

Except it does not, there is no more contentious issue in Israel than "who is a Jew", and it is getting hotter every day.

On one side are people who want to expand already expansive Law of Return(for various reasons), and on the other side are ... people who feel about Gentiles as you feel about Jews.

Ask them.

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