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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   33045 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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The discussion of sexual behavior has generated some rich concepts to discuss how human desire works. Here I want to discuss three terms that have interesting meaning.

(1) virgin

A simple denotation: hasn't had sex. The connotations are varied, and change with context. It could mean:

  • Something is pure and innocence, untouched by corruption (virgin landscape).

  • The first time (the virgin voyage of a boat)

  • Someone hasn't had a life-changing experience (skydiving virginity)

  • That something is safe (virgin drinks without alcohol).

  • Insulting someone unable to earn their desire (virgin vs chad)

(2) pornography

Pornography is famously difficult to define outside of "I know it when I see it". Coming from the greek pornographos (writing about prostitutes), it most commonly refers to sexual images and videos that stimulate erotic desire in the viewer.

When used as a metaphor, the scope of "porn" expands to something like the passive observation of the desired object without without the work to actually access it. To fully enjoy it, the viewer must suspend disbelief, and imagine they are a part of the porn in order to pretend the simulation satisfies one's desire for the real thing. However someone who has only viewed porn is often still considered a virgin (but not innocent!), because they haven't actually experienced the desire fulfilled yet.

  • The SFW porn network (earthporn for nature, quoteporn for inspiro) is pornographic.

  • Most of reddit has a pornographic nature to it. (eg: relationship drama)

  • Streamers and podcasts are friendship porn.

  • Cooking shows are food porn and online cooking videos are pornified

  • Instragram is status porn (and sometimes regular porn).

  • Sports competitions are both porn of the game being played, and porn of victory feelings.

  • Careless blogposts can end up as insight porn consumed for pleasure.

  • Cards-against-humanity game is transgressive joke porn

(3) cucked

A cuckooo bird will lay it's egg in the nest of another bird, tricking them into raising the cuckoo's hatching. This naturally evolves to refer to situations where a parent (usually the dad for obvious reasons) is raising kids he thinks are his, but are in fact from another man. Which then simplifies to the actual act of watching someone else have sex with someone you want. Nowadays known as a cuckhold fetish.

The concept of cucking has become so broad and complicated that a psychiatrist could write a whole book about it. A sample story might have a husband watching someone else fuck his wife. Which raises the question at the core of the cuck fetish: why doesn't she fuck the husband? A full understanding of cuckholding requires explaining all three motivations. The cuckhold is usually motivated by (suppressed?) feelings of insecurity. He his not capable or worthy of having sex with her. The bull is motivated by either lust or rubbing superiority of dominance hierarchy in the cuckolds face. The cuck-er similarly may be lustful, or could also be sadistically belittling the cuckold.

Racial dynamics add to this swirl. The common case is a white man watching a white woman fuck a black man (with a large penis). This fantasy props up so much there are entire porn sites based on this concept, and plenty of alt-right fanfiction about it. Racial insecurity. There's a secondary market for asian men watching an asian woman fuck a white man (with a large penis), which is related to WhiteMale-AsianFemale couples, and asian masculinity in general.

Some use of "cuck" in practice simply mean coward. Someone with "cucked beliefs". Or a cuck-servitave (cringe conservative). This dilutes the richer meaning of cuckholding. A more proper usage is the bike-cuck meme, in which a man copes with the loss of a bike by imagining someone else enjoys riding it more than him. Perhaps he'd like to watch too. An additional meme is the copypasta that raising a daughter is cucked because the dad is spending his time and effort helper her grow as a person for another man to enjoy. Which is an interesting broken perspective.

....

All porn is cuckhold porn. The object of desire (the sex) is happening on a screen and is inaccessible. The viewer must either accept the cuckholding, or delude themselves into thinking they are a playing a part. This process spirals into insecurity, first from feeling inferior to the object of desire, which leads to a cuckhold fetish to the porn itself, a feeling that one doesn't deserve to fuck reality and should be constrained to the porn. Giving up and accepting that fucking reality is too much wok.

Parsimonious hypothesis: An aspect of male heterosexuality is wanting to see his female partner, whether temporary or long term, degrade herself sexually—and a key aspect of female heterosexuality is wanting to oblige.

In more “ordinary” circumstances, this is for his physical benefit, and may manifest itself in her doing ball-licking, rimming, gagging throatfucks, anal, facials, and the like. In more extraordinary circumstances, this may result in BLACKED-adjacent behavior and beastiality—the ordinary going haywire and defective. And these are all reflected in porn.

All porn is cuckhold porn.

So if, on a rainy day, I whack it to an old POV sex-tape of myself banging some chick, that would be intertemporal cucking? Reminds me of the Time Traveler’s Wife.

It’s an amusing Ship of Theseus type thought experiment: Most of the cells in “my” body have likely been replaced since then. Oftentimes, then-me even sounds different and jests differently in the skippable introductory cut-scenes beginning few minutes than I do/would now, which sometimes catches current-me off-guard and makes current-me laugh with the jokes by then-me.

Soon some of my old personal phone videos could qualify as period pieces, if they don’t already. It’s also pretty funny many of those chicks are married now.

I like the theorizing about aspects of normal male heterosexuality wanting to degrade and female heterosexuality wanting to oblige. Opportunity to study those mechanics of how sexual desire is actually related to by the person.

Those categories seem like a good start, with more underlying variation and complexity that could be analyzed more. Maybe Queer theorists have also looked at this?

Sounds like something radfems would say, except they would call this not female heterosexuality, but male heterosexuality imposed on females.

It’s crazy how radfems deluded themselves into thinking that all sexually submissive desires must be imposed from the outside by a patriarchal conspiracy.

Do they not know how many sub men there are?

They haven't gone far from some of the mottizens that paint everyone with a very broad brush. Or even a paint roller.

In more extraordinary circumstances, this may result in BLACKED-adjacent behavior and beastiality

Of all the things to share a sentence. Having sex with animals or black people. You know, comparable examples of "extraordinary" deviance.

Having sex with animals or black people. You know, comparable examples of "extraordinary" deviance.

This is uncharitable. OP discusses "racial insecurity" as a factor in interracial cuckolding and @Sloot's comment can easily be read as a callback to that. Cuckolding and bestiality are both examples of fairly extraordinary deviance from baseline human sexual behavior, as far as I know. Jumping straight to "this must be racism" is all heat and no light. Don't do this.

I disagree. I actually considered the charitable interpretation rule before responding and decided to continue with a charitable view of their actual comment. I don't recall them discussing racial insecurity somewhere else in this thread. Having no memory of that I'm responding to this one comment by them.

"Blacked" porn isn't cuckold porn. It's just interracial porn with a black guy. A plain and unambiguous reading of their comment directly relates regular interracial sex and sex with animals as "extraordinary" examples. So I'm responding to what they wrote, not some unrelated set of claims that would be more charitable to their larger point.

I will take care to charitably interpret posts. And I'm not one to cry racism, so no worries there for the future. But I think I'm right about this one.

I don't recall them discussing racial insecurity somewhere else in this thread.

This seems like a reading problem, then. From the OP (to which the person you were responding was directly responding):

Racial dynamics add to this swirl. The common case is a white man watching a white woman fuck a black man (with a large penis). This fantasy props up so much there are entire porn sites based on this concept, and plenty of alt-right fanfiction about it. Racial insecurity.

(Emphasis added.) As for this:

"Blacked" porn isn't cuckold porn. It's just interracial porn with a black guy.

This may be a fair criticism; I admit that I did not go check on the exact nature of "Blacked," and will simply take your word for it here. But if "Blacked" porn includes any interracial cuckolding porn at all, then I think your interpretation still fails the charity test in this case.

It's trivial true that somewhere in all the internet there is some video that is both "blacked" and cuckold. Just like "blacked" is not anal or any other fetish, but some tiny portion of those videos will also include other categories of porn.

But we can't use the standard of a single counterexample in discussions. In all the content online and all the various interactions of hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of people, there must be some small set of Chinese robbers or "blacked" porn where they decided to something different than normal and added some guy to play a cuck.

Perhaps someone could even make a larger sensible point using those examples. But OP didn't. He merely dropped the incrediblyinflammatory statement about "extraordinary circumstances" such as sex with animals and black men. Not cuckoldry. Not some other reasonable point that you or I could come up with.

Rather than addressing some reasonable point that OP didn't make, I addressed their actual simple and clear statement. Charitability is not disregarding someone's words in order to substitute in unrelated but more sensible claims.

He merely dropped the incrediblyinflammatory statement about "extraordinary circumstances" such as sex with animals and black men

See, no, this is not enough charity. This is putting words in someone's mouth. "OP" isn't who you were responding to, OP is one level up from that. OP mentioned interracial cuckoldry, and someone else responded with a comment about "BLACKED adjacent behavior" which you took to mean something inflammatory, but which in context of the OP could, charitably, be a reference to the aforementioned interracial cuckoldry (which the brand BLACKED apparently famously produces, albeit not exclusively, which fact I am somewhat annoyed you have now made me research to be sure).

And here's the thing--maybe you're right! But the level of confidence, indeed insistence you're bringing to bear here is evidence of inadequate charity. No one actually said "having sex with black people is, or is like, bestiality," only that "BLACKED adjacent behavior" (contextually potentially a reference to interracial cuckoldry) was an extreme case, as is bestiality. Where someone does not make an explicitly inflammatory claim, context matters, and your earlier response to me suggests you were either ignorant of or ignoring that context.

Doubling down here with bad takes on the of meaning of charity does not help you. Don't lecture me about "actual simple and clear" statements when you are forced to repeatedly reword what was actually said in order to support your umbrage.

Watching porn of oneself. Hm not sure how to categorize that. Perhaps metaphorically masturbatory? Because one is finding themselves hot? I dunno

An aspect of male heterosexuality is wanting to see his female partner, whether temporary or long term, degrade herself sexually [...] ball-licking, rimming, gagging throatfucks, anal, facials, and the like

It's hard for me to conceive of such garden-variety acts as degrading.

I think we should be quite careful to distinguish submission (in its most general sense - in the sense of taking on any sort of relatively lower status for any length of time) and degradation. The former need not imply the latter.

I realized years ago that I can't stand commercial porn because it's impossible to imagine myself feeling empowered with the actors you see in commercial porn. I know from experience that if I'm around a bunch of super hot people, it doesn't make me feel super hot, it makes me feel super ugly. I seek out homemade porn that lets me envision myself empowered if I was in the room: porn featuring homeless men, for example, because I feel superior to them.

All porn is cuckhold porn.

Well, all sex acts are downstream of power. Cuckolding is an explicit illustration of power. I have engaged in anonymous sex with other men since I was 18, once I realized how power and domination work between men this became clear. The more dominant male performs the top role and the more submissive male performs the bottom role. (This is not just in anal sex but in oral sex and aggression dynamics and so on.)

I like to view straight cuck porn often, because I find the eroticization between the two males very exciting. I usually ignore the women when I view it. Seeing two straight men go through the same process that two gay men go through when they have sex is gratifying. Cuck porn is basically gay porn with a woman inserted, but the domination and power dynamic between two men is still the same, even when there is no sex act performed directly between the two men.

(1) virgin

A simple denotation: hasn't had sex.

Oh you fortunate person that has not encountered the (yes, on Tumblr way back, but also around the place way back as in several years ago) notion that this is not a simple definition and it's all to do with the patriarchy and ackshully it only means "an unmarried woman" so the virgin goddesses could well have been having sex, so there male chauvinists! The obsession with virginity is only a way to control women and their sexuality! Virgin doesn't mean hasn't had sex and why are you so obsessed with my hymen anyway?

Fourteen year olds encounter feminism for the first time and go bonkers, in other words. They don't seem to think about male virgins, or if they do, they dismiss it as "men can't be virgins anyway and it doesn't matter" for some idiotic reason, don't ask me to remember why it was.

The obsession with virginity is only a way to control women and their sexuality!

Isn't it though? Historically and presently in many central Asian societies they dramatically restrict womens lives in order to ensure virginity. High status men demand paternity certainty, and in order to achieve paternity certainty you have to restrict women's sexuality, and in order to restrict sexuality you have to make sure they're never alone with another man or have the mobility to go somewhere they could be alone with a man. Is there a society that does costly practice like seclusion/hijabs/foot binding to secure male virginity?

Now that I think about it, it is a sort of forerunner argument to the trans activist contention: biology no real.

"Virginity" is only a social construct and merely means "unmarried woman". So a woman could be a literal whore but if she's not married and never has been, she's a virgin!

I think most of us would agree that is stretching the definition to the point of absurdity.

Based on the practices you referenced, it seems like it's certainly not only a way to control women and their sexuality; rather, it's a way to instrumentally control women and their sexuality for the purpose of fulfilling some other need, in this case paternity certainty for high status men. Given that, the chain of reasoning seems to be the reverse, actually; people want paternity certainty, and virginity is, for biological reasons, intricately tied to paternity certainty, and so people form an obsession with (preserving) virginity, which, for physical reasons, requires control of women and their sexuality. People are instrumentally controlling women and their sexuality only as a way to fulfill their obsession with virginity (which is in itself an instrumental goal on the way towards paternity certainty), rather than the other way around.

But you don’t have to listen to 14 year olds on tumbler.

Until they grow older and get hired at HR at my employer. Microaggressions etc were in official training.

We don't.

Still, a distressingly descriptive model to explain the last ~10 years of Western society is "virtually every left-leaning politician, journalist, educator or media figure started treating 14-year-olds on Tumblr as infallible fonts of wisdom". Even if the 14-year-olds on Tumblr are wrong, they seem to be disproportionately influential figures in our culture. So it's probably a sensible idea to at least be aware of what they believe even if you disagree with it.

The fear of being "cucked" is making some people psychotic. View anything through such a loose lens and you see yourself getting cucked everywhere. And you're not a cuck, right? So all this cucking makes you feel emasculated and boiling with rage and you'll do anything to make it go away, even if it means giving up your humanity.

That one is a relatively insignificant and powerless man doesn't have to be viewed through the lens of a sexual fetish. There's other, healthier ways to cope.

Haha perhaps I am psychotic due to reading Baudrillard too young and getting to read such things.

I agree some people get way too deep into cuck stuff, especially in right-wing internet circles. However I think the root cause is from unaddressed insecurity complexes, which present themselves as feeling unworthy of their desires and finding excuses including imagining superior competition in great detail.

All porn can be used as cuckold porn if the viewer imagines themselves to have a particular relationship to the performers but that doesn't mean all porn inherently is cuckold porn. You could make the same argument about basically all forms of entertainment, that watching/listening/reading about other people achieving great things must lead the audience to either delusionally imagine themselves in such a situation or spiral into inferiority and take masochistic pleasure in that inferiority.

The flaw in your argument is that you're discarding relating to a fictional character and imagining yourself in their place as a delusion not a key part of how human societies have spread knowledge and values for thousands of years. An ancient Greek could become insecure and depressed hearing about all the cool stuff Odysseus did and knowing that they'll never do anything that great, or they could be inspired by the story to seek out clever and unusual solutions to problems in their day to day life. The audience isn't cucked by the media itself but by how they imagine themselves relating to it.

Of course the knowledge and values passed on in a lot of mainstream porn are garbage because it's an audiovisual representation of a tactile experience generally aimed at the total indulgence of the preferences of one gender (usually men). You could watch what's popular in /r/chickflixxx and then go out and do some of those moves on a female partner and that would be a non-cucked way to engage with porn since imagining yourself as the man is no longer delusional.

All porn can be used as cuckold porn if the viewer imagines themselves to have a particular relationship to the performers but that doesn't mean all porn inherently is cuckold porn. You could make the same argument about basically all forms of entertainment, that watching/listening/reading about other people achieving great things must lead the audience to either delusionally imagine themselves in such a situation or spiral into inferiority and take masochistic pleasure in that inferiority.

Honestly wonder if the recent surge in cuckold porn has something to do with how it injects a ton of taboo/shock value to a scene, without requiring a ton more budget or extremism to actually film. I know a guy who's a mid-grade porn producer, and he's told me that the whole 'stepcest' trend is also an example of this. Since you can turn a vanilla scene into a stepcest scene with literally 10 words added to the script and not having to pay the talent for doing anything especially physically arduous.

Honestly wonder if the recent surge in cuckold porn has something to do with how it injects a ton of taboo/shock value to a scene

I think so, definitely. Porn is all about novelty, and after a while the last shocking thing is now commonplace, so you have to move on to something even more extreme. And your actors (unless they specialise in it) probably don't want to do extreme BDSM stuff, so fake incest or cuckold stuff is a way to have a taboo subject and still keep everyone happy.

Not directly related, but a similar definitional debate that was had many times during games of Never Have I Ever in grad school: What counts as "Sex" for the purpose of determining Body Count, [Loss of] Virginity, practice of sexual orientation, etc.?

Classically, the heteronormative definition of sex (PIV intercourse to male completion) pretty much covered the concept. But sexual orientation complicates this, it seems ridiculous to say that a woman who has had sex with many women but no men is a virgin. Equally the variety of sex acts can complicated it, and the use of "loopholes" like oral or especially anal sex to claim technical virginity strikes most as intensely silly.

Dan Savage has generally been a proponent of labeling "Last Name Sex" (Oral, Anal, Manual, etc.) as equivalent to intercourse. But standard cultural practice has been to treat them at least slightly differently at different times.

At the same time, you have men who want to claim to have had sex with women when the thing they did seems to have stopped well short of sex. Does masturbating in front of someone constitute sex? Ejaculating on a dance floor with a partner who was just dancing with you?

So we have two major failure modes: the nice Babtist college girl who claims to be a virgin despite the high school nickname Oral Audrey, and the male desperate to pump up his numbers who claims he had "cyber" sex with a camgirl because he paid her to watch him masturbate.

The definition we settled on for purposes of determining who should drink/lower a finger in a game of Never Have I Ever was this: Sex occurs when a person 1) achieves orgasm through the 2) intentional 3) physical 4) acts of another person. When those criteria are met, both the party who orgasms and the party who caused the orgasm have had sex.

  1. Orgasm by one party is necessary to establish that a complete sex act has occurred. It is not relevant if the other party orgasms or not. Sexual acts that don't result in orgasm for any party are categorized as "fooling around." Normally, in hetero relationships, it will be the case that the male orgasms and the female may or may not, but the reverse works as well. I have trouble picturing a complete sex act in which nobody orgasms. If neither could get it done, while theoretically it could have been the whole nine yards but they couldn't hit the target, it seems more likely that it was abortive or farcical, involving physical impotence or alcohol.

  2. The acts have to be intentional, they have to be intended to produce orgasm. So the dancing example, that isn't sex. Or a guy who rubs against a woman in a crowded subway car.* An accidental orgasm doesn't count.

  3. The acts have to be physical, they have to involve touch. Talking someone through masturbation, watching someone, or cyber sex aren't sex.

  4. The acts have to be those of another person. Masturbation doesn't count, if another person is merely present and observing. There is some debate here, if the orgasm is ultimately self-initiated during acts with another person, I tend to lean towards that counting as long as the physical acts are contributing to the orgasm. So masturbation does count if the other person is playing with the masturbator to achieve and intensify arousal and orgasm.

This definition has the advantage of covering all sex acts across all sexual orientations and genital configurations. But there are definitely some "edge"ing cases where it might deliver odd results.

The alternative definition, proposed for purposes of answering the question to partners and friends about Body Counts, is that if you want to claim a high number only penetrative sex to orgasm counts, while if you are trying to claim a low number everything even mildly adjacent counts. So an 18 year old boy claiming to his buddies that he lost his virginity doesn't get to claim anything but PIV to completion; but an 18 year old girl trying to trim her partner count to sound less slutty to her boyfriend should be forced to include anyone who met even 3/4 of the above criteria. This definition is good in that if you follow it, you'll never be accused of lying or hiding anything; it is bad in that everyone wants to lie all the time and will anyway.

What other definitions would TheMotte propose? Are there different definitions useful in different situations?

*This is where we'd fit in an argument about consent.There's no good way to handle it, hopefully it's not that big an issue for any indiviudal.

You were playing “never have I ever” in grad school? Wild.

It combines Law Students favorite activities: drinking and arguing about precise terminology and definitions. Somehow alcoholics will engage in a five minute debate to avoid taking a tequila shot if someone tries to make them drink it.

Anyway it's the most fun at 22-26 when people have diverged significantly in their experiences. Freshman year of college everyone is pretty close together with a few outliers, after 30 everyone is pretty close together with a few outliers, at 25 there's a huge spread between the top and the bottom.

So a handjob counts as sex for the purposes of NHIE answers? I guess that's the price you have to pay for covering woman-on-woman sexual acts without overcomplicating the definition.

Yes. It seems pretty clear to me. Last name sex. It's status as consolation prize is kinda irrelevant, and skill dependent, to the question. You certainly can't have sex any other way afterwards until the refractory period concludes.

To me handies are less relevant to the WLW question than they are to the evasive evangelical girl question. Given that our NHIE questions tended to "punish" slutty behavior. So consider "Never have I ever... Had sex with a man!" If a guy gave a man a hand job to completion he should clearly drink. Or a kings rule like drink if you've had more than five sexual partners. A girl who's had PIV with three guys and gave five others hand jobs should clearly drink there.

I have trouble picturing a complete sex act in which nobody orgasms.

To be frank, has happened to me a fair few times.

Maybe “intended to”?

Ugh, you try to finish while rolling. Good luck.

I have definitely had “a complete sex act” while on MDMA with no orgasm for either person. (Persons, honestly.) If you go at it for a long while, but you never, uh, seal the deal, but you still have that connection and intimacy, I consider that a sex act.

Maybe needing 3/4 of those factors works better? I'm trying to think if it leads to any possible false positive hacks.

All porn is cuckhold porn.

Is every fictional story a cuckold story? Whenever I enjoy a work of fiction, am I getting cucked? If I read Harry Potter for enjoyment, am I getting cucked?

If I can enjoy Harry Potter without being cucked, then why can't I enjoy porn without being cucked? We can subsume both experiences under a single general process of experiencing fiction. The fact that one is more likely to make me ejaculate than the other does not seem to me to be an essential difference.

Reading fiction is a metaphorical cuckholding when the reader is watching the characters experience the narrative and discovery that they themselves want to experience.

This is not a bad thing about fiction, and it is not-not a bad thing. I think there's an important pattern to be noticed around 'cucking' and how we experience desire. I don't want to be making the worst argument in the world by tying this pattern to the negative connotations of 'cucking'.

If you read Harry Potter and enjoy it, there may be many reasons why you enjoy it. Learning character archetypes, learning more about oneself through reading, trying to predict what happens next, etc. But if you told me that you expressly enjoyed reading Harry Potter because you would love to go on a wizarding adventure and therefore enjoyed reading about someone else who could... well. Especially if you told me you'd rather read Harry Potter than go on your own adventure somehow.

Harry Potter's adventures are more interesting than my adventures in the day, because they're more exciting and I don't have to do any work to make them happen.

I think this focus on (the possibility of) self-inserting while reading literature, the idea that literature primarily exists to represent pleasant states of affairs, is misguided. It ignores whole genres that represent states of affairs that no one would want to experience: horror, true crime, surrealism, etc. It also ignores wide swaths of poetry and other types of non-representational writing. What would it mean to self-insert while reading Pound's Cantos or Eliot's The Waste Land?

Learning character archetypes, learning more about oneself through reading, trying to predict what happens next, etc.

I wouldn't phrase it in these terms, but I would suggest a concept of general aesthetic experience that goes beyond mere self-inserting or mere delight in mimesis. And I contend that this sort of general aesthetic experience can be applied to at least some works of pornography as well. Some porn is wildly imaginative (mainly in the sphere of written erotica, indie comics, and the like - not your average studio production) and shares the sorts of salutary properties and features that you find in other quality works of art.

Those miserable genres of media are known as Misery Porn. The reader wants to experience something about those cases (the desirability of the victim?) and can experience those thrills second hand, through the victim getting fucked by the world, much like a cuck watching someone experience what he is too insecure to experience himself. Hmm it's a stretch.

The boundary between art and porn is going to be complicated because neither concept is well defined. My view is that a few things are true:

  • there is porn (explicit video) that has artistic aesthetic value alongside the titillation. (eg through camerawork)

  • there is an art of making porn: where various representations of titillation are practiced.

  • there is a porn-like nature to all art: where it is trying to invoke a feeling in you without involving you in reality.

This is one of the oldest arguments against fiction, famously. But I’ve always had the suspicion that people who love fiction the most often have highly overactive imaginations. They’re already doing the above in their heads, living lives they’ll never lead, that kind of thing. The book is only another vessel for the imagination, they wouldn’t set out on a real adventure either way.

As a fiction lover with an overactive imagination, that's essentially accurate.

Further, although it's perhaps a bit arguable, the "All porn is cuckhold porn" view doesn't seem to apply well to what I've always seen described as softcore porn: your classic Playboy features solo performers but still manages, um, titillation (although one could, IMO weakly, argue that Hefner served that role).

Even then, to use your example of fiction, there's a line -- a blurry one, sometimes -- between reading Harry Potter and appreciating its storytelling (for the articles, I swear!) and identifying with Harry as a self-insert. Excessive self-insertion even a frequent trope in low-quality fanfiction. There's always a bit of tension between wanting to be like the protagonist, and wanting to be the protagonist.

I do find the premise to be interesting, and possibly true in certain ways in lots of cases, but I don't think it's quite as all-encompassing as it's stated.

The figurative use of the term "cuck" is essentially just a dysphemism for calling someone a "doormat". The assumption is that men who allow their wives to have sex with other men aren't really okay with it, but go along with it due to a lack of backbone and an inability to establish boundaries for themselves. This obviously generalises (no one was fooled that "bike cuck" really didn't mind his bike getting stolen).

For centuries, laughing at the man who had the horns planted on his head was the attitude in society.

It's only modernity that has made it into a fetish where money can be made out of producing porn, and people get together to indulge in their kink.

Ah, progress?

The assumption is that men who allow their wives to have sex with other men aren't really okay with it

Which is itself interesting because in practice it seems as if almost all cuck relationships involve the man persuading his wife or girlfriend to engage in his sexual fetish, not the other way around. There seem to be some women who propose open relationships, perhaps in rare cases even swinging / partner swapping but I’ve never heard of a woman proposing that her husband sits in the corner of a room jacking off while she fucks a well-endowed man out of the blue.

Cuckolding (as in the fetish) is a purely male paraphilia. I mean that in the sense that the relationship is between the ‘cuck’ and the ‘bull’, the woman doesn’t even have a special name, she’s just the woman, the wife, the girlfriend. It’s a humiliation fetish that instead of other forms of sexual domination or humiliation, which are direct, involves a third-party, namely the woman, in the sexual humiliation so that the ‘cuck’ and ‘bull’ are never themselves interacting in a sexual way.

One interesting question is whether the ‘cuck’s’ attraction to his wife is even relevant. I don’t think it is. In fact there are fetishists who fantasize about being cuckolded ‘by’ their mothers, sisters and so on, and usually not even in an incestuous or Oedipal way, it’s purely about being humiliated by the ‘bull’. The bull’s penis, used to humiliate them is what ultimately turns them on.

This is why I think that cuckolding is not a purely heterosexual thing. I think there seems to be a real sexual attraction to the ‘bull’ in a lot of men with this fetish. The wife is objectified in the purest sense, becomes merely a vehicle that allows them to explore these feelings of wanting to be sexually humiliated by another man.

I agree with a lot of that, but I'm not sure about the endpoint about homosexual attraction being part of it.

Cuckolding is about reclaiming some kind of lost power. Cuckolds see themselves as uncompetitively unattractive and shut out of normal sexuality. Cuckoldry as a fetish allows the participant to make that a kind of choice: by eroticizing the fear and insecurity, the male mind regains a level of control. He might believe he can never satisfy his wife directly, so his mind removes him from direct contact with her but still allows them to achieve mutual sexual satisfaction. That's why it also always has to involve the female object somehow involving him in the scenario. It can't just be the woman fucking a hot man, but instead she has to go on at length about how the cuck is so inferior to the bull and how she has to deceive him to get what she truly wants.

It's analogous to how rape victims will sometimes start having rape fantasies, in that they both allow the fetishist to regain control over something he or she has no control over.

I don't think these two explanations of cuckoldry would be exclusive of each other.

In fact there are fetishists who fantasize about being cuckolded ‘by’ their mothers, sisters and so on, and usually not even in an incestuous or Oedipal way, it’s purely about being humiliated by the ‘bull’. The bull’s penis, used to humiliate them is what ultimately turns them on.

As a reverse example, there's a quite vocal segment of people who play pornographic video games that claim any presence or implication of a male sexual partner in their game that is not the protagonist is cuckolding (or NTR as they call it). Or even that any sex between love interests that is not a threesome with the protagonist is one.

That's why adult games are basically segregated into NTR games, harem games that very carefully avoid anything that might trigger their playbase, games with female protagonists that have sex with dozens of partners and a small minority of games that can afford to ignore the backlash and do what they want.

there's a quite vocal segment of people who play pornographic video games that claim any presence or implication of a male sexual partner in their game that is not the protagonist is cuckolding

Or heck, even the presence of non-human, gender-ambiguous tentacles. Thus the rivers of ink spilled over whether Muv-Luv Alternative counts as NTR or not.

Cuckolding (as in the fetish) is a purely male paraphilia.

You know that there exist women who get off on watching their husbands fuck other women, right? Obviously it's more rare than male cuck fetishists, because all extreme fetishes are less common in women than they are in men, but it's not unheard of.

It's more common in women, just less extreme because everyone involved can satisfy that desire quite easily (if they are hot enough and/or willing to pay).

FMF threesomes are an incredibly common fantasy, and a woman fulfilling it for her husband is barely transgressing normality, while getting most of the cuckqueen jollies. Similarly, a woman with an "understanding" attitude to her husband's affairs might secretly eroticize it, but she has no need to verbalize it or make a big production of it.

Male cuck fantasies have to be verbalized because they are more transgressive.

I don't think FMF is about women's desire for cuckolding, it seems to be guys who want to engage in threesomes but will not countenance having it be MFM (or whatever way the acronym goes) because that would be gay.

If we take it that women are all a little bit bisexual, it's a lot easier for a woman to go along with her boyfriend who wants a threesome with a hot chick for his birthday than try and talk him into letting her have two guys at once, because he's only going to get jealous and sulky about that.

Now if the hot chick is an ex or a woman who is going to be in his life, then sure, the woman is going to be jealous and less likely to agree, because that again raises the spectre of "so you want to bang her, do you? are you cheating on me?" the way that the MFM would for the man.

You, really? Seriously, though, I think it’s mainly that FMF tends to involve some form of sex between the women, whereas cuckolding or even a regular “MFM” threesome doesn’t involve sexual contact between the men.

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would be gay

This musical documentary claims there's a 'Golden Rule', that it's not gay when it's in a three-way.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Pi7gwX7rjOw

I don't think FMF is primarily or only about being a woman being aroused seeing her partner with another woman in most cases, but there are definitely women (personal experience) who get off on that aspect of it. If your personal experience of it is different, you/[r] partner simply may not be in that aspect of it.

My point is that because FMF is a very normal male fantasy in 21st century secular western culture, your cuckqueen doesn't need to go out of her way to make a big thing out of her desires, she simply does a thing her husband probably wanted to do anyway. There is no cultural or moral block to navigate. If she just tells her male partner she is open to it, he won't ask motivation questions.

Whereas a male cuckold is very much going against normality, and so he has to make a big production out of it or it won't get done at all. He has to have a talk with his partner and tell her specifically that this turns him on, or she won't go along with it because it doesn't make any sense.

It seems to me that ‘FMF’, even if initiated for a man who wants two chicks at the same time bro, has a kind of sexual ‘equality’ in that everyone is having sex with everyone. In MFM, by contrast, the two men are almost certainly not having sex with each other (perhaps your experience suggests differently, I’d be interested in hearing it). This is why many men also reject the idea of MFM with their partner, because it’s adding another man without him getting any pleasure from him; the archetypal MFM situation is either cuckoldry or two frat bros tag-teaming a drunk sorority girl.

The idea of two men and a woman all having sex with each other (including the men with each other) almost has a kind of Byronic libertinism to it, I don’t think it describes a lot of sex that happens today.

Maybe something like an FMM? You’d need a bi man and a gay man who doesn’t mind the F…

Weirdly, I’ve always thought MFM to be more…threesomey? than FMF. It feels like to me that at any given moment in an FMF threesome one woman isn’t getting the whole package, even if it evens out in the end. Like some sort of serial monogamy with an observer waiting in line, or maybe a couple as a unit having sex with a woman. Then again, thinking about it, it probably isn’t necessarily that different from MFM…

In reply to both your replies to me, yes you have it exactly right. That is exactly why FMF threesomes are more common. Though I think the "equality" is a lot less common than you seem to think, it's more a of a platonic ideal that is only rarely reached than the average. A lot of FMF threesomes degrade into some mix of one person watching the other two fuck" or "theoretically Bi unicorn is a pillow princess" or something like that. But that's why they at least make it far enough to fail, yeah.

Once again, though, it is perfectly possible for any other motivation to free-ride on that "normal" motivation, so a shameful fetish motivation doesn't need to be exposed to daylight. Defining Fetish here as "Needing X stimulus to get off" (where X isn't something banal like physical stimulation of the genitals or whatever), we quickly reason that the Fetishes are only detectable or necessary to confess where they are weird, because if you required X to get off but it was something fairly normal it would never be apparent unless it was from inside the person's mind. If I had a fetish for Brunette white girls no one would ever notice because that is a solid percentage of my dating pool to begin with, I could date ten brunettes in a row and at most it might get a giggle from people who were close to me; if I had a fetish for Asian girls or Ebony-Skinned African girls it would probably be noted eventually by my friends as those women are a little rarer in my social circles, maybe if I dated three or four in a row people would notice; if I had a fetish for dwarves or women three inches taller than me it would be immediately apparent to even casual observers after the second in the series and strongly suspected/mocked at the first.

My argument is that precisely because FMF are more common, and because there are all these other reasons why women might be engaging in them, any woman that likes the "watching my partner fuck another woman turns me on" aspect of it never has to talk about it, she just gets what she wants. Where a man enjoying that is rarer, so he needs to explain it in a way that protects (lol) his heterosexual bona fides.

The idea of two men and a woman all having sex with each other (including the men with each other) almost has a kind of Byronic libertinism to it, I don’t think it describes a lot of sex that happens today.

And it is a damn shame it doesn't. RETVRN

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Instead, the narrative is that her husband is so masterful that he can maintain a harem, look how much other women envy what I have, etc.

That makes sense, I guess I didn't see the humiliation as central to the definition, but if it is a central factor then I agree I've never been in an FMF that qualified.

Humiliation is obviously central to it, the man is either the humiliator (of another man) or humiliated by him.

I thought of "Cuckold Fetish" as just "I like watching someone else fuck my partner." Whether the motivation/arousal is a result of the fetishist being aroused by humiliation of watching someone better fuck his partner ("I could never fuck her like that"), or by the competition aspect of it ("I can fuck him better than she can"), or by compersion ("I like that this is making my partner happy"). I'm gathering that it refers specifically to the humiliation variety. The more you know, I guess.

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I could have said homosexual, I think female cuckolding / cuckqueaning is generally different though, it seems more like a variant on swinging and from what I’ve read humiliation of the woman cuckold isn’t usually the primary sexual turn on for her, it’s more about wanting to satisfy her man, keep him, make him happy, kind of like a Ghislaine Maxwell with Epstein type thing.

I have no idea of the psychology involved, and I think humiliation fetish is part of it. I wish we could go back to "what grown adults get up to in their bedrooms is nobody else's business" because I do not want to know about this, thanks.

There is always this stupid idea that if only we were a bit kinder with those leaders (be it Hitler, Putin or others), if we had made just one or two small concessions, there would have been no war. But this is a complete misunderstanding of the nature of their regime. Whatever you give them, they see as a sign of weakness, a proof that they can push harder. You negociated with me about Syria, so that I can do anything there? I will also take Ukraine. You give me Danzig? I will also take Alsace. It's a game where they can only win: either you give them what they want, and they are stronger and can push for more, or you don't, and they get a casus belli.

EDIT:

In the wake of the 9/11 Attacks, the Jewish Neocons stampeded America towards the disastrous Iraq War and the resulting destruction of the Middle East, with the talking heads on our television sets endlessly claiming that “Saddam Hussein is another Hitler.”

By the way, I remember quite precisely what happened, and the jews were not responsible of it. All of America wanted this war. The people who opposed it took a ton of shit. You probably wanted this war yourself. But I guess it is easier to blame the stupid choices you made on the jews.

There is always this stupid idea that if only we were a bit kinder with those leaders (be it Hitler, Putin or others), if we had made just one or two small concessions, there would have been no war.

Even if we grant that, Hitler only rose to power due to Germany being horribly abused after WWI and Putin due to how terrible transition from communism was in Russia compared to other post soviet countries.

By the way, I remember quite precisely what happened, and the jews were not responsible of it. All of America wanted this war.

Americans were wildly misled about the situation, for example, lots of them thought that Saddam was connected with 9/11. Taking down Iraq was strategic goal of Israel. Look up "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", lead authored by Richard Perle, "architect of Iraq war".

Americans were wildly misled about the situation, for example, lots of them thought that Saddam was connected with 9/11. Taking down Iraq was strategic goal of Israel.

It seems to me that people that are so easily mislead should take part in no decision at all. As I said somewhere else, being dumb is no excuse.

So abolish democracy? Based.

Germany was not horribly abused after WWI. In fact, I would go far as to say they got off easier than the Russians, the Austrians, and the Ottomans, and they well got off easier than the French in 1871. Indeed, the same figures that engineered WWI - the militarists of Germany - faced no punishments, and indeed became fellow travelers of the Nazis.

Indeed, the same figures that engineered WWI - the militarists of Germany - faced no punishments, and indeed became fellow travelers of the Nazis.

I am not opposed to punishment of people personally responsible, but what happened to civilian population, like continuing starvation blockade between armistice and signing the treaty, reparations causing hyper inflation, etc.

Is there any evidence that large number of Germans starved to death after WW1? It's a longstanding (as in, back to the 1920s) revisionist claim, but I think the evidence is lacking.

Germany being horribly abused

No, they weren't. They really, really weren't. The Germans sure thought they were, because they deluded themselves into thinking they weren't one people among many in Europe, but clearly superior to all else. After imposing the treaty of Frankfurt on the French, and the treaty of Brest-Litovsk on the Russians, to then bitch and moan about Versailles can only have one name: crocodile tears.

Putin due to how terrible transition from communism was in Russia compared to other post soviet countries.

The criminal mafia Putin ended up heading is the one of the major reasons why the transition ended up being so terrible, and his comrades took a significant part in making this transition so terrible, and that's how they all became multi-billionaires.

Even if we grant that, Hitler only rose to power due to Germany being horribly abused after WWI

Horribly humiliated and somewhat, but not horribly abused. By about 1924, the Allies were seeking ways to strengthen Germany again. Germany experienced a net inflow of capital in the Weimar Period: hardly a nation being sucked dry with reparations.

Additionally, if Germany had finished WWI with honour, no loss of territory, and not economic dependence, would there have been a WWII akin to WWI? Would Hitler have been able to ride a wave of traditional German imperialism? The underlying strength of Germany and the rivalry with Russia/France would still be there. It might not have been as bad as WWII in reality, but to deny its possibility is to be cavalier with historical causation and counterfactuals.

Putin due to how terrible transition from communism was in Russia compared to other post soviet countries.

The West was very kind to Russia in that period: feeding them, not attempting to roll them back further in Chechenya or Crimea, letting Russia take over the USSR's Security Council seat, stopped it sliding into civil war in 1996 etc.

Putin and his regime still ended up blaming the West for Russia's woes in the transition period. That's not to say that those acts of kindness were bad: they saved many lives in Russia, kept it from collapsing into even more bloodshed, and possibly bought a decade or more of Russian passitivity towards its neighbours - maybe the longest period of peace from Russian aggression in Eastern European history.

The point is that kindness towards your enemies is not enough. Reagan had the right idea of assertive strength and openness to mutual concessions. That won't always work - the results would be very different with Hitler than Gorbachev - but it's a relatively robust strategy. Ironically, it's not so different from what Chamberlain and Baldwin actually pursued in the 1930s, in that they undertook Reagan-style rearmanent. However, the concessions were not matched with concessions from Germany.

An angry Bob in middle America has no power to formulate plans for middle East invasions and then put them into action.

Many Americans wanted revenge for 9/11. The direction those emotions were guided in and the actions those emotions were used to justify were completely the work of neocons and zionists. To pretend those two movements are not extremely jewish goes beyond any reason.

An angry Bob in middle America has no power to formulate plans for middle East invasions and then put them into action.

Democracy means that everyone is responsible for what happens. Especially everyone which was in favor of the choice that was made. Sure, a guy in middle America wouldn't have been able to change anything himself, but it would have made a huge difference if a lot of angry Bob in middle America had opposed the war, instead of being in favor of it. The jews weren't a majority of the Bush electorate, and it's pretty clear that the Bush electorate supported the war.

Many Americans wanted revenge for 9/11. The direction those emotions were guided in and the actions those emotions were used to justify were completely the work of neocons and zionists. To pretend those two movements are not extremely jewish goes beyond any reason.

People were angry. They wanted a war. So they are not completely innocent. Moreover, the problem of the war in Irak was more the war than the fact that it happened in Irak. All the other possible targets of the "revenge" were even worse: Pakistan has nukes, Saudi Arabia has oil. Other countries had no responsibilities in 9/11. They could have argued for peace, but you know very well that it wouldn't have worked. Some people have tried (some of them jewish), but they have never been heard. So the neocons provided you with what you wanted: the best (or the least bad) target they could find. That was not the main problem. The problem was that an angry mob was asking for blood. Being dumb and emotional is no excuse.

Democracy means that everyone is responsible for what happens.

If you want to say that, that's nice. I don't think it necessarily does mean that in some ideological abstract, but hey, maybe it does. But much less would I consider modern 'democracies' in general or America in particular in any way related to ideological abstracts of what 'democracy' "means".

Especially everyone which was in favor of the choice that was made.

The public can only be as informed as the institutions that inform it. To that end the Pentagon had launched a massive media campaign to propagandize people into wanting war with Iraq. As detailed by David Barstow. That's on top of every other media element, many of whom jewish, who pushed relentlessly for war.

The jews weren't a majority of the Bush electorate, and it's pretty clear that the Bush electorate supported the war.

The electorate were angry because of 9/11. They were then fed a mass media cycle that fueled that anger. This anger was then directed towards a war with Iraq. This was done intentionally. I just made this argument in the my prior post. Please don't ignore it and restate the argument it just responded to. It's tedious.

As for the rest of your post, you are trying to weave a narrative that the war was a consequence of the wants and will of Bob and I can't take it seriously. Bob is angry all the time and no one in power cares. Bob asks for things all the time and no one in power even listens. Everyone knows Bob has no power. In this case Bob was angry and the powers that be saw they could use that anger to their advantage to get what they wanted. Invading Iraq was insane. The pretense for the invasion a lie, and its supporters either useful idiots or neo-con zionists thinking only of Israel. The neocons didn't give anyone what they wanted except themselves. They crafted a media narrative based entirely on lies and deceit that was designed around taking advantage of Bob and his emotions so he would send his children to die for Israel.

The problem with your theory is that the american jews have not really been in favor of the war:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/26677/among-religious-groups-jewish-americans-most-strongly-oppose-war.aspx

https://forward.com/news/1797/poll-70-of-jews-oppose-iraq-war/

https://www.jewishaz.com/issues/story.mv?051223+poll

How is that a problem with 'my theory'? Why would it need a majority of jews in favor of the war?

When you say that "the jews" are responsible for something, it's a requirement that at least a majority of them were wanting for it to happen.

That's not what was said, so I repeat my question.

How much power does some random person actually have? It’s really unlikely that anyone in America could have stopped a war the elites wanted to have, or really any other decisions those elites wanted to make. Democracy isn’t about giving the unwashed masses a real say, especially in imperial matters. You might ge5 a say in whether a lane gets added to a local highway, or a Walmart being built nearby, but in matters the elite care about, our oligarchy is not really that different than any other historical empire. No average Joe ever gets the kind of say that would make him morally responsible for wars.

A random person has not much power. But if the media were all agreeing about war, it's not because they are jewish, but because there was no market fir opposing war. The media could have opposed the war as much as they could, people would have looked at other media. They had as much appetite for anti war media as a AOC supporter for looking Tucker Carlson show. So after that blaming the media and the establishment is ridiculous. Just like it would be ridiculous for Bush to blame it on the people.

The American media is explicitly pro-regime as unless they sufficiently report the news as the regime wants it reported, they don’t get access to the leadership of the regime. And so, essentially, the appearance of consent is often manufactured. I would consider most of the statements of “support” for regime positions as selective polling used to create support, not as dispassionately reported unbiased facts.

Then you have to explain why it fails sometimes, eg Vietnam and pentagon papers

Being dumb and emotional is no excuse.

Correct, and there is no excuse for catering to "dumb and emotional". What, were the Democrats going to run a pro-invasion candidate in '04? I suppose it's possible given that Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in the first place but it strikes me as rather unlikely.

US foreign policy is somewhere between loosely controlled by elections (Democrats and Republicans differed in the 2010s over our our approach to Iran, for example.) and not at all. The Bush administration didn't invade Iraq because Americans were mad (Afghanistan, yes. Ron Paul of all people voted for that AUMF. Even today I don't think there are many who criticize the initial invasion, more that it mission-crept into a failed attempt at nation building.), but because they'd been wanting to invade Iraq for years. Neocons exploited anger over an unrelated event and stoked fears over nonexistent WMDs to get what they'd wanted all along.

US foreign policy is somewhere between loosely controlled by elections (Democrats and Republicans differed in the 2010s over our our approach to Iran, for example.) and not at all.

Sure, because Americans do not care. If it did matter to them, it would be controlled by elections. But in this particular case it somewhat mattered to them, yet they agreed with the government.

I already quoted in the thread George Soros, one the vilest Jews in the consciousness of American right:

An open society is always in danger. It must constantly reaffirm its principles in order to survive. We are being sorely tested, first by 9/11 and then by President Bush's response. To pass the test we must face reality instead of finding solace in false certainties... Our future as an open society depends on resisting the Siren's song.

or

We face a vicious circle of escalating violence. President Bush ran on the platform of a "humble" foreign policy in 2000. If we re-elect him now, we endorse the Bush doctrine of preemptive action and the invasion of Iraq, and we will have to live with the consequences.

While Zionists are predominately Jewish, blaming Jews for Iraq is like blaming Italians for Mafia, because Five Families are predominately Italian (and then there are plenty of non-corrupt people of Italian descent serving in police force).

What exists in the consciousness of the American right holds no relevance to who is responsible for the actions taken post 9/11. The existence of jews who were or are against those actions changes nothing about who is responsible for those actions. Those actions were taken by neo-cons and zionists. Two of the most jewish movements in American politics.

If the anti-war, peace loving, only good, never bad, constantly doing what's best for the goyim jews I keep hearing about from jew-apologists were in charge I would have nothing to talk about. But they are obviously not. And even assuming they exist in any relevant number, their powerlessness and uselessness when it comes to fighting back against all the jew made crap in the modern world is not an argument in favor of jews in general or an excuse for those jews in particular who keep doing things that are bad for Europeans.

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If the anti-war, peace loving, only good, never bad, constantly doing what's best for the goyim jews I keep hearing about from jew-apologists were in charge I would have nothing to talk about. But they are obviously not. And even assuming they exist in any relevant number, their powerlessness and uselessness when it comes to fighting back against all the jew made crap in the modern world is not an argument in favor of jews in general or an excuse for those jews in particular who keep doing things that are bad for Europeans.

You are allowed to rail about Da Joos, but you still have to dial down the antagonism and not engage in strawmanning like this. Even if you really believe "Jews" are a single unit, the fact is that there are Jews here (probably on both sides of any given argument) and you need to address them (yes, you are addressing posters here on the Motte when you talk about Jews) as individuals. If you want to speak about what The Jews are doing, either make sure you can defend the claim that it applies to any given Jew, or stop using such broad generalizations. (And no, "Of course I don't mean literally every single Jew, just 99% of them" is not sufficient.)

I mean, I'm not really allowed to "rail about Da Joos". Nigh every single time I make a critical point about expressions of jews you are here wearing your mod hat being antagonistic and sneering at me. Going so far as to strawmanning my argument just after you accused me of doing so.

You are allowed to rail about Da Joos

This is antagonistic sneering. I am not "railing" against anyone. That's not a fair summation of what I wrote. And always referring to a critical statement with regards to jews as being about 'Da Joos' is disrespectful and childish. I mean, can I refer to any pro communist argument as 'gommunism'? Oh, I didn't know you were one of those who liked 'crapitalism'. Oh, is that a 'shitlib' argument? No really, what are you doing?

Even if you really believe "Jews" are a single unit

This is a strawman. I don't. How you could gleam that from me arguing about distinctions between jews is beyond me.

the fact is that there are Jews here (probably on both sides of any given argument) and you need to address them (yes, you are addressing posters here on the Motte when you talk about Jews) as individuals.

I am at a loss at what you are referring to. No jew came forward with their own beliefs, nor is the belief of any individual in question, nor did I insinuate that any jew had to have a specific belief if they were not neoconservative or zionist. Like, can you quote where I went wrong?

If you want to speak about what The Jews are doing, either make sure you can defend the claim that it applies to any given Jew, or stop using such broad generalizations.

I made specific claims regarding specific institutions and movements. I am sure I can defend the claim that neo-conservatism and zionism are jewish. And so far no one has bothered pretending they are not since everyone knows they are. Perhaps it's my error in assuming people would know the difference between recognizing that just because the Italian Mafia is Italian doesn't mean that referring to it as such means every Italian is a mafioso. Maybe it's a jewish thing.

I mean, I'm not really allowed to "rail about Da Joos". Nigh every single time I make a critical point about expressions of jews you are here wearing your mod hat being antagonistic and sneering at me

Transparently false. You post about Jews all the time, and only occasionally do you get carried away and have to be modded.

That's not a fair summation of what I wrote.

I'm sure you don't think you're railing. You are free to disagree with my subjective opinion about the quality of your arguments. You are not free to make pejorative generalizations about your outgroup.

By the same token I would have thought that your personal subjective opinion did not warrant you being antagonistic and sneering towards others. Considering I did not make pejorative generalizations about my outgroup, but you did antagonize and sneer, I am not sure what you are doing here.

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Jewish Americans opposed the Iraq War more than any other group in America, by a more than 3-1 margin. As the previous poster said, even Jews the right claims are behind all acts of villainy like George Soros opposed the war. The Prime Minister of Israel opposed the war, and warned Bush against it. These are not 'marginal' Jews.

And again, as Rov_Scam writes above, the decisionmakers on the Iraq War were:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Condoleeza Rice, and John Bolton, not a Jew among them

So again, most Jews were opposed, many elite Jews were opposed (we can't say 'most' only because polling doesn't exist, but I think it likely), and the major decisionmakers were gentiles, including the President who had a familial vendetta against Saddam Hussein dating back 15 years.

Which is all completely irrelevant to the fact that the neoconservative and zionist movements were jewish. Most Italians had no hand in the Italian mafia. Was the Italian mafia not Italian?

So again, most Jews were opposed, many elite Jews were opposed (we can't say 'most' only because polling doesn't exist, but I think it likely), and the major decisionmakers were gentiles, including the President who had a familial vendetta against Saddam Hussein dating back 15 years.

Which would not explain why, according to William Kristol, Bush Jr was not on board with the idea until after 9/11.

“I think you could make a case that on September 10th, 2001, that it’s not clear that George W. Bush was in any fundamental way going in our direction on foreign policy.”

"OUR" of course, referencing the neocon side, as opposed to the pragmatist side within the White House at the time. He had similar things to say about Cheyney

“Cheney is a complicated figure and, obviously, a very cautious and reticent figure, so hard to know what he thinks in his heart of hearts. I think he had feet in both camps, so to speak.”

The neocon faction, led by Paul Wolfowitz had been agitating for war for a long time and they finally found the right conditions to push it forward. That's on the back of all the events that inspired the 9/11 attacks in the first place.

Was the Italian mafia not Italian?

The Cosa Nostra are overwhelmingly Sicilian. Are neocons overwhelmingly Jewish?

Neoconservatism as a movement is jewish. Just like the Italian Mafia is Italian despite the barman being Spanish or the guy driving the concrete truck being from Algeria.

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Most Italians had no hand in the Italian mafia. Was the Italian mafia not Italian?

If the Italian Mafia has a long-standing vendetta with the local Russian mob, and then the local Chinese decide to drive them out of town, shaking your fist at the damn Italians is just stupid.

You've lost me.

The people in power most associated with the Iraq war were George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Condoleeza Rice, and John Bolton, not a Jew among them. No Jews on the entire National Security Council, either. The idea that none of these people actually wanted the war but were talked into it by the likes of Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz is ridiculous. I could just as easily make an argument that the war was completely the work of blacks.

My guess is that if the Israeli government & certain key Jews in the USA had not wanted the USA to go to war with Iraq, then the Iraq war would not only have not happened, it wouldn't have even been seriously considered as an option. And if Israel had actively opposed the war, there is a ~0% chance that it would have occurred.

Roughly half of the key people with the Project for a New American Century were Jews, and they were advocating for regime change in Iraq at least as early as 1998- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

Far more important, the Israeli government wanted the USA to go to war with Iraq- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/17/iraq.israel1

(They were nearly the only government which wanted the USA to go to war in Iraq.)

The Israeli government represented the interests of way more powerful Jews than a handful of neocon Jews in Washington DC.

Also, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy". by John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt, covers many aspects of how Zionists sometimes twisted America's foreign policy against our own interests, as happened in Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy

(And, the authors argue, those Zionists often hurt Israel's interests as well).

Bush/Cheney and their other staffers also played their own absolutely crucial role. (I always thought that their main motivation for war in Iraq was to make money, and that's even more corrupt than any Jewish neocon's motivation).

And I think that most of the USA bears responsibility for buying into the lies & twisted associations used to sell the Iraq war to the American public (and many of those peddlers of lies were not Jews). The eagerness for vengeance among so many Americans, and their gullibility, made them pay a huge price, in blood and treasure.

Exploitative people generally need gullible people to go along with their schemes, and sadly most Americans are gullible and don't do their due diligence. And it seems like gullible people normally pay a larger price than exploitative people pay for their schemes.

A hallmark of jewish controlled movements is non-jewish frontmen, as is noted in detail by Kevin MacDonald. But that's rather besides the point of what neo-conservatism and zionism are and where those things come from.

It's easy to make things sound far fetched and insane. As if a hooked nosed caricature from an A Wyatt Mann comic was whispering jewish lies into the ears of hapless Americans. But that's not how things necessarily work. And I don't know if I should insult your intelligence by explaining to you how belief in an ideology can influence peoples decision making, or if I can just ask you to stop pretending you don't understand that the Bush Jr administration was neo-conservative and zionist adjacent, that those movements are jewish, and that adherence to those ideologies exists as an expression of jewish influence insofar as they push it forward and adhere to it.

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A hallmark of jewish controlled movements is non-jewish frontmen

In absence of detail, this statement disproves your argument by making the hypothesis unfalsifiable. It is also a statement with the implication that every single political movement ever was controlled by the jews. That's not a reasonable argument, a high-effort argument, or even a functional argument.

Rov_Scam named a bunch of individuals who are broadly regarded as having pushed the US into the second Iraq War by making public (fallacious) claims about the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the involvement of Iraq in 9/11. I think a reasonable refutation would require naming a bunch of jewish individuals who are behind the alleged "non-jewish frontmen", and describing how they pushed the US into war. If you can't do that, then either you need to rethink the assumptions that led you into thinking the war was orchestrated by a jewish conspiracy, or you need to stop trolling.

It's not unfalsifiable, as Kevin MacDonald has given multiple examples of these movements, including neoconservatism. But even then there is no absence of detail for those who bother doing a cursory glance over even just the Wikipedia article on neoconservatism.

Many adherents of neoconservatism became politically influential during the Republican presidential administrations of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, peaking in influence during the administration of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Prominent neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration included Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Paul Bremer. While not identifying as neoconservatives, senior officials Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld listened closely to neoconservative advisers regarding foreign policy, especially the defense of Israel and the promotion of American influence in the Middle East.

Rov_Scam names a bunch of senior officials who make decisions based on information given to them by advisors. When those advisors are neocons then I find the case rather cut and dry.

It's also rather annoying that the default of things is that they are just happening for no reason at all and US foreign policy revolving around the middle East and Israel goes unquestioned and any attempt at demonstrating why things happen at all is met with accusations of conspiracy, as if any government body wasn't a group of people scheming together to have things happen in the way they wanted. It makes me wonder what the affirmative positions contradicting my alleged 'conspiracies' are.

No really, where do these people get their ideas from? Was it not neoconservatism winning out over pragmatism in the Bush Jr White House?

It's also rather annoying that the default of things is that they are just happening for no reason at all and US foreign policy revolving around the middle East and Israel goes unquestioned and any attempt at demonstrating why things happen at all is met with accusations of conspiracy, as if any government body wasn't a group of people scheming together to have things happen in the way they wanted.

I suppose if you think that the only alternative to your account is that events "are just happening for no reason at all", then your position will seem painfully reasonable to you. That doesn't mean that your position is reasonable.

As for the examples you give, that's far from showing that they pushed the US into war, as opposed to being part of a movement that led the US into war. That doesn't evince that neoconservativism was a Jewish-controlled movement or that the gentile neocons were "frontmen".

I think that's the only alternative to a slough of deconstruction that proposes no alternative.

As for the examples you give, that's far from showing that they pushed the US into war,

If "they" are neocons and zionists then it shows exactly that.

That doesn't evince that neoconservativism was a Jewish-controlled movement or that the gentile neocons were "frontmen".

The link provided to Kevin MacDonalds analysis shows in detail how neoconservatism is a jewish movement. Did you even click it?

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I'm not going to read your link. It's 50 to 60 printed pages long. I skimmed the first 2500 words, and the gist of it seems to be that the neoconservative movement was an academic movement supported by majority-Jewish media, and took a pro-Israel foreign policy stance. That's fair, and I will concedie that the most prominent neoconservatives on that list were intellectuals of Jewish ancestry. However, looking on Wikiepedia it seems that most of the prominent American neoliberals on Wikipedia are also Jewish. Can we name an American political movement from the past 20 years which was not dominated by Jewish intellectuals? Do Jewish intellectuals just originate all (American) political movements?

Also, you still need to make the very important causal link from this academic movement to the actual war in Iraq. From the unfinished Gulf War, it is likely that Rumsfeld and Bush had a vendetta against Sadam from 1991, and from the Bush/Cheney oil business it is likely that the war was motivated by the capture of oil fields. Did these neocons originate the invasion, or were they merely providing a convenient rationalization for it? (And why was the supermajority of the American public in support of the Iraq war, when the American public is not Jewish?) You (and Kevin McDonald) admit that the "frontmen" were not Jewish, so you don't get to strip them of agency and culpability for what happened without a very well-articulated causal model.

Do Jewish intellectuals just originate all (American) political movements?

I don't think so. But even if that were the case, our incredulity toward that fact, if true, would not make it any less true.

Also, you still need to make the very important causal link from this academic movement to the actual war in Iraq.

Neoconservatives pushing for war predates the Gulf War. And as I stated in a prior comment, according to prominent neocon White House insider William Kristol, neoconservatism was the driving force behind the war:

“I think you could make a case that on September 10th, 2001, that it’s not clear that George W. Bush was in any fundamental way going in our direction on foreign policy.”

He had similar remarks towards Cheney

“Cheney is a complicated figure and, obviously, a very cautious and reticent figure, so hard to know what he thinks in his heart of hearts. I think he had feet in both camps, so to speak.”

Both camps referring to the tug of war between neocons and 'pragmatists' within the White House at the time. A tug of war that the neocons ultimately won. It's not a claim of mine and mine alone that there is a causal link. But beyond neoconservatives taking credit for it at the peak of their influence and confidence, it is an accepted belief on both sides of the 'fringe' political spectrum:

https://mondoweiss.net/2012/01/neoconservative-responsibility-for-the-iraq-war/

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2016/august/23/the-neoconservatives-the-war-on-iraq-and-the-national-interest-of-israel/

Beyond that I don't know how to further argue the point. Neoconservatism had been gunning for war in the middle East for a long time. They move to positions of influence and power and at a flashpoint the US goes to war with Iraq. Arguing the more specific agitating factors surrounding that is the subject of multiple books like The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War. And though I'm not imploring you to read a book as an argument, I would present the existence of the book, along with the existence of a host of other similar material as evidence for the plausibility of the causal link.

Those Jews are incredibly impressive people. Even when all the people in charge, the relevant decisionmakers, the people making their plans, drafting them, and ordering to have them carried out are gentile, it's all the Jewish influence that made it happen. So much so that the world's mightiest nation ended up more united than it had been in decades before or since, with nobody but rando internet posters any the wiser.

Is it possible to learn this power? Can I get in on this? The effort required is so superhumanly and extremely impressive that I'd love to find these guys and go along with them; they are clearly more competent and fit to rule than any group I've ever heard of, at all.

This is low effort and banal. Believe it or not jewish people can have influence. And the levers and mechanisms by which factions in politics can have influence over elected officials is not some incredible feat that warrants disbelief.

The effort required is so superhumanly and extremely impressive that I'd love to find these guys and go along with them; they are clearly more competent and fit to rule than any group I've ever heard of, at all.

If that's your takeaway from the effects of neocon foreign policy it says more about your argument than anything I could. Being silly for the sake of argument is not a good look for your argument.

The labor theory of value is wrong, and it is wrong for commenting as it is in economics. I have expended exactly as much effort as required.

If you aren't going to put in any effort, just don't bother. When I looked at this comment chain I saw you making provably false claims (i.e. none of the people involved in the planning of the Iraq war/PNAC were jewish) that don't even rise to the level of refuting the point you're trying to argue against (jewish influence played a part in the invasion of Iraq). Then, when questioned, you say that the debate isn't worth your time.

If I was an antisemitic troll trying to convince reasonable people to adopt my prejudices, I could not have crafted a better comment than yours if I was trying. Look, I can understand not wanting to get into endless interminable arguments about jews with internet losers who have nothing better to do - but you're better off just not engaging with the topic at all than trying to score cheap shots then fucking off and claiming the debate is beneath you when it turns out you didn't bring enough intellectual firepower to actually make a point. It makes your position look worse and their position look better, and I'm going to hazard a guess that you aren't actually an antisemite, nor do you want to lend their arguments additional credibility.

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Can you flesh out your argument for why it was the smart thing to promote Ukraine entering NATO, rather than negotiating Ukraine as a neutral region? Given that this was their red line since the early 2000s, I have no idea how someone could consider it “appeasement”. It seems to me that the worst case scenario has transpired: our continual pressure and influence in Ukraine has destroyed the country, probably forever (given fertility rates), has cost enormous sums of money, has wasted American influence in Ukraine, has pressured Russia into developing better drone technology, has finalized the alienation of Russia from the West, has influenced Arab nations into cozying with Russia, and all we get in return is some dead Russians, and maybe we will increase German weariness to America given we destroyed their pipeline. This was a bad decision, unless we only care about dead Russians. What will we gain in five years from it all?

Appeasing dictators is the kind of thing that sounds good in the short-term, but can wind up being very bad later. It's also very easy to say "oh just let Hitler have Czechoslovakia" when you are British and not Czech. The strategic problem in WW2, of course, was that Hitler was never going to stop there, and letting him do what he wanted mostly just made Germany stronger. Making it easy for dictators to achieve big wins easily, just by threatening war, even encourages other dictators to threaten war and try to invade other countries. A short-term victory, but long-term loss. The humanitarian problem was that Hitler was now in charge of more people, which is obviously bad; this badness might have been more insulated from British politicians than a war involving Britain would have been, but it was still there.

What makes the Czechoslovakia situation even worse in hindsight is that there was a good chance the Heer was going to launch a coup against Hitler if the western allies hadn't backed down. Not that anyone knew this at the time.

Source on this? I'm a big WW2 fan and haven't heard of this before.

Wikipedia page

Thanks

In practice, neutrality would have meant that Ukraine will always remain weaker than Russia and can be invaded at any time. Russia would just have to wait for a time where NATO is occupied somewhere else. Russia violated the Budapest memorandum and the Minsk agreement. How could Ukraine trust them to not invade them?

Moreover, the fact that Ukraine is or is not in NATO is not very relevant for the security of Russia. They are American nukes in the baltic countries, so the threat would not be any bigger. On the other side, Russia would still have nukes, so the invasion risks aren't any higher. So if Ukraine joining NATO does not change anything for Russia security, you have to find another reason why it matters to them. The only thing Russia can do if Ukraine is "neutral" but not if it is in NATO is invading them.

has destroyed the country

No, the invasion has.

has cost enormous sums of money

The invasion has. The US are not responsible for it.

has wasted American influence in Ukraine

Are you kidding? American influence is stronger than ever in Ukraine.

has pressured Russia into developing better drone technology

No, their invasion has pressured them to do so.

has finalized the alienation of Russia from the West

Once again, it's their choice to invade Ukraine that has alienated them. Even after 2014 the west was totally OK negotiating with Russia. Have you heard about Nord Stream 2?

has influenced Arab nations into cozying with Russia

They always did... They are not democratic countries, they have an interest in helping authoritarian regimes. It has not much to do with Ukraine.

and all we get in return is some dead Russians

And the reassurance that you won't abandon your allies, which was in doubt after the Afghanistan retreat.

The idea that one is not threatened by a neighboring state because there are other neighboring states unaligned with Russia doesn’t make sense. I am not threatened by five enemies because I have four? But it makes especially little sense given: the important of flat eastern Ukraine for invasion, and the importance of the Black Sea for Russia. America may very well have been threatened by the Saudis funding radical Islam, but that doesn’t mean they can just blow up Saudi Arabia. Instead we settled on lesser Arab countries.

neutrality would have meant that Ukraine will always remain weaker

Ukraine is small, it will always be weaker, but now it will be destroyed. This argument doesn’t hold up to either the predictions made years before (they will be annihilated), or the present data (look at the birth rates). “I will either attempt to be more significant than I am or be destroyed” is a recipe for narcissistic ego death.

Russia violated the

NATO violated the promise not to expand east as part of the negotiations involving German reunification.

No, the invasion has.

Yes, the invasion that was promised for years because of the sequence of actions that NATO + NATO-influenced Ukraine took. This is like when the Mongels invaded Iraq and destroyed Baghdad after Baghdad slew their emissaries. Sorry Baghdad, you don’t get to “be sovereign” against the Mongols, just like Cuba and Iraq don’t get to “be sovereign” against America. This isn’t how reality works, and indeed it has never worked like this in the whole history of nations. Cause and effect is a much clearer way to understand what is best for America and/or Ukraine.

Again the bunch of tired claims about NATO threat refuted so many times

https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjU-ve4Pn4k&t=1081

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVmmASrAL-Q

You can refute it as many times as you like. The promises of NATO to Russia are, by this point, worth nothing, even if the West wasn't openly discussing partitioning Russia.

Do you want to provide your ideas instead of linking to YouTube videos?

I have no desire of typing 5000 words, if everything can be found in the linked videos, or on Wikipedia, or wherever. Just put in on 2x. Arguments you present are not new, and the refutations of them are ubiquitous.

Right, I’m obviously not going to watch a random YouTube video, but here’s the archival research of a top institution in foreign policy studies

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University

Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” (See Document 6)

Afterwards, Baker wrote to Helmut Kohl who would meet with the Soviet leader on the next day, with much of the very same language. Baker reported: “And then I put the following question to him [Gorbachev]. Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position? He answered that the Soviet leadership was giving real thought to all such options [….] He then added, ‘Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable.’” Baker added in parentheses, for Kohl’s benefit, “By implication, NATO in its current zone might be acceptable.” (See Document 8)

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Damn, that's unfortunate, because I actually read multiple refutations of your position on TruthSocial. Your arguments are not new and have been defeated comprehensively elsewhere - but I have no desire of typing 5000 words (sic), so you'll just have to take my word for it.

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It is beside the general point of the discussion in which I mostly agree with you but it is interesting how these videos while emphasizing agency of countries in Eastern Europe don't extend it to Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Transnistria mirroring the pro-russian talking point that foreign support equals foreign rulership.

I wish I knew more about leadership of those state-like formations. LDNR was lead by people directly affiliated with Kremlin, or unruly warlords who were eventually killed. More than half population there saw their future in Ukraine. But South Ossetia, and especially Abkhazia look much more autonomous. Of course, it doesn't cancel the fact, that a lot of ethnic Georgians were murdered or driven out, just like in LDNR — thus changing the general attitude of people there, and the ethnic composition. And Transnistria is probably somewhere in between LDNR and Abkhazia in terms of agency.

Ukraine is small, it will always be weaker, but now it will be destroyed

"Destroyed" is a relative term.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are much smaller and weaker than Ukraine, but Putin has to play nice with them, because they're in NATO. If you were Ukrainian, and you didn't know that you would be invaded, wouldn't that be attractive to you?

The idea that one is not threatened by a neighboring state because there are other neighboring states unaligned with Russia doesn’t make sense. I am not threatened by five enemies because I have four?

Let me rephrase it: Ukraine joining NATO does not improve significantly NATO capabilities regarding Russia. I'm sorry, but the idea of a land invasion through Ukraine is ridiculous. It would mean a nuclear war. We are avoiding to send troops to Ukraine to avoid a nuclear conflict, but somehow we would invade Russia? And even if we wanted to take the risk, it would make more sense to attack from the baltic states as they are a lot closer from Moscow and Saint Petersburg than from Ukraine.

Ukraine is small, it will always be weaker

No, it won't be weaker if it has stronger allies. Russia would never have dared to invade Ukraine if it was a NATO country. And the birth rates mean nothing, as they can change fast. Russia also has declining birthrates, so the population ratio might very well be constant.

NATO violated the promise not to expand east as part of the negotiations involving German reunification.

The Russian propaganda says so, but until "they told us" becomes an international treaty, it's meaningless. If those promises even existed, they were never part of a formally approved treaty. No country has ever felt bound to respect oral promises of former leaders. It is just insane to claim they should. But even assuming that those promises were formally made and broken, I don't see your point. My argument was that Ukraine could not trust Russia security guarantees because Russia violated its security guarantees toward Ukraine twice. Are you claiming that Ukraine should actually believe Russia because NATO also broke some of its promises? It makes no sense at all.

Russia also has declining birthrates, so the population ratio might very well be constant.

No it wasn't constant. In 1991, it was 3:1 but it soon became 4:1, as Ukraine both had less TFR and negative net migration. Russia's ethnic minorities (esp. Muslims) have greater TFR.

The future is not always like the past.

has pressured Russia into developing better drone technology

No, their invasion has pressured them to do so.

What drone technology? The technology of buying them in Iran, repainting them and pretending it's Russian? I think they had this technology before.

why it was the smart thing to promote Ukraine entering NATO, rather than negotiating Ukraine as a neutral region?

Because Russia would still try to take over Ukraine, by war if necessary and it would put Ukraine in worse position?

It seems to me that the worst case scenario has transpired

The worst case would be Russia taking over Ukraine, murdering whoever opposed their regime, run russification full scale and be emboldened enough to invade Estonia or Latvia (and cause direct NATO-Russia war or collapse of NATO).

has wasted American influence in Ukraine

Do you REALLY think that American influence in Ukraine dropped as result of that?

given we destroyed their pipeline

It is hardly confirmed that USA did this, there are also other credible candidates.

Given that this was their red line since the early 2000s

They probably lied about this.

Ukraine entering NATO, rather than negotiating Ukraine as a neutral region?

Ukraine as a neutral region would require Russia giving up its naval base in Crimea, which is very important to Russian strategic interests. In detail, how would you obtain that concession from them?

Because NATO wasn’t why the Ukraine war happened. Prighizin himself said the reasons for the war were a lie.

Joining the EU economically was the proximate cause for the war and Ukraine leaving Russian sphere of influence. Economically and culturally there was never possible to be “neutral”. Zelensky himself made a comedy routine years ago saying basically Ukraine found a new sugar daddy that was rich and it was Europe. Ukranians look over the border and see Poland on pace to be richer than the UK. Russia can’t compete with the west financially.

The choice for Ukraine was never neutrality. It was get rich forming economic and cultural unions with the rest or stay poor in a union with Russia.

The whole “NATO” thing and neutrality always was just propaganda. Peace was never possible. Russia was never going to agree to military neutrality but a rich and prosperous economically allied with the west Ukraine.

We didn’t have to imply that we were interested either. Had we said no Ukraine would have been better off because they wouldn’t have been invaded. The war buck stops with us because we kept this going.

The war buck stops with us because we kept this going.

I agree that it is Russia fault, but how this changes anything? It is not much that can be done with that except supplying Ukraine more.

By us I assume you mean the US. First US isn’t even a member of the European Union nor a European economy that would have been Ukraines economic linkages. America literally had zero say on these issues which is why Russia invaded.

Also this removes any agency from Ukraine. They wanted something different because their neighbor Poland got rich and their economic relationships with Russia kept them poor.

They live in a Cripps neighborhood, joining the Bloods was never a viable option.

Maybe if the God descended from Heavens on Dec 1 2013 before protesters and opposition politicians in Kyiv and said to them: "Go home, victory of your protest will lead to great human suffering and hundreds of thousand deaths", nothing of that would have happened. Ukraine would be just a shittier version of Belarus for perpetuity, all smart people would have left either way, even if there was no war.

But it doesn't work like that. Ukrainians wanted into the EU. EU members supported those aspirations — some more enthusiastically (like Lithuania, or Poland), some less (like France, or Germany). On the other hand Putin and his close circle have more agency than amorphous blobs like pro-Western Ukrainian population, or European bureaucracy. The onus should be on them.

Gentrification happens. And the cripps launching an attack seems to have been a miscalculation that might end up costing them their entire empire.

They live in a Cripps neighborhood, joining the Bloods was never a viable option.

war so far seems to indicate that Russia overestimated their power

maybe they will finally get that Russian empire is done?

Except for the four countries in the Cripps' immediate neighbourhood that joined the Bloods without any violence? And the many more countries a little further down the road in the Cripps neighbourhood who did so as well?

why it was the smart thing to promote Ukraine entering NATO, rather than negotiating Ukraine as a neutral region

Because there can be no Ukraine "as neutral region". Russia sees Ukraine as part of the Russian Empire, detached from it by deceit and fraud. It wants it back. It will not respect any agreements or papers that would prevent that. They may say whatever it is prudent at the moment, but they will never respect it.

The only thing that can deter Russia is the perspective of the armed conflict with NATO. They are not deluded enough to think they can manage that. Thus, Ukraine in NATO means peace (with Russian seething but unable to do anything about it), and Ukraine being "neutral" means Russians are going to attack it sooner or later. And they did.

I have no idea how someone could consider it “appeasement”.

Factually. They wanted to take over Ukraine since Putin decided he's going to be Peter the Great 2.0. Once the decision was made, the question only was when they'd decide to try. They tested it out in 2014 and figured out weak and ineffectual sanctions is all the West can field. Adding commitment not to protect Ukraine would only reinforce this assessment. In 2022, they decided the opportunity is ripe - America's president is weak and senile, Europe's elites are weak and corrupt and lust after Russian oil profits, European militaries are largely a joke, US society is divided and half of the country thinks the other half is Russian agents - it's a good time to act. Appeasing them might only mean they decide the good time to act was earlier (maybe not under Trump - he's too crazy, may do something unexpected, better wait until he's out).

It seems to me that the worst case scenario has transpired: our continual pressure and influence in Ukraine has destroyed the country

Bullshit, there was no "influence" there that had anything with any of Ukraine's problems. It is true that corrupt US people meddled there (yes, Burisma), but it was only an opportunistic grift. Corruption in Ukraine has been endemic without any US involvement and much of it was instigated and facilitated by Russia. Mere presence of Russia next door - where corruption is ingrained in the state structure and which is economically towering upon Ukraine, so that anybody who joins the corrupt Russians may immediately wield immense comparative power in Ukraine - is a huge corrupting factor, but much of it remained from the Soviet and early post-Soviet times too. Only the war forced Ukrainians to clean up the house a little - and much of it still remains. It's not a good time to talk much about it, but nobody who knows what's happening there can not ignore it.

As for the choice of whether to go back to the bear hug of Mother Russia or become an independent nation, they made this choice in 1991, confirmed it in 2014, and it has been made irrevocable in 2022. Nothing about it had much to do with the West - in fact, the West has been kinda lukewarm in treating Ukraine in any but opportunistic manner, mainly because pissing off Russia too much - before 2022 - wasn't in anybody's plans. Too much money to be made on oil and gas. Germany is a shining example of it, of course. Having a hot war in Europe changed it quite a bit. But let's not project that changed attitude back to when it didn't exist. Europeans openly laughed at Trump's suggestion that the conflict with Russia is imminent - remember?

has finalized the alienation of Russia from the West,

That has been a done deal by mid-2010s. And the West couldn't do much about it, really.

has influenced Arab nations into cozying with Russia

Arab nations aren't idiots. When they see US is running away from Middle East, and Russia is ready to invest $$$, they know which way the wind is blowing.

What will we gain in five years from it all?

That depends on whether US will dare to help Ukrainians to actually win the war. If they do - weakened Russia that would temporarily sit within their own borders and not mess with anybody else. If they don't - bloodbath in Ukraine and ultimately Russian takeover of Moldova, and possibly attacking the Baltic states. Also kiss Taiwan goodbye, if Russian can do shit like that, China certainly would want too.

our continual pressure and influence in Ukraine has destroyed the country, probably forever (given fertility rates),

Very possible this will happen, but history will not see America as the one holding the knife, but rather the country that attacked a democracy unprovoked and during the war literally kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.

has cost enormous sums of money,

Literally the best bang-for-buck the US Military has ever had. Less than 10% of the annual US DOD budget to thoroughly emasculate the old enemy, weaken China, zero lives lost, massive increase in US soft power for finally being on the right side of a war. Plus the true cost is probably less than half of the sticker price.

has wasted American influence in Ukraine,

What?

has pressured Russia into developing better drone technology,

Oh no we can never stand up to bullies like Russia they might -checks notes- develop better drone technology!! Who cares. Besides at this point I wouldn't trust the Russians to develop a microwave. And, more to the point, neither would the half of the planet that (used to) use Russia as their weapons dealer.

has finalized the alienation of Russia from the West,

It has been obvious to anyone paying attention for the last 20-ish years that Russia was never on any kind of course to peaceful integration with the West. The Russian kleptocracy was just fundamentally incompatible.

has influenced Arab nations into cozying with Russia,

Okay so 1) Arab nations don't give a hoot about Russia their relationship is purely mercenary, and 2) this sentence implies that we don't want Arab nations cozying with Russia which implies that their influence is a negative for the US. So then surely -from a purely realpolitik POV- it is good for the US to diminish them? you can't simultaneously hold that Russia is an irrelevant backwater and also that it is a malign influence on American interests.

What will we gain in five years from it all?

A hundred things. but if you want to put blinkers on and care about literally nothing else than the American rival du jour then invasion of Taiwan looks substantially less likely now than it did at the start of the war.

You negociated with me about Syria, so that I can do anything there? I will also take Ukraine.

I'm sorry but I think your take is just pure garbage. It flattens the complexity of geopolitical motivations and concerns into a childish cartoon with designated evil people and designated good people, rather than looking at the incredibly complex historical dynamics which play into real world conflicts. Not only that, you've gotten the situation on the ground entirely wrong - it was the US trying to manufacture a casus belli, with the Russians not actually needing one (given that they were there in response to a request from the government of the area). Similarly, if you think that Putin simply decided to invade the Ukraine on a whim as a result of the US failing to stop him in Syria, you're just flat out wrong - the conflict in the Ukraine started before that.

But worse, this kind of belief and idea actively makes peace more difficult to achieve. When you just say that some category of people are arbitrarily bad and negotiating with them isn't possible, you close off dialogue and prevent the acquisition of the kind of perspective that can actually find a non-violent resolution. When you spend time and effort understanding why other people act the way they do and the factors motivating them, you can understand what they consider to be an existential threat. When you recognise other people as rational actors in their own set of circumstances and strive to understand that context you can find ways to compromise and allow both sides to get a portion of what they want. But your view? When you treat other people as simple villains that cannot be negotiated with, only held down with brute force, then it is impossible to understand what motivates them and why they do the things they do. There's no possibility for compromise with the two-dimensional villain that you've conjured up in your head, just war and pure physical force - which makes me glad that we do not live in the world you are imagining.

You didn't refute his point, you just said it was "garbage", and that people's motivations are complex. Sure.

Situation 1: An incel writes a manifesto, where he declares women evil, demands them to be redistributed among all men, cries about Asian men not being popular. Then he drives through a crowd, killing several people.

Crying wojak: "No, we must understand his motivations, men are expendable, sexlesness is as high as ever!!!"

Chad: "This guy is a monster"

Situation 2: A dude writes a book in prison about Jews being a scourge, and that his country needs to conquer a lot of land. Then he becomes a dictator of said country, declares a war on his neighbors, kills millions in the process.

Crying wojak: "No, we must understand his motivations, Versailles was too harsh, American Jewish plutocracy and that guy in a wheelchair provoked him to attack Poland!!! What about autobahns?"

Chad: "This guy is a monster"

Situation 3: An autocrat writes a manifesto about his country having a rightful claim on the territory of a neighboring country because history, makes speeches about how he was betrayed by the West, that the West is degenerate, how a nation that is above his own country in terms of human rights and media freedoms is Nazi. Then he declares war on this neighbor (sorry, declares a Special Military Operation), kills more than 100k people in the process.

Crying wojak: "No, we must understand his motivations, Ukraine is historically Russia's territory, did you read Mearsheimer, he is a genius, it's all West fault!"

Chad: "This guy is a monster"

“Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine so, basically, that’s wrong" - Chad, apparently.

Yet another victim of the compromise ideology. Surely it makes sense to make peace with Putin, none of those that tried are there to complain.

This is an incredibly old comment, but for the record there are actually people who made peace with Putin and can talk about it. You can just go ask Xi Jinping how he found Putin as a negotiating partner, and he's pretty positive about the relationship. The rest of the BRICS nations seem fairly happy to go along with him too for that matter. Hell, you could even ask Hillary Clinton or Robert Mueller about their dealings with him, and they're still around too!

They did not make peace, as there was never any war...

This is such an absurd strawman I question how seriously you believe this. Yes, of course Putin (and Hitler, and Stalin, and al-Assad, and every other dictator) is not a cartoon villain who acts only in a simple reactive manner. But he does act according to cause and effect. He wanted Ukraine for a long time, for a lot of reasons. No one said "He simply decided to invade Ukraine on a whim." It's perfectly reasonable to think that the lack of response in one place emboldened him to push forward his Ukraine goals.

I am curious what compromise you think is possible that doesn't amount to "Give him everything he wants"?

I simply took the OP at their word and did not try to sanewash their comments. To wit:

Whatever you give them, they see as a sign of weakness, a proof that they can push harder. You negociated with me about Syria, so that I can do anything there? I will also take Ukraine. You give me Danzig? I will also take Alsace. It's a game where they can only win: either you give them what they want, and they are stronger and can push for more, or you don't, and they get a casus belli.

Framing the idea of dealing with or negotiating with people as being a sign of weakness that simply results in them taking advantage of you means that brute force "diplomacy" is the only option that's left. What other conclusion can be drawn from the claim that giving them anything at all represents an unacceptable loss? Maybe I should have just sanewashed his comment and assumed he meant something else, but I don't see what other conclusions to draw from a paragraph that essentially says that any form of negotiation is a mug's game that leads to them winning every time.

But you actually raised real objections in your post so I'll answer them.

First of all, the US didn't just "negotiate" with Putin in Syria. They attempted an invasion of the country in an effort to instigate a regime-change and replace Assad, and then failed. Russian naval forces have been in the country since the cold war, and the two nations have been allied for a long time. Russia correctly saw that the deposing of Assad would change the situation in the Middle East in a way that was very much not in their favour, and so they did their best to make sure Assad remained in power. The US is in this case an aggressive, invading military power that still has troops in Syria, and they are there without the permission of the region's government. How can you possibly interpret this as the US "negotiating" with Putin? The US military tried to achieve their goals and failed, then accepted the situation because there wasn't anything else they could do about it. This is akin to trying to assault somebody, losing the resulting fight, and then claiming that because you "negotiated" with them and let them keep their wallet, they are now emboldened to be even more aggressive towards you in the future.

He wanted Ukraine for a long time, for a lot of reasons.

I don't really think this is true - I think that Russia's preferred outcome would have been for Ukraine to remain a neutral borderzone between them and NATO forces. Russia made it abundantly clear that they saw the placing of missile interdiction systems on their front door to be an existential threat, and I don't even think they're wrong to do so. But I don't even need to get into the weeds of psychoanalysis where I work out the motivations behind a major power like Russia in order to resolve this argument - I can, even without authoritative sources, definitively state that what happened in 2015 Syria did not play any role in motivating Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine (which is itself not even the first outbreak of conflict in the current dispute).

I am curious what compromise you think is possible that doesn't amount to "Give him everything he wants"?

Firm security guarantee that Ukraine does not join NATO nor host NATO forces/missile systems, and an end to the attacks on the breakaway republics and Crimea. Beyond that, a rescindment of the sanctions placed upon Russia and a return of their seized assets. I think that's a fair compromise and would satisfy the Russians, even if the US wouldn't be happy about it. Ukraine would even be free to join the EU in this case too.

Leaving aside your questionable version of history, your argument now is essentially that Putin is justified in what he did. This isn't an argument about whether he's a cartoon villain acting irrationally with whom it's impossible to negotiate (which is what you accused the OP of believing). It's an argument about whether or not he's in the wrong. My objection was that you cast the OP's argument as a strawman. I disagree with your (Russian) version of events in Syria and Ukraine, but that's an entirely different point of contention.

I don't appreciate the casting of my understanding of the situation as "Russian". I am not Russian nor do I live there, nor am I especially invested in their victory - though not for lack of trying, given how frequently I offer to bet that Crimea will not be retaken by Ukraine. I think that they're almost certainly going to end up the victors in the current conflict, but that's just my best understanding of the situation rather than what I want to happen (which is, for the record, peace).

As for justification, I don't think that's precisely the right word, but it does fit. I absolutely think that if you look at the situation in Ukraine in a broader historical context, going back to the Maidan and the troubles that led up to it, you can gain a much better understanding of the situation and why Putin is doing what he is doing - and having done that is why I object so strongly to sophomoric takes like the outcome of the Syrian conflict travelling backwards through time and informing Russian strategy in the past.

I don't appreciate the casting of my understanding of the situation as "Russian".

Well, it seems to follow "we must surrender to Russia" which is good for Russia and bad for everyone else.

Especially

I think that Russia's preferred outcome would have been for Ukraine to remain a neutral borderzone between them and NATO forces

was weird. It is quite clear that preferred outcome for Putin and other similar russians would be recreation of USSR or larger.

Firm security guarantee that Ukraine does not join NATO nor host NATO forces/missile systems, and an end to the attacks on the breakaway republics and Crimea. Beyond that, a rescindment of the sanctions placed upon Russia and a return of their seized assets.

Then next step would be to send totally-not-russian-army into Kherson. Or maybe meddle in Estonia.

I think that's a fair compromise and would satisfy the Russians

Russians would be happy. But I see no reason to expect that they would hold to it better than to Budapest Memorandum.

Well, it seems to follow "we must surrender to Russia" which is good for Russia and bad for everyone else.

No, this is a more general principle. If Russia was messing around in Mexico or Canada I'd come down on the side of the US - but right now it is the US empire getting involved in a nation that is immediately adjacent to Russia.

was weird. It is quite clear that preferred outcome for Putin and other similar russians would be recreation of USSR or larger.

Again, I disagree. Russian strategy right now recognises that they cannot overcome the current hegemon by themselves, which is why they're focused on strengthening their ties with China and laying the groundwork for a multipolar world. They're not interested in recreating the USSR, but the current conflict was motivated by real and serious security concerns (if you disagree, ask yourself how the US government would react if what happened in Ukraine happened in Mexico or Canada).

Then next step would be to send totally-not-russian-army into Kherson. Or maybe meddle in Estonia.

For what purpose? Russia had a very clear and definite set of reasons to go into Ukraine, and I don't see those reasons existing for Estonia. And isn't Kherson in Ukraine anyway?

Russians would be happy. But I see no reason to expect that they would hold to it better than to Budapest Memorandum.

Why would they break an agreement which you already said would make them happy?

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When you just say that some category of people are arbitrarily bad and negotiating with them isn't possible

That's a strawman of what they said.

There are historical examples of diplomatic deals made by democratic governments which include concessions to a dictatorship and yet do not result in war, and end up more or less being respected. I can mention the Camp David Accords which included the military dictatorship in Egypt, or the One China policy, the various treaties to limit nuclear armament etc. So let's not think in absolutes.

It's not a democracy/dictatorship question. It's about imperialistic leaders that only respect strength. They see any concession as a sign of weakness. There are leaders like that in democracies too, even though it's rarer and they are less dangerous because their powers are limited.

"Concessions don't always lead to war" is not equivalent to "Concessions reliably lead to peace."

I don't believe that any of those examples involve granting territorial concessions to invaders, so they don't seem relevant.

Well, ok. Not territorial concessions to invaders, strictly speaking, but such concessions nevertheless.

  1. How do you figure?

  2. Regardless, OP's entire point was about concessions to expansionist efforts, so they are not relevant.

the One China policy

How can you list that with a straight face when nearly everyone thinks China is making moves to invade Taiwan within the next decade or two. Peace in our time maybe, but it only made war more likely long term by strengthening China. Treaties on nuclear armament aren't looking so hot now either with Iran using these toothless treaties as a smoke screen to continue their nuclear weapons program.

This is still just speculation at this point regarding Taiwan.

Treaties on nuclear armament aren't looking so hot now either with Iran using these toothless treaties as a smoke screen to continue their nuclear weapons program.

That's a very strange way to describe the Trump administration leaving the treaty and the Iranians leaving it as a reaction.

All of America wanted this war.

I remember, too. I remember the mood over here being largely sympathy for the tragedy and understanding why they would want revenge, but also that this was a terrible idea and was driven by emotion, not any reasonable evaluation of what was going on. I suppose some of the foreign policy hawks also saw it as a chance to get back into the nation-building game, but it was the completely understandable lashing-out of a people who had been hurt.

That didn't make it right, but there was no need of sinister Semitic string pullers to urge it on.

Right, the Iraq War had a huge number of non-Jewish backers and it's ironically quite philosemitic to ascribe agency only to Jews and not to any gentiles and to claim the former persuaded the entire west (with polling routinely showing supermajority public approval) to invade.

Often overlooked is that Bush Sr considered not finishing off Saddam to have been a grave mistake and possibly to have cost him re-election, and imparted this unto his son. So W had a personal vendetta against Saddam and had stacked his team full of his father's advisors (who also had the same personal vendetta). Many of these were gentile and their reasons for wanting to invade Iraq had little or nothing to do with Israel.

The Israelis themselves were ambivalent; Ariel Sharon discouraged the war - certainly the entire Israeli establishment would rather have invaded Iran than Iran. Mossad was more in favor, but it certainly wasn't the case that all the Israeli elite favored the war, and Jewish Americans were one of the most opposed of all American demographics.

You can't invade Iran without controlling Iraq or some other land neighbour. Anyway, Israeli influence is all over the war, notwithstanding the many non-jews who also favoured it.

Israel provided faulty intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destructions. For the last 30 years they've been publicly claiming that Iran is a few months away from a nuclear bomb.

Netanyahu wrote an op-ed calling for regime change in Iran, Iraq and Syria (amongst others) in the Chicago Sun-Times, as did Ehud Barak in the Times. Sharon was in favour of the war, as Ha'aretz reported: 'Sharon believes that Iraq poses more of a threat to regional stability than Iran, due to the errant, irresponsible behavior of Saddam Hussein's regime.' Whatever skepticism there was in Israel was about the US stopping short and only invading Iraq as opposed to Iran as well.

And then there are the myriad high-ranking US officials who admit that Saddam was no threat to the US, only a threat against Israel. Zelikow, member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board admitted it. General Wesley Clark admitted that the supporters were truly worried about Saddam's nuclear threat to Israel not the US.

it's ironically quite philosemitic to ascribe agency only to Jews

There's a joke about Rabinovich who was subscribed to every anti-Semitic newspaper there is (probably going back to pre-revolution times in Russia). When asked why he's doing that, he answers - well, you see, if I read Jewish papers - the Jews are attacked, the Jews are oppressed, the Jews are murdered... It only depresses me. But when I read these papers - the Jews run Russia, the Jews run America, the Jews run Europe, the Jews buy everything, the Jews always win... It makes me feel a bit better!

There was (allegedly) a similar joke about a Berliner Jew in 1930 who always read the Nazi papers "Volkische Beobachter," "Der Angriff," and "Die Sturmer" instead of the comparatively-mainstream "Berliner Tageblatt."

My understanding is that Israelis also didn't like the war in Afghanistan, since happenings in Afghanistan did not serve Israeli interests in any conceivable way?

Except the general sentiment of "kicking the asses of Islamist fanatics can't be bad" I don't think anybody in Israel cared much about what's happening in Afghanistan. They have enough problems with Iran and bordering Muslim states to care about something so far away. It's small enough to not pose any threat, there were almost no Jews there (I think for a while there was two - and of course they didn't get along - but now there's none) - why bother?

Yeah, I didn't mean like man-in-the-street way but moreso in the higher echelons way, who thought that America invading Afghanistan was a distraction from what it should be really doing, ie. invading Iraq and Iran.

apparently remained too much of a gentlemen to have them arrested and prosecuted

Convenient. "Dany just kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet..."

Corruption was actually a big faux pas among British gentlemen back in those days, and it would have been politically useful for Chamberlain (not averse to undermining his enemies) to expose it by Churchill et al.

Unz’s account cogent enough that academics should seriously engage with it and it be taught in schools as Unz wants it to be?

Academics HAVE engaged with revisionist arguments. The problem is that, while (Nazi-sympathising) revisionists can often do a good job in trouncing amateurs due to knowing more of the basic facts ("You didn't know that the Sudetenland was German speaking? Let me tell you what else they kept from you...") they don't actually have arguments that stand up under academic scrutiny.

There are sensible forms of WWII revisionism, e.g. the representation of pre-1939 Allied foreign policy has become mythologised by Churchill worshippers and perma-hawks. It was a failure of appeasement and deterrence, but the inefficacy of the latter in containing self-destructive dictators was perhaps too frightening to contemplate during the Cold War.

World War II is extremely overstudied at this point, its lessons are overinterpreted, and in many countries it is taught far too much in schools, at the expense of events that are either more relevant to understanding the modern world (e.g. Russian, Chinese, and internal American history) or more integral to specific nations' current conditions and identities (the Reformation, the Crusades, the Industrial Revolution etc.). Obviously WWII helped form the modern world, but the Cold War did so more recently. And, at this point, I think we've finally got past the horror of progressives at the mere thought of teaching children about the evils of International Communism, lest it create McCarthyism, war frenzy, and the destruction of all life on Earth.

a large bout of “military Keynesianism” and a major war would cure the country’s seemingly insurmountable economic problems

Keynes played no small role in the start of World War 2, but contrary to how this anonymous FDR advisor is supposedly invoking him here, it was due to his outsized concern with the economic destructiveness of the post-war order as being too harsh on Germany. The Economic Consequences of the Peace significantly shaped the perception of Versailles in the US as being incredibly unfair, though this was largely a myth. A young French economist, Étienne Mantoux demonstrated that Keynes' dire predictions had fallen apart almost immediately:

In opposition to Keynes he held that justice demanded that Germany should have paid for the whole damage caused by World War I, and he set out to prove that many of Keynes' forecasts were not verified by subsequent events. For example, Keynes believed European output in iron would decrease but by 1929 iron output in Europe was up 10% from the 1913 figure. Keynes predicted that German iron and steel output would decrease but by 1927 steel output increased by 30% and iron output increased by 38% from 1913 (within the pre-war borders). Keynes also argued that German coal mining efficiency would decrease but labour efficiency by 1929 had increased on the 1913 figure by 30%. ...

Keynes also believed that Germany would be unable to pay the 2 billion marks-plus in reparations for the next 30 years, but Mantoux contends that German rearmament spending was seven times as much as that figure in each year between 1933 and 1939.

Despite this, Keynes' book became a significant influence on the subsequent post-war policy of the United States, to strip back many of the reparations owed by Germany. This both enabled Germany's rearmament while lending credence to false, conspiratorial narratives of economic persecution. Summed up in a review of Förster's The Treaty of Versailles: a reassessment after 75 years, excerpted:

To begin with economics: it is even more clear now than it was at the time that, in terms of its resources, Germany could have paid the sums demanded of it. Indeed, as Schuker has argued in his 1988 book, American 'Reparations' to Germany, 1919-1933, if one takes into account the reductions in the reparations burden initiated by the Dawes and Young Plans (in 1924 and 1929 respectively), American credits to Germany for fulfilling its liability, the default on these obligations, and the de facto cancellation of outstanding reparations payments in 1932, it is reasonable to conclude that Germany paid no net reparations at all.

Keynes' narrative on the war has been particularly sticky in the US education system, to the point where his takes are reproduced uncritically even to this day. Mantoux fought for the Free French Forces and died in Bavaria, 1945, eight days before the German surrender.

Memoirs and other historical documents obtained by later researchers seem to generally support Flynn’s accusations by indicating that Roosevelt ordered his diplomats to exert enormous pressure upon both the British and Polish governments to avoid any negotiated settlement with Germany, thereby leading to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

Wow, Germany was provoked into invading Poland; because, they were not just handed Polish land on a silver platter. What an argument. Just like Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine; because, they were not just handed eastern Ukraine on a silver platter.

Wow, Germany was provoked into invading Poland; because, they were not just handed Polish land on a silver platter. What an argument.

That's pretty far away from the argument, and quite irrelevant to the passage you are quoting.

Poland, by refusing to hand over Danzig and working through Germany to get what they wanted, were aligning themselves with Britain and the US to get what they wanted. What's being highlighted is that Poland made the decision to stand against Germany on the basis that they had the backing of the US and Britain. A basis that, according to Flynn, was being heavily pushed on the Poles by the US.

Considering the US and Britain didn't have any ability to stand by their word, going against Germany was maybe the worst decision ever made by Polish statesmen. Getting some of the worst of the war and post-war occupation.

going against Germany was maybe the worst decision ever made by Polish statesmen

Given that Germans planned to murder or enslave Poles, what was the alternative? (RP II leaders made numerous stupid decisions, not surrendering to country that wants to exterminate you was hardly one of them - it was at least worth trying to defend and winning was plausible even if very unlikely)

You've replied to multiple comments of mine saying the same thing. I don't care for your hysterics, but it would be much more manageable to steer the conversation somewhere productive if you could keep them to a single comment, thanks.

It is far away from the argument, but it's also far more correct. Note that your framing is selectively allocating agency to the Poles and the Brits/Germans to choose in response to the German demands, just as Flynn's framing attributes agency to the American influence driving others decisions, but neither address that the Germans themselves had the agency in not only making unreasonable demands, but also the agency to not make those demands. The dictator is not an immovable fact of nature, for which there is no reasoning and agency only exists with the responder. The dictator is an agent, and has used their agency to posit the demand in the first place.

Avoiding this point- that people are resisting unreasonable German demands- is required to credibly claim that the Poles were unreasonable in not compromising to them, because there is no failure in reason or competence to resist the unreasonable. But the German Nazis were being unreasonable, and the other actors were being reasonable in resisting the unreasonable, and so re-establing the actual originating context- that the Germans were the originating actors and making unreasonable demands- is the more correct point for conveying not the argument, but the actual context the argument is trying to ignore.

Your contention relies on the Germans requests being unreasonable when you could just as easily say that they weren't. Not the least considering Poland could have been much better for it, along with all of Europe, if they had aligned themselves with Germany against communism and what National Socialists recognized as capitalism in the hands of the international jew.

My argument isn't selective about anything. I think you should step back and recognize just what narrative is being revised. Hitler could have done things differently, but the obvious case here is that so could everyone else. In the context of general WW2 narratives that shovel all blame on Hitler in particular, and to a lesser extent the Treaty of Versailles, there exists an obvious angle of blame that is never talked about lest it draw attention away from the great myths we have created out of Hitler and the holocaust.

Not the least considering Poland could have been much better for it, along with all of Europe, if they had aligned themselves with Germany against communism

No, it would not go better for Poland given that Germans genuinely consider Poles as subhumans.

what National Socialists recognized as capitalism in the hands of the international jew.

that particular stupidity solved nothing, was mistaken and resulted in several millions of innocent people being murdered

You pro-slavery, pro-mass-murder and pro-Hitler (ok, that is redundant a bit) apologia is spectacularly stupid and evil.

No, it would not go better for Poland given that Germans genuinely consider Poles as subhumans.

Please stop telling lies. The Germans considered West-Poles to be aryans. Hitler said of slavs that they were docile so long they had food and drink.

that particular stupidity solved nothing, was mistaken and resulted in several millions of innocent people being murdered

Please engage with statements in context. This is a waste of time.

You pro-slavery, pro-mass-murder and pro-Hitler (ok, that is redundant a bit) apologia is spectacularly stupid and evil.

This isn't an argument and makes no sense since I have made no pro-slavery or pro-mass-murder statements.

The Germans considered West-Poles to be aryans. Hitler said of slavs that they were docile so long they had food and drink.

Are you now in full scale denial? Germans proceeded to murder people who were not docile.

Germans considered West-Poles to be aryans

Only some of them, and that was only subgroup anyway. And you were eligible if you cooperated with mass-murdering nazis.

They killed British and American soldiers too. You know, because there was a war.

Only some of them, and that was only subgroup anyway.

West-Poles, according to Nazi racial law, were aryans.

And you were eligible if you cooperated with mass-murdering nazis.

Seems like we have gone very far away from Germans considering all Poles subhumans very fast.

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You pro-slavery, pro-mass-murder and pro-Hitler (ok, that is redundant a bit) apologia is spectacularly stupid and evil.

Less antagonism, please.

Your contention relies on the Germans requests being unreasonable when you could just as easily say that they weren't.

It would be very easy to say many false things, but they would remain false, hence why not even you claim that the German grivance narrative driving the demands was justified.

Not the least considering Poland could have been much better for it, along with all of Europe, if they had aligned themselves with Germany against communism and what National Socialists recognized as capitalism in the hands of the international jew.

Their reward would have been to be colonized, treated as subhuman, and progressively enslaved and exterminated, as per the policy statements and intentions of the German rieche.

My argument isn't selective about anything.

It is very selective about many things.

I think you should step back and recognize just what narrative is being revised. Hitler could have done things differently, but the obvious case here is that so could everyone else.

This is irrelevant to the reasonableness of other people, as Hitler did NOT do things differently, and people were making decisions based on what he DID do, which was unreasonable by standards both contemporary to now and contemporary to then.

In the context of general WW2 narratives that shovel all blame on Hitler in particular, and to a lesser extent the Treaty of Versailles,

These narratives are false, not least because Stalin had his fair share in allying with Hitler, and the Treaty of Versailles was a red herring that was not a justified grievance for German actions.

there exists an obvious angle of blame that is never talked about lest it draw attention away from the great myths we have created out of Hitler and the holocaust.

There are no great myths of Hitler or the holocaust. There is banality of incompetence and evil, and those who wish to dismiss it away in their mediocrity.

It would be very easy to say many false things, but they would remain false, hence why not even you claim that the German grivance narrative driving the demands was justified.

I don't pretend to know either way which geopolitical claims are more justified since I assume all actors are demanding what bests suits them at the time. And the world that would have been if things had gone differently is not known to anyone. Considering how easy you find it to say and believe false things I can only question your confidence.

Their reward would have been to be colonized, treated as subhuman, and progressively enslaved and exterminated, as per the policy statements and intentions of the German rieche.

As per war propaganda driven by those who were at war with Germany. The Germans said the same thing about the allies.

It is very selective about many things.

?

This is irrelevant to the reasonableness of other people, as Hitler did NOT do things differently, and people were making decisions based on what he DID do, which was unreasonable by standards both contemporary to now and contemporary to then.

"Reasonableness" in this context is nonsense. There was nothing 'reasonable' about Germany playing second fiddle to Britain and France whilst the Soviet Union amassed power. Though it's much easier to simply retroactively assign reason to the victors.

There are no great myths of Hitler or the holocaust. There is banality of incompetence and evil, and those who wish to dismiss it away in their mediocrity.

You rely on these myths to maintain your viewpoints. The Germans weren't evil and relying on verbal constructs to sneak such words into the conversation is all you have. Since your viewpoint relies on condemnation of the evil vs good rather than objectivity and analysis.

I don't pretend to know either way which geopolitical claims are more justified

And I know that German claims of being superior to Slavs and Jews and being entitled to murder and enslave them were wrong and not justified. In the end even Hitler renounced claim of German superiority.

The Germans weren't evil

Germans deliberately murdered and enslaved millions of innocent people, planned to do more on that on gigantic scale with large scale genocide.

Feel free to call it differently, for me "were evil" is a fitting description for people doing it, but I would be happy with more descriptive version.

And I know that German claims of being superior to Slavs and Jews and being entitled to murder and enslave them were wrong and not justified. In the end even Hitler renounced claim of German superiority.

What are you even saying? How does this relate to any of what I wrote? 'I know this and that!'

Germans deliberately murdered and enslaved millions of innocent people, planned to do more on that on gigantic scale with large scale genocide.

Then why did the person I was replying to use the concept 'banality of evil'? There's no need for you in this conversation, given your differing views to the person I was replying to, especially since you are making no sense in relation to what was being discussed by us.

Feel free to call it differently, for me "were evil" is a fitting description for people doing it, but I would be happy with more descriptive version.

I am doing so and I don't care one bit for what you prefer given your comically simplistic view on history.

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Poland had been debatable land for centuries. When it wasn't being carved up by the Russians and whatever German and other states were on the borders, it was expanding into an empire of its own carving up other territories.

Trying to figure out if Danzig should be German or Polish or Danish or what the hell is one of those "who would win, Superman or Batman?" kind of questions to chew over. Like another famous tangle:

The British statesman Lord Palmerston is reported to have said: "Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business – the Prince Consort, who is dead – a German professor, who has gone mad – and I, who have forgotten all about it."

Depending on the degree of precision you want to achieve, you can of course argue about every single tree line in Pomerania or Silesia, but the arrangement post-WWI followed ethno-linguistic lines pretty well at the eastern border of Germany. This wasn't some completely intractable question, it was solved fairly well at Versailles. The remaining minorities on both sides of the border were geographically distributed in a way that precluded easy solutions but also not that significant in terms of numbers. On top of that several mixed areas got their own referendums to clear remaining doubts.

Poland ended up handed over to Stalin wholesale. Great work there.

Terrible, but not as terrible as what Hitler had planned for Poland.

No worse for them, not at all, than the treatment the Germans gave them.

Yeah, I think this is the weakest link of the revisionist claims. I actually do think Hitler wasn't hellbent on "conquering Europe from the getgo" as many Western historians will claim. Plus Poland had its own antisemitic government. Putin got into hot water for pointing out that Josef Beck, Poland's foreign minister, was closely co-operating with Nazi Germany in order to jointly deport a great number of Jews. Hitler attended a special funeral in honor of Poland's strongman leader Pilsudski's when he died.

There's an interesting article focusing on Poland from the point of view of an Palestinian-American, which details a lot of these things that many are unaware of.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-polands-anti-semites-helped-colonise-palestine

Obviously the author has his grievances, but he does stick to the facts. Poland was very enthusiastic in supporting Zionism as a way of getting rid of its Jewish population. It played a key role in training Zionist militias, in particular later Prime Minister Menachem Begin himself. So clearly the Poles weren't the angels we were taught and Nazi Germany was far more pragmatic than we are told in the lead-up to the war. This probably has some parallells to the current UA-RU war, as past UA extremism and intolerance is whitewashed by the Western press.

That said, Hitler's invasion is justified by revisionists on the same flimsy grounds that Russia's is now by its apologists. I am willing to believe that the Poles were mistreating Germans in the "Danzig corridoor", but this was the 1930s. Kristallnacht had just happened. Was Nazi Germany really the "dindu nuffin" that Unz and other revisionists would have us believe? The entire period in question is a stark reminder of how toxic nationalism taken to its fullest extent often is.

So clearly the Poles weren't the angels we were taught

Those facts you list are pretty well known (to historians). Along with Poland being an asshat towards Lithuania:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Polish_ultimatum_to_Lithuania

or that they used Germans annexing parts of Czechia to expand their own territory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(1938%E2%80%931939)

or that Poland repressed their other minorities, not just Jews:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonization#Ukrainians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Ukrainians_in_Eastern_Galicia

So there is no some grand conspiracy to whitewash Interwar Poland, just as there is no conspiracy to hide the existence of Ukrainian radical nationalists. It's about emphasis and rhetoric: when all you talk about is how the 2nd Republic was oppressive, or how some Ukrainian soldiers openly sport Nazi insignias — most likely you are a biased hack, like Unz. Unfortunately, a lot of nuance is lost along the way, because Ukraine should drop radical nationalists as their values are antithetical to EU which Ukraine wants to join.

I am also quite reminded of the perennial tankie claim that Soviet Union just had to invade Finland in 1939 when we didn't give them the small bits of territory they requested.

How much utility is there in studying WWII revisionism

None whatsoever.

WWII is circumstantially unique- the vast majority of totalitarian land empires are not as bad as either Nazi germany or the Stalinist USSR. For that matter imperial Japan was a lot worse than a typical ethnonationalist imperial power, too. In the modern consciousness, including the consciousness of elite decision makers, everything about WWII is overshadowed by that fact(well, set of facts). And we are simply not very likely to have a war with three regimes that evil as active participants again on a timescale where people still remember WWII as a thing to draw lessons from and not as something Akin to the great Byzantine-Persian war or the war of Jenkin’s ear or King Phillip’s war. Sure, they’re historically relevant, but no one thinks about them to draw lessons.

‘Never again’ with regards to WWII refers to the litany of unprecedented and unrepeated human rights crises in the war, not to the existence of a war. And it was not obvious ahead of time that the Nazis or Soviets or imperial Japanese would murder so many people(although perhaps the nature of the regime should have been a clue that they would murder some number). Most continent-wide conventional wars between major powers do not involve the intentional killing of 10’s of millions of civilians. WWI featured a single genocide- the ottomans butchering Christian subject races- and a few smaller human rights abuses, the mass targeting of civilians was limited mostly to a single theater. The second Congo war and Vietnam both featured civilian deaths on a large scale, but no mass exterminations. The Iran-Iraq war was a war between some pretty detestable regimes- one of which carried out multiple active genocides during the war and the other of which conscripted children to use as human mine clearers- but doesn’t feature the gigantic relative civilian body counts that WWII did.

The closest parallels, morally, are the Yugoslav breakup and some conflicts in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the size doesn’t compare. And that’s the relevant reason WWII sticks in anyone’s mind. You can avoid another set of world spanning genocides by not putting genocidal madmen in charge of three major continental powers all at once, and that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.

You can avoid another set of world spanning genocides by not putting genocidal madmen in charge of three major continental powers all at once, and that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.

I hope that's the case, but I'm not convinced that Tooze's Wages of Destruction is wrong.

It describes a lot of the worst atrocities by Nazi Germany in economic and logistic terms, and while that doesn't make the people who did it any less genocidally mad or evil -- the actions are just as vile whether done because of bad moral philosophy or to simplify food logistics -- it does give an alternative reason why three (or, uh, many more than that) genocidal madmen popped up and received widespread support all at once, despite their often wildly conflicting positions and backgrounds. And one can at least imagine the same frameworks applying to those other genocidal madmen, and to other less-successful ones who still nonetheless punched far above their grade.

Which still leaves revisionism as pretty unexciting, but does leave past genocides and especially the bigger and more deadly past genocides as worth studying.

the vast majority of totalitarian land empires are not as bad as either Nazi germany or the Stalinist USSR.

How many other totalitarian land empires are you counting as having existed (roughly)?

If there have been 50 other empires then sure these 2 are an outlier, but if China, the Central Powers (do they count as totalitarian?) and Tsarist Russia are the only other examples then it's at most a slim and in no way a vast majority.

Modern China and Saudi Arabia, Tsarist Russia, kruschevite Russia, fascist Romania, ceasescu’s Romania, Yugoslavia, Saddam’s Iraq, arguably Vietnam and North Korea, possibly modern Russia(I’m seeing a track record here), potentially apartheid SA and maybe Iran and hafez’s Syria. I’d also count Egypt at certain points in the late 20th century and mobutu’s Congo.

‘Never again’ with regards to WWII refers to the litany of unprecedented and unrepeated human rights crises in the war, not to the existence of a war.

As a comment about the cocktail-party talk of Anglo-Jewish in elites early 21st century America, this is probably true, but as a statement about the global political response to World War II, it is profoundly false. The people who live through WW2 and the institutions they set up were all about "Never again" with regard to total war between the great powers.

The first test is how the Western allies handle Stalin's post-war demands, and given a choice between "Never again" as in don't commit/assist/cover up epic human rights abuses and "Never again" as in don't risk a war with Stalin over petty shit like human rights, the West chooses peace. The Cold War begins with conflicts over spheres of influence, not Soviet crimes. The rhetoric of the Truman doctrine is about defending democracy against totalitarianism, but the actual policy it was first used to justify was supporting what were effectively right-wing military governments in Greece and Turkey against probably-popular Communist-backed revolutions.

The Preamble to the UN Charter begins "We the Peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war..." and sets up a whole bunch of conflict-resolution institutions, some of which were intended to have teeth (although the Cold War meant that the Security Council never functioned as intended). It specifically declined to set up human-rights enforcement institutions - Article 2, Principle 7 is "Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state "

The Schuman Declaration setting up what would eventually become the European Coal and Steel Community specifically states that the aim is to make another war between France and (West) Germany impossible, but does not mention human rights. The EEC/EU doesn't even acquire a formal commitment to human rights until 2000.

This isn't surprising - World War II was an order of magnitude more deadly and destructive than the Holocaust. Comparing these Jewish Holocaust death tolls to these total WW2 death tolls, the only country where Holocausted Jews were a majority of the dead was Czechoslovakia (which was spared the worst of WW2 in a paradoxical but genuine success for Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy).

In Russia and China, "Never again" obviously refers to the invasion and ruination of their countries by Germany and Japan respectively - it is a call to make sure that you are at the table and not on the menu next time. So not "Never again a war", but "Never again a war without a quick victory". For obvious reasons, not about the Holocaust.

It is easy for Americans to think silly things about WW2 because the United States was spared most of the negative consequences. Continental Europe was basically trashed from Saint-Lo to Stalingrad, as was China. The UK was bombed, blockaded, and bankrupted. Japan was nuked. As the people who actually lived through all this die off, Americanised western Europeans are starting to think the same silly things. This is bad.

I mean while I’m sure that we did accidentally stop human rights abuses, the story of never again is really only propaganda. Nobody has or will go to war over human rights. It’s just that it’s something the West has generally found the idea useful as it sounds a bit better to say “human rights” and “fighting to end war” than “we’re strong and we are stronger economically so toe the line or else.” The real reasons were pragmatic and aimed at our own ends.

Nobody has or will go to war over human rights.

intervention in Serbia/Kosovo seems like a case of that, with side of "stop your stupid tensions in that region, last time it ignited WW II"

there were also some other interventions which seem to be genuinely attempt at that

it sounds a bit better to say “human rights” and “fighting to end war” than “we’re strong and we are stronger economically so toe the line or else.”

That's a false dichotomy.

the story of never again is really only propaganda

"Never again a Holocaust" is propaganda. "Never again a land war in Europe" is something that Europeans and Americans of the wartime generation took extremely seriously, and which Europeans and Blue Tribe Americans are still taking seriously in Ukraine as we speak.

Much as the globohomo elites liked to kvetch about the lack of Pride parades in Moscow, nobody seriously suggested actually doing anything about it, even something petty like boycotting the Sochi Winter Olympics. What brought the banhammer down - both the little banhammer in 2014 and the big banhammer in 2022 - was Russian troops crossing the internationally recognised borders of Ukraine with murderous intent.

Serbia seems like it was a war from the west and mostly about human rights.

I don’t think the Russo-Chinese elites are reading WWII revisionism, and the 40’s and fifties elites definitely aren’t because they’re dead.

The decision makers in western countries don’t care how the war started, don’t think about the vast human cost that was inevitable from major conventional war between continental empires, and focus on 1) the unnecessary abuse of civilians and 2) why that was, which boils down to the ideological peculiarities of several of the regimes involved. That’s the lesson our elites are applying, and the actual reasons WWII broke out are irrelevant for it.

Yes, there’s arguments that an antisemitic regime starting to lose a total war will start exterminating the Jewish population, but Germany turning towards antisemitism was not inevitable prior to the Nazi party deciding to make antisemitism a major part of their platform. The Soviet regime was probably going to leave a gigantic body count no matter what happened, but, you know, the Russian empire could have been non communist.

although the Cold War meant that the Security Council never functioned as intended

Didn't it? I think the purpose of it was (as you explained...) to avoid a war between the great powers? It seems to me it succeeded quite well.

My understanding is that the purpose of the Security Council was to proactively deal with "threats to international peace and security" (like minor royals being shot in Sarajevo or less-than-perfectly controlled great power client states invading each other) before they escalated to possible great power conflict. I don't think it did this - in particular the list of US-Soviet proxy wars in banana republics is long, and the UN system did basically nothing - escalation was prevented by some combination of MAD and the post-Cuban Missile Crisis steps taken to ensure bilateral communication between the superpowers.

In Russia and China, "Never again" obviously refers to the invasion and ruination of their countries by Germany and Japan respectively - it is a call to make sure that you are at the table and not on the menu next time

Russia has been very much at the table in WW2, chomping on pieces of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Baltic states, etc. Is it when their former friends the Nazis turned out to be less than friendly, the trouble began. Russia and Germany were probably the two European parties that were ok with the war started - the rest remembered WWI and so were going out of their way to not provoke another one - which, paradoxically, ensured it would happen.

Agreed on the actual historical facts, but my impression is that the historical mythology of WW2 is extremely important to the versions of national identity being promoted by both the Soviet and the Putinist regimes. And the key points of the myth are:

  • The innocence of the Soviet Union and the utter wickedness of Hitler's unprovoked aggression (the Molotov-Ribentropp pact is ignored, obv), occasionally backed up with ahistorical claims that the Soviet Union was abandoned or betrayed by the western democracies in the pre-war period.

  • The Soviet Union's underdog status at the start of the war (probably true)

  • The extraordinary deadliness and destructiveness of the eastern front in WW2 (which is true) which is blamed on Nazi wickedness (ignoring the contribution of Soviet incompetence)

  • The extraordinary effort and sacrifice of the Soviet people to defeat the Nazis (definitely true)

  • The idea that defeating the Nazis was a mostly-Soviet achievement while the western Allies effectively sat the war out and watched Nazis and Communists shoot each other, Spanish Civil War style, and that the rest of the world being insufficiently grateful to the Soviet Union for singlehandedly saving the world from Nazism at enormous human cost is a sign of western wickedness. (Ahistorical)

In other words, the myth clearly centres aggression and not genocide as Hitler's supreme crime, and the intended lesson of the myth is that Russia is always at risk of a surprise attack from the west, needs to be stronk so that the attack can be repelled well before the "Nazis" get to Stalingrad, and suffered massively from being insufficiently stronk in 1941.

Welcome back Foreverlurker!

sigh I'll go reset the "Days Since The Jews Did It" sign.

No need, I already threw out every number except 0. They'd just been sitting in a box for centuries.

is Unz’s account cogent enough that academics should seriously engage with it and it be taught in schools as Unz wants it to be?

(1) should academics engage with it? Yes, because there is some truth mixed in

(2) should it be taught in schools? No, because most of it is erroneous or misleading

God knows I hold no brief for any of the Churchills, but this much is wrong:

A particularly notable instance occurred in early 1938 when Churchill suddenly lost all his accumulated wealth in a foolish gamble on the American stock-market, and was soon forced to put his beloved country estate up for sale to avoid personal bankruptcy, only to quickly be bailed out by a foreign Jewish millionaire intent upon promoting a war against Germany.

(1) Did Churchill, along with others, lose his shirt in 1929 (not 1938)? Yes, and he went on a lecture/speaking tour of North America to raise money. He had a friend, Bernard Baruch, a Jewish financier who did lend him money or otherwise mitigated his losses. I suppose "American" does count as foreign, but Winnie was half-American himself by his mother.

(2) Did he lose a fortune again in 1938? I can't find any account of this. Mainly, he had been out of office during the 'wilderness years' and lived extravagantly even though he was also having to write for a living (as well as he liked writing historical books). The Churchills as a family had always been bad with money and it fell to one of them in the 19th to restore the family fortunes by marrying an American heiress. Churchill's father was a younger son, so not the heir to the dukedom, and as the son of a younger son, Winnie had little money of his own (by his standards, at least). Thanks to Adolf, Churchill's prognostications were proven right and the government had to appoint him First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939 which saved his financial skin.

(3) Did he have to sell "his beloved country estate"? This is probably Chartwell and the answer there would be "no" since he bought it in 1922 and lived there until 1965. When in office, he would have had official residences. List of places Churchill lived here.

Winnie would also not have needed to be bribed to be militant about Germany, though he probably would have happily trousered any cash coming his way.

I am just your average idiot and if I can pick holes in the accuracy with ten minutes online, I imagine real historians could do a lot better.

EDIT:

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who was horrified to discover the corrupt motives of his fierce political opponents, but apparently remained too much of a gentlemen to have them arrested and prosecuted. I’m no expert in the British laws of that era, but for elected officials to do the bidding of foreigners on matters of war and peace in exchange for huge secret payments seems almost a textbook example of treason to me

Pardon me while I smile wryly. May I recommend interested parties to read The Man Who Knew Too Much published in 1922 by G.K. Chesterton? It's very cynical for Chesterton, almost defeatist, and I think it's down to a combination of finding out how the sausage was made, politically, and that the Liberals and the Tories were much of a muchness (after his early and short-lived political efforts) and the personal fallout for him and his brother due to the Marconi Affair. That Chamberlain would have been horrified to find out Tweedledee and Tweedledum were both to be found with their snouts in the trough and their fingers in the till, I take leave to doubt, and that there were no prosecutions was more down to "but we'll have to prosecute half of our lot as well if we do this" than gentlemanly tact.

“I know you are magnanimous,” said March after a silence, “and yet you tolerate and perpetuate everything that is mean.” Then after another silence he added: “Do you remember when we first met, when you were fishing in that brook in the affair of the target? And do you remember you said that, after all, it might do no harm if I could blow the whole tangle of this society to hell with dynamite.”

“Yes, and what of that?” asked Fisher.

“Only that I’m going to blow it to hell with dynamite,” said Harold March, “and I think it right to give you fair warning. For a long time I didn’t believe things were as bad as you said they were. But I never felt as if I could have bottled up what you knew, supposing you really knew it. Well, the long and the short of it is that I’ve got a conscience; and now, at last, I’ve also got a chance. I’ve been put in charge of a big independent paper, with a free hand, and we’re going to open a cannonade on corruption.”

“That will be — Attwood, I suppose,” said Fisher, reflectively. “Timber merchant. Knows a lot about China.”

“He knows a lot about England,” said March, doggedly, “and now I know it, too, we’re not going to hush it up any longer. The people of this country have a right to know how they’re ruled—or, rather, ruined. The Chancellor is in the pocket of the money lenders and has to do as he is told; otherwise he’s bankrupt, and a bad sort of bankruptcy, too, with nothing but cards and actresses behind it. The Prime Minister was in the petrol-contract business; and deep in it, too. The Foreign Minister is a wreck of drink and drugs. When you say that plainly about a man who may send thousands of Englishmen to die for nothing, you’re called personal. If a poor engine driver gets drunk and sends thirty or forty people to death, nobody complains of the exposure being personal. The engine driver is not a person.”

“I quite agree with you,” said Fisher, calmly. “You are perfectly right.”

“If you agree with us, why the devil don’t you act with us?” demanded his friend. “If you think it’s right, why don’t you do what’s right? It’s awful to think of a man of your abilities simply blocking the road to reform.”

“We have often talked about that,” replied Fisher, with the same composure. “The Prime Minister is my father’s friend. The Foreign Minister married my sister. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is my first cousin. I mention the genealogy in some detail just now for a particular reason. The truth is I have a curious kind of cheerfulness at the moment. It isn’t altogether the sun and the sea, sir. I am enjoying an emotion that is entirely new to me; a happy sensation I never remember having had before.”

“What the devil do you mean?”

“I am feeling proud of my family,” said Horne Fisher.

Harold March stared at him with round blue eyes, and seemed too much mystified even to ask a question. Fisher leaned back in his chair in his lazy fashion, and smiled as he continued.

“Look here, my dear fellow. Let me ask a question in turn. You imply that I have always known these things about my unfortunate kinsmen. So I have. Do you suppose that Attwood hasn’t always known them? Do you suppose he hasn’t always known you as an honest man who would say these things when he got a chance? Why does Attwood unmuzzle you like a dog at this moment, after all these years? I know why he does; I know a good many things, far too many things. And therefore, as I have the honor to remark, I am proud of my family at last.”

“But why?” repeated March, rather feebly.

“I am proud of the Chancellor because he gambled and the Foreign Minister because he drank and the Prime Minister because he took a commission on a contract,” said Fisher, firmly. “I am proud of them because they did these things, and can be denounced for them, and know they can be denounced for them, and are standing firm for all that. I take off my hat to them because they are defying blackmail, and refusing to smash their country to save themselves. I salute them as if they were going to die on the battlefield.”

Firstly, welcome back to your usually scheduled programming.

  1. As the other user said, Hitler’s territorial plans had a long history that predated his rise to power. Lebensraum/the ‘Drang nach Osten’ was - far more so than antisemitism or rearmament or domestic economic or political reform - the central ideological message of the National Socialists from the mid-1920s onward. Books and articles about the idea of a ‘Volk ohne Raum’ / people without (enough) land became bestsellers, irredentism and expansionism went beyond nazism to become a pillar of the entire German hard right. Almost all of Germany’s problems were, at one point or another, blamed on it - and as you suggest, this was the means by which the Nazis blamed the Treaty of Versailles and Jews for many of Germany’s problems.

  2. Unz makes Hitler seem like an extreme retard in this piece. If his own intelligence was informing him that America and Britain were looking for an excuse to declare war, why would he give them an excuse by taking Poland? Hitler’s own war plans largely prove Unz wrong. If he merely (as is often suggested by the far right) wanted to fight communists, the invasion of Poland and Czecheslovakia, and the deal with Stalin, make little sense. The strategy in the east confirms imperial ambitions, already plainly discussed, that in the medium term would have resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the West Slavs almost universally. As for the Jews, one of the main reasons they were concerned wasn’t their property in Germany (largely already sold by 1938, and the majority of German Jews had already fled) but the vast Jewish populations of Poland and elsewhere in CEE which they feared Hitler would expropriate, persecute or kill, which of course he eventually did.

Unz’ argument is essentially that even though predictions of what Hitler would do to occupied Eastern Europe largely came true and fully retroactively justified efforts to try to stop him, he originally - despite his consistent arguing for German manifest destiny eastward for almost two decades before he embarked upon it - didn’t actually want it. Seems pretty ridiculous to me.

As far as I can see, nobody else has made this point so far, so I'll argue that if any (future) Allied government deserves real blame for not averting another world war, it is the French, for not opposing the German remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, which would have been easily justifiable legally and carried no risk.

Yes that was really the main treaty violation that should have triggered a response because it was the only real strategic threat to France and Britain. Germany taking Czechoslovakia or Austria or Danzig doesn't really do anything to change the balance of power. Sure, the Skoda Works are nice to have but they aren't going to affect the outcome of a war if Germany can't defend the Rhineland. So the one actually critical treaty provision is the one that gets ignored but then France and the UK decide to kamikaze into Germany over annexations that primarily threaten the Soviet Union. It makes absolutely no sense and I don't think they could have handled things in a less competent way.

It makes absolutely no sense

It makes sense if you think of it as them developing an evolving model of Hitler's behaviour, rather than looking at each annexation in isolation.

the French, for not opposing the German remilitarization of the Rhineland of 1936, which would have been easily justifiable legally and carried no risk.

Disallowing the militarization of your own territory is the definition of not having sovereignty... Maintaining this arrangement in perpetuity was neither possible nor reasonable. Even if they scared the Germans away, they could just do it again and again whenever the French let up pressure. "We are going to go to war with you if you put military in your own country" was never going to be a stable arrangement, it was always going to lead to a showdown.

Agree. Hindsight is 20/20, the allies didn‘t know it was the first in a long line of increasingly demented demands, but this one was still reasonable. And when the french (and belgians) previously tried to play hardball with the ruhr occupation, the anglos weren‘t supporting them, they had to withdraw and scratch some reparations. So it would have been just france versus germany, with the rest of the world increasingly favouring the defenders, and condemning france.

Afterwards it came to light that the deployed Wehrmacht units had orders to retreat without a fight if armed resistance was offered by the French. There would have been no defenders.

And then what? They level german cities to the ground, demanding unconditional surrender? They'd just go home after a while under diplomatic pressure like in 1925.

It'd have been a great embarrassment for Hitler and obviously would've eroded his willingness to take similar political gambles in the future. It'd have also demonstrated that the French government will respond militarily to violations of the Versailles Treaty. I'm not arguing that it'd have prevented another Franco-German war forever and ever, but it'd have averted another world war, eventually.

Alternative history scenario: three years later, a sympathetic germany beats down france first, to the indifference of the anglos, sick of the high-handed bellicosity of the gallic rooster. When the germans get to poland and tschekoslovakia, the brits realize too late that Hitler is a bad actor. Deprived of a large allied power on the continent, they no longer have the leverage to threaten war. So later it's just germany versus soviet union, longer, bloodier, and Hitler gets baku‘s oil.


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