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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31913 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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Mandela Goes From Hero to Scapegoat as South Africa Struggles

10 years after his death, attitudes have changed. The party Mr. Mandela led after his release from prison, the African National Congress, is in serious danger of losing its outright majority for the first time since he became president in 1994 in the first free election after the fall of apartheid. Corruption, ineptitude and elitism have tarnished the A.N.C... Faith in the future is collapsing. Seventy percent of South Africans said in 2021 that the country is going in the wrong direction, up from 49 percent in 2010, according to the latest survey published by the country’s Human Sciences Research Council. Only 26 percent said they trusted the government, a huge decline from 2005, when it was 64 percent... The unemployment rate is 46 percent among South Africans aged 15 to 34. Millions more are underemployed, like Mr. Thebe. He studied computer science at the university level, never receiving a degree. The best job he said he could find was selling funeral policies to the staff of the court.

While Mr. Mandela is still lionized around the world, many South Africans, especially young people, believe that he did not do enough to create structural changes that would lift the fortunes of the country’s Black majority. White South Africans still hold a disproportionate share of the nation’s land, and earn three and a half times more than Black people. Mr. Vawda, 17, belongs to a generation that knows Mr. Mandela only as a historical figure in textbooks and films. To him, Mr. Mandela’s fight to end apartheid was admirable. But the huge economic gap between Black and white South Africans will be on his mind when he votes for the first time next year, he said. "He didn’t revolt against white people,” Mr. Vawda said. “I would have taken revenge.”

the truth and reconciliation commission led by mandela chose to pardon many perpetrators of crimes related to apartheid, such as the murderers of amy biehl, an anti-apartheid activist, in order to encourage, well, truth and reconciliation. young south africaners have identified that mandela and his friends didn't go far enough with their silly restorative justice ways - perhaps a nuremberg would have been more appropriate. if you were willing to necklace traitors of your own race, why not the enemy?

What sort of political options on the ground do radicalized youth like Mr Vawda have?

The almost openly genocidal EFF?

“I cannot guarantee the future. I am not a prophet. I said that if things don’t change, there will be a revolution affecting all of us – and that will include me and black people in suburbs. Those rising up from townships will accuse us of abandoning them in squalor and in poverty. We will all be in serious trouble.”

“It may not be me [calling for the slaughter of white people]. But it could be me. What will necessitate such a thing? I can’t guarantee I can’t or won’t call for the slaughter of white people. But why would I make a pledge to say I definitely won’t call for that? I won’t do it.”

Imagine looking at the state of South Africa and thinking 'what this country really needs is more brain drain, capital flight, international isolation, even more intense ethnic conflict.' I suppose this goes to show the power of nationalist feeling - it can override all other considerations.

I think this also highlights the importance of HBD. Some people on this forum have disputed its value, saying 'so what do we gain in the real world from this knowledge'? We'd gain useful information about the destiny of states that go from white rule (indigenous fighter jet programs, first heart transplant, nuclear program) to black rule (mass unemployment, constant power outages, ludicrously high crime/murder rate). We'd know it was unlikely that South Africa, along with Brazil, would be a meaningful part of BRICS, the source of future world economic growth. Useful investing information! And we'd know that since the situation in South Africa was very unlikely to markedly improve, future racial conflict is likely as the economic gap between black and white remains.

I think this also highlights the importance of HBD.

If anything, I'd say it demonstrates the exact opposite.

Imagine looking at the state of South Africa and thinking 'what this country really needs is more brain drain, capital flight, international isolation, and even more intense ethnic conflict.'

It just goes to show that culture matters.

Imagine looking at the state of South Africa and thinking 'what this country really needs is more brain drain, capital flight, international isolation, and even more intense ethnic conflict.'

How does believing in HBD equate to wanting any of that? HBD is a descriptive theory; understanding that the differential in human capital between the white minority and the black majority does not suggest any particular course of action or policy recommendation for the country. In fact, the knowledge that the current precipitous decline in material and cultural standards is a direct result of the dispossession and disenfranchisement of whites can easily lead to a belief that the country needs more international investment and intervention by foreigners, given that it’s blindingly obvious that the native blacks are not ever going to be able to maintain anything close to the first-world standards that prevailed in the country during apartheid.

It's not descriptive at all. HBD as it is espoused by yourself, @RandomRanger, @Folamh3, @self_made_human @SecureSignals Et Al is not about describing a position it's about justifying a position. It is normative through and through.

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I don't recall ever endorsing HBD, except if you're referring to my belief that IQ is mostly genetic rather than environmental (i.e. a descriptive stance).

I'm pretty sure that I've never claimed that HBD itself is normative. I consider it both true and useful for the purposes of further policy choices, in the same manner that 1+1=2 being true has downstream consequences in the field of economics.

Obviously, HBD is relevant because it can justify or refute a position. I think what you mean is that our "post-modern racism" came first, and we just cling to HBD to justify something we already wanted to believe, and that was partially true at the beginning although probably not in the way that you think...

My politics pre-HBD were probably closest to yours among anyone else in this community, of a broadly libertarian-conservative persuasion. Believe me when I say I understand where you're coming from because I used to think exactly like you in many ways (I know that's insulting, sorry, but I mean it).

My interest in HBD was initially, admittedly, because I saw it as bolstering some pervasive criticisms of Free Market idealism:

  • HBD sinks the theories that persistent wealth inequality and inequality in various social outcomes is driven by market failure, or aftershock effects of racism.
  • HBD provides a strong anti-welfare argument in the presence of open borders (yes, my initial interpretation of HBD pegged it as an argument against Welfare rather than an argument against immigration/open borders).

Given that the chorus of Systematic Racism was in a massive crescendo post-2016, HBD sparked my interest because it seemed plausible and to provide the best libertarian-compatible (or so I thought) explanation for those patterns of social behavior.

Of course, though, that didn't last long as @DaseindustriesLtd recently described, accepting HBD as true and taking a few steps beyond questions of economic efficiency quickly led to a broad, systematic collapse of my previously held beliefs (again, which were basically aligned with yours).

On Dissident Right Telegram I recently saw an informal poll with a decent sample size indicating that about 50% of the respondents previously identified as libertarian, so my experience is likely common among those in that sphere.

On one level, you're right that interest in HBD was motivated by an attempt to bolster a political viewpoint, but at the time it was as a defense of moderate system values against the Systematic Racism rhetoric which exploded post-2016, rather than motivated by an a priori desire to be a political dissident, which was unimaginable at the time. I know you don't want to believe that our political beliefs followed our acceptance of HBD rather than the other way around, but that was certainly my personal experience.

Thank you. I despise the subtle consensus-building here about the Imperatives of the Implications of Noticing, but I didn’t have the words to say it.

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