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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32653 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.

How convenient, it's just the culture. Will you also argue that culture can make a chihuahua into a hunting dog? Will an improved culture of running put Europeans at the top of the 100m sprints? Will changes to black culture mean they start getting many Fields Medallists or STEM Nobel Prizes?

Genetics is real. Evolution is real. These things will remain real regardless of what you think about them, that's the beauty of material reality.

Who would have thought in 100 AD that at some point the world's top scientists would be from Britain and Germany?

The Germans often inflicted crushing defeats on the Roman Empire (most famously at Teutoburg but in many other battles), persuading Rome that they shouldn't try to conquer that territory. If the armies of sub-Saharan Africa obliterated two entire American or British divisions that would be very strong evidence that they were peers of British or American civilization.

Furthermore, there has been considerable demographic change in Britain since 100 AD. Anglo-Saxons weren't even there yet.

The German victories over the Romans happened back when despite huge differences between the two sides, they were not very different in military technology. So the German victories over the Romans cannot be directly compared to modern clashes between European and African armies. An African army of the ancient Roman time period would probably have defeated a Roman army in some cases too, especially with the advantage of terrain such as the Germans had at Teutoburg.

The Romans respected German bravery and military prowess, but I think that very few Romans of that time period would have thought it anything but extremely unlikely that the backwoods savages east of the Rhine would eventually lead the world in science and technology.

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