naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Curtis Yarvin wrote about this clusterfuck: Gaza and the nomos of the earth. It makes some humorous connections between American foreign policy and dog fighting pits, and visualizes a world where America stops trying to meddle and just lets "might makes right" rule:
But this is how might makes right. Now, picture this victory—the victory of force and order over turmoil and chaos—worldwide, cleaning up all the world’s open sores. You are picturing the fall of the American empire—and realizing that, like the USSR (if much better), the GAE can actually fall upward. Almost all the problems it supposedly exists to solve will rapidly solve themselves as soon as it is gone.
Curiously, he's arguing for the US cutting Israel loose, militarily and diplomatically, but that this would lead to Israel finally sorting out the Palestinian problem, through force. I say curious, because I'm not sure if Israel is actually strong enough to stand on its own without the US supplying weapons, but if they are, well, I say Israel is illegitimate, but so be it: I don't believe in wandering into a barbaric hinterland to impose one's sense of justice or civilization, which is a big point of agreement between me and Yarvin.
Definitely felt called out hard by this line:
Are you addicted to Anglo-American missionary imperialism? Test yourself with two easy checks. Do you genuinely, emotionally, care about the plight of the Palestinians? Do you know where Stepanakert is? If your answers are “yes” and “no,” you need help.
I need help I guess, except I don't believe in militarily intervening in favor of the Palestinians.
I wonder what is the proper relation of a civilization to the barbarians. Yarvin says:
The basic way for a country to be neutral in a war is, as Hamilton observes, to trade freely with both sides, but not sell weapons (“contraband of war”) to either.
And yet, so much of the world is barbaric. Kinda makes you hope Better Angels of our Nature is true.
Actually, less than a month ago as I write, in a “type 1 conflict” in which America had no dog, two hundred thousand Armenians were ethnically cleansed.
Sorry, what? Can I have a link? I can't even find a Wikipedia article.
This sentence confused me as well, I knew he was referring to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as voxelvexillologist notes below but the 200k figure surprised me. The wikipedia entry states that 230k ethnic Armenians have been displaced by the conflict. I assume moldbug was using "ethnically cleansed" to mean "displaced" while I imagined he meant that there were 200 thousand casualties.
Technically speaking no ethnic cleansing has happened though- the Armenians left on their own(and tbf, I would have too) without any coercion from Azeri forces except Armenia losing some battles.
They cleansed the same region of the Azeri population a while ago, did they not? The fear that what goes around comes around is hardly new.
The majority of colonial Europeans who left places that didn’t have extremely violent anti-white pogroms like Algeria left because they expected that there would be nothing for them if they remained, and they might get purged. Sometimes the fear is justified, sometimes less so, at least in the short term - the Europeans who held onto their property in 1997 in Hong Kong (many fled in the early 90s) made huge returns in the 2000s and 2010s. Similarly in Africa, some Europeans left at the ‘smart time’, on the eve of decolonisation, but others who held on in some countries (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia to some extent) often did pretty well. Even in Kenya, where Addio Africa shows British fire sales before the troops leave, the ~50,000 whites who held their nerve are often still there and still pretty rich.
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Notes -
Curtis Yarvin wrote about this clusterfuck: Gaza and the nomos of the earth. It makes some humorous connections between American foreign policy and dog fighting pits, and visualizes a world where America stops trying to meddle and just lets "might makes right" rule:
Curiously, he's arguing for the US cutting Israel loose, militarily and diplomatically, but that this would lead to Israel finally sorting out the Palestinian problem, through force. I say curious, because I'm not sure if Israel is actually strong enough to stand on its own without the US supplying weapons, but if they are, well, I say Israel is illegitimate, but so be it: I don't believe in wandering into a barbaric hinterland to impose one's sense of justice or civilization, which is a big point of agreement between me and Yarvin.
Definitely felt called out hard by this line:
I need help I guess, except I don't believe in militarily intervening in favor of the Palestinians.
I wonder what is the proper relation of a civilization to the barbarians. Yarvin says:
And yet, so much of the world is barbaric. Kinda makes you hope Better Angels of our Nature is true.
FTA
Sorry, what? Can I have a link? I can't even find a Wikipedia article.
This sentence confused me as well, I knew he was referring to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as voxelvexillologist notes below but the 200k figure surprised me. The wikipedia entry states that 230k ethnic Armenians have been displaced by the conflict. I assume moldbug was using "ethnically cleansed" to mean "displaced" while I imagined he meant that there were 200 thousand casualties.
He uses the dictionary meaning of the term. The way everyone else conflates ethnic cleansing per se and genocide is, uh, atrocious.
Technically speaking no ethnic cleansing has happened though- the Armenians left on their own(and tbf, I would have too) without any coercion from Azeri forces except Armenia losing some battles.
I wonder why they decided this is the time to go.
They cleansed the same region of the Azeri population a while ago, did they not? The fear that what goes around comes around is hardly new.
The majority of colonial Europeans who left places that didn’t have extremely violent anti-white pogroms like Algeria left because they expected that there would be nothing for them if they remained, and they might get purged. Sometimes the fear is justified, sometimes less so, at least in the short term - the Europeans who held onto their property in 1997 in Hong Kong (many fled in the early 90s) made huge returns in the 2000s and 2010s. Similarly in Africa, some Europeans left at the ‘smart time’, on the eve of decolonisation, but others who held on in some countries (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia to some extent) often did pretty well. Even in Kenya, where Addio Africa shows British fire sales before the troops leave, the ~50,000 whites who held their nerve are often still there and still pretty rich.
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