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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29051 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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So, perhaps this too much of a war question, rather than a culture war one, but I'm having trouble understanding why Iran is launching attacks on random cargo ships in the Red Sea via proxies in Yemen, and now apparently directly https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-67811929 .

Ok, at least some of the vessels are Israeli linked, and they're hitting at US warships, but my confusion is what this hopes to achieve. Operation Preying Mantis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis seems an apt concern for the Iranians as a repeat: they cant hope to exert serious pressure on Israel's economy, and the moment they sink or damage a warship they're getting hit hard surely? And is it earning them any friends?

Meanwhile Hezbolah is Iranian backed and maybe directly controlled, and has done little in the current conflict. If you want to apply pressure to Israel, isnt that the way, especially given that Hezbolah has resources Hamas does not and could seriously threaten another front that would need actual Israeli resources. Iran isnt going all out with its assets, or the assets in cases are refusing to for self preservation.

So why hit ships? Is it really all they can do? Do they assume the US cant respond? Maybe it earns them some respect from the muslim world for standing up, but it just seems... odd. I'm not exactly Bismark, but I'm clearly missing something.

Meanwhile Hezbolah is Iranian backed and maybe directly controlled, and has done little in the current conflict.

They've forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the north of the country, all without drawing the kind of polarizing international opprobrium that would give Israel a justification for the kind of Gaza-like heavy-handed operations which would be necessary to remove Hezbollah from within easy rocket range of the border.

If, as has been speculated by people like Haviv Rettig Gur, that one of the purposes of Hamas's 10/7 aggression is to ultimately make the feeling of security necessary to maintain a first world standard of living impossible in Israel and drive the Israelis into the sea through emigration/attrition, Hezbollah has achieved about as much as Hamas has done, without any of the downsides.

I have speculated about such a strategy before myself. I do not know if anti-Israel forces have thought through such a strategy, but to me it makes at least some sense. Israel's enemies are not capable of defeating it using conventional war. US and Israeli military forces are too powerful for that, and in any case Israel could use nukes if it was ever being conventionally overrun. Developing nuclear weapons and then using them against Israel could work - Israel is a small country and even nuking just, say, Tel Aviv might essentially end the Israeli project. But Israel would retaliate with its own nuclear forces and there is a non-trivial chance that Israel would retaliate by nuking not just the attacker, but also other Muslim countries. However, if Israel's enemies could impose a constant state of insecurity on the Israeli population that is significantly above the current state of insecurity there, it could conceivably cause many of Israel's most talented people to leave the country. One of the problems with such a strategy, though, is that the new Israeli diaspora would to some extent continue to materially support Israel, just from their new countries. If Israel retains a large core of people who are willing to tough things out and at the same time is being just as supported materially as they are now, just through donations instead of taxes, I am not sure that much would actually change.

A big problem with this strategy is that there's no way a state of insecurity could be placed exclusively on Israel without inspiring global copycats. The choice won't be insecurity in Israel vs security Elsewhere. It will be a government willing to defend you in Israel vs governments unwilling to defend you elsewhere, which is basically the same equation that drew countless Jewish migrants to Israel in the first place.

One of the problems with such a strategy

The other problem is assuming Israel is just going to sit there and take it. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, none of them are invincible themselves, if Israel wants to they can hit back hard. It's not going to be easy, but of all countries, Israel is the least likely one to go down without a fight, putting aside the Samson Option.

I'd take it around the other way -- Israel moved those civilians so that a junior commander within HZ cannot conduct a strike that would force everyone's hand.

The Iranians and their allies know that the US Navy has other commitments, they really cannot afford another front opening up in Yemen. We should be looking at this as a global conflict. It's not just Iran and proxies vs Israel and US.

Raising oil prices is good for Iran and constraining Liberian (US) shipping is good for the whole Russia-Chinese-Iranian axis. I'm not saying there's a grand conspiracy where everyone is taking orders from Xi but they do have similar motivations and shared interests. We see Russian and Chinese tankers going untouched. Elements of the Chinese navy are hanging about nearby ignoring Israeli merchant ships that complain about being attacked. It also harms US prestige for its allies to be unable to use Suez.

Times have changed since the 1980s - Iranian anti-ship missiles and anti-access, area-denial weapons generally are more potent than they were, in comparative terms. The US is shooting down $2000 drones with $2 million dollar missiles that can't be resupplied at sea. This is not really sustainable.

What is the US supposed to do? Bombing Yemen has been tried and hasn't worked out for the US alliance group. Aircraft and armaments need to be conserved for the primary theater in Asia anyway. Invading Yemen is a disastrous proposition, second only to invading Iran.

What can Israel do? They're prepared to fight Hezbollah and Lebanon but their options for fighting Yemen are much less promising. If Hezbollah and Iran preserve their strength for if/when China and Russia fully enter the war, they have a greater chance of getting what they want. Plinking away at US merchant shipping and tying down forces in the Red Sea contributes to their group at relatively low risk.

Air defence wasn't really NATO's strong suit during the Cold War. NATO prioritized fighter jets over SAMs. Since then there has been 30 years of cut backs with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq costing an ungodly amount of money. SAM-systems had little use against taliban, and they cost a fortune to buy and operate. The cutbacks lead to a big drop in capacity, as cutting spending leads to a much bigger drop in deliveries. Half the budget and the unit cost increases due to diminishing production volumes.

Ukraine is currently consuming SAM systems at a much higher rate than they are produced. Nobody expected Russia to manufacture 3000 Geran drones in a year and almost none of them to be shot down by a fighter jet. Russia manufactures more missiles than expected and defending from Russian missiles wasn't the main priority during the forever wars in the middle east.

China is manufacturing missiles and drones at an industrial rate while Iran has managed to go from barely being able to fight in the skies to having thousands of flying systems. A war of attrition between American SAM systems and Iranian, Chinese and Russian drones and missiles is a big win for the latter. Especially if they are using 10 000 dollar drones built with parts ordered online.

Quite right. Also the lethality of surface to surface missiles has increased. Scuds in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were not very accurate, you could maybe target an airbase or some big target... nothing like the precision we have now. They were big, expensive and relatively easy to target on the ground, now there's a wide range of missiles that are smaller, harder to spot, cheaper to replace. I saw a Houthi military parade on youtube, where you'd expect to see columns of tanks they just had dozens of trucks with drones on them.

Israel can’t do anything except reroute Israeli merchant vessels via the cape. Israel can’t attack Iran directly except possibly with a nuke in a Samson option scenario.

The US can’t attack the Houthis directly, whatever can be gained by striking Yemen has already been mined by the Saudis. They can threaten to strike Iranian oil sites to pressure them, although actually doing so would be a substantial escalation. It’s probably the next step up, though, other than maybe striking some Houthi land targets which everyone knows is a pointless gesture.

China and Russia have no interest in entering the war against Israel, they’re happy to stay neutral and occasionally grandstand against Israel’s actions in Gaza to boost their reputations with Muslims. They haven’t even sanctioned Israel, which would be the first step in actually taking a stand.

On the other hand, it hurts Russia and China as well.

China is demand starved and this severely limits their competitiveness in European markets since they only do a minority of commercial shipping out of China and that isn't changing soon. This couldn't come at a worse time for them.

Russia does very little of their own shipping and ships going around the cape means that more shipping capacity is going to get bought buy Europeans, especially in big tankers. This risks significantly decreasing the volume of commercially viable russian oil exports (which could be good for Iran I suppose).

Europe obviously hurts from the higher shipping costs.

Egypt faces catastrophy if their Forex dries up and the rest of the Arab world hurts in the sense that it further decrease their ability to affect oil prices and the higher prices go to shippers, not them.

The only ones that unambiguously win in a material sense is the US, which one could suspect is why the response has been so tepid and seemingly inept, if one is conspiratorially minded.

I think it's just that America is administratively paralysed and inept and that this coincidentally hurts everyone but themselves in a material sense but also hurts their prestige and legitimacy as hegemon which I believe is probably more important than any short term economic gains.

I agree. At least one of the reasons you’ve seen the US be very limited in its response so far is that going full World Police now just allows everyone else in the region to abrogate their responsibilities and blame all violence on America. They want China to get upset with Iran, and are willing to drag things out to get it.

Even Egypt isn’t publicly condemning the Houthis yet, and China hasn’t said anything. Ironically, Israel’s a possible winner if this drags out, especially now the overland route between Saudi and Egypt (via Israel) is gaining steam.

Global conflict? Kind of like a...... world war?

A comparatively cold one, if you will.

One of the problems with being hegemon is that everyone has interest in weakening you. I think that some state actors have noticed something - while the US has the military capacity to respond, they no longer have the administrative one. Look at how many crisis there are that are not being handled well - US Southern Border, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, the strings of coups in sub-Saharan Africa, the saber rattling of Ethiopia, the saber rattling of Venezuela. Just sowing chaos may lead to the demise of the sovereign or at least pushing it into isolationism.

US Southern Border, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, the strings of coups in sub-Saharan Africa, the saber rattling of Ethiopia, the saber rattling of Venezuela.

Only one of these directly involves the US, that being the Southern border, which has been a basket case forever. The rest, at worst, is indirect, like Israel/Gaza. The US has not been that successful regarding Ukraine, because the political will is lacking to expend more resources, and Russia was underestimated. In any decade there are at least some conflicts going on, some of of which may affect the US indirectly. This is not much different. Compared to as recently as the late 80s, in which the Cold War and Eastern Bloc was still extant, things are looking not bad.

There is a lot of antipathy to the US though, especially in the Middle East, Russia, and some of China, but this is hardly new. A watch and wait approach is ideal now.

Regarding this latest development between Iran and the US, I predict there will be no escalation and the issue will resolve itself. The US knows that Iran is useful, even as an enemy, because it helps keeps Sunni power in check. Sunnis are arguably worse, owing to long history of terrorism against Western targets that have nothing to do with Israel, and also state-sponsored terrorism by Sunni-majority countries. Iran has a long history of making provocations against the US that are self-contained, like in 2020 https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/01/08/irans-attack-on-us-base-in-iraq-underscored-depth-of-max-pressures-folly/

That is not how things work when you have a unipolar world. There are no crises that don't involve the hegemon. In a multipolar the flares on the borders of spheres of influence are expected. Let's take Ethiopia - Eritrea - while the likes of china and russia are to be contained (not controlled), the US diplomacy lacks the capacity to tell Abiy Ahmed to sit on his ass and shut up. Which is a strong signal to other countries - that if you want to stir shit, now is the moment. Part of it is that the non first world is just too big to ignore - so it is possible to have a form of parallel world economy.

while the US has the military capacity to respond, they no longer have the administrative one.

If nothing else, the 10/7 attack and Gaza war have driven a huge split in Biden's coalition on the issue, and has probably done a number on his approval and election polling numbers.

I think it's what you wrote -- Iranian assets that have leverage are refusing to jump based on their own risk/reward ratio.

What's Hezbollah going to gain from striking harder? They will draw a huge Israeli response that will cost them dearly. Meanwhile they don't have much to gain -- Iran doesn't have an option other than to keep supporting them in Lebanon as the only credible Shiite power. Seems like a basic self-interest judgment. And they have enough of a power base they aren't completely dependent on Iranian support.

The Houthis, meanwhile, are almost totally dependent on Iran. And they benefit greatly since the Saudis are their main enemies and the conflict put the immediate brakes on the Israel<>Saudi thaw. The hotter it burns, the worse for the Saudis and greatly reduces likelihood of the [realignment of Israel/Saudi[(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-20/biden-says-hamas-attacked-to-halt-israel-saudi-normalization) that hurts Iran the most.

YMMV, but "local/domestic self-interest" is always a good first guess.

The missile from Iran directly is interesting and would be a serious escalation if the result of a change in official policy. Of course it might not be official policy. One of the problems with pushing propaganda so heavily to buttress the alleged moral authority of your government is that your men are liable to believe it.

Sure, many Iranians seem opposed to their government’s policy on Hamas and the Houthis, but the IRGC is the best-funded and most loyal-to-the-revolution part of the Iranian state apparatus; it’s also more religious, I’ve heard that quite a few more senior commanders are committed Shia scholars of the Ayatollah’s theory. It’s possible this was a rogue action by a particularly zealous commander.

But in a sense it is an issue, it’s difficult when you build credibility on an issue for decades and then, when that issue finally comes to a head, you do nothing (and indeed resolutely deny you knew your proxy was on the attack). The Houthis, Hamas, even Hezbollah are funded in substantial part by the Iranian state, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own firm religious beliefs that can conflict with the often more pragmatic preferences of the Iranian elite.

The following is a comment about US media, not about the war in Gaza.

Whenever the mainstream US news covers the humanitarian disaster in Gaza (and the suffering is absolutely horrendous), the underlying subtext I get is "Israel should stop assaulting Gaza". But there's another path that would also end the humanitarian disaster, and that's the unconditional surrender of Hamas.

I'm not shocked that Hamas doesn't surrender, but I am shocked that the option is never even mentioned in passing by the talking heads. Do they not think of it? Is it too far outside the bounds of normal discourse? If this were any other military conflict in all of history, it would be considered decided by now, and Gazans would be suing for peace.

And if they did surrender, then what? Likud is dedicated to preventing a Palestinian state and certainly accept one state solution with full voting rights for all palestinians. Palestinians were fighting with Israel back before Hamas even existed.

Charitably, the media isn't supposed to be giving advice on how best to end international conflicts, and should restrict itself to reporting the facts of the situation. If no discussion of unconditional surrender has occurred between Israel and Hamas, then there's no reason to bring it up.

But you, me, and my neighbor's 4-year-old daughter know the real reason the media is funneling footage of "humanitarian disasters" into American homes. Israel is the neocon darling and American Middle Eastern foothold oppressing the religion of peace, and Israel (and, by proxy, the American military) must be made to suffer for its transgressions. It's the same playbook that Walter Cronkite and his ilk used to make the Vietnam War lose all popular support. The military is one of the few institutions that the left has never completely captured, and so it seeks to undermine and rally public opinion against Israel.

The left loses if Hamas is publicly humiliated by Israel, which is what an "unconditional surrender" amounts to. Israel losing also weakens the United States military significantly, and while I doubt anyone in the media seriously thinks Israel will lose to Hamas, they still stand to gain if Israel loses in the court of public opinion.

So far you’ve been getting a lot of replies saying that the US can only pressure Israel, but not Hamas. This is false. Hamas is not a leaderless organization, it’s actually very well organized and its leadership is known to all.

The heads of Hamas, those that are parallel to its government rather than military leadership, are situated in Qatar. Their locations are known. They frequently fly out of Qatar, to any place they wish, such as Egypt just recently. They are, of course, war criminals. However, there is literally no effort or any calls to bring any of these men to justice, or any sanctions on Qatar. This is despite providing direct monetary aid to Hamas, as well as the aforementioned sheltering of Hamas leadership.

Qatar is a US ally in the region, the US even has bases there (unlike Israel), the US is one of (if not the) largest importer to Qatar. In other words, the US has a lot of leverage on Qatar, if only anyone wished to use it.

Keep all this in mind when reading all these other replies.

This is false. Hamas is not a leaderless organization, it’s actually very well organized and its leadership is known to all.

Oh surely. I think the interesting factor here is that Hamas doesn't have a monopoly on violence in Gaza. Possibly even by design, Islamic Jihad and other groups have the ability to independently throw a wrench in things. As I recall, those groups (broadly non-Hamas militants) had a decent fraction of the hostages taken.

So even if you did turn the screws on Hamas (via Qatar or otherwise) it doesn't solve Israel's problem. Everyone in the West dreams of some Palestinian leader that has a monopoly on force and hence can negotiate for an end to armed resistance in return for whatever is on offer. In reality, if they tried they might quickly lose their position or their limbs.

Yes, Jihad is the biggest and most well-known not-Hamas in Gaza. There’s also several hamullahs (extended family? Not sure how to translate) with their own militias, and some AQ aligned organization. Other than Jihad, they exist only due to Hamas tolerance - and in any case, they’re all quite killable.

If no Palestinian leader is capable of ruling his people for the better, then I’m quite OK with sending them to a far off land that’s willing to take them for enough money - I don’t think we tried Angola or DRC yet.

I think it depends on context. If Hamas tried to kill/suppress them all as part of a deal with Israel or the US in which they were viewed (rightly/wrongly) as giving up the cause, I strongly suspect they might not fare well.

Could be. Hard to tell. They might have a problem of internal rebellion, anyway, making it mostly a moot exercise.

The US allows and even encourages Qatari relationships with the Taliban, Iran, Hamas and other anti-US groups because it makes for a good meeting place, offers near-unlimited access for US intelligence for wiretaps etc, and is trusted enough by most of those groups. Both Hamas and Qatar are well aware that the former is in the latter because the US tolerates it, and this arrangement works for all three parties. Qatar is a core part of the GCC, but being less hostile to the Iranian axis suits almost everyone, and both the Saudis and the US know that Qatar depends upon Iran not extending its natural gas claim in the main Persian Gulf (which Qatar would be unable to defend itself against) into Qatar’s larger field, which many in Iran would like to claim.

Even granting all of that, it still stands in contradiction to the majority of replies here re: America not being able to influence Hamas, or at least the perception thereof in the protestors’ minds.

It seems we only know how to hand our allies the rope with which to hang us, under the pretense of allowing us to see from a higher vantage point. See also: Pakistan with Osama. Perhaps we do gain from these relationships in some way, but it would seem we are getting the worse end of the bargain, and the relationships will end unfavorably to us in all cases.

People just correctly identify total surrender by any side as impossible and correctly don't consider impossible options.

Also, the US has leverage on Israel and no leverage on a Hamas that's already maximally sanctionned. So only the former's conduct is even up for debate from their point of view.

And those Arab countries that are in the converse situation really don't want to draw any attention to the fact that they're looking the other way.

it would be considered decided by now, and Gazans would be suing for peace.

Nonsense. The Taliban didn't surrender to overwhelming American might. This isn't how asymmetric warfare works, the lack of a definite end to conflict is the main weapon of the weaker force.

Also, the US has leverage on Israel and no leverage on a Hamas that's already maximally sanctionned.

Not at all, Hamas is fully dependent on NGO aid to maintain its rule. There is almost no government in the world that would be easier to smoke out with a US led coalition that does the easy thing of "doing nothing."

This isn't how asymmetric warfare works, the lack of a definite end to conflict is the main weapon of the weaker force.

And hence at second-level, the absence of a power structure that can end the conflict is itself a weapon of asymmetric warfare.

So far Hamasniks have been surrendering just fine. They’re also perfectly capable of dying en-mass. Only their leadership in Qatar remains untouchable to us (Israelis) for now, but hopefully that will change once the hostages are out, or at least accounted for.

Shit like this is why I roll my eyes at the /pol/-trolls who try to paint Israel as being uniquely duplicitous for a US ally.

Like, tell me you don't know shit about middle-eastern history or politics without using those words.

It’s very clear that most people opining on the subject couldn’t even point to it on a map, let alone speak of any history. However, I can’t just roll my eyes and move on, since eventually this will come back to bite us (Israelis) in the ass.

Israel as a major industrialized nation is probably ahead of France in the list of non-Anglo US allies. The amount the French stole with sexy women stationed in airports is much more than Israel ever took.

The amount the French stole with sexy women stationed in airports is much more than Israel ever took.

I think you're right and given that the Vietnam War started as the US bailing the French out of their colonial fuck-ups I'd say they owe us a whole lot more than whatever's on the books.

They’d probably say the US owes them more for independence.

I'd say that debt was paid off after the US bailed them out of back-to-back world wars.

Paid in full saving them from the Germans. Twice.

Oh no ze Germans are coming, we can't just let them make trains come on time and grow our GDP!

Can you imagine if the French soccer team was full of blond-haired, blue-eyed men instead of beautiful diversity?

Indeed.

An insurgent doesn't need to win, they just need to not lose.

As I keep saying, I think a lot of these talking heads are not "anti-war" as much as they are "on the other side" and trying to launder their desire to see Hamas win through a wash of humanitarian concern.

As seen in Vietnam, when prominent "Anti-war" voices could often be seen demonizing US soldiers while happily posing with North Vietnamese artillery and praising the virtue of the Viet Cong. They didn't want the war to end so much as they wanted their side to lose (so they could then proclaim cultural victory).

Would that lead to peace? Or would it just lead to different terrorist attacks on some later timetable? It's not clear at all that it would.

What peace offer is on the table for Hamas from Israel? Really, what is it? Unconditional surrender doesn't even really have a meaning here: when Japan surrendered it was assumed that Japan would still exist as an entity and Japanese people would live there. Is that the deal for Gaza, or will they be expelled? Murdered? Never allowed to leave or to prosper?

r would it just lead to different terrorist attacks on some later timetable?

One does not expect terrorist attacks to end, but at least you could hope for the end of State-Sponsored terror attacks if Hamas surrendered, then the Gazans elected responsible leadership, or a coup by an Attaturk-like dictator remade the State of Gaza into a more normal country than it was on 10/6, because their government wishes to be at war with Israel forever.

Gazans already had Gaza on 10.6, they didn’t need any offers. Now they might have occupation back.

Whenever the mainstream US news covers the humanitarian disaster in Gaza (and the suffering is absolutely horrendous), the underlying subtext I get is "Israel should stop assaulting Gaza". But there's another path that would also end the humanitarian disaster, and that's the unconditional surrender of Hamas.

They probably would argue that Israel has obligations to support humanitarian aid into the area, both legally (international law) and morally, as the formal state with a much stronger military and large amounts of US backing. It's worth noting that this was exactly what deBoer's position was (is?), and he's hardly as bad-faith as some actors.

We have diplomatic relations that we could use to pressure Israel into stopping the assault. Israel has a recognized and legitimate power structure with leaders who we can negotiate with and who could change their policy if we convinced them to.

There things are not true of Hamas. It would be nice if they surrendered, but there's no singular leader or group who could command that to happen and be obeyed, and we wouldn't have meaningful diplomatic relations with them if they would.

Speech is usually a consequentialist act designed to achieve a specific outcome.

Remember the story of the madman, who wants to hide his madness and decides to say only true things; after he has stopped 50 people on the street to emphatically tell them that the sky is blue, everyone knows he is mad for sure.

People don't just go around saying every true thing they know just because they're true; they say the things they think will accomplish what they want in the saying.

Saying that you wish Israel would stop is not very likely to end the violence at this point, but there's at least a clear and straightforward causal mechanism by which it might minorly contribute to something like that happening in the future.

Saying that you wish Hamas would surrender (as an American at least) has no clear path by which it could have any effect on the ongoing conflict. If anything, the most likely outcome of people saying such things en masse is that it splits the conversation into 'teams' (arguments as soldiers) over which side should be responsible for ending the conflict, thus taking responsibility away from Israel and weakening the international pressure on them to stop.

Thus, it is reasonably interpreted as a wish for Israel to continue its attacks, since that would be the most straightforward strategic outcome accomplished by insistently pushing that narrative into the public conversation.

That's why people aren't saying it.

There's presumably very little outside of direct massive intervention (of the sort that Israel hasn't asked for and almost certainly doesn't want) that US could do to make Hamas surrender, whereas there's a large amount of levers US can use to affect Israeli policy, including making it stop assault Gaza.

I've often seen these demands of "why condemn country/instance X (a Western country, or an ally/vassal of the West) but not country/instance Y (hostile to the West)" from various instances (media, "the left", whatever), and I cannot help to think that, insofar as the country Y is indeed the kind of a country/instance whose policy the West can do very little to affect outside of direct violence, this is a demand for a literal virtue signal. There's no perceivable point beyond "you should do this, because I'd consider you doing this a positive demonstration from you".

That just incentivizes countries to be anti-USA and irrationally belligerent in the future. You have to think about this from a time consistent perspective.

Not really, considering that being anti-USA and irrationally belligerent, unless there are special conditions like here, create an increasing risk of the said direct massive intervention.

The following is a comment about US media, not about the war in Gaza.

The comment is about what the comment is about, regardless of prefatory statements.

I'm not shocked that Hamas doesn't surrender, but I am shocked that the option is never even mentioned in passing by the talking heads. Do they not think of it?

They think it's ridiculous to consider that to be a possibility. Either they're pro-Hamas, or they consider Hamas to be like a force of nature that they cannot affect, unlike Israel.

I am not American, so cant comment on the exact tone of US media. But perhaps they bought in to the whole "only democracy in the Middle-East" and "most moral army in the would" slogans. After all, Hamas is roundly condemned as a terrorist organization by both sides of the political establishment in the US (and nearly the whole of Europe), so perhaps it doesnt really make sense to make moral appeals to them?

I think the really interesting question here is if Hamas would have anything to gain by an unconditional surrender. While I agree that Israel is likely to win a decisive military victory, I think Hamas so far is winning a slight PR victory and a perhaps even bigger political victory. I dont have any illusions about how Hamas value the sanctity of life, either Palestinian or Israeli, so I think the chance of a political victory is much more important for them in the long term.

It would be an understatement to say that the pre October 7th status quo was dire for the Palestinians. With between 700 000 - 800 000 settlers on the West Bank gradually encroaching on more and more Palestinian land, and talk of annexation of the West Bank becoming mainstream in Israel (Netanyahu had this a campaign promise in 2019 and won the subsequent election). This was all happening with the tacit approval of the US (and probably also most Arab countries), the dream of a two state solution was more or less dead. With this as a back drop Palestinians were witnessing Arab countries pursuing a politic of normalization with Israel, while giving lip service to the Palestinian cause. From the ground in Palestine the status quo probably looked a lot like a slow moving ethnic cleansing. Palestinians gradually getting more sympathy in the US and Europe did not seem to help their case at all, and as we saw earlier this year, having the sympathy of western populations did nothing to help the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh against being ethnically cleansed by a western ally.

Now fast forward a couple of months to today, the plight of Gaza is front and centre again. The US is finding itself increasingly isolated on the global stage as Israels guardian angel. Arab countries had to distance themselves at least optically from anything Israel does. Behind closed doors many of them are probably wondering if a normalization will be possible at all with the current Israeli political scene. We are also in a situation where there is a real chance that Bidens reelection might be in jeopardy due to his support of Israel. Just the perception that this is a possibility is an unprecedented win for the Palestinian cause, and we now have Blinked take some symbolic steps to be seen addressing Palestinian concerns, such as sanctioning violent settlers.

If we assume that there are countries pulling the strings of Hamas, perhaps Qatar, Iran and even Russia, the case for a political win becomes even stronger. Did anyone even notice or care that a female Iranian dissident won the nobel price just now? Does the liberation of Iranian women even register to people when 50 000 pregnant women in Gaza are being bombed daily? However no country has had a bigger PR win over the war in Gaza than Russia. Not only is the attention towards Ukraine diminished, the passion in the "slava Ukraini" camp has been decimated. Many people who thought they where "on the right side of history" and supporting the little guy Ukraine against the bigger aggressor, are having second thoughts about the morals of their side, which is cheering on the Israeli offensive in Gaza. I clearly see this among my normie friends in Norway. People are seeing the Ukraine conflict more in term of realist politics and not absolute morality, and if you are being a realist, perhaps it makes sense to let Russia keep the Russian speaking parts of Ukraine for a ceasefire.

In this scenario the death of many thousands more Palestinian children seems like a small price to pay for what Hamas has achieved.

I think the really interesting question here is if Hamas would have anything to gain by an unconditional surrender.

One would have to look at this both from a foreign-policy and a domestic-policy perspective as well. Domestically, Hamas loses ground to Islamic Jihad or the Al Aqsa Brigade if they are seen as conciliatory to Israel. This is one reason Hamas remains competitive with the PNA.

Or from a second-order game theoretic perspective, the Palestinian power structure incentives this kind of distributed authority. In a game of chicken, they've dismantled the steering wheel and dispersed it into a dozen little pieces.

There is evidence that Israel is “punishing” the civilian population, which is a war crime. The party that is morally responsible for the misconduct is the only party that should be asked to stop. The US has influence over Israel, but has zero influence over Hamas. It’s brought up that Hamas has tunnels under buildings, and this is to explain Israeli actions, but saying “Hamas should surrender” because of potential Israeli war crimes would be a bad precedent for human rights. Consider a Russian and Ukrainian war where Russia targets civilian homes in Kyiv because they could be housing reserve troops. Would you expect the media to bring up the option that “the Kyiv Regime can surrender to avoid being war crime’d”?

(Just in the past couple weeks we saw Israeli snipers shoot women outside of a Catholic church (leading the Pope to condemn the attack as terrorism) and Israel killing their own hostages, who were walking outside waving a white flag without a shirt. This last one is the strongest evidence we have of Israeli misconduct / war crimes. What is the probability that they accidentally shot these men, versus that they shoot men in most situations where they come across young men?)

who were walking outside waving a white flag without a shirt.

Wasn't this just recently part of an ambush in the area? Mentioning it makes me think you are uniformed or trolling.

That’s interesting, because you mentioning that makes me think you are either uninformed or shilling. It’s a densely populated city, you don’t get to spray and pray because on a different day in a nearby area your soldiers were allegedly fired upon. That justifies killing every male in every location where you have been shot. And there are a lot of locations like this, all over Gaza.

We are talking about a specific false flag tactic though. When you're country's military consistently uses underhanded tactics its going to set the opposing military on edge, which will lead to such things.

People who have cancer often undergo chemotherapy. This procedure involves pumping toxins into the body to kill cancerous cells. Of course some healthy non-cancerous cells do get caught up in this and die. Like many other things in life, chemotherapy comes in different strengths, if a cancer is small you go for low dosage chemotherapy where very few helathy cells get killed in the crossfire. But if the cancer is very big you need to go for agressive chemotherapy because the low dosage stuff won't get rid of the cancer. This agressive chemotherapy will kill lots of healthy cells too, but that doesn't mean the chemotherapy as a whole was a bad idea.

In much the same way Hamas is a cancer on the face of this earth this has grown way too big. Low dosage stuff like precision strikes and being 150% extra sure you're not shooting at people who aren't threats (when by and large 90%+ of the people you encounter will be threats) before pulling the trigger isn't strong enough to excise Hamas from this world. That requires high dosage chemotherapy which will regrettably have side effects including some number of civilian casualites. It's sad, but the alternative (Hamas is left to fester) is even worse.

Bad metaphor. In this case you're not saving the 'patient' getting the chemo, you're saving their neighbor.

If your cancer could be cured by giving your neighbor chemotherapy, maybe you could ask for their consent to undergo it to help you, or maybe you could pay them.

If you broke into their house with a gun and abducted them to get chemo tied down in a basement until you were healthy again, that's not exactly an unalloyed good that everyone should grudgingly endorse as necessary.

Palestinians are also suffering from Hamas, who prefer to divert aid into missiles rather than development.

As is their revealed preference.

You understand this comment reads exactly like something Hitler would say in a speech about Jews, right? I suppose he would use the term parasite, or diseased vermin. Just like not every Jew was a Bolshevik extremist (see: Winston Churchill’s comments), not every Palestinian is a Hamas extremist. Punishing Palestinians as a collective is not morally permissible. And incidentally, were Britain to treat the Jewish colonizers like this in the 30s and 40s (punishing the collective for hiding terrorists), it’s doubtful Zionism would ever have got up and running. Their maximum collective punishment was a curfew — should they have bombed them to the abyss instead?

This reasoning essentially amounts to "Hitler treated Jews like enemies. So we should never treat anyone like enemies."

Whether a comparison to disease is appropriate is true or false on the object level; a blanket condemnation makes no sense. You're also glossing over the difference between comparing an ethnic group to a disease, and comparing a military/terrorist oprganization to a disease.

If Israel wanted to punish Palestinians ‘as a collective’, they’d have killed many more of them. Gaza is very small, a few targeted strikes could kill 50,000 civilians a week, maybe even in a night. We know the kind of casualty counts real indiscriminate bombing attacks on civilian targets produce, and they’re simply not evident in this conflict.

Punishing Palestinians as a collective is not morally permissible

The Palestinian people as a whole are not being punished as a collective, they are just collateral damage which Israel doesn't care about. It's a different thing. If on my way to work I step on some ants and crush them to death I'm not punishing them, they are just collective damage that I don't care about in pursuit of my goal (for me getting to work, for Israel the eradication of Hamas).

it’s doubtful Zionism would ever have got up and running

Zionism has a long and storied history going back to Theodor Herzl since the time of the Dreyfus Affair in 1894. The British promised the Jewish community a home in Palestine in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration (even ignoring the fact that simultaneously they had promised the land to Hussein bin Ali, king of Hejaz, an Arab leader, for his support vs the Ottomans as well as secretly dividing the exact same land between themselves and France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, but Perfidious Albion is like that; and of course after WWI when it came time to make good on their contradictory promises the Sykes-Picot Agreement won out and the British kept the land for themselves, giving it to neither Jew nor Arab), not just the 30s and 40s.

Their maximum collective punishment was a curfew — should they have bombed them to the abyss instead?

Not initially no, you start light and ramp up until the terrorism stops. They should have been as severe as needed to stop the violence and no more. Same with Hamas, Israel has already tried all sorts of lighter punishments to improve Hamas's behaviour but so far they haven't worked.

The idea that it's ok to kill thousands of innocent people so long as you were indifferent to killing them instead of wanting to kill them, is exactly why everyone needs to get the fuck away from virtue ethics before it does any more harm.

This is bog-standard international law that's been around for ages. One cannot intentionally kill civilians but attacks that incidentally kill civilians are permissible so long as the attack is intended to achieve a significant military goal.

Perhaps it's wrong, but if it is wrong, the problem is much deeper than virtue ethics.

Sure, but I think we were talking about morality and what we think Israel should do, morally speaking. Not what the law allows or doesn't. There are good reasons for those to be different things.

A subset of X attacks Y. Y responds in part to deter future attacks by X. Y kills some of X accidentally (including those uninvolved in the attack). Z claims “that’s collective punishment.” Y responds I am not trying to collective punish X; the only way to eliminate the capacity of X to attack Y is this attack. Otherwise, you effectively give X a deadly analog to the heckler’s veto.

Not sure why virtue ethics requires this. Seems like you can also get there using utilitarian reasoning.

That's an ok argument for why Israels actions are ok. It's just not the argument I was responding to:

The Palestinian people as a whole are not being punished as a collective, they are just collateral damage which Israel doesn't care about. It's a different thing.

I think that’s the exact argument.

Intellectual honesty is a well-defined and commonly used term. I think "intellectual bravery" should be part of that arsenal as well.

In simple terms, the willingness to think about the unthinkable and speak about the unspeakable. To actually "go there". And by this I don't mean to think about killing all Palestinians, but more so to ask "So what happens if Israel stops now?". You, me and the talking heads and the people in the halls of power all know the answer to that question. The answer being that Palestinians will forever continue to launch terrorist attacks for Israel doing anything short of just packing up and leaving the Middle East altogether.

The intellectual cowardice here, is the Elite (media/journalist/public) class not having the balls to tell this to the masses. The media is a mirror for the masses and the masses just want bad things to stop happening NOW. They don't have the intellectual faculties to simulate the potential outcomes of doing so.

They know it, they think about it, just like you and me. The masses don't.

They know the outcome, and they are acting on it. The international community has been doing everything in its power to prolong the Arab-Israeli conflict as much as possible. There’s the very existence of UNRWA as one clear example, and this current iteration is just one more example - albeit one with an alibi.

I can’t quite find the motive, other than just Jew-hatred, but action speaks clear enough.

Intellectual honesty is a well-defined and commonly used term. I think "intellectual bravery" should be part of that arsenal as well.

There's already a word for that. We call it autism.

I kid, but only kind of. Usually when someone is being 'brave' in this sense, what they're really doing is not understanding that speech is a consequentialist act designed to accomplish specific goals on the world. They don't understand what other people are trying to accomplish with the things they say, or what the consequences or their own 'brave' speech will be.

As I and others already pointed out, the reason people talk about Israel stopping instead of Hamas stopping is that we have diplomatic levers on Israel such that saying they should stop might actually get them to be careful about collateral damage and ratchet down the civilian body count, whereas us saying that about Hamas has no way to affect them and will instead muddy the waters in ways that give Israel more leeway to commit atrocity.

Someone who had no understanding of that might notice everyone saying one true thing while not saying another true thing, make up some half-assed sinister explanation for why, and then be 'brave' enough to say the thing everyone else isn't saying, really loudly and stridently and all the time.

Without realizing that they're the one who doesn't understand what people are actually doing in this conversation at all, and that they're a bull in a china shop causing damage they probably wouldn't endorse if they understood it.

Which is not to say contrarian speech is always bad! It's not at all uncommon for the public perception of an issue to get fixated on an incorrect or misguided model, where people are manipulating their speech in ways that are unnecessary and harmful, and it is useful for someone who recognizes that happening to push back.

But that should be a considered and sober decision by someone who understands the stakes and intentions of everyone involved and what effects they intend to have with their contrarian speech. Not someone blindly trying to be 'brave' by saying the thing no one else is, as if everyone else couldn't possibly have any kind of good reason for all arriving at that decision at the same time.

The phrase 'Would you jump off a bridge just because nobody else is' comes to mind. That's certainly a type of bravery, but one that we want to be careful about encouraging.

(and, although I don't know that this board is very concerned with ableism in general: I've taken the assessment tests on my own, I would probably be diagnosed low-level autistic if I wanted to get a diagnosis. I'm not just sneering at outsiders here, I'm sharing faults I've found in my own thinking and spent decades trying to learn to compensate for, which I recognize in others at times)

Yeah, even after three decades I still sometimes fall into that same old trap of taking what people say at face value, and of expecting the same of them, as if we spoke to each other in order to exchange epistemically sound information. Which is practically never what regular people actually intend to do in conversation.

There's already a word for that. We call it autism.

No we don't, the defining quality of autism is the lack of awareness. The autist doesn't know that what he is saying is dangerous.

Similar to the difference between launching a monkey into space and asking a man to do the same. A man can be described as "brave" in a way that the monkey is not because the man knows he's strapping himself to a bomb.

I understand and might even agree to your insinuation, but that doesn't apply here.

I know why they are doing as much, for optics and consequentialist reasons. However, they are still cowards because they are choosing the consequences of short-term peace instead of putting an end to the problem. And no I don't think there are any mechanistic barriers to Israel doing the unthinkable, the Arab/Muslim world already hates Israel as much as a human can hate anything ever, they launched 3 holy wars against them with a much shorter laundry list of grievances. Just nuke Gaza and get done with it, or at the every least let it be known that it's on the table, carrots don't work on Arabs. What are the Arabs gonna do? Get more mad?

"So what happens if Israel stops now?". You, me and the talking heads and the people in the halls of power all know the answer to that question. The answer being that Palestinians will forever continue to launch terrorist attacks for Israel doing anything short of just packing up and leaving the Middle East altogether.

I dont see how potential future terrorist attacks are worse than the carnage we are seeing in Gaza today, unless you value Israeli lives much higher than Palestinians. Which I totally can understand that Israel does, but why is it a given that the US population values the safety of Israelis to that extent where the current situation in Gaza is an acceptable trade-off? We are after all talking about the safety of a nuclear armed country with the near unconditional backing of the worlds most powerful state, against a terrorist group that according to Israelis themselves consists of 40 000 men controlling a piece of land under naval blockade and without an airport.

but why is it a given that the US population values the safety of Israelis to that extent where the current situation in Gaza is an acceptable trade-off? We

Because it is in our interest for it to come to a different equilibrium than what it was at on 10/6. Having a terrorist state on the Mediterranean is not good, see, e.g. the Houthi pirate problem on the other side of the canal.

I simply believe peoples are allowed to make war. It's the last argument of kings, and when rulers decide to make it, it's their right by God. Palestinians have consented to rule by Hamas, both by in democratic elections and by failing to remove them. Israelis have consented to rule by Likud, both by democratically electing them and failing to remove them. I have no desire to force some sort optimization where people with different religions, values, cultures, languages, and histories from me have to adopt my values and solve problems as I would prefer that they solve them. They have the right to their own way of life and that includes going to war with their neighbors and the resulting devastation that war my cause in the short term and a hopeful peace in the long term when one side extracts the necessary concessions from the other. Forcing people who hate each other to live as peaceful neighbors is cruel, humiliating, and dehumanizing. They will commit escalating aggressions against each that slowly escalate the hate they hold for each other, which is corrosive to their souls. If they have to settle the matter through war, well that may be painful, but at least their grandchildren may grow up in a world where the matter is resolved.

Israel didn’t make the choice to value Gazan lives less than Israelis. Gaza did when it launched a terrorist attack.

Just like if some breaks into my house, then me killing them isn’t saying anything about how I value life but instead is making a statement about how the criminal values life.

Palestinians or whatever terrorist group they have in power at any given time, probably isn't going to be an existential threat for Israel in any meaningful sense the medium term for the reasons you said. And I am also not really looking into the moral calculus of any of this either.

Game theory, real politik, just plain old politics, the code, whatever you want to call it: Most entities have an implicit assumption that other entities won't get in their face, and if they do, they will be hit for it. Palestine in whatever shape it exits, continues to get in Israel's face.

And I also don't really feel too bad for entities that hit other entities and then get hit back, even if they get hit back really disproportionately hard. That includes Palestinian civilians.

It's not like the poor people of Gaza are held hostage by Hamas. Well they are practically if things like a good economy and future is of concern, but I don't think Gazans want all that more than they want the destruction of Israel. They want Hamas, they still think Oct 7 was a good idea given Israels retaliation, they spit on dead bodies of abductees. Palestinians are maxed out in their antisemitism. In a sane world they would have been eveporated yesterday. They are practically a death cult that is a ticking timebomb and a stain on the middle east.

It's not like the poor people of Gaza are held hostage by Hamas. Well they are practically if things like a good economy and future is of concern, but I don't think Gazans want all that more than they want the destruction of Israel. They want Hamas, they still think Oct 7 was a good idea given Israels retaliation, they spit on dead bodies of abductees. Palestinians are maxed out in their antisemitism. In a sane world they would have been eveporated yesterday. They are practically a death cult that is a ticking timebomb and a stain on the middle east.

You are calling for an eradication of a people and yet you are attacking them for their extremism. Clearly you demonstrate an extremism of far worse proportions here and by going that far are demonstrating the wrongness of your position. I highly doubt when you have such a pro mass murder position today, with so little to excuse it you would be more sympathetic to Israelis if you were in the Palestinians position.

This is why most of the world and majority of American youth is against Israel's attrocities and support's ceasefire.

To address what you mention just bellow about the woke.

The problem with the woke is that they are unjust, are racist extremists, have no sense of proportion, have a never ending grievances, explore ethnic issues in the most ridiculously one sided propagandistic manner, don't respect their hated ethnic groups rights and so on and so forth. Actually the zionist ADL types are an important part of it, but granted there can exist those who are more negative of the Jews who also can be part of it. It is your logic here that follows that template whining about Palestinian antisemitism being maxed out while you support their eradication when you say they should had been evaporated yesterday. And of course, like the woke you make no effort to understand any nuance, as if Israel has not been just minding their own business respecting the Palestinians rights, while you are painting it as if Palestinians launch terrorist attacks just cause they are evil.

What is going to happen since you respect power so much, is that this kind of extremism that is indecent will come with a backslash and people losing respect and opposing those having such positions. And this is an understated way to put it.

Personally, I can't but be affected when I see the destroyed homes and the footage of the dead children. To trivialize genuine disgust at civilians being destroyed in one of the worst 21st century atrocities by comparing them to the woke, is promoting a manipulative and false argument. Sympathy over the nonsense promoted by the woke is not warranted. However, precisely because people like you promote their destruction the Palestinians deserve our sympathy in opposition of this agenda and in support of Israel stopping the war.

People are not going to be convinced by this kind of rhetoric which appears unhinged. A picture says a thousand words and the world is going to be increasingly angry at those who commit and support these atrocities.

I don’t think they’re saying that. I think they’re saying that, whatever one’s personal opinions on the conflict, it’s become clear that it’s ‘us’ or ‘them’. Two state solution is dead. Either there will be an Arab Muslim state of Palestine or a Jewish state of Israel. Both sides are clearly aware of this, neither is happy with a compromise position. So the only remaining questions are firstly whether to fight or surrender, and secondly what must be done to win.

I don’t think they’re saying that. I think they’re saying that, whatever one’s personal opinions on the conflict, it’s become clear that it’s ‘us’ or ‘them’. Two state solution is dead. Either there will be an Arab Muslim state of Palestine or a Jewish state of Israel. Both sides are clearly aware of this, neither is happy with a compromise position. So the only remaining questions are firstly whether to fight or surrender, and secondly what must be done to win.

No, the above poster was pretty clear with what they were saying and you shouldn't be sanewashing them. This motte and bailey with the kind of genocidal language and the more vague "its about what must be done to win" is tiresome.

A Jewish Israel already exists. They have won at expense of Palestinians plenty already. Maybe tomorrow you will be calling for them to win some more and promoting the dilemma of Syria, or Lebanon vs Israel. Why expect that the Likudist great Israel project will stop at Gaza?

The question in practice isn't whether it will become an Arab Palestine, but whether it will continue with illegal settlements, mass destruction in gaza that has lead to some of the highest casualties per capita for time of conflict in modern history, blockade, shutting down electricity and food supplies. While many of Israeli elites use the most extreme language about how they support warcrimes, of how they are dealing with animals, how they are to destroy Amalek. Really the question is whether Israel will seize more land and succeed in a second Nakba.

Obviously, almost the entire world agrees that ceasefire is a better move and compromise than Israel continuing this course. You are promoting the fallacy of a false dichotomy here. If people support Israel commiting ethnic cleansing through a very murderous conduct against the Palestinians, they should say this outright. And should stop framing their extreme nationalist and racist preference at expense of Palestinians and in favor of Jews as being about having no alternatives which is false.

Incidentally, lets assume for the sake of discussion that both Palestinian leaders (in Gaza) and Israeli leaders are fanatics and many of their people have been fanaticized in turn in said direction and their dream is the destruction of the other party. In that scenario, we don't really have to adopt fully their perspective and preference. In terms of what pressure has to be enacted, it shouldn't actually respect and allow the desires of Likudists or of Hamas to be realized.

If we are to assume they are both fanatics then let us support the side that doesn't attack neutral ships. Seems like an easy compromise.

Palestine in whatever shape it exits, continues to get in Israel's face.

Hamas does, yes.

But what you're talking about here is collective punishment, and the duty for an ethnic group to police it's own members or face consequences.

This is along the same lines as 'men need to police other men' and 'men need to teach boys not to rape'. It's along the same line as holding all Christians accountable for the Westboro Baptist Church and the evangelicals who got Roe repealed. It's along the same lines as making all white people pay for reparations or take a back seat in hiring until racial inequities have been repaired. And etc.

Which are not things I'm necessarily against! To me, the main difference between these cases is consequentialist, in that on one hand people are maybe being shamed a little and maybe receiving mild financial penalties, and on the other hand thousands of innocents are being killed.

But, people who argue this type of logic in the case of Palestine and Hamas, should realize how the logic applies to other cases where they might be on the other side of the issue.

But what you're talking about here is collective punishment, and the duty for an ethnic group to police it's own members or face consequences.

Correct. If Germans don't think about the consequences of electing a radical party to control the Reichstag, and the Nazis get control of the country and start annexing and invading the neighbors, the result is that other countries declare war on the entire country of Germany and not just on the individuals controlling policy. This is because the basic assumption of the modern nation-state system is that the nation is the sovereign unit, and has the right, ability, and duty to ensure it is governed in the manner it prefers.

If the Palestinians can't even ensure their representatives to the rest of the world match their preferences, then it's hard to call them a "nation" in any meaningful sense.

Hamas is indeed not recognized as the governing body of a nation.

Not for any logical reason. Gaza, from the mid 2000s to 10/7/23 was a sovereign state that was not occupied by any foreign power. The sole reason for them not being recognized internationally was so NGOs and the like could justify sending them lots of money and aid (which they knew would fund terrorism).

De facto, it was.

This is along the same lines as 'men need to police other men' and 'men need to teach boys not to rape'.

What is wrong with those sentiments? Women are physically weaker than men, and most men listen more to male authority figures than female ones. Men are held in check by other men. Even on the most literal level, rape is investigated and rapists arrested by the police and convicted felons incarcerated in prison, both those institutions are largely run by men.

I need to find a poet to immortalise this sequence of events. Brava!

? It’s not an opinion I haven’t expressed before.

Aww, well it's still great even though it wasn't on purpose. Basically guess posted a common (in my experience) progressive misunderstanding of a popular argument here (the actual argument being not that men shouldn't teach boys not to rape but that we already do, and rapists are defectors) and you cut through it by holding them to their word, a rebuttal technique they've used often in the past. Throw in the fact that in isolation someone reading these posts might conclude that guess is right wing and you are left and it's chef's kiss chaotic beauty.

I didn't even advocate for that sentiment!

If Hamas didn't have popular support, I wouldn't make it. If Palestinians have any issue with Hamas at all, its because they aren't gung ho about wiping Jews off the face of the earth enough. Polling data from the West bank shows this.

Doesn't apply because the Palestinians aren't in a position to police hamas, they WANT hamas to do what Hamas does.

It’s hard not to think the Palestinians are making the right choice given their political/tribal framework.

After all, is Razib not always telling us that almost all of us modern humans are the result of a thousand-person population bottleneck 100,000 years ago or whatever? From the perspective of tribal survival, a few highly fecund people surviving while preserving their identity is preferable to the whole population assimilating into global homogenization. Jews ourselves did this, it would have been easier at many points to assimilate, but it took until the 18th century for most of us to start (and even then, the future of the Jewish people is reliant on those who refused to do so), so one can only be so angry at the Arabs for doing the same.

The issue is more that the Palestinians know that Israel cannot fully eradicate them for political reasons, and therefore that from a game theoretical perspective, they only need to refuse to surrender for long enough that the ‘international community’ ie United States tells the Israelis to knock it off. Arguably nobody has done more to make actual genocide less internationally acceptable than Jews, so again this is largely a problem of our own making.

The final issue is that unlike in other tribal post-colonial populations, there is no group of ‘moderates’ who can be trusted to police the Palestinian population. Sure, Israel supported the Islamists against the ‘secular’ Arab-nationalists-with-socialist-characteristics, but the PLO was also a terrorist organization that had no problem killing Israeli civilians and had maximalist aims, so as distasteful as Islamism may be it’s not actually ‘worse’ than the alternative and, crucially, makes Palestinians less sympathetic for Western publics themselves dealing with Islamist terror.

The longstanding goal of Likud has been to find some other Arab nation to govern Palestinian Arabs in areas A and B and in Gaza. But while Israel’s Arab neighbors in Jordan and Egypt have no great fondness for Palestinian militants, they (smartly) choose to blanket refuse to govern the Palestinians, preferring to leave the problem in Israel’s hands.

The Kushner-MBS plan seems to have been (reading between the lines) for the Saudis to take on that duty, granting them the privilege of governing all three primary Islamic holy sites (the Kaaba in Mecca, Mohammed’s tomb in Medina and now Al Aqsa in Jerusalem) in exchange for policing the Palestinians. But that’s delayed now, a big success for Iran, so there are no good options for Israel.

As someone of gentile European descent, I'm descended from assimilated Celts and Germans, who were in turn descended from assimilated Bell Beaker people, who were descended from assimilated early European farmers and so on. Why do you need to keep your identity to survive? The Palestinians themselves were not always Arabs or Muslims.

Of course they could become another people and still reproduce, their lineages would still continue (albeit likely with far lower birthrates). But their identity would arguably be lost, which they seem to care about.

Why should Gaza accept being locked in a small open air prison in which they are under a blockade? Why should they accept continuously expanding Israeli settlements that slowly ethnically cleanse Palestinians? Why should they accept being second class citizens on their ancestor's land compared to recent arrivals from Eastern Europe? The option of cooperating with being ethnically cleansed because it will be nicer doesn't really make sense.

The best comparison to Palestine is the French in Algeria. France entered Algeria in 1830 and stayed for 132 years. That is 57 years longer than Israel has existed. There were 1.6 million ethnic French in Algeria. Many had lived there for generations when they moved home.

There are 2.3 million people in Gaza, making it a large city, 3.2 million on the west bank and 2.1 million arab citizens of Israel. Furthermore, there is also Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have a young population and a growing population. Their best bet is to do what the Algerians did in the 50s and 60s, simply make occupying them unsustainable. The French shot lots of Algerians, jailed lots of Algerians and won almost every battle. The Palestinians are not going to run out of people. Even with 20 000 dead in Gaza over the past 2.5 months, 15 000 have been born during the same time. The Palestinians are fighting an existential threat and have to push back continuously.

The Iraq war was a massive drain on the US. Israel has about 5.7 million jews not counting Haredis who don't pull their weight. They are not going to be able to fight an equivalent to the Iraq war. The Palestinians have a genuine chance of making Israel unsustainable. They can force Israel to have a huge prison population, to have a continuously mobilized army and to be in a constant state of turmoil.

Why should Gaza accept being locked in a small open air prison in which they are under a blockade?

They shouldn't. They should become a normal nation like the rest of us. The only reason they are under a weak blockade (its almost insulting to call it that TBH) is because they keep making war with their neighbor.

The Iraq war was a massive drain on the US.

The Iraq War wasn’t even the tiniest drain on the US’ resources. The US military had 1.4 million personnel in 2003, only 130,000 were required to totally destroy the Iraqi state.

So a tiny fraction of 2% of GDP was being spent on Iraq. Some pro-US analysts estimate Russia might spend 10% of GDP on the Ukraine war in 2023 all-in.

This is before considering that the Israeli advantage actually increases with drone warfare and automated defense tech, which has to be smuggled into Gaza but which can be publicly bought or even produced in huge quantities in Israel, which is also a country where the biggest constraint on offensive warfare is an extremely low casualty tolerance.

It pains me to read these tired talking points on the Motte of all places. This reads like the equivalent a woke college student listing off their usual combination of strings handed down to them from the hivemind.

Why should Gaza accept being locked in a small open air prison in which they are under a blockade?

They created that situation for themselves by not chilling down with the suicide bombings and indiscriminate rocket fire. It's like yeah their situation sucks, but no one asks why are they in the situation to begin with.

Why should they accept being second class citizens on their ancestor's land compared to recent arrivals from Eastern Europe?

Because they launched 3 wars with help of their coreligionists and lost all of them. Starting a war hands you down the downsides of losing it.

The option of cooperating with being ethnically cleansed because it will be nicer doesn't really make sense.

20% of Israel is Arab. Ethnically no different than Palestinians. They got work visas and got entires into Israel, maybbe after a decade or two with no constant rocket fire and terrorist attacks, that work visa program could have turned into a permanent residency program.

As for the rest of your comment. You are right. Israels location is deeply deeply unfortunate.

It pains me to read these tired talking points on the Motte of all places. This reads like the equivalent a woke college student listing off their usual combination of strings handed down to them from the hivemind.

This adds heat to your post, but no light. It's totally unnecessary. Please don't.

This reads like the equivalent a woke college student listing off

While opposing the wokest country in the middle east that is flooding Europe with migrants? The hivemind on this subject is the neo-con war machine and the media dominated by AIPAC and the ADL pushing for more war in the middle east and more refugees to Europe.

They created that situation for themselves by not chilling down with the suicide bombings and indiscriminate rocket fire.

Why would they accept being put in Gaza with their country split into two pieces? Why would they accept not being able to live where they or their parents grew up? If the Israelis could stop the occupying, they wouldn't get hit with rockets.

Because they launched 3 wars with help of their coreligionists and lost all of them

Again, why would they accept becoming refugees and not fight back? They have seen how Israeli zoomer soldiers hide in the bathroom and cry while trying to defend a strong point from an attack from a lightly armed militia. There is nothing that says they can't fight back and win. Fighting a large tank battle might not have been the best option. Fighting with FPV-drones, rockets and ambushes might work. Iraq and Afghanistan are great examples of how globalists were removed from a country by continuous small attacks. The Palestinian population has grown extensively since then. The Irish lost a bunch of armed conflicts against the British before most of Ireland became independent.

that work visa program could have turned into a permanent residency program.

Clearly, the Likud was instead creating a refugee crisis on Europe's boarder by expanding settlements and slowly growing Israel. Unfortunately for Netanyahu, his population is increasingly consisting of a woke people, haredi fundamentalists and muslims.

While opposing the wokest country in the middle east that is flooding Europe with migrants?

Are you talking about Syria or the US? I’m honestly having trouble parsing this line.

Israel is flooding Europe with migrants. Israel has been economically blockading Syria, regularly bombing Syria and has armed all sorts of jihadist groups in Syria. Meanwhile, IsraAID is standing on the beaches of Greece and helping the migrants get into Europe.

Syria had a civil war which sent millions of refugees to Europe. It has nothing to do with Israel, and everything to do with its own regime and sectarian strife.

Israel is not capable of blockading Syria. It makes no geographical sense anyway. Here’s a map.

I haven’t heard of IsraAID until now, so I can’t comment on who they are. I do know that most Israelis would rather Europe not accept any Muslims, as it makes Europe less welcoming to Jews. What Europe chooses to do, however, is their own choice even if I think it’s a dumb choice.

Pro-Israel lobby says 250 activists will meet with their senators and representatives in Washington in a bid to win support Congressional support for military action in Syria.

https://www.haaretz.com/2013-09-07/ty-article/aipac-pushing-hard-for-syria-action/0000017f-f82d-d887-a7ff-f8eddf280000

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-gives-secret-aid-to-syrian-rebels-1497813430

Not to mention regular bombing and missile campaigns against syria.

I do know that most Israelis would rather Europe not accept any Muslims, as it makes Europe less welcoming to Jews

Not the view of ADL, AIPAC, jewish internet defence league or any other mainstream jewish organisation.

None of those are Israelis. Are you replacing “Israeli” with “Jewish” in your mind?

Also, again Syrian refugees are the result of sectarian violence, not US action. Israel is not the US, in any case, even if it were Jewish influence somehow forcing the US to act.

Israel will bomb Syria if needed, especially now with the civil war chaos, but those don’t send refugees to Europe.

Do you concede that Israel did not blockade Syria? Can you explain what made you think it did?

Why would they accept being put in Gaza with their country split into two pieces? Why would they accept not being able to live where they or their parents grew up?

Uh, because they lost the war(s)? They lost the political battle and the actual battle. Where are the Germans firing rockets at Czechoslovakia and demanding an absolutely extraordinary right of return? Why would you ever grant a right of return to a people supporting homicidal maniacs? There's three generations of people born in Gaza now.

If the Israelis could stop the occupying, they wouldn't get hit with rockets.

Gaza was not occupied by Israel until the tanks rolled in a month ago. In fact, Israeli settlements were removed from Gaza in the interest of peace. It's clear how that worked out.

Germans can move to modern day countries that came from Czechoslovakia. There is no reason for them to accept ethnic cleansing. There is no reason for the rest of us to accept an Israeli caused refugee crisis.

Gaza was not occupied by Israel until the tanks rolled in a month ago

It was under a blockade which was an act of war. Hundreds of the attackers who enforced this illegal blockade got what was coming to them. If Gaza is under blockade there is no reason for the people of Gaza not to break it.

Palestinians can also move to any country that will let them in. There aren't very many of those because, unlike the Germans, they have burned their bridges in every nearby Arab state.

There is no reason for them to accept ethnic cleansing.

Lol, okay, hope they are enjoying not accepting it and getting their shit kicked in.

It was under a blockade which was an act of war.

It was under blockade because they literally started shooting rockets at Israel. If they hadn't elected a genocidal party and started a war with the preeminent military power in the region, gaza could have been the Singapore of the Levant at this point.

Palestinians can also move to any country that will let them in.

Why would they move to another country? Why would the rest of the world want an arabic refugee crisis. The best option is not to have millions of Arab refugees, the best option is for millions of Arabs to stay put.

Lol, okay, hope they are enjoying not accepting it and getting their shit kicked in.

The Algerians experienced that, now they have a free state.

It was under blockade because they literally started shooting rockets at Israel

Wonder why people who were shoved into a tiny open air prison while their country was cut in two and is continuously shrinking due to settlements don't fight back. If Israel hadn't been an expansionist aggresor they wouldn't have a rocket problem.

Why would they move to another country?

You tell me - you brought up Germans moving to modern day czechoslovakia.

The Algerians experienced that, now they have a free state.

Pacifying the algerians was not an existential issue for France. The existence of Hamas is an existential issue for Israel.

Wonder why people who were shoved into a tiny open air prison while their country was cut in two and is continuously shrinking due to settlements don't fight back. If Israel hadn't been an expansionist aggresor they wouldn't have a rocket problem.

Daily reminder that:

  • gaza and the West Bank were not Israeli territory until the arabs started and lost the six day war

  • Israel occupied the entire Sinai and returned it to Egypt

  • Egypt did not want Gaza back

  • Jordan stripped West Bank residents of citizenship

  • it wasn't an open air prison until Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and Hamas started to fire rockets at Israel

Losers of history get killed, that’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it’s always going to be. Do you have a unique issue with this? Nothing that’s happened to the Palestinians hasn’t happened a thousand times to million different tribes through history.

More comments

Iraq and Afghanistan are great examples of how globalists were removed from a country by continuous small attacks. The Palestinian population has grown extensively since then. The Irish lost a bunch of armed conflicts against the British before most of Ireland became independent.

Both the IRA (and general Irish independence) and the Taliban could easily have been crushed if the relevant armies were willing to be brutal enough. The US could leave Afghanistan a couple thousand lives lighter and a trillion dollars poorer, but otherwise unscathed. The Israelis know it’s a fight for their survival, there is no backstop. The same applies to Vietnam, too. It was never a question of capability, only of will and to some extent geopolitical trade offs.

Peace in Ireland also, of course, involved the British government very overtly constraining unionist militants who were very well armed and who would have made any military attempt by Irish nationalists to take Ulster extremely painful, bloody and quite possibly unsuccessful. The best example of successful terrorist tactics is actually Algeria, except that even in that case the French could have won, De Gaulle just decided that enforcing permanent apartheid status on Algerian Muslims for the sake of the pieds noir was inefficient and risked the socialists, if they ever came to power in France, giving all Algerians French citizenship. Israel doesn’t have a France to return to, and the socialists aren’t going to come to power there any time soon, so again the same logic doesn’t apply.

the wokest country in the middle east that is flooding Europe with migrants

This makes me like Israel even more. Europe deserves another 50 million poor migrants from the third world as punishment for their historical actions as well as for the reification of "consequences" for their idiotic policies of subsidising bad behaviour.

What do you propose happens to the 61% Israelis who are Jews ethnically cleansed from other Middle Eastern nations in the past 100 years? Where do they go back to?

French Algeria is not a good comparison, because the French have a France.

French Algeria is not a good comparison, because the French have a France.

Eventually the French will not have a France in the current trajectory and unlike the Israelis they are politically not pro French today in the way Israelis are pro Jewish.

We don't live in a world that the argument in favor of respecting a people's right to exist as a majority in their own homeland is taken for granted. Or to continue to exist in general without demographic replacement and threat of persecution in their own homeland. Especially not by the pro Jewish lobby in western countries which has an isolated sensitivity to the possibility of Jews being oppressed that it doesn't apply to various other groups such as Palestinians, or indeed the French. Do you support France remaining French and the homeland of the French people?

In accordance to the person you are responding to, Israel's occupation makes it unsustainable, especially as Palestinian demographics increase. So the Jews living in Israel have the option to remain to Israel but abandon settlements and the occupation and still have a homeland. Stopping the settlements doesn't stop Israel from existing.

There is also the option of a transformation of Israel into a civic state that is multi-ethnic that grants equal rights to Palestinians even if eventually the Jews become a minority. Jews can have equal rights and live there. Another alternative is a state that is even suspicious of Jewish nationalism in the manner western societies are more anti their own ethnic group's nationalism than those of minorities and is pro mass migration. This wouldn't be a genuinely equal and just society but it would fit with the template of what mainstream liberalism and most influential Jewish ngos support in western countries and under their definition would be anti-racist.

Either scenarios can be be opposed to legitimately, if one consistently oppose such experiments by having reasonable worries in other cases, but not if they aren't. But the first scenario especially does exist in the table as an alternative.

The important issue is that Israel as a Jewish majority state can coexist with respecting the rights of non Jewish minorities in Israel and in Palestine. So it is a false argument to claim that Israel's current course is about its existence, when it is about an extreme nationalist agenda to dominate non Jewish Palestinians, ensure demographic dominance in the future as well and get control and land. Religion and the idea that all of that land and more is God promised land is also not irrelevant to this conflict. It would also be nice if Israel tried to police some of the religious intolerance towards the Christian community living in Israel and punish those spitting on them.

It's also worth mentioning that Christians have been ethnically cleansed from most countries in the Middle East post WWI.

Lebanon was a majority Christian country until quite recently.

I wonder why the mainstream press in the West almost never covers those atrocities? Just this year, an enclave of Armenians had their homeland stolen from them and had to flee.

The outrage over Gaza is not a principled objection to violence or to ethnic cleansing.

I wonder why the mainstream press in the West almost never covers those atrocities?

No you don't.

You know full well why. As much as the secular progressive who identify as "woke left" and the secular progressive who identify as "dissident right" may hate each other, they hate Christians and Jews more.

The casual hatred and desire for destruction expressed by @BurdensomeCount and others in this thread is not the exception it is the norm.

Lebanese Christians aren’t primarily a minority because of ethnic cleansing but because they have lower birth rates than Muslims. In addition it’s likely that colonial censuses undercounted the Muslim population, so the Christians never had the demographic advantage they (and the French) thought they did.

Christians in Lebanon are mostly anti-Israel, and a majority of them supported the October 7th attacks. I'm not sure they blame Muslims for their diminishing numbers in Lebanon.

Israel is a strong ally and the main weapon exporter to Azerbaijan.

So the big question is, why are christians in the west so eager to support the country responsible for bombing christian churches in Gaza and help a muslim country ethnically cleanse one of the oldest christian communities in the world? The whole thing has a "chickens for KFC" feeling about it.

Christians in Lebanon aren’t big fans of Israel, but I’m pretty sure most of them do not like their Muslim neighbors much either- as in ‘had a brutal civil war with them in living memory’.

Christians in the West are also major weapons exporters to Azerbaijan and primary clients of its oil industry. Meanwhile, the Armenians were staunchly allied with the Russians until Putin inevitably screwed them over. Meanwhile Iran allies with Armenia against Muslim Azerbaijan for fear that a corridor with also Muslim Turkey would compromise it strategically. It is what it is.

I think you missed my point.

I'm not trying to assign blame. I'm showing that few people actually care about ethnic cleansing. Or, at a minimum, they don't care enough to learn a basic amount of history or geography.

They care about tribalism.

This seems like an isolated demand of rigor. Would you say people can't show outrage over the October 7th attack unless they read up and condemn every atrocity that was committed in the region leading up to that date?

Would you say people can't show outrage over the October 7th attack unless they read up and condemn every atrocity that was committed in the region leading up to that date?

Yes. More specifically, I think the scope of caring should be scaled to the level of the atrocity.

If this were any other military conflict in all of history, it would be considered decided by now, and Gazans would be suing for peace.

Not at all. History is full of hopeless last stands in which the outmatched party refused to sue for peace. And unlike some of the warriors of hopeless last stands from times long ago, Hamas at least can count on more friendly media to inflate their last stand into the stuff of legend than a bunch of the last stand warriors of older times could have counted on.

Running like a rat out of a flooded tunnel is rarely a stuff of legends. Hamas are hypocritical, where ISIS were at least sincere - Hamas are willing other Palestinians to die for their cause, but not themselves.

Read Thucydides. He describes some people who were probably some of the bravest of all time, and yet even they surrendered sometimes. The Plataeans in their home city, the Spartans at Sphacteria. And all of them were willing to let some civilians die for their cause. Hamas has not surrendered yet after over a month of fighting at extremely outmatched odds. Whether you support them or not, clearly it is not true that they are willing other Palestinians to die for their cause, but not themselves. Hamas themselves are dying in large numbers.

So far the tales of Hamas valor and bravery are slim even from the official Hamas propaganda wing. No last stands, no deeds beyond the call of duty. Not even organized pockets of resistance.

They are like the SS divisions - good at dishing om civilians, totally shitting themselves and inadequate when faced with proper adversaries.

Indeed.

Hamas leaders don't seem to lead from the frontline.

It's actually insane to me that much of the the left in America thinks white supremacy not only is a threat to America but literally the biggest threat. I have been visiting some family in California this week and I have really gotten to see the white lib in their natural environment. Before this trip I had thought that the complaining about white liberals by conservatives was just a round about way to criticize other groups that aren't acceptable to attack and they were overemphasizing how bad they are. I have actually changed my mind on this and I think they have become quite deranged. Literally everything is seen through the lens of race and white/POC. These were people who had pretty moderate political views from what I remembered but they are no longer moderate. I was so annoyed by their beliefs but I didn't want to argue with them so I just kept silent.

However, I kept thinking to myself who are these white supremacists that they think run the country? If this country was run by white supremacists, they would be doing a terrible job. I think we can imagine what a white nationalist government would do.

First of all, their immigration policy would obviously promote having a white majority. The US obviously fails this. Its immigration policy has transformed a country that was once 90% white into a country where whites will be less than 50% of the population in 20 years and this has happened in people's life times. This isn't some slow demographic change. It was deliberate in some cases and merely allowed in other cases. A white supremacist country would simply not allow this to happen. We've seen ethno states from Nazi Germany to Israel. In the case of Israel, they prioritize keeping Jews the majority and try to get more Jews to move there. In the case of the Nazis, the took it to the extreme and exterminated non-Germans. The US does the opposite of either of these, allowing non-whites to become a majority of the young people and of births in about 50 years.

The second things they would do is prioritize whites over non-whites. Does the US do that? DEI and those kinds of organizations and philosophies are designed to hire more non-white people and less whites. On my job review I filled out, I was judged on 20% of my review on DEI type stuff, one of which was hiring more "diverse" candidates. It is illegal to specifically hire whites only and even if it wasn't the country would hate you if you actually did it. All kinds of programs have been set up to get more non-white people into elite institutions through affirmative action and other policies. The isn't a single government program that was created to specifically help whites, but the same can't be said about all other groups. Biden literally said he would only consider a black woman for VP and on the Supreme Court. Their competition in the Republicans would never dream of explicitly saying they'd only pick a white man.

In a white supremacist country ran by white supremacists, white supremacists would also be liked by the population and government. Except again this doesn't happen. If you are a white supremacist openly, you will be hated and fired from your job. If you try to be a public intellectual and organize a pro-white organization, you will be kicked off of social media and be removed from the banking system. People will say it is okay to physically harm you. If you get famous enough, you will be the most hated person in America like RIchard Spencer. You will be sued and attacked by left wing lawfare, again like Richard Spencer. If you want to be like and be successful, being a white supremacist is literally the worst thing you could be other than a pedophile.

This has real world consequences where it makes people think in insane ways. Look at this insane reddit thread I found on rdrama. These people literally think being concerned about millions of people crossing the border a year is racist and white supremacy. I know many people like this, including in my own family. This delusion is then propped up by academics and intellectuals. Probably 75% of every "smart" person out there who is educated in elite institutions believes this to some degree.

I don't really have anything else to say other than I'm just baffled that so many supposedly smart and rational people don't think through their arguments and beliefs. Cartesian doubt is apparently out of style. I don't see any evidence whatsoever that white supremacy or racism is anywhere close to the biggest issue the US faces.

I think you're severely overestimating the popularity of the Coatesian 'white supremacy' anti-racist paradigm versus normie lib 'don't be a dick' anti-racist paradigm.

(I suspect you also underestimate the prevalence of racism, which leads to further confusion)

I kept thinking to myself who are these white supremacists that they think run the country? If this country was run by white supremacists, they would be doing a terrible job.

Your confusion arises from semantic differences. When someone like Coates or Kendi talks about "white supremacy", they don't (just) mean mask-off segregationists or white nationalists. They don't even mean closeted white racists. They mean the whole accumulation of things which collectively acts to keep white people at the top of the socio-economic heap*. You can probably find a direct quote from one of the above that articulates this without my paraphrasing, but it's late and I'm on my phone, so I'm leaving that as an exercise for the reader.

Crucially, in this paradigm, it is entirely possible for society to be white supremacist despite the fact that everyone including racist white people profess to oppose racism and look at efforts to form explicitly white organizations with intense suspicion. Disparate impact and outcomes are the key indicators.

*though they'll also be quick to note that the US also has a pretty long history of explicitly giving preferential treatment to whites.

Your confusion arises from semantic differences. When someone like Coates or Kendi talks about "white supremacy", they don't (just) mean mask-off segregationists or white nationalists. They don't even mean closeted white racists. They mean the whole accumulation of things which collectively acts to keep white people at the top of the socio-economic heap*.

Which begs the question: if white supremacy isn't a tangible ideology or movement, only a nebulous feeling permeating pie charts about household incomes and crime rates, then why would "white supremacists" be a threat to the status quo? A status quo that, supposedly, they benefit greatly from?

They mean the whole accumulation of things which collectively acts to keep white people at the top of the socio-economic heap

This is, mostly, the predictable consequences of people’s own actions.

Your confusion arises from semantic differences. When someone like Coates or Kendi talks about "white supremacy", they don't (just) mean mask-off segregationists or white nationalists.

This is the kind of thing the motte and bailey phrase was designed for.

This is the kind of thing the motte and bailey phrase was designed for.

maybe even THE thing.

Except that they're more than willing to defend the supposed bailey. This is more like referring to refugees and asylum seekers as 'illegals'.

acts to keep white people at the top of the socio-economic heap

The awkward part is that Asians have higher income and homeownership rates (among other outcomes) than white people.

Yes, but only because they live in places with high cost of living.

When you compare them to white people living in the same location, they're not actually doing better.

They just cluster in coastal cities for historical reasons (which have their own White Supremacist aspects, but I'm not an expert on that).

I don't buy it. Asian homeownership rates are also higher than whites. If Asians are also living in higher COL areas, that should raise estimates of their true "adjusted" wealth/income even further.

There's a contingent of Asians who want to minimize Asian success for various reasons (obvious contradictions with woke orthodoxy, visibly successful groups are less likely to get handouts and resources). I've met some of them in the past and you basically cannot believe what they say.

The second things they would do is prioritize whites over non-whites. Does the US do that? DEI and those kinds of organizations and philosophies are designed to hire more non-white people and less whites. On my job review I filled out, I was judged on 20% of my review on DEI type stuff, one of which was hiring more "diverse" candidates. It is illegal to specifically hire whites only and even if it wasn't the country would hate you if you actually did it. All kinds of programs have been set up to get more non-white people into elite institutions through affirmative action and other policies. The isn't a single government program that was created to specifically help whites, but the same can't be said about all other groups. Biden literally said he would only consider a black woman for VP and on the Supreme Court. Their competition in the Republicans would never dream of explicitly saying they'd only pick a white man.

I believe tech companies are meritocratic in the hiring process, at least for the tech positions. Those interviews are regarded as notoriously hard, assuming you even pass the screening.

I don't really have anything else to say other than I'm just baffled that so many supposedly smart and rational people don't think through their arguments and beliefs. Cartesian doubt is apparently out of style. I don't see any evidence whatsoever that white supremacy or racism is anywhere close to the biggest issue the US faces.

Because it's only a belief. There is no consequence for being wrong, nor does it require any effort beyond thinking it. So there is only upside for holding socially acceptable beliefs and zero personal downside in the short-term for holding wrong ones, even of society is made worse in the long-run.

I believe tech companies are meritocratic in the hiring process, at least for the tech positions.

Startups, yes, because the first 30 people at a company matter. But places like Google, Apple, and Microsoft are just running annuities now. They can stash thousands of useless employees on vanity projects and still issue dividends for the foreseeable future.

I believe tech companies are meritocratic in the hiring process, at least for the tech positions. Those interviews are regarded as notoriously hard, assuming you even pass the screening.

This isn't even remotely true. In fact I'd wager tech is one of the least meritocratic places out there, if by that you simply mean your talent and results correlate with success in the company.

Because it's only a belief. There is no consequence for being wrong, nor does it require any effort beyond thinking it. So there is only upside for holding socially acceptable beliefs and zero personal downside in the short-term for holding wrong ones, even of society is made worse in the long-run.

Most of us don't have good arguments for 'anything' we believe. We don't work out a logical syllogism and reason our way to actions through Socratic dialogue on a daily basis. We simply approach a situation with a set of beliefs about things. I don't even think it's true that most people learn from their experience.

i guess the wrongness of my first statement proves the second

This isn't even remotely true. In fact I'd wager tech is one of the least meritocratic places out there

Why do you think that?

I'm not the one you asked but I'll take 'direct observation' for 500 Alex.

Maybe things were different 20 - 30 years ago, but these days all I see and hear coming out of Silicon Valley is grifters and venture capitalists looking to grab a slice of the Next-Big-Thing™ rather than build a business. What sparks of brilliance and merit that do exist are often isolated and by no means representative of the wider class.

Because in much of tech, development and maintenance is looked at as a cost center, not a profit center. Now in fairness to you, you did only say "tech," you didn't say something like cyber security more specifically. Nevertheless I've found in my own experience that it generalizes. But because of that, the business incentive structure for a lot of tech focused jobs punishes skilled developers and instead caters to being the first to market, with mediocre products that hit the shelves before they're ready.

If you want some basic insight in how aspects of the tech world view this, I'd suggest watching this insightful 10 minute clip. I'd wager cybercrime is more meritocratic than almost anything else you find in tech.

Why do you think it’s worse than in other industries though? I don’t think anyone was comparing tech to cybercrime when you claimed it was one of the least meritocratic places.

Is it less meritocratic than law firms? Newspapers? Hospitals? Academia?

My personal experience has genuinely been that the best people on people on my team tend to have the highest level (software engineer at Google). I would loathe to assume that my experience generalizes across the company (let alone the whole industry), but the mere fact that tech has interviews that are at least sensible proxies for ability automatically puts it way ahead of the curve compared to most industries.

Why do you think it’s worse than in other industries though? I don’t think anyone was comparing tech to cybercrime when you claimed it was one of the least meritocratic places.

I think you may have misread my previous comment... The original statement was simply about tech, so that's the context I was replying to.

My point about cybercrime is that if somebody wants to segment and break down tech into it's various sectors, I think you'll be hard pressed find a subsection of it that's more meritocratic than the criminal element. Ransomware gangs don't care one bit about arbitrary qualifications or making you jump through hoops. If the axis of a meritocracy are that people are rewarded in proportion to their value, then that's certainly true. Cyber criminals earn their just desserts. All they care about is your talent, performance and reputation as a black hat. If you can deliver, you go to the front of the line. All other considerations are secondary.

When you deviate away from tech and look at the catalog of other industries, you could argue that in other industries a meritocracy is less the exception and more the rule. I could be wrong, but all I can draw from are my own experiences and observations. Perhaps someone else can offer up a different view.

My personal experience has genuinely been that the best people on people on my team tend to have the highest level (software engineer at Google). I would loathe to assume that my experience generalizes across the company (let alone the whole industry), but the mere fact that tech has interviews that are at least sensible proxies for ability automatically puts it way ahead of the curve compared to most industries.

I think interviews are a lousy barometer for evaluating merit, personally. And that's a rule I apply across the board. I don't think they're entirely useless per se, but I'm guarded about over relying on their utility.

I believe tech companies are meritocratic in the hiring process

Hopefully without doxxing myself, I work as a contractor for several of the top-5 tech companies (however that is construed it is true). So I'm privy to a lot of their internal communications, culture, etc. And I can tell you that these people are simply falling all over themselves to worship the dark and the lame. The gay, the fake, the trans. It's pathological and it's clearly a very high priority.

at least for the tech positions

Yes, but this is doing a lot of work. A serious skilled employee (i.e. white or asian male) generates enough productivity to support maybe 10-20 others. But this is being utilized. I go to a lot of sales meetings, etc. with the 'big guys' and it turns out that almost everyone in a position to function in other-than-coding-or-facilities is a woman of color, and they (mostly) have no idea what's going on.

I like to ask people questions. E.g. I was once at the Udvar-Hazy museum, where resides the actual Enola Gay, and was fortunate enough to chance upon a veteran who had flown the same model of plane. I asked him one of my favorite questions, which is, "If you could change anything about it, what would you change?" This is, more broadly, a great question to ask of anyone about his industry. But the guy's response was, "The head." Apparently people at one end of the plane had to crawl through a long, cramped, dark, very cold tube to get to the bathroom. Fair enough and good answer; precisely the sort of insight for which I am fishing.

So anyway, given what I do, people very high-up on the corporate ladder like to meet me and have a conversation. Executives, etc. And I like to ask them, "How did you get into this?" Up until about 2017 it was mostly white men with blue eyes and they had interesting answers. Long life histories, fascinating twists and turns, happened to be in the right place at the right time so as to illustrate broader trends and forces. These guys were enthusiastic about describing their journeys and, frankly, grateful to tell someone who clearly wanted to glean what wisdom he could from their examples.

Now it's all girls with names like Roselia and they have no idea how they got where they are. Not only that, but they perceive that they don't belong, and suffer terribly from impostor syndrome, and hate me for asking. So, after a couple years of bad sales, I stopped asking, started emotionally supporting them, and am doing just fine. Except inside.

And I can tell you that these people are simply falling all over themselves to worship the dark and the lame. The gay, the fake, the trans. It's pathological and it's clearly a very high priority.

True, but worshipping various identities is one thing but working with the incompetent is quite another, and in general they don't want to do the latter, which is why their diversity numbers remain what they would consider abysmal. Google had a rather large group of true believers who really thought (and perhaps still do think) that they could somehow find and/or create far more black and (cis)female software engineers. And they failed, over and over again.

I believe that the best argument for HBD is that years after setting progressive diversity goals for themselves, the most powerful, wealthy, data-rich companies still can't meet them. Perhaps we need some kind of kamikazes willing to crash entire departments by hiring large numbers of random brown people to hit the diversity targets (only), but that wouldn't exactly look good for anti-racism enthusiasts.

Not only do they believe they can make engineering representative of US demographics, they believe that racism within the company is the reason it isn’t already representative.

Never mind that the company sources talent globally and neither India or China can help to deliver black engineers.

I know some guys from India who are black-passing.

I don't really have anything else to say other than I'm just baffled that so many supposedly smart and rational people don't think through their arguments and beliefs. Cartesian doubt is apparently out of style. I don't see any evidence whatsoever that white supremacy or racism is anywhere close to the biggest issue the US faces.

Once again, you can't reason people out of things they didn't reason themselves into. To quote Michelle Obama: "Don't think, Barack, feel!"

If you reason from facts, the United States is obviously not a white supremacist nation. The top countries of origin for immigrants in America are Mexico, China, India, the Philipines, and El Salvador. The highest income ethnic groups in America are, in order: Indian, Filipino, Taiwanese, Sri Lankan, Japanese, Malaysian, Chinese, and Pakistani. Whites are barely average.

"People of Color", as white liberals like to call them, seem to want to come to America, and once they get here, they do so well they outperform white liberals. They even serve in the armed forces in higher proportion than whites.

But those are facts, and white progressivism isn't about facts, it's about feelings.

Progressives believe things that make them feel good. More specifically, they believe things that make them feel like they are a member of a high status group, they have high status in that group, they are secure in that status, and that they deserve that status. That's how they simultaneously claim that you are born with your sexual orientation, but you can pick your gender, that affirmative action is a remedy for past discrimination, but Asian Americans should be pushed out in favor of whites, etc.

There's a greentext floating around saying that some people parse information through a "consensus filter" - they don't ask themselves "is this true", they ask themselves "are other people OK with me believing this". If your world is social, that's probably a good survival tactic. You conform to and behave according to the memes that will cause the group to accept and protect you.

That's how white progressives end up saying crazy things about ethnic minorities that ethnic minorities themselves don't believe.

"White supremacy" is one of those things. By saying that America is white supremacist, you differentiate yourself from your lower or middle class origins where people are patriotic and colorblind. You can ingratiate yourself into and reinforce your position in the PMC. You even get to tell yourself you deserve this status because you have a large circle of care than others.

They don't, in any way, believe in the literal truth of America being white supremacist - if they did, they would ban immigration from Haiti to save the Haitians. You won't get anywhere pointing out the three million people of color risking their lives to get here, or the incredible success so many of them achieve in such short order.

To a white liberal, words don't actually have meaning, they're just the carrier wave that gets modulated to transmit feelings, specifically social feelings about who is cared about and who belongs where.

Trying to reason with them will just confuse or infuriate them.

Filipinos are the second highest income group? That seems off.

Does it? I feel like they pretty much run medicine and manufacturing.

By household. They commonly have households with several working adults.

Great point. Collectivist living'd skew it back, definitely wouldn't expect them to be top 2 for average adult incomes.

There's some truth in what you say but I think that you go too far with it. White liberals don't just spew meaningless words, they have plenty of explanations (or, to be less charitable, rationalizations) for their beliefs. Take your Haiti example. The bog-standard progressive explanation for this is "Yes, America is a white supremacist country, but it is still a good thing for Haitians to be able to come to America because white people have destroyed Haiti so much through colonialism that America is better to live in materially than Haiti even though America is white supremacist." You might not agree with this explanation, but I don't think that it's pure status/virtue signalling. If you are convinced of the truth of the assumptions that the explanation depends on, the explanation will seem quite logical to you.

I think that some people really overestimate the degree to which progressiveness is some sort of status-climbing social adaptation. To some extent it is, but I'm not sure that it really is one much more than any other political, social, or religious movement.

And if you want to convince white liberals that they are wrong, I think that you would probably be more effective by doing stuff like subtly introducing them to data that puts their assumptions into question than you would be by going into it assuming that most of them are opportunistic social climbers who do not actually care about the truth.

Some people here don't realize that what is obvious to them is not obvious to others. Yes, you (not you satirizedoor specifically, I mean the generic Motte poster) might be well-acquainted with FBI crime statistics, for example, or with sophisticated logical arguments about why central planning underperforms the free market. But there are a bunch of people out there who literally do not even know that there are racial discrepancies in crime or in the results of intelligence tests, or know anything about the history of communist economies. It's not even that they know about it but have progressive-type explanations for those things, it's that they don't even know that there is anything to explain to begin with.

Of course there are also white liberals who know about those things but have progressive-type explanations for them. And there is a group, probably small in my opinion, who really do simply not care about the truth, like some kind of O'Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four. My point is, though, that in my opinion the most accurate mental model of white liberals is that most of them fall into either the first (they don't know) or the second (they know but they have progressive explanations for it) groups. Not into the third (cynical social climbers) group.

And if you want to convince white liberals that they are wrong, I think that you would probably be more effective by doing stuff like subtly introducing them to data that puts their assumptions into question than you would be by going into it assuming that most of them are opportunistic social climbers who do not actually care about the truth.

Oh my sweet summer child, I'm related to white liberals.

You'll never get anywhere reasoning with an AWFL. On the other hand, you can move them by subtly implying that the elite social consensus has moved on, and that by advocating for what they believe, they're now behind the times or low status. The other way you can move them is to show that there's a group that their opinion doesn't care about, and then emote about the harms done to that group.

And if you want to convince white liberals that they are wrong, I think that you would probably be more effective by doing stuff like subtly introducing them to data that puts their assumptions into question than you would be by going into it assuming that most of them are opportunistic social climbers who do not actually care about the truth.

I would love to live in a world in which I could redpill woke people just by spitting a ceaseless barrage of facts and logic™ at them until their worldview crumbles into dust. Unfortunately, after a decade of arguing with woke people using pretty much exactly this approach, I don't have a great deal of confidence in its efficacy. Wokeness is a fully self-contained and self-consistent paradigm. In a remarkably short period since its inception, it has evolved antibodies for any objection one might raise against it - not necessarily good antibodies, but antibodies nonetheless. If you tell a passively woke person a politically uncomfortable fact, they will generally defuse the cognitive dissonance by appeals to ignorance ("I'm sure that's only one of several studies showing that Asian-American households make more money than white American households, and other studies have found otherwise"), while a hardcore true believer will do so by retreating into conspiratorialism ("you really think the Amerikkkan police only shot 30 unarmed black men this year? There's no way the police are reporting every single black man they kill").

Really, I think the idea that woke people can be persuaded just by showing them facts and data is the same sort of naïveté Scott described as endemic on the 2000s internet, in which atheists apparently believed that Christians and/or creationists would leave the faith en masse once presented with ironclad evidence of Biblical inconsistency or irreconcilable fossil records. It's fair to say that didn't go as they hoped.

You're preaching to the choir. I'm not arguing that it's possible to convince the majority of woke people with facts. I'm just arguing about what is more likely to be effective when trying to convince that fraction of woke people who are persuadable.

intelligence tests

Completely poisoned in the educated upstanding progressive brain. Back in college we were thoroughly taught how bullshit intelligence tests are. I believed it for a bit before I understood college misled me.

Posters on reddit commonly recite the thought-defeating sneers against intelligence tests that I learned in school. This has really sunk its claws into the broader progressive consciousness.

There but for the grace of God go I. Good thing I was born a contrarian.

A lot of them do and you get responses like this:

White supremacists claim the number 90 refers to the percentage of violent interracial crime allegedly committed by African Americans. Some white supremacists cite the 1994 National Crime Victimization Survey produced by the Justice Department as evidence for the percentage. However, this figure does not show up in the survey itself and is not considered an accurate one. In any case, it should be noted that the vast majority of violent crime is intraracial (committed by a person of one race against a person of the same race), not interracial, in nature.

Pretty much any online political person knows about this and they wave it away with all kinds of ridiculous rationalizations. Just search "13/50 reddit" and you'll see they don't even try to engage with it just find some way of deboonking it and moving on. Same with economics.

In any case, it should be noted that the vast majority of violent crime is intraracial (committed by a person of one race against a person of the same race), not interracial, in nature.

A better retort to counter the 13/50 stat would be something like '90% of fraud in the US is perpetrated by whites'. Different races are more inclined to engage in different types of crime. for blacks, it is violent crime.

Best stat I can find shows whites committing about 70% of fraud; this figure is 20 years old and is roughly the same as the percentage of the population that was white. Whites are only over-represented in bribery.

This isn't true though. Blacks commit almost every crime at rates higher than whites. There might be a few exceptions but the general trend is certainly not that different races commit equal amounts of crime but just commit different crimes. The general trend is that blacks commit more crime.

white people have destroyed Haiti so much through colonialism that America is better to live in materially than Haiti

This is true far more than even the normal damages that colonialism did to non-whites living under it. Haiti (then Saint Domingue) used to be a very productive and rich colonial possession of France, its plantations provided a good amount of the total wealth of the French Empire. During the French Revolution the Haitians managed to get a small amount of freedom for themselves, while still being a French colony. After wanting the ideals of equality that the French apparently espoused so heartily to apply to them as well, the were rewarded for their impudence by first being sent Charles Leclerc who tricked the Haitian leader Toussaint L'Overture into meeting him, ostensibly to discuss terms. When L'Overture agreed to this meeting, thinking Leclerc was a man of honour like himself he was arrested and shipped off to Metropolitan France and imprisoned until he died. It turned out that Leclerc was not an honourable man...

Leclerc died of Yellow Fever (perhaps a divine punishment?) a few years later and was replaced with Rochambeau (this was the son of the Rochambeau who fought in the American Wars of Independence, his father was a hero, he was a shitstain), who turned out to be even worse than Leclerc, being actively evil instead of merely dishonourable.

Rochambeau was known for burying captured rebels alive in insects or boiling them to death in molasses. He even invented the first rudimentary gas chambers to kill people en masse and the story is told of him inivting some natives to a ball then at the stroke of midnight announcing that he had just ordered his troops to come and kill every single native man present (this trechery against his guests would get him straight down to the 9th circle of Hell if we are to believe our Dante).

Eventually the Haitians were able to throw off the yoke of the French and declare independence in 1804. However their "white man" problems were far from over. France was not happy at losing such a valuable possession, and immediately instituted a blockade of the island. At this time the other great naval powers of Europe who had a presence in the Carribean: Spain and England were engaged in the Napoleonic Wars against France where they were tearing each other apart. A reasonable observer may well have expected that given they were at each other's throats, these two countries might have helped clear the blockade of Haiti. Instead they did the exact opposite, choosing to help France enforce the blockade out of fear that their own colonies in the area may be next to revolt...

In 1825 the blockade was finally lifted and France recognised Haitian Independence. But not before the Haitians agreed to assume a 90 million Franc debt to France, and to add insult to injury the reasons given for this debt were as "compensation of lost property". To put this into perspective, France had recently sold Louisiana (this was the entire middle third of the modern day US in size, not the small chunk of land Louisiana is today) to the United States for 60 million Francs and here they were demanding substantially more from the populace of a portion of a single island in the Carribean.

So basically Haiti, an island of half a million extremely poor recently freed slaves, was burdened with a debt 1.5x the price France had gotten for the entire middle third of the modern day USA. And of course they had to pay high rates of interest on this debt too. It would not be cleared until 1947, well over a century after it was imposed on the Haitian people.

It is impossible to deny that the conditions imposed by the white man upon Haiti made it particularly difficult for them to become a success story. To me a fair punishment for French crimes in the region would be France being obliged to take 30,000 Haitian citizens a year as immigrants in perpetuity, accepting them as citizens and treating them no different from their own people, up and until we reach a state of the world where each year there are fewer than 30,000 people who want to move to France from Haiti. It would provide a very good incentive for the French to improve living standards in a country where the people are still so poor that they eat cookies made from mud to sate their hunger.

Yet Haiti and the Dominican Republic had comparable GDP per capita in the 1950s. Look at them now.

They don't, in any way, believe in the literal truth of America being white supremacist - if they did, they would ban immigration from Haiti to save the Haitians. You won't get anywhere pointing out the three million people of color risking their lives to get here, or the incredible success so many of them achieve in such short order.

To a white liberal, words don't actually have meaning, they're just the carrier wave that gets modulated to transmit feelings, specifically social feelings about who is cared about and who belongs where.

Here I was thinking that I might have an uncharitably low opinion of the PMC's cognitive abilities, but fuck me if this isn't so much worse.

I wouldn't say this speaks ill of their cognitive abilities. They took over Harvard, and we didn't.

Good post. So what can be done about people who pick and choose based on feelings and belonging rather than truths? I don't know how I can respect and get along with them. For me truth, or the attempts to find it at least, is so central to what separates us from the animals.

Politically you prevent them from being able to participate in the broader society.

This is serendipity, because I was just going to write something on the recent winner of the Booker Prize. The winner is a novel called "Prophet Song" by an Irish writer, Paul Lynch.

Before I start, I have to say that I am badly out of touch with literary fiction of the past twenty years or so; I stopped reading it around 2005, when John Banville's "The Sea, The Sea" was published. So I don't know what the current trends are, or have been, and this is simply my immediate reaction to a book I have not read, and have no intention of reading, based on the reviews of what it is about.

So! Paul Lynch wishes he was an American. Or in second place, Canadian. Because he has written the male version of "The Handmaid's Tale". Here's the review by the Irish Times and I'll just pick out bits to let you know why I think this.

The main thrust of the story is that Ireland in the near future is now a totalitarian, dystopian state. The good old Irish misery novel redux, sez you? Ah, but in the prime of that novel, the Big Bad was the Catholic Church. Even a sensitive soyboy liberal writer like Lynch can't pretend that the Church has anything like the power it used to have, so he has to settle for politics instead. (And yes, I apologise for using a term like soyboy but that's the reaction his face and quotes evokes in me).

We got secret police and union leaders being disappeared. Wait, is this 80s South America? No, not even that interesting. Canada is the Holy Land place of refuge, just like in "The Handmaid's Tale". To be fair, traditional Irish emigration has also been to Canada amongst other places, but I don't think Lynch is making that kind of connection. It's more the kind of converse you see when people claim in American elections that if X wins, they're fleeing to Canada ahead of the jackbooted fascists that will surely be coming for them.

And here's where it all falls down for me, because the political landscape Lynch is writing about is not Irish, it's the imported American culture war politics, and that's what leads me to believe Lynch secretly wishes he were an American/Canadian living amongst His People, not stuck in this benighted island (the accounts of his previous novels on the Wikipedia page about him are the standard Irish novel tropes, apart from the one imitating Hemingway).

Thing is, we've had our own home-grown Fascist movement, the Blueshirts (in analogy with Mussolini's Brownshirts and Hitler's Blackshirts) and indeed, one of our political parties and one of the parties in the current joint government are the heirs of that movement, Fine Gael. But they're down with all the new liberal social progressivism; indeed, the current leader and Taoiseach is the half-Indian, openly gay, has a boyfriend but is in an open relationship (minor kerfuffle over pictures of him kissing a guy not his boyfriend in a gay club with mostly everyone coming down on the side of ‘not our business’, though here is the video clip about what that socialising entailed) Leo Varadkar, so what would be fascinating in a novel would be the exploration of how the social progressive agenda can fit comfortably alongside pro-business, pro-light touch regulation, pro-capitalism and indeed pro-law and order which is seen as developing into authoritarian and fascist regime.

But that’s not what Lynch gives us.

Instead, he’s writing “Suppose Donald Trump gets elected for a second time?” fiction but set in Ireland. And here’s where I start quoting and laughing.

(1) Article about him winning the award:

After receiving the award, Lynch said: “This was not an easy book to write. The rational part of me believed I was dooming my career by writing this novel. Though I had to write the book anyway. We do not have a choice in such matters.”

…During a press conference later on Sunday evening, Lynch said he was “astonished” by the violent disturbances on the streets of Dublin last week. “I recognise that energy is always under the surface, what’s happening in Dublin, we can see (the book) as a warning.”

Lynch said he was “distinctly not a political novelist” and his book is really about “grief”, as it tells the story of a woman who has her husband taken away by the newly formed Irish secret police.

Oh gosh wow, yeah, totally risking his career. With a topic that is the received wisdom of the day, the favourite bogeyman of the chattering classes, and the subject of countless opinion pieces in online media, both traditional and social, about the horrible rise of fascism and the death of democracy in Western societies, particularly America. Is he really trying to persuade us that the literary Cheka are going to wreck his career for touching this one?

That bit reminded me of nothing so much as this scene from C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce”, where the liberal bishop claims he ran huge risks and his friend reminds him that all he did was surf the Zeitgeist:

"Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?"

"There are indeed, Dick. There is hidebound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed - they are not sins."

"I know we used to talk that way. I did it too until the end of my life when I became what you call narrow. It all turns on what are honest opinions."

"Mine certainly were. They were not only honest but heroic. I asserted them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk."

"What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came - popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?"

"Dick, this is unworthy of you. What are you suggesting?"

"Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause."

(2) Synopsis from Wikipedia tells us what the story is all about:

In a near-future Republic of Ireland, in the wake of a teachers' union strike, the right-wing National Alliance party seizes control of the government. The National Alliance gives the Irish national police (the Garda Síochána) and the judiciary far-reaching powers. The regime also establishes a new secret police force, the Garda National Services Bureau. The new government quickly repeals civil liberties; peaceful protests are broken up, and Irish citizens are arrested without cause and tortured.

Larry Stack, a teacher and trade union leader, is arrested and held without charge while attending a rally. His wife, Eilish, who is a scientist, is left to care for their four children and her father, who has dementia. Eilish petitions for her husband's release. The state soon descends into civil war, and Irish citizens who are suspected of being part of the resistance are arrested or killed. Eilish struggles to keep her family together during the civil war; she contemplates fleeing the country with her family, possibly joining her sister Áine in Canada.

Oh, Canada! The dreamed-of paradise for the liberals who are terrified Trump is hiding under the bed! There’s a lot to be discussed here, and I hope to get through it, if I can gather up my scattered thoughts into a bundle (maybe even a fasces?

(3) From the review of the book, which is a little bit critical of Lynch’s approach as a work of writing, not so much the politics:

In this Ireland there has been an unspecified “crisis facing the state”, which has allowed the government to establish emergency powers and create a secret police, the GNSB. We are, in other words, deep in dystopian hell – though shallow might be the better word. The best way of involving the reader in a world like this is through individual stories, and Lynch cleaves the reader close to the Stack family in Dublin.

They are Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist working in biotech, her husband Larry – deputy general secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland – and their four children Mark, Molly, Bailey and Ben. The story opens in grand style – “The night has come and she has not heard the knocking” – as the cops arrive to take Larry in for questioning. Larry has been negotiating for better pay and conditions for teachers, and has been publicly vocal in his support. There is a tense scene where “sowing discord and unrest” battles “exercising my rights under the constitution”.

But Larry doesn’t come back from his interrogation and Eilish, however much she believes that “there would be outrage” if the police overstepped the mark, is about to learn that constitutional rights depend upon people in authority being willing to uphold them. That brings to mind the still-fresh story of Trump’s desecration of constitutional norms in the United States; and when Eilish, like a frog in slowly boiling water, hopes that everything will be fine and she won’t need to take the kids to Canada as others are doing, we think of Jews who didn’t flee Nazi Germany.

Indeed, there is no shortage of heavyweight analogies here, and some good dramatic scenes too: when the family home is sprayed in red paint with the word TRAITER (if the devil is in the detail, then that misspelling is the mot juste); when Eilish runs from hospital to hospital in search of bad news, and is greeted with even worse; and the last pages of the novel, which seem to give the whole story purpose by twisting the reader into a fresh perspective on a timely issue.

There are a few points here where I laugh, and the one about the threat of the Teacher’s Union is one of them. Up till about 2008 and the aftermath of the economic crash in Ireland, the teachers’ unions (we have four of them: one for primary school teachers, two for secondary school, and one for university lecturers) were about the most powerful unions in Ireland, able to wring concessions out of successive governments. Whether you were the atheist, Labour Party Minister for Education, the slightly more to the right of centre centrist right wing party Minister or the slightly more to the left of centre centrist right wing party Minister, you could and can be heckled and booed at the union conferences.

I have no doubt that Irish governments would have loved to haul off teachers’ union big-wigs to the secret police headquarters, but they never had the public support until the economic crisis meant that now the government had a mandate to stand up to public sector pay demands and broke the unchallenged power of the teachers’ unions.

The rest of it is standard “oh noes the Trumpists are coming to haul us all off to the concentration camps!” stuff which, unhappily, has percolated over here as well. Now, in the article about Lynch’s interview after winning the award, there is mention of the protests that happened in Dublin, and here’s where it gets a lot more complicated than a simple morality tale of the Bad Far-Right Desecration of Sacred Democratic Norms.

Yes, we’ve seen far-right, white nationalist, and white supremacist groups making incursions into Ireland. Yes, we’ve had our own nativist party trying to get going. And yes, our police force has long wanted more powers and more equipment in line with other, armed, police forces. But all of this has been resisted, in a general, passive, way by the public.

However, and here is where the narrative departs from Lynch’s tale of secret police hauling away trade unionists, it is in response to the anti-immigrant rioting which was destructive and hitherto unknown in Ireland, that the ramping up of police powers happened. In other words, it’s the liberal/left political inclination which is getting the law-and-order police state going, not the right.

That’s where the really interesting novel should happen, but instead even the reviewer drags out the comparison with Trump, and not with historically established leftist authoritarian states.

We’ve had a civil war in Ireland, and the historical parallels with people being killed, arrested, and so on are there to be made. But not in the simplistic manner here.

As to the part where the reviewer purrs about the mot juste, that rattling noise you hear is my eyeballs rotating in their sockets. Well of course the hate graffiti would be misspelled, after all we nice, right thinking people know that the lesser sorts are stupid and illiterate. But they might also like to bear in mind that reports in America of such hate graffiti and similar incidents often turn out to be hoaxes perpetrated by the very people claiming to be the victims in fear of their lives.

The Booker's had a string of weak winners since George Saunders' deserved win for Lincoln in the Bardo. The best of the stack is Shehan Karunatilaka's The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida but read it vs the last South Asian winner, Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

Karunatilaka:

The memories come to you with pain. The pain has many shades. Sometimes, it arrives with sweat and itches and rashes. At other times, it comes with nausea and headaches. Perhaps like amputees feeling absent limbs, you still hold the illusion of your decaying corpse. One minute you are retching, the next you are reeling, the next you are remembering.

You met Jaki five years ago in the Casino at Hotel Leo. She was twenty, just out of school, and losing pathetically at baccarat. You were back from a torrid tour of the Vanni, unhinged by the slaughter, breaking bread with shady people, seeing the bad wherever you looked, and wearing your notorious red bandanna. You had sold the photos to Jonny at the Associated Press and cashed a welcome six-figure cheque. Even in Lankan rupees, six figures are better than five.

You had outplayed the house at blackjack, whacked the crab at the buffet and washed it down with some free gin. A regular day at the office.

‘Don’t bet on ties, sister,’ you said to the strange girl with frizzy hair and black make-up. She looked at you and rolled her eyes, which you found strange. Women usually like the look of you, not knowing that you prefer cock to cooch. A trimmed beard, an ironed shirt and a bit of deodorant will elevate you above a herd of sweaty Lankan hetero males.

Adiga:

. . . That's why I want to ask you directly if you really are coming to Bangalore. Because if you are, I have something important to tell you. See, the lady on the radio said, "Mr. Jiabao is on a mission: he wants to know the truth about Bangalore."

My blood froze. If anyone knows the truth about Bangalore, it's me.

Next, the lady announcer said, "Mr. Jiabao wants to meet some Indian entrepreneurs and hear the story of their success from their own lips."

She explained a little. Apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don't have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, does have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousands of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs -- we entrepreneurs -- have set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now.

You hope to learn how to make a few Chinese entrepreneurs, that's why you're visiting. That made me feel good. But then it hit me that in keeping with international protocol, the prime minister and foreign minister of my country will meet you at the airport with garlands, small take-home sandalwood statues of Gandhi, and a booklet full of information about India's past, present, and future.

That's when I had to say that thing in English, sir. Out loud . . .

(that thing is "Fuck!/Motherfucker!")

Adiga's a natural, Karunatilaka's a purply tryhard.

2019 was the most transparently political of all the recent transparently political awards. It was a double winner despite the rule against it, Margaret Atwood won (her writing is excellent, but it was for a Handmaiden's Tale sequel) and Bernadine Evaristo became the first black woman to win for Girl, Woman, Other. I'd rate GWO above most of the other recent winners but that's not really praise. The others all do this varying combination of purple prose, idiosyncratic writing, and "unconventional structure." They might not be consciously or even unconsciously trying to be Cormac McCarthy but there's a shitty sameness of what reads as McCarthy wannabe-ism from writers who don't understand the great works succeed in spite of such style because of masters who know when and how to break the rules.

Milkman

"My poor deprived class!" cried teacher and gain she was bluffing, pretending sorrow about our lack of color, our hampered horizons, our mental landscapes, when it was obvious she was a person too defined within herself to be long perturbed by anything at all. And how come she was this? How come she was doing this antagonizing, this presenting of an anti-culture to our culture when she herself was of our culture, where the same rules of consciousness regarding the likes of color – regardless too, of church affiliation – as applied to us ought equally to have applied to her? But she was laughing again. "There is no blue in the whole of the window," she said. "Look again please. Try again please – and, class" – here she paused and, for a moment, did become serious – "although there's no lack of color out there really – there's nothing out there really. But for temporal purposes please note – the sky that seems to be out there can be any color that there is."

"Testicles!" cried some ladies and gentlemen and a frisson – the only French of the evening apart from "le ciel est bleu" and that literary guff the guy in the book had been posturing –went through us. It seemed to our minds that no, what she was saying could not ever be true. If what she was saying was true, that the sky – out there –not out there – whatever –could be any color, that meant anything could be any color, that anything could be anything, that anything could happen, at any time, at any place, in the whole of the world, and to anybody – probably had too, only we just hadn't noticed. So no. After generation upon generation, fathers upon forefathers, mothers upon foremothers, centuries and millennia of being one color officially and three colors unofficially, a colorful sky, just like that, could not be allowed to be.

Jesus Christ, editor totally MIA.

The Promise

I should have been there. So Astrid thinks. That she was flirting with Dean instead only adds to her guilt. She believes, wrongly, that her younger sister knows the truth about her. Not only this truth, others too. For example, that she vomited up her lunch half an hour ago, as she regularly does, in order to stay slim. She is prone to paranoid fears like these, suspecting sometimes that her mind can be secretly read by people around her, or that life is an elaborate performance in which everybody else is acting and she alone is not. Astrid is a fearful person. Among other things, she's afraid of the dark, poverty, thunderstorms, getting fat, earthquakes, tidal waves, crocodiles, the blacks, the future, the orderly structures of society coming undone. Of being unloved. Of always having been that way.

Shit editing again.

Prophet Song

You were supposed to bring Molly to practice, Larry, I had to cancel another call with our partners, I have only just returned back to work after maternity leave, how do you think this looks? He stands by the door with a foot half-pulled from his boot and then he lowers his eyes like some abject and beaten dog, he shakes his head and looks her full in the eye and she sees a change come over him, his voice an angry whisper. They are trying to disrupt us, Eilish, they are spreading lies within the union, you will not believe what I heard today — His voice falters before her narrowed gaze and then his eyes seek the floor again. Look, he says, I hear what you're saying and I'm sorry. He shows her a small pay-as-you-go phone, a burner phone he calls it. Even if they wanted to listen in, they could not know the number. She watches him thinking of the children listening to them whispering in the hall. You are behaving like some criminal, Larry, listen, it looks like Bailey is coming down with a virus, he's gone upstairs.

Now Prophet Song, which maybe I should have started with because that's what you wrote about. There are weak Booker winners but the writers still show some skill. Burns and Galgut have chops they just had shitty editors. Prophet Song is the first Booker winner I've read I would call a bad book. I felt less disgust after finishing Hank Green's "I can do it too" YA trash than that shit. Lynch is a shitty writer, this is a particularly shitty piece of his overall shitty submission. I've read significantly better from anons on /lit/ and if someone posted this to a /wg/ thread they would have been mocked relentlessly for being so far up their own ass without even having something good to show for it. The book is poorly conceived, poorly written, and that's besides the terrible structure that should have magnified the shittiness to everyone judging but for some reason put it on track for the preeminent English literary award.

Coetzee's Booker-winning Life & Times of Michael K is unconventional structure, no chapters but three sections, set in South Africa during a civil war the novel implies the whites are losing. The book is rich with commentary, but being Coetzee who can actually write, it's usually subtle and beautifully so. There's an idea in this space; still set in Ireland, a revisiting of the Troubles where the racial line is Irish and not. A story of a person who keeps experiencing events and actions against them beyond their control. Proper punctuation and structure but like Coetzee with very long sections instead of chapters. But all of this would require an intelligence and thoughtfulness and above all skill in prose Lynch does not possess.

A woman won the second Booker, a Trinidad-born Indian Brit the third. This stuff is such a bummer, and it's also insulting because writing might be the purest meritocracy. If someone could write like Rushdie they could look like anything, be anything, believe anything, and they'd succeed, because his lower peers have for decades. Wherever there is a "lack of representation" it's because there's a lack of skill. You can take the angle of social and economic factors keeping that writing skill from being developed, but that's the only angle there is. If it's good enough, people will read it. Political awardings do nothing, they aren't incentivizing anyone to pick up the pen who wouldn't so they're not bringing anything new and good into the field, they're just making the brand worse and the field worse as they further encourage publishers to keep facilitating this bullshit.

Your excerpt from Lynch's novel is exactly what I imagined 🤦‍♀️ "Ochone, Eileen achusla, but isn't it the hard, dreary life you have and you trying to rear your seventeen ragged-arse children while your drunken husband is never home except to beat you and get you pregnant again in between spending the rent money in the pub, och ochone agus ullagón o!" Such a staple of the Irish novel as to become a parody of itself, and he's still using an updated version of it.

Trade union husband finding out that it's the left-wing element* he's served all his life turning Ireland into the authoritarian police state, but one where anyone can get gay married and sure don't we have abortion now (albeit it's in a limited way) and do you want to bring back the bad old days when the Church was in power, do you, Larry? while his middle class striving to be upper-middle class STEM professional wife working for one of the American pharma multinationals with a base here dreams of making it to the head office in California because that's where the action is, everyone knows that the real career advancement and power lies in America if you can get there and doesn't want to know anything about it, don't rock the boat Larry, we're never going to get a visa if you have a criminal record; everyone is happy with the new prosperous Ireland - if you are in the right place to avail of that prosperity - and of course we need to crack down on the ignorant lower class that is rioting in the streets - now that's a novel that would threaten his career.

But that's not a novel he's ever going to write.

*Or the version of it we have now; the Frank Cluskey type in the Labour Party is long gone and replaced by the champagne socialist element much more comfortable with social progressivism rather than the class struggle, and appealing to win the middle-class vote by promising more social liberal policies while the real working-class element is scooped up by Sinn Féin and the tiny splinter Marxist parties, such as our very own college-graduate Trotskyists.

The rational part of me believed I was dooming my career by writing this novel. Though I had to write the book anyway. We do not have a choice in such matters.”

sobrave.jpeg Reminds me of John Boyega saying that he expected his acting career to be over as a consequence of his heroic decision to speak at a - Black Lives Matter protest, in London. Okay buddy.

I heard about the central stylistic gimmick of this novel (the entire book is told in one unbroken paragraph) before I heard about the premise, and based on that alone I knew I'd never read it. I've read some books which experimented with the form and presentation of the text in interesting ways (e.g. House of Leaves), but I find it impossible to imagine any way in which this gimmick would be anything other than an annoyance. Upon hearing the premise I'm even less inclined to read it than previously.

You're entirely right to point out that concerns about a far-right authoritarian takeover of Ireland are about as unfounded as it being taken over by pixies and unicorns. Even the idea that such a scenario is implausible in Ireland, but would be plausible in the US or Canada, is fanciful - just as in Ireland, it's the parties who present themselves as woke centrist neoliberals who pose the greatest threat of initiating democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. As @KulakRevolt will remind us, it wasn't a far-right Canadian prime minister who froze the bank accounts of anyone even tangentially connected to an oppositional political movement (the kind of thing we'd expect from Erdoğan or Putin) - it was Justin Trudeau, Mr. "Because it's 2015" himself, on whom Leo Varadkar unabashedly models himself.

To be slightly more charitable to Lynch, I wonder if he's fallen victim to some kind of The Last Psychiatrist-esque "telling yourself one story as a protection against what's really bothering you" psychological defense mechanism.

Any remotely politically aware person living in Ireland in the last five years would have good cause to be concerned about Ireland falling victim to democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. The lockdowns instated in response to Covid-19 represented an unprecedented seizing of control by the state and an incursion into the private lives of Irish citizens, and were some of the longest in the world. Likewise, nobody ever expected the introduction of vaccine passes to get into bars and restaurants: the denizens of /r/ireland scoffed at me when I said I was worried about them being brought in, and assured me they never would - then they did, and the same people scoffed at me for being concerned about this unprecedented invasion of privacy. Earlier this year, a piece of "hate speech" legislation (which, among other things, would make it an offense punishable with jail time to have a racist meme stored on your phone, even if it was sent to you by your annoying uncle in a family WhatsApp group chat) passed in the lower house of parliament, despite only 27% of the public supporting it. It has not yet passed the upper house, but of course the architects of the bill are using last month's race riot as a pretext for pushing for it to be passed (even though it would have done nothing to prevent the riot). All of these policies or pieces of legislation were introduced by a coalition government which presents itself as woke, centrist and neoliberal. Meanwhile, the far-right politicians in the country are so marginalised that they might as well not exist for how involved they are in the democratic process - no politician who could be characterised as far-right under even the most generous interpretation of that term has ever held public office.

Now, you can scoff and roll your eyes at anti-lockdowners and accuse them all of being anti-5G nutters who'd step over their own grandmothers' corpses for a pint in a pub with their mates, but on some level, any thinking person must experience some measure of concern about these developments, if only on a subconscious level, no matter how much they might try to deny it. Perhaps Lynch reacted to the political developments of the past five years with the same alarm I felt about Ireland's future. The problem for him is, he can't imagine a world in which a socially progressive government could also be authoritarian. I don't mean the possibility of such a thing coming to pass has occurred to him, but he's dismissed the possibility as too remote to merit serious consideration - I mean that he can no more conceive of such a thing than he can a triangle with four sides. For most educated Irish people, "right-wing" and "authoritarian" go hand-in-hand, and the concept of a "left-wing authoritarian state" is an empty set, a term without a referent. They've never heard of the Holodomor, or the Khmer Rouge - they think of Cuba as "that place with great healthcare" and nothing else. I've even had a Trinity graduate patiently explain to me on Facebook that Josef Stalin was actually far-right, and accused me of doing a disservice to real socialists by inaccurately characterising Stalin as far-left.

So, Lynch notices he's concerned about the possibility of Ireland becoming an authoritarian state in the near future. He can't bring himself to confront the possibility that Fine Gael could ever be the instigators of such a state (how could they? They have their pronouns in their bios on Twitter!). So the only way he can express his concerns in a way that feels psychologically safe for him is by contriving this absurd scenario in which the far-right seizes power and instates all of the policies he's worried about Fine Gael bringing in (presumably along with some token anti-LGBTQIAA2S+ and anti-immigrant legislation, to improve Lynch's plausible deniability). I don't think Lynch is lying to the readers about what his book is about - I think he's lying to himself.

That was the part that made me laugh till my sides hurt: my career is so threatened by writing this book that I... won the freakin' Booker. Such threat! So consequence!

The moves to give the police tasers and greater powers recently all grew out of the liberal response to perceived far-right incursion and hate speech, and that's the kind of "some sort of public crisis permitted the government to go in this authoritarian direction" that would be a better novel to read, but Lynch went the easy way.

Never mind that I'm supposed to believe that a modern Irish woman in a middle-class college-educated STEM job as a molecular biologist is going to have four kids today, but again Lynch is going for the tired old tropes of classic Irish lit. He wants the "ochone, Eileen achushla" tropes of the days when the Church was the Big Bad (so the martyred wife and mother of a large family will-she nill-she with the checked-out/emotionally unavailable/absent husband and father) mixed with the Ripped From The Headlines stuff, and of course the overseas literary prizes are going to eat it up because this kind of "so poetic!" bullshit is what they expect from Irish writers.

Again, at the risk of engaging in shameless self promotion...

The reason that various flavors of failed progressive seem to gravitate towards an ideology resembling early-mid 20th century fascism (as opposed to some flavor of conservatism) is that fascism is a fundamentally progressive ideology. They might take the red pill but they never manage to free thier minds. They want to continue believing that the world runs on inductive logic when any game involving multiple agents is going to be anti-inductive. They want to quibble some group's position within the intersectional stack rather than question the validity of the stack as a concept. They cling to psuedo-marxist nonsense about group/class consciousness and group/class differences to salve their own wounded pride. They still seem to think that they can appeal to some non-existant higher authority with words like "academic consensus" and "studies show". In other words they still think that's air they are breathing.

It's pretty poor taste of you to repeatedly bring me up as an example of how awful and racist HBD posters are on here (particularly when I'm none of the above), and then use my comments as a springboard to promote your own stupid hobby horse whenever the mood takes you. Have some respect.

???

I think you are missing the linchpin of the worldview, which is an axiomatic assumption that persistent group differences in outcomes can't be just, natural or accidental. The fundamental equality of groups (rather than individuals) is as close to a central dogma of faith as you can get for the dominant secular religion, and everything you observe follows quite easily from trying to square this belief with observed reality. Do you have a better explanation for US statistics that does not violate this belief than that somehow, despite superficial appearances, pro-white bias must have found a way?

(Regarding the bafflement, surely smart and rational people being unwavering in a religious belief should not be surprising, given humanity's track record.)

Do you have a better explanation for US statistics that does not violate this belief than that somehow, despite superficial appearances, pro-white bias must have found a way?

Cultural differences can make a very big difference- Asia adopting memes from Christendom is why it had so much catch-up growth despite by HBD it should have had better outcomes earlier. Assimilated Jews are fantastically successful, unassimilated ones are not.

It's not hard to point to cultural factors in the AADOS community which explain the income gap, and there are perfectly reasonable cultural-happenstance explanations which don't rely on HBD. White progressives are simply uncomfortable with a narrative that most people are responsible for their own station in life, more or less.

It is such a strange belief.

  1. It is saying in effect society writ large matters but micro cultures don’t matter. That is, the overall structure of society causes some groups to fail but an individual group culture is at best orthogonal to success. That is an extraordinary claim.

  2. It assumes that genetics apply for individuals but not groups despite clearly there being a genetic difference between groups (eg whites and Asians look different). Again this is an extraordinary claim.

So to believe that difference in group outcome is proof of discrimination relies upon two extraordinary claims.

Very few people, especially ones who'd be considered "normies" by any sane criteria, think about the logical structure of their beliefs deeply enough for these sorts of questions to ever occur to them. This is true even if they are straightforward factual beliefs and not mere signalling (and I agree with a few others that what's going on here is more a complex mix of the two than straightforwardly one or the other).

I think with some people here you might be talking cross purposes with regards to equality. Underneath the progressive dogmatism and irrationality, there is a real debate to be had about the importance of socioeconomic and political equality, that I think people want to get to; but they mostly get swept up in the first category with the common satirical image of the 21st century progressive that they don't want to be associated with.

Race will always be a dead end that will lead nowhere, if you want to use it as a proxy for trying to attain some level of material equality with another group.

Diversity or equity? Pick one. They're basically antonyms.

I think you'll find it agreeable that diversity without the dogmatism (and in particular the virulent progressive strain of it) is a good thing, and a certain amount of it is necessary for a healthy and functioning society. The same can be said for equality as well. But, I reject your dichotomy as a false dilemma. I think the research bears out the notion that greater levels of equality, or rather the lack of inequality if the former is too politically charged, leads to better overall outcomes. Saying this as a far-right leaning person myself doesn't necessarily make me uncomfortable either. Liberals not leftists have a monopoly on terms like diversity and equality.

The research is written by people with an agenda. The US has both more "inequality" and better overall outcomes than the rest of the western world, which argues against that rather strongly. Same for "diversity"; lots of research up and down swears diverse teams do better, then we look around and we find homogeneous teams which did really extraordinary things.

I'm all for being skeptical of motivated reasoning, but I'm not a priori dismissive of a body of research that does exist, that seems to lend to support for more equitable societies being healthier. I'm aware of absolutely 'no' research, save for somebody pointing it out to me, that suggests less equitable societies have lower rates of crime, poverty, life satisfaction, etc.

Your last point is interesting to me. I'm not even aware of a reputable institution that claims diverse teams do better. That is if my understanding of "diverse" is calibrated to mean the same thing I think you're implying.

I'm all for being skeptical of motivated reasoning, but I'm not a priori dismissive of a body of research that does exist, that seems to lend to support for more equitable societies being healthier.

That term "healthier" isn't well defined and is generally used to hide circular definitions (the research will include in its definition something which is equivalent to inequality itself). The people pushing this can generate as much research as they care to.

Your last point is interesting to me. I'm not even aware of a reputable institution that claims diverse teams do better. That is if my understanding of "diverse" is calibrated to mean the same thing I think you're implying.

The business journals are full of such claims, so I think you just don't consider that field reputable (as indeed you should not)

Well I can't confess to being well read on any business journals, so unfortunately I can't comment on them. If your remark is meant more generally to gesture in the direction of pointing out how much garbage is littered throughout the social sciences, this isn't pointing out anything researchers haven't known for a long time. I deal with it quite regularly myself. That said, I don't see much opportunity to engage further with your remark, as it doesn't actually address any of the direct claims that are made. Not that I'm faulting you for it, I don't have much time to read books people throw at me either. But based on what I've read as highlighted above, this at least does pass the sniff test to me. I'll leave it to someone else to tear the data apart.

greater levels of equality

terms like diversity and equality

Nomenym didn't say "equality," they said equity, which is not the same thing. To quote a passage repeated in various places:

Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

(Emphasis added.)

You can see how trying to equalize all outcomes between individuals and groups and increasing diversity are goals at tension, yes?

Nomenym didn't say "equality," they said equity, which is not the same thing. To quote a passage repeated in various places...

Fair enough. However I think my usage still converges with the point you're making quite well.

You can see how trying to equalize all outcomes between individuals and groups and increasing diversity are goals at tension, yes?

If by that you mean there are always innate and fragile fault lines that underlie the mutual cooperation and peaceful engagement of diverse groups, sure; I have no problem with that. Lee Kuan Yew (the founder of modern Singapore) thought race and religion were two of those things, which is why they required delicate social managing to keep the peace between diverse cultures and ethnic groups. So we know it can be done. Not saying it's easy. I'm not even saying it's always desirable. Only that it's possible.

I think you are missing the linchpin of the worldview, which is an axiomatic assumption that persistent group differences in outcomes can't be just, natural or accidental.

This isn't even true though, is it? Almost everyone knows that black people are faster sprinters, that Kenyans win marathons, etc...

People understand how genetics works, observe it in their own life, and comment about it frequently. There are almost no people who truly hold the absurd "tabula rosa" worldview.

It's all post-hoc rationalization. Social signalling comes first and then people work backward from that. They'll claim a tabula rosa viewpoint when pressed, but when the subject of which race has the biggest dongs comes up, they'll have a bad case of amnesia and revert back to the HBD thinking which they know to be true.

This why you can't convince any of these people with correct arguments about HBD. It's not about HBD. They already believe in HBD! It's about social signalling, and by saying politically incorrect things you are being impolite and low status.

I don't think that most of them are consciously deceiving others by secretly believing in HBD but not admitting it. Many of them simply never think about any kind of HBD to begin with. They have literally never noticed that most of the best sprinters are ethnically African. Others have noticed HBD when it comes to physical skills, but have literally never thought of the idea of applying it to intelligence or behavior. And there are some others who have thought of applying it to intelligence or behavior but have decided that it does not apply. Which is not even necessarily such a crazy decision to make. I personally think that, while, HBD is definitely somewhat applicable to intelligence and behavior, the arguments in favor of it are not as air-tight as many people around here believe. For example, typical HBD views do not neatly explain how the Germans went from having no scientific achievements or large-scale civilization around the year 0 AD to being world leaders in math and science, living in one of the world's most complex and organized civilizations, by about 1900 AD, and they do not explain why I should assume that black people will not be able to do the same thing at some point.

They have literally never noticed that most of the best sprinters are ethnically African.

They obviously notice. A sprinter like Dafne Schippers got a lot more attention because she won despite being 'different.'

I don't think that most people think about Kenyan runners at all, but if they do, they can surely also chalk this up to something non-genetic like life in some parts of Africa just happening to involve really good running training.

tabula rosa

A... pink slate?

This is why you can't convince

You mostly can't convince religious people with correct arguments either; if they (or, more commonly, their children) are persuaded at all, it is usually precisely by status gradients. To the extent your argument works for progressive antiracism being fake, it seems that it would do likewise for religions - but then that fakeness is surely moot, since smart people have lived, killed and died for it in droves.

A... pink slate?

Lol. My bad.

To the extent your argument works for progressive antiracism being fake, it seems that it would do likewise for religions - but then that fakeness is surely moot, since smart people have lived, killed and died for it in droves.

Great analogy. Wokism is similar to a religion in many ways. The beliefs of wokists are fake. Similarly, the religious disputes between Protestants and especially Catholics during the Wars of Religion was fake as well. Do you think the average person cared about doctrinal disputes? Of course not. They might have pretended to care. But not enough to actually learn enough about religion to adequately explain the differences. These were, after all, mostly illiterate people.

So why were they fighting? Tribalism.

A… pink slate?

”Man is born gay, and yet everywhere they are marrying their beards.”

Almost everyone knows that black people are faster sprinters, that Kenyans win marathons, etc...

I think you'd be surprised how many people simply wouldn't even get that far. I've been told by a lot of people that it simply has to do with the elevations of those runners' countries of origins or something. That's all it takes to wave it away, and if that fails, they can always just suss out that you're trying to prove a broader wrongthink narrative, AKA "arguing in bad faith."

Many people won't even believe that male and female humans have different physical performance in sports for any reason but different socialization. Whether they were thinking backwards is an irrelevant question now, because the firmware is now complete and they just have trouble accepting genetic differences being real in general.

Many people won't even believe that male and female humans have different physical performance in sports for any reason but different socialization.

While I find this plausible, I haven’t seen this myself. Could you link me to any actual instances of this argument being made non-ironically?

One time I got into an argument with a woman who would not concede that men have a higher sex drive.

I've seen that on Reddit (from men, even!) and it makes me laugh every time. Granted, it's Reddit so what would one expect, but still. I've seen more than one person unironically try to turn "men have a higher sex drive than women" into "haha these loser virgins think women don't have any sex drive". It's so bizarre that they are dedicated to denying what every generation prior accepted as a basic fact of life (that while women want sex, on average they don't want it nearly as much as men do).

I obviously don't have a transcript, but I've had this argument with my sister many times. She's even gone so far as to deny that men become more muscular than women when both lift weights.

I have dated several girls who refused to believe there are any innate differences between men and women. To the point of melting down a bit when they tried to play wrestle with me and discovered that their exercise regimen of an hour at the gym every day doing cardio and weights was no match for my exercise regimen of lying on the couch every night inhaling chips ahoy.

The Williams sisters at the height of their career versus the 203rd ranked tennis player was a big eye opener for me, he smoked them both with basically no issue.

"Height of their career" is not accurate, neither had won a major title at that stage. They were emerging players. I think Serena was 17 at the time.

Not to say the result would have changed if they had played a few years later, but still.

Invite her on here.

Sorry bro, she's married.

Many people won't even believe that male and female humans have different physical performance in sports for any reason but different socialization.

In my subjective experience here in Sweden this has almost entirely gone away. It used to be fairly prevalent in the late 90s/00s but then both statistics and young teenage boys comfortably beating elite professional women over and over again got media attention and the narrative went away.

Counterpoint: I live in an extremely progressive-dominated part of the US but in over ten years of having lived here, despite the fact that I am more politically outspoken in a heteredox way than the average person around me, I can count on one hand the number of times that I have ever talked with a person who seemed to see everything through the lens of race and white/POC or who made a fuss about my political opinions.

Leftists tend to overestimate how white supremacist America is, for sure, no doubt about that. But I would say that critics of leftism sometimes overestimate how radical the average leftist or progressive is.

To be fair, I think that I have only stepped foot on a university campus like twice in the last ten years, so I don't know, maybe I'm out of touch with how radical things have gotten at those places.

I was the same, until I got involved in some political activism groups. The people who see things this way may be a small minority of the overall population, but are dramatically overrepresented in certain places.

Left-wing conspiracy theories—or at least this one—have been polished by the mainstream media and intelligentsia. If you engage in a deep discussion disagreeing with this conspiracy theory, you could lose friends, family members, or even your job. It's what you are told to believe and incentivized to believe, so, of course, many are going to accept it. Also, what's so bad about the belief? At worst, you're just sacrificing to help out people who were harmed; your standard of living might drop a little, but it's worth it to alleviate the incredible suffering of others. That there are people who are genocidal towards whites is just a conspiracy theory...

I think Moldbug said something along the lines of 'if there are millions of casual, part-time witch-hunters and inquisitors all going on about how much they hate and want to kill witches, then the country doesn't have a witch problem. On the other hand, if the moment anyone comes out to complain about sorcery and they're immediately turned into a newt...'

The answer is simple. What you are starting to notice the lies that underpin the whole secular progressive worldview.

You're expecting social constructs and conflicts to abide by inductive logic when they don't.

You're expecting IQ scores and educational attainment to be proxies for intelligence and rational behavior when they are not.

You're trying to assign value based on identity only to realize that the whole concept of identity is incoherent.

You're starting to notice "the leviathan-shaped hole", and you are starting (if only just starting) to become red pilled.

You know why white nationalists are hated don't you? Because they are losers. Look at who they seek to emulate, the Nazis? don't make me laugh. The Antebellum South? as much as it might pain some of my long-dead ancestors to hear me say this, that dog wont hunt. Like I said losers. Now imagine the most stereotypically racist, and toxically masculine, man that you can. Sheriff Buford T. Justice himself transplanted into the modern day. Now ask yourself what does white nationalism and the dissident right have to offer such a man that he can't get for a better price elsewhere. Why would a man like Sheriff Buford T. Justice want to associate himself with a self-loathing Hollywood Jew like Steve Sailer? or the cavalcade of faggots, furries, and perverts that follow him?

You can try appealing to academic consensus but academia is a progressive feminist bastion and Sheriff Buford T. Justice is suspicious of your fancy city talk.

You can try appealing to strait Nietzsche "will to power" nonsense but Sheriff Buford T. Justice is a god-fearing man.

You can try appealing to simple racism and this plan might just succeed but Sheriff Buford T. Justice, being a southern man, will be sure to point out that not all niggers are black.

self-loathing Hollywood Jew like Steve Sailer?

Sailer isn't Jewish. Fuentes supporters were wilding recently on twitter with accusing everyone of being Jewish, and as a joke most everyone who wasn't with them started saying they're actually Jewish..

So, a meme.

Now ask yourself what does white nationalism and the dissident right have to offer such a man that he can't get for a better price elsewhere. Why would a man like Sheriff Buford T. Justice want to associate himself with a self-loathing Hollywood Jew like Steve Sailer? or the cavalcade of faggots, furries, and perverts that follow him?

Elsewhere? Where are the non-explicitly white nationalist communities that would offer what a 1970s comedy movie character would want? Where are these 'winners' upholding the West's heritage shamelessly?

Where are these 'winners' upholding the West's heritage shamelessly?

All around for those who have the eyes to look.

  • -14

Responding universally to questions about specifics is not exactly a good way to convince people that something exists. "Where's energy? It's all around us maaan."

Come on, at least give three examples. Better yet ones that you wouldn't dismiss as being ridiculous failures.

At this point the only people I see who are taking the Western canon seriously are all fringe pessimists that have long given up on political solutions and are writing about it in the past tense.

Responding universally to questions about specifics is not exactly a good way to convince people that something exists. "Where's energy? It's all around us maaan."

You're not wrong, and yet at the same time how else am I supposed to answer? Dude might as well be asking where all the non-pozzed girls are, the answer is "not where you're looking."

Dude might as well be asking where all the non-pozzed girls are, the answer is "not where you're looking."

That can't possibly be a fair comparison.

People who would uphold the West's heritage shamelessly should be easy to find, as they would fly their colors high. On the other hand non-pozzed girls have no incentive to publicize their virtue, as modesty is a central aspect of being 'non-pozzed', by opposition with OnlyFans or Twitch performers.

So if I'm not looking in the right place for people who are both pro-traditional Western values and proud to display them, where am I supposed to look? Is there a British Empire going around colonizing the world I just haven't noticed?

Why would a man like Sheriff Buford T. Justice want to associate himself with a self-loathing Hollywood Jew like Steve Sailer? or the cavalcade of faggots, furries, and perverts that follow him?

The much larger cavalcade of "faggots, furries, and perverts" on the other side seems to have quite a following, so those chartacteristics fail to be distinguishers.

Basically what @slothlikesamwise said.

That there is a more popular cavalcade to the left doesn't mean he has to join the one standing next to it.

They are distinctives within the right tho, he doesn't have to choose the left but merely not this one faction.

a self-loathing Hollywood Jew like Steve Sailer?

Steve Sailer is not Jewish. His ancestors were primarily Swiss. He has discussed this numerous times. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

He may not follow the Jewish faith, but his mother's Jewish and in a bio-deterministic world that would make him Jewish.

Meanwhile in a non bio-deterministic world, I think that rubbing elbows with producers and being a member of that culture should be enough to mark one as "a Hollywood Jew".

That said @2rafa correctly points out that Ronald Unz would have been a better example. That's on me for not really paying attention to who's-who in the WigNat/dissident blue tribe.

his mother's Jewish

I have never heard this before. Would you happen to have a way for me to confirm that handy?

but his mother's Jewish

Is she? This is genuinely the first I’m hearing of that. Where did you find that info? A cursory search turned up no results for that claim.

That's on me for not really paying attention to who's-who in the WigNat/dissident blue tribe.

You already know what I’m going to say. This seems like Example #846 of you making a bold claim about a figure in your outgroup, and then having to walk it back when someone points out that you made it up or mixed up two completely different people. You keep claiming to have some valuable insight into what makes your outgroup tick, and yet so often your statements about them are not only wrong, but are directly contradicted by reality. You don’t know anything of value about the people you’re talking about, which might be why you have to keep making things up about them.

Where do you find that Steve Sailer’s mother is Jewish?

Given his other comment about “rubbing elbows with producers” - something which I also don’t think Steve Sailer does or has ever done - I’m almost wondering if he has mixed up Sailer with David Cole. They do both write weekly columns for Taki.

I already admitted that I should have used Unz as an example instead of Sailer but there is there no "confusion" here at all. The entire Takismag crew is composed of degenerates.

No, there literally is confusion because you have mixed up two different individuals, attributing to one of them things which are true of the other one. You appear to have been thinking of David Cole, but saying Steve Sailer. None of your criticisms of the one even remotely apply to the other. You can’t tell the difference between them, because you are too lazy and too obstinate to even attempt to develop a cursory understanding of a topic on which you nevertheless continue to opine very confidently. The next time you post another screed about how you understand the Dissident Right than we understand ourselves, I do hope that people will take a moment to recall that you can’t even be bothered to get the basics correct.

I don't think it's certain, but he's apparently adopted and believed as of 2002 that one of his biological parents is Jewish:

Personally, having been raised in Los Angeles a continent and a generation removed from the 1948 Trotskyist vs. Stalinist squabbling at CCNY that obsesses some prominent neoconservatives to this day, all this NYC in-fighting seems a little remote to me. I have one foot in all three camps (I guess that makes me a campstool): I'm Catholic; I've always assumed I'm biologically half-Jewish (I'm adopted); and I'm an Anglophile and an admirer of WASP culture. So, I wish everyone well.

How interesting, truly some archival Sailer deep lore.

Yes, Sailer isn’t Jewish and also isn’t antisemitic by the standards of the dissident right, I suppose he has a minor Paleocon ‘noticing’ thing, but he’s more aligned with Murray and Hernnstein than with MacDonald.

Unz is probably the best example of a self-hating openly Jewish person on the DR, essentially uncritically believing and arguing that every single thing that went wrong in the 20th century West was the primary fault of Jewish people.

Why not try to emulate Israel? They seem like winners not losers.

Why not try to emulate Israel?

Ahh the old "To defeat the Zionist we must become the Zionist" gambit. ;-)

I can think of numerous ways in wich I would like to see the US become more like Israel, but I don't think the BAP-reading RETVRN types are going to like what I have in mind.

Why are we defeating zionists again?

Excellent question.

Hlynka will have a good reason for why Israeli Jews have an interest in their identity, don't worry.

I’ve never gotten the impression that he has a particular fondness for Jews or Israelis, he just doesn’t hate them for HBD reasons specifically. His is almost a kind of Marxian antisemitism, largely cultural.

He is philosemitic, certainly. He thinks people who advocate for white people are losers because "whole concept of identity is incoherent", but it turns out he has a lot of respect for Jews who identify as belonging to a tribe which claims to have been literally chosen by God as God's favorite people. It's a deep contradiction of Hlynka but it isn't his fault per se, he is properly interpreting his own religion which does demand this exact contradiction.

His is almost a kind of Marxian antisemitism, largely cultural.

It's entirely cultural. I actually have a lot of respect for the practicing Jew who actually tries to keep to the covenant and the sabbath. After all, there but for the grace of God go I.

My antipathy is more for a certain sort that seems to treat their status as a member of the chosen/anointed as a substitute for virtue. To paraphrase Ian Malcom, "you have all this power and knowledge, but it didn't require any discipline to attain it, and now you want to sell it, you want to sell it".

Ironically Marx himself is one of the more quintessential examples of the type.

Frequent_Anybody2984 misses the other, equally important side of the equation, which is the conservatives who are so deranged that, even in the face of all these progressive aggressions which you have mentioned, they will still join the Progressive chorus of hateful denunciation of anybody who advocates for the interests of white people. Hlynka in particular is interesting, because he relates white nationalists to progressivism whereas Hlynka himself is better than any progressive at regurgitating the progressive-approved denunciations of the radical idea of advocating for the interests of white people in the face of the patterns of facts you have laid out.

Hlynka himself mentioned being "red pilled", the actual red pill is that Hlynka is playing his role which has been laid out for him within our progressive paradigm perfectly. The left is anti-white, the mainstream conservatives are also anti-white, that's the red-pill, and Hlynka's strong knee-jerk reaction against the idea of advocating for white Americans is proof of that. He's on the same side of progressives on that question, even as the demographic profile of the country radically changes at a historically unprecedented rate, you can rely on Hlynka being there to strongly inform you that you are a loser if you care about white Americans.

The left aint "anti-white" they're Anti-West. White is not a skin color it is a state of mind which is how guys like Tim Scott, Clarence Thomas, and Larry Elder end up being labeled as "white nationalists" by the LA Times.

You're trying to assign value based on identity only to realize that the whole concept of identity is incoherent.

Is it really, or is it just the way it's practiced here in the west? In much of the rest of the world, it's taken for granted and assumed. When LGBT organizers took to the streets in Russia and were banned, much to the collective butthurt of those in the west, it only became an issue here because the wrong identity was the losing side of an issue. Identity is just coalition politics.

I have always felt that Paul Graham captured the modern concept of identity quite well. I can understand calling it incoherent, meaning confusing, in how people argue about it, often holding incompatible or contradictory views. That people try to game social status around the concept of identity does not really speak to the usefulness of identity as a concept when reasoning about the world for any given individual.

Is it really, or is it just the way it's practiced here in the west?

Yes it is. The entire concept of identity as it is popularly described and understood amongst secular progressive types is a load of functionally incoherent nonsense. Not only that, it actively degrades the individual's ability to read and understand social dynamics.

I would even go so far as to contend that; if people were to start approaching identity as a simple political/religious affiliation and not something that has anything to do with the "lived experience" or "intrinsic qualities of" the identified, that this would represent a substantial improvement over the current status quo.

That doesn't really disagree with my statement, I think. Certainly the way it's practiced by American progressives, I agree it's incoherent and a lot of nonsense. But that's a far cry from saying identity itself is bs. And granting as much, it's what human beings do regardless, so I'd say it's better off figuring how how to channel and deal with it than overcome it.

I do not think that it is "a far cry" at all. I think that this is one of the places where the "leviathan-shaped hole" in the discourse is most manifest. There are effectively two mutually exclusive and contradictory concepts of "identity" that currently exist in the same space. That within the identifier and that of the identified. Assuming the goal is to understand, we'd be better off tabooing "identity" entirely.

Assuming the goal is to understand, we'd be better off tabooing "identity" entirely.

I think the practical hope for something like this leaves so much to be desired that it's not even worth spending any political capital over it. We could already count the number of problems that lack otherwise realistic political and economic solutions, but for the fact that people can't find any common agreement or consensus to identify their own self-interest with the importance of the issue at hand. And I think torpedoing things like Christianity or Nationalism doesn't help a civil society in the long run.

People have an identity, whether they want to admit it or not. Societies carry a national identity, the ones that don't, don't exist. There's no such thing as an individual without a history, lineage, common language, ethnicity, whatever else have you. It's a fantasy to believe otherwise. What does lacking an identity leave you with that's superior to a person who has one?

People have an identity, whether they want to admit it or not. Societies carry a national identity, There's no such thing as an individual without a history, lineage, common language, ethnicity, whatever else have you.

Yes, and this is precisely why the liberal fetish for emancipation is so destructive. Having rejected all deeper connections they are left with nothing but the superficial, and thus find themselves embracing social atomization.

The alternative, of course, being subjection to those of higher status they are connected to. Aside from "be the patriarch in the patriarchy", there's no good solution.

Would it be accurate to say that one of the things that makes it incoherent is that they think Identity is intrinsic, not chosen?

I think a good chunk of the incoherency comes from trying to have it both ways.

IE wanting to treat chosen qualities as intrinsic and intrinsic qualities as chosen. Contrast the whole trans-women in sports debate with a senescent white male threatening to take away Mee-Maw's black card if she doesn't vote for him.

Sooner or later something has to give.

I agree with you even though I don’t agree with racism. Politics is simply social power. And the vast majority of people really don’t have thought out positions on issues, they follow whatever the powerful people around them (elders, bosses, authority figures, teachers and professors) tell them that good, honest, hardworking people believe. This is why issues like minimum wage get terrible traction— the only people who care are people who get paid hourly. Trade unions are a non-starter because wanting one is coded working class, uneducated, poor, and hated by the political elite and businesses. Hence people won’t allow themselves to favor them, and would be offended if someone suggested they need one for their office. Go down the list of any issue, and the difference between things that are popular and unpopular is the power of people holding that position.

This is why issues like minimum wage get terrible traction— the only people who care are people who get paid hourly.

This doesn't seem true. Talking about raising the minimum wage and wealth inequality is popular amongst the nytimes reading PMC

Yeah but there’s a reason the federal minimum wage didn’t change much for decades and had its maximum purchasing power in 1968… they don’t actually care that much.

I mean, except the highest minimum wage is in the most left-leaning places in the US. The US minimum wage hasn't raised nationally, because of right-leaning congresspeople.

Related h/t @ymeskhout

This guy is talking about "leftism" as a shibboleth for what I would call radical progressive. People who call themselves "leftists" and hate "libs". Literally abolish the police, end capitalism, Portland / Seattle Black Bloc.

In the above essay, the author is a former leftist examining the pathology that leads to minimizing Hamas atrocities. The latent desire in American leftism to Fuck Shit Up needs a dastardly target to excuse its behavior.

I don't think there is much difference between leftists and libs. The online leftists who hate libs more or less agree with them on almost everything. They pretend to take edgy positions because they aren't actually trying to get elected or affect change, but if they actually ran for office they would be pretty much the same. Look at people on /r/stupidpol who call communists who support trans stuff and identity politics liberals. It's just leftists shit flinging like the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front scene in Life of Brian.

I feel like the core of 'liberalism' is holding principled positions, specifically with regard to crushing people who disagree with you, the Liberal Wisdom is, there are in fact bad tactics.

The progressive liberal conflict, is that progressives think appealing to principles is just a tool of the oppressor, no bad tactics, only bad targets.

The leftist liberal conflict, is socialism/communism vs redistributive capitalism.

This is how I understand these terms in the context of American, and to a lesser extent, Western politics in general.

I’m a liberal and a centrist, and I’ve heard the exact same argument from leftists, but reversed, in that I’m basically a fascist because I support capitalism, am against identity politics, quotas, unrestricted immigration, and am geopolitically pro-Western.

I'm saying the opposite and that most "communists" in the USA (and socialists too like the DSA) are essentially just liberals

There are obviously major ideological differences between DEI capitalists who vote Biden and actual Leninists or Black Bloc anarchists who want to guillotine rich people (including many of the previously mentioned group) ASAP. That’s like saying both sides in the Cold War had the same ideology. Both may have been descended from the same kind of Hegelian narrative, and ultimately from enlightenment ideas about progress, but they weren’t the same.

Stupidpol is just white male leftists who prioritize their interests in the leftist coalition over those of the queer leftists, radfems, third worldists, ethnic minorities and other groups on the far left.

It looks like inconsequential infighting to you because you're distant from it.

Your own disagreements with other people to the right of Mao look like inconsequential infighting to them.

Indeed it's a well documented fact that fascists, liberals and communists all think the other two are basically identical.

The truth is that politics is a great deal more complicated than a discrete amount of ideological groups vying for power.

The truth is that politics is a great deal more complicated than a discrete amount of ideological groups vying for power.

Indeed, let this be our weekly reminder that Identity Politics makes people stupid.

Differences though there may be, I think there's something to be said of the fact that, for whatever reason, liberals seem to hold that the person saying "liberals get the bullet too"/"Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" is their dear friend, and they seem quick to circle the wagons to defend radical leftists who hate their guts.

Liberals seem to be under the impression that the radical leftist is a strawman, that these people are just the same as them, save for maybe being a bit more energized, and that they are having their words distorted. This phenomenon is probably why conservatives say they're the same people. Liberals are all too eager to see anyone anti-right as an ideological ally. See: sanewashing, as with "defund the police." "These fellows seem to agree with me, being upstanding anti-rightists. Surely their words and movement are being unfairly mischaracterized." clueless.png

From what I see, liberals don't think communists are fascists, they either think they're fellow liberals, or flat out don't believe they exist, that they're just an exaggeration used to malign regular old liberals. (Which, to be fair, does happen, and might be their primary exposure to these radical ideas.)

I'm reminded of the Muslim suicide bomber's parents who said that they didn't know their son had become so religious as though that were the inevitable consequence. There is a sense in which leftists are just liberals that take the liberal's ideology seriously, and so liberals have no real textual defence against leftists. When a leftist takes them to task on an issue, they might have pragmatic objections but they can't argue the principle.

I’d say most liberals would argue that there’s no imminent risk of capitalism being abolished or overthrown in the modern west and that the actual far left is a vanishingly small and powerless group of irrelevant people who occasionally smash Starbucks or Chase Bank windows during G20 protests or whatever. It’s not like the denizens of CHAZ were going to take over Amazon or assassinate Bill Gates.

When liberals are actually threatened by the far left it tends to be more of a mixed result.

I’d say most liberals would argue that there’s no imminent risk of capitalism being abolished

That's not relevant. You can take a cultural issue, and the same dynamics will appear - "no one is performing gender surgeries on minors", "CRT is just a continuation of the Civil Rights movement", "feminism is just about equality between men and women". I suppose they try to deploy they same sort of dismissive "there's no imminent risk of X being abolished" argument here too, but it's a bit of a harder sell, when all the top institutions are pushing the radical messages that are supposedly strawmen.

Well no, because beyond deciding who gets into Harvard the far left does have a central, overriding goal, larger than all else, which is a revolutionary abolition of the “capitalist mode of production” ie private property. And again they don’t seem close to this in practice. You can’t have Marxism without Marxian eschatology. CRT while extreme wealth inequality and billionaires exist isn’t the ultimate goal for them, or even a good stopgap measure.

I don't think so. If it was an overriding goal, we'd already have an economic-left + cultural-right coalition. As it stands even the "class reductionist" stupidpol leftists have to signal their disgust with "rightoids".

Their economic goals are at best secondary, and in the worst case opposite of what they publically claim.

From years of reading fact checking sites for my job, this seems true. Snopes liberals fend off right wing accusations implicating and sullying Antifa with incredible regularity. Meanwhile something like smiling Covington kid, Damore and other stores that take off on the right isn't really their beat.


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