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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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Far Right HBD Civil War

Bronze Age Pervert recently xeeted on what he believes in the current infeasibility of HBD politically:

While for the sake of truth I think facts about racial disparities should be discussed, it’s not good at all politically. In fact it’s impossible in the present circumstances. Only a myth of race blindness is workable. You won’t convince some populations that they are inferior by birth and deserve their station in life. You won’t even convince “decent people” from high achieving populations of this. On the other hand discrimination to offset perceived past discrimination or natural inequalities is also felt to be wrong (although I think it would be relatively easy to convince modern populations to accept affirmative action to offset natural inequalities, which is another reason pushing this with a political intention is a big mistake). The only solution in short run is race blindness, stopping and reversing all racialization of politics and society. This isn’t my own preference by the way but a statement on fact. The “HBD position” is an impossibility politically and culturally today. Public hypocrisy is the only way out that will be accepted unless you are ready to go the Nietzsche and Gobineau route (and you are not).

This was controversial with numerous pundits amongst the different spheres of the Right: with Woods, Winegard, and Fuentes having opposing views.

I think the question of politically feasibility of HBD is a point of discussion, in addition to—perhaps more interestingly—the timing of the xeet by Bronze Age Pervert—wat means? Is HBD the path forward? In the chaos of the Isreal-Hamas war and the current anti-woke backlash, is the vitalist Right looking to make themselves more palatable?

BAP's point is that some people on the right imagine that "if HBD awareness goes 'mainstream', racial spoils systems will end", when in reality racial spoils and denial of HBD are only tangentially connected.

It would be quite easy to have both widespread awareness of HBD and racial spoils systems like affirmative action, because the primary point of these systems is to distribute resources (like well-paid sinecures, social status, political influence) between groups. It's actually a very classically liberal viewpoint to believe that meritocracy must be absolute and that everything should be distributed based solely on talent.

EDIT: As @Ioper says below, this misunderstands the central progressive impulse, which is the drive toward equality. "From each according to ability, to each according to need" is a direct rejection of the idea that talent should be rewarded with a superior quality of life.

And the global viewpoint suggests this, because many nations far beyond the WEIRD bubble practice affirmative action widely even though DEI politics isn't dominant there. Hindu nationalists practice it, the CCP practices it, the Brazilians and Nigerians practice it. Sure, global homogenization is a thing, but in many cases these policies exist for much more mundane reasons than high-minded progressive equality politics, like reducing the chance of explosive civil conflicts.

There's a delusional fantasy among some rightists that if only the (white) public "knew" about HBD, the wool would fall from their eyes and they'd instantly adopt conservative positions on a wide range of policies. In reality, leftist ideas are much more resilient than that. They can justify affirmative action, reparations and so on in countless other ways, and in some cases already have.

BAP's point is that some people on the right imagine that "if HBD awareness goes 'mainstream', racial spoils systems will end", when in reality racial spoils and denial of HBD are only tangentially connected.

His point goes much further than that. I agree with this part of his statement, but the part the DR takes issue with is when he says "Only a myth of race blindness is workable." In fact, the myth of race blindness is what has itself proven to be unworkable. It is a myth that is so recent and so destructive. The idea we cannot move past this myth, at least in an esoteric form among elites, is just absurd.

He is correct that red-pilling the normies on HBD isn't a silver bullet. But the point is we need some other myth than race blindness, a better one. A myth that is more in accordance with reality and pro-civilizational and even, dare I say, inclusive on some level. There are definitely some HBD nerds on the DR that think it's a silver bullet. But the better contingents of the DR recognize that HBD reality is more of a motivating force for why we need better myths to congeal society.

This also shows that certain people in the DR like Keith Woods and Nick Fuentes were correct to publicly point out that BAP is a Jew last year. Now that he is overtly pushing the race blindness for white gentiles and ethnic nationalism for Jews card, it's another notch in the belt of the DR showing its model of the world panning out.

Nobody should be surprised that a Jewish nude body-builder larping as a Nietzschean fascist, at the end of the day, really wants race blindness for the white gentiles and ethnic nationalism for the Jews.

In fact, the myth of race blindness is what has itself proven to be unworkable.

I had the exact same thought. Color-blindness could work for whites and asians, and maybe even hispanics, but it has been soundly rejected by blacks and, from what I can see in Canada, indians (no, the other indians). It's not up to me to say whether color-blindness is the way forward, it's on the populations that have rejected it, and because they have rejected it, I cannot maintain it as a goal or ideal any longer.

The point seems to be that the 'myth' of race blindness is not the central principle of the political left. It's a temporal feature of parts of the left in diversifying western countries. But it's not central - as the shift from focusing on 'equality of opportunity' to 'equity [of outcome]' suggests.

The idea of the most famous modern leftist meme on race - remember this one? - is that only equality of outcome, 'to each according to need' matters. And equality of outcome renders the discussion of causes of inequality largely irrelevant. It could be evil capitalists, or racists, or patriarchy, or HBD, or guns, germs and steel, or some other cultural cause; it's not important, for the left only the 'correction' of these inequalities is important, whatever their cause. The right, whether it's against communists in a homogenous country or against progressives in a diverse one, must make the argument that inequality itself is just, because 'equality' - in whatever form - is perverse, empty, and ugly.

Alamariu isn't rejecting white particularism or supporting mass immigration (or at least it doesn't seem like he is, that would be a pretty big shift), he's saying that basing that particularism on a perceived or real hereditarily higher white intelligence (when compared to some, but not all, other racial groups) is flawed. It doesn't have a powerful cultural message, and is only likely to annoy the many whites who have productive and friendly relations with lower performing minorities. Perhaps most damningly, it would expose far more of the public to the fact that Jews and Asians really are more successful than whites in many fields for genetic reasons, which is part of why many antisemitic wignats spend a lot of time online trying to disprove the substantial body of evidence that suggests Ashkenazim are around 2/3 of a standard deviation smarter than gentile whites.

And most importantly, it doesn't actually alter the political conversation in the US. The American right already has a compelling argument against mass immigration for reasons of culture, economics, language, crime and so on - that's why Trump won. And the problems with crime in the ghetto in St Louis or Chicago or Baltimore won't be solved by 'awareness' of HBD either, they're due to much more mundane issues with policing, sentencing, and the way that criminal justice is dispensed in liberal cities. American conservatives dislike illegal immigration from Central America anyway, what they need is a conservative political elite capable of solving the issue, not one focused on litigating what exactly is responsible for why second generation Salvadorans don't go into software engineering at the same rate as Asians.

which is part of why many antisemitic wignats spend a lot of time online trying to disprove the substantial body of evidence that suggests Ashkenazim are around 2/3 of a standard deviation smarter than gentile whites.

Just as an aside, my interpretation of the studies I've seen was that ashkenazim had a higher verbal IQ but lower visual intelligence, and these differences were largely caused by the same alleles which are responsible for a lot of the sphingolipid disorders that are so prevalent in the community.

The argument made by the more intelligent nationalists I've seen is that the Askhenazim IQ curve isn't so far ahead of the white curve as to explain the disparities in outcome (the gentile population is so much larger that there are more gentiles at just about every point on the IQ spectrum), and that jewish nepotism plays a big role in their overrepresentation in a lot of areas. I think this is fairly plausible, not the least because you can point to actual specific instances of this kind of nepotism and discrimination in regular life - see Ivy league admissions offices penalising applicants for rural activities and jewish overrepresentation in admissions offices.

BAP is saying that a right-wing ethos has to be race-blind because it's the "only workable myth." But where does he think this myth came from? It is very recent, it was never believed at any other point in human history, it certainly wasn't believed in the United States or Europe during the peak of its civilizational advancement. Right now it is hard to imagine moving past that myth, but BAP is trying to steer the right wing away from exiting the orbit of that myth. It's subversive.

I agree that exiting the orbit of that myth is not a substitute for creating a better myth or having that influence gain traction among elite influencers, but it's certainly a prerequisite.

he's saying that basing that particularism on a perceived or real hereditarily higher white intelligence (when compared to some, but not all, other racial groups) is flawed. It doesn't have a powerful cultural message, and is only likely to annoy the many whites who have productive and friendly relations with lower performing minorities.

I agree, but it's a false dichotomy to pretend that the only two options are IQ worship and race-blindness. The Romans had a racial-mythos that oriented society. It was not race-blind, but it also did not constantly harp on IQ statistics. BAP saying that embracing race blindness is the only alternative to HBD evangelism is ridiculous. The Roman system was HBD evangelism without any statistics. HBD denial was likewise not established by statistics and charts but by myths.

So BAP saying the right has to accept the race-blind myth, despite its failures, is subversive.

Perhaps most damningly, it would expose far more of the public to the fact that Jews and Asians really are more successful than whites in many fields for genetic reasons, which is part of why many antisemitic wignats spend a lot of time online trying to disprove the substantial body of evidence that suggests Ashkenazim are around 2/3 of a standard deviation smarter than gentile whites.

That's an overstatement, one minor youtuber tried to take that on but it was widely panned.

I also do not see that fact as damning, as I am not an IQ-worshipper. All that matters is the advancement of civilization, that's the only contest that matters. Jews can test and finagle their way into Aryan civilization and Aryan institutions, but don't kid yourself into thinking income and accolades constitute a higher "achievement" than the people that built the civilization and core institutions which are hosting you. Not many Europeans are clamoring to be accepted into institutions in Asia or Israel or to assimilate into Asian Civilization or (lol) Jewish Civilization. It's the other way around.

Greece, Rome, the British Empire, the United States... The genetic substrate for civilizational achievement, and by the same token civilizational decline, is the actual important insight of accepting HBD, but so many get stuck in the local optimum of only caring about IQ and economic outcomes.

The American right already has a compelling argument against mass immigration for reasons of culture, economics, language, crime and so on - that's why Trump won. And the problems with crime in the ghetto in St Louis or Chicago or Baltimore won't be solved by 'awareness' of HBD either

I think it's silly to say the argument is compelling when it is the argument that has been presented throughout the course of the most radical peacetime demographic transformation in human history. Those arguments are obviously not compelling.

I've already granted that HBD awareness won't solve the problems you describe. What it ought to do is inspire intelligent, high-agency people to search for a better mythos. The subversive function of BAP is to try to redirect as many of those people as possible back into the Conservative "We are the real MLK equal opportunity dreamers" 'opposition' to progressivism.

Ok what’s your plan for winning elections on an pro-HBD platform where non-Whites are at least 40% of the electorate?

If you get rid of disparate impact and all the implicit and explicit subsidies that exist for non-Whites you can totally overturn much of the incentives that have been changing Western demographics without having to go and campaign on a platform that insults half the populace.

There’s a reason BAP followed up his tweets by talking about Kazakhstan and Fiji - both of which empower the native population without HBD as a basis for their actions.

If you get rid of disparate impact and all the implicit and explicit subsidies that exist for non-Whites you can totally overturn much of the incentives that have been changing Western demographics without having to go and campaign on a platform that insults half the populace.

No you can’t. You can probably boost white birthrates on the margins in the short term, but offering them a slightly higher percentage of college professorships because they don’t have to compete with affirmative action will not do this.

Well currently in the US we have more people entering the country via claiming asylum than are being born so that’s a good start there if you want to prevent demographic change.

But a presumably race blind society would also phase out things like subsidized small business loans for rich minorities like South Asians and East Asians which help crowd out majority owned small businesses, government contracting set-asides, DEI departments, affirmative action in the Civil Service, etc.

Well currently in the US we have more people entering the country via claiming asylum than are being born so that’s a good start there if you want to prevent demographic change.

Yes, none(and I mean that completely literally; by the time they get to the US they’re economic migrants)of these people are real refugees, but even if they were deported immediately the US would still become (nonHispanic)white minority eventually. Gotta change the birthrates, and no one knows how to do that enough to take effect- and changing official discrimination will do even less.

No you can’t. You can probably boost white birthrates on the margins in the short term, but offering them a slightly higher percentage of college professorships because they don’t have to compete with affirmative action will not do this.

There's a LOT more affirmative action than a few professorships.

It was an illustrative example, but civil servants and professors- and other typical beneficiaries of AA- are not known for their tfr to begin with. My point was that increasing the percentage of whites in high status jobs is not going to boost their birthrate, which is what you need to do to have a whiter country going forwards. And changing small business loan conditions in their favor won’t either.

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