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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.

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.

What I notice is that this delusional fantasy is shared by many, possibly most, leftists as well, which is what many of them say justifies the immense amount of censorship efforts to prevent HBD from being an acceptable thought. But as you say, leftist ideas are resilient, and it always struck me as both as naive and as counterproductive. Naive because it it takes the most simplistic idea of something like "if people realized people of [race] were more genetically predisposed to [bad behavior], then of course that would lead to more bigotry and racial hatred and dehumanizing of people of [race]" without actually doing the sociological research required to justify such a belief. And counterproductive, because it creates the false notion that the correctness of leftist ideas are contingent on some empirical reality about genetics, leaving those ideas open to appear to be falsified by facts about genetics coming out. And for what gain? None as far as I can tell, since leftist ideas actually aren't contingent upon HBD being false.

Leftists are perennially terrified of rightists, though, it's one of those eternal political dynamics. The right should be more scared of the left, but the opposite happens because the left is more neurotic and sees fascist takeovers as a constant possibility that requires extreme vigilance and action to avoid; the right often becomes complacent in power, the left often purity spirals.

That said, most progressives worried about HBD rhetoric aren't secretly worried it's actually true. Some are, Ezra Klein is probably one of them, but most believe it actually is racist pseudoscience or whatever.

sees fascist takeovers as a constant possibility that requires extreme vigilance and action to avoid

Given the sizable fractions of Western electorates who, based on their placement on a social-axis-vs.-economic-axis "political compass," would likely vote for "fascism" if given the opportunity, why shouldn't they hold this view?

There’s more than a few problems with using political compass (memes or otherwise) as a proxy for fascist support. Sampling bias, for starters, but also “skin in the game” and ability to pattern-match. Cheering for fascist aesthetics on Twitter won’t necessarily translate to votes.

I’d expect very low real-world support for an openly fascist candidate. The American cultural memory is so instinctively against it.

Cheering for fascist aesthetics on Twitter won’t necessarily translate to votes.

I'm not talking about aesthetics, or an "openly fascist candidate," I'm talking about, on the "social axis"/"economic axis" plane, that even though we hear a lot from the "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" libertarian quadrant, that is actually the quadrant with the smallest fraction of the electorate, and there are a lot more voters in the (opposing) Fascist quadrant.