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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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The Redpilling of the American public intellectual?

Being extremely online, using both X and Substacks and having used them for several years, I cannot not notice a process of redpilling of many US-opinion makers, both blue and grey tribe members.

Elon Musk and Marc Andressen are the first obvious examples, with both of them having directly followed and quoted members of the Dissident Rights (Andressen some days ago tagged Covfefe Anon in a post). Musk in particular speaks often with figures like Indian Bronson, Cremièux and Hanania, all of them supporters of the HBD and "liberal-racist" or "liberal-realist" (still fun that we are talking about an Indian, a Jew and a Palestinian).

Then we have the old New Atheism and IDW intellectuals gang like Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt and others. Their contribution to progressive criticism is not new, but from what I see on X, on the wake of the Harvard controversy, they are talking an harder turn. I cannot confirm because it is only an impression from who they interact with on X.

We have the "Silicon Valley Galaxy", the network of Musk-supporters based in California, with people like Mike Solana (another gay man) exorting the virtues of nationalism and communism-bashing on his wildly popular newsletter.

Nate Silver is a very fun example. A gay Jew who, in the last year, took an hard turn against progressivism because of Covid criticism and the purges that came from it, and now on his substack is attacking the left at every turn, attracting the very entertaining hate of the academic crowd on every post.

Also an individual like Noah Smith, while still completely faithful to the Neoliberal project, began to heavily criticize the progressives, saying that they are way more dangerous than the right.

I am sure that there are other names I forgot.

All of this to say that I see a change of opinion of public figures that, in the year 2016, would have been for sure allies of the Democrats against a Trumpian state. Obviously the change of opinion of twitter-based figures, online characters and academic eretics is not a change of opinion of the PMC at large, but for sure is more that the Dissident Right could have hoped for some years ago.

Musk in particular speaks often with figures like Indian Bronson, Cremièux and Hanania, all of them supporters of the HBD and "liberal-racist" or "liberal-realist" (still fun that we are talking about an Indian, a Jew and a Palestinian).

In general, Indians, disregarding our general societal conservatism, are very much "race realists".

Hell, someone asked me if I'm an alt for Indian Bronson. Which I am not, for the record.

The only reason this isn't particularly obvious is that there are very few other "races" in India, it's mostly Indians of different ethnicities with the odd African student going to college.

But that stance does carry over when we move to the West, Indians can have quite negative opinions of other races, especially blacks, though the liberalised UMC 2nd gens have that covered up their integration into the Social Justice memeplex. Certainly in the women raised that way, less so the men.

My relatives in the UK always told me to keep an eye out for congregations of black youths, and to keep my phone in my pocket if I spotted them.

We do however, have sincere appreciation for the local Whites, and other "Model Minorities" like the Asians, even if Hispanics are a bit iffy they're not unbearably so.

The only reason this isn't particularly obvious is that there are very few other "races" in India, it's mostly Indians of different ethnicities with the odd African student going to college.

I thought it was due to the scheduled caste/affirmative action in India being so very strong that the majority of Indians who end up in the West have a bone to pick with the concept of it.

A disproportionate number of immigrants to the West (especially the US) are upper caste, so that's certainly one of the reasons they're unhappy with things, let alone when they find out that being (South) Asian means they're going to be discriminated against again in the States, when it comes to education at least (and woe upon anyone who comes between an Indian and his kid's education).

But Indians, in India, are quite prone to casual racism, especially against Blacks, East Asians, or the North-Eastern citizens of India who look more Nepali/Bhutanese/Thai than they do what you typically think of as "Indian". I will note that by "racist" I mean muttered comments, crude comparisons or questionable/insensitive wording. Africans or African-Americans get the worst of it, though the Indians in the US are usually savvy enough to keep their opinions shared solely within their cliques.

Honestly from having a close friend/old housemate who's very high caste Indian back in the motherland (Father a very high ranking Air Force figure, grandfather owned a ton of stuff), it was always hilarious listening to complaints about bias or stratified society in context of what their family had gotten up to.

As I've said before, I'm not upper class. In fact my descent from my father's side makes me just above the cutoff for explicit AA as extended to the lower castes.

If that has ever advantaged me, I haven't noticed, and it has glaringly disadvantaged me when it came to the AA quotas for higher education, it's at something ridiculous like 66% now, maybe 80%.

Hell, I didn't even know my caste till a biology teacher asked me in high school, because she wanted to pray at a temple for her students and that was somehow relevant. Some on /r/India would claim that's a sign of privilege, but fuck them.

It might be different in the military, which still is a bit of an Old Boy's club, but in general India is quite meritocratic. I am modestly confident that the success of the upper castes stems more from HBD reasons than the system being stacked in their favor, whereas it explicitly is for the lower ones and they're still not closing the gap.