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ymeskhout  14d ago (text post)   4000 thread views

The Bailey Podcast E036: White Right

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In this episode, we talk about white nationalism.

Participants: Yassine, Walt Bismarck, TracingWoodgrains.

Links:

Why I'm no longer a White Nationalist (The Walt Right)

The Virulently Unapologetic Racism of "Anti-Racism" (Yassine Meskhout)

Hajnal Line (Wikipedia)

Fall In Line Parody Song (Walt Bismarck)

Richard Spencer's post-Charlottesville tirade (Twitter)

The Metapolitics of Black-White Conflict (The Walt Right)

America Has Black Nationalism, Not Balkanization (Richard Hanania)

Recorded 2024-04-13 | Uploaded 2024-04-14

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That was an infuriating listen. The loop was (1) Ymeskhout or Tracing raises some point about the alt right or white nationalism, (2) Walt agrees there's some truth there, but nuance and background is needed, (3) Walt bolts down a tangent rabbit hole that has nothing to do with the substantive point, (4) Midway through, before he can wrap around to the prompt, Tracing gets mad about something in his tangent and challenges him on it. Return to (1).

The least fruitful bailey episode yet. Kudos for both sides being willing to sit down with each other, but man.

I'll comment on just one specific point that Walt/Yassine make vis-a-vis Black crime.

Y: But when you say something like protecting whites from crimes committed by other races, I don't know. What does that mean? Like, are you talking about white [enclaves] -

...

Y: - But how would you protect against that when you say protecting whites from crimes committed by other races how does that look different from just protecting against crimes?

W: I would just say a harsher carceral state in general.

Y: A harsher carceral state for black people or just in general?

W: For everybody.

...

W: In practice, all you'd have to do is crack down on crime more harshly generally, and it would it would mostly be black crime that you're containing. okay but so it doesn't look any different right it doesn't but but the reason you can't do that is because of pro-black like religion basically in america we have this religious political instinct and i write about this in my essay the metapolitics of black white conflict you know my basic theory like we have this like cycle in american history where we alternate between like sort of like worshiping or fetishizing black people and desperately trying to like bring them up to uh like the white standard and then sometimes there's there's a very like vicious sort of uh crackdown on, on, uh, on black people, right?

Yassine asks - what reason is there (other than just simian hatred of the racial outgroup) to advocate for White interests specifically? As he correctly points out - the end state that Walt wants (a race-blind justice system) doesn't obviously require any appeal to White identity.

He's not quite right - as Walt points out, you can't just do race-blindness without addressing the inevitable racial disparity.

But this still doesn't get us to White Identarianism - the (truthful) explanation for Black crime is simply HBD: Black people commit more crimes because of their genetics.

Walt claims that telling the truth would be politically infeasible. This isn't crazy - there's a reason why HBD isn't discussed in the mainstream (and why it's now called "HBD" instead of a more descriptive term like "racialism")

But to be blunt, Walt's proposal of reparations with strings attatched sounds even more insane and unlikely to work. He understands this won't actually make Blacks happy (very soon all the disparities will re-emerge), but he hopes this will catalyse some kind of spiritual awakening amongst Whites, as now instead of abstract differentials in crime rates, the harm caused by Blacks would be concretely manifested as the yearly "Reparation Tax". Aside from the fact that Affirmative Action basically does this already (and hasn't helped reduce tensions), this just sounds too complex to work (There's a lot of moving parts, and each step of reasoning is only sort-of plausible)

So do we conclude Whites should logically just be "race-realist but not racist"? The problem is that even if we could magically snap our fingers to get to Walt's end-goal - this would still be anti-White.

They both talk about being "harsh on crime" as though this just means we turn up a dial that puts more criminals (a disproportionate amount of whom are Black) into prison. But in practice, enacting any such policy basically has to make general society a lower trust (i.e. worse) place to live in. For some specific examples:

  • The fact that "inner city" schools have to include this ugly protection with their vending machines

  • In France, FGM has become a problem To quote the article:

We explain to doctors the importance of examining all children. In that way they can check not just for FGM but for sexual abuse

In other words, by simply having Africans exist in France (and adopting an anti-racist ideology), the native French population must now have their young daughters undergo an uncomfortable, embarassing check-up for FGM, despite the fact that this literally never happens for them (I know this is a non-US context, but I think it illustrates the general point quite well)

Now you could reasonably point out that every example I gave is pretty trivial - I mean it's not that hard to lock your bicycle, I doubt the FGM-check is invasive, and a slightly uglified vending machine still produces the same snacks. But all of these little things add up, to make the environment around you feel generally crappy and prison-like, and maybe more importantly, to make you feel worse about yourself (the vending machine protector, the FGM check-up, the bike lock - they're all there because a generic person, like you, cannot be trusted not to do a smash-and-grab, mutilate your daughter, or steal a bike)

To be clear - everything I said only proves that even race-blind policies (as opposed to segregation, a different justice system for different races, ethnic cleansing, etc) would be anti-White. I haven't said anything on what would be moral (even if you're a White Identarian, the interests of Whites wouldn't be the only thing you judge morality on)

To be clear - everything I said only proves that even race-blind policies (as opposed to segregation, a different justice system for different races, ethnic cleansing, etc) would be anti-White.

Following your argument about Blacks being more likely to be criminals, I think you misspelled Anti-Non-Black, as these policies would affect Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans just as much.

He's not quite right - as Walt points out, you can't just do race-blindness without addressing the inevitable racial disparity.

I think you can, and in fact the US criminal justice system mostly does, I would argue. There is no affirmative action in prison, where we sentence the odd Asian criminal to terms ten times longer than e.g. a Black criminal so that the incarceration rates of different races match the population rates. Race-blindness is very different from equality of outcomes. This could be due to HBD, or economics (I am sure poor Whites commit more crimes (in prison-years) than rich Whites), or more exposure to lead during childhood or whatever. While left-wing people might argue that some of the disparate incarceration rates are due to selective enforcement of laws based on skin color, I think that this is not the case for more serious crimes like murder. There might be the odd case of a corrupt police department deciding to frame the odd Black gang member for a murder to increase their clearance rates, but the median murderer you find in prison is there because they did indeed commit a murder.

Another aspect which Walt did not mention is if the HBD crime hypothesis is true, then the biggest victim in all of it is the Black community, because the lion's share of crime is intraracial. I am a utilitarian. I do not particularly care for the race of a rape or murder victim. Most Blacks are not criminals, and they do not deserve to be raped or murdered any more than a white person. Hell, not even criminals do deserve to be raped or murdered.

Take trigger-happy police shooting unarmed Black men. Utilitarianism to the rescue again. What we want to minimize is the number of innocent fatalities from both cops and innocent civilians. So we want to adjust police trigger-happiness to the point where the first derivative of the total death with respect to the trigger-happiness is zero.

Let us assume a two person interaction. A cop stops a car with a civilian. He has a certain level of suspicion that the person in the car might shoot him based on heuristics such as race, type of car, neighborhood etc. If he shoots and is wrong, one innocent (the civilian) dies. If he does not shoot and the civilan shoots him, he dies with some probability q because he is wearing a bullet-proof vest. If p is the Bayesian probability that the civilian will try to shoot him, and f(p) is the probability that he shoots first given that evidence, the total amount of innocent lives lost in the interaction is:

T(f, p) = f(p)(1-p)+q(1-f(p))*p

Then the first derivative is dT/df = (1-p)+q*p

If we set this to zero we get the point p=p0 where we are indifferent between the cop shooting and not shooting. (1-p0)+q*p0 = 0 p0=1/(1+q)

The optimal f(p) would thus be a step function which is zero for pp0.

Crucially, p=p0 is the point where a cop is just as likely to die from not shooting first as shooting an innocent civilian. Most innocents die at this point, the case where p is almost zero (a cop stopping a woman who is shopping with some small kids) or almost one (cops stopping the getaway vehicle of a bank robber) are unlikely to result in the deaths of innocents because a cop made the wrong call with regard to shooting.

I also think it is fair to ask that cops should act in a way which protects their lives not more or less than the lives of innocent civilians. (If you don't want to put your life on the line for civilian lives, get job at Walmart.)

Let us stretch our assumptions a bit and assume that p is roughly constant in frequency in that region of death near p0. (This is kind of a big assumption. It may very well turn out that most cops getting killed in traffic stops are getting killed in events where there is no warning sign and p is one in a thousand, far below p0 which is at least 0.5.)

In that world, a well-calibrated police force would carry as many cops shot by Black men as innocent Black men shot by cops to the morgue from traffic stops. It also provides an excellent incentive structure. If you shoot an innocent, the price is not that that you lose your job or spark race riots or anything, but that your police force will be made to behave less trigger-happy to the point where that will kill one of your fellow cops, maintaining the balance.

Under these circumstances, and with the relevant statistics provided by the police department, I as a proud grey tribe utilitarian would be totally fine with innocents of one race or gender getting more frequently shot than a different race or gender, just as I accept the fact that I am more likely to get shot by a cop when I get stopped at 2am in a run-down car in a bad neighborhood than I am if I get stopped at noon in a upper-middle-class car in a rich neighborhood.

It's odd that they go round and round on how white identity would sell an anti-crime agenda. It might not on a government level, but there are ways it could work on an individual.

Walt could be clear that being in a subculture where the details and demographics of crime are discussed makes people want to stay in low-crime neighborhoods and be pretty good at predicting which neighborhoods are low-crime. Whether you live in an implicitly white suburb (quite common) or an explicitly white country (the supposed goal of WN), this may be an expression of tribal identity that makes you safer.

There's an issue with white flight, in that it concentrates crime and makes white people feel less responsible for the costs of governing areas they don't want to live in, which includes policing. Leaving the ghetto and then running it as a police state would be an example of the unpleasantness you describe. Imprisoning more people and for longer sentences is certainly the way to get the antisocial fraction out of the way of everyone else.

The cyclical pattern of crime and enforcement has existed about as long as anti-racist narratives have been dominant. We can count the 2010s trough in crime rates as a sort of completing of the cycle, with recent years repeating the mistakes of the 1960s. (Walt mentions in the podcast that it goes back earlier, so likely a reference to Reconstruction and the subsequent "nadir of American race relations.")

Advocating for race-conscious policies so that racial groups with lower crime rates don't need to deal with the consequences of living in a high-crime environment seems like an extremely narrowly scoped argument. Should men between the ages of 15 and 25 be excluded from low-crime neighborhoods too?

Focusing on race, rather than gender, income, age, or (heck), criminality seems rather odd -- where's the post advocating for banning all felons from your city?

Well, just to take this point by point:

  • Age segregation occurs in senior communities. These are certainly safe from young people but impose on their residents a requirement not to house kids or younger adults for extended stays. A larger attempt to segregate people away from young men would probably require society to figure out what it intends those young men to do, especially the affluent ones if it is affluent neighborhoods that would shut their doors to that group.

  • Gender-based segregation is even more difficult due to most family units being composed of people of both genders and various ages. It goes in the niche ideological space of lesbian separatism if practiced consistently, but girls' schools, convents, and other explicitly or de facto female institutions can exist.

  • Income segregation is real in that zoning can exclude cheap housing while the well-off bid up the prices in exclusive areas. This is the most effective method middle-class people have to avoid crime, but it comes at literal and figurative prices.

  • Yes, actually, restricting residence in an area by rap sheet would be popular and maximally functional with a minimal impact on everyone who doesn't have a felony on their record.

  • Racial segregation has precedent (used to be legal) and occurs in part voluntarily due to different lifestyle preferences.

So do we conclude Whites should logically just be "race-realist but not racist"? The problem is that even if we could magically snap our fingers to get to Walt's end-goal - this would still be anti-White. They both talk about being "harsh on crime" as though this just means we turn up a dial that puts more criminals (a disproportionate amount of whom are Black) into prison. But in practice, enacting any such policy basically has to make general society a lower trust (i.e. worse) place to live in. For some specific examples:

Very much agree.

One thing that is not talked about, in the context of high black crime. Is how much higher it actually is than the official statistics indicate. Even before BLM and Floyd made policing minor crime in black areas taboos, it already was not emphasized. Black neighborhoods regularly deteriorated into street parties of teens burning garbage and openly drinking and using drugs. Rapes were and are common, and never reported, in these fiery, but mostly peaceful (unironic use of the phrase), street gatherings. The only thing that gets the cops to intervene is a gunshot, where unless they catch a body, the perp is rarely caught.

Now, try to imagine a scene like that happening in a white neighborhood. You can't. 5 cop cars descend on a house in the burbs because its 10 PM and the music is a little loud.

I used to argue with white nationalists a lot many years ago on /r/anarcho_capitalism and what I found very frustrating is they refused to properly defend their point of view, particularly on the point of who counted as white. The rare time they would say, it was usually strictly people born on the European continent, so Turks in East Thrace were white but not Turks on the other side of the Bosporus strait were not, I guess. Attempts to pin them down on definitions like this were taken as bad faith tricks to undermine their cause and there was not a lot of interest in having real intellectual discussion about the merits of white nationalism. I found I could get them to explain why they thought whites were superior to non-whites, but I could not get anywhere discussing the practicalities of how a white ethno-state would work.

I completely agree that it makes more sense to select immigrants by the traits that whites are claimed to possess. Selecting them based on race is extremely crude.

Walt seemed like he was participating in good faith, but I found he rambled on a lot and would have preferred to have him pinned down more on some of these issues. I think he reinforced my impression of the alt-right, which is not that they were a bunch of super intellectual misfits but that they actually had terrible epistemic habits and were white nationalists more for the vibes as the kids say rather than its intellectual merits. I've read some of Richard Spencer's stuff and seen interviews with him. He's not that smart. I haven't been impressed by anything from the alt-right as far as intellectual arguments go.

I think that's separate from believing in human biodiversity. It's the leap from human biodiversity to white nationalism that I have never found convincing. I think there is a parallel here with communists, who are extremely difficult to convince to enter into a serious debate. Attempts to debate communists are shot down as risking undermining class solidarity. Similarly, attempts to debate white nationalists are shot down (though not nearly as quickly and definitively) as risking undermining white racial solidarity.

Another parallel is how communists put a huge amount of effort into debating theory (though not at addressing the best counter-arguments to that theory as they mostly only debate other communists) and almost none in how a communist society would actually work.

I used to argue with white nationalists a lot many years ago on /r/anarcho_capitalism and what I found very frustrating is they refused to properly defend their point of view, particularly on the point of who counted as white.

Not sure I count as white nationalist, but my definition would be basically "supermajority ethnically descended from the Ecumene", with the cutoffs of the Ecumene being the Sahara in the south, the Urals in the northeast, and somewhere around Persia in the southeast. This seems like the most sensical definition in terms of genetics (Persia, of course, was the most porous boundary there, hence the lack of clarity).

I completely agree that it makes more sense to select immigrants by the traits that whites are claimed to possess. Selecting them based on race is extremely crude.

The usual argument here is regression to the mean. Genes and environment both have effects on phenotype, and it's tricky to separate them. If one accepts arguendo that white people are genetically predisposed to WEIRDness, then when filtering for phenotypic WEIRDness you're filtering more strongly on nonwhites, which means they will on average have greater environmental contribution, which means compared to similarly-WEIRD-phenotyped whites they would have less genetic tendency toward WEIRDness. Thus, their children would be predictably less WEIRD; they would regress toward the mean.

(NB: I am actually agnostic about the main object-level claim here; HBD is not my forte, and particularly among humans who aren't either sub-Saharan African or *nesian - i.e. Eurasians, North Africans and Native Americans - I'm sceptical of claims of large differences given the short timescales involved and similar subspecies heritage. I'm merely pointing out the logical consequences of that claim if one does accept it.)

Why wouldn't the ecumene include Ethiopia and India?

Regression to the mean is an argument for having higher or lower trait thresholds for certain races, but not for excluding those races altogether.

Why wouldn't the ecumene include Ethiopia and India?

My understanding is that they weren't quite as well-mixed with Europe/Mediterranean. Certainly, on a superficial level, it's much easier to distinguish Indians and Ethiopians from Italians than it is Arabs. There's definitely a line-drawing problem in Persia, as I said, because indeed there was a lot more geneflow between the Ecumene and India than there was between e.g. India and China.

Regression to the mean is an argument for having higher or lower trait thresholds for certain races, but not for excluding those races altogether.

Agreed.

A more workable slogan would be "We don't expect you to be white, but we do expect you to act white." They want to be in a society where white American behavioural norms are expected and not being white isn't an excuse.

"We don't expect you to be white, but we do expect you to act white."

By such metric Switzerland or Poland is white nationalist.

Or, South Africa by apartheid times was not.

From about 2015 until Merkel's retirement people were regularly calling Poland WN or worse. I'm not exactly sure when it stopped, but from the Trump impeachment to covid it wasn't a priority and after the Ukraine invasion internationalist types weren't badmouthing it anymore.

From about 2015 until Merkel's retirement people were regularly calling Poland WN or worse.

This does not change that any definition classifying Poland as WN is deranged.

No, I think many want a racially white society where there is a substantial reduction in the non-white population and immigration restrictions based on race. For example, I've heard proposals to split the United States up so that part of it can be a white ethno-state and another part can be given to blacks. To achieve that, you do have to actually define who is white.

Thanks for raising this btw, because I'm doing a Banned Book Review and this exact issue comes up in the text. (Spoilers: the heroes ethnically cleanse the LA area in a rough and ready fashion)

I agree with almost everything you said. If we had six hours, I would've started the discussion with "how do you know who is white?". I tried to pin Walt on some answers about "white interest policies" but there were only so many ways I could rephrase a question. I know a white supremacist I've been talking to for years who has been agonizingly obfuscatory on very elementary questions across many years, so I didn't have high hopes for clarity. Edit: It was wrong of me to impugn @WaltBismarck by association, especially through a connection he has explicitly abandoned.

Do you hold any other ethno-identity interest group to this standard? Or is this an issolated demand for rigour?

Did you ask Black Lives Matter, Ukrainian Nationalists, Zionists, or Quebecois Nationalists to narrowly define Blackness, Ukrainianness, Jewishness, or what it means to be quebecois?

THE ENTIRE POINT of ethno-nationalism is that the core of the ethnos gets to define and redefine and redefine again the meaning of the ethnos so as to advance their interests the exact same way the wokes redefine "oppression"

"How do you define whiteness? What about all the edge cases?"

You define it exactly the way that maximally benefits the core white ethnos that no one contests is white, and then you redefine as new more precise definitions come about that can more readily benefit the core of the ethnos.

This isn't hard. Ethno-tribalism is the OLDEST ideology in human history.

To the extent White Nationalists won't answer you it's because they know the game is to play 20 questions and keep digging down til we're debating the definition of the word "is" when no Irish nationalist, black nationalist, or Polish Nationalist was ever held to this game of defining exact haplogroups. Everyone knows what a pole is, everyone knows who an Irish person is, everyone knows what a white person is... To the extent someone was an edge case it was on THEM to show profound unyielding loyalty to the cause to prove that they were truly part of the group, not on the group to come up with narrow definitions that escape every exception.

"How do we know this won't be applied perniciously or cruelly? How do we know you will be consistent at all?"

You don't. That's what sovereignty means, he who decides the exception. Just as the Supreme Court gets to torture the meaning of words to contort your rights whichever way they feel fit, and mixed race and jewish millionaires get to torture the meaning of "oppression" to grant themselves more and more privileges and punish dissent even harder, the white nationalists will define and redefine white however they choose whenever they choose so as to protect the core of the ethnos and advance the interest of unambiguously white people.

The only way marginal cases can protect themselves from being redefined as "NOT WHITE" and deported is to continuously make themselves assets to the white ethnos, the exact same way on the left white "Allies" have to constantly be the most fanatical advancers of the cause or be attacked and destroyed.

"how do you define white?"

Whichever way maximally benefits blonde haired, blue-eyed people of north european descent at that exact moment.

I hold any ethno-identity interest group that seeks control over a larger group I want to be a member of to this standard. If I sought to be part of a black community, I would apply the standard to BLM; if I sought to be Ukrainian, I would apply it to Ukrainian Nationalists (and indeed, part of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians trying to apply this standard to Ukrainian Nationalists is a nontrivial component of the civil war!); if I were or sought to be a citizen of Israel, I would apply the standard to Zionists, and so on.

I am generally pro-whataboutism, but in this particular case it's really silly to insinuate that being concerned with the exact definition of the WN ingroup and the ingroup of, say, Zionists are at all comparable. WNs want control of countries that I live in, or at least to split off parts of them. Of course it concerns me to know whether I, and other people I care about, will be inside their circle of concern, in a way that is orders of magnitude apart from what happens in some enclave across the world. I doubt that you do not understand that, so what exactly is it you are trying to say? Simply that WNs are under no obligation to answer the question because they will do what is in their own interest and that's their god-given right? Fine, but then I'm under no obligation to stop asking questions or concern-trolling in a way that will make WNs look bad to prospective allies either, because I find that to be in my own interest and then surely that's my god-given right too. Once you commit to that level of conflict theory, there is generally little point in hosting a debate at all anyway, unless you stand to benefit from seeing one of the sides humiliated and expect to be able to railroad the debate to make that happen.

I hold any ethno-identity interest group that seeks control over a larger group I want to be a member of to this standard. If I sought to be part of a black community, I would apply the standard to BLM;

I don't follow. Are you seeking to be a part of a white ethnostate? If not, why are you leaving BLM off the hook?

No, but I seek to/am part of states that WNs want to make into white ethnostates. (Ignoring the part that I no longer live in the US nor was ever a citizen) I don't think that BLM ever wanted to make the US into a black ethnostate, or split off a part to form one, either; and even if they did, I for sure would not meet the definition for inclusion, nor would anyone I know or have care for beyond of the level I have for the generic stranger (as I somehow managed to spend my $many years in the US completely insulated from the African-American community).

To the extent to which they do want to seize control of things that I or those in my circle of care currently have (possibly shared) access to to hand to those outside of my circle, BLM would be a straight-up enemy to me, but how they define their membership in detail is then not so relevant to me. Unlike in the case of WN, they would presumably not try to lure me or anyone in my circles with a dubious promise that they are fighting for our benefit; it would be beyond any doubt that it is not so.

Unlike in the case of WN, they would presumably not try to lure me or anyone in my circles with a dubious promise that they are fighting for our benefit; it would be beyond any doubt that it is not so.

So if I understand you correctly you're only applying this standard to groups who presume to speak in your name and/or fight for your interests? If so, wouldn't that mean all they have to do, for you to drop the question, is to say something like "don't worry about it, we're not including you"?

Sure, that would be sufficient (though the first half of your statement has to be extended to cover groups that want to seize a role that I expect to speak in my name and/or fight for my interests, such as the government of a country I live in). Having that black on white would make it easy, since then there would be no debate that I can treat them as enemies with all that entails. "Either you owe me some clarity regarding whether I'm in your circle of care and to what extent, or you can direct further inquiries to the business end of the police/military representing me" is a binary choice I'm happy to offer.

You might want to protest that BLM-like groups also want to govern, but there the uncertainty that matters for me is fundamentally different. They would presumably claim that they want a government for all, and only intend to stop unfairness that black people currently experience. There is no sense in which fluctuations in their definition of black could become relevant for me; I would only doubt that the "government for all" part would be executed in earnest. On the other hand, the WNs leave no doubt that they do not want "government for all", but the exact boundaries of the set of "whites" for whom they intend to govern would have a great deal of impact on me and things I care about.

To be very concrete, I believe that WNs understand that most whites are against them, but think that given sufficient power and time they could brainwash most of them to support the WN agenda, and kick the remaining ones out as race traitors. The real definition of the "whites" they fight for is therefore "Caucasian + will be persuaded by our propaganda". This is not a very good pitch to those in this set who have not yet been persuaded by the propaganda, and therefore they want to remain coy about it.

It doesn’t seem very fair to call WN as “brainwashing” or “propaganda”. A lot of their ideas seem very truthful to me. It’s probably impractical to make the US Sweden today, but a society like that with low crime and a far larger percent of their population being able to function in the modern world and therefore a higher trust society and a larger capability for a welfare state feels truthy to me. It’s not like they are just making stuff which brainwashing or propaganda seems to apply to me.

It’s definitely an honest debate on whether the US should move in a white nationalist direction (limit immigration, promote western civ, meritocracy, expect minorities to live by white standards, etc). And very honest for Europe to turn anti-immigrant so they do not develop similar problems as the USA.

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This thread speaks to something I really don't like about rationalism.

It is incredibly pedantic and overly concerned with explicit formalist truth/knowledge in a way that doesn't reflect how identity and power work in the real world. It comes off as extremely autistic at times. The fact is that reality is nuanced and messy and contradictory, and virtually all heuristics will be inapplicable to some situations. It's sturm and drang, not high minded spergy debate. As a successful propagandist, I know that irrational emotions and especially the invisible rules of prestige/cultural coding are a million times more powerful than beautifully crafted syllogisms.

When it comes to race--The shoreline of England is infinite if you keep zooming in. You can't define the world in terms of edge cases. Sometimes you need the low resolution filter to reflect how people actually behave. And in a lot of situations people will only use (and very frequently, can only use) the low resolution filter. When you are attacked as a white person, it makes sense to defend yourself as a white person, and not as some New Libertarian Man who exists outside of the world's tribal classification schema.

You might not care about race, but race cares about you. In prison you hang out with the other white guys or you get raped.

When it comes to immigration policy, from a WN perspective there simply isn't a good answer as to where to draw the line and any smart WN will tell you this, but that doesn't mean race is irrelevant. Race is clinal, and whenever you try to chop it up into discrete subgroups you will have to make some simplifications that reduce the accuracy of your model. This doesn't mean the variation covered by the original cline/gradation isn't significant. It just makes creating immigration policy etc. that isn't overly accepting or too prohibitive very difficult.

This is something WNs are very thoughtful about and will discuss internally, but when asked by an outsider it always feels very shifty and bad faith. Thankfully as a former WN who hasn't renounced my past, I can still have those discussions with active WNs in a way you can't. If you look at episodes 5 and 14 of my podcast I explicitly grill them on where/how they draw the line, and they make a genuinely good faith effort that leads to very interesting discussion.

I don't appreciate you trying to frame my rhetoric as shifty or evasive, or trying to "pin" me. I'm not some drug kingpin you're trying to prosecute. We're supposed to be gentlemen trying to hash out how the world works, and these are incredibly complex and nuanced issues that need to be answered in an expansive way with the proper historical and scientific context. Sometimes you need to let someone ramble for a few minutes so they can adequately provide this context, but you were grilling me like a prosecutor with very simplistic and direct questions and it felt on many occasions that you were coming at me in bad faith or with an agenda. I don't think that's what you wanted to do, but I also think you have a lot of unexamined biases.

there were only so many ways I could rephrase a question

I detected in the first few minutes of the discussion that you weren't interested in a broad historical/philosophical discussion that could get into the meat of the issue, and wouldn't let me provide enough context to satisfy a neutral party. I subsequently gave an extremely direct answer to literally every question you asked. But no, I didn't let you trap me into defending something I don't even believe, because I have a much higher IQ than the frog twitter wignats you're fighting with on Twitter, and can tell when I'm being baited.

I know a white supremacist I've been talking to for years who has been agonizingly obfuscatory on very elementary questions across many years, so I didn't have high hopes for clarity.

This reflects an uncharitable and supercilious attitude I think you should work on. Nobody calls themselves a "white supremacist" first of all, so when you say this you just sound like an asshole who won't let someone define their own beliefs. But I know you're not an asshole, so you should stop this behavior.

Second, I am clearly someone who is engaging in good faith in an adversarial environment, and deserve be treated entirely on my own merits, and not be spoken down to because of your interactions with past interlocuters of an ostensibly similar worldview. But you were acting like I was still a WN and were entirely uninterested in my deeper and more abstract thoughts about race.

If you had let me ramble more and actually flesh out my worldview rather than pressing me to defend tenets of an ideology I had very explicitly abandoned I think the convo would have been more enlightening.

Perhaps we can aim for that in a future discussion?

Rationalist hubris is believing politics can be understood 100% rationally. Only to the degree you can place yourself in the heads of the emotionally-driven other will you understand what's going on. It was strange to me you got laughed off/brushed aside so often in the podcast, because your low res filter is much closer to how average Americans engage with politics than this abstract-1000-moving-parts-strict-heuristics-analysis-machine the ratsphere attempts to lug everywhere.

In general I think formalism is a good thing. If we’re to have a debate on the merits of a certain social system or political ideology, we must know what it is that we’re actually talking about. If I’m advocating for “democracy” or “white nationalism” or “communism” it’s absolutely important to know what the terms actually mean. The first reason this is important is that it prevents people from speaking past each other. If “communism” is formally defined as “state ownership of capital” then we can be sure we won’t get lost in the weeds of talking about things that look like communism that actually aren’t like Kibutz or monasteries or nuclear families. It also avoids the issues of changing definitions and snuck premises. If we don’t define Communism, then either one of us are free to change the definition in ways that suit us. If I don’t agree with communism, I can redefine it to be only totalitarian socialism and dismiss everything else as “not really communism” even if it would meet the definition. If I’m in favor of communism, I can do this in reverse and start including Sweden as a communist country because some utilities and the health care system are state run. It also prevents to snuck premise problem where I talk about things that I really wish were part of the communist system but aren’t.

But there is a related problem there where people try to win arguments solely by definitions. For example, you defined communism as state ownership of capital. What about a state that allows for private ownership of capital but imposes very high levels of taxation and requires regulatory approval to basically make any decision?

But that then devolves into a discussion of “what constitutes high levels of tax” or “approval.”

All of those things are important but frequently when I see someone overly focused on definitions they often forget that the map was made for man.

you were grilling me like a prosecutor with very simplistic and direct questions and it felt on many occasions that you were coming at me in bad faith or with an agenda. I don't think that's what you wanted to do, but I also think you have a lot of unexamined biases.

There was no malice at all on my end, and I'm more than open to having any of my unexamined biases pointed out. My goal with asking questions is ideally to reach a point where I can pass an ideological Turing test and be able to accurately rephrase my interlocutor's position. The questions I ask therefore come from what appears to me to be either contradictions, ambiguity, or lack of evidence. I can't claim to really understand someone's beliefs or how they came to form those belifs if I gloss over that nagging curiosity. I understand that any categorization will run into limitations. I wouldn't expect the answer to my question about who is white to come with crisp demarcated lines, but I am nevertheless interested in how someone would try formulating an (imperfect) answer.

Second, I am clearly someone who is engaging in good faith in an adversarial environment, and deserve be treated entirely on my own merits, and not be spoken down to because of your interactions with past interlocuters of an ostensibly similar worldview.

You're right about this. It was wrong of me to impugn you by association and I retract and apologize for that.

Why do you consider yourself a good propogandist? The only thing I know you for are racist Disney parodies and articles that went viral where everyone made fun of you for them on both the left and the right. Didn't you also participate in Charlottesville which basically destroyed the Alt Right? What successes have you had?

I've read a few of your articles and listened to a few of your podcasts and honestly your arrogance is extremely off putting and I don't think I'm in the minority here based on the reactions I've seen online. The only people who you appeal to are people like Richard Spencer who are supposedly on the dissident right but somehow prefer Democrats to Republicans. You don't think this matters because you are only trying to appear to elites but that is simply just not going to happen.

I did not participate in Charlottesville. In 2015-2016 my content brought tens of thousands of people into the Alt Right. I was the biggest AR creator on Youtube for several months. You can learn more here: https://newaltright.substack.com/p/how-the-alt-right-won

Since returning to the public sphere I have built a large and lucrative Substack extremely quickly and several of my essays have gone viral. I can pretty consistently influence discourse in the dissident right and adjacent scenes whenever I want.

It's just empirically demonstrable truth that I am an effective propagandist.

Was your content creation anything other than racist Disney parodies? Please give me an example from this time period that you consider good propaganda that had any impact on the real world. The alt-right had essentially zero new ideas. It was just a rehash of old ideas like the Culture of Critique or Jared Taylor. These ideas had been kicking around for decades, and who is to say that the alt-right really had anything to do with their recent popularity since there are so many confounding variables. Do you think if your "propaganda" never existed then there would have been any measurable difference in the alt-right's popularity?

Your articles mostly went viral for all the wrong reasons. They had more negative reactions than positive ones even on the dissident right. The only places I've seen ay of your articles discussed are by extremely online people. You can only influence discourse in an extremely niche and powerless portion of the internet. You're just a minor e-celeb at best. Say what you want about Andrew Tate, but he is an extremely effective propogandist. Same with Moldbug. Nobody really knows who you are or cares about your ideas. You will have to be a lot more effective before you are an empirically effective propogandist.

I explain how my videos influenced the discourse in my retrospective. Feel free to consult that.

In summary--my videos cemented a lot of memes/brainworms that defined Alt Right culture in late 2015 to early 2016 ("shift the overton window", "don't punch right", "no enemies to the right") and this absolutely influenced tactics on the ground.

These ideas had been kicking around for decades, and who is to say that the alt-right really had anything to do with their recent popularity since there are so many confounding variables.

Bizarre statement. The Alt Right was their recent popularity. Their newfound relevance literally manifested as the Alt Right.

Do you think if your "propaganda" never existed then there would have been any measurable difference in the alt-right's popularity?

Absolutely. I was one of the most influential content creators from this period and I've spoken to literally hundreds of people who said they found the movement through me. This includes a lot of future leaders of the movement, including Richard Spencer's current right hand man: https://x.com/TAlbert0Barbosa/status/1720146998358049043

Jared Taylor would not have had me create a music video for Amren 2016 if I hadn't been one of the most important figures in the movement at the time.

Your articles mostly went viral for all the wrong reasons. They had more negative reactions than positive ones even on the dissident right.

That hasn't been my impression at all. The IDW is currently raving about me for instance.

In any case, my essays have gotten people talking about me and have put thousands of dollars in my pocket. That's the first step to creating any kind of influential platform.

Also, I'd like to note that in another comment you say this:

I'm a long time lurker but I found his post that I responded to extremely irritating. So much so that I had to create an account to respond to it.

Ask yourself why I was able to get such a rise out of you that you created an account just to lambast me? Does that not speak to a particular talent or skill? You yourself have demonstrated that I'm able to inspire exceptional reactions in people.

Right now I am optimizing for controversy because I need to rapidly increase salience, and to that end it's fine to piss some people off. Whenever guys like you loudly complain about me, there are inevitably a few people who are rubbed the wrong way, and a few of those guys will end up giving me views and money.

So I welcome the negative reactions. At this stage all publicity is good publicity.

Just to add on to my comment, I feel like I have been incredibly negative towards you because of my biases. You are clearly an incredibly educated and smart person. I think the disagreement between us is how effective you are. I have read your articles and they are well thought out and make a good point. I just disagree with you and the way you write really annoys me. I don't doubt that you are an incredibly smart person who can write well. So don't take my attacks as anything personal. I fully admit you are intelligent person who has gotten their ideas out there. I just don't like how you are doing it.

So I apologize for the personal attacks. It's just your comment made me have to make it personal. You seem like a cool person. I just hate your ideology and arguments. And I say this as someone who is sympathetic to the alt right.

this is a very sweet and thoughtful comment, thank you!

I completely understand your reaction and don't resent you for it. As I said in my other comment, on some level I am playing a character with Walt Bismarck and want to piss people off. Right now I just need to very rapidly build salience. That will tone down once I doxx myself and can relax into a less exaggerated persona.

I think at that point you'll find me a lot less annoying.

More comments

There is no movement. You can't join something that doesn't exist. And having Richard Spencer and his people like you is not a good thing if you want to be popular because he is hated by everyone.

In any case, my essays have gotten people talking about me and have put thousands of dollars in my pocket.

And there we go.

Right now I am optimizing for controversy because I need to rapidly increase salience, and to that end it's fine to piss some people off. Whenever guys like you loudly complain about me, there are inevitably a few people who are rubbed the wrong way, and a few of those guys will end up giving me views and money.

So the Skip Bayless method.

I'll be honest. I find people like you incredibly distasteful and harmful to white interests and the right in general. You optimize for controversy which repulses as much as it attracts. But you're getting money for your substack and people are talking about you, so in your mind you are winning. I personally think this goes nowhere except for money and attention for you, and I will leave it at that.

I respect this attitude. All I'll say is that I'm trying to quit my normie bug job as fast as possible, and once I can pay my bills via Substack will likely adopt a less explicitly provocative approach. That kind of naturally happens anyway to creators once they reach the 25-50k mark. My public persona will grow to resemble someone like Kaschuta or Default Friend. But it's literally impossible to grow at a decent rate initially without throwing a few grenades.

Even now, I think you'd probably find my overall metapolitical strategy mostly agreeable. I am a very civicminded person and believe in building bridges and talking to virtually anyone. I just like to "pop the zit" when it comes to scary topics instead of letting pus fester under the skin. This isn't always pretty or clean, but my actions are definitely helping to sanitize prowhite / rightist politics. If I can pull any of my old friends out of the ghetto I will be very proud of that.

"Jeb Bush who talks like Benito Mussolini" is kind of shorthand for my rhetorical strategy as well.

I'm approving this comment despite it being your first and only one so far. It's a bad comment, it's nothing but "You suck," and if you just spun up an alt to attack someone you don't like, congratulations, you got your dig in, but if you post more in this vein this account will be banned.

I apologize. I made a response to his response that was also antagonistic but deleted it after seeing this. I'm a long time lurker but I found his post that I responded to extremely irritating. So much so that I had to create an account to respond to it. That being said, it would be pretty hard to respond to that without being a bit personal because he made it personal himself with the "I am a master propagandist" bit. If someone says that, it's difficult to criticize them without making it a bit personal because you're saying no you are not.

I mean it's pretty antagonistic, but his points seem valid enough -- it's not so much "you suck" as "what makes you think you're so great". Which seems like a pretty valid thing to ask somebody who's proposing some radical shit on thin rationale?

If you guys really want a forum of witches, tone-policing the antiwitchers when they make mild criticism of the witches would be a good first step.

Tone-policing and telling people not to be antagonistic has always been a thing here. If you can't call out the witches civilly, don't spin up a new alt just so you can do it uncivilly.

Sure, but this comment seemed civil enough, and you felt compelled to warn it -- think on that for a bit, and then maybe think some more on why long-term quality posters might gradually turn towards antagonism in this realm.

I'm surprised none of them were willing to bite the bullet. Were you specifically asking how the state is supposed to go from 50% nonwhite to 0% nonwhite? They might be a bit more cagey about that part, since nearly any answer would get them banned from Reddit.

The strange thing is that I found the opposite watching white nationalists debate neoreactionaries, where they mocked each other for being overly focused on practical/final solutions and airy theorizing, respectively.

The white nationalists were more likely to say "stop trying to muddy the blood quantum by asking about octoroons and italians, we know there's a point where it becomes arbitrary and theory doesn't need to account for every possible detail."
Not that their "practical" debates were much to write home about, but they did attempt it.

Were you specifically asking how the state is supposed to go from 50% nonwhite to 0% nonwhite?

No, I was asking who counts as white.

This quote came to mind when you asked what is white Nationalism.

A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”

White People - are those who can keep it. Propagate self-governance. Live as free people in a functional complex society

Non-white - are the people who can not self-govern or contribute to its existence.

In the American context which uses an expanding term of whiteness it’s basically anyone who can replicate and reproduce the ideals expressed in the founding of the nation.

That’s stupid. No, worse—it’s a bailey, an attempt to distance white nationalism from the poor optics of boots meeting necks.

Civic nationalism pretends race-blindness right until it comes time to judge whether someone is capable of meeting this nebulous standard. And what do you know, suddenly it’s time to fall back on population statistics and half-assed sociology. How convenient it is to use skin color as a proxy!

That's an interesting definition of white. I've heard "whoever is white in America is American", but not "whoever is American in America is white".

What kind of term would there be for the subpopulation of phenotypically white people who can't self-govern?

Are you referring to lower class whites like Appalachians left behind from their upper class? I guess the peasants of people still get to be what their upper class can you do.

Or are we talking Arabs/Syrians/Palestinians? I guess they would be non-white though by skin white since their societies have never been able to function as a Democracy. And outside of oil money never achieved much.

That is still really vague. I am talking about people who want to restrict immigration based on race. What would that actually mean? Once they can answer that, we can talk about whether that actually makes sense, whether it could work, how it would be done, and whether there are better ways of achieving those goals. White nationalists don't seem to want to do any of those things. But they are decisions they would eventually have to make.

It's not that "How would you decide who is white" would never need to be settled, but it's often used as a gotcha in the exact same way as when trans advocates try to nail their opponents down to a precise fully biological definition of gender and then make a big deal of it when they struggle to handle all the edge cases with a single definition.

The specific way they "make a big deal of it" is to act as if these terminological questions need to be dealt with at the outset, otherwise all subsequent discussion must necessarily be confused. But they fail to consider why their opponents might see their own priorities differently. White identitarianism has gained traction online because of the way whites have been treated. Despite anti-whites probably being more likely than most to deny that there could be any definition of the white race, they certainly see no problem with talking about white people as a monolith.

This where the bad faith accusations are coming from. When a group of people is being attacked, most would agree it's in their interest to organize to defend themselves. Explicit anti-whites can be forgiven for trying to shut this down by muddying the waters on whiteness; why wouldn't they want an enemy that they can organize against but that is epistemically incapable of organizing against them?

More annoying are the centrists who do the same thing: "How can you expect people to give a sympathetic hearing to white nationalism if you can't even define one of the two words in that moniker?" The answer is that it's a peripheral question that need only be answered once white nationalism is closer to the levers of power. It's very easy to classify most Americans or Europeans as white or non-white; that's enough for now. There are factions that might prefer to include, e.g., Armenians, and there are other factions that might prefer to exclude them, and so on for other populations of coarser or finer granularity. White nationalists are aware that nature only provides us with racial clusters connected by gradients, not sharp, one-dimensional boundaries. It's simply unreasonable to demand that a single definition spontaneously coalesce from out of their reasonable diversity of internet opinions. Not to mention that any one definition would look silly and arbitrary to outsiders for the same reasons that white nationalists themselves can't agree on a definition.

That will change if and when one of the factions gains the political edge over the others. Even the hardest of the hard right generally fall in line behind Trump, whatever their personal disagreements with him, because he is doing the most (so they believe) to advance their causes. Imagine how ecstatic they would be if a US president deported all recently arrived, unmarried, non-white immigrants, severely clamped down on immigration, reasserted the accomplishments of white people in the teaching of American history, curtailed the anti-white animus in media and academia, etc. Contrary to the "But what even is white?" people's demands, they wouldn't really care whether some Istanbul satellite made the cut. It's an edge case, it belongs on the edge.

Once WNs have a power gradient to follow, then will be the time to start hardening feelings into policies, a process that will be constrained by whatever alliances and compromises make sense to those people, in those positions, with those connections, at that time. It's understandable that internet randos who know the impotence and arbitrariness of their own opinions are not willing to make themselves the spokespeople of the entire movement.

Even the hardest of the hard right generally fall in line behind Trump, whatever their personal disagreements with him, because he is doing the most (so they believe) to advance their causes.

Counterpoint: I'm acquainted with some far-right folks (though I'm sure Hlynka would have disagreed with that classification) who have been consistently Trump-skeptical-to-Trump-hostile since 2016, though not in the "never-Trumper Republican" way. Some even argue that his victory in 2016 was a product of foreign election-tampering and he was a puppet taking orders from overseas; the whole "Russian collusion" narrative… except for the difference of it not being Moscow pulling his strings, but Jerusalem. That the election this November is "just a show," and there's no meaningful difference between Trump and Biden because they're both "ZOG puppets." (And that elections will remain meaningless until we have a party and a candidate who understands that the only question that matters is "the JQ" and says so.)

Then there was also one guy who argues that all secular governments are servants of Satan (citing Matthew 4:8-9), and that we need a totalizing Christian theocracy; which, in the "correct" understanding of Matthew 22:21 — that only he holds, and everyone else gets wrong — is what Jesus actually called for.

Yes, I understand that they have reasons for not wanting to give a definition, but that still makes it very frustrating for an open-minded person who wants to hear their ideas explained and defended.

It's also quite annoying when a group keeps saying "we're being mistreated so it's only natural we organize and defend white rights and by the way we want a white ethnostate and no we won't say what that means". I have no interest in supporting a movement that refuses to say what they're actually going to do once they have more influence. If you want more influence from me, you need to explain what it is you are trying to accomplish.

And it's not that I have high expectations for being convinced, but I will certainly be open-minded and give it a fair hearing.

The answer is that it's a peripheral question that need only be answered once white nationalism is closer to the levers of power.

I totally disagree with that because the merits of your movement entirely depend on how you define it. If your argument is that white's have certain inherent traits upon which society depends, you do actually need to say who those white people are. I don't see how people can be expected to agree on those traits if you can't agree on who you're talking about.

Once WNs have a power gradient to follow, then will be the time to start hardening feelings into policies, a process that will be constrained by whatever alliances and compromises make sense to those people, in those positions, with those connections, at that time.

That position makes sense if you're already convinced that having a white ethno-state is the right thing to do and that you will personally benefit from it regardless of precisely how the white race is defined, but for most people that isn't the case. They're either belong to one of these groups (e.g. Jews) whose place is insecure or they're white people who don't know exactly what you're proposing and therefore cannot assess whether it makes any sense.

For example, I personally think Jews are a clear net positive contribution to society, while many white nationalists are virulent anti-semites. Whether you include Jews is not an "edge case". It's a pretty important detail that determines how much the sense the movement actually makes. Or what about Iranians? The ones I've met have all been great. It matters to me whether they're included.

Now, to be fair, I don't see myself as likely to be convinced in any case, but I still think it matters whether a white ethno-state means including some of the ethnicities that seem like clear net contributors and more questionable ones that maybe have certain social problems like high crime rates or substance abuse issues. At the minimum, we should be able to agree that that is a very different argument. And you should recognize that the vast majority of the white people are in the same boat. If you want to have any hope of advancing your argument, you do need to work out some of these details. Some other extremists, like anarcho-capitalists for example, I find to be actually quite good at working out these details.

You are partially committing a fallacy where you expect the other side to all agree on an argument instead of having internal competing groups.

That being said the White Nationalist and the CRT/Woke probably roughly agree on who is white. While I agree it can be vague; you definitely can create your pyramids. The wokes usually have an oppression pyramid with black females at the top and someone like Elon Musks at the bottom. You just flip their pyramid. The people you want to allow to immigrate are the oppressors in the oppressor/oppressed pyramid.

No, I'm definitely not expecting them to agree with each other. I've witnessed arguments over whether Jews are white or whether Iranians or Armenians are white. I've witnessed arguments over whether you need to be 100% pure European or whether some lower threshold is good enough. I'm just saying that when you ask any given white nationalist for a definition, they usually reject the question outright.

Flipping the woke pyramid doesn't work because the main question is who makes the cut and is allowed to stay or immigrate to your ethno-state.

As a third culture kid, a recurring thought that keeps coming back to me when I read themotte, is how rare it is for bias to be acknowledged in earnest. I don't know if it's a genuine blindness, an unconscious aversion because the ramifications would be too frightening, or end-of-history-esque arrogance.

In the middle of discussion, people will insert something akin to americanisms, carry on without justifying it, and their opponents will handshake it by pushing back on everything except those assumptions. I don't want to piss off too many, so I'll add that I saw this in sneerclub too. They were guilty of the same as they cast rocks against, only their baseline/anchor point was more mainstream.

Professionally and academically, whites are fairly self conscious about being WEIRD and proactive about acknowledging their own biases, binary thinking, and so on, so it's bizarre to me that rationalists would be reluctant to engage at length about their elevated weirdness.

In this podcast, weirdness in white people does get acknowledged, but it's framed as the reason white people are/were great. This goes unchallenged, so subsequently, a lot of claims are slipped into the omnibus, and the discussion spirals into a case of Woozle effect. Sure, some white quirks enabled western hegemony, but which ones, and why does Walt get to decide?

At 21 minutes, a claim is made that you want people who have ideas at 2am after partying and hooking up with a random girl. At 26 minutes, white fratbro-ism is made out to be an integral part of white exceptionalism. If they say fuck you***, you should say fuck them. At 63min, constant fighting is the secret ingredient. And at multiple points, saying terrible things in the heat of the moment or just to be edgy should be acceptable if not celebrated.

Why is this subset of white norms allowed to represent the essence of white excellence? How do you know this isn't survivor bias and those traits wouldn't be denounced as degenerate behavior by white elites of yesteryear? Or more directly, does Walt, despite his scots-irish background, get to appropriate and define the white label simply because Tracingwoodgrain identifies cares more about his mormon community? It's likely in 50 years some retconned hispanic american will wax on about his latin temperament and machismo as what made whites great. After all, the jesuits and conquistadors certainly pulled their own weight.

***As an aside, why did no one challenge this part? The "fuck white people" articles wasn't the start of history. Up-front pro-white interests had been the norm for centuries. It's odd to frame the soft WN stance as reactive to being mocked by non-whites starting in 2014. You'd never guess this is the culture that can't stop writing Create Your Own Villain stories, and so easily understood "OJ was payback for Rodney King." And also, I really want to point out that these fucked up racial dynamics are unique even among white multiracial societies. Americans have perfected racial mobilization and being maximally edgy, so if that's what Walt sees as desirable in the new republican party, then the 'fuck white people' backlash should be seen as an expected development to the game. Personally I think American salesmanship is incompatible with running a pragmatic racial realpolitik society like Singapore. It would require too much of an identity shift, so even if they pulled it off, would you really call it a win for whites?

***As an aside, why did no one challenge this part? The "fuck white people" articles wasn't the start of history. Up-front pro-white interests had been the norm for centuries. It's odd to frame the soft WN stance as reactive to being mocked by non-whites starting in 2014.

There was only so much time and it was already extremely difficult to stick to one point at a time, it's always a judgment call about which issue to latch onto. I admit that "Everyday Feminism article headlines radicalized me" as an explanation caught me off-guard in the moment.

Fwiw, leftism has made me more race and gender conscious albeit in a way leftists don’t like.

Had some trouble getting through the struggle session of TracingWoodgrains and Walt. Primarily because of how bad Walt's responses were.

No politically 'center' person called out how insane the anti-white politics are since they seem to lack to cognition to understand just what is going on. The principal 'center' response to anti-white hate is individual and verbal. The principal fuel for the fire that is ethnic tension is group based and emotional.

There are groups saying things where the direct implication is 'I hate you and want you to die'. They celebrate the suffering of your group and its demise. They believe firmly that when bad things happen to you it's a good thing, because you deserve bad things happening to you.

It reminds me of a TED talk, where the feminist geneticist lecturer or whatever is talking about the Y chromosome. She gets asked by a man about the Y chromosome disappearing. She laughs it off and says that whilst some women celebrate it, men have nothing to worry about since it won't disappear in at least 4 million years if trends continue.

I felt an emotional response to that question and answer. I realized I don't like the idea of men going extinct. I never thought about it but the idea that a grouping I am made a part of by others is doing poorly makes me feel bad. The idea that there are people out there who celebrate this makes me feel worse. It makes me feel like I have an enemy.

Now please realize that the feminist geneticist did not answer the actual contention of the topic at hand. There are women out there, credentialed academics, holding positions of power, that hate my group so much they celebrate its ultimate demise. Me being told that, actually, extinction will not happen to you personally but rather in 4 million years, is not an answer relevant to the emotional turbulence the theory invokes. Since that turbulence is driven by the fact that there exist people today who are gleeful over the idea that 'bad' things happen to my group. However long in the future that badness will be.

Centrist critique of anti-whiteness takes issue with the expression. Alt-Right critique takes issue with the emotion.

There are women out there, credentialed academics, holding positions of power, that hate my group so much they celebrate its ultimate demise.

If it makes you feel any better, these women, and women as a group, are being absolutely bodied on all fronts by men in dresses.

It is interesting that misandrists manifest in a single way: hatred of men.

However so called misogynists manifest in many ways: MGTOW (which do seem to hate women), chauvinist (who love women but don’t like women in certain roles)

Listening and very much enjoying, nice job

So I read the "The Metapolitics..." article that is linked and while I can agree with its arguments largely, I found this part:

But when a white person has kids with a black person the kids will almost always see themselves as black. This isn’t “the cultural legacy of the One Drop Rule,” it’s the obvious fact that black people have much more dominant genes than everyone else.

...which strikes me as kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense.

The obvious reason those kids will see themselves as black is that the Spanish/Hispanic (and, I guess, French/Francophone) cultural sphere, unlike the North American Anglo-Saxon one, includes the concepts of mestizo and mulatto, and accordingly lacks the legal concept of the white race as the separate and dominant racial group, which originates from Virginia in the late 17th Century, as far as I know. It has everything to do with the cultural legacy of the One Drop Rule. Those kids, if born in Britain, France or Spain etc., will not see themselves as nonwhite, because their societies lack the concept of whiteness as an identity.

That article confused me. It feels like it was written from an alternate reality.

The GOP establishment argued in its famous “postmortem” that Republicans could never win enough Hispanics to triumph nationally unless they moderated on immigration, while Tea Party stalwarts and crypto-WNs claimed Latinos would never be conservative, and would just flood the country like Orcs voting for more handouts at the expense of the beleaguered white middle class, who wouldn’t have the numbers to electorally defend themselves. 10 years later it seems all of these factions were comically wrong in their predictions.

No they weren't. Biden won the Hispanic vote by 20+ points as did Clinton.

He's being really smug about this even though he was factually wrong and anyone can easily check it in seconds.

Biden and Obama did well with Hispanics but Bush did pretty good too, particularly in 2004 (44%). The Romney GOP postmortem assumed that this was because Bush signaled openness to immigration reform in his second term, but I think that was ill-founded.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about Bush to say, but since every republican since has lost Hispanics by an even bigger margin then it at least hasn't been disproven that moving left on immigration would help Republicans. The way to do that would be to have another Republican candidate to the right of Bush who does even better. I think you're right that it wouldn't help much but that's conjecture.

If the absolute best case, once in a generation achievement for republicans is to lose Hispanics by 12 points (Bush), and the normal outcome is to lose them by 20+ points then it seems like the "Tea Party stalwarts and crypto WNs" were proven right that demographics doom republicans to be a permanent minority party.

Not necessarily. The Bannon plan only called for Republicans to win 40% of Hispanics. In time limited assimilation converts some Hispanics to the ‘white’ category, so as long as the GOP wins increasing voteshare among whites demographics isn’t necessarily guaranteed to go against them.

Why would there be assimilation into whiteness when all the incentives are for them to continue to claim distinctive minority status?

And in an era when even whites are desperately fleeing whiteness on every official form, hence the "native American" population exploding.

And Trump is ahead on Hispanics right now. Pledge to make immigration easier and he'd be even more ahead than he currently is.

Assumes facts not in evidence. Given that most Hispanic voters are from places like Mexico and Puerto Rico, and the new migrants are from places like Ecuador and El Salvador, there isn't good evidence that they particularly want those people coming in. Intra-Hispanic racism is very strong, likely stronger than anti-Irish/Italian sentiment ever was in America. It is a big mistake to imagine that non-whites abide by anything similar to the thought processes that govern whites, particularly urban liberal whites who dominate the discourse.

Hispanic vote is rapidly trending GOP and Biden won it by far smaller margin than pantsuit

if born in Britain, France or Spain etc., will not see themselves as nonwhite, because their societies lack the concept of whiteness as an identity.

Press (X) to doubt. They would see themselves as non-white in exactly the same way as if they were born anywhere else that has the internet and english is commonly spoken. Further they will be reminded at every step by their peers, teachers and general adults how much MENA, person of color or BAME, BIPOC or whatever else fancy term for non-white they are.

It depends on the person and the context. As with sexuality, where bisexuality or queereness is a political label more often than not, in an European context calling yourself black or "native" is completely dependent on your political ideology.

it’s the obvious fact that black people have much more dominant genes than everyone else

Yeah, this is obvious BS. There are lots and lots of traits which are dominant and more present in whites compared to Africans, e.g. the gene for Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency (this is what causes favism in such people who consume fava beans) which is more prevalent in Africans is recessive X-linked.

obviously traits that are more physically apparent are more salient to social stigma of interracial marriage

this is a weird gotcha that utterly misses the point

I agree. In Kenya, half-white people are seen as ‘Mzungu’ - white - by natives. Meghan Markle and Barack Obama would be ‘white’, albeit of African descent. Half black kids in Britain have a separate racial category (mixed race), they’re seen neither as white nor black (which is why people were confused when Markle was considered black by the American press). The reason why the author thinks that African genes are ‘dominant’ is that when, say, your white friend (or indeed just another white person in your community) has a half-black kid, the aspects of their appearance that look different from you stand out much more. That’s the same reason a Kenyan would consider, say, Hakeem Jefferies to be white.

The article by Hanania is genuinely infuriating because while he gets it right that a majority of African-Americans see politics through the lens of race, neither he nor the comments can seem to figure out WHY this is. Instead they just shake their heads and go “man, those Negroes, why are they so unreasonable?”

This is a genuine blind spot amongst the right IMO. Because actually understanding the historical roots of this dynamic that might lead to an actual SOLUTION, would require actually engaging charitably with (dramatic pause)

CRITICAL RACE THEORY!!!

(horror movie thunder sound cue)

Which of course, they won’t do.

Are we not missing the kind of Occam’s razor of reasons here.

Black people are more ethnocentric in their politics because under any other system they consistently come out bottom.

Lots of ethnicities have been aggrieved by discrimination and colonialism but have generally gotten on-board with a racially pluralistic form of politics because they don’t consistently come out on bottom, so the situation isn’t bad for them.

No population is ever going to just admit their worse, therefore there must be a more nefarious reason and the simple solution to that reason is for your population to govern.

This is not to say that the legacy of discrimination does not help justify that lack of trust and resulting governing reason, but it is far from the sole cause.

Yes, I'm also considering writing a post about (the loss of) trust which imo explains large parts of our current problems. Blacks have lost trust in whites ever since the colonial era's blatant racism, and only ideologies that strongly denounce this past manage to successfully build a coalition with them. The right has lost the trust in public institutions since many of them blatantly push a left-wing agenda, sometimes even above the interests of the institutions they nominally belong to. Center-left people disgruntled with wokeness don't trust the right with power due to the moral majority & McCarthy era and more recently the rights failures to replace laws and institutions they got rid of with functional replacements.

The same is happening on the country level; Russia, after briefly moving towards the west shortly after the fall of the USSR, has lost the trust in the west due to consistent "will never happen -> has already happened, sorry" Nato-creep. China, India and many other non-western ascendent countries feel likewise betrayed by a western attitude they interpret as "we totally tolerate all cultures, except everything about them that's not about exotic food and funny clothes, or else you're a fascist and we'll punish you with sanctions".

Blacks have lost trust in whites ever since the colonial era's blatant racism

The linked Metapolitics... post actually goes into detail about this.

I was delightfully surprised by the Walt Bismarck post. It’s a level of empathy toward blacks you don’t usually see on the “Dissident Right”

The Alt Right was always empathetic to other races, the DR is far meaner and chuddier.

Critical race theory, as an application of Marxist theory, is essentially a product of white (and Jewish, if you want to separate that out) academics engaging in a project to rehabilitate the post-Stalinist left after the Soviet Union (and Maoist Chinese) economic project failed and orthodox Marxian economics was widely discredited.

It has nothing to do with an inward-facing attempt to understand black people, black identity or black culture. To the extremely limited extent that some black people were involved in early progenitors of what would become critical race theory (and personally I really would push back at the idea that this is what, say, Frantz Fanon is doing, but hey) it was largely about colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean rather than the unique situation that what exists in the modern US.

I don’t think black people are necessarily being ‘unreasonable’ and I think that Hanania would certainly acknowledge that a large contributing factor to the development of a separate, extremely prominent African American identitarianism is the history of slavery and segregation. But the solution doesn’t run through CRT, it revolves around whether this separatism is something the black community wants to change, and even if it is, whether it can.

But the solution doesn’t run through CRT, it revolves around whether this separatism is something the black community wants to change, and even if it is, whether it can.

Well, that’s just the issue right? Defeating black separatism would have to involve a fundamental change in the social dynamics that give rise to seperatism. Namely ghettoization and outcome gaps.

But the central premise of “HBD” is that changing that is basically impossible because we’re just worse than every other group. So I guess we’re just fucked then.

You could do what Europe did to civilize. They killed off the bottom 1-2% of their population every year until those with the most violent tendencies had been eliminated.

I can't tell if this is trolling or just completely lacking in any empathy and interest in giving a serious response.

The right has an easy answer to this. The differences are entirely genetic. Low IQ, high criminality, highly prone to violence. There are no such things as “historical roots”. The problem with CRT is it then inflames racial differences and also proposes solutions that only makes things worse. For example it tries to solve genetic differences with social programs like affirmative action. Which eliminates the meritocracy but doesn’t solve the underlying differences.

Hanania also is a hardcore HBD but has stated fairly directly that you really can’t make those arguments in public. Instead he uses dog whistles now. Like arguing for the meritocracy because he views that as a winning political strategy while using his more direct logic for those positions is a failing political strategy. Arguing against affirmative action is a failure of a policy because IQ gaps can’t be fixed by going to Harvard is a losing strategy. Arguing for a meritocracy because Asians are on the wrong end of the affirmative action stick is a winning a political strategy.

Black identitarianism / nationalism isn’t a product of HBD lol, plenty of groups have a strong identity and ethnonationalism at all population performance levels.

Black Brazilians are of predominantly the same background as African Americans but have a much less pronounced ethnic identity and nationalism.

(2) isn't good evidence for (1) because Brazil Blacks are much more mixed than American, ditto Brazil Whites.

There is a substantially larger mixed population, but no whiter (in most cases) than those most African-Americans would consider unambiguously black.

Can someone speak plainly on what I’m getting wrong?

I generally translate CRT to disparate outcomes is proof of racism and we even had a long post in Racism academically being about the same.

I have no problem with black nationalism/identitarism so long as it isn’t code for special access/anti-meritocracy/criminals don’t go to jail.

Being that he specifically cited no-solutions and quoted Hannania I feel like I correctly identified where Hannania’s position is coming from.

Need to read this: https://newaltright.substack.com/p/the-metapolitics-of-black-white-conflict

CRITICAL RACE THEORY!!!

(horror movie thunder sound cue)

Cute, but it would be easier to believe that attempt at mockery isn't posturing, if everyone in the mainstream didn't flip out when alt-righters apply the exact same theory.

This is why I support reparations: https://newaltright.substack.com/p/the-pro-white-case-for-reparations

On the whole dysfunction of the schools and their criteria. It just seems like the age of the usefulness of higher education as a selection criteria for the elite should have passed a long time ago. It's too legible, too gameable. What we should do to fix them is the wrong question, we need a whole new pipeline. It's clear from the discussion that teaching people things is not really part of the elite college mission, it should be separated out.

I assumed you were being facetious, and I started to write a response about the elite college mission. But it’s possible you’re dead serious, and have some alternative structure in mind. This is why we have a rule about speaking plainly.

In the interest of not misrepresenting you—do you believe elite colleges spend more or less time teaching people things than they did in the 1950s? And do you think that should actually change?

“do you believe elite colleges spend more or less time teaching people things than they did in the 1950s? And do you think that should actually change?“

I did read an article I believe from the Crimson by a student who said no one puts much time into class anymore and it’s all extra-curriculars. I can’t find it right now. But the average GPA at Harvard has risen to 3.8. If you are going to get an A or A- anyway then you do not have the same pressure to put in the work.

https://www.chartr.co/stories/2023-12-08-2-grade-inflation-at-harvard

So yes I think a strong argument can be made that elite colleges spend less time teaching people things and more time building up extracurricular resumes.

I think they spend the same or similar amounts of time, it's just the learning seems secondary to the selection and socialization. All colleges have been suffering through becoming more and more instrumentalized as they become a necessary Goodhart's check box for middle class life. I think this process is downstream of the internet bringing all the contours of the various credentialing systems and their bounties to the attention of everyone. You can see this in the sharp plummeting in the ivy league acceptance rate starting in around the 90s.. If you offered someone either the education they can get at Harvard or the connections and credentials which one would it be more rational to choose?

There is undoubtedly learning at Harvard, but is the point of Harvard the learning? And if it's not, if its primary purpose is as an exclusive club for hand selected elites to rub shoulders then the willingness to throw out merit to service political goals makes perfect sense. And also I'd quite like to burn it to the ground.

Is there any desire out there for a book review of Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann by someone who is not of Walt Bismarck's milieu?

It was brought up in the podcast and address's a lot of what Yasine brings up. But it's also a bloody tome to reread and something that someone without context of who I actually am could use to immediately disqualify any other points I may make in the future. So I'm reluctant to just put it out there.

Why could someone use it to disqualify you? The Wikipedia summary makes it sound like a milquetoast critique of the Overton window manipulation around immigration

Imagine Shinigami Eyes but applied to people who merely engage seriously with an author.

I want to be able to talk with progressive minded people that 2+2=4 without a tag next to my name that's the same as the one next to Walt's and have my thoughts dismissed out of hand.

Good luck, but last year those people said it was racist to think 2+2=4 (can't remember the hashtag for it right now).
It's just not possible to engage without tripping those alarms. Even tracingwoodgrains is on those lists.

Would it be a waste of time to do an anonymous review you couldn't publish?

I'm never going to ask someone to do a book report for free. What would you say are the main points that I would find relevant?

A comprehensive history of how European Americans have imagined themselves overtime, the social conditions preceding each shift, when Reaction happened and how it manifested, leading up to the present day US, UK, & Canada.

In the podcast a lot of your comments seemed focused on Why not sort for the Cultural Trait Directly (The high IQ Ugandan) as well as Why focus on this broadest possible identity group (proxy of a proxy of a proxy). He doesn't really address point 1, but the entire book is about the inevitable social patterns people display regarding point 2.

Kaufmann traces over time how ethnic shifts intensify otherwise dormant identifications (case studies in voting patterns & self identification in the same city at 5%, 10%, and then 30% Hispanic. How previously blase National Symbols become are suddenly realized to be Ethnic Distinction symbols once the population of an area sharply shifts. Tipping points movement patterns in the UK mirroring the US), distinguishes between ethnic stories of 'who are we' changes vs how intermarriage may create more colorism distinctions, uses mono-racial but multiethnic societies as case studies for what happens when societies experience massive shifts over a short amount of time (Northern Ireland, Antigua, Ivory Coast).

Briefly flipping through it again (it's been a few years) It's really a mostly empirical work. As far as I can tell Kaufmann's primary adversary is less the cultural right than the old economic focused left. I'd contrast it with Mark Blyth's "Angrynomics" which makes the old left case for economics as the primary driver of social forces as an explanation for Trumps victory in 2016 and the broader populist shift in Europe. Kaufmann hammers over and over that the cultural conflict over ethnicity explains far more of the data in self-identification, voting patterns, school choice, internal migration, de facto spatial segregation, and support for X or Y policy.

It's most salient chapters for the non-academic are the final fourth and final. Kaufmann both extrapolates what will happens and then also illustrates a few plausible near future scenarios depending on how society responds. His go to example for contrast is Mauritius vs Mexico, which stand in for a closed off society vs an open mixed one.

I appreciate the snippet. It sounds like the book's thesis is essentially about "here's how race and demographic changes influence people's political opinions". I fully acknowledge that people do form race-based identity groups while simultaneously believing it's not constructive or useful. Am I off base?

I'll steelman white nationalism for you even though I'm not and have never been a white nationalist.

One argument that Walt should have made was that tapping into white racial grievances is a good way to win elections (this might actually be false but you can at least make a decent argument that it's true). Look no further than the success of blacks voting as a racial bloc to see how successful the racialized voting strategy can be. Trump pandered to white identity and won, with a surprisingly diverse base, also implying that the strategy is viable. If he'd actually used the phrase "white people" maybe it wouldn't have gone the same way, but Overton windows and cultures can shift very quickly. Whether you like it or not, tribalism is a real and powerful human characteristic that can be harnessed to win elections. in the election-winning sense, White Nationalism is useful.

Whether it's constructive is obviously subjective, but I think even for centrists you could make the argument that it is. Racializing whites and then using that political power to implement policy could be constructive if you like the policy. Crime is a good example, and I think your discussion of the issue was kind of off the mark. White identity politics has a better chance of bringing about tough-on-crime policies than the kind of race-blind rhetoric you and Wood seem to favor. Black people are not going to vote for politicians that want to put people that look like them in jail. This is true despite the fact that the majority of the cost of black crime falls on black people. "Tough on crime" is a racist dogwhistle in the sense that everyone knows it means locking up a disproportionate number of black people. You sort of touch on this and this essay states it better: the effects of these policies will be racially disparate and voters can detect the dishonesty inherent in not addressing that. Walt should have argued that if you want tough-on-crime policies, it's much easier to motivate whites to vote by disseminating videos of gangs of black youths beating up defenseless white people and signal boosting egregious black-on-white crimes than by convincing black people that everyone'll be better off if we lock up more of their kids.

You repeatedly ask the question "what even are white interests?" which I'd answer by asking "what are black interests?" Is bail reform advancing black interests because it helps blacks spend less time in jail or is it harming black interests because it's letting out criminals that will victimize blacks? Obviously this doesn't have an objective answer but it doesn't follow that racial interests don't exist. Racial interests are just whatever the racial voting bloc wants. I think the majority of whites would support complete abolition of affirmative action, therefore it's a white interest even if the actual effects of that abolition aren't necessarily beneficial to whites. This doesn't even touch on governmental spending which is actually quite zero-sum and much more obviously in one or another groups' "interests". Voting as a racial bloc means a much better chance of implementing policies your group mostly agrees on, and forces politicians to pander to you. The black voting bloc has been pretty successful at doing this. I don't see why whites couldn't do the same thing, and I don't see any disqualifying difference between black interests as a concept and white interests.

Again, these aren't my politics, so maybe this doesn't match what wignats actually believe, I just felt Walt could have addressed your arguments better.

Racial interests are just whatever the racial voting bloc wants. I think the majority of whites would support complete abolition of affirmative action, therefore it's a white interest even if the actual effects of that abolition aren't necessarily beneficial to whites.

I appreciate the steelman. I don't claim that racial interests can't exist, it just that they get diluted and meaningless very quickly. A sunscreen subsidy could obviously be a "light-skinned racial interest" because it targets as close to the thing itself. Can you really say that affirmative action is against "white interest" when 29% of whites are in favor? It's probably more meaningful to say that ending affirmative action is a "republican interest" given the 14/74 approve/disapprove ratio compared to every other categorization. The more disagreement you have about an issue within a population category, the less useful the category is on that topic. With race categories, we seem to run out of issues that are rationally relevant very fast.

I think we need to make a clear demarcation between race vs ethnicity even if the one often incorporates the other. The old Yamato Nadeshiko trope is a clear example of something that's like 90% behavior, 10% physical attributes.

So personally I think ethnicity groups are constructive/useful. I think a physical attribute description like race is only useful when it correlates with ethnicity with such overlap that it's meaningful information at a glance. People want the ethnicity information so badly that in monoracial societies people often play shibboleth games to figure out what someone's sub-identity is. Naming conventions/accent is a common one. My sister worked in a town that specifically renamed itself so that anyone who pronounced it as it's naturally read would be immediately outed as an outsider. To pronounce it 'correctly' you had to pronounce it incorrectly. Done after the American Civil War to identify Yankees. And I've heard that in Ireland a way to checking if someone is protestant or catholic is ask them what school they went to growing up. No idea if that information is outdated or just rumor though. But it illustrates the point.

On a racial level if a 3rd generation japanese-american visited Japan I think it's perfectly reasonable for the local Japanese to initiate conversation with him in Japanese after a quick glance and then be surprised when he only speaks English. But it would also be reasonable if the native Japanese looked at the 3rd gen, had a second to process all the other information, the manner of dress, hair style, posture, gait, social manners, nearby company, and concluded 'I bet that's an American'

There is also one other issue of identity groups being useful. And that is the tragedy of victimization on the basis of ones attributed race/ethnicity by others. As illustrated in the movie Operation Finale. A young woman is unknowingly courting the son of Adolf Eichmann. When Israeli agents explain to her that she's at risk to she protests that she and her family aren't Jews, her grandfather was Jewish but her father converted and they are good Catholics. To which the agents respond rightfully 'you think that matters to him?'.

I think it's useful, inevitable even, for people to form identity groups based off of mutual aid against threats they each can't avoid by disclaimer.

I hope my writing is precise. This is such an awful topic to discuss because of the constant ambiguous 2 step people perform going back and forth between race, ethnicity, and individual's position in race-ethnic-cloud-space.

I don't understand the demarcation is, except that you appear to use ethnicity to mean "sort of culture and upbringing"? Like accents and manners? I was born and raised in Morocco but I get clocked as having lived away for decades almost immediately when I go back and visit, so would you say my "ethnicity" changed?

I use race to point towards someone's uncontrollabe physical features. People generally default to height, hair colour, and skin colour but this also includes internal features like pelvic tilt affecting butt shape.

I use ethnicity to mean culture, language, & upbringing. But culture almost always includes an accounting of racial features. A Japanese Beauty is largely a social construct, but it includes notions of long straight black hair. Mormon face is apparently a thing. It would be strange to read accounts of "the ideal Dutch beauty" of the 12th century and find requirements for Afros, even if the other 90% just describes social virtues. Kaufman points out that while many cultures place a value of skin lightness relative to their own norm, they also find the extreme paleness of Europeans to be ugly.

So ethnicity accounts for race, but race is only at most a statistical indicator for someone's ethnicity.

I'd say your personal ethnicity has drifted away from the broader Moroccan core. Different cultures have different notions of what's within their cultural cloud vs what goes beyond the boundary. There are many accounts of people born and raised in Japan still being ostracized as 'not really japanese' because they don't fullfill 100% of all expectations of what it means to be Japanese. Many settler-colonial societies like the US & Canada meanwhile have a much more open conception of what it means to be American. Of course these self-conceptions can massively shift overtime, but there's always a self-conception. I don't know how expansive the Moroccan conception is but i'm sure it's something you've navigated & negotiated about with both your family and with strangers.

I was born in Canada but came to the US in my adolescence. When I go home everyone immediately comments on how American I've become. But most Americans didn't grow up being told to 'Go Back Where You Came From'. And every Remembrance Day I'm reminded of my difference from the typical American. Meanwhile my Jamaican-Canadian-American coworker complains about she feels racially alienated living in America. She misses Jamaica where everyone looks like her. But she's culturally a much cleaner fit into the American mainstream than I am.

Walt has a lot of patience with Tracing.

Tracing chill the fuck out dude

Just an example; “you’re like a communist who still praises Mao”. Walt doesn’t praise Hitler, does he? Nobody expects soft democratic socialists to feel shame about their prior opinions about the bourgeoisie.

Why would I? That tension between his present and his past, and my conflicted thoughts about it, is core to the reason we thought it would be interesting to do a podcast in the first place. We chatted in advance as well and covered some of the same ground; he came in fully aware that it could get combative and was not just amenable to that approach but actively interested in it. Masking my own sentiment towards the alt-right would be a disservice both to him and to listeners. When we moved past that part, I went back to engaging in a milder, more deliberate way, but both have their place.

Walt doesn't praise Hitler, but analogies are just that: analogies. I absolutely would push soft democratic socialists who had histories full of guillotine memes and so forth on those topics in very much the same tone I was pushing Walt. In his own writing, he makes the explicit comparison between himself and liberals who had communist phases, so it's worth exploring that comparison on its own terms.

FWIW, I thought it was fine. Your point was lucid, I appreciated you pushing Walt on the matter, and while you did sound a bit charged, it didn't come off as pointless belligerence to me.

There's a transcript on the Substack page:

And I understand that now you are trying to build a healthier culture, but I think, just like I would say to someone who was a communist back in the day and then softened towards liberalism but still loved their communist phase and still talked about how proud they were about cheering on Mao Zedong and so forth, I would say, no, screw that. Mao Zedong was evil. If you want to join a different side, you have to join a different side.

Analogies are not meant to perfectly map, and Hitler never came up in the discussion.

He took a lot of liberty with that here. He’s also being very emotional while saying this.

And yeah, maybe if Hitler did come up the Mao analogy would have been better.

I find it a bit odd that while John Hajnal has a (concise but detailed) Wikipedia entry, but the Hajnal Line as a concept, in fact, does not, and instead redirects to an entry seemingly arbitrarily entitled "Western European marriage pattern", which appears to have been put together by leftist activists. This applies even more to the entry on Werner Conze, which it links to.

I also find it very odd that Hajnal has no entries in either German, Hungarian or Hebrew on Wikipedia, even though he was the son of Hungarian Jews who moved to Weimar Germany.

On a related note, I find it odd that nuptiality as such has no Wikipedia entry at all, and only has a very short and imprecise entry in online dictionaries. I'm no scholar, but as far as I know, the scientific definition of nuptiality as a concept in demographic studies is the rate of fertile women within a population. As such, the nuptiality rate and its projected change is absolutely crucial to the demographic future of any society.

Here is the article immediately before it was merged, and here is the article as it appeared in March of 2021, before an activist editor significantly changed it, summarizing his changes as follows: “Per talk page request, adding content to reduce bias in the article toward Hajnal'a theory, as well as to mention the racialist history of this research.”

This editor’s Wikipedia user page gives some insight into his views and editing motivations: “I am primarily interested in the documented history and photography of American small towns and railroads. Most of my activity on Wikipedia would consist of edits of that nature; if it weren't for the fact that I seem to find myself entrenched in lengthy disputes over culture-related articles; typically with trolls. I adamantly oppose the rise of racism, HBD, bio'truth', nationalism and jingoism, and I consider these to be the most compelling threats of our time to human dignity and safety.”

Thanks for digging this up. I assumed it went down something like this.

I linked to the Wikitionary entry for Hajnal line, but it's a mistake on my end to rely on Wikipedia as a source here. I default to linking to Wikipedia which works fine as a starting point for more information for almost every topic but because I'm not steeped in the race & IQ sphere, I had forgotten how zealous the Wikipedia editors have been on "sanitizing" this particular topic (I'm fairly sure there was a motte effortpost that convincingly outlined how insane the editors had gotten). If you have a better source to link to, let me know.

The title "Western European marriage pattern" is muc more accruate to the actual concept. Walt describes eg Ireland as trans-Hajnal, but if you actually look at the line (in red), it's clear that Ireland is on the West of the line, and is only devided from "cis-Hajnals" by an different line. What is important about the concept is the region, not the boundary. So it makes sense to name the article for the characteristics of the region. As for the content, it doesn't seem too argumentative. It throws in a line shitting on WNs, which is to be expected. But for the rest of the argument it seems pretty neutral. Acknowledging that the theory is accepted by some scolars and rejected by others.

I'm a bit confused by this concept. Elsewhere, I've read that Scotland should also be on the other side of the line. Is this actually a robust concept and does it really explain anything?

A couple of points.

The entry rather dubiously calls Hajnal a Holocaust survivor and strident anti-fascist. The Wikipedia entry on him certainly includes nothing about his supposed anti-fascist activism, and says this:

In 1936 his parents left Nazi Germany, and placed him in a Quaker school in the Dutch countryside while they arranged to settle in Britain. In 1937, John was reunited with his parents in London, where he attended University College School, Hampstead.

Also, stating that “his theory has been warmly received and heavily promoted by Neo-Nazis, and the alt-right”, and citing as proof an 1983(!) essay from a scientific journal, which is obviously inaccessible without a subscription and whatnot, plus a 2020 monography without page numbers included, is rather suspect.

The last part of the entry entitled “Precursor to theory” is pure nonsense. The idea that a man had great ideological influence on genocidal Nazi policies in occupied Eastern European lands, even though he was a mere infantry captain of the Wehrmacht, serving on the Eastern Front until getting wounded in 1944, and was thus barred from taking his nominal seat as professor of some newly-founded Nazi university (that doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry in English), which would be the sole potential basis for even calling him a Nazi ideologist/theoretician (other than the sociology articles he wrote before, which apparently all focus on Jewish influence in Poland, the Baltics etc., which has scarcely anything to do with the concept of the Hajnal Line), is hardly anything but ideologically motivated baseless garbage.

But anyway, merging the existing Wiki entry on the Hajnal Line, which I’m sure existed at some point, with this particular one, which admittedly cites lots of demographic data but is needlessly verbose in my view, and pointedly fails to go into a similar level of detail about Eastern European patterns, is definitely suspect.

Having now read more of the entry, I agree the article is fine as a starting point. I vaguely knew about the Hajnal line map, but my limited familiarity made the lines seem arbitrary to me, and I didn't know it stemmed from particular marriage patterns.

Here is a good summary on the Hajnal Line from HBD Chick and this goes into greater detail about some of the particulars.

I'd recommend starting there.

That's the standard way for organized leftists to 1984 something from Wikipedia. Vote to merge the article in question with another semi-related article. Move over some of the content, redirect old links, delete the original article. Then vote to minimize and delete the moved over content as it doesn't really fit with the new article.

Every step can be argued as neutral, but the end result isn't.

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On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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