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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   24225 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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If US intelligence was most focused on strengthening America's stability, wouldn't they try to shore up American identity? Wouldn't they want colorblind patriotism, the supporting the troops ethos? You want to smooth over divisions, you don't want to create even controlled conflicts. You'd try to subvert and suppress dangerous groups of course but you wouldn't try to suppress the majority's white identity, you try to annex it into American identity.

Look at what Russia does. Rally around the flag, enemies all around us, we're all Russians regardless of race/creed, sacred duty to the motherland... They suppress the liberal/trans/separatist minority rather than the majority.

Here's an interesting article that perhaps deserves a post of its own. There are many things to say about it ("Gorbachev and Yeltsin ruined ice cream, the cowards.") but you get the sense that the state machinery is trying to keep the country together, promoting unity rather than division: https://harpers.org/archive/2024/01/behind-the-new-iron-curtain/

That's not what the US is doing. They're playing the patronage/suppression game, not the national unity game. 'We need more blacks in the Air Force, quotas everywhere, need to fight white supremacy and racism'. Those Stand Down days in the US military to counter extremism, internal conflict over things like migration and national identity.

Wokeness really isn’t very far from what Russia and China do for their minorities; both practice affirmative action openly or less openly. These countries’ governments are both officially anti-racist. Chinese rightists complain online about privileges granted to non-Han minorities; Russian ones complain online about advantages of Central Asians or Muslims replacing whites in Moscow and so on. Russia has emphasized national unity since the start of the Ukraine War, but it doesn’t seem to me more radical than the unity the US had in support of ‘the troops’ after 9/11. The US military’s internal rationale for affirmative action is domestic social unity, that’s why the Supreme Court gave them an explicit carve-out in the affirmative action ban last year.

Do their military contractors have bizarre struggle sessions over Han / Russian privilege? Do their major corporations tell workers to be less Han / Russian?

If not then this is just cope.

Imagine if black people and Muslims in America were allowed to have 4 kids each but white people were only allowed to have 1 child each. That was literally state policy in China until recently. I don’t know how you can say that’s better than the US.

I could imagine it of there was a billion Americans, and it came with none of the self-flagellation. Sorry but there just is no comparison between the two approaches.

I don’t think you really mean that. Would you accept a permanent end to affirmative action, bans on any DEI, guaranteed meritocracy in public and private employment and harsh crackdowns on any racial identitarianism (white or black) in exchange for limits on the number of kids white people could have?

It is simply indisputable that China is more leftist about this kind of thing than the US. The specific flavor of anti-racism in America is largely unique to the Anglosphere, progressivism isn’t.

If the policy was time-limited like in China, sure.

It is simply indisputable that China is more leftist about this kind of thing than the US

We were talking about wokism, not leftism.

Also note how you completely dropped Russia from your argument.

I discuss it below, but it’s hard to quantify the extent to which Putin tolerates the extreme overrepresentation of various minority groups in organized crime in Russia proper. By contrast the modern FBI went after organized black gangs to the extent that the whole culture fractured and the drugs business is no longer even the main cause of internecine conflict in eg. the South Side.

By contrast the modern FBI went after organized black gangs to the extent that the whole culture fractured and the drugs business is no longer even the main cause of internecine conflict in eg. the South Side.

Interesting, so what is the main cause now, if you don't mind my curiosity? I'm not familiar with this situation at all, so I'm now just intrigued.

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