domain:web.law.duke.edu
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
18hr ago
· Edited 18hr ago
Finally, at least one Crimson headline writer and one cartoonist have suggested that I am anti-Semitic. I regard anti-Semitism, like all forms of religious, ethnic and racial bigotry, as a crime against humanity and whoever calls me an anti-Semite will face a libel suit.
Public writers who threaten critics with a libel suit (especially for an evaluative claim like “is an anti-Semite”) always rub me the wrong way. It just seems pathetic, like running to teacher because someone called you a doo-doo face. The cost of having a following for your thoughts is that someone’s going to misinterpret them. If you can’t take that heat, stay out of the kitchen.
I also feel like it’s a lack of humility — if you’re offering up a radical take on race, someone’s going to find serious issue with that. Maybe they’re misinterpreting you. But the cost of a radical reinterpretation is that the people who rely on the mainstream one will find it intensely offensive. Of course you’re going to get called nasty things! You can wear that as a badge of honor, or shriek about it. Only one of those makes you look like a person with the intellectual humility required to actively argue for a radical take.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
18hr ago
Sometimes whichever mod approves his first few posts doesn't immediately spot the pattern. That said, you only see the ones that do get through.
Hieronymus
18hr ago
Your point's a strong one, but I don't think your last sentence lands as the flourish you probably intended.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
18hr ago
My question is simple: How does everyone else with a new account manage to get filtered all the time while he seems to get past it so easily?
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
18hr ago
If I said: "The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the Jewish race" do you think Ignatiev would regard that as anti-semitism? Obviously he would. So you just switch "White" from "Jew" in his own rhetoric and it goes from "moral good" to "crime against humanity."
He would simply point out that there is no example in history, with the exception of the few brief periods in which Israel has existed as an insular sovereign political entity, in which Jewish people have had the power to openly privilege themselves as a dominant racial group at the expense of other groups. Whereas there was a period of several centuries wherein white people — conscious of their whiteness and the way it made them different/better than other people — had both the means and the willpower to travel around the world establishing states in which they were made the supreme/privileged race and others were treated as less-than as a result. And, Ignatiev would argue, this power differential favoring white people has continued to the present day. He would argue that Jewish people simply lack the concentrated power and the racial solidarity to place themselves in a position of supremacy over white people even if they wanted to.
Therefore, there is a context around the claim that “Jewishness must be abolished” — namely, that such a project has been actively attempted multiple times within fairly recent history and had demonstrably catastrophic results for Jewish individuals — that simply doesn’t exist (at this time) around the superficially-similar claim that “whiteness must be abolished.” Even if there were some not-insignificant number of powerful people working together to abolish whiteness, the methods they would realistically have at their disposal would not look anything like large-scale pogroms or the Holocaust or whatnot. White people do in fact still have the lion’s share of the money, the power, the resources, the access to nice things and prestigious employment, etc. Their enemies are forced to resort to more long-term abstract tactics such as tipping demographics through facilitation of mass immigration — something which affects countries on a long time scale, but doesn’t actually produce significantly negative impacts on the quality-of-life of individual white people in the present.
Now, of course, this is where you and I both disagree strongly with Ignatiev, given that we recognize that some ethnic groups actually are quite bad on average and have the ability to introduce a lot of pretty substantial negative externalities in a pretty short period of time when given any power/leeway. That being said, I would hope you can acknowledge that none of those externalities, as of yet, have risen to anywhere near a level of badness comparable to racial chattel slavery, industrial-scale pogroms, apartheid, etc. (You may believe that things could get that bad for a significant number of white people within our lifetimes. I think the probability of this is low but that it’s worth taking at least some basic measures to guard against. Ignatiev believes such an outcome is totally implausible, and that none of his political allies would ever dream of doing something like this even if they could.)
And again, as far as I call tell Ignatiev does believe that he personally benefits from a system of white supremacy. Unlike you, he doesn’t appear to just see himself as “white-passing, but exempt from all the really bad criticisms of white people because he’s Jewish.” He, like most people who are honest about it, recognizes that he’s white in every way that counts, and that this has benefited him tangibly. (Police officers are less likely to apply a heightened scrutiny to him upon clocking him visually. Service staff are more likely to treat him deferentially rather than warily. And so on and so forth.)
Most people, whose “Jewdars” are quite weak, would probably have no idea Ignatiev is Jewish unless they asked him, or unless they happened to have a reason to look up his early life on Wikipedia. Therefore, if Ignatiev does genuinely believe that a visibly white/European phenotype confers material advantages in this country, then he is advocating stripping himself of those advantages. I don’t think he sees “abolishing whiteness” as being in his cynical self-interest, in the way that Ben Shapiro sees pro-Jewishness as in his self-interest. Again, Ignatiev does not seem to have any affinity with the Jewish community, does not seem to wish to avail himself of protection within it while whiteness is being abolished, and opposes the continued existence of an Israeli state where Jews could escape to if they fall afoul of “anti-white” activity.
You, Hoffmeister, accuse me of being an equal-offender racist- racist against everyone
I have never called you a “racist”, and I don’t ever unironically use that word. What I do believe is that your identity commitments are too parochial. That you’re thinking too small by focusing on the centrality and purity of European-derived people only. That you’re unnecessarily excluding millions, potentially billions, of valuable contributors to the human race, because you’re too micro-focused on reifying whiteness.
It's telling then that you are defensive of Ignatiev who defends Black Identity on the basis that it musters resistance to White Identity. So his real position is the precise opposite of what you imagine. He supports using Black Identity as a tool to undermine White Identity
Does he? Genuinely, are there specific passages of his writing in which he does so? I’m not aware of any, although I’m far from a connoisseur of his work. If you have evidence of this it would likely change my assessment of him considerably.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
While this guy's milieu indicates 'crazy liberal' more than 'crazy conservative' there are absolutely right wing conspiracy theories about the western powers preventing black Africans from developing/letting them starve because they're not gay/gender equal enough. Hang out with the people who think abortion is human sacrifice- not as some sort of metaphor but actually literally- and they'll probably share some.
Doctors: Attending to hypochondriacs and prolonging old people’s suffering.
What. For example, what do you think paediatricians do?
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
According to wiki, it's not just a rumour- it's the opinion of the CIA and the Mossad, has been confirmed by at least one Pakistani ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and is treated as fact by NATO.
dr_analog
razorboy
19hr ago
Didn't North Korea have a stupidly large battery of artillery lined up ready to shell Seoul as deterrent?
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
I mean the big flaw in this seems to be that no one in their right mind actually wants a generic sub-saharan African currency. The CFA franc is still in use for a reason.
cjet79
19hr ago
I'm a Washington capitals fan, loved watching them celebrate when they won the cup some years back. The DC area is usually a little buttoned up and proper, so it was fun seeing wild party culture come here even for a very brief window. I remember the caps players swimming in public fountains in the middle of the day with cheering fans and confused tourists from other countries standing around taking videos.
Also Ovechkin beat Gretskys goal record this year, which was a decent consolation prize for them losing in the second round of the playoffs. Some of the players that have been on the team since I became a fan are starting to leave or announce retirements. I'm hoping they can rebuild with a great new team.
Ovi also feels like he is from a different era of sports, staying with a single team for his entire career even though he is a star player.
JarJarJedi
19hr ago
I'm sorry but I vastly prefer "degeneracy and blight brought about by modernity and late-stage capitalism" - aka civilized living in good conditions, decent income, nice job and all trappings of modern civilization - to "mostly functioning nations" (side note - did you notice how "mostly" became the most deceitful of words in English recently? Take "mostly peaceful"...). Given how many people move from "mostly functioning" to "degenerate late capitalist" nations and how many move the opposite direction, I somehow suspect I am not a rare exception.
TIRM
19hr ago
make sure you're promoted into a management role
Lowest level managers are prime candidates for downsizing.
AvocadoPanic
19hr ago
They're not talking about killing current males, mostly.
They are absolutely talking and working towards their goals of eliminating what many people would think of as males from existence. You say this is folly and impossible yet they seem intent on putting forward the effort. I think it's worthwhile opposing this effort with the full force and breadth of capability.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
19hr ago
It's amazing to me how often a conversation like this happens.
"Well, what he said was bad, but he wasn't actually calling for genocide." "So you think what he said wasn't bad. I guess you are pro-genocide."
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
19hr ago
Well, the problem is for SS, all Jews (modulo some tiny fringe who agree with him that yes indeed, we Jews are awful!) are evil.
It's rough! Ignatiev's beliefs are awful. But not Jewishly awful. Still, SS is more sympathetic than Ignatiev.
Eh. They both basically want to eliminate their outgroup. I suspect Ignatiev's agenda is probably not literally exterminationist, so fwiw I find him more sympathetic, but that's like choosing which woman on The View is more intelligent.
SecureSignals
Training the Aryan LLM
19hr ago
I don’t believe that this is what he meant by “anti-Semitism”! I believe he meant a far more quotidian antipathy towards individual Jewish people as a result of their religion or ancestry.
Ok, well let's just take a look at the undefeated Uno Reverso.
If I said: "The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the Jewish race" do you think Ignatiev would regard that as anti-semitism? Obviously he would. So you just switch "White" from "Jew" in his own rhetoric and it goes from "moral good" to "crime against humanity."
Again, why would Ignatiev waste his time writing books and giving speeches about “abolishing blackness” when he knows full well that this would simply introduce massive friction and mutual recriminations within his political coalition? Just to prove to you that he’s not a hypocrite? It’s not like you’d hate him or oppose him any less if he did so. So why should he care about appeasing your sensitivities?
This is funny Hoffmeister. Firstly, I never accused Ignatiev of hypocrisy, he's a Jew who is hostile to White Identity. That's not hypocritical. Ben Shapiro is not hypocritical for strongly opposing White Identitarianism while strongly supporting Jewish identitarianism. He's not being a hypocrite, he's being a Jew who is strongly motivated by his religion and ethnic identity.
But secondly, you were the one who said "In that sense, it is also true that he wants to 'abolish the black race'" without providing a shred of evidence.
In fact, the situation is worse. You, Hoffmeister, accuse me of being an equal-offender racist- racist against everyone, while I accuse you of being even worse- only racist against blacks. It's telling then that you are defensive of Ignatiev who defends Black Identity on the basis that it musters resistance to White Identity. So his real position is the precise opposite of what you imagine. He supports using Black Identity as a tool to undermine White Identity, which is why his ideas found such prominent reception during the BLM Great Awakening. In this way, his position is basically equivalent to the anti-semitic conception of the conniving Jew who wants to manipulate Blacks to get back at whitey. This is literally Ignatiev, but you remain totally blind to this pattern of behavior and the writ-large alliance between Jewish intellectuals, Blacks, and the Civil Rights movement.
You appear to see him more as the consciously-vindictive aggrieved minority who wants to be the next one to hold the whip hand. Is this an accurate characterization?
He hates White Identity, he wants to destroy it- and there's no evidence for hatred of Black or Jewish identity, in fact precisely the opposite. That is my characterization of his beliefs.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
19hr ago
But just as people who want to "end masculinity" and "end the gender binary" are not talking about literally exterminating males, you know perfectly well what Ignatiev actually meant.
This argument would never hold against any other group; women, blacks, jews themselves. We can't accept and normalise this sort of rhetoric. Its indefensible.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
19hr ago
They are talking about eliminating males in a real sense.
Yes, but what they are talking about is folly, and impossible. They think they can literally transform males into something else. But they aren't talking about killing people. As with "whiteness," I don't have to agree with their construction to point out that they are not literally talking about eliminating people.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
19hr ago
while declaring in-kind criticism of Jewish identity to be a Crime against Humanity.
I don’t believe that this is what he meant by “anti-Semitism”! I believe he meant a far more quotidian antipathy towards individual Jewish people as a result of their religion or ancestry. I believe that his frequently-expressed opposition to Israel is part of his larger opposition to the reification of unchosen identity groups. If “Jewry”, as you’re using it, means “Jews cooperating and seeing each other’s fates as inherently tied together, in both past and present, on account of their shared inherited identity,” then yes, I think he pretty clearly wants that to stop.
What I think you’re either ignoring or failing to recognize, though, is that as a leftist he believes it’s important to prioritize. Leftists believe in tackling the very big problem (the centuries-long privileging of fair-skinned people over dark-skinned people, which is still ongoing and still profoundly negatively impacts the latter’s lives) right now, and then later on down the line, once that’s been done, future progressives can start working on dissolving the other, less currently-powerful unchosen identity groups.
Again, why would Ignatiev waste his time writing books and giving speeches about “abolishing blackness” when he knows full well that this would simply introduce massive friction and mutual recriminations within his political coalition? Just to prove to you that he’s not a hypocrite? It’s not like you’d hate him or oppose him any less if he did so. So why should he care about appeasing your sensitivities?
One possible answer is that it makes white people feel bad and defensive when he fails to do so, and that this is bad — either because it is a priori bad to make people feel bad about their race, or because it’s politically counterproductive and unnecessarily makes enemies of a numerous and powerful group. And certainly the latter, at least, is a good reason to not to what Ignatiev is doing, even if one shares his philosophical priors. I was precisely one of those white progressives who got scared off by the explicit anti-white antipathy expressed by guys like Ignatiev, and who discovered a positive white identity as a result. (I’ve since lost some of the enthusiasm I had about that identity at the time, but it was sufficient to ensure I could never again be a leftist.)
Still, there are, demonstrably, plenty of white people who are comfortable with the proposition that whiteness could be fully deconstructed, without that having any serious negative impact on the material reality of their lives. That the hegemonic culture centering whiteness could be dismantled, and that instead of another group taking up the whip hand and using it to take their own turn as the hegemonic oppressor, everyone could just all agree to be deracinated self-inventing individuals. You and I both agree that they’re wrong about this — that there will always be a hegemonic culture in any given polity, and that such a culture will likely always have something to do with unchosen/inherited identity groups. But that’s a testable claim, and committed leftists really do believe that, in the fullness of time, they can stop that pattern from recurring. And given that belief, I think it’s fair to say that they are anti-Whiteness™️ without being anti-White People.
Their main problem is that they are, unwittingly or otherwise, politically allied to vindictive non-whites who are very consciously committed to simply changing which group(s) will be the next up to hold the whip. I see Ignatiev as more of the naïve idealist who really believes this time will be different and we can finally defeat racial identitarianism for real. You appear to see him more as the consciously-vindictive aggrieved minority who wants to be the next one to hold the whip hand. Is this an accurate characterization?
Hadad
19hr ago
Oh, yes, assuredly. Ignatiev's creed is abominable, but so long as he also supports the dissolution of Israel and Black identity or whatever, he's evil for non-hypocrisy reasons. That's a thing SS is good at: finding a lot of evil Jews. The problem is they're mostly evil Jews, whereas he thinks they're evil Jews.
It's rough! Ignatiev's beliefs are awful. But not Jewishly awful. Still, SS is more sympathetic than Ignatiev.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
19hr ago
It’s a Jewish specific thing in this context because Jewish laws forbid that anything that touches something unclean must be destroyed. Christianity has no similar rules. If I hold a race in a church, it might be offensive, but it doesn’t render the building “unchristian” to the point that it must be destroyed. The closest I can think of is hala in Islam or no beef in Hinduism. Reserving the holy things of religion against things that break those rules isn’t special treatment is the condition doesn’t exist for other religions.
The critical problem of getting function nukes is enriched uranium, delivery mechanism can be a truck, like the recent Ukrinian drone carrier
While they don't have the launch codes, by definition nukes must be weapon grade enriched uranium, the big dogs are likely bluffing
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