OliveTapenade
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User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
23hr ago
Well, I don't think it's meritorious to confidently expound on a matter that I - and you - are ignorant of. Honest doubt is superior to confidently propounding a narrative that's not grounded in evidence. Otherwise we end up just doing this. I don't personally have a macro theory of prehistory, and I don't think I need one in order to question someone else's.
What I suggest is that macro theories like this are usually made far in excess of actual evidence, and therefore tend to reflect a combination of the ideological biases of the theorist and what audiences find narratively compelling. I interpret what you've written as a variant on the Gobineau/Grant Nordicist theory, and I think that theory has been successful because it's flattering to the people who made and received it and because it's aesthetically or narratively compelling. It's in your very title here - 'The Race of Kings'. Narratives about an ancient group of super-people have weight and heft to them. Poetry. Conan the Cimmerian has an appeal to him.
But let me compare a different narrative - say, Gimbutas' Civilisation of the Goddess, and the Great Goddess hypothesis in general. The Great Goddess narrative in some ways complements your own; the primary difference is who the protagonists or the good guys are, with the Goddess people postulating an indigenous egalitarian society rooted in feminine wisdom that was overcome by evil horse-riding militant patriarchalists. Even so, I think it's fair to be very skeptical of the Great Goddess people. The theory has a certain poetic resonance, a thrill for the soul, as is undeniable if you ever read Robert Graves, but that is insufficient to commend it for actual belief.
I take Belloc's parody as useful because, as the saying goes, you can't reason someone out of a position that they were never reasoned into. If someone was enchanted into a position, you have to enchant them out of it again.
What was prehistoric human civilisation like? I'm not entirely sure. There's some archaeological and genetic evidence, and I have some guesses, but they are not particularly confident guesses. The point I want to make here, however, is that we should resist the lure of poetry. I think what you're writing here is not a dispassionate survey of historical evidence, but rather a story. Honestly, I think it'd be more productive to respond to your narrative in literary terms, rather than historical.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
To be fair, I don't read you in the OP as making a substantive argument either.
What's in the OP is a story or a narrative. But anybody can tell a story about history. What would make it an argument is some reason to believe that it's true or useful.
HereAndGone presents Belloc's parody of that story. Belloc also does not, strictly speaking, make an argument. But I think his response is insightful, because the appeal of, for lack of a better term, the Aryan story is that it feels powerful. It fits with intuitions; it's poetic. It conjures up the image of the horse-riding, fire-guarding, sky-worshipping chain of fathers and sons that rode out of the steppes to conquer the world. Seeing the man on the horse is something difficult to unsee. Truth and evidence are beside the point if it resonates with the soul.
So what Belloc does is take that same story and make it look absurd. His doggerel is counter-poetry. Instead of seeing the great conqueror on a horse, you see the absurd pretensions of 20th century racialists, midwit eggheads concocting silly fables in defiance of what is plainly visible among the people.
It's a war of memes, and it's being argued on that level.
But if what you want is to know how the human race and human civilisation actually developed...
Go somewhere else. None of this is that.
OliveTapenade
4d ago
That seems a rather uncharitable interpretation? He said that Floyd hagiography ≥ Kirk hagiography, and that seems very hard to argue against to me.
OliveTapenade
4d ago
I do think he's in the process of being exaggerated and caricatured in absurd ways - I came across this piece earlier today and I do think it's significantly overestimating him. I don't think Kirk was the Devil or a fascist or anything like that, but I do think he was an opportunist who thrived on provoking outrage and overreaction, and whose actual views were an interesting combination of chamelonic and exaggerated. His position changed regularly depending on who it was most profitable to suck up to as a young right-wing activist.
He shouldn't have been killed. What happened to him was a tragedy. But just because a tragedy happened to someone does not provide that person with any more insight or virtue than he possessed before it happened.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
I'd argue that vocal activists themselves are a tiny minority. My anecdotal experience has been that most trans people on the street find this academic language strange and alienating, and do not themselves have a very well-developed concept of gender identity. Like most people, they kludge it together out of a slurry of experiences and half-remembered concepts received from others.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
Wouldn't they? Isn't that a textbook example of queering the gender binary?
OliveTapenade
6d ago
I would find it difficult to imagine a comprehensive transhumanism that doesn't implicitly include transgenderism. From some years back I remember "morphological freedom" as a transhumanist talking point, and there's no particular way to cash that out that doesn't validate transgenderism. If one of one's goals is complete personal and bodily autonomy, well, you get transgenderism thrown in for free.
I don't think I agree with this position as a normative good, but it is an intellectually consistent one, in a way that I think some of the transgenderism arguments today are not. Morphological freedom also includes, for instance, transracialism for free, even though progressive orthodoxy validates transgenderism but not transracialism.
Perhaps a transhumanist might argue that morphological freedom and individual autonomy extends to the right to make your physical body anything you desire, including everything from sexual organs to skin colour to species, but does not confer a right to be included in any particular community you desire? So an elective community of people identifying as natal-woman or natal-black or what have you might still have the right to constitute itself as such, and forbid transgender or transracial people from joining it. If I imagine a transhumanist utopia, I could imagine a group like that existing in something like the Culture; though I also suspect that in a realistic liberal-transhumanist context, that group would be a tiny minority of weird people, tolerated but largely ignored by most of society, in which transhumanism and radical morphological freedom has dissolved most such concerns or identities.
OliveTapenade
7d ago
I find it helps to think of tradition as a river, rather than something static. Tradition is, inherently, a record of change. To be 'traditional', to be part of a tradition, is to be aware of and shaped by all the river's upstream flow. It is not to be exactly the same as the part of the river that was upstream, and neither is it to recreate the conditions upstream perfectly today.
OliveTapenade
8d ago
Sure - I'm an Australian, party discipline is much stronger here, and in practice we all know that we're not really voting for our local MP, but rather for the party that MP represents. Even so, in this system I do believe that MPs of the party in Opposition are democratically justified in opposing the Government's policies. Labor's crushing election victory this year does not obligate the remaining Coalition MPs to cooperate with whatever Labor wants to do; neither did the Coalition's decisive 2013 win obligate Labor to refrain from acting against the Coalition Government. That would go against the whole point of having an Opposition.
The point I'm trying, perhaps clumsily, to make is that I think it's bad faith to use a presidential 'mandate' as a reason for why members of congress should not oppose that president's policies, if they and their party think it necessary to do so.
OliveTapenade
8d ago
I can see nothing in the constitution that says that states or communities are not allowed to welcome migrants. I think you're reading a kind of racial bias into it? I know you didn't mention specifically, but I think it is significant that this conversation is about Korean migrants, and not white or black migrants from elsewhere in the US.
It seems to me that you are assuming, on a highly speculative basis, that Georgians are strongly opposed to living alongside Koreans. I see no evidence of that, nor that the democratic will of Georgians is to get rid of this Korean community, Koreans in general, or Asians in even more general.
OliveTapenade
8d ago
Isn't the consequence of every individual seat's election a mandate for that elected congressperson? No individual congressperson is bound by a presidential mandate. They are responsible to the constituents below them, not to a president above them.
I repeat my position that Republicans in congress have zero obligation to be acquiescent to the will of a Democratic president, and Demicrats in congress have zero obligation to be acquiescent to the will of a Republican president. Mandates, if they exist at all, do not work like that.
OliveTapenade
8d ago
Are you a Georgian? I still haven't seen any evidence that Georgians hate Koreans or are opposed to their presence in the state. Why should it be the null hypothesis that Georgians want these people out? Nothing in the top level post quoting the WSJ indicated that natives have any problems with the Koreans, and the Koreans seem to contributing well to the local economy and cultural acclimatising to American ways, including by taking English names. I can find the full article by archiving it and there seems to be positivity there, including by Georgian government officials. Some local union workers have complained, but it also seems like most of these Koreans have come legally, consistent with Georgia's laws.
I mean, this mostly seems like a model minority situation to me. Koreans have mostly come to Georgia via the legal process, which Georgians themselves established via their state government, and those that have come have respected the local culture, worked hard, and tried to fit in.
Now, sure, maybe native Georgians hate them for some reason and want them to go, but you can't just assume that as your starting point. Be careful not to typical-mind here - maybe you don't think Koreans should live alongside Americans, but it is hardly clear that that is a majority opinion in Georgia.
At any rate, some Koreans coming to Georgia to live and work there, if consistent with Georgia's existing laws, cannot be said to constitute 'replacement' in any reasonable sense of the word.
OliveTapenade
9d ago
In what way does Pelosi's comment have any bearing on that?
OliveTapenade
9d ago
I'd argue that you're indulging in word games more than I am - in this case, comparing Koreans to weeds while implying that resources in Georgia are scarce, or that the presence of Koreans reduces prosperity for others. I think this is a misrepresentation of the scenario. Is the state of Georgia like your garden bed? Are the Koreans choking out native Georgians? That's not clear at all.
It's not even clear how race or ethnicity is relevant - if the issue is that Koreans consume more resources, wouldn't it also be a problem if native white or black populations increase? All people consume resources. We just generally don't view this as prohibitive because Georgia possesses ample natural resources (nobody is starving!) and because people produce resources as well.
The metaphor you're making just doesn't make any sense.
OliveTapenade
9d ago
What does that have to do with the point under discussion?
OliveTapenade
9d ago
Why do you say 'native white' specifically? I said myself that I think a community has the right to determine its own conditions of entry, but in the case of Georgia, that existing community is not exclusively white. Wikipedia tells me that about a third of Georgians are black, which sounds about right for a former Confederate state. Judging from this it sounds like it's been like that for a long time, and I'd bet that most black Georgians are descendants of people who've lived in the state for centuries. So I find it a bit odd that you specify 'the native white population', since the native population of Georgia in this context seems like it would include an awful lot of blacks as well. Do they not count, for you? If not, why not?
On a side note, I also notice that, per Wikipedia's chart on live births by race of mother, the black birthrate in Georgia is going down faster than the white birthrate, though the overall number of black residents is increasing slightly faster, presumably due to immigration. Notably comparing 2010 to 2022 on USAFacts, the populations of every racial group in Georgia have increased, including whites. It seems hard to say that Georgian whites are being 'replaced' if they are increasing in number.
Anyway, what would happen if you submitted a referendum to all native Georgians on immigration policy? You might have to define 'native Georgian', but I see no way of defining 'native Georgian' that would restrict it only to whites, since there is clearly a very large non-white population whose ancestors have been resident in the state for centuries. But let's say we poll everybody who is resident in Georgia and who had at least one ancestor resident in Georgia in 1950. What would they vote for?
The answer is that I don't know. I don't think you know either. Georgia is a red state, but not that red - Stacey Abrams won 45% of the vote in 2022, and 48% in 2018. Its house of reps is 100 Republicans to 80 Democrats. There's clearly a left in Georgia and we might expect them to be more sympathetic to immigration - and of course, many on the right, including moderate Republicans, are sympathetic to a level of immigration as well. I'm not convinced that Georgians would overwhelmingly vote to kick Koreans out. There's clearly an appetite in Georgia for cracking down on illegal immigration, and Brian Kemp has signed bills to that effect, but I can't find much recent about legal immigration. This 2025 poll suggests that most Georgians want illegal immigrants to have some path to residency - if true I can't imagine them being more hostile to legal immigrants.
What position do you think Georgians would all vote for? Ending all immigration? Banning all Asian immigration? Nonwhite immigration? What is it that you think Georgians want?
OliveTapenade
9d ago
I mean, my take on the broader question is that it's undoubtedly true that migration changes the character of a community - it changes its make-up in terms of ethnicity, language, religion, genetics, custom, and much more.
I also think that it is entirely reasonable for a community to have an internal discussion about how they want to change in the future, if at all, and to take organised action to ensure that they only change in ways they want, rather than ways they don't want.
That means that, for instance, if a community values being ethnically, linguistically, religiously, etc., homogenous, it can pursue policies to that effect.
The relevant question in most Western contexts is whether any given we does value that, and perhaps more importantly, whether we should value that. When we as a community make migration policy, what are our priorities? What goals are we serving?
In practice I think it's usually economic growth, and that tends to overwhelm everything else. But often people do claim different goals or motivations - the right often talks about cultural compatibility, or the left talks about compassion and hospitality. At any rate, this is a good internal debate to have.
I pressed NYTReader a bit because what that situation looked like was a community that was changing in terms of overall make-up due to an influx of Korean immigrants, and it wasn't clear that the natives were opposed to that immigration, or that the immigration was contrary to the wishes of the Georgia legislature. (Granting, hopefully, that the legislature is the preeminent forum in which the internal discussions or debates that I mentioned happen.) Hence my wanting to ask - what should be the priorities here? Why? What values or principles motivate your reasoning on this subject?
OliveTapenade
9d ago
Sure, that's why I was probing you a bit about what the lines are, in order to precisify what your concerns actually are. I didn't want to leap to conclusions and assume the worst.
That said, I'm not particularly keen on you outsourcing your opinions to someone else. Dean is a very articulate poster here, but one thing Dean cannot do is tell me what NYTReader thinks.
OliveTapenade
9d ago
If the concern is cultural change, I think that's valid, and I'm open to a discussion about that.
That is, though, I think a different concern to 'demographic replacement'? I take demographic replacement to suggest an agenda of, well, replacement - that is, not just a community changing through migration and integration of people of new cultural backgrounds, but rather the elimination of the existing population, and new people taking its place.
OliveTapenade
9d ago
Oh, sure. I expect both Democrats and Republicans to make up rules on the spot to justify whatever it is that's in their advantage to do. Neither side is particularly scrupulous or principled.
What I mean is just that, in this context, I don't see any reason why the Democrats shouldn't try to do things that they think their voters might want, or which will obstruct their political opponents. Trump winning the presidency in 2024 does not imply that the other side ought to sit down, shut up, and let him do whatever he wants.
Jonah Goldberg often criticises the concept of a 'mandate', and I think he's broadly correct. If we're going to invest a lot in mandates, every individual member of a congress has a mandate, and in the case of Democrats, that seems a lot like a mandate to oppose the Republicans, or oppose Trump. "You lost fair and square" is a bad objection to Democratic congressmen pursuing their own mandates. Politics is always going on all the time, power is always being renegotiated, and no side is entitled to their enemies laying down arms.
Just reversing partisanship isn't always a good tool, but it is helpful sometimes. If it were a Democratic president and obstructive Republicans in congress, would the same people agree that Republicans lost fair and square and ought to just let the president do what he wants? I don't think so. I think they'd want congressional Republicans to use all the leverage they have to extract concessions or limit what the president can do.
OliveTapenade
9d ago
Is the native population declining? Your quotes didn't say that, and as noted I can't read the article.
I think degree matters as well. If a native population goes down by 1% while at the same time some migrants move in, I wouldn't consider that replacement. I think the word 'replacement' suggests a wholesale removal. Is anything like that going on?
OliveTapenade
10d ago
You said in place of. What's your evidence for that? I just distinguished between addition and replacement.
I don't have a Wall Street Journal subscription, so I can't read the article itself, but I would be very shocked if the WSJ was pushing a line about demographic replacement - especially since the portions you've quoted sound sympathetic to the Koreans.
OliveTapenade
10d ago
I think most of it is just economic, to be honest. The two-party consensus is that large-scale immigration is necessary for economic reasons - more workers enable more economic growth, and it fills out the bottom of the population pyramid, which is declining due to demographic transition. (For non-conspiratorial reasons - no one's scheming to reduce the native birthrate, and in fact the birthrate decline is global.)
When asked, neither party usually says that's the reason, though if pressed they will usually mention it as one among others, but I think it's the core reason and most of the rest is rationalisation.
OliveTapenade
10d ago
The unpopularity of the Democrats is part of Klein's point, though. Their own base is unhappy with them, it seems partly because they are not perceived as doing enough to fight or to interfere with Trump's agenda.
And... they would seem to have a reasonable mandate to do that. Opposition parties are, in fact, supposed to oppose the government party and hold it responsible. The Democratic members of congress have obligations to represent the people who elected them and to make decisions that they perceive as in the interests of the country as a whole. The American constitutional system does not ask representatives to shut up and roll over just because the president is from a different party.
I don't think a government shutdown is a good idea myself, or a good move for Democrats, but Democrats absolutely should use the positions they have to do things that their voters want, or that they think is good for the country, and both those principles mean opposing some of what the government is doing.
Ironically, by the standards of this theory, I'm an Aryan, or at least a Nordic - I'm of Northern European ancestry, tall, fair skin, wavy hair, and so on.
But to put that aside - I think you and Bartender are engaging in a kind of motte-and-bailey here.
It is mainstream academic consensus that the Kurgan hypothesis is true, and that the earliest Proto-Indo-European homeland was somewhere in Central Asia. These people either were among or were the earliest tamers of horses, and successfully migrated into places from India to Europe. I don't think you need to intimate that there's some kind of academic conspiracy to conceal this - it's sufficiently consensus that it's in Bill Wurtz.
However, in the OP you go considerably beyond this position, to the extent of speculating about very specific cultural traits and the values of these groups' elites, and go to suggest that these people constitute a distinct race of 'Nobles' (yes, I know you're just translating arya), who maintained themselves as a unique separate caste through endogamy. You speculate heavily about 'selection pressures' that produce strong, militarily capable steppe peoples who conquer weaker, more passive peoples, rule over them but become weakened over time, and are then replaced by a new wave of invaders. This is getting a pretty distant way beyond "the Yamnaya culture existed", and beyond what I think can be reliably demonstrated from archaeological and genetic evidence.
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