2rafa
8hr ago
It’s because Murray is British and thinks British culture and history are the best in the world, and Churchill is by far the most beloved British political / cultural figure in history, topping almost every single poll of the greatest British people of all time. Ideology is entirely secondary, although in general Murray, as a fan of the British Empire - of which he considered neoconservatism / liberal imperialism a successor - likes Churchill’s imperialism. Churchill’s actual opinions are irrelevant on both sides (see, for example, Cooper’s insistence that Churchill’s primary motivation in prosecuting WW2 was some debts he allegedly owed to Jewish moneylenders).
2rafa
12hr ago
They can apply for judicial review on the basis of legitimate expectation and will very likely win and there's even precedent for it:
In theory they could use a notwithstanding clause to eliminate the prospect of judicial review when passing a new immigration bill, but they are both incompetent and unserious, so they won’t. One of the good things about parliamentary sovereignty and no written constitution is that a simple majority can at least just pass a law that says “this ignores the ECHR, ignores any court judgment, and establishes no legal challenge to itself whatsoever” and it actually works.
2rafa
12hr ago
I think this is a relatively substantial mischaracterization of Murray, who has mostly called himself a classical liberal, except when he decided to embark on the contrarian project of rehabilitating the by-then-already-discredited term ‘neoconservative’ in the late 2000s and early 2010s (largely since abandoned).
He’s a gay cosmopolitan man who essentially wants the cosmopolitan liberal society of the early 2000s to continue forever. He’s pretty open about that, and it is the main reason he is opposed to mass immigration from the Islamic world.
2rafa
3d ago
As @Pasha said I think the classic Anglo humanities model where you do essays at home for practice (but which count nothing toward your final grade) and then have a combination of (hand)written exams in class and an oral exam seems like the best. That was true even before AI, but it’s especially true now.
In this case there is really no real to use AI to do homework since it doesn’t affect your grade and is pointless as a learning tool (which is not to say AI can’t be a useful learning tool, but ‘write 1200 words on x that I will never read but will email to the TA’ isn’t it).
2rafa
4d ago
Yes, due to intracommunal ethnic dynamics in the Bantu population, specifically between the Zulus and Xhosas, not to mention the fact that most ethnic resentment is toward black immigrants from the Congo and elsewhere, and to a lesser extent toward Indians.
If you ask the average black South African they might agree with a statement like ‘white people still have an unfair share of the nation’s wealth’, but it’s a distant fourth or fifth place behind other grievances.
2rafa
4d ago
It wasn’t a genius move and he came unnecessarily close to actual ruin on a couple of occasions. You can disagree, but this one of very few areas where I personally know a couple of people involved in lending for commercial real estate in NYC and NJ at that time and they both say the same thing. (And one of them definitely voted for him, the other I would guess did).
2rafa
4d ago
I mean 3.5 years to go…. I would say that things are probably going to be fine, but the real question mark is over the response to any black swan events (very major terror attack, major financial crisis, something weird/new happening with AGI) that could happen.
2rafa
4d ago
The miscalculation was not only that Trump actually believed in tariffs, unlike abortion, immigration, trans whatever, where he was always malleable. It was that Trump’s career record displayed regular, bone headed conviction to make and stand by dumb decisions (which is why the business declared bankruptcy multiple times during the largest multi-decade property boom in history) principally around the casinos in Atlantic City. It’s relevant because that whole project (directly responsible for 3 out of 4 of his bankruptcies) was the result not only of great ambition but also of steadfastness in the face of many advisors, bankers, fellow developers, partners etc no doubt telling him he was making the wrong decision(s).
On this basis I assumed that while Trump would fold eventually on the tariffs, he would persevere until the economic situation deteriorated considerably. When thinking about why he caved before then, I have a few ideas. The first is that Trump thinks of himself as a genius, especially in real estate, but he does allow for the existence of other geniuses, and I think he does accept that at least in domain terms other people are smarter than him (Elon Musk with ‘computer’, Jamie Dimon in finance etc), and they were both against tariffs. The second is that he’s easily persuaded by flattery, which is a classic Chinese art form, and while Xi was publicly posturing I do think there has been some suggestion that the diplomatic approach was softer. Lastly, I think people Trump likes personally like MBS and Meloni who both deal a lot with the Chinese and are in many ways economically reliant on them told him the tariffs were bad, and Trump has something of a sense of loyalty, at least in certain situations, provided someone (eg Cohen) doesn’t cross him publicly.
2rafa
4d ago
I don't think money will save you from a government that wants you death or destitute.
The South African government is a coalition between the ANC and (effectively) the white party, with many white ministers including the minister of agriculture (most directly relevant to Afrikaner farmers). The main party that displays intense racial animus toward Boers is a small minority party whose appeal is limited for a variety of reasons.
Almost all regulatory complexity is the result of closing loopholes lawyers found in earlier, simpler regulation. Congratulations to them, because all the legal specialists in each regulatory area will be poring over any new, ‘simplified’ regulation with the religious fervour of a leading Talmudic scholar to find out exactly what is implicitly allowed until enough bad news comes out that the current regime is restored.
Take two of the regulatory and legal standards that libertarians hate most - the definition of tax evasion and the definition of wire fraud. Detractors are completely correct that both are extremely vague (the former is essentially ‘anything that violates the spirit of paying your fair share of taxes’ and the second is ‘lying about anything that might lead to any gains for yourself through any medium of communication’), but their vagueness is largely organic and downstream from the fact that any stricter standards would make the enforcement of the rules pointless because any intelligent lawyer or other actor could rules-lawyer their way out of it.
Any standard of tax evasion or anti-bribery law or anti-corruption enforcement regime that does not effectively rely on ‘the spirit of the law’ (a thousand year old standard in common law anyway) is doomed to fail. This was the big tax revolution for rich people in the 90s, by the way. All those articles about how ‘despite top tax rates being 70/80/90% in the 1960s, rich people actually didn’t pay very much tax at all’ are true. What changed tax from something nobody smart paid to something most rich people pay at least some of (even if you disagree with how much) was an IRS (and other national tax agencies) that had the power to go after people solely for spirit of the law type violations.
2rafa
4d ago
30% is nothing; reshoring manufacturing when China has better logistics, transport, infrastructure, training and labor would require much more than 30%.
2rafa
7d ago
Ye’s team says the song will be featured on his upcoming album “Cuck” (Internet slang for “cuckold,” a term for a husband whose wife is unfaithful), which also includes tracks titled “Gas Chambers,” “WW3,” and “Hitler Ye and Jesus.” The album art depicts two figures wearing hooded Ku Klux Klan-like robes in different colors, while the art for the “Heil Hitler” song shows a swastika-like doodle.
This shortly after he essentially came out (whispers of various gay relationships have been gossip fodder for years, the most widespread rumor involving the late Virgil Abloh, the fashion designer). I do feel bad for him, I don’t think going through this kind of thing in public is dignified.
Will it change the narrative? I think the narrative has already been changing for at least ten years. Given AI / AGI / ASI, and its effect on the economy, culture and politics, I think it’s impossible to say what will happen even ten years from now.
2rafa
7d ago
I received the following DM from a new user with no posts or comments this week:
Oh wow, a Jewess is against White identitarians? What a surprise! If propagating an (idea) meant I would be dead within a year, I would be against the (idea) too. I genuinely thank your people for nuclear weapons, but it's time for you to bow out. Permanently.
I occasionally (like twice a year) get random DMs from people with no real posting history, but they’re usually polite enough.
This one was pretty funny, bearing a certain resemblance to the navy seal copypasta. I think it was in reference to a comment in which I implied that the woman who called that child the n word was being rude.
I appreciate the gratitude for the nuclear weapons, though. I’ll pass that on.
2rafa
8d ago
Yes, I could have clarified ‘from the Islamic world’, but pretty much every Western country that has experienced mass immigration has experienced it from there too.
2rafa
9d ago
Apparently a progressive in general terms, albeit not a radical one by the standards of the church.
2rafa
9d ago
What happened in Rotherham occurred and occurs in every single Western country that experienced mass immigration. The only difference is that the peculiar ownership dynamics of the British tabloid press meant it achieved a degree of media attention it didn’t elsewhere, except to a much lesser extent in the Low Countries.
2rafa
9d ago
She is receiving the money as reparations for an unjust system of oppression
Does it count as reparations if the donors are almost certainly all white?
got them out of the state
Not to be trite, but America has to get very, very, almost unfathomably bad for someone to move back to Somalia.
2rafa
10d ago
No, because that kind of critic actually believes that Tolkien truly on purpose wrote a secret gay romance that he had to conceal because of the sensibilities of the age. Most of these takes don’t actually believe that a bunch of Hollywood progressive writers covertly stuffed dissident right themes into a kids movie, it’s just a funny creative writing exercise.
2rafa
10d ago
I’ve seen limited real-world reporting of either this or the Karmelo case. The articles are there, but they’re not headline news at least for me in the usual places I read news online. I think that’s a good thing.
In general, I abhor rudeness. If I ran a country, I’d have the policy of this subreddit’s moderation; say what you want, but say it politely, and with some respect for who you’re saying it to.
The thing about this grift is that it solves itself. There are not enough identitarians on either side for more than a handful of people to raise this kind of money. Now, it’s a novelty, but it wouldn’t be and perhaps won’t be for very long.
2rafa
10d ago
I agree, but the popularity and particularly rote nature of this specific category of criticism is a feature of the post-2014 internet.
2rafa
10d ago
The problem with Kashmir is that India drags out the conflict in a deeply unsympathetic way.
The vast majority of the population is Muslim. Muslims have no real place in a Hindu nationalist project of the kind you and other serious Hindutva activists propose. Some accommodation can probably be made with the Sikhs (who can be domestically pacified) and the other domestic minorities like the Christians and Buddhists don’t really matter.
Either
- India should hand Muslim-dominated but India-controlled Kashmir to Pakistan, created as a Muslim state. No doubt major concessions in other areas could be won in exchange for such a generous move.
Or
- India should resettle large number of Hindus in J&K etc such that these become Hindu-majority land, the same way that China did in Xinjiang or Russia did when it settled the far east with Europeans.
The current status quo is untenable.
2rafa
10d ago
About ten years ago, a new form of cultural criticism emerged on places as diverse as 4Chan’s /tv/, Twitter and Slate Star Codex’s Culture War Roundup thread.
The general message was always the same. An ostensibly mainstream or even outwardly progressive Hollywood movie was secretly Based™️, sometimes supposedly intentionally on the part of a secretly redpilled director or writer, mostly unintentionally by someone who didn’t realize what the implicit narrative of what they were creating actually was.
I’ve written comments like this, I’ve enjoyed comments like this. But you can’t be too serious about them, and in fact you could write a similar narrative about almost any movie or TV show you can think of.
Not really. Murray’s ideology is the status quo as of the late 2000s / early 2010s. As polling suggests, in the UK among his generation that includes the extremely mainstream and almost universally accepted viewpoint (outside of the radical left and Indians) that Winston Churchill was one of the greatest Britons of all time because he ‘won’ the last major war that the country was involved in - and really there is no deeper complexity to that perception.
Murray’s ideology makes him a small-c conservative in some ways (he basically wants Britain as it existed in like 2007 to exist forever and for it to be filled with people who accept the major tenets of liberalism forever) and a classical liberal imperialist in others. The latter (liberal imperialism) isn’t an oxymoron, by the way, it has a long tradition in British politics going back at least 180 years.
It’s hard to hate Murray because, like Harris, he’s actually pretty open about what he believes and he openly acknowledges that this is mainly based on his perception of his own self-interest. He’s a gay man who wants to export liberal western culture, by force, onto the whole world and prevent mass immigration of people who hate him. You can disagree with him, but he is ideologically consistent.
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