ahobata
1yr ago
He's setting up a round of "would you rather" with the choices being "risk getting bitten by a shark" and "risk getting electrocuted". In the process, he bends the laws of physics and makes a digression in which he humorously mocks "them" for trying to explain away all the shark attacks that have supposedly been in the news lately. The clip got a laugh out of me the first time I watched it (specifically the "because they misunderstood who she was" part). I wouldn't question the mental acuity of any of my 130 IQ friends if they said the exact same thing from beginning to end, modulo style.
There's no comparison between this and Biden-tier gaffes. This isn't even a gaffe, just working-class-coded banter.
How would you apply this model to music, where the direct imitation of nature is naturally more of a niche thing (though it can be quite nice in some cases)? And why are rugged, mountainous locales so popular in landscape painting -- maybe that too is a cultural idiosyncrasy and things like the Lascaux cave paintings represent art in a more pristine state? What makes symmetry pleasant?
Teeth blackening is unusual in that it resembles "naturally" blackened teeth, which are disgusting. Most art fads aren't like that.
I think you give nurture short shrift. The thing is, so does post-modern art, which by prizing novelty (and sometimes ingenuity) over all else, simultaneously rejects the fruits of both biology and culture.
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.
Well, you could take this arbitrarily far. We can agree that it would be unreasonable for you to demand the extension of the word in the form of a complete list of names. On the other extreme, you could simply rely on common sense. I suppose the only reason that anybody can be won over to the far right is that they find the everyday use of the word "white" good enough for government work (or rather, good enough for anything but that). As I pointed out in my previous comment, they have that in common with leftist race agitators. For some reason, people rarely feel the need to own the leftists by trying to stump them with "define white" (or "define black" for that matter) or pretend that their ideas can't be seriously engaged with until those minutiae have been tied up in a bow.
(If I had to guess why, I'd say that, besides the left having succeeded in keeping the Overton window decidedly left of center so that centrists are less willing to give right-wing radicals as much leeway on anything, the left usually doesn't openly call for things that sound like anywhere near as significant a departure from the status quo as a "white ethnostate". The exception that proves the rule is reparations, whose critics are often keen to know whether white people who do not descend from slaveowners will be on the hook. Then again, as far as I know the answer is "yes", so they're still left with the problem of having to provide an objective definition of "white".)
The resemblance between left and right extends to their ambivalence towards the Jews. As a non-leftist, my response to their ambivalence is not to buttonhole some leftist on social media, ask him what the left's real final solution to the Jewish problem is, and walk away in a huff when he doesn't give me a straight answer. Instead it's to recognize that there is indeed a natural tension, observe how various types of leftist are dealing with it, and draw my own conclusions about how the left's relationship with Jews is likely to evolve over time (not that Jews are a monolith either).
In the interest of letting you have one concrete WN point of view, I'll give you mine without any obfuscation or proselytizing. Let's define "white" and "ethnostate", starting with white. I am of NW European extraction and feel the most kinship with that group of people. But there are no prospects in uniting behind that identity while strictly excluding other white people. White ethnic particularism in the US is on the wane, white people are too mixed both individually and collectively, and I would be proud to belong to any civilization that could be considered the heir of European Christendom (emphasis on European). In practical terms, that means basically anyone who has roots in the European continent is in. Bosnians are in, ethnic Russians are in, southern Italians are in. North Africans are out. Caucasians, not sure (who cares). Turks and others whose national identities don't align well with race might have recourse to being judged on their appearance and/or genetics. Or, what would probably be safer even though it would unfortunately come with false negatives, they could be excluded en masse. It's not an important question to me, so my attitude is wait and see.
The Jewish question is more important but more nuanced. In my opinion, they are a net negative in spite of their scientific accomplishments. (To digress slightly, other than the more frequently encountered arguments about their harmfulness in the cultural sphere, a) their scientific advantage is gradually petering out, and b) people often forget to factor in the opportunity costs of fraudulent scientific paradigms that set progress back for as long as decades, and that probably only succeeded because of persuasive but intellectually dishonest Jews like Chomsky, Marx, Freud, (Joseph) Greenberg, Yudkowsky, Levi-Strauss, Mead, Gould, Lewontin, Witten, etc. My pet theory is that white scientists are more inclined towards exploring large amounts of data and noticing patterns, whereas Jews are more liable to have their "one big idea" that they will then defend to the death -- which generally serves them well in rigorous disciplines where raw cognitive horsepower is the limiting factor and their imaginations are less free to run wild. More succinctly, breadth vs. depth. Of course, their higher g probably makes them better at both approaches on average, and I concede that science is probably ahead of where it would have been now if Jews had never existed.) There are enough who are strong allies to Western civilization to give me pause, but it's hard to imagine them ever not being a huge collective nuisance. Ideally, the Jewish identity would be expunged. Failing that, they would be treated the same as other non-whites, but monitored extra closely.
Now, "ethnostate". For me, it's not just a question of demographic composition (although it goes without saying that both legal and illegal immigration must be reduced to a tiny fraction of their current levels), but how the nation sees itself. Ideally, only white people should be considered Americans in the fullest sense, the same way that being raised in Korea and fluent in Korean don't suffice to make an Englishman Korean. This was, in fact, how most non-white immigrants and their children were informally viewed in the US until very recently. The problem with that arrangement wasn't that it was synchronically bad, but that it was unsustainable. The temptation for foreigners to stab their hosts in the back -- to gain power by shameless guilt-tripping out of one side of the mouth and mockery out of the other, a tactic that could only work on the people that least deserved it -- proved to be too strong, and will only grow stronger the longer we allow it to continue.
Purely demographic diversity is not necessarily unworkable, but it can only work if there is one ethnic group that is universally agreed to be the backbone of the nation. In the same way that a white man who moves to China and gets a job there tacitly understands that he is meant to be working for the benefit of Chinese people, minorities who reside in a white ethnostate must know they are there for the benefit of white people. As of now, they can't be trusted to fulfill that expectation. So at the very least, they can't vote. They can't run for office or make political donations. They can't become lawyers or judges. They can't move money out of the country as flexibly as they can now. Their participation in professions such as journalism is capped at a low percentage. Their participation in more valuable professions where their strengths complement those of white people, i.e. certain areas of STEM, is capped at a somewhat higher percentage. (Not to dismiss the untapped white talent in this area, whose chances to develop their skills are artificially hamstrung by making worse students than researchers/practitioners.) All the preceding restrictions are introduced slowly. They are ineligible for pronatalist incentives (mainly targeted at UMC white people). White people are not paid more for doing the same work. There are restrictions on freedom of expression that are onerous by today's standards, but more transparently enforced.
History lessons that involve clashes between white and non-white people are taught predominantly from the white perspective. The contributions of minorities past and present are given due recognition (i.e. some, but without the distortions endemic to most textbooks today); they are to be neither celebrated nor demonized (with the exception of blacks, see below). The classics are resurrected but their stewardship no longer falls to academics.
Interracial relationships will ideally not have to be outright banned, as even now, miscegenation is not a serious threat to the existence of the white race, and will presumably fade away on its own. The children of whites and other light-skinned races are perhaps given some leniency in deciding who they identify with; children that are 3/4 white, 1/4 East Asian are white; half-black and half-brown children are black and brown. The thing we call "black culture" is eradicated. Blacks are expected to keep their heads down and work, or leave. They are made to understand that they will achieve less and have less as their natural condition. Capital punishment makes a big comeback and is extended to underage black teens in accordance with their more rapid maturation. Illegal immigrants at the Mexican border are shot on sight. Illegal immigrants already residing in the country are given notice to leave, after which rewards will be posted for reporting them to the authorities (who will deport them at their own expense, or kill them if they lack the wherewithal). (This could be relaxed depending on the state of the economy at the time, I'm well aware that what I'm proposing would already be crippling in the short term.) Formerly outspoken white race traitors are closely monitored and/or subjected to regular public humiliations. Formerly outspoken non-white enemies are deported if possible, otherwise killed.
Full steam ahead on AI and robotics research, in part to weaken the case for imported labor. The social sciences are purged. I have other ideas in this area that are less within the purview of white nationalism but are intended to reinvigorate the natural sciences.
Honor culture is reinstated among white men. Greater men are expected to show noblesse oblige, lesser white men are encouraged to be humble. The signature aesthetics of our culture are derived from those of the (new) elite, not from mass entertainment, which may still exist but is widely understood not to mix well with status. (Entertainment is purged of Jewish influence, which is not just pernicious but straight-up inferior -- music and storytelling are not among their many gifts.) If there is still a democracy, incompetents are unable to vote, but the state has a duty to treat them with dignity and love. The culture will be conformist at first, but only out of necessity because we presently lack the cultural depth to do anything worthwhile with independence. The ideal to be aimed for in the long term is something like the Renaissance, where the cultural backdrop provided men and women with no little inspiration to pursue independence in ways that, though often evil, added something back to the cultural ferment better than the tawdry nihilism that has infected 99.99% of the world's cultural output (superficial variations in emotional valence aside) in the last 50 years.
Goes without saying that a violent revolution is the most likely path to this highly unlikely scenario.
This is just my personal vision of a white ethnostate. Others are likelier to support blanket deportations, which might have better prospects for the long term. That would be my preference too, but I think it'll take some time before we are ready to stand on our own. I also acknowledge that a lot depends on the pace of AI development.
ahobata
1yr ago
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.
Another parallel is that BIID is also partly driven by a sexual fetish in the majority of cases. I can't find the paper right now, but I recall having read one showing that patients tend to conceal that fact from their doctors and form communities where they help each other find willing surgeons and publicize techniques for duping less willing ones into going along with it. But AFAICT the similarity is shallow, it's just that the gratification of paraphilias is considered a questionable motivation for major surgery by most of the medical community.
ahobata
1yr ago
Journalists had no issue pointing out when a police officer who allegedly did something abusive is White.
Because when gangbangers shoot other gangbangers it's expected. If the shooters are caught, they invariably go to prison. It isn't complicated. Cops are supposed to be there to protect the public
"The police should he held to a higher standard, therefore we should make a big deal of it when the officers involved in an incident are white"? I'm not following your reasoning here.
If there were a case to be made that the race of a police shooter is more important than that of a gangbanger, we would either have to exempt black cops, or be open about the fact that they are, for one thing, way more likely to shoot than their white partners at the same crime scene. I would be very surprised if the alleged racism of white cops towards black suspects were enough to outweigh their less trigger-happy baseline.
In practice, the racial angle is never played in the opposite direction, and with a few exceptions, shootings by black police officers do not make national news. (When I asked GPT-4 (!) to provide counterexamples along the lines of Mohamed Noor, it pretended to misunderstand and gave me a list of black police shooting victims after stipulating it couldn't vouch for the shooters' also being black; when reprompted, it could not find any.)
Even as someone who appreciates the enormity of black violence, particularly black on white, I find it easier to recall the names of white (-coded) on black shooters. Where is the black George Zimmerman? Statistically there should be many of them, but no one comes to mind. Your conflating "white" and "police officer" is telling, in that expectations are higher for both. In my opinion, the correct framing is more that blacks are incapable of being the target of the media outrage machine, which strongly prefers white people when available, and their being a police officer is just a bonus (and relatively frequent compared to the extremely low overall rate of white on black crime).
ahobata
1yr ago
A white nationalist isn't someone who merely wants, personally, to avoid contact with non-white people. If it was, they could achieve that by never leaving their own home, which would also be about as politically effective as moving to Latvia.
ahobata
1yr ago
Republicans obviously aren't immune to blaming the outgroup for their woes, but they are still consistently more likely to endorse the bootstrap perspective. While not a politician, Oliver Anthony was widely feted by them as well as the rank and file. Relevant line from his song:
But God, if you're five foot three and you're three hundred pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
That's a pretty harsh way to talk about your ingroup, but they gobbled it up (so to speak).
you're addicted to fentanyl because of corrupt doctors and politicians in bed with Chinese companies flooding the country
Having just looked it up, I (a non-American) am surprised that needle exchange programs enjoy the level of support among Republicans that they do, but it's still almost twice as high among Democrats, and Republican states are far more likely to ban them. To be sure, this isn't a perfect proxy for embracing personal responsibility; it sets the bar below that. But the difference is still clear: Republicans are less likely to endorse policies that amount to buying people the opportunity to remain mired in their self-induced problems.
Taking a step back, you can believe in people's (qualified) agency without being a full-blown existentialist. All the conservative takes you list are accurate to some extent; if China stopped exporting fentanyl to the US, there would in fact be fewer addicts. It's a difference of degree.
ahobata
1yr ago
I don't know if they pile 'em on enough to spot individual cases, but there are already some known LLM style signatures that can be used to detect subtler uses in collections of documents. https://twitter.com/mishateplitskiy/status/1769433162122232127
Sadly, with the speed at which these detection methods are being developed, I doubt we're in for much Schadenfreude of the Claudine Gay type -- sudden fall from grace after getting away with it for years.
Completely uninformed speculation, but could it just be a holdover from when inflation was extremely high? Cost of living went up faster than many could adjust to; they never got used to it. And it's still going up! The fact that people don't notice the deceleration could be attributed to confirmation bias. Whenever they notice that something has gone up in price, it's "See, the prices really are going up still! And they would have me believe I'm imagining things." They're probably better at noticing price increases now too, anecdotally quite a few people in my circles track them more deliberately than before.
It's similar to how critics of the establishment sometimes allege that announcements that "Inflation has gone down" are misleading. I personally am not misled, but a small part of me might be unconsciously translating "Inflation has gone down" to "Inflation is under control", which it doesn't feel like it is, because prices still seem unreasonably high.
As for why we would be especially prone now to such a post-inflation vibecession, maybe it has something to do with the fact that millennials, who have outsize influence on the vibe economy (on social media), saw the highest inflation rates of their lifetimes through most of 2021, all of 2022, and the first half of 2023, and at least through the remainder of 2023 inflation stayed well above what they'd typically experienced in the preceding 15 years.
ahobata
1yr ago
Martin isn't Jewish if your standard of evidence is posting images of 23andme results not sourced from Google images (he's NW European, mostly English iirc). He's also talked about his Christian background on spaces.
Like most posters in BAP's clique, he's critical of "third-worldist" anti-Zionism and lowbrow antisemitism in general.
ahobata
1yr ago
On the journalist side, Gamergate was a mask-off moment; on the gamer side, it was a revelation. But the masks have mostly stayed off since then, at least for those with eyes to see. Gamergate took place on the eve of the Current Year. By now most of us know what side we're on, and our threshold for a story turning into a rallying flag that outlasts the <weekly Current Thing outrage cycle is much, much higher. Maybe some of the very young will be swayed, although most of the commentary I've seen on this story has been from millennial Gamergate veterans ginning up their audience to mobilize for WWII, some of whom I think are mainly motivated by nostalgia. (That's why they're dragging Anita Sarkeesian back into the fray: getting the gang back together.)
Besides, the original Gamergaters were utterly vanquished. Gaming is one of the wokest industries now, unlike back then when there was a sense that it wasn't too late to claw it back from the brink. Pretty much all that's left for them to do is make half-ironic self-deprecating jokes about gamers being the most persecuted race and the like.
Maybe you added that last bit as a joke, but I think the incongruousness of panicking about violence from the candidate who just came almost literally within a hair's breadth of being brained by (presumably) a Biden supporter would not be lost on most viewers who are not already extremists.
More options
Context Copy link