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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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Naive because it it takes the most simplistic idea of something like "if people realized people of [race] were more genetically predisposed to [bad behavior], then of course that would lead to more bigotry and racial hatred and dehumanizing of people of [race]" without actually doing the sociological research required to justify such a belief.

Is sociological research really needed, beyond the examples of history? I'm reminded of a piece from "crunchy con" religious right-winger Rod Dreher where he first acknowledged that HBD — he specifically singled out Steve Sailer — is probably correct, scientifically; but then argued that we, as a society, must pretend it is not, actively censor it, and maintain instead a "noble lie" (Dreher explicitly called it that) of egalitarian blank-slatism, because it's "proven" that human beings simply 'can't handle the truth.' The proof being the Jim Crow South and, of course, 1930's Germany.

I seem to remember ame_damnee back at the old place once making a similar argument in response to someone asking whatever happened to 'the pursuit of excellence.' To draw attention to "excellence" would also draw attention to it's lack, and that, it was argued, automatically and inevitably leads to people donning jackboots and building death camps. Again, "the Mid-Century Germans," as some like to euphemize, are all the proof necessary to show what happens when the egalitarian veil receives the slightest puncture.

(Meanwhile, this ignores that the bulk of settled societies throughout human history were quite inegalitarian and believed in hereditary differences, without descending into coercive or genocidal projects of eugenic "improvement." For example, it's hard to find a philosophy more hierarchical and inegalitarian than Confucianism, but AIUI when eugenics came to China, the (greatly weakened) Confucians were pretty much in opposition. And in the West, the now-deleted third verse of "All Things Bright and Beautiful" persisted enough in cultural memory that I remember once hearing it performed in a Bob Hope movie. So there's something more needed beyond just "people are born different" to get to "therefore we must exterminate the lower orders.")

As Neema Parvini said in his New Years stream, the core of the dominant ideology of the present day is that we're still fighting Hitler, if only 'the little Hitler inside each of us.' Letting people "realize people of [race] were more genetically predisposed to [bad behavior]" led to Nazi's once, and we all swore "never again." So what more social science is needed beyond that?

Letting people "realize people of [race] were more genetically predisposed to [bad behavior]" led to Nazi's once, and we all swore "never again." So what more social science is needed beyond that?

This is my core objection, that this isn't what led to Nazis. I don't believe the Nazis' rise to power in Germany was due to scientists dispassionately admitting to a populace that has only ever lived in a Western society of egalitarianism that they are forced to conclude something that they didn't expect or at least know to be true before they did the research, that there are different distributions in important traits such as intelligence when analyzing different groups of people, grouped by what we refer to as "race." I think it was closer to telling people that the Sciencetm proves that those people you already despise really are despicable. Which is far more similar to modern idpol than to HBD, which is one of the main reasons I reject idpol so much, though even then I wouldn't go as far as to censor them.