TheOneWhoFarts
7d ago
Thailand becomes the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.
It appears to be completely uncontroversial:
All but 11 of 380 lawmakers present in parliament's lower house voted to approve the draft legislation, paving the way to the formation of a committee to merge the four bills into one ahead of further debate and votes expected next year.
a government survey conducted between Oct. 31 and Nov. 14 showed 96.6% public support for the draft bill.
Not only does the new law allow gay couples to adopt children, it also uses gender-neutral terms in place of “men”, “women”, “husbands” and “wives”.
Pretty much on par with the most progressive marriage, gender, and adoption laws anywhere in the world. This aligns with my suspicion that a country can have same-sex marriage, gay parents adopting, and even sex and gender categorizes beyond man and woman while maintaining a conservative and cohesive society. At least, Thais don't seem to think they will be affected at all by these developments.
Do we have any Mottizens from Thailand who can weigh in?
TheOneWhoFarts
8d ago
I think that the average white French person - and certainly white Parisian - feels a closer affinity to a second or third generation black French person than they do white Americans. This is more likely to be the true if we're talking about a particularly idiosyncratic American culture, like the deep south, which most Europeans are confused by. And of course, white and black Americans have more in common with each other than they do with their racial counterparts in Europe.
TheOneWhoFarts
8d ago
I guess I'll reply here rather than to OP.
No, not "that guy", but if you tell me who that guy is I can maybe provide a more substantive rebuttal.
Explain my post? Sure - I'm interested in dissident politics, despite myself not aligning with the alt-right. I like The Motte because quite a few people have this same proclivity and so I can give my thoughts on these things and get feedback on whether I'm thinking through things correctly.
This particular topic - white nationalism - interests me because I try to understand why there are white people (some who are demonstrably less "white" than me) who feel a natural solidarity with other white Americans to the extent that they, in the words of Gregory Hood, see them as their "family". I can understand Polish solidarity and German solidarity and Irish solidarity in the American context, but not white solidarity.
TheOneWhoFarts
8d ago
Sorry, yes, Greg Johnson is the other guy. Counter-Currents and Johnson are far more incendiary, so it's a bad mistake to make.
Looking at the speech you linked, I agree that as a public figure, Hood is more off-putting as the face of the white nationalist movement than Taylor, but I maintain that Taylor is not nearly as respectable as his fans like to think he is. In the interviews I've seen, he's often annoyingly sardonic, peddles in racial stereotypes that would alienate most people, and prone to snickering as a way to communicate that he is clearly right and his opponents are clearly wrong.
he has always struck me as sincerely committed, and obviously being the second banana at a deplatformed white nationalist website is nobody’s idea of a lucrative sinecure
This is an aside, but I've always wondered how these guys make enough money to support themselves and a family.
TheOneWhoFarts
8d ago
event their current level of endogamy given their small population pool relative to the population is proof of very strong social pressure for endogamy.
The intermarriage rate among secular Jews in the US, which now approaches 70%, exceeds that of other small religious/ethnic population groups, like the Mormons. Yes, their smaller population explains some of the intermarriage, but it doesn't explain why it's so high.
TheOneWhoFarts
8d ago
I like this idea. They should put you in charge of the Democratic party.
TheOneWhoFarts
8d ago
Greg Johnson is the most respectful white nationalist on the internet. Even more than his boss, Jared Taylor, who has a habit of deploying an annoying little giggle and sardonic attitude in many of his interviews. I discovered Greg Johnson through this website and have been reading him on and off.
He has recently written an article entitled "White Advocacy Is for All of Us". I'm not sure I'm smart enough to articulately respond in essay form, but I do want to give my immediate thoughts to some of the points he raises to spur discussion. I apologize this is not more high effort.
As a preface, like others here, I've been immersed in online reactionary politics for years but have not, like our ideological progenitor Scott Alexander, become a reactionary. More on that later.
Excerpts from the article and my thoughts:
However, if someone is not just a race realist but also a white advocate, there is a sense in which he is egalitarian and collectivist. Racial identity means that being part of a people has inherent worth. It means that every white person is important because he or she is white. All are our people. Race is our extended family.
We're off to a definitional start, but I'd like to see Johnson define "white" in the American context. For example, does he include mixed-race people? Arab Americans? Are Polish Americans as white as those with German ancestry from North Dakota? Is there an argument to be made that certain non-white Americans are more "white" than certain groups of white Americans?
Progressives admire patriotism in non-white countries, even as they scorn it in whites.
I'm not sure progressives think much about patriotism in non-white countries, and I don't think many of them admire Israeli patriotism.
Most of us must belong to a political community, and even the richest man with seven passports is less secure than a middle-class citizen of a truly independent, national state.
A person with citizenship in seven countries is far more secure than an average citizen in a first or second world country because the latter could be completely fucked over by a recession.
Modern white advocacy holds that race is the most salient identity today. Non-whites see us as white, not as “Christians,” “Americans,” or “Westerners.” So do those in power. Government, business, and academia treat you as white even if you do not identify that way. Class is secondary, because, unlike race, it’s not immutable. For non-whites, though, race trumps class solidarity.
I'm sure that a lot more can be said here, but two reasons I think class is often more salient than race are (1) middle class and affluent whites (and blacks) often choose to live around others from the same social class rather even if it means living in a more racially diverse area, and (2) the high rate of intermarriage (look up Indian American women) of non-whites.
White Americans are essentially a stateless people. Though we founded and sustain the country, we have no real stake in its success as a political entity.
"We" is doing a lot of work here. By now, most white Americans are descendants of people who did not found the country, to say nothing of the fact that many non-white people help to sustain it currently.
Consider JD Vance. He made his reputation with a searing portrayal of Appalachian degeneracy. He is not without sympathy for his fellow hillbillies, but he managed to defy his upbringing. But like Jim Webb, who paid tribute to the Scots-Irish in Born Fighting, this tribune of his people married outside his race.
Complaints about "race mixing" are a dead end for the white nationalist movement, but I guess that goes with the territory. You can't be a white advocate and also be ok with marrying Indians, but they're not going to convince anyone than JD + Usha is anything other than a lovely couple. This is just one of those things that people have moved on from.
Today, could a young JD Vance be admitted to Yale Law School?
Maybe? At least, it's not obvious that affirmative action is more likely to adversely affect a white applicant in 2025 than 2010.
Just after the election, Vivek Ramaswamy kicked up a stink with his comments on Americans’ supposed laziness, with Elon Musk agreeing soon afterward. Now, leading conservative activists say young men should work at fast-food joints instead of complaining about a lack of opportunity. Conservatism is becoming the ideology that justifies downward mobility — but only for white men. No one is telling young or non-whites to work at Panda Express.
The impetus for this was, among others, this tweet from Chris Rufo: "This is basically “full employment.” The Panda Express near my house is offering $70k/yr plus benefits for the assistant manager. You can make $100k/yr working at Chipotle for a few years and working up to store manager." This...seems reasonable to me? Why is working as a manager and potentially making a very respectable salary of 100k/year a bad idea? The alternative, if one can go to a decent school and is otherwise capable, is working in a traditional white collar profession - accounting, wall street, medicine, law - which I imagine many white men are still doing. And why woouldn't this message from conservatives be equally applicable to blacks and Hispanics? I don't think Rufo is speaking to just white men here.
These days, almost any non-white who can string a few sentences together can get a nice job by claiming to be conservative. White men are supposed to settle for jobs that will never let them marry or buy a house.
I don't get the first sentence. Does he mean working a grifter podcaster or something? That's not a viable career path for most. As for the second sentence, making a 100k/year in a managerial position that Johnson believes is low status - supplemented by some income from your spouse - does allow one to marry and buy a house.
It is absurd that Chris Rufo, who has done great work showing how DEI stacks the deck against whites, is now telling whites to get jobs in companies that have been biased against them for years. Mr. Rufo is married to an Asian.
I laughed here at the "married to an Asian". It seemed to come from nowhere. But ok, if they shouldn't get jobs at companies that hate them, where should white men work? Is the suggestion to build their own businesses?
However, Donald Trump still lost non-evangelical white working-class voters by eight points, an improvement on last time, but still worrisome if the GOP wants to be the “workers’ party.”
I thought this was very interesting and I hadn't seen this is any of the post-election coverage.
There is a loveless synergy emerging between MAGA Republicans and white advocates. Our core constituency is the same: whites struggling to stay middle-class in the face of replacement migration and a ferociously anti-white culture. The traditional heart of any right-wing movement is those from the patriotic middle class who fear downward mobility. Leadership in revolutionary movements often comes from aspiring elites who think the existing system keeps them out. Young, ambitious white men feel that way about DEI America, but the Left can’t resist insulting whites. Conditions are perfect. Will the American right blow this opportunity? Will it keep jabbering about grit and hard work? Is it that important to feel superior to Zoomers?
An interesting paragraph, but I'm not sure what he's getting at. If the situation really is as dire as he says - rampant anti-white racism, demographic replacement, no jobs for whites - then the Republicans don't even need to campaign for white votes: the overwhelming majority will just vote for them. But given that that isn't happening (Trump lost non-evangelical white working-class voters by eight points!), perhaps it's more complicated and perhaps a lot of whites don't see their problems through the prism of race.
All this begs the question: what exactly does Johnson propose should be done, and why do those things require white identity politics?
TheOneWhoFarts
8d ago
I found this video in 15 seconds. The most upvoted comment is, "Let the record show: this was recommended by YouTube, not sent or searched for".
TheOneWhoFarts
8d ago
I'm on your side here, but I'd like to see you respond to his comment below.
TheOneWhoFarts
9d ago
Trump is hard to ideologically nail down, or at least ascribe a single label to. Different factions of the right desperately wants him to their guy but he keeps veering off script. For example, he occasionally hints at a blood and soil type nationalism ("they're poisoning the blood of our country"), but then he also repeatedly calls for increased immigration, most recently from the oval office yesterday as he was signing EOs. And like I said yesterday, he sometimes intimates in directions that makes the alt-right hopeful, but then makes it clear he is very much a 90s color-blind type liberal. I also don't think he is particularly dogmatic about transgenders, and I predict that once the culture war dies down on this particular topic (i.e., the mainstream consensus becomes that children are out of bounds but adults can do anything they want with their bodies), Trump wouldn't be averse to adopting a "third gender" policy like in Argentina. I can see him on stage doing his silly little dance with a Travesti during his term.
TheOneWhoFarts
9d ago
Trump Pardons Nearly All 1,500 Jan. 6 Rioters
Letting Enrique Tarrio out of a 22 year sentence is reprehensible imo. Kinda increases the incentives for doing political crimes now. Also, those who committed violence against Capitol police who were doing their jobs and were rightly found guilty, should not be let go. In fact, JD Vance recently said "If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned", but Trump pardoned everyone that committed violence, the one that repeatedly tased an officer, the one that threw a fire extinguisher at an officer's head, the ones that chased that lone brave officer up the stairs, the ones that used bear spray on officers, used pieces of wood and other improvised clubs to hit officers, and on and on.
TheOneWhoFarts
10d ago
I confess to a feeling a bit of schadenfreude that Trump is decidedly not the hero that white nationalists so desperately want him to be. Between Trump's invocation of MLK during the speech, the black reverend praying for America, and the diverse military choir ushering the President out, this was a reminder that the alt-right stuff we read online has little to no bearing on what the next four years will be like.
I love America.
TheOneWhoFarts
11d ago
This is the just latest episode of Trump engaging in borderline scummy "business", like the the weird Bible he sold during the campaign. Individually, these things could be dismissed as funny gimmicks, but cumulatively they grow tiring.
I want our politicians to be serious people, and very few of them on all sides seem to be these days.
TheOneWhoFarts
16d ago
I think this exactly right. A lot of the coarse anti-Semitism you see on Twitter since Musk's acquisition doesn't have an IRL equivalent. It's not an issue that splits MAGA because core MAGA voters - white working class, poorer whites, a significant amount of Hispanics this time around - are either pro-Israel or don't think about Israel at all.
TheOneWhoFarts
16d ago
Witkoff's blunt reaction took them by surprise. He explained to them in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him.
So for much Jewish ethnocentrism. Interestingly, were he not Jewish, he would probably be accused of anti-Semitism.
A lot of American Jews, including the elites, are secular. I wonder if this will cause a rift between Jews in the Trump administration and their more religious Israeli counterparts.
TheOneWhoFarts
16d ago
Ah, thanks. I thought the post feature was for linking to outside essays.
Academic agent calls out the "Online Right" as almost all astroturfed and worthless.
The piece critiques the degradation of the online right, drawing parallels with the decline of chivalric feudalism. He says the online right has been overtaken by moneyed interests and political agendas and has been transformed into a fragmented and noise-filled spectacle. Interestingly he says this shift mirrors the way capitalism absorbed and neutered the left. According to him, the "regime" itself and the influence of financial backers who dilute truth in favor of sectional interests are to blame. He references Jonathan Haidt’s observation about the academy: institutions cannot serve both Truth and political activism. The Online Right is now compromised by financial backing and institutional control. The few independent voices left are isolated and marginalized, offering little hope of meaningful change.
He talks about John Artcot's "Factions of the Rightosphere" and says most of the voices there are working to neutralize genuine dissent, which is ironic given that Academic Agent has been accused of the same thing.
He concludes that it's all hopeless because the "stupid hobbitses" [phrase coined by Curtis Yarvin] are largely unaware that their political heroes may be paid shills. For most, political discourse has become a form of entertainment, akin to watching a soap opera. The actual ideological substance is irrelevant as long as they are entertained and fed a constant stream of content, no matter how shallow or false.
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