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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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Associating the radical departure from HBD to race denial in the early 20th century to Protestantism also does not make sense given the fact HBD was invented within White protestant culture, and the eugenics movement was also invented there and more advanced than anywhere else in the world. The United States, Germany, Scandanavia all had comparable eugenics programs and the Nazis were not even an outlier in that regard.

Are you anti-HBD? From where I stand, you do not pass the intellectual Turing test for the pro-HBD position. Saying that HBD was invented (not discovered, invented) within White protestant culture makes it sound like like you simply wrote "'Scientific' Racism" and then did a search and replace with HBD.

Only an icky minority of HBD proponents would claim that HBD is a refinement of whatever the Nazis thought.

The more sensible position would go:

The Nazi race ideology was based on Cargo Cult Science. Dilettantes who had not read the Sequences went out and "proved" exactly what they wanted to prove. Thus race denial was a directionally correct update. Later on with much better statistical methods, understandings of biases and confounders we discovered that race actually plays some role, after all. By analogy, first people said that the Sun circles around the Earth. They were very wrong, and the update towards "the Earth circles around the Sun" was the most significant step towards a correct model of the solar system ever. However, with further theories and precision measurements, we were able to determine that actually, the Earth and the Sun circle around their shared center of gravity (which happens to be within the sun) and are also subject to the gravity of all the other planets. While to some tiny degree, the Sun thus circles the Earth, this does not mean that the geocentrists were right all along.

I also don't get the paranoia about crypto-Jews. I think Jewish culture places a great value on arguments, and a disproportionate amount of intellectuals with outspoken opinions are of Ashkenazi origin.

However, they do not have mind-control superpowers which enables them to argue gentiles into anything they want. Thus, an argument by a Jewish-origin person is not an infohazard, and I can read it and judge it on its merits the same as I would any other argument.

Of course, if there was a Jewish World Conspiracy, the DR might be worried that if too many of their leaders are crypto-Jews, they might bury the story of How The Jews Secretly Control Everything. A council of Jewish Leaders which has directed every public Jewish-origin person from Karl Marx to Scott Alexander in a giant Kayfabe performance for the gentiles.

Personally, I find that notion silly. Occam's razor would prefer the explanation where Bernie Sanders is really a socialist, Eliezer is really worried about x-risk from AI and Ayn Rand was a true believer in capitalism or whatever.

Nah, Judaism is a racial Cargo Cult. The Old theories around race turned out to be more empirically accurate than what constitutes modern-day expert consensus. The current consensus of race and HBD denial is the Cargo Cult. Those older theories, which predated the Nazis and were not invented by them, have been totally vindicated by 21st century advancements in genetic analysis. Obviously they weren't correct about everything, the Urheimat of the Aryans was not in Germany as claimed by German nationalists. But the Corded Ware culture, the common ancestor to all European peoples and languages, did originate from that part of Europe.

Only an icky minority of HBD proponents would claim that HBD is a refinement of whatever the Nazis thought.

It would be incredibly dishonest for HBD proponents to pretend that their conclusions are divorced from the 20th century Protestant Darwinists/race scientists. They are simply "rediscovering" what was already learned over a hundred years ago, and suppressed by ideologues with an ethnopolitical agenda.

I think Jewish culture places a great value on arguments

I do think they place great value on arguments, and are very willing to bend reality to conform to their arguments. This was a common pattern of behavior throughout all the influential 20th century intellectual movements discussed in this thread. They weren't based on empirical study, they were just arguments based on predetermined conclusions which happened to align with their Jewish identities and ethnic interests. Yes, they place great value on arguments, very true. Too much value, even, and not enough on the truth.

But the Corded Ware culture, the common ancestor to all European peoples and languages, did originate from that part of Europe.

That's not true. The Greeks and Albanians are from late-Yamnaya/Catacomb culture people, the Basque still exist and there are Uralic and Turkish people as well.

Not to mention how much of the ancestry of these groups isn't from the Yamnaya or Corded-Ware culture people. Or how much of a mongrel race these Indo-Europeans groups were in the first place.

You just pick and choose what facts you want to fit your narrative.

Sure, CW was ancestral to Italo-Celtic, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic languages. So nearly all European languages, fair enough. I already mentioned the Urheimat was not the CW culture in any case. It's pretty amazing all of those languages come from one common ancestor. In my opinion that qualifies as some vindication for the older Racial theories. The Urheimat was probably the Russian Steppe, but the CW culture gives truth to the caricatures of the older racial theories, especially in comparison to something like Hebrew mythology or modern-day academic consensus. The Nazi racial theories were more grounded in reality than what passes today. Although the Reich Lab is responsible for making a lot of very recent corrections that are bringing the present-day consensus closer to the old racial theories.

CW culture was a mixture of Yamnaya, European farmer groups, and Hunter-gatherers. So basically they were "mongrels" to the extent modern Northern Europeans are mongrels.

German Nationalists claimed the Urheimat was Germany, but in reality the markers they pointed to spoke to the massive influence of CW culture. That's a reasonable error, it's not a racial cargo-cult compared to something like Judaism or modern Race Denial.

Even the most mystical accounts of Hyperboreans emerging from the Northern most land in existence and colonizing the world/founding civilizations likewise has far more basis of truth than something like the Hebrew bible.

The Nazi racial theories were more grounded in reality than what passes today.

You are eliding the fact that the Nazis thought that Balts and Slavs weren't really Aryan, despite them being more CWC by ancestry than any German. Also that they were pale, blond, blue eyed people, when they were overwhelmingly far more swarthy. Nazi racial theories made no sense and they used them to justify killing millions of people most of which were fellow Aryans.

This is a common tactic of yours, to elide the terrible parts of Nazi ideology and equivocate it with the worst ultranationalist sentiments of other peoples.

You are eliding the fact that the Nazis thought that Balts and Slavs weren't really Aryan, despite them being more CWC by ancestry than any German.

Because that's not true, from the German racial laws where Poles and Italians are given as examples of Aryan people:

Aryan descent (German blooded) is thus a person who is free of foreign blood, as seen by the German people. The blood of Jews and Gypsies also living in Europe, that of the Asian and African races and the Aborigines of Australia and America (Indians), are considered as foreign. For example, if a Englishman or a Swede, a Frenchman or a Czech, a Pole or an Italian, is free of such foreign blood, he must be regarded as Aryan, whether he lives in his native country or in East Asia or in America or he may be a US citizen or a South American Free State.

Alfred Rosenberg also regarded Slavs as Aryan. Both Hitler and Rosenberg also regarded Greeks and Meds in general as Aryan, as well as Finns and Estonians. Why lie about what they believed?

Nazi racial theories made no sense and they used them to justify killing millions of people most of which were fellow Aryans.

This is fake Steven Spielberg history, Germany had a reasonable causus belli against Poland and France/Germany escalated to a World War and refused all of Hitler's peace proposals.

What reasonable casus belli did Germany have against Poland?

Wait, did I just reply to SecureSignals in a post about Jews?

Damn.