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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35891 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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It really isn't, given that this concern can also stem from a universalist worry about the consequences of white race politics.

You've conceded the entire point. That HBD denial is rooted in a concern for the consequences of white race politics (and it always has been, even pre-WWII). That is an ethnic conflict. A scientific issue is transformed into political dogma because of ethnic conflict. Rationalists aspire to approach HBD without regards to the underlying ethnic conflict. Level 3 approach HBD with the appreciation that they are entering the political arena of an ethnic conflict, as they are in the analysis of a large portion of other cultural phenomena that are generally regarded as bottom-up and emergent.

No it isn't, given that most of the concern is coming from gentile whites.

It depends on what you mean by "most." Those most responsible for its hegemony in the academy have been Jewish. Franz Boas and his disciples who took over anthropology departments across the country, and opposed white Darwinists and eugenicists, were engaging in an ethnic struggle against those concerns of white racial politics. You admit to all the individual parts, you just don't accept the whole.

You asked me for evidence that HBD denial is the outcome of ethnic conflict. Then you say it's the result of "universalist worry about the consequences of white race politics". But it was not universalist. There was a conflict, which followed strong ethnic trends between Jews and Gentiles, in which the side dominated by the Jews won hegemony in the academy. The hegemony is now "universalist" because the Boasians won the conflict and fortified their hegemony using every dishonest, dogmatic, anti-scientific, and authoritarian tactic in the book.

HBD denial wasn't a scientific error, it was a political triumph.

You can have the last word, as far as I'm concerned you have conceded the point I was trying to make and now you're splitting hairs.

You're equating subversive intellectual and cultural influence with "conquest." Obviously you do so because it's easy to argue that Jews haven't conquered Gentiles, and it's very hard to argue that Jews have not had strong cultural and intellectual influence on issues like HBD.

Why don't you actually make an argument? Just say that Jews have had no particular strong influence in opposing HBD in anthropology and the sciences. You're too afraid to argue that, so you instead opt for spouting this cowardly garbage that has no content to respond to.

spouting this cowardly garbage

I'm not totally happy with the level of charity in this thread, but certainly your rhetoric here has crossed over into "unnecessarily antagonistic" territory. Please don't.

I’m saying that the MacDonald thesis and your “stage 3” go way, way beyond discussing the impact of Jewish academics on early evolutionary psychology

The argument is indeed generalizable. That is a testament to its strength. It's an argument that gives both Jews and Gentiles agency, unlike your suggestion that Jews have just been beholden to Red Tribe / Blue Tribe politics within the fixed liberal framework, without having any agency to frame the culture or debate in a way that they perceive to be in their ethnic benefit.

You also attribute extremely strong claims that nobody makes. MacDonald and others fully attribute liberalism to the Puritan Anglo tradition and to the particularities of that ethnos. MacDonald has an entire book on the evolutionary psychology of Europeans and how that led to individualism and liberalism. They perform the same mode of analysis in understanding the emergence of liberalism and individualism as being a product of evolutionary psychology. What you take issue with is when they generalize that analysis to movements with substantial Jewish influence in the development of liberalism in the 20th century.

Suffice it so say that as I’ve said before I have a broadly Churchill-Solzhenitsynesque view on the matter and think both ‘sides’ are dealing with motivated reasoning in a bout of interethnic hostility in which ‘science’ is just a tool to shore up the persuasiveness of one’s own preset position.

Not sure what you mean by "Churchill" view on the matter. Churchill, for his part, attributed Jewish influence as being the most decisive factor of the Bolshevik revolution that outweighed all other factors. I agree that the MacDonald/Cofnas debate is an expression of interethnic hostility. That's yet another example of these conclusions generalizing because they are true.

You will acknowledge the MacDonald/Cofnas debate as an expression of interethnic hostility. What about the feud between the Grantians and Boasisans? E.O Wilson vs Gould? Charles Murray vs Erich Turkheimer? These are all expressions of interethnic hostility, and that is the entire conclusion of Level 3 as such. That is not as strong a claim as you are trying to frame it as being "conquest" or universal blame for every single idea or movement.

It does indeed reflect poorly on Whites. You understand now why there's such a sharp and bitter intra-White political divide.

No it isn't, given that most of the concern is coming from gentile whites.

Is it proportionally coming from them?

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