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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31506 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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So apparently Syria is collapsing. Jihadists are near the capital and Assad is nowhere to be found. It looks to be so over for the Assad region.

Since this is the culture war thread, here's what Donald Trump had to say on X.

Opposition fighters in Syria, in an unprecedented move, have totally taken over numerous cities, in a highly coordinated offensive, and are now on the outskirts of Damascus, obviously preparing to make a very big move toward taking out Assad. Russia, because they are so tied up in Ukraine, and with the loss there of over 600,000 soldiers, seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years. This is where former President Obama refused to honor his commitment of protecting the RED LINE IN THE SAND, and all hell broke out, with Russia stepping in. But now they are, like possibly Assad himself, being forced out, and it may actually be the best thing that can happen to them. There was never much of a benefit in Syria for Russia, other than to make Obama look really stupid. In any event, Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!

Cicero he ain't but I'm glad that this viewpoint represents the new foreign policy thinking. The U.S. doesn't need to have a finger in every pie. The international reputation of the United States was never higher than before WWII when we were mostly an isolationist country. In the decades since, we've spent trillions on our foreign misadventures and have only enmity to show for it. The Middle East is not "strategically important" anymore either, and we don't need to "contain" Russia or Iran in that area. Most countries are neither our friends nor our enemies so we should just stay out of their affairs.

Marco Rubio who is the new foreign policy minister doesn't really represent something new.

If you look at Trump's appointments and their rhetoric it is more like he is putting a MAGA lipstick on the same old neocon zionist policy. I don't see any indication that Trump's agenda will be to abandon the middle east.

Also, Trump's rhetoric on Syria have been quite contradictory. Both talking about the red line and in the past blaming Obama for the rebels. The USA, turkey and Israel supported and are to blame for the civil war in Syria. The Turks did it to gain mercenary forces, to fight the Kurds and to gain more land. The Israelis did it to weaken Iran allies and to gain more land. There were also other parties involved like Quatar which also helped the rebels and coincently the Qatar Turkey pipeline that Assad rejected would pass through Syria.

So why is the USA doing regime change in the middle east? It is mainly in service of expanding the power and influence of Israel and maybe some part of it has to do with weakening Russia and possible friendly countries. At least with Syria. There has definitely been a march on institutions of Zionists and pro Israel extremists and the Jewish lobby which includes both donors and organizations is powerful and American politicians are even transparently ridiculously servile to Israel in their over the top rhetoric. In a manner that exceeds say the Reagan administration under which Netanyahou also thought the Israel lobby was powerful.

Trump is just rhetorically all over the place, but it seems that for the most part he aligns with the neocon agenda even if sometimes his rhetoric was against them when he criticized them. Now, I would prefer he wouldn't align with the neocons but I have to call it as I see it.

Suffice to say letting the Jihadis loose, allowing Erdogan to expand his empire, and use mercenaries which he also used on Armenia and might also use against other countries in the future, and all of Israel's conduct, new land grabs, and the whole Syria, Libya and Iraq policy, cannot at all be defended from an ethical point of view. Even from a sheer benefit point of view for the USA, it is significantly questionable. But American + others aligning with it involvement in the middle east has been one of the biggest crimes in the 21st century so far. What has transpired has destroyed very large number of lives, leads to significant reduction of Christian communities, has costed enormous amount of money and played its role in large migration waves that have been destructive to european countries.

Israel is invading Syria through the Golan heights "to establish a buffer zone", so far unopposed (?).

THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!

Says the president-elect of a country whose air-force has been flying air missions in Syria in support of groups on its own terror list.

As in, you can't claim bombing missions against Syrian Arab Army and its allies while it's fighting Al-Qaeda remnants are anything else but actually air support for those terror groups, nasty resistance fighters, whatever. Flying CAS for headchoppers.

In the decades since, we've spent trillions on our foreign misadventures and have only enmity to show for it.

I have traveled to a lot of places across the globe and the overwhelming sentiment I've received is "America fuck yeah". Whatever enmity there is seems largely restricted to either cultural/political (relative-)elites and some parts of the Arab world over Israel.

Moreover, the meme of widespread animosity against America is the indirect product of anti-American cultural project. The US remains one of the most sought after places to immigrate.

I do actually want to agree that from a practical perspective many of these misadventures were totally useless! But that's just on a geopolitical plane. We spent trillions (and our own soldier's blood) for nothing. But don't get sucked into the "America bad hurf" meme on the side.

US is prosperous, prosperity is desirable, hardly a reason to pat yourself on the back. If you blur the distinction between the country and the empire, of course the enmity will be diluted.

Prosperity is downstream of what I'm talking about here.

Could you elaborate on what you are talking about?

US prosperity is downstream from the cultural and social mores that much of the world widely admires.

That’s one hypothesis. The other, less flattering hypothesis, is that US prosperity is downstream of your ancestors conquering a massive continent full of natural resources, plus being the one left standing when your rivals annihilated each other in two world wars.

Either is possible, but it seems wise to beware the flattering option precisely because it’s more seductive.

In particular, it leads to the conclusion that foreigners and immigrants admire you for your culture and wish to uphold it. Europe fell for the same trap - people don’t come to Britain because they admire British Values, they come because they want a share of Britain’s prosperity relative to the third world.

Or perhaps you should beware the option that flatters your ideological commitments. It's equally as convenient/inconvenient to admit that America really does do things well, it just depends where you're standing.

It's very convenient for Americans to pretend that we're successful because of our unique national ideals and character. And it's very convenient for Europeans to pretend that it's all just a historical accident.

Fair, but at least I have been an economic liberal. My current ideological commitments come in large part from observing that economic liberalism != prosperity. At best, it’s a prerequisite.

And going back to the original point, it’s important to realise that most pro-Americans don’t believe it. I’ve known some immigrants who were very pro free market but most are not. They want American power and prosperity not American values. Nobody gave a damn about British values once we lost the empire. Likewise people only started treating China and Japan with respect when they became rich.

It’s kinda both though. Just being the owner of land with resources doesn’t make you a rich country. And being on land that doesn’t have those resources doesn’t make you poor. Russia has a lot of oil and mineral wealth. Nobody wants to live there. Hong Kong and Taiwan are both pretty small countries, but they’re wealthy. Thus I submit to you that America is not successful just because of our land. A good bit of our success is due to our people and the values they hold. Things like productivity and meritocracy, traditional morality, innovation and adoption of technology, freedom from government interference.

It also probably doesn't help that Russia is really fucking cold.

nobody wants to live there.

Wrong, I'd like to live in both Moscow or Sankt Petersburg, and probably wouldn't mind many other places.

Natural resources are not a primary or even secondary predictor of national production. This is a silly leftist meme.

Per OEC, the US's largest commodity export sector is "mineral resources", almost entirely in energy (oil, coal, etc.). The US is underperforming as a primary producer for regulatory reasons, but there isn't much under the ground that can't be found in North America.

I don't see how natural resources can be as unimportant as you're claiming. You need something to work with in order for your nation to produce shit. That means either you need the materials yourself, or some other resource you can trade to those who do have the materials. Of course natural resources can't be the only factor, history shows that sometimes people with more resources wind up losing. But to say it isn't an important factor at all ("not a primary or even secondary predictor") seems like it's going too far in the other direction.

National resources aren't the most important thing but they're certainly important. It doesn't hurt that Saudi Arabia has a gazillion barrels of crude. Back in the 1930s they were almost totally irrelevant, oil put them on the map. Nor is the US disadvantaged by having enormous reserves of oil, coal, iron and fertile soil.

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That’s clearly part of it but America also has an entrepreneurial spirit that Europe does not. By 1990, Europe had almost caught up to the United States. But since then the US has grown and grown while Europe has stagnated. That has nothing to do with WWII and everything to do with Europe’s self destructive socialist tendencies.

since then the US has grown and grown while Europe has stagnated

I'm perfectly willing to blame at least half of that stagnation on US foreign policy specifically. Not just because the American defense umbrella allows for shambolic spending on social concerns instead of industrial and research concerns, but primarily because they engaged in very specific direct and indirect actions to prevent European economic activity outpacing that of the USA. And they did so in conjunction with the USSR, ironically enough.

I don't blame the Americans for wanting to stay on top, nor am I deluded enough to think that Europeans are blameless, but the idea that Europe's incapable of embracing entrepreneurship is silly given that it was the literal birthplace of the industrial revolution.

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Wholly willing to believe that culture has an effect, or that culture and prosperity can interact in positive or negative loops.

But I think the point still stands that people are willing to imitate American culture for precisely as long as they think it will make them rich, and that the ‘liberalism reliably causes prosperity’ thesis is not as strong as people sometimes make it out to be.

On a separate point, Britain still has a pretty entrepreneurial culture - we make lots of startups. But almost all of them go to the USA. Partly because of regulation, but also because that’s where all the investor funding is. Prosperity begets prosperity. Poverty begets cautiousness.

On a separate, separate note I think Europe’s 1990s prosperity was a dead cat bounce, caused by opening the country up to wild financialism and selling off everything to wealthy foreign buyers. Not all of it - beating socialism and the unions clearly had an effect. But not nearly enough to become America.

Canada and Mexico have many of those same advantages but are still less prosperous than the US.

Maybe. My impression is that Canada is colder, more impassable and has less resources than its more prosperous cousin, but is still reasonably ok. And that Mexico is largely arid and not over blessed with natural resources. Someone with more geographic knowledge is welcome to jump in.

But look at Britain or Western Europe. You can say that they fell into disrepair as they became less liberal, or you could say that people were less willing to tolerate a liberal culture as they became less prosperous.

The sentiment among Christian Syrians when I visited a decade ago was "we're worried America will get in solved and make things even worse." They seem to have been more correct than not.

Thank you, USA.

Based.

Is it realistic to hope that this can/will open a path to the repatriation of Syrian refugees/“refugees” currently in Europe? Like presumably a great many Syrians who fled the country did so because they were either direct opponents of the Assad regime or were otherwise threatened by Assad’s rule specifically. With a rebel Sunni-led government transitioning into power, will this be seen as plausibly obviating those asylees’ original claims?

There's a mention within the webpage for this study (the study itself does not give definite total numbers) saying that 'As of December 2022, approximately five million Iraqi nationals have returned from abroad', though that may include refugees from near abroad (other Middle Eastern countries, that is), and some number of them have probably emigrated again.

Turkish government has immediately made announcements to the effect but I have dim hopes of even Syrians in Turkey leaving. The ones in Europe look basically impossible without a very radical shift

It would be politically interesting to show that look, even if their home country stabilizes, these “refugees” will never ever leave once they are here

I think we always knew that. The anti- side knew that they would become a permanent welfare underclass, and the pro-side thought they would become vibrant and diverse 'new-Europeans'.

It's so insane. It's like the European elites looked at all the problems America has with its black underclass and thought to themselves "I gotta get one of those".

Blame Disney. Making Gypsies hot exotic innocents who deserve pity made all criticism of domestic underclasses impossible to maintain without cries of 'racism', a charge that magnified its weight from the 1960s till now. Guy Ritchie making Travellers hot probably didn't help either.

On a more serious note, the Europeans successfully kicking Irish Travellers and Gypsies out of cultural capitals and into third rate cities (Marseille always had a reputation and right now Malmo is its own meme) probably had a great deal to do with the acceptability of a postracial European polity. Out of sight, out of mind. Some places being perennial shitholes regardless of foreigner presence probably contributed greatly to the presumption that shitheads are race-agnostic, blinding polite society to the racialized nature of shitheads till it became too late.

implying [from a European perspective- they still think they're sovereign, how cute] American fifth-columnists haven't been planting those ideas in European elites for the past 80 years

Europeans are a conquered people (their massive civil wars in the first half of the 20th century saw to that) and naturally align themselves with Imperial aesthetics. Sure, there's the whole power dynamic divide and conquer thing, but that's downstream of there being no real European elite other than that which is legitimized by the Americans.

I think greentexting like that is kind of confusing and the same point could be made without it.

Uh, elites are largely unaware of the problems of the black underclass aside from poverty porn handwringing about the pernicious effects of racism on the community.

If they do not know the problems of the black underclass, then how do they know what to censor? Like the man inventing excuses for the dragon in his garage, they must have a model of black dysfunction hidden somewhere in their brains; otherwise, would not know which thoughts are dangerous. Hence "the woke are more correct than the mainstream"; when a progressive complains that coming down on crime will affect black people the hardest, it is because he realizes on some level that blacks are much more criminal than whites.

From 1984 by George Orwell:

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink.

Yeah, if they are aware of problems with blacks, european elites chalk them up to the legacy of slavery, american racism, lack of welfare, excessive police and carceral state – all mistakes they could never make. Their superiority complex is hilariously mirrored in american elites view of the european muslim and roma underclass – the europeans obviously don’t know how to integrate people, they don’t have the wonderful american civic tradition, they lack the welcoming culture and ritual turkey-killing, etc.

they don’t have the wonderful american civic tradition

But when they do have this tradition, they can be blamed because their tradition is more aggressive and assimilationist than the US, so maybe that's causing the backlash

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I have never met an American who had anything nice to say about gypsies if they knew what gypsies were. Ironically I've heard more eastern euros come to their defense than Americans.

American elites, or at least blue tribe elites, do seem to legitimately actually believe that Arabs could be integrated if Europeans were more welcoming. To be fair, there's also a huge contingent of Americans who believe 'what do you expect? Muslims are violent savages' and while there's not a ton of true elites in that category, it gets surprisingly close thereto.

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It's so insane. It's like the European elites looked at all the problems Americans have with its black underclass and thought to themselves "I gotta get one of those".

The American elites don't have to deal with the problems of a black underclass. On the other side in the ledger, empires as far back as the Babylonians realized that ethnically divided provinces were easier to rule.

On the other side in the ledger, empires as far back as the Babylonians realized that ethnically divided provinces were easier to rule.

I'd imagine that only applied to remote parts of the empire that are ethnically distinct from the heartland. Close to home, I'm pretty sure you'd rather your territory be ethnically unified to lower chances of rebellions/separatism.

Ethnic rebellion and separatism are rare. The Ottomans successfully played divide and rule for centuries.

The more members of the ruling ethnicity are around, the more credible competitors there are.

This is the problem a lot of ethnonationalist philosophy suffers from, it starts from the assumption that ethnos is primary. If I'm the Ottoman emperor, am I making moves to maximize the odds the empire stays together, the odds a Turk is on the throne, the odds a member of the dynasty is on the throne, or the odds that I and my immediate descendants remain on the throne? All can be in conflict on the margins.

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Clearly elites are protected from the worst results of their bad decisions, but I don't think it's some conspiracy to divide the working class.

A better explanation is that it comes from social signalling, where high status people can signal their abundance by not being concerned with petty things like crime and taxes.

As societal wealth gets higher and higher, the signalling required to separate oneself from the commoners gets more expensive. A high end watch is not going to cut it. You need luxury beliefs, the more extreme the better. Among these luxury beliefs, one of the most common is a hatred for white people and the belief that countries need to be reformed by importing large numbers of non-whites. If they are criminals and layabouts, it's actually better because it destroys the existing society more effectively. The signal is clear: "You worry about crime and your community all you want. Your worries are low status. I have so many resources I'll be fine whatever happens."

I've been meaning to write a post about the irony of dirt-poor post-grad white men being the most motivated regime propagandists on Twitter; compensating for lack of real status by signalling luxury beliefs as hard as possible.

The guys who were sneering hardest at every concern about inflation, crime, and woke discrimination were the ones getting mugged on their way to teach a graduate seminar in European history for $14.50/hr, because they'd watched all the tenured positions go to Queer Black History profs.

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People who fear their neighbour are wont to beg for the elites to protect them from him.

The EU could come to a deal to return them, but it would undoubtedly be blocked by the ECHR. The ECHR ruled that deportation to a country where any part is unsafe (construed extremely broadly, including for ‘human rights’ reasons) is illegal. They’re not going to allow deportation to Syria in any case, and wouldn’t whether under Assad or HTS or (likely) anyone else.

In addition, many Syrian migrants in Western Europe have already received asylum / permanent residency, many are already citizens.

What prevents the EU from just ignoring ECHR if enough countries wants it?

The entire European project is based on obeying signed treaties, protocols and contracts. There's little concrete beyond this mutual structure to hold it together (after all, it doesn't have a military). If countries start to renege on them, the fear is that the whole project starts crashing.

ECHR is however, obviously destructive and acting against interests of particular countries and Europe as a whole. If European politicians can't perform one act of statesmanship and dissolve it, what then ?

The constitutions of many EU countries and established law. Of course every law can be overturned and countries can withdraw or simply ignore the ECHR, but domestic courts (eg in Italy) can prevent or stymie this. It turns into a long, protracted legal battle that outlasts any rightist government.

domestic courts

And herein lies the problem. Courts in Western EU countries are more loyal to Brussels-aligned worldview than anything else (ETA; anything else includes, the intent and letter of laws and treaties). During nearly all of the post-Lisbon treaty years, until 2020, everyone understood that the EU treaties did not permit the EU bonds. In one night, powers that be noticed the treaties are only worth the paper they written on, as nobody really understands what is written on them [1]. Consequently, they could re-interpret them as they pleased, and the EU "recovery" package (NextGenerationEU) was born. Some legal crickets remain, and are loudly ignored ("it does not appear completely implausible that the measure could be based on Art. 311(2) TFEU", the great legal standard of constitutional thought in Germany as it relates to the EU law.)

Similar re-interpretations of treaties have not proven possible (and I predict, will not prove possible) against mass migration. By iron law of bureaucracy, the EU bureaucracy exists only to make the EU bureaucracy more powerful, and by extension, serve interest of the social class of people who fill its ranks. For this class, mass migration is not a concern. Their vision of EU is a multicultural, multiethnicity realm. Import of new peoples is not at odds with the vision, and along the way found a way to make Bertold Brecht poem true -- with mass migration, the government may have found a way to dissolve the people and elect another.

[1] Unlike the US constitution, which generally defines the institutions and their powers, the EU treaties are written in vague legalese fluff. Compare:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; [...]

Art 311 of TFEU

The Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies. Without prejudice to other revenue, the budget shall be financed wholly from own resources. The Council, acting in accordance with a special legislative procedure, shall unanimously and after consulting the European Parliament adopt a decision laying down the provisions relating to the system of own resources of the Union. In this context it may establish new categories of own resources or abolish an existing category. That decision shall not enter into force until it is approved by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.

The US constitution grants the Congress power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to borrow money on the credit, and so forth. TFEU grants a "system of own resources of the Union" "without prejudice to other revenue" and way to establish a new categories of them, which apparently also included ability to borrow money on the credit of the European Union.

Very very loud leftist politicians.

Yes.

Conditional on there being relative stability in any of the major cities (Aleppo down through Damascus), there is a non-trivial chance that an aid-for-acceptance swap will occur, in which external backers (Turkey / the EU) offer much needed financial / civil governance assistance in exchange for whoever is holding the area to accept returnees. The benefit to the local authorities is not only the assistance in rebuilding what they'd want to rebuild anyway (including housing to absorb more than just the returnees), but the 'import' of a tax and recruit base.

This will be less viable in the areas where there is significant fighting, but with the collapse of the Assad government it's uncertain how much Iran can, or will try, to force a fight. Beyond that, the actual ability of internecine militant conflict is unclear.

The factors that enabled internecine fighting between militant groups in the civil war phase were the presence of a unifying opponent to justify mobilization in general and tactical alliances in particular (Assad as the unifying enemy), the inflow of resources to fight and compete over (foreign aid to groups opposing Assad), and the lack of clear leading groups (mutual relative weakness supporting existential struggles). The later in particular was a goal / function of Russian airpower, which prioritized consolidating / less radical power groups in order to keep the rest fragmented and present Assad as the only alternative to ISIS.

With Assad's fall, those factors have substantially changed. There isn't a single unifying interest to drive mass mobilization, the interest external states have for flooding the anti-Assad movement with weapons has changed now that there is no Assad, there are indeed dominant groups whose clear strength facilitates detente rather than existential struggle, and there isn't likely to be a Russian (or American) air campaign deliberately trying to crack coalitions.

In all likelihood, Syria will be a complete mess, so no hope of that from me.

Obviously no because the Syrian refugees in Europe are economic migrants. European countries are not even deporting rapists and other criminals. Why would they deport people because of a regime change in their home country? Those Syrian refugees and their descendants are there for good. Future anthropologists will study the demographic transition which is very similar to how Corded Ware culture replaced Bell Beaker culture - except that this latest demographic replacement happened more quickly.

Asylum was just a fig leaf in the first place. Refugees are supposed to go to the first safe country, not the place with the most generous welfare benefits and strongest pro-outgroup bias.

Refugees are supposed to go to the first safe country

Is this actually a law or part of a treaty?

No. The system that the 1951/1967 Refugee Convention was supposed to be setting up was one where refugees were registered in the first safe country they reached, and then where they ended up was determined by negotiation between the UNHCR and the receiving countries.

"Refugees are supposed to stay in the first safe country" is not law - it is arguably implied by the clauses in the convention saying that refugees can't be prosecuted for illegal immigration when they cross from a dangerous country to the first safe country.

Refugees are supposed to go to the first safe country

To be fair the vast majority did go to Turkey.

...and those that left for Europe have demonstrated that they don't respect the law.

Countries can set whatever immigration/refugee targets they want, but their selection procedure shouldn't be "whoever is most willing to lie and cheat". They may not have written that policy down anywhere, but that's what happens when you don't enforce the rules.

The more relevant migrant flows wouldn't be from Europe to Syria, but Turkey to Syria, in turn enabling Europe to Turkey (which already occurs in substantial amounts).

Turkey not only has the far greater number of Syrian refugees, but those who did just go to the first safe country. These are a electoral burden, and facilitating their return was a policy goal of Turkish-Syrian relations for a good part of the last year, and Assad's refusal to engage on that was part of the Turkish support for the coalition that just took most of the major cities in Syria.

If/when Turkey pressures its recent partners to accept back Turkish-based refugees in exchange for continued reconstruction / reconsolidation / resist-other-rivals aid, that will create two opportunities for the Europeans. One is leverage the opening for their own aid-for-reacceptance bargains (as countries being willing to accept deportees is one of the big obstacles Europe has to deportation), and another is to make renewed deals with the Turks to accept the European-reached migrants, a deal more possible when Turkey has reduced its own refugee burden.

Likelihood of genocide towards the mostly Assad-supporting minority groups? Alawites and Christians seem very vulnerable to militants with a serious chip on their shoulder.

I will be very surprised if there are any non-Sunni groups left in parts where they aren’t a solid demographic majority. And even in those areas they will survive likely only due to the communities organising for self-defence and Turkey’s control over the new Syrian government.

On Wikipedia (for what that's worth) the page for HTS says they've made some gestures towards tolerance for Christians and Druze.

If you can't trust those guys, whom can you trust?

If you can't trust those guys, whom can you trust?

Putin? ISIS? Bill Clinton?

Why is it America's responsibility to protect these groups?

You know what? Just once, I'd like to see Germany or France have a go at it.

Since that will never happen, more optimistically I'd hope the Alawites and Kurds can coordinate for their own defense in areas where they have a demographic plurality. Not sure about the Christians...

What did I say that sounded like ‘it’s America’s responsibility to intervene for humanitarian reasons’?

What did I say that sounded like...

Not sure about them, but I read your comment as a rhetorical question, not a request for information. My reading was:

  • (First comment): Trump wants isolationism.
  • (Imagined bridge): This is bad because...
  • (Your comment): It will increase the risk of genocide.
  • (Imagined conclusion) Therefore, we shouldn't do it.

leap_to_conclusion_mat.gif

You’ve been warned five times for this lazy chan impression. Stop it.

Sorry, I can't tell what you're trying to say. Your link appears to be broken, therefore I couldn't possibly draw any conclusions about your intentions.

Could you clearly and explicitly lay out every step of your reasoning, as is the standard in every discussion?

I think they meant to reference this https://tenor.com/bj47U.gif In the yeschad.jpg style to humorously say you shouldn't jump to conclusions, because they thought you were jumping to conclusions. Their mistakes were map instead of mat and confusing interpretation with jumping to conclusions.

American government supported the "moderate" head-chopper rebels, so responsibility would be under "you broke it, you bought it" clause.

No. Syrians have agency and are responsible for their own country.

This blinkered thinking would lead to permanent US involvement in Syria.

More importantly, the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics is evil and you should be feel bad for espousing it.

It's "blinkered thinking" to think that a country has responsibility to limit damage it causes abroad? Nobody made US get involved under Obama but it did.

We limit damage by staying out.

You are justifying involvement today because of involvement (however minor) that occurred a decade ago. The same logic could be used to justify more involvement a decade from now, etc...''.

It didn't just occur a decade ago. US aircraft were even bombing Syrian army after Allepo was taken over.

It's "blinker thinking" to think that a country has responsibility to limit damage it causes abroad?

It is when you project damage it didn't cause onto the tab out of American ethnocentricism and a dismissal of the agency and ability of other actors.

It may be self-validating in a way to believe American power is central to the cause and outcomes in other conflicts, but the Americans were never the biggest player in the Syrian civil war, or the most decisive, or the most responsible. Americans are not the hyperagent of the Syrian Civil War. Americans were never the hyperagent of the Syrian Civil War.

'You broke it, you bought it' depends on 'you' actually being the agent to break it. 'You' did not.

Current sentiment online seems to be positive- Kurds and Christians seem generally pleased with the current shakeup, reports of minor rapport-building.

At this point, it seems to be a waiting game.

What are the likely consequences re: Israel should the Assad regime collapse?

For all his faults, at least Assad has refrained from mounting direct military attacks against Israel; moreover, unlike Lebanon, Syria TTBOMK does not harbor quasi-state paramilitaries that attack Israel. And all this is despite the cozy relationship between Assad and Iran, and the Golan Heights hatchet remaining pointedly un-buried!

Do we know anything about which rebel group is likely to end up on top if Assad gets the boot? I could imagine the US foreign policy blob backing “moderate rebels” in order to win some leverage over them and their Israel policy if and when they take control of Syria (because that’s worked out so well for us before). But I am extremely skeptical that any new regime can keep as tight a lid on anti-Israel kinetic actions as Assad has.

The successor regime, assuming there is one and it’s not just a Libya-style power vacuum, will have much bigger problems to worry about than Israel(as Assad did).

The Israelis had a pretty cordial relationship with ISIS, see https://www.newsweek.com/israeli-defense-minister-i-prefer-isis-iran-our-borders-417726

The love-in was reciprocated, I don't recall any ISIS attacks against Israel.

They want anyone but Assad and thus Iran. And they mean anyone. Assad also wanted the Golan Heights back, as would most strong Syrian governments regardless of who is in charge. So a weak and divided Syria is what Israel wants to see.

They want anyone but Assad and thus Iran. And they mean anyone.

The monkey’s paw, the devil you know, etc. etc. Though since we’re talking about Israel, perhaps the parable of the golem is more apropos.

Well it's certainly yet another challenge for Israel to worry about.

But if the Syrian jihadis enjoy living they'd be smart to consolidate their gains. Israel was able to surgically eliminate almost all of Hezbollah's leadership and I expect they'd do the same to the Syrians should they get feisty.

I worry more for the Alawites in Syria who will be at the mercy of these barbarians from the East. Perhaps they will be able to coordinate defense, I don't know. I assume other religious minorities have already fled, but any that remain would also be in harm's way.

It could go either way, depending on the new management. Assad is friendly with Iran and he has allowed Iran’s paramilitary proxies to roam free throughout the country. Getting rid of Assad in favor of Sunni rebels will sever Iran’s access. Even if the rebels are jihadists there’s a good chance they decide that they have enough on their plate already, and avoid antagonizing Israel permanently, or at least for the next five years or so. That’s the approach ISIS took, so it’s not an absurd idea that the Syrian rebels might do that too.

Assad is friendly with Iran and he has allowed Iran’s paramilitary proxies to roam free throughout the country.

This is true, but AFAIK no Iranian proxies have staged attacks on Israel from within Syria, right?

That would be incorrect.

Iran has been running supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria, with Syrian locations serving as the operational stockpiles and planning centers. This was the key supply route for the Hezbollah rocket campaign that led to the recent Hesbollah-Israel conflict.

Huh, I didn’t know that, but it makes geographic sense. Thanks for explaining

No problem.

For elaboration- most weapon shipments go by sea due to the bulk shipping costs, and Syria was a preferable point unloading to Lebanon for a variety of reasons. In addition to the increased difficulty of smuggling through Lebanese ports where non-Hezbollah factions (such as Israel) would increase the risk of exposure compared to the more supportive Assad, the 2020 Beirut port explosion (where a warehouse of amonium nitrate created a city-shaking explosion) made arms shipments through such ports politically risky as well. One of the theories of the amonium nitrate explosion is that it was part of a Hezbollah stockpile, and while Hezbollah has denied that, being caught with major weapon shipments through ports would have been a significant risk.

As a result, post-2020, Iran relied more on the Syrian route.

Not directly, but most of Hezbollah’s arms shipments have to go through Syria to get to Lebanon.

We should be thankfull that Iran has helped Syrians defend themsleves and that we haven't gotten a complete genocide of Christians and others who represent the last vestigates of Greek civilization in the middle east. Iran has been hugely beneficial in Iraq where they helped the Iraqis end the occupation and then fight ISIS. In Syria they helped fight off jihadists attacking Syria for years.

The stability that Syria provided for the past 8 or so years has been highly beneficial and it is a great shame that we are losing it.

DO NOT GET INVOLVED!

US obviously is involved, has been for more than a decade. The proxies are remote enough for this to be an opportunity to throw a bone to the part of his base that wants less adventurism/imperialism. Trump is still a philosemite and for hostilities with Iran.

This current offensive doesn’t seem US-driven. Turkey has some involvement but even they appear surprised at the pace. It seems Assadist morale has been totally hollowed out and the SAA’s mostly Sunni fighters (Alawite men having suffered insanely high casualty rates over the last 14 years) didn’t care to fight.

The offensive is Turkish driven in the sense that Turkey facilitated the initial setup and possibly the timing. What seems to have surprised everyone was the shock and military collapse on the Syrians.

The best I can figure, the shock-effect of significant UAV use in Aleppo sparked a disorganized retreat to Hama that led to significant vehicle losses (something like 150 vehicles, including tanks, running out of gas), which weakened the Syrian forces enough to more or less keep retreating and not contest Hama. This and some other optics led to a doom loop of non-resistance, which led the Aleppo offensive to gain momentum rather than use up its resources and culminate.

The current questionmark is Homs, which controls access to Damascus and could functionally bisect the Assad regime.

The pro-russian military OSINT bloggers/shills complain about this retreat that every Arab army sucks. This is probably not wrong though.

What’s Turkey’s beef that led to them playing chicken (by proxy) against the SAA? Pure Sunni vs. Shi’a/Alawite sectarianism, or does it go deeper than that?

Deeper.

Part of it is Sunni vs Shia split. The Syrian civil war was mostly a Sunni uprising, because the Assad dynasty survived by brutal suppression of the Sunni majority. This dynamic was made worse by the Iranian intervention, and efforts of the Iranians to proselytize and establish Shia communities in/as regime strongholds.

Part of it is Erdogan's Arab Spring-era desire to be a middle eastern leader of religious-democracy. Erdogan was a rare supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt when it was a thing, and had ambitions of a sort-of raising Turkey as a middle eastern leader through blending Islamic democracy. This didn't really last, but it was active nearer the start.

Part of it is Turkey's Kurdish concerns. Syria's north and east is highly Kurdish, with groups there supporting Kurdish sectarian terrorists who attack into Turkey proper. The lack of Syrian prevention was always something of a sore / a leverage point of Assad against Turkey, but the de facto autonomous states the Kurds secured during the civil war has been a significant Turkish concern.

Part of it is refugee resettlement politics. Many of the refugees who fled Syria stayed in Turkey, where they became substantial burdens far in excess of what the Europeans politically buckled under. The Turkish desire is to return Syrian refugees back to Syria, and this may have been an objective / hope of the Aleppo offensive. Turkey had desired Assad to take them back after the 2020 ceasefire, but Assad basically refused because he wanted them to be Turkey's problem rather than his own.

Part of it is regional power politics. The Turks are one of the regional major powers, but their presence and influence in the middle east has long been limited by Syria. Not because Syria is itself a major power, but because Assad invites in the Iranians (who are a regional power rival) and Russia (who is a different sort of regional power rival) in part to counter Turkey.

Part of it is Russian strategic competition. While Russia helps Assad, Turkey supporting the anti-Assad forces is a way it can indirectly poke the Russians and remind them that their interests need to be taken seriously, and not just the Syrian interests either. Regulating support for the militants is thus a form of leverage vis-a-vis Russia.

There are more, but this should be demonstrative.

This is pretty accurate in general but I also want to note that Turkish foreign policy was controlled by different groups back when we got so deeply entangled in the civil war (ie former PM Ahmet Davutoğlu and very CIA-aligned Gülen movement). There was a strong expectation of West getting directly involved and Assad collapsing very soon. This pretty much only didn’t happen because Obama

I’m not sure the current Erdoğan government members would have acted the same way 10 years ago when the uprising started. But they inherited the situation and need to continue state policy.

This is a fair enough point. Erdogan himself hardly inherited, but there was substantial government composition evolution (including his own viewpoints, informed by the previous eras) that I agree he probably wouldn't make the same policy decisions as awhile ago.

So like, what happens to Syria once Assad is gone?

Sunshine punctuated by light showers of rain genocide.

More civil war.

He's not even the last Syrian party standing, let alone the last party altogether.

Who knows. It's probably not good but there's no clear path to a good outcome that can be reached via more U.S. involvement.

Last war ended with 12 million refugees and over a million comming to Europe. The wave of jihadism that came with a country in the vicinity of Europe becoming a terrorist haven also created massive blow back. There is some chance that Europe simply won't let the jihadists take over this time. Assad is hugely beneficial for Europe.

Quite the opposite. Under Assad, the Islamists and broader Sunni population fled to Europe. If the West had helped the Islamists win, it would be the Christians and Alawites who would have fled to Europe.

I had the thought that maybe the US should back Assad militarily in exchange for kicking out Russia and Iran and recognizing Israel. Who says no to that arrangement?

Alternatively, the US stops occupying Syria's oil and minds its own buisness.

The US produces 130x as much oil as Syria.

No one cares about Syrian oil. If their production went to zero tomorrow the oil price wouldn’t even go up.

It matters because it is one of Syria's main revenue sources. Losing it puts Syria in a permanent state of crisis.

The Iranians had IRGC stationed throughout his country including in Damascus, he wasn’t in a position to tell them to leave.

What’s the steelman for why the US historically was against Assad?

Geopolitical strategy. The US has Israel and Saudi Arabia as it's dominant regional allies.

Supporting the Sunni rebels is popular with Saudi Arabia, both it's government and it's people.

Syria was USSR aligned during the cold war and kept up Russian connections after.

The Ba'ath parties that ruled Syria and Iraq started out as the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which wanted to set up a Soviet aligned mega state in the Middle East. That didn't pan out.

Basically Syria has always ended up on the other side of US alliances in the Middle East.

Divide and conquer. The US has a long history of supporting jihadists and trying to undermine stable states in the region. The Iraq war wasn't nation building, it was nation wrecking. The goal was to turn the middle east into a buch of small clan structures consistently stuck in internal fighting. Assad provided a stable state which was difficult to dominate. Now we get the destruction of christian culture in the region and a flood of migrant to Europe.

That isn’t a steelman. That’s basically “the US is dumb” which I agree but trying to see the other side.

Assad was an enemy of Israel and the Gulf Arabs, and a friend of Iran. The US is an ally of Israel and the Gulf Arabs, and an enemy of Iran.

[edited to past tense. Welcome to the dustbin of history, Assad]

Perhaps but in a material way? Is he really worse compared to the new regime?

Is he really worse compared to the new regime?

In the limited way relevant to US interests, very much so. In the language of the Cold War, Assad is their son-of-a-bitch, whereas the factions taking over are our sons of bitches. (I do not claim that the new regime is better than Assad for the civilian population of Syria, although it could be).

  • The Syrian Free army (now controls northern Damascus) is an actual US client group, which allows the US to use the territory it controls to spy on Iran and launch airstrikes against ISIS.
  • The Southern Operations Room (now controls southern Damascus) is a coalition of militias which worked with various western and Gulf Arab countries until we stopped throwing good money after bad and decided (wrongly, as it turned out) that Assad had beaten them.
  • HTS (controls Aleppo, Homs and Hama) is a coalition of jihadi groups some, but not all, of which used to be affiliated to Al-Quaeda. They have been co-operating very closely with Turkish-backed secular groups to the point where they can probably be considered as part of the Turkish client faction. Turkey is, of course, a NATO member and western ally.

I think they have a lot of faith in democracy solving problems, and the new state more accurately reflects the makeup of the people.

Countries don't generally pull 180° switcheroos like that simply because it would make all their other allies go "Hey, wait a minute...", especially when it would mean backing a losing horse like here.

It's still possible that Assad can pull off a rabbit from the hat and save his skin, but I just have to say that this whole process makes the whole "Lion of Damascus / Can't Mossad the Assad / Curse of Assad" memery seem, after the fact, rather cringe and, dare I say, Reddit (sure, a lot of it was jokes, but a lot of it wasn't). The great opthalmologist of Syria was, after all, just a paper tiger with little evident support beyond the minority demographics, if that, and a modest amount of pressure from a faction led by a guy who (unconvincigly) refers to Acemoglu on media makes the whole apparatus collapse like a house of cards.

Doesn't really look very good for the general pro-Russian camp that a major ally/prop of Russia would go out ingnomiously like this - kind of like Yanokovych, in the ends, forgotten by everyone basically the moment he left Ukraine, without support even among the antimaidan militants that Strelkov would later use as tinder for his Greater-Russia project.

Doesn't really look very good for the general pro-Russian camp that a major ally/prop of Russia would go out ingnomiously like this -

The same happens to America's puppets like South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. If they aren't themselves chased out, the moment they turn their backs it all collapses like a house of cards.

South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan

One of these things is not like the others.

Did anyone other than Erdoğan (and Netanyahu) politically survive Assad from his original set of enemies though?

The guy who was VP of the United States when the Syrian civil war started is still (just) alive and still (technically) in high political office.

Perhaps the unexpected Zerg rush of HTS was all Biden’s doing to beat the curse

The dictator and the guy who's been in and out of power since the nineties. Obama wasn't removed politically; he was term limited out and if he had been able to run in 2016 he would have stood a very good chance of winning.

Pretty big achievement for any leader to survive politically for 13 years, no?

Good point, although that memery has outlived its usefulness/relevance for years at this point, as Kamala lost the election, Biden is a lame duck and Trump isn't an interventonist. If the regime does indeed fall in the near future, it'll happen with negligible input from the US or Israel or the UK.

Hey hey, Yanukovych got a last gasp of almost-relevance when he was staged to swoop into Kyiv in the initial Russian invasion as a new government.

Assad is considerably less likely to be relevant like that, though. His minority power base is even smaller, and he doesn't have the narrative impetus of reversing an American effort.

Rationalists are much crazier than you might guess. I would describe Michael Vasser as a cult leader. My impression is his followers believe in all sorts of total insanity. I have recently observed Vasserite insanity going real bad.

Mike Vasser followers practice intentionally inducing psychosis via psychedelic drugs. Inducing psychosis is a verbatim self report of what they are doing. I would say they practice drug induced brain washing. TBC they would dispute the term brain washing and probably would not like the term 'followers' but I think the terms are accurate and they are certainly his intellectual descendants.

Several people have had quite severe adverse reactions (as observed by me). For example rapidly developing serious literal schizophrenia. Schizophrenia in the very literal sense of paranoid delusions and conspiratorial interpretations of other people's behavior. The local Vasserite who did the 'therapy'/'brainwashing' seems completely unbothered by this literal schizophrenia. You can imagine I am being unfair but if someone develops schizophrenia because of your methods, and you consider this a positive development, then you deserve negative language.

As you can imagine this behavior can cause substantial social disruption. Especially since the Vasserite's don't exactly believe in social harmony. Local Vasserite did a lot of yelling at people and what point described the social situation as a chess game with herself as Queen. This is not subtle brilliance at work. This has all precipitated serious mental health events in many other parties. Though they are less obviously serious than "they are clinically schizophrenic now". But that is a high bar.

I should note I am by no means a normie. I in fact think many illegal chemicals are probably underused, though far from all of them. I am most confident in Testosterone and Ketamine. I am a heavy psychedellics user though I do not know how people can benefit from them. But rationalists take these guys and go full on 'cult brainwashing is great'. At some point you aren't open minded you are suicidal.

I am not going to leak personal info. But I have observed this insanity fairly directly. Any remotely functional group would have kicked out this insane cult long ago. But maybe I give people too much credit. A different insane cult apparently was in some level of control of Japanese politics for a long time.

Does anyone have a theory on how these completely obviously terrible ideas get people to do them. Perhaps I am just as bad. But I simply do not think using testosterone or psychedelics in a relatively safe way is the same as submitting to cult brainwashing while high.

But rationalists take these guys and go full on 'cult brainwashing is great'.

I mean, there's an argument to be made that this is a heavily-precedented and positive mode of human society. Note that many prehistoric cultures (including recent prehistoric cultures such as Native Americans) have made heavy use of psychedelics to produce strong tribal bonds. Presumably, this is because it is a winning strategy in the EEA by increasing within-group altruism, and from a hedonic perspective it's not obviously bad either. See Haidt in The Righteous Mind for some more discussion of this.

There is a major caveat attached to this, though, which is that using brainwashing to remodel people's minds is only arguably-prosocial and/or plausibly-worth-it-for-the-subject for certain values of the output (note here that while we got a look at a lot of cultures that do this during colonisation, we did not get to see the full evolution of these techniques including false starts and unrefined forms, only the final forms that were selected for); from my (extremely fragmentary) knowledge the Vassarites' methods seem to produce a lot of murderous and/or suicidal people, which seems extremely maladaptive and a bad deal by almost any measure.

I have no idea who Michael Vasser is and you allude to “local Vasserite” without ever explaining the situation in a coherent way. It sounds like you are trying to describe fights within your local friend group.

Here's Scott Siskind on him.

One of Vassar's (ex-)disciples was Jack LaSota a.k.a. Ziz, whom you can read more about here.

I have no direct knowledge of any of these events.

Ive been gone for a while, has something changed in how we act around His name?

Quoth the man himself:

So I've taken the steps I need to in order to feel comfortable revealing my real name online. I talked to an aggressively unhelpful police officer about my personal security. I got advice from people who are more famous than I am, who have allayed some fears and offered some suggestions. Some of the steps they take seem extreme - the Internet is a scarier place than I thought - but I've taken some of what they said to heart, rejected the rest in a calculated way, and realized realistically I was never that protected anyhow. So here we are.

And I left my job. They were very nice about it, they were tentatively willing to try to make it work. But I just don't think I can do psychotherapy very well while I'm also a public figure, plus people were already calling them trying to get me fired and I didn't want to make them deal with more of that.

[...]

My name is Scott Siskind, and I love all of you so, so much.

I was around for that, it just... didnt seem like people started using the real name after? ACX isnt even a google result for "Scott Siskind", just secondary sources.

I mean, most of them didn't, but I find referring to someone by first+middle name distasteful.

Yeah he's gone public with his name after the whole NYT doxxing thing and the shift to substack.

I was going to say wbbtw

Wbbtw?

Welcome back, by the way. He hasn't posted in a year

I think I've heard the name a time or two, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you anything about him.

There is probably a good discussion to be had about cult dynamics in Bay Area rationalism, but this doesn't seem to be it.

Same. No idea what's going on or how this is relevant.

MICHAEL VASSAR is an American futurist, activist, and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and chief science officer of MetaMed Research. He was president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute until January 2012. Vassar advocates safe development of new technologies for the benefit of humankind.

"I'm a founder and chief science officer for a medical company called BayesCraft."

Okay. And he likes psychedelics too much allegedly? I'm missing so much context here.

Same here! And then the sibling comment is „oh I talk with Visser regularly“ and I guess this board is for some people the local (Bay Area?) friend group?

I don't live near many rationalists, but I have had several phone conversations with Vasser, and have not observed this. He seems sane to me. We had normal (for nerds) conversations.

Huh. Do I know you? I feel like I know you...

Though rat-adj with BPD was like half the community when I was in the bay area so- Ah well. Probably best not to try to disambiguate you anyway.

But yeah... Vassar- just had that cult leader energy. Everyone who met him knew that much. The act of talking with him would give people a contact high.

Vassar, before I came to Berkeley, someone warned me "Vassar is kind of crazy and it's impossible to have a normal conversation with him". As a result, I spent several months avoiding you. Then I finally got to meet you and I realized I had made a huge mistake. I mean, you are crazy, and it is is impossible to have a normal conversation with you. But normal conversation is incredibly over-rated compared to whatever the heck you call the thing that interaction with you involves. I regret that we didn't get more of a chance to talk about stuff and I hope to solve that sometime in the future.

-- Scott Alexander

You listen to Michael Vassar. You don't remember traveling to this party or sitting on this beanbag. You don't remember when he began to speak. He is still speaking. He sounds like madness and glory given lisping poetry, and you want to obey.

-- Alicorn

I was around when people were elevating Vassar's sexual misconduct on social media...

Many wispy memories of drama from the old discords and tumblrs bringing me back... Memories of friends of friends having psychotic breaks... Memories of jailbreaking our minds...

I wonder if HasturTimesThree is still out there... or Alice Monday... Listen. We were all crazy, and looking for something, anything to render us sane. The ratsphere selects for people that are seeking sanity after all.

Vassar's energy? His confidence? It enables him to attract people with that need.

Humas seem wired for such entrapment. It pattern matches pretty well to various cults, especially those that grew out of EST Training and its numerous offshoots. A charismatic visionary puts a new skin on old ideas, finds seekers, cordons them off, messes with their brain chemistry (though drugs, fasting, sleep deprivation, conflict, sex) Intragroup adherence is amplified though group activities, financial and relationship ties (which are sometimes totalizing). This pattern pervades Scientology, EST, The Landmark Institute, Osho, original Bikram Yoga, the Peoples Temple, Nexium; probably some companies, families, and churches. Landmark (which grew out of EST), appears to have found a stable payoff matrix. Good for them. As a rule of thumb, if you're invited to The Esalen Institute, you're 1% more likely to be joining a cult. If you hear the word ayahuasca weekly, 2%. If you're suddenly contemplating whether water has a memory, the importance of Ley lines, or past life regression, 50%. If half your discretionary incomes goes to this new group, 200%. When the leader is fucking your wife, you're probably in a cult.

What are your broad thoughts on testosterone? I've long been curious for various reasons. It seems to me like a reasonable tradeoff to a healthy, ageing person, but I haven't looked into it too much.

If you want to avoid a cult and want to do X then don't do X with a bunch of other people in an organized way.

An underdiscussed downside of the renaming of Twitter to X is the added mental difficulty of interpreting sentences where “X” is used as a variable, like this one

It is incredibly annoying, which is why I call it Twitter.

Humas

Half-way between 'Humans' and 'Hamas', reminding us that the potential for cultish fanaticism resides in all of us. I like it, very resonant with your text.

Romanian Supreme Court Cancels Election, Overthrows Results of First Round

Recently, unknown dark horse anti-NATO candidate Călin Georgescu shocked the world by winning a plurality of the vote in the first round of Romania's presidential election. Key to his victory was an intense social media campaign, with a particular emphasis on Tik-Tok.

Romania's Supereme Court has today declared these results null and void. The full opinion setting out their reasoning has yet to be published, but this is almost certainly due to allegations of Russian interference. I have not seen any credible accusations that votes themselves were fraudulently cast, only that Georgescu's campaign recieved improper (illegal?) assistance from Russian media operations. This is IMO the most important outstanding question.

That "Interference" is likely no different from how European politics is influenced by American media. Politics has become global, things simply influence eachother. And I'm sure no left-wing victory will be cancelled because of outside influence. This merely seems like the attempt to make anything sufficiently right-wing illegal, with the argument "Their politics overlap with what some people bad people of the past believed".

This seems like the old, tired, western leftist playbook by now. Russia is both feckless and a bogeyman simultaneously. They both subvert democracy, almost prophetically, every time some left wing party loses an election, but also will soon be beaten by NATO's wallet and the long arc of history.

The allegations of Russian media operations seems to stem from Calin Georgescu's social media success on TikTok. I've previously discussed how the TikTok ban was ultimately determined by Zionist support for deplatforming a source of highly-successful anti-Israel content, with accusations of China manipulating the algorithm to boost pro-Palestine content only being substantiated by pointing to the success of those content tags. China was a scapegoat for the TikTok ban in the US, and Russia appears to be the scapegoat for the cancelled elections in Romania based on a very similar logic, as @theSinisterMushroom pointed out the actual evidence of content manipulation on TikTok in Georgescu engagement is basically non-existent.

On that note, it was only a few days ago that the American Jewish Committee, uh, wrote letters that they were very concerned about the first round of the election:

AJC Expresses Concern About Romanian Presidential Candidate with History of Antisemitism and Holocaust Revisionism:

Rabbi Andrew Baker, Director of International Jewish Affairs for American Jewish Committee, has written a letter to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and Romanian Foreign Minister Luminita Odobescu expressing concern about the victory in the first round of the Romanian presidential election by Cailin Georgescu.

In the letter, Baker called Georgescu a “person who fuels the flames of anti-Semitism, who personally promotes Holocaust revisionism, and who, through his political views, defies the essential purpose of NATO."

The full text of the letter is below:

...

The first round of the Romanian Presidential elections last week has seen the victory of a candidate who is anathema to everything that we have worked for together. He is someone who fans the flames of antisemitism, who personally promotes Holocaust revisionism, and who by his political views challenges the essential purpose of NATO. Surely, this cannot be indicative of Romania today.

Calin Georgescu's "Holocaust Revisionism" amounts to praise for Romania's WWII wartime leader Ion Antonescu, who was in the 90s still well-regarded among anti-Communist sympathizers. Antonescu's image was dinged some as Elie Wiesel Commission did its relentless Holocaust guilt-tripping campaign. Western-aligned media focused on maligning the Antonescu administration due to deporting Jews to the East in Transnistria without the proper supplies, doing mass reprisal shootings in response to partisan attacks and other stuff, grossly exaggerating the intentions behind it. After a while it had become increasingly untenable to make positive statements about Antonescu's leadership in the presence of the left, in high society or among politicians. (And of course it's illegal "Holocaust denial" too.)

So the question of Russian interference in TikTok is likely the least important question, as that issue is a scapegoat for other problems, as alluded to by Reuters:

Also of concern to European allies is Georgescu describing as national heroes and "martyrs" Ion Antonescu, Romania's de facto World War Two leader, sentenced to death for his part in Romania's Holocaust, and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, a pre-World War Two leader of the Iron Guard, one of Europe's most violent anti-Semitic movements.

The EU diplomat said Georgescu's views on the pair, as well as on NATO, would increase tensions both at home and abroad if he came to power. "Imagine the discussions in the (European) Council, imagine the polarisation he would bring at home," said the EU diplomat.

EU "Democracy" is just the biggest lie there is. On another note, that Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania referenced by the Rabbi in his letter expressing, uhm, concern over the first round of the election? That exact same institute is now, as of last month, a Trusted flagger under the Digital Services Act (DSA) in the EU. The line between Holocaust studies and outright legal censorship of political dissidents no longer even exists, the same "institutes" just have both jobs at the same time officially, now.

Where is the evidence that the election was cancelled because the AJC and Elie Wiesel institute wrote letters ‘expressing concerns’ about the candidate? You’ve often done this, arguing that anything that is supported by some Jews that subsequently happens must have been set in motion by those Jews, which is rather fallible logic.

The election was cancelled to prevent the growth of a European right wing, because EU "Democracy" cannot allow a real Right Wing. The AJC pressure with the accusation of Holocaust Denial, the Elie Wiesel Institute in Romania being delegated official EU censor, those are examples of how this political suppression is actually happening. Of course there are other factors as well. But Reuters has admitted the pressure is coming from this direction, and the story of Russia manipulating TikTok holds no water whatsoever.

because EU "Democracy" cannot allow a real Right Wing.

It's interesting that "right wing parties in the EU are necessarily anti-semitic" is such a horseshoe statement.

What is your definition of 'a real Right Wing'?

The Reuters article said one EU official ‘expressed concern’ with his views on that historical figure, then mentioned the AJC letter. Where is the causative relationship between that and the decision taken by the Romanian court?

You are free to draw your own conclusions, my conclusion is that the political pressures mentioned in the Reuters article are more relevant to the actual snap decision than Russian influence in TikTok. Mostly because the latter has no basis to support it, they were pulled out of thin air after the authorities did not like the results of the first round of elections.

And if you accept these elections were shut down in order to anti-democratically put an obstacle for the growth of the Right Wing in Romania/Europe, then the Reuters article and AJC letter are revelatory for where the real concerns are coming from and the actual tactics that they are using to repress right wing influence in Europe.

But you are free to believe that the elections were cancelled because Russia interfered by influencing TikTok and not for those other reasons, if you want to believe that!

I think the elections were cancelled because Romanian pro-EU elites and businesspeople didn’t want this guy to win and are (clearly) powerful enough to prevent him from doing so. I don’t think antisemitism factored into their motivation to any non-negligible extent.

Oh it's the businesspeople of course. I think "pro-EU elites" is getting closer and that is certainly part of it.

Do you admit that one of the main reasons for consternation over European Nationalism and growth of right-wing parties is anti-semitism among the "pro-EU elites?" Do you not believe them when they essentially outright say "we can't have a right wing because of the Holocaust?"

What's so amazing is that you don't even take the "pro-EU elites" at their own word that they are very concerned about anti-semitism, or at least that is an excuse they use to clamp down on those parties with increasingly anti-democratic measures. You don't even believe them when they say it directly.

Upwards of 85 million people died in WW-II, the fact we're cancelling Democratic elections in 2024, and underneath the veneer of psyopping the West into thinking it's because of Russian interference in TikTok, under the hood the, um, responsible decision makers are citing his praise for Antonescu, is outrageous. Citing the fact that Jews died in shootings or resettlement in WW-II should not even remotely justify this act by Western Democracy (TM). I don't think I misrepresented at all, I think your representation is actually worse than mine was as mine had slightly more detail than what you are mentioning.

It's just such a Jewish-centric view of the world, we can cancel elections if someone praises a leader who got Jews killed during WW-II, a war in which tens of millions were purposefully killed by world leaders on all sides? Are we able to cancel elections if a candidate praises a world leader or national hero who was responsible for getting white people killed in WWII, or getting Romanians killed under Communism? Are Jews just that special?

Antonescu is not even accused of being involved in the alleged operation to gas millions of people inside gas chambers that had been disguised as shower rooms, and @Stefferi apparently considers it illegal Holocaust Denial to praise someone who died before WW-II even started, based on the fact that person was an "anti-semite." Can we take notice now that Democracy is just being cancelled now and these Holocaust Study institutes are just officially being delegated as EU censors?

I do not think him praising a mass murderer is grounds for overturning a democratic election.

I didn't say anything about anything being illegal or Holocaust denial, I just noted it was quite misleading to state that Georgescu was only being criticized for praising Antonescu when your own sources also mentioned Codreanu.

This is unfortunately characteristic of all your posts on this topic.

"Some Jews happened to die during a war, and now anyone who might have somehow been involved with a Jew dying during the war is cause for cancelling elections. Holocaust grifters are pretending that Jews dying during a war is worse than anyone else dying during a war. Yeah, there were some resettlements and shootings, but that's just stuff that happens in war."

Well, gosh, yes, that would be pretty outrageous, wouldn't it?

Your responses are bad and disingenuous, and I have pointed out before that you don't engage in good faith or honestly, not because I disagree with your premises (which I do), but because you intentionally obfuscate and cloud the actual issue you are arguing.

Your core belief is that the Holocaust didn't happen, and if it did the Jews deserved it, and nothing exceptionally bad ever happens to Jews and if it does they deserve it. Of course if you presented it that bluntly, you'd turn off even a lot of the Jew-critical readers. So instead you post things like this, arguing as if people are (at the instigation of paranoid manipulative Jews) criticizing some guy who admires some other guy who might incidentally have been involved in a few Jews dying along with lots of other civilians during the war. But unless you can handwave away all Jew-slaughter as conveniently as you would like to, the charges against Antonescu are considerably more than "some shit happened during a war."

Now this is not an invitation to go through your entire Holocaust denial tap dance one more time to explain how being an anti-Semite is irrelevant and anyways anti-Semitism is good actually because Jews are bad. You single-issue posting about Da Joos is annoying; dropping the Joo-posts into every single thread that you can possible make about Jews is even more annoying. What grinds my gears personally is when you engage in this level of disingenuous, which offends me because I dislike sleazy argumentation. If you said "Antonescu wasn't responsible for any massacres because those didn't happen," I'd disagree but at least you'd be arguing honestly. Likewise if you said "Antonescu participated in the slaughter of Jews because they had it coming and he was doing a good thing." I am honestly not sure which of those two statements is closest to your actual belief, but "Antonescu dindu nuffin" is surely not something even you are niave enough to actually believe.

This is unfortunately characteristic of all your replies to me, you just grandstand with irrelevant jabs and don't even engage the point I'm making.

Can you Amadan, parse for me why a Romanian Nationalist praising a Romanian Nationalist leader constitutes Holocaust Revisionism? That's a serious question I expect you to answer. You just take the double-speak in stride and don't even think to question it.

Sadly you devolve to the same baseless accusations of dishonesty even though I'm extremely upfront about what I believe. The core controversies surrounding Holocaust Revisionism are not directly even related to the WW-II narrative surrounding Antonescu, so why would I bring them up? Your accusation that I'm being dishonest by not mentioning those other matters is just another of many examples of you being extremely uncharitable instead of engaging my argument.

Can you Amadan, parse for me why a Romanian Nationalist praising a Romanian Nationalist leader constitutes Holocaust Revisionism?

I didn't say it was. But much of the objection to this Romanian nationalist was because of (a) his own anti-Semitism (which, again, you just claim doesn't exist and is also a good thing) and (b) the involvement of the leader he's praising in the Holocaust (which you... well, see (a)).

Note I am not claiming this in itself is reason to overturn an election; I don't even know all the nuances of the Romanian political situation. I'll bet you don't either. If a candidate who was legitimately elected had his election overturned just because he's an anti-Semite, well I'd object to that on principal (again, without knowing what Romanian law says). But I don't think that's the case and it doesn't seem to have much to do with what happened. It just so happens that a right wing candidate appears to also be anti-Semitic, so you are again trying to shoehorn your ZOG conspiracy into events, because everything is always about Jews.

Feel free to keep wasting your time grandstanding, I'm just going to ask you the same question again:

Can you Amadan, parse for me why a Romanian Nationalist praising a Romanian Nationalist leader constitutes Holocaust Revisionism?

Why would the Rabbi from the AJC make this claim? Explain that to me, and if you decide to continue whining about me talking about "da Joos" I'm just going to ask this same question again in response.

Can you Amadan, parse for me why a Romanian Nationalist praising a Romanian Nationalist leader constitutes Holocaust Revisionism?

I answered you directly above, and @spiky_fungus responded below.

and if you decide to continue whining about me talking about "da Joos" I'm just going to ask this same question again in response.

If you actually start posting about something other than Da Joos, I will stop pointing out that you do nothing but Joo-post. You would like to post about Jews Jews Jews constantly and you've been told not to. You haven't actually been modded for it recently because we let people have a long, long leash about their hobby horses, because it is somewhat subjective at what point someone is going on about something "too much," but if you are declaring your intention to single-issue post over and over, that will make our decision easier.

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Can you Amadan, parse for me why a Romanian Nationalist praising a Romanian Nationalist leader constitutes Holocaust Revisionism?

this was answered, you are doing your usual dance again of wasting time of others...

In

Western-aligned media focused on maligning the Antonescu administration due to deporting Jews to the East in Transnistria without the proper supplies, doing mass reprisal shootings in response to partisan attacks and other stuff, grossly exaggerating the intentions behind it.

you lied as pointed out in

This is...a severe misrepresentation of Antonescu's involvement in the Holocaust, enough that it got me to stop being a lurker just to say this so people reading your comment do not take it at face value. He encouraged and later did nothing to stop the murder of thousands of Jews, and for those who were not killed, he was complicit in them being rounded up and stuffed in trains that would go in circles, stopping periodically to offload the dead.

also you manipulated as pointed out by

Not only that, but it's pretty odd to say "Calin Georgescu's "Holocaust Revisionism" amounts to praise for Romania's WWII wartime leader Ion Antonescu" when it's followed by a quote indicating that Georgescu also praised Corneliu Codreanu, whose antisemitism was absolutely under zero doubt by any standards.

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You know, this ‘the ADL uses Russian/Chinese influence concerns as a fig leaf to go after TikTok because it boosts anti Zionism’ is a well evidenced enough take that I didn’t realize where you were going with it until you got to Ion Antonescu, who regardless of his other merits as a leader was definitely a willing and enthusiastic participant in the Holocaust even when compared to other axis leaders like Horthy and Tiso who collaborated in such matters.

In Rumania even the S.S. were taken aback, and occasionally frightened, by the horrors of oldfashioned, spontaneous pogroms on a gigantic scale; they often intervened to save Jews from sheer butchery, so that the killing could be done in what, according to them, was a civilized way.

Things became so bad that the local Nazi representative, German noble Manfred von Killinger, intervened and asked them to stop and defer to the Third Reich’s own efforts. I feel like when a Nazi named “Baron von Killinger” is horrified by your brutality, it’s time to take a step back and evaluate whether you may have crossed a line.

(Slate Star Codex, Review of Eichmann In Jerusalem, January 2017.)

Not only that, but it's pretty odd to say "Calin Georgescu's "Holocaust Revisionism" amounts to praise for Romania's WWII wartime leader Ion Antonescu" when it's followed by a quote indicating that Georgescu also praised Corneliu Codreanu, whose antisemitism was absolutely under zero doubt by any standards.

As a wise man once said: if they don’t want to be seen as an international conspiracy to subvert and destroy anything that goes against their ethno-religious interests, then they should probably stop conspiring internationally to subvert and destroy anything that goes against their ethno-religious interests

And if the Nations didn't want Jewish people to conspire internationally to blah blah blah, maybe don't try to wipe them out every time you're looking for a scapegoat.

(I don't believe there is any international Jewish conspiracy¹, but if there were, I'm not sure I'd blame them.)

¹"I can swear to you, there is no Jewish banking conspiracy. Do you know why? Jews can't agree with other Jews on where to go for dinner! There's no way we control the banks! We couldn't even get that meeting started! 'Alright, Saul, Morris, everybody sit down, we're gonna start the meeting to control the banks.' 'Oh sure, who died and left you king? No, sure, start the meeting, I'll sit over here, I'm nobody, I'm nothing, I got no opinions.'" -- Jon Stewart

Do you really believe that? Isn't the huge over-representation of jews in positions of power due to an in-group bias? This in-group bias doesn't even surprise me, Indians have it too. I actually think it's weird that only whites (particularly on the left) seem so negatively biased towards their own. The idea that jews can't cooperate in general doesn't seem to coexist well with this observation.

If you're disliked everywhere you go, by the way, I'd say that would call for self-reflection.

This doesn't seem like an unfair take to have, and keep in mind that I'm not like other people you've seen talk negatively about the jews. I barely know any history, it doesn't interest me. I don't know much about WW2, and I'm not using any information relating to WW2 in my conclusions. If I must say what I dislike about jews, and why I think others might dislike them, it's that they use feminine methods of obtaining power. Women can usually get away with methods like this (the victim mentality, for instance) because they're good at making things look appealing. Grabbing power through social manipulation without having the skills to make it look appealing, will frankly make people hate you over time.

I wouldn't even say I dislike jews in general, but many things that I dislike, because they're dishonest (like the media) has a very large ratio of jews working there, at the very least. But I will dislike anyone who I think uses dirty means to achieve things.

Do you really believe whites don’t engage in nepotism? It happens to not be mediated by ethnicity, but white people do lots of nepotism on the basis of alumni networks, family connections, religion, etc.

A very big percentage of the Jewish overrepresentation in positions of power is HBD. You’ll notice how much of it is specifically Ashkenazi.

A very big percentage of the Jewish overrepresentation in positions of power is HBD. You’ll notice how much of it is specifically Ashkenazi.

Do you have an actual number on this? I'd be interested in seeing a rigorous, good faith investigation into how much of that overrepresentation is HBD as opposed to nepotism.

This is a fair point, but the stereotype is definitely Ashkenazi and the early life check is usually something along the lines of ‘name ends in -stein’. And Jews are more overrepresented in fields with high verbal IQ(lawyer etc) than in fields with high mathematical IQ(engineer etc), so how much of it is merit is inherently harder to measure.

I’m comfortable saying a big chunk of it is almost certainly HBD without knowing, specifically, how much, and it would shock me if there weren’t nepotism networks that may or may not be available to the average Jew but are definitely not available to gentiles. These things exist all the time- historically Jewish fraternities I’m sure offer fantastically good networking opportunities, like their gentile counterparts. But these types of things are all over the place for all kinds of groups- there’s veterans networking, there’s indians networking, etc, etc.

As far as things like the ADL, or Jewish ‘charities’ that really just redirect money from gentiles to Jews, I’m not a fan, and distinguishing these from nepotism that Jews simply happen to be better at is reasonable, but I suspect they’re rather minor contributors to Jewish success.

I can appreciate the reply and understand your point, but I was gesturing towards a more numerical approach. With IQ distribution plots and demographic numbers we can work out what proportion of a given IQ range is gentile as opposed to ashkenazim, and compare the actual observed numbers with what the IQ distribution statistics would suggest. Obviously it isn't a perfect measure, but I think it beats just going on vibes.

Whites on the right might, but I think it's less than other races tend to. Left-leaning whites seem to have a negative bias towards themselves. I found a picture which seems to reveal this: https://tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net/production/883104fdaad1810c8dbbb2a6df5a4b6ed7d5036f-2560x1138.jpg

HBD

I'm not sure thats an explain all of it, but Jordan Peterson did write a good argument towards this. However, given not only who is in power, but how it's used, I think it's fairly certain to say that whoever is in power finds some sort of joy in the destruction of Christianity, white people, masculinity, family values, identity, and so on. While there's a lot of psychopaths in power, I can't see why other white people would destroy their own, unless they're brainwashed (which makes them a separate group from those doing the brainwashing, who are also more intelligent).

I also don't think intelligence necessarily correlates with evil in white people. Nikola Tesla was good to a fault, and died poor and alone. Unlikely highly intelligent non-jews, which tend autistic, intelligent jews seem to be wordcels with good social skills and communication abilities. And if the success of jews is genetic, then couldn't a desire for money or power be stronger in jewish genetics as well?

feminine methods of obtaining power.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by 'feminine' vs. 'masculine' means of obtaining power?

Feminine: Using indirect methods, using cunning and deception, appealing to feelings and morality rather than logic, hypocritical. Masculine: Bold, simple, direct, not afraid of direct conflict because it's stronger and thus able to win while playing fair. Uses logic or power. Will say the truth even when its unpleasant. Admits its own faults without shame.

But what I mean by "feminism" clusters with oversocialization (Ted's criticism of left-wing mentality), moralization (Robert Greene), mental weakness (used in comparisons like "good times result in weak men" and insults like "snowflake". It's to my understanding that progrssive beliefs correlate with mental illness, including depression and anxiety, so I don't think this criticism is entirely unfair), and "Slave morality" (Nietzsche).

If you compare how women and men compete for social power, there should be some overlap with what I wrote above.

If you're disliked everywhere you go, by the way, I'd say that would call for self-reflection.

How can non-existent people self-reflect about why they are hated in places they don't go to?

Many of the places with the most Jew-hatred have basically no proximal Jews to hate. The Arab states basically ethnically cleansed themselves of Jews last century, and yet Jewish spy animals is practically a genre of comedic international media. These do not happen because the locals have some well informed awareness of Jews, or any sort of significant exposure to Jews from which to make an informed opinion.

Many have never actually met or had a real interpersonal relationship with a Jew at all, positive or negative, to have an opinion about. They have never had a Jew apply feminine power against them, because they have never met a Jewish man or woman.

And by extension, this means that no Jew has met them.

They have never had a Jew apply feminine power against them

Not directly, but indirectly. If you see some powerful people do some terrible things, and these people just happen by sheer coincidence, to be jewish about half the time (despite only 2% of the population being jewish), who could blame you for associating the two? Many people have hated "old white men" because most powerful people in the world have been old white men. But at least you can explain this by "well, the country was like 99% white when these people started solidifying their power". And that it's men, rather than women, who are powerful, can be explained by the statistical distribution of personality traits. Some groups also hate "The rich", "The government" or "The elite", so it seems that most people just agree that the top is rotten and filled with terrible people, and that we merely disagree on which trait to identify them by (money, gender, religion, race). You're correct that I have never met any of the powerful people who are actively making life worse for me. They're just jewish at surprisingly high ratios. And the non-jews which I hate still have a distinct feminine way of thinking and acting. It may be that society has lost enough good taste that what I'm calling feminine is simply the dominant strategy.

And it makes sense to distrust the elite, and even to hate them, for they know the consequences of their actions. Countless books (some dating back over 100 years) warn against what's currently happening in society.

Not directly, but indirectly. If you see some powerful people do some terrible things, and these people just happen by sheer coincidence, to be jewish about half the time (despite only 2% of the population being jewish), who could blame you for associating the two?

Anyone with the statistical literacy, which is why I asked the question you have tried to avoid.

Again-

How can non-existent people self-reflect about why they are hated in places they don't go to?

You're correct that I have never met any of the powerful people who are actively making life worse for me. They're just jewish at surprisingly high ratios.

If you have never met any of the people who are actively making worse for you, why do you believe you know who they are well enough to determine their relative ethnic distribution?

Moreover, if you have never met any powerful jews who actively made life worse for you, then how could the number of jews you have met who were not powerful jews actively making life worse for you provide a personal experience to believe that the jews as a collective are actively making life worse for you?

By your own statistics, you'd have a 0 encounter rate of powerful jews who actively make life worse for you, versus a X number of Jews who are not powerful and making life worse for you, where X is the number of Jews you have met in your lifetime. Unless you have personally known 0 jews, 100% of all jews you would personally know would be lived experience evidence against powerful jews being responsible for your misfortunes.

And it makes sense to distrust the elite, and even to hate them, for they know the consequences of their actions. Countless books (some dating back over 100 years) warn against what's currently happening in society.

Prejudice and scapegoating on the basis of historical ignorance are among the things the venerable classics warn against. On the other hand, there are countless old books filled with nonsense, including conspiracy theories and prejudicial scapegoating that other books warn against.

Your question had the premise that jews don't exist, so I just decided to refute that (and to refute the idea that you need to be harmed directly and in person)

And I'm no good at history, I don't know of many of the instances in which jews were "kicked out", but you can't kick out what isn't there, and if a country has built resentment towards a certain group of people, then it would be weird if said group hadn't been involved in something controversial in the country at the time. It would be even weirder if this had happened over 100 times, in many countries, across more than 1000 years of history.

why do you believe you know who they are well enough to determine their relative ethnic distribution?

I don't need to know people personally to know their religion. I also don't need to meet every jew to know what ratio of the population is jewish?

to believe that the jews as a collective are actively making life worse for you?

I don't know if regular jews, outside of elite institutions and rich families, fit known stereotypes. I don't know if they support the plans of powerful people who make life worse for me. I don't even know if they tend left-wing. Lets ask Google: "The AJC survey found that 61 percent of American Jews said they would vote for Joe Biden, while 23 percent said they would vote for Donald Trump". Seems that they do. I also don't know what ratio of these people support feminism and its nonsense.

I don't even know if I've ever met any jews in person. I don't ask people about their religion or race.

On the other hand, there are countless old books filled with nonsense, including conspiracy theories I meant books like 1984. It warned against something that we could see happening in real time.

What do you think about this quote? "Media: lords of public opinion The American media is a willing recipient of Soviet subversion. I know this, because I worked with American journalists and correspondents in Moscow while on the Soviet side, and after my defection to the West. People habitually refer to the American media as ‘free’, ignoring the obvious and commonly known fact that most of the most powerful media in the USA, is already monopolized both financially and ideologically by what are referred to as ‘liberals’. American media ‘chains’ belong to fewer and fewer owners, who, do not seem to mind that the media is being almost totally ‘liberalized’. Liberalism, in its old classical sense, means above all, respect to individual opinion and tolerance to opposing views."

It was published 40 years ago. The idea that American media is left-learning, that it's owned by a few elites, and that modern "liberty" is different from classic liberty (that is, becoming pretty much it's opposite) is not exactly new, but to call it obvious as long as 40 years ago is impressive to me.

What about this one? "Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population. One should not, however, overestimate the thickness of this stratum. It varies from country to country in accordance with national temperament. Also, it is regionally dependent on public education and is subject to the influence of acutely disturbing factors of a political and economic nature. Taking plebiscites as a criterion, one could on an optimistic estimate put its upper limit at about 40 per cent of the electorate. A rather more pessimistic view would not be unjustified either, since the gift of reason and critical reflection is not one of man’s outstanding peculiarities, and even where it exists it proves to be wavering and inconstant, the more so, as a rule, the bigger the political groups are. The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness. Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic." Written by Jung in 1957

I don't think it would be right to dismiss these warnings as conspiracy theories since the consequences they warned about have manifested themselves almost as predicted, and since the idea that these predictions are "mere conspiracy theories" is much newer idea (it seems like the attempt to discredit ideas retroactively and to establish the current consensus as correct in a timeless sense)

And we were warned about this, too, in 1883: "‘Formerly the whole world was insane’ – the finest ones say, blinking." This describes how anti-traditionalists speak about the past. They essentially go "Everyone was evil, the past is immoral and wrong, but now we're enlightened by science and know what's good and proper!" and then they try to rewrite history exactly how "1984" said they would.

I don't dislike Jews because of Nietzsche, and while he has written many things about them (including my claims here, that they subverted values and made them more feminine), his overall description of jews seems positive to me. I'm aware that this reply doesn't respond to what you meant by your statement, but I feel like I'd explain my views better.

Finally - is there no group that you think badly about, that you haven't met in person? And isn't your life influenced by a lot of powerful people who your voice is hopeless to ever reach?

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An interesting tidbit is that voting had already started when this decision by the Supreme/Constitutional Court (CCR) came out.

Unfortunately, this is just the culmination of a series of events, which could maybe be traced as far back as the December 1989 revolution in Romania if I had the motivation for an effortpost. The joke being, Romanians haven't met a thing they couldn't steal, and these elections aren't even close to being the first.

For context, Romania's presidential election goes into a runoff second round with the top two candidates if no one has the majority of votes in the first.

After the first round results came out in favor of the far-right independent Georgescu and the opposition USR candidate Lasconi, I remember writing to a friend "no worries boss, this is Romania. Who do you want to win? We'll fix it, 'se rezolva.'" I wish my cynicism would have been slapped down just this one time, but you'll never be wrong being a cynic about Romanian politics.

The accusations against Georgescu are paper thin; the intelligence report declassified by the sitting president Klaus Iohannis (of the center-left PNL currently ruling in a coalition with center-right PSD) mentions such ominous things as old accounts reactivating, some VPN usage, and no IP address sharing between the pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts -- which just proves how sophisticated and malicious those darn Russians are. Also, Georgescu maintains that he hasn't spent any funds on his campaign, but someone has been paying TikTokers for posting/reposting his videos. And that's it. That's all it takes to redo the elections. Yes, there's Democracy, but within limits.

This charade follows a recount of the first round of voting based on another weak claim of miscounting some votes (no such claims were accepted by the court for the parliamentary elections where much more solid proof of fraud was provided -- but then again PSD-PNL won those elections so no biggie). Unfortunately the recount did not provide satisfactory results, so we have come to this.

As you'd expect, the current Supreme court is composed of all PSD appointees, since they have in one form or another been in power for 95% of the time since the 1989 revolution. Now, of course Georgescu is very pro-Russian, and may even have been supported by them. But I doubt any future elections will be restarted if evidence came out that Russians paid off some influencers to post videos of the PSD-PNL candidates.

All this makes me glad to have left that place. "Romania is a beautiful country; it's just too bad it's inhabited."

Edit TL;DR: the incumbent coalition didn't make it to the second round, so to save democracy from the Russians they had to restart elections. Next time make sure to vote better

If there was a round of voting left, why not trust voters to Make The Right Decision and vote for the non-TikTok runoff candidate if Georgescu is such an obvious threat to democracy for checks notes foreigners making him trend on social media? Can't all the angry Romanian protestors just vote for Lasconi as the "fix" for this "problem?"

Current President's term ends on Dec. 21, but the next election isn't until March. Current president exceeding his term is a constitutional issue.

Why not indeed. Cynically, because they expect they'll get away with it. Legally because they declared the elections to have been vitiated/corrupted, and there's no other real recourse. I also saw some posts about how the court had secret information that Georgescu might have won if the election continued, so they just had to act to save Romania (and give their buddies another go at it, but that's just incidental :)

Unfortunately for her, Lasconi may have walked into a trap. After the first round of results was validated (by the same supreme court which now decided there was fraud lol) she aligned with PSD-PNL in a pro-European coalition. Now that Georgescu will probably be barred from running again, all the anti-system people might vote for Simion (from the far-right AUR) who backed Georgescu. Simion may or may not be controlled opposition, but is the preferred candidate for PSD's Ciulacu to go against in the second round. It seems quite possible that Lasconi will not make it to the second round again, especially if one believes the reports of PSD funneling some of their votes towards Simion previously.

The law on the President's term is quite self-contradictory. It could be argued that the current president's term ends when the new president is appointed.

only that Georgescu's campaign recieved improper (illegal?) assistance from Russian media operations.

The legal cause for the cancellation seems to be undeclared campaign funding.

At least that's what I'm getting at this point.

Is there proof that Georgescu knew that money was being spent on social media campaigns on his behalf and didn't chase down the exact amounts to report it properly? Because tbh it just kind of seems like he didn't think he was gonna win, either.

Do campaign finance statutes include provisions for cancelling elections if money is underreported? Here it's generally fines and such, not undoing the election itself.

Is there any evidence the current ruling party knew about the social media campaigning but didn't do anything about it because Georgescu is a partiless nobody and they thought he would just leech some votes off the far-right party?

Is there proof that Georgescu knew ...

If I'm reading it right, it doesn't matter if he knew or not. The law in question seems to be https://legislatie.just.ro/Public/DetaliiDocument/73672, in particular Chapter IV (Capitolul IV).

Do campaign finance statutes include provisions for cancelling elections if money is underreported?

The brief statement mentioned an article from the constitution which says basically "the elections must be held according to the law" and the law (above) says "blah blah blah prohibited". Looks like there are no specific provisions for this particular case, and it's up to the court to figure out what to do now.

My understanding is that the court decided that the election was not held according to the law, and therefore doesn't count as a valid election, and the country needs a valid election to elect a president. With no explicit shortcuts, the country now has to go through the full election procedure. Again, that's just my reading of the situation so far. The full statement from the court should, I guess, state the logic of the decision, maybe. Shrug emote.

Because tbh it just kind of seems like he didn't think he was gonna win, either.

Seems to be so, yeah.

I have not seen any credible accusations that votes themselves were fraudulently cast

Reuters:

The intelligence service also said access data for official Romanian election websites was published on Russian cyber crime platforms. The access data was probably procured by targeting legitimate users or by exploiting the legitimate training server, the agency said.

It added that it had identified over 85,000 cyber attacks which aimed to exploit system vulnerabilities.

So the election systems may have been hacked.

Romania, like most of of the world, does voting by paper ballots only. I don’t see how hacking any “election systems” would be material for the election results that would warrant wholesale cancellation.

I presume vast majority of the "cyber attacks" are the kind where the attacker doesn't care is the target the election official's laptop or their dishwasher (both can join the botnet for reasons not related to election at all).

Theoretically, hacking an digitized election system enables interference in the election outcome despite the paper ballots. If precincts use computerized system to track who is in the rolls, you can DDoS the precincts with unfavorable demographics; as queues mount, some of the voters will be turned off. If you want to stuff ballot boxes without too many accomplices among election officials, hack the system to see who did not vote, plant a false vote and flip the variable next to non-voter name claiming they voted. After the election, if done successfully, the numbers will match and the fraud will be difficult to reveal.

The problem is, there has not been news about computer problems during Romanian elections. The version that circulated around reddit was about governing socialist party making a miscalculation: they instructed the mid-level party bosses to campaign for Georgescu in order to split the votes of the opposition, hoping to face an easy opponent in the run-off. They didn't realize Georgescu was popular for unrelated reasons, and overshot. All of this is naturally internet rumors.

I am not Romanian, but we do have paper ballots in Slovakia. And I theorized with my friends for how to possibly influence elections and it seems impossible to me. Some counterpoints to yours based on my own experience in voting comittee:

If you want to stuff ballot boxes without too many accomplices among election officials, hack the system to see who did not vote, plant a false vote and flip the variable next to non-voter name claiming they voted.

This is impossible. The elections are very decentralized, where election rooms are mostly at schools in specific classrooms with election committee consisting of people from various political parties. All eligible voters are automatically registered against their residency and are assigned their specific voting room. All voting is paper based and ballots are handed out against signature. All voting is limited to one day, often Saturday or Sunday with voting rooms closing at 10PM.

What happens next is that all ballots are manually counted with all voting committee members present and having full access to ballots to check them and count them on their own. Final tally is then phoned to central committee, ballot box is then sealed with signatures of all local voting committee participants and relocated by policemen. All participants can take photo of the final tally and they can find it on official government website after elections to check if there was something shady going on.

I am not sure if you are US citizen, but I cannot stress how fucking ridiculous and unsafe your elections are. I dare you to find some way of how to falsify Slovak parliamentary elections just to understand how stupid the voting in US is. The only thing I thought of was some psyop - like planting some free ballot boxes somewhere or maybe bribing some people to declare their own tally did not match in order to attack trust in the voting mechanism or maybe arson of couple of ballot boxes during election day. But I could not think of much more than that.

Seems like cassus belli to "liberate our Romanian bretheren". Not a good sign for the stability of Europe.

On one hand, allowing countries to subvert foreign elections seems obviously bad [1]. On the other, throwing out election results based on foreign social media posts seems liable to create a valid threat of a denial of service for elections absent something like The Great Firewall (which is itself a potential threat to open society).

I see why both sides would presumably be frustrated by this, but I don't have a real Platonic ideal of an alternative to suggest. Governance, at least good/fair/democratic governance, is hard.

  1. For some value of bad that is pretty nebulous. For all the allegations in the US in 2016, the actual posts entered into evidence in followup investigations were IMO almost embarrassingly bad and not really shown to be effective.

There's also the reality of the diaspora. There's no way to avoid foreign thought in elections when so many voters live abroad. There would need to be a like mandatory "homecoming" of the diaspora (~9 million Romanians, for instance) before being allowed to vote on anything.

There would need to be a like mandatory "homecoming" of the diaspora (~9 million Romanians, for instance) before being allowed to vote on anything.

What percentage of that diaspora is gypsies, though? I observe that at least here in America, if you hear that somebody is “Romanian” — and in America, this is almost always in the context of learning that law enforcement has broken up some ring of professional thieves comprised of “Romanian immigrants — Romanian nearly always means “Roma” and not ethnic Romanian-speakers. My understanding is that this is mostly true throughout Western Europe, although I have no doubt that some reasonable number of actual Romanians also emigrated, particularly during the Ceaucescu years.

There's a lot of actual Romanians who've immigrated. You don't notice them because like eastern european immigrants in general, they're largely functional educated middle class people, and most Americans just think they're some kind of slav(they are not). I've met plenty of people from Romania, who identify as Romanian, would find a confusion with gypsies very offensive and often insist that roma be referred to as gypsies to avoid confusion.

In Western Europe they're a bit more visible because Romanian immigrants to Western Europe are more likely to be working class, although still usually non-criminal. There are a lot of them. Romanian immigration(and my understanding was that this is actual Romanians who took normal working class jobs from normal working class brits) was one of the complaints from the Brexiteers. Again, you're more likely to see a news story about a specific "Romanian" or group of "Romanians" who are actually gypsies, but that's because gypsies are all criminals that no sane person wants in their country, so they get arrested a lot.

Why shouldn’t I be able to vote based on rhetoric from Russian bots? What if they make better arguments than the domestic media? Why is my vote illegitimate because I’ve internalized a truth that came from a source you don’t like?

“Sounds like someone controlled by an oligarch to me…” (sarcasm)

But seriously, this is a major shift in Cthulhu swimming leftwards and making people go insane. If every right-wing win is de facto evidence of Russian election interference and every right-wing loss is a victory for democracy, the rules-based world order is screwed.

de facto

Did you mean to say ipso facto (by itself/automatically)? De facto is used more like "essentially" or "more or less", which, while it works here, seems a bit unidiomatic.

If every right-wing win is de facto evidence of Russian election interference and every right-wing loss is a victory for democracy, the rules-based world order is screwed.

Why? Right-wing movements in many places have come to oppose American globalist hegemony recently, and "rules-based world order" has always been politics speak for "obey the American globalist hegemony". If the people internalise what you said and consider anti-$thing wins to be tantamount to [enemy action] and pro-$thing wins to be tantamount to [cluster of positive affect], this seems pretty good for $thing.

De facto - Means "in fact" or "in effect". It describes practices that exist in reality, even if they are not officially recognized by laws. For example, a de facto leader is someone who has authority over a country, but their legitimacy is widely rejected.

De jure - Means "according to the law". It describes practices that are legally recognized, regardless of whether they exist in reality. For example, a de jure leader has a legal right to authority, even if they are unable to exercise it.

I was speaking in a right-wing dialect, with brevity, and with the contrast between the two definitions above in mind. You're right that I was not clear because de facto is probably the worse usage here. I'll restate it: "If every right-wing win is assumed to be evidence of Russian election interference and every right-wing loss is declared a victory for democracy, the rules-based world order is screwed because WWIII is inevitable."

and "rules-based world order" has always been politics speak for "obey the American globalist hegemony".

...?

The phrase 'rules-based international order' grew in prominence in international affairs literature as a consequence of the American invasion of Iraq, where it was a form of criticism of the US (for not relying on UN Security Council approval). It was later adopted by the Obama administration during the American-European post-Bush reconciliation to distinguish itself from its predecessors, and later was repurposed against Obama's successor as a condemnation of Trump's willingness to break with various institutions, including the WTO, the Paris Climate Accords, and the JPCOA.

In so much that 'rules-based order' is used in regards to Americans, it has consistently been an anti-hegemonist critique of the Americans, not a hegemonist call to obedience to the Americans.

There's no visible spike in ngrams around 2003; in fact it starts growing around 2000 and grinds to a halt around 2006. You could maybe argue that the later growth was due to the Obama administration's use against Bush as you posit, though it seems that the graph starts growing a bit late for that. A search for opinions on its usage in the wild before Russia/Ukraine mostly brings up references to Australia using it with respect to China (example). I also tried to search for the phrase filtering for things up to 1/1/2014, and the top results that were dated correctly are about the ICC ("only for Africa and thugs like Putin"), a paper that flat out only has the phrase "American liberal hegemonic order" in its non-paywalled part, and a Clinton speech referring to the US as the cornerstone of "rules-based international order".

I think the problem is not so much how the term "rules-based international order" is used with respect to the US, but that the term is basically not used with respect to the US at all, except by a few low-agreeableness cranks who can't read the room. German newspapers can barely publish a single article about what Russia or China do in their neighbourhood without referring to the "rules-based order" or adjacent terminology such as "war of aggression" ("Angriffskrieg", a German favourite), but either of those things is hardly ever mentioned when discussion the wars of the US or Israel at all. The other "rules" are evidently also only for Africa and thugs like Putin.

If someone creates a set of rules for you to follow (and the ones that created them were American institutions, which many of these articles are not shy to brag about) but does not need to follow the rules themselves, to follow the rules is to accept their sovereignty over you.

One way to put this is that it's an example of the classic political debate "must the King obey the law?" In a "rules-based world order", the hegemon can still make the law, but they also have to obey it. This is, of course, good for the nobility (State Department, UN, Davoisie, etc.) and bad for a maverick King (Bush, Trump, etc., though one was too hawkish and one is too dovish), so one's position on the issue tends to be defined by who you support in that power struggle. Very few people in high places want a revolution that breaks both the Crown and the Court, but that sort of multipolarity is popular with outsider critics.

The issue with this metaphor is that the nature of international law is that it quite often isn't.

As a project, international law theorists spent a good part of the 90s/early 2000s trying to build / impose an expectation of abiding by certain premise that others hadn't agreed to, and then using the non-compliance as a lever against those who had never consented, even though on a legal level international law rests on the consent of the states who choose to take part in elements of it. Sometimes states are agreeing to things they don't consider an objection at the time- see UN charter law- and sometimes violation of laws they have agreed to is a worthy tool- see nuclear non-proliferation violations- but in other cases international laws are used by select in-group members as a diplomatic cudgel against those who never consented to them in the first place.

The Rules-Based-Order rhetoric regularly invokes the later category, which tends to be more obvious whenever international law institutions like the International Criminal Court are invoked against non-members. It's not that the law was made but its makers refuse to follow it- it's that laws are made by and for some groups who then go on to demand that others must obey, or that customs that aren't common laws are insisted as universally applying as a matter of law.

So in this metaphor, this is more akin to the nobility of one Kingdom, let's call it Aporue, writing laws to govern the conduct the kings of Acirfa and Acirema. Some of these laws even give them the right to try and imprison the kings and nobles of these distant lands. If those other Kingdoms agree to adopt such laws... great! Fine and dandy, assuming all other things are fair. But if they don't, and Aporue tries to impose them regardless, this is less a political debate about the King following their own laws and more an attempt at a political imposition against the laws of the other Kingdoms.

That actually fits even better into a feudal metaphor - a potpourri of overlapping contracts and privileges, such that the Bishop of Israel cannot be tried in a lay court, that the Free City of Moldova may have elections free from the meddling of the Duke of Russia, that the Emperor is obliged to varying yearly gifts of aid, that the Peace of God obtains here and here, but not here, and so on. Rule over a feudal realm and over a world-system looks pretty similar, because they both come out of attempts to realistically and multilaterally negotiate in a state of anarchy.

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What does "Subvert" mean.

People can learn things and share opinions with those they talk to. That's how we arrive at decisions about who to vote for. Without a great firewall no election can truly be safe from foreign influence, because individuals will always internalize the influence of their foreign friends.

I think that means I agree that this is a tough nut to crack. I'm not sure there's a hard line, we might have to choose somewhere on the gradient and draw one.

Hopefully we'll all arrive at some agreeable middle ground. "rules of honorable culture war"... Perhaps something where you're allowed to influence online friends but to do so with a government backed media campaign is a culture war crime? (this is just a spitball in the direction of the vibe... I doubt the UN would actually pass this.)

Of course I say "we"... but I'm not Romainian. I merely say "we" because... its a nut America has yet to crack as well. It's something every country needs to figure out.

It’s not a line that should be drawn. Theres no way any government should be allowed to simply set aside election results. It just opens the door to a government deciding that Theres interference any time that they don’t happen to like the results. And given that such things would be hard to prove or prevent, there’s no way to 100% defend a fair election from those kinds of accusations. Maybe people wanted Trump, or maybe it was secretly Russia! And since it was secretly Russians the vote would be set aside.

I... think I agree with this. Though I'm not certain. It might be possible to come up with a plan that would convince me otherwise. No, I don't think we should simply set aside election results. Ideally whatever method we use is entirely prior to voting, (as a great firewall would be) without being... the great firewall. I can't think of a solution I fully endorse.

It's a bit of a paradox under my value system in the first place. Reconciling the need for shared values and the need for individual liberties I mean. Coordination of wills and individuation of wills trade off closely with one another.

Even this would be fairly dangerous, because you essentially have to curb free speech during an election, as it’s unlikely that you’re going to be dealing with a manipulation scheme that is stupid enough to not VPN at minimum and probably at least be able to spoof IPs in the country if not create a network of servers in the country to post from. It’s unlikely that you can thus tell the difference between native crime-thinkers and a network of agents from Kazakhstan trying to influence the election. And even if you could, again the temptation to simply label messages that go against the doctrine of the cathedral as “interference”, “misinformation”, or “disinformation”, not because they’re false, but because it’s an easy win. You get to hobble your opponent by blocking messages in his favor while you can get your message out easily.

Again, these types of decisions are effectively attacks on democratic principles because it allows for the ruling party to simply declare the other side to be cheating, and thus put a strong thumb on the scale in favor of the ruling party.

There is no way such a rule would be backed by the Western countries unless they could get reassurance that it would never be applied against them in the court of public opinion. A quick search reveals USAID spent $63 billion in 2024, and this is not counting other allied financial moves like the EU's offer of more than 10% of Moldova's GDP as a loan to help the pro-EU candidate. (Imagine the pandemonium if Georgescu's campaign had a promise of a $35B loan from Russia attached to it if they leave NATO!) Then, there is the circumstance that Western culture is "Universal Culture". The West out-spends and out-memes its adversaries on its periphery regularly; losing one rare match is not a good reason to throw a tantrum and quit the game.

The EU financed and even gave weapons to the revolutionaries that overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014, installing an EU-friendly government instead of the previous government, which was oriented towards Russia. That kicked off the current Ukraine situation.

There isn't even a veneer of fair play and there hasn't been in a long while. To be fair, I would not expect fair play from Putin. But the EU as an institution is converging towards the same kind of thing, in the name of "defending democracy" to boot. I don't like either, but I have to live in the EU and Putin is far away, so one of them I hate theoretically but the other one I by now hate viscerally.

One might have imagined that the Russian-advocated attempted self-coup the preceeded the culmination of Maidan (and, of course, the reversal of the EU association agreement that preceded the Maidan political crisis) might have had something more to do with kicking off the current Ukraine situation, but I am glad to see a non-American attribution for once.

I agree with you. So I'm not sure how things will be resolved.

Personally I never liked this game though. Win or lose the culture war is emotional hell on earth.

On one hand, allowing countries to subvert foreign elections seems obviously bad

From the POV of western empire it's hard to argue this though. With examples like Georgia where earlier this year they voted to limit and track foreign NGO funding and this was met by western backed protests. Now that a non western government got elected the west is full tilt on propaganda and encouragement for violent protests and overthrowing the elected government.

Had something similar in Hungary as well where they tried to limit foreign NGO funding and this was met by mass tantrums from the EU who said it was contrary to European values. So apparently European values are that they get to influence others thinking and no one else does.

So apparently European values are that they get to influence others thinking and no one else does.

Looks at last few thousand years of history. The answer has pretty clearly been yes until maybe 1945. And even then, I'm not completely sure whether that was a change in values or just the rhetoric used to express them in polite company.

If the American people weren’t so aggressive and well-armed they definitely would have done that in 2016, regardless of how ineffective the influence campaign really was.

On one hand, allowing countries to subvert foreign elections seems obviously bad

Is there a steelman for simultaneously believing that a) we should have relatively porous borders and lax immigration controls, and b) foreign interference in domestic elections in the form of social media posts is a bad thing? Because surely there are many individuals who have expressed support for both positions.

If the Russians first crossed the southern border illegally and then started trying to drum up support for right wing populism, would that be ok and democratic? Now they're just undocumented residents instead of foreign nationals, right? You could say "no that's still election interference", but then it just seems like you're saying "advocating for the side I don't like is election interference", which is a bad look.

We also don't have any jurisprudence I'm aware of on how rules for "foreign propaganda" mesh with the First Amendment. Could FDR ban publishing Der Stürmer by German sympathizers in 1942? That looks a lot like an act of Congress restricting the press, but honestly you'd have trouble getting me to march in support of the publishers. What about in less-declared conflicts? Did the Soviets ever try to just publish Pravda above-board in America?

We actually just had a minor development that is sort of on this front in the DC Circuit with the TikTok divestiture case. I haven't yet actually read the case, just some excerpts from Volokh, but it's likely to be influential.

Uh, FDR did a lot of stuff like that. He may not have banned Der Stürmer but he wouldn’t have been stopped from it by constitutional concerns.

Could FDR ban publishing Der Stürmer by German sympathizers in 1942?

FDR wiped his ass with the Constitution. I don't think he cared one bit what it did or did not allow him to do.

Could FDR? yes... Of course he could. The constitution wouldn't matter.

He had the Espionage and Sedition Acts and the Office of Censorship and the public trusted him. Had he told them we were banning publishing Der Stürmer the courts likely would have deferred to him during wartime.

Note that the internment of the Japanese Americans involved:

  • Forcible removal from homes, businesses, and communities.
  • Incarceration in remote camps without due process.
  • No evidence of wrongdoing against the vast majority of internees.

This wasn't just a violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments but an assault on the very concept of equality under the law. The Supreme Court upheld internment in Korematsu v. United States (1944).

And FDR just unilaterally did it. With an Executive order.

Long story short, constitutional rights can be expected to become elastic during wartime.

Pretty much, and this is the reminder to the American audience that many Europeans feel they are in a war context due to the nature (and the justifications) of the Russian war in Ukraine. One can disagree with it, but the European geopolitics is reflecting the sort of balances and compromises that come with significant geopolitical insecurity.

In a way, this is what the birth of a more strategically autonomous, multipolar Europe looks like. The Europeans are following in the footsteps of the American policy transition of the early cold war, when covert actions and interference rose as way to address concerning developments near home and further abroad.

Pretty much, and this is the reminder to the American audience that many Europeans feel they are in a war context due to the nature (and the justifications) of the Russian war in Ukraine.

Where are you getting this from? I never heard anyone say this, so while there might be some people believing it, I wouldn't call it "many". In any case canceling elections due to a "war context" without a formal declaration of war seems like shameless authoritarianism.

...from various European diplomatic and government reporting, many of which have been posted in The Motte over the years, as well as personal engagements?

I call it a war-context rather than simply war because while there are no direct European Union/NATO-member involvement in combat operations, it's not exactly hard to find acknowledgements of the contextual perceptions on views of the Ukraine War (explicitly noted as a reopening a war in Europe to change territorial borders) with demands for reshaping the European security order (with pre-war terms that would only be achieved by war), reasonings for why supporting Ukraine is important for more than moral reasons,, the Russian gas cutoff that accompanied (the fulfillment of long warned/disbelieved geopolitical hostage taking and an understood consequence of a war), Russian-associated sabotage efforts (of which there was just a naval vessel standoff in the Baltic), the perceived role and purpose of Russian information activities (to influence election results) and political-ally cultivation in European politics (including support for Russia-amiable leaders like Orban who then go on to develop their own more authoritarian shifts), beliefs that Russia has attempted direct coups of European community members (especially Moldova), the reasons why Trump's NATO non-support threats are so concerning (because the perceived need for NATO has overwritten nearly two decades of increasing NATO skepticism), and various others.

If you do not believe many Europeans view themselves in a major geopolitical conflict with Russia which includes stakes of state and governmental survival, we will have to disagree. If you think that this conflict is unfair to be described as a war-context despite much of it happening in the context of the Ukraine War, I am open to other terms. I would support some varient of 'Cold War,' but the cold war was a war context in many ways, so that would confudle the distinction.

I would still maintain the point that many Europeans do not share an American-centric perspective of Russia as a not-really-significant threat, and view the Ukraine conflict's greater context (as in, the context that led to the Ukraine conflict rather than Ukraine itself specifically) with far greater concern. This greater concern, in turn, drives decision making and value-compromising that would not occur in less concerning geopolitical contexts.

In any case canceling elections due to a "war context" without a formal declaration of war seems like shameless authoritarianism.

And I am not trying to dissuade you from that perception. Instead, I am trying to make a point that the lack of shame is driven due to the perception of necessity in geopolitical conflict.

'We are afraid of Russia' is not a mere figleaf excuse insincerely held to justify self-interest by people who are not afraid of Russia.

Geopolitical fears, in turn, drive the substitution of value/rule-prioritizing deontological ethics in decision makers with more utilitarian/consequentialist models, particularly due to increasing the dependence on institutions biased towards more consequentialist professional ethics (i.e. military and intelligence services) and partly because the raising of stakes can lead to belief that failure will see the losses of action occur regardless. (i.e. the cold war fear that letting a Communist foothold solidify would lead to a different authoritarian of worse geopolitical effects than your own supported strongman).

What we are seeing by and from the Europeans is sad, but very much consistent with shifts from when stakes are perceived to be low (and thus deontological consistency has lower costs) to a higher-stakes competition perception. We know that the EU leadership elite has a capacity to accept the elections of governments that they strongly dislike- see the Poland PIS and Orban- and we are now seeing differences in behavior that correspond in differences to attribution.

This is a perception difference that creates a gap with many Americans, who do not view the stakes of the Russia conflict as particularly high-stakes outside of nuclear escalation risk, which itself is a reason to de-prioritize the other elements of the conflict. Which, in turn, feeds into European leadership perception on the need to act for themselves, contributing to the cycle.

The consequence of fear-driven actions, however, is that much as it's hard to make someone understand that their paycheck depends on them not understanding, it's hard to find shame in people who believe what they are doing is necessary to avoid worse outcomes. Shame for these sort of things comes later, when the sense of urgency has faded (and often retroactive information consideration makes past dilemmas seem obvious), or from outside, by people who didn't share the context-perception in the first place.

Some Europeans, especially in Eastern Europe, are genuinely concerned by Russia. Others (including many politicians and newspaper writers I read) are blowhards who switch seamlessly between "Ukraine is losing, we must send missiles so they can resist" and "Ukraine is winning, we must send missiles so they can finish the job" depending on the latest reports. The idea that Russia is about to sweep Europe is ridiculous.

Personally, I think there is a pretty sizeable contingent of Europeans whose performative fear of Russia is driven by the usefulness of being able to suppress dissident parties and call local dissent 'Russian misinformation'. It may well be that they have convinced themselves, of course. But in my personal circle (UK) anti-Putin sentiment is driven far more by disgust than fear.

We know that the EU leadership elite has a capacity to accept the elections of governments that they strongly dislike- see the Poland PIS and Orban-

They most certainly do not.

and we are now seeing differences in behavior that correspond in differences to attribution.

We are now seeing increasingly bald authoritarianism due to their failures to destroy right-wing governments in more subtle fashion - financially and procedurally. Plus the looming threat of populism in their own countries driven by their absolute failure and arrogant incompetence.

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