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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   30927 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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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

The fawning defense of Trevor Noah in that article is remarkable. By saying black people aren't French, what's apparently happening is the following:

Noah ... in his response offers a critique of traditional French approaches to diversity from a progressive, multicultural point of view.

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.

They think the (mostly Christian IIRC) Dearborn Arabs are representative of Arabs worldwide.

That belief codes as super low status to me, I would say it’s completely outside the elite’s overton window(of both continents). Even though I think a redneck going off such an uncouth heuristic would likely be more often correct than a member of the elite. Eg, the recent syrian re-shuffling. It’s unlikely to go well, and if you don't have giant 'egalitarian' blinders on, it's obvious that the religion of peace has a lot to do with it. Every time you get rid of a dictator, they start larping as 7th century warlords.

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.

Perhaps outright rebellion or separatism is unlikely, but at the very least stability is far more likely under conditions of ethnic homogeneity? With highly diverse populations, you've got a higher chance of different factions fighting each other, and even if they're not fighting you, that's still pretty detrimental to overall security, the economy etc. As you said, this might take a back seat to certain other priorities, but I'd imagine it's generally pretty high up there. Ethnically divided regions might be easier to rule, but they're also easier for enemies to conquer.

To take the Ottoman example (and I could be completely wrong on this, I'm not a subject-matter expert), I doubt there'd be many Sultans who'd would want core provinces like Anatolia to look like modern-day Lebanon.

Core Ottoman provinces like Anatolia always looked like modern day Lebanon. To my recollection, core modern Turkey didn't become majority Muslim until the refugee inflows of Muslims fleeing Eastern European nationalists in Greece and the Balkans combined with Christian migrant outflows to those new countries in the 19th century. And it didn't start to look as Muslim as it does today until the destruction of Greek and Armenian communities during and after WWI.

Also, Once again, you're talking from the perspective of the state. The ruler does not necessarily care about maximizing outcomes for the state. He might care more about maximizing outcomes for himself, and his sons. Which starts and largely ends with hanging onto personal power.

Minorities have advantages for rulers. Because they depend on the ruler for protection from the majority, they are in the special power of the ruler, and can be used more readily. It's a trick seen over and over throughout history.

This is the problem a lot of ethnonationalist philosophy suffers from, it starts from the assumption that ethnos is primary.

People are still thinking on 1789-1945 terms. Ethnonationalism (really, it should just be 'nationalism') thrived then because the military meta made loyal mass armies the backbone of a good army. The only other period in history quite like it, as far as I know, was the infantry meta of the Warring States period 475 – 221 BC, and if you look at the institutions of Qin, the winner of that conflict, they sound exactly like something out of 19th century Prussia.

Absent this, empires frequently bring in outsiders to help them rule even their core provinces. The Mamluks had their Circassian slaves, the Turks their Balkan janissaries, the Roman emperors their freemen and barbarian-staffed administrations.

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.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. I always wonder what kind of man puts himself in that situation.

But it does give me hope that maybe we've reached peak woke. Woke beliefs have filtered down to some very low status people now, and so its time for another turn of the barber pole.

It's quite common now for women to express contempt for sniveling "male feminists". They'll often couch this in terms of these men not being true allies, but I think more accurately it's a disgust reaction to low status men.

Having heterodox beliefs is a luxury afforded to the strong and high status.

It's quite common now for women to express contempt for sniveling "male feminists". They'll often couch this in terms of these men not being true allies, but I think more accurately it's a disgust reaction to low status men.

I’ve long had a theory that outspoken male feminist Allies are mostly the men you don’t particularly want around your daughter, because of selection effects- men with bad behavior choose that stuff to compensate for red flags.

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

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