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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   36241 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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This started as a reply to @SecureSignals @RandomRanger and others but I didn't want to leave it buried at the bottom of a 20 comment long chain as I feel like it warrants examination on it's own.

I posit that the biggest obstacle to the online dissident/woke/identitarian right gaining influence and a wider audience in the US is not that it is rife with grifters, feds, and cosplayers. (Though it is) It's biggest obstacle is that it doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from the online woke/identitarian left in the eyes of people who are not members of the priestly caste (IE Journalists, Academics, etc...). While I acknowledge that the identitarian right has managed to make inroads within the priestly caste (See Yarvin's recent interview in the NYT), it seems to me that the influence of priestly caste has been waning overall (See the election of Donald Trump).

I get the impression that a lot of commentors here don't grasp just how unpopular identity politics is in "normie" spaces. In fact, I would say that to call it "unpopular" may be grossly under selling it. Leftists often lament the weakness/lack of class consciousness in the US, that the poor, more often than not, do not see themselves as "exploited" as much as they see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed". However I believe that this is a feature rather than a bug if one wants to live in a society with high trust and social mobility, and one of the things that distinguishes the US from other nations.

If the identitarian right and the wider priestly caste are going to hold on to Identity Politics as an organizing principal/value they are going to have to have to confront the fact that the perception of Identity Politics in the popular zeitgeist is that of an ideology for losers. An ideology for people too stupid, degenerate, or incompetent to survive in an honest meritocracy. An ideology for people who could not and therefore "Didn't Earn It". They will also have to overcome the perceived association of Identity Politics with Socialism, Marx, and other foreign (distinctly Un-American) influences. Specifically, those of the Indian sub-continent (IE the worst place on earth) and Europe (IE that socialist shithole our ancestors fled across the ocean to escape, and that we as Americans have expended untold millions in blood and treasure trying to protect from its own worst impulses).

Finally, there is the question of value added. Is the priestly caste even relevant these days? Are the jobs that the priestly caste performs mostly fake? Could we do away with them entirely? If so, is trying to align with them a smart move?

Imagine a sincere white supremacist, a walking talking Hollywood cliche with a shaved head, half a dozen kids, a wife he beats, and the 14 words tattooed on his back. How would you go about convincing him that he would be doing more to secure a future for his children (and his genes) by urging his son to associate with gay Catholics and non-binary/MTF cat-girls, than he would by letting his son date that thicc Latina from down the street?

I contend that these are the sort of issues that both the woke left and the identitarian right are going to have to grapple with if they don't want "Trumpism" to run the table on them, as much of the ground level opposition to wokism as it exists today is in reality opposition to identify politics as a whole.

To what extent do American normies buy into the belief that their society is a honest meritocracy?

They've bought into wanting a honest meritocracy, the question of to what degree we actually have one is a major bone of contention, and driver of anti-woke sentiment.

As far as I know, one recurring talking point of (mostly suburban and PMC) white liberals is that the blindness and ignorance of classical liberalism towards North American racist and white supremacist power structures is the main factor driving many people towards identity politics. If we accept that premise, it’s a major driver of woke sentiment as well.

If we accept that premise, it’s a major driver of woke sentiment as well.

The principle of explosion says if we accept a false premise, we can derive anything from it. The bit about "racist and white supremacist power structures" is a boogeyman; if you try to find out what they are you get a combination of real but insignificant examples (e.g. a racist sheriff here and there) and smoke and fog, where things are said to be white supremacist for reasons that don't make sense (and are sometimes outright nuts, like that Smithsonian poster about being on time being white)

And you believe those talking points?

You believe that a member of the PMC would never lie or misrepresent facts to push a political agenda?

Even PMC members here in Germany, who have no stake whatsoever in the matter, faithfully talk those points as gospel truths.

Unfortunately I think their belief in this is mostly unironic and sincere. So is that of their mulatto 'allies'.

I asked you if you believe them.

I don't believe that a member of the PMC would never lie or misrepresent facts to push a political agenda. I also don't believe that that's what they're doing in this particular case. I also don't think that nonwhite minorities traditionally had ample reason to believe that American society is a honest meritocracy.

How is this supposed to serve of rebuttal then?

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To the extent that they are succeeding.

That's not exactly a stable social consensus though, is it?

The whitest parts of America are the highest trust. Robert Putnam has shown that social trust is related to homogeneity. We also know that oxytocin allele expression is related to social trust, so not every group has the same amount of social trust. If you value “social mobility”, the easiest way to increase this is to live in a homogenous high-trust nation. This is why the five nations with the most social mobility are Nordic, and all of the top 10 are European. And so,

if one wants to live in a society with high trust and social mobility,

their primary ambition should be to maximize how many Europeans exist around them, particularly Northern Europeans. And it seems everyone knows this, hence migration. But this is problematic for those who deserve that level of trust, but for whom the trust is reduced with every addition of foreigner. Because they deserve to live around their own kind, just as much as an intelligent individual whose genes express a high IQ should be able to work productively according to his genes.

An ideology for people too stupid, degenerate, or incompetent to survive in an honest meritocracy

Notably, high-trust Europeans do not feel this kind of sentiment, which is why they enact policies that help their own citizens and promote social mobility. Right now they think that everyone is their people, because they have been misguided, but this can be changed. Meritocracy is also not a historically common idea in Europe. It’s also not very evidenced by science. A person’s identity is not their IQ, it’s the whole package of genes which they share in common with their family and extended kin, IQ involving a sliver. Meaning a high IQ Russian has more in common with an average Russian than a high IQ Persian. This is why a high IQ member of a nation in history continued identifying with their nation. A high IQ is just one genetic expression of a group, and it may even come at the cost of other valuable group skills (like in-group preference!).

Thought experiment: you have a group of Northern European Utah Mormons who were selected by both race and culture to be hyper-trusting. Let’s assume they aren’t gay furries. How do you convince them with reason to invite foreigners to live alongside them? The only reason their theology stopped being explicitly racist is that the American government forced the change upon them. I can imagine, you know, that they may want to invite some Chinese or Japanese families for fun. Maybe an Italian architect, maybe a Japanese designer. But why would they ever increase their foreigner proportion by more than 1%? Is this in their interest?

The more we refer to the priestly caste the more I am reminded of Babylon 5.

"Three castes: worker, religious, warrior."
"They build, you pray, we fight."
– Neroon of the Warrior Caste to Delenn of the Religious Caste

What happened to the worker caste in the US? The religious caste outsourced everything?

The religious caste convinced itself that it was the working caste.

Let’s assume they aren’t gay furries.

Cheap shot?

I just didn’t want the inevitable “but how can you forget —“, he is an outlier

Well, Trace isn't a Mormon any more, so I hardly see the relevance.

How would you convince Mormons to invite non-Mormons to live alongside them? I'm not sure. 45% of Utah is non-Mormon, so it doesn't appear to be that difficult, and as far as I'm aware Mormon Utahns don't seem to have any great hatred of their non-Mormon neighbours.

Or is it specifically how you convince 'Northern Europeans' (Nordics? Germanics? Aryans?) to live alongside non-Nordics? That again doesn't seem that hard? Minnesota, for instance, was settled as majority Scandinavian and Germanic, I believe, and it now seems pretty welcoming of non-Nordics.

I just don't particularly see the riddle here. Neither Mormons nor Northern-European/Nordic/Germanic/Aryan/Whatever people are in fact inherently predisposed to exclusionary ethnic communities. You may just be typical-mind-ing here. Perhaps you feel a kind of visceral opposition to living in a community that's something less than 99% Nordic, but demonstrably not even most Nordics feel that way, much less most fair-skinned people, and much less people in general.

You can’t provide a reason for why they would rationally opt into immigration if they knew all the data. Mormons do not have autonomy. So there’s no “revealing preference” here. Nordic countries brought in immigrants under the false belief that everyone in the world is just like them; science and research has now disproven that. If Sweden knew what they knew now, they would never have brought in immigrants. You cannot persuade Swedes logically to do this.

Those are statements of dogma, not reasoned arguments. What reason do you have to think that it's genuinely inconceivable that a majority-Mormon population would ever welcome more than 1% of a non-Mormon population? That Swedes would never welcome more than 1% non-Nordic immigrants? On what basis do you think that? There's at least directional evidence at the moment suggesting that both Mormons and Swedes are happy living in societies that are less than 99% homogenous.

You've also avoided clarifying exactly what you're talking about - I understood you to be making a racial argument here. Presumably Norwegian immigrants to Sweden are fine. German? Slavic? Italian? I am guessing that by 'immigrants' you mean 'non-northern-European immigrants'? Likewise are you assuming that 'Mormons', contextually, means fair-skinned Mormons?

Meaning a high IQ Russian has more in common with an average Russian than a high IQ Persian. This is why a high IQ member of a nation in history continued identifying with their nation.

The Russian elite were for centuries francophiles who disdained the slavic culture of their peasant countrymen. In fact the entire project of 19th century European nationalists was essentially the convincing of high IQ individuals to stop identifying as part of a multinational imperial elite and start identifying with poor farmers who spoke the same language, so it was clearly non-obvious to them that they should do this.

Seems like something that’s still in place today to an extent.

People of the multinational upper class often feel more kinship with one another even though they’re from different countries than they do with the lower class people in their own country.

This is honestly true in my own life. I’m in grad school. My friends are from all over the world. I have a lot more in common with them although they’re from Iran and China and Ecuador than I do with people even in my own family in the US who never left their hometown and whose thinking and interests in life are very foreign to my own.

It’s sort of a self sorting by intellect and interests.

I gather this is what is meant by “globalists”.

the entire project of 19th century European nationalists was essentially the convincing of high IQ individuals to stop identifying as part of a multinational imperial elite and start identifying with poor farmers who spoke the same language

Is what the intelligent wing of the modern right wants basically equivalent to what the old European nationalists were trying to do?

The whitest parts of America are the highest trust.

The highest trust parts of the US aren't "white" as much as they are "red" and "rural". States like Utah, Idaho, Wyoming , and Vermont. Even in bottom tier trust states like Lousiana and New York, the trend holds with the highest trust counties being those with the less urban development and more Trump voters.

their primary ambition should be to maximize how many Europeans exist around them

To what end?

Europeans do not feel this kind of sentiment

And why should I as an American care what Europe thinks? You have yet to make the case that racialism creates better outcomes than a color-blind meritocracy. I also note that when Europe does "enact policies that help their own citizens" those polices are contingent on citizenship and cultural affiliation rather than race with France favoring the French, Spain the Spanish. The notion of "whiteness" or a unified European race is notable in its absense.

Re: the "thought experiment", we convince them the same way we have historically, through the ruthless enforcement of cultal norms. If you don't love God, Guns, Baseball, and Apple Pie you can GTFO of our country.

If the identitarian right and the wider priestly caste are going to hold on to Identity Politics as an organizing principal/value they are going to have to have to confront the fact that the perception of Identity Politics in the popular zeitgeist is that of an ideology for losers. An ideology for people too stupid, degenerate, or incompetent to survive in an honest meritocracy.

That is certainly not the perception of Jewish Identity Politics, take Ben Shapiro for example. I doubt you feel that way about Jewish Identity Politics and the way it expresses itself in politics and culture. And even if you do feel that way about it, you are very far away from the Normie who perceives it as totally normal in the base case, but in many cases they view defense of Jewish Identity Politics as a moral impetus that falls even on non-Jews.

I do not believe the engagement of Jews with Identity Politics in how they socially, politically, and economically organize is because they are losers who are too stupid or degenerate or incompetent to survive in an honest meritocracy. Do you think that?

How is it we arrived at this point, where Jewish Identity Politics is a profound moral impetus, but White Identity Politics is just for people "too stupid, degenerate, or incompetent to survive in an honest meritocracy?"

I would say, however we arrived at this point, we use the same tools and levers to reverse this perception among normies. Normies, and people like yourself, have arrived at this bifurcated interpretation of Identity Politics based on the esoteric racial propaganda you have been exposed to since you were a child in various forms of your daily life. My opinion is not that we do normie outreach with political arguments, it's that we use the same tools to promote White identity as have been used to create your negative perception of White identity.

And maybe you think you arrived at your opinion of White Identity based only on rational argument and careful consideration. No you didn't- it's downstream of history you were taught, the stories you were told by your teacher, the material you were told to read in school, the movies you watch every time you go to the theater, the social causes taken up by Hollywood celebrities. If all of those things had conveyed a different cultural signal to you, you would also have a different opinion of White Identity, so it is for normies.

Yes, this is a Spencerian interpretation for how esoteric, racial moralization and demoralization signals in religion and culture are the key for directing the identities and behavior of the normies. Not going up to them and trying to convince them with arguments. That's certainly not how you or the normies became convinced that Identity Politics for Jews is great and Identity Politics for White people is degenerate.

To what extent does Ben Shapiro even represent a form of 'Jewish identity politics'? If anything, Shapiro is a Western chauvinist who generally frames his arguments in terms of pan-Western common cultural values, rooted in a Judeo-Christian tradition.

That's certainly not how you or the normies became convinced that Identity Politics for Jews is great and Identity Politics for White people is degenerate.

Again, 'jews' are a monophyletic group, so identity politics for them makes sense. 'White people' are not, they're multiple groups, several of which hate each other, so identity politics don't make sense.

Again, 'jews' are a monophyletic group, so identity politics for them makes sense. 'White people' are not

That is the funniest thing you have ever said, European peoples are incredibly more monophyletic than Jews, who themselves are 50% European among Ashkenazis. Even the notion they are descended from the Hebrews is dubious, compared to the more likely possibility of converts in the Roman Empire.

People don't even understand how static European race has been racially for thousands of years. A Spaniard from the south of Spain is more closely related genetically to a Norwegian than to a Moroccan.

Edit: I would also suggest that the intra-European racial animosity among Whites in the US- while I acknowledge that does express itself in different ways even today, it's still lower than it is between Jewish subgroups in Israel. And in any case the perception of Jewish Identity Politics among normies is not at all a function of the supposed monophyletic-ness of Jews, it's a function of the propaganda that has been transmitted to them their entire lives.

European peoples are incredibly more monophyletic than Jews.

How do you square this claim with millenia of intra-european warfare? Are you saying that you can't tell a Prussian from a Paddy? or a Paddy from a Wop?

monophyletic

Monophyly means belongs to a Clade descended from a common ancestral group not shared by other people- there is very much a European Clade that stands out among the rest of humanity, and Jews themselves are descended from the mixture of that Clade with a Near-Eastern mixture.

I don't even think it's a relevant question for your argument or my response to you. But all Europeans descend from the mixture of three constituent races: Anatolian Farmers (represented best by modern Sardinians who are nearly 100% of this admixture), Western Hunter-Gatherers, and Proto-Indo-European Steppe herders (most concentrated in Northern Europe). All Europeans are a combination of this ancestral group, and nobody else in the world is descended from that ancestral group alone. That is a clade that is unique to Europeans and only Europeans among everyone else in the world, from the Spanish to the Swede.

You are talking out your ass, per your own sources the vast majority of Jews are descended from a single Levantine source while the various sub-tribes of Europe seem to come from all over with distinct physiognomic differences betwern Iberians, Celts, Anglos, Scandis, Slavs, Greeks, Et Al.

I’d like to point out that nobody who doesn’t self-identify as part of this "caste" has ever referred to it as a priestly caste.

I’m sure they view themselves as Napoleon placing the crown on his own head, but to everyone else it looks more like Gavin McInnes putting something else somewhere else.

Do you have a term that you would prefer?

PMC is less ill-fitting than priestly, although it still doesn’t quite capture my sentiment.

A priestly class actually has the respect of the other classes, and takes its mission in shepherding them seriously. The noisemakers the West has today fit neither of these criteria.

If anything, I’d say the primary characteristic of this class is being annoying in rhetorically-compelling (but not epistemically- or aesthetically-compelling!) ways. Think "Team Building Exercises" or other such nonsense. What are you gonna do, argue that team building and camaraderie is bad, hmm? Yet everyone who’s ever been subjected to this has the same thought in their mind: "this is such bullshit."

Dumbledore vs Umbrage is a good example of the contrast between the actual priestly class and the rhetorically-motivated class that fancies itself priestly.

PMC is less ill-fitting than priestly

Have you read Scott Alexander on Priesthoods? I think he makes valuable points there, and its the reason I like the priestly analogy. The PMC in general is absolutely not a single priesthood - there's to little general "intra muros" priest-priest communication happening, since they don't actually share any dogma. "Real" priesthoods (medicine, individual academic research fields, engineering, politics, ect.) have much more internal interactions than interactions with the outside "parish", and they care much more deeply about those internal conflicts than they do about what the rest of us think.

There is no anti-identitarian right, nor center, nor left in any substantial sense. It only exists as a convenient propagandistic claim. The problem of any genuine opposition to the current order which the woke left does not represent, comes to the fact that people who support progressive identity politics and oppose the rights and interests of groups that the progressive stack alliance is against, especially the Jews, are against it. Rich donors like Paul Singer fund gatekeepers of this ideology. So there has been a march on institutions of people who have the agenda of suppressing the rights of their white outgroup and even other right wing associated identities. The more obvious woke types are just one part of the general agenda. They are more the bad cop of it. The supposedly anti woke liberals share the key ideology and are part of it.

In general it is fiction that there is any anti-identitarian space. There are people who concern troll right wing identity groups because they are in the bed with say zionists, or support as you have doneHlynka the black civil rights revolution which the modern woke is a continuation. Even on the supposed right you have someone like George Soros who is an identitarian funding the compact magazine that concern trolls about people on the right being Kinists. As in putting their family first. Which is even more radical, inflammatory rhetoric as usual.

So some of the anti woke space are fakes who support the inherent logic and the motte and bailey of the far left that moves from radical egalitarianism in general to concern trolling its outgroup, to supporting identity politics for its ingroup.

Additionally, trying to transform societies into some sort of actively hostile to identity even if consistent, which it is not, would fall under a very radical egalitarian agenda. It would fit under the far left, not the center, nor the right.

However, the true nature of the ideology of those who marched on institutions and try to maintain it, is not of a sincere consistent radical egalitarianism, which it self is morally and intelectually bankrupt and doesn't work, but of tribalism that is interested in suppressing and even destroying its outgroup tribes for the sake of its in group tribes of the progressive stack.

Now, while I am against communism, I don't mind the 8 hour work week. While radical egalitarianism is a morally bankrupt dogma that always brought disaster and it is of course an onerous demand towards the groups it applies to, because of these reasons those who promote it make exceptions for groups they genuinely like and argue for example that Jews or blacks deserve identity politics, nationalism, because they like them. This doesn't mean that maximalist right wing so called identity politics is good. The right amount is a pertinent discussion but of course this discussion can't be done by those with a mentality of not giving an inch and even then the tendency of most people on the issue would be to not support sufficient than too much. But I do think there is a point in opposing excesses of any group's tribalism both in theory and in practice.

But yes actually ironically some level of white identity politics is even less racist and works better both from an outside universalist view but even more so actual white people are behaving quite against their own interests if they disagree with this.

People who want to destroy european nations who are in bed with foreign extreme nationalists, and adopt their logic are actually engaging in treasonous behavior. This applies even if they do so under the pretense or they genuinely bought into some radical egalitarian dogma. You do not have the right because you have adopted a certain ideology, to destroy nations, especially your nation. So the correct response has to be to disallow such activities and to gatekeep against them, when the opposite is happening the criminal agenda carriers are gatekeeping. To make criminal organizations which pursue this criminal agenda to destroy european nations illegal and restore the rule of law and stop and punish treason.

Secondarily, many institutions have adopted the idea that they are against racism. Unlike some on the right I do consider racism to be a real thing but opposition of borders is racist. It is about genuinely mistreating other groups, and it is comical absurdity that anyone should accept a moral harm in not being pathological altruist and that your right to exist as a people and retain your proud seperate communisty, is this. And of course there is a lot of gray area. In any war, not treating badly the hostile group ends up allowing them to harm your collective. Nevertheless it is in fact a good practice to discourage or disallow certain practices. The point of our language and classification is to seperate the bad with the good and not muddy the waters. I try to remove some of the deliberate dirt that have been thrown into them to confuse things by the faction I have been criticizing here.

Communistic/radical egalitarian definitions of classism, racism, etc do not matter and are illegitimate and in fact the people citigng them engage in more so in mistreatment in relation to the broader concept, and it is moreover adopted as a concern troll against the outgroup. In addition to engaging in all sorts of horrible behavior towards the broad ideological categories, i.e. most of humanity that would fall under their categories.

A bit like, if I try to get a rich family to lose all their money and struggle session accuse them of classism, or try to kill a poor guy, because he is poor that is actually more of a class associated unfair behavior. If I try to define everyone who has a national community or religious group or property and supports property rights, as evil, then I would be demonizing, oppressing an enormous amount of people and even harming those who are pressured to support this vision and become guilty participants in struggle sessions. Radical egalitarians not only oppressess through hysterics, defamation, blacklisting, but also have a track record of mass murder and more hardcore. But again, this is more of an alliance of tribalists who use radical egalitarian against their outgroup which also has very negative history and implications.

Obviously, targeting certain ethnic groups constantly with an agenda of seeking their destruction and slandering the opposition that they are evil racists, is enormously racist. It is actually genuinely incredibly bad behavior. I do think it violates genuine human rights and rather than giving in to the people who use that rhetoric the weapon of racist accusation, it genuinely is behavior that must be taboo and in practice, not just in theory, its adherents abuse their power. Whether in who they hire, in what content they produce, in what resources they direct, or in taking away peoples freedom both overtly and through their hysterics and slanders and threat of overt action.

People who are fanatical and hysterical about this and namecall are behaving in a manner that is bellow any professional ethical standards as journalists, podcasters, people who run social media, forums. It is an insanely inflammatory ideology in general. And 100 times this for politicians, or as members of bureaucracy, and even more so for any military or intelligence services. The system should be excluding people whose agenda is to destroy the people they rule. And if they have a messianic radical egalitarian combo with extreme nationalism motte and bailey going on, this applies even more so. Since this combo leads to people being fanatics that don't have any limit in how far they would go because they falsely believe to be virtuous. Or rather they have some doubts but because the alternative of what they are doing is so negative, they are inclined to choose to dehumanize those they harm.

Good relationships result in certain issues not being debated ad nauseum because both parties recognize that they infringe on sacred red lines and so they don't bring it up. For example if you have a terrible relationship with your wife, she might try to pressure you into an open relationship. In a good relationship this never enters the picture. If you had a terrible mechanic, he might try to scam you and mislead you about what is the problem with your car so they can overcharge you and insist in pressuring you to accept his take. This is to say, that there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that much of the problems of the culture war have to do with this side which wants to destroy western civilization and if defiend narrowlly, not just that, making constantly onerous demands and pretending they are helping save us from impeding darkness and evils. When in fact they are the problem and an arrangement that respects the sacred red lines that aren't ideological lines of specific weirdo ideologues but obvious common sense red lines, while the absurdity is the radical egalitarian concern troll. Whose adherents which includes plenty zionists and even some pro palestinians, pro anticolonialism nationalism, remember universal nationalism as a principle when it is convenient to them.

Because this faction pretends to support freedom to promote its agenda and oppose freedom when it comes to opposing it, I will also say that: It would be a benefit when onerous demands are shut down and the when we see the end of rhetoric on the lines of "you can't have an inch because you will inevitably take a mile you nazi" type of hysterics, the end result would be a superior intellectually equilibrium.

The freedom to oppose genuine evils and absurdities is good, but it is good for people to know that if they support what infringes on sacred red lines there would be push back. And even better if they are sufficiently honorable to feel shame and guilt when doing so. Which is another part of what I am advocating. So this is a bit different than some on the right and my preffered is a somewhat more dissident center right. Not to be confused by what the things that claim to be center right do. There is too much shame and guilt over things people shouldn't be ashamed and guilty for, but the people concern trolling their right wing outgroup and demanding they accept something very onerous, should not be doing it in the first place because they ought to had felt shame in pursuing such an immoral agenda. There is a very significant similarity with the agenda I criticize here and with the behavior of scammers in general which I find very important for people to bad mouth in general. Because we want honest and honorable people to do business with but also to be in relationships with.

Are nations desire to be nations and the connection its people they feel with each other to be treated as evil because a daft dogma says so? Is a desire for monogamy and not to share your wife with the world evil and irrational because one's simplistic ideology doesn't understand it? And so on, and so on. Radical egalitarianism, also known as the new left and mainstream liberalism of which the woke are not opponents but a component (and it is also hard to seperate them with some people who claim to be anti woke) is both an ideology that includers scammers of the out group and allows to scam the outgroup while making exheptions on the ingroup, but their claims are also based on misunderstandings of human nature, society, what is good, etc and it hubris of modern age for it to be treated as default. Like communism which is terrible but 8 hour work week is good, race communism is terrible but there can be some merit in the idea of universalism in regards to say not invading and killing foreign tribes. But not in seeing your own tribe as evil in its pursuit of its own existence as a healthy, prosperous sustainable ethnic community.

So, I am an advocate for making radical egalitarianism in general and especially the one that concern trolls the right wing ethnic outgroup, to be treated as a shameful ideology. Because even any of its true believers are promoting societal suicidal dogma and it is additionally a convenient way to scam and harm the outgroup. The one sided targeting and exceptions are baked in it, motte and bailey is constantly done, but it is bad even if it was to be consistent which it won't be. It shares ground with the behavior of those who try to get away with scamming others into accepting a very onerous deal.

We would be better off without this ideology around.

You're making a bunch of mouth noises, but you haven't really said anything.

You say...

There is no anti-identitarian right, nor center, nor left in any substantial sense.

...and i reply that this is manifestly untrue.

If a deep blue state like California is struggling to muster a simple majority, what hope do you think AA and DEI have in the rest of the country?

Point being that Im not trying to "transform" society into being anti-identitarian, im saying that a good chunk of it already is. And that if the dissident/identitarian right wants to expand it's audience and influence it's going to have to grapple with that fact.

I think he’s saying that, in practice, you have a big chunk of “anti-indentitarian normies” who are in fact mildly anti-white, and have been for so long that they don’t consider themselves indentitarian. They support ‘civil rights’ and in practice DEI and AA as long as those aren’t too egregious and they don’t have to actually argue in favour of racial discrimination out loud, which would break the spell. Thus the defeat of explicit AA initiatives in California.

You then have another big chunk of anti-identitarian normies who are mildly racially ingroup biased and have been for so long that they, again, think of themselves as being totally against any form of racial identity.

So the number of “anti-identitarian normies” who are actually anti-identitarian in practice rather than just in the mouth noises they make is much smaller than you think.

Whether true or not I don’t know but from afar it seems plausible. Either way, though, the taboo is still very potent both in America and the UK.

That oposition to DEI, AA, the LGBTQ agenda, and other flavors of woke PMC overreach is mostly motivated by anti-white animus is certainly one of the takes of all time.

Firstly, Europe and India do not belong in the same category as 'non-American'. Europeans founded the USA. France and Spain helped America break away from England. Americans speak a European tongue, LARP as Romans with the Senate and Capitol, Eagles and Fasces and Cincinnati. American law is just English law with a twist.

Americans are just a different kind of European, the most successful offshoot. India is totally different. E pluribus unum is not a hindi expression. India is not fundamentally a European country, even if they kind of speak English and kind of have European law. The heritage they look back to, the culture they live in, the religions they worship are not European.

You seem to consider meritocracy as an end in and of itself. Why? Meritocracy will throw your children into Korean style hell-schooling and hell-exams to raise the GDP. Meritocracy will make you work 996 hours. Any mistake you make can be permanently recorded and held against you - incentives dear boy. Economic efficiency demands trackers on your work PC to ensure you're working hard. Economic efficiency demands that your factory be closed down and sent to Bangladesh to eke out 3% higher profit for someone else.

It will raise the GDP but at what price?

Economic efficiency and meritocracy should not be the goal of our culture and civilization. If we go down this path, then AI will do to us what you want to do those who 'didn't earn it'. Nepotism and being extremely lazy is not good either, there needs to be a balance. I am not anti-meritocracy per se but there should be limits.

Art, culture, family, fun, play and nation matter. Preserving a nation enables trust and strengthens the benefits of meritocracy while limiting the weaknesses. You can trust that the other guy isn't lying about his exams, that he won't screw you over and steal your IP because you share a background, you're of the same tribe. That's what tribes are for! You can't be totally trusting of course but better than limitless meritocracy (which is ironically just a breeding ground for ethnic cliques and corruption). Homogenous nations are important, they enable trust and stability. Nation is the opposite of diversity, it prevents this whole problem at the start. What happens when you bring in a million smart people from a foreign ethnic group and they start working together to infiltrate your institutions and build up their own power base, bootstrapping their merit into corruption? They have an advantage in cohesion and trust over the rest.

It's no good to say that the progressive left and the far-right are similar. They have markedly different goals in most respects. The far left wants everyone to be the same shade of brown, they have a particular distaste for European just about anything, they want DEI which is the reverse of meritocracy, they want mass redistribution from rich to poor. The far right wants there to be more Europeans, they're super pro-European, moderately pro-meritocracy, reasonably happy with the market system though they want some constraints. They are much more meritocratic than the far left. It's not a horseshoe, I think that concept has done permanent damage to political ideology.

How would you go about convincing him that he would be doing more to secure a future for his children (and his genes) by urging his son to associate with gay Catholics and non-binary/MTF cat-girls, than he would by letting his son date that thicc Latina from down the street?

How is this relevant to anything? He goes for the blonde girl shouting slurs on tiktok of course.

It's no good to say that the progressive left and the far-right are similar. They have markedly different goals in most respects

It’s funny you said this because as I was reading I internally was thinking that everything you wrote up to this point I could barely distinguish from a socialist.

Preserving a nation enables trust and strengthens the benefits of meritocracy while limiting the weaknesses. You can trust that the other guy isn't lying about his exams, that he won't screw you over and steal your IP because you share a background, you're of the same tribe.

There are quite a few low-trust ethnostates in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, while places like Singapore and the UAE sit near the top of the corruption perception indices, so preserving one's nation does not appear to be necessary or sufficient for maintaining trust.

What happens when you bring in a million smart people from a foreign ethnic group and they start working together to infiltrate your institutions and build up their own power base, bootstrapping their merit into corruption?

They win a bunch of Nobels and found companies and institutions in your name, making major scientific and literary contributions to your society, before losing their internal cohesion and assimilating into the broader population as their ethnic and religious solidarity is eroded by the overwhelming tidal forces of modernity?

"quite a few"?

Serbia (>80% Serb and ranked 104 out of 180 by the CPI), Belarus (85% Belarusian and ranked 98 out of 180 by the CPI), Albania (>90% Albanian and tied with Belarus by the CPI), Kosovo (also >90% Albanian and ranked 83 out of 180 by the CPI), Cambodia (>95% Khmer and ranked 158 out of 180 by the CPI), and if we feel like stretching the definition of Southeast Asia we can throw in Bangladesh (99% Bengali and ranked 149 out of 180 by the CPI) too.

It's no good to say that the progressive left and the far-right are similar. They have markedly different goals in most respects. The far left wants everyone to be the same shade of brown, they have a particular distaste for European just about anything, they want DEI which is the reverse of meritocracy, they want mass redistribution from rich to poor. The far right wants there to be more Europeans, they're super pro-European, moderately pro-meritocracy, reasonably happy with the market system though they want some constraints. They are much more meritocratic than the far left.

One could certainly be confused about this statement by reading American right-wing Twitter, which is replete with poasters continuously declaring how much Europe sucks, how Europe is bound to collapse and its all the fault of the Europeans, "enjoying having your women raped by browns Europoors?", declarations about the total ideological detachment of Americans from their European origin countries etc.

There's Europeans and there's Europeans. I can understand Americans taking a few jabs at the European PMC, when the internet discourse coming from the continent has been essentially dominated by them, and who have done absolutely nothing but talk shit about America and Americans for all this time.

Firstly, Europe and India do not belong in the same category as 'non-American'.

If you are you trying to claim that Europe and India are both "American"? I am pressing X to doubt.

Europeans founded the USA.

...and you think that this means we owe them? That this gives them power over us? I disagree.

Americans are just a different kind of European

No we are not, we are better than them.

You seem to consider meritocracy as an end in and of itself. Why?

Because merit, like virtue, is self-justifying, They are things that are good unto themselves.

Art, culture, family, fun, play and nation matter.

I agree, and if you believe that this is the case, why are you choosing to align yourself against them?

How is this relevant to anything?

It is relevant because @IGI-111 is wrong, the powerful do not dictate what is popular to "the normies", "the normies" dictate what is popular to the powerful.

The priestly class is unpopular. There's lots of people who believe in identity politics of one variety or another(usually not DR approved). And the DR is priestly class. Normies don't want their kids around LBGTs, they don't want them taking after uberintellectualism, they don't want them to be 'nerds'. They want their sons to be football stars that get good jobs in town and get married to make grandbabies.

Normies are a lot less bothered about LGB than you imply by lumping it in together with T.

The case against homosexuality (both in its Abrahamic and secular versions) is based on the same logic as the case against post-sexual revolution liberated straight sex, and normies find that logic unpersuasive. Empirically, when the LGBs were offered normalisation on the same basis as the sluts, rakes, unrepentant adulterers, frivorcers etc. they took it, and aren't doing anyone any more harm than the straights did when they took up ubiquitous non-procreative sex. Despite gay marriage, straight marriage is in a better state than it has been in since the introduction of no-fault divorce. This is happening within the plain sight of normies and their families, so they know.

You can make a secular socially conservative case against sexual liberation for gays and straights (empirically, it crashed the birthrate and launched a bastard epidemic). You can (and should, if you take the Bible seriously) make a conservative Christian case against it. But making either of those cases makes you like like a wierdo - it is the epitome of normie-unfriendly conservatism. Given what we can see in front of our noses, arguing for sexual restraint for gays only just makes you look like a self-hating closet case seeking moral support. (It is also intellectually incoherent, but normies don't care about that.)

LGB (but not T) is the one early-C21 woke issue where normie public opinion has swung behind the woke position.

T is different, because the difference between men and women matters in the way that maintaining a ban on one particular subset of non-procreative sex doesn't.

I think you're way overestimating the popularity of gay men. Opinions seem to run the gamut from 'they're all closeted pedophiles' to 'it's weird and gross but what adults do amongst themselves is none of my business', with the mode somewhere around 'fetishistic plague rats'.

No. To many women, and not just urban millenials and zoomers, gayness is equivalent to goodness. This is not universal but also not rare at all. The gay man is the man with all his toxic masculinity stripped away. The gay man is docile and domesticated. The gay man is an ally against the patriarchy. The gay man has the positive qualities of the woman. The gay man is not a threat. The gay man is gentle and good to have around. The gay man is not an inscrutable, terryfingly physical, emotionally unavailable, violently competitive machine. The gay man is not to blame for everything that is wrong in the world. The gay man did not ruin the woman's life. The gay man has no intention to enslave a woman for her fertility. The gay man is man as he should be.

Your understanding of the distribution of opinions is wildly incorrect. You are taking the long tail of the actual distribution and declaring it the median.

I think to have a good feel on this, you need to disassemble the problem:

  • Is the median gay man closer to Andrew Sullivan (or maybe, less extremely, to a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy character) or to an assless-chaps wearing degenerate?
  • What is the normies' perception of what the median gay guy is?
  • What is their opinion on the gays across this AS-AC spectrum?

My intuition is that normies have a mostly good opinion of gay people, but that part of it is based on them thinking that the average gay guy is more "normal" than what they actually are.

Andrew Sullivan

Is your claim he's not an assless chapped degenerate?

Maybe I don't have enough context, but yes? He certainly seems to be hated by the most libertine parts of the LGBT community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sullivan

Lists him looking for anonymous bareback sex with other HIV+ men and self identification as a 'bear'. Seems more degenerate that not though I've no specific evidence for assless chaps.

My suspicion is the degeneracy we see and is reported is the tip of the degeneracy iceberg, the reality is wider and deeper.

Bug chasing will scare the hoes normies.

He may be a very median 'gay'. The median is still very degenerate.

More comments

Perhaps this is filter bubble reasons, but most secular-ish normie parents I know do not want their sons to have gay football coaches, do not like the ‘gayBC’ agenda in entertainment, would think a gay son is a parenting failure, believe that trends originating in the gay community is enough reason to boycott them in ipso, don’t make a massive distinction between gays and trans. These are people that if they do go to church don’t pray at home, expect their kids to cohabit(even as they think the time of doing this should be shorter) before marriage, wear bikinis etc.

I think this is rural catholic filter bubble (whereas AFAIK @MadMonzer is London cosmopolitan filter bubble). My secular-ish normie parents grew up in 1960/1970s Britain, where almost all the best-dressed, most witty, popular, aristocratic men were gay. Being gay is essentially aspirational: they're secretly quite keen on the idea of the idea of having a gay child and are applying slight, unthinking pressure to my bi-questioning sibling in ways that make me uncomfortable. I don't know how they'd feel about gay teachers and they're certainly not into pride or anything; they're conservative in most other ways.

(However, as with many things in Britain, it can be very difficult to distinguish between 'runs a permanent crimestop filter' and 'is actually enthusiastic' even for close family).

I have access via in-laws to the Reform-curious rural UK filter bubble, and there the reaction to happily married lesbians (two thirds of same-sex marriages in the UK are women) is "so what" and the reaction to flamboyantly gay men being flamboyantly gay in public is bemused eye-rolling as long as they remain fully clothed.

If Nigel Farage thought that gay-bashing would gain votes for Reform, he would do it. He doesn't.

Certainly gay-bashing would be a terrible move. I have a vague sense, however, that the very solidity of the 'so what' reaction is disguising less comfort than people are willing to let on. I have no proof for this, it's just based on myself and on a sense that people are...slightly too careful about the subject. The very speed with which even right-wingers tell you they don't give a shit kind of makes me feel like they do, actually, give a little bit of a shit.

Of course this is the loosest kind of vibes-based psychoanalysing, so feel free to discard it completely if you want to. But I don't think we've ever seen anything like the absolute closing of ranks that happened over gay marriage. In about a decade we went from a world in which a younger-me was mildly chastised for being too fervently pro gay marriage to a world where even the suggestion that gay marriage might not have been a great idea provokes universal condemnation. I think everyone remembers proto-cancelling incidents like the defenestration of Tim Fallon and everyone knows how dangerous is can be to be associated with even a whiff of homophobia.

I always feel that Britain is a lot like Japan in some ways. The social pressure and desire to conform can be so strong that there is very little gap between the consensus and people's conscious opinions. In the same way that I'm pretty sure liberal democratic Japan could turn into a Maoist communist state in a decade given a change of leadership, I think the same is true of Britain. Change the right few minds, let it cascade and I think a lot of people might suddenly 'discover' an entirely new set of opinions that would not necessarily be any more 'real' than the previous ones but would feel just as sincere to their owners.

Rural I will grant you, but I was specifically pointing at non-tradcath friends to avoid that aspect.

But you live in a traditionally catholic area, right? I assumed that your secular friends were Catholic-tinged, so to speak, even though not actually catholic. Whereas for example my parents are secular but they're Church of England secular. Or in California they would be Silicon Valley secular.

More comments

Your original claim was that "Normies don't want their kids around LBGTs." That implies something more than just finding male-on-male buttsex gross.

A quick google suggests that "parents campaign against trans teacher" comes up with a lot of examples of normies campaigning against exposing their children to T. "Parents campaign against gay teacher" gets you stories about muslims and fundies.

If you think that trying to keep gay men away from kids is normie-friendly, you have to wonder why Florida Republicans (who are perfectly happy to run on anti-trans messaging) get cross when you call the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act a "Don't Say Gay" law.

It's always hard to understand populations. We can't just get into their brains and observe what they really think. We can see survey results, but those are tricky and sometimes only get what people think they're "allowed" to say. See also the constant discussion of "shy Tory/Trumper". As such, one ought to be very sensitive to the fact that much of the population was really just bullied into a position on the topic. It's extremely difficult to actually tease out how many people really believe it or have really internalized it as true. It is entirely possible that as people see that the exact same specious arguments are being marshaled in favor of the T (with the expectation that folks actually believed and internalized it WRT the LGB, and thus the further expectation that it will be slam dunk successful), they will find it less and less social suicide to simply reject the entire fallacious underpinning. They won't even have to immediately say, "...and yes, rejecting this underpinning means also rejecting it in the case of LGB, also." At least, not at first; not overtly. That could come more slowly, as it becomes more socially acceptable. Or, of course, as we've seen on some other issues, it could come quickly in a preference cascade.

It's just extremely difficult to know which of those possible worlds we live in, given the obviously impossibly difficult measurement problem. Obviously, any public group that is organizing and trying to build political momentum is going to focus on the issues where they think they are the strongest, but along the way, they'll be pushing for underlying worldviews that have implications. It is common for them to know what those implications are, to believe that those implications are, indeed, true, but to not want to draw attention to it until they have succeeded enough where they are strongest and subtly changed the nature of the conversation along the way.

EDIT: I forgot that I should also point to the fact that those same people are forthright about the fact that they did just bully people into believing something in order to win political victories, that they didn't really believe it themselves, that many people don't actually believe it, and they'd love it if we could just kind of forget that their sus claims were "critical", because they'd really rather that no one go back and reconsider in light of reality.

I get the impression that a lot of commentors here don't grasp just how unpopular identity politics is in "normie" spaces. In fact, I would say that to call it "unpopular" may be grossly under selling it. Leftists often lament the weakness/lack of class consciousness in the US, that the poor, more often than not, do not see themselves as "exploited" as much as they see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed". However I believe that this is a feature rather than a bug if one wants to live in a society with high trust and social mobility, and one of the things that distinguishes the US from other nations.

I think it’s a fine belief in the instance that you actually aren’t harmed by the misbelief. If you really are exploited, the first step in changing the situation is realizing you’re exploited. Likewise, a belief that identity politics is bad only works when you aren’t being harmed by believing that. If everybody but your group is playing identity politics, you’re not being more noble, you’re simply surrendering the field. If you’re not willing to stand up for your social class if you’re being exploited, you’ll be exploited. Politics, whether you like it or not are a team sport. Five people voting together get what they want. Five people voting separately get nothing.

Normies don't decide what's popular. They adapt to what people with power tell them is. I you aren't yet convinced of this you can look at all the people who will suddenly become fine with Trump and his administration when they are the ones distributing treasure.

The Marine Le Pen strategy of becoming more "normal" can be useful so as to avoid being pinned down in the margins of weirdness, but it's intrumental at best. Successful political movement are both pragmatic and uncompromising on their terminal goals. Lose either and you fail.

Normies don't decide what's popular. They adapt to what people with power tell them is. I you aren't yet convinced of this you can look at all the people who will suddenly become fine with Trump and his administration when they are the ones distributing treasure.

I think an even better example of this is Covid. A highly cautious view of Covid and of what measures were appropriate are highly correlated with class status and were particularly unpopular with less affluent, less white and overall less 'priestly' people both in the US and Europe. But at the end of the day, the priestly class still got its will for 1 to almost 3 years, depending on location, and hugely shifted norms of hygiene, social activity and economic behaviors like remote work among the rest of society. I still regularly see people here in Germany, mostly elderly and often of MENA heritage (confusing given that at group level they certainly had the least respect for any of the Covid theater), wearing a mask without covering their nose, and given the medical absurdity of this I struggle to think of this as anything other than an illustration of memetic elite dominance.

Uh, less affluent whites were the main group that hated the covid response, but minorities were big into it.

My impression is that in terms of organized political resistance middle and lower class whites were certainly the drivers of that, but in terms of simply not giving a shit and going on with life regardless of what the state says that's definitely more of a minority thing, at least here in Germany. For the US I'm less sure, but it also depends more on the group. Using vaccine uptake as a vague proxy, Asians were all-aboard, but they're also more affluent on average, Hispanics were more likely than red whites but less likely than blue whites to take the vaccine, blacks were least likely overall. Another example are the riots after George Floyd's death which, while featuring plenty of white people as well, were disproportionately minority, and they were AFAIK the first large scale breakdown of public Covid discipline.

Blacks in the US didn’t get vaccinated because they don’t trust anything and that led to elaborate conspiracy theories about it making your testicles swell up so people would stop masking. Red whites didn’t get vaccinated because we hate the people telling us to. Hispanics were middle of the pack because that’s kind of their thing.

IME blacks held extremely covid conscious views, they just didn’t think that the vaccine was real or contact tracing would work- usually for Alex Jones type reasons. There were lots of demands for ‘everyone stays home for two weeks, even the grocery stores be shut down’. They were big on NPIs.

I suspect vaccine uptake and masking would give you two entirely different answers. In the US, blacks had lower vaccine uptake, but at least anecdotally (and in some surveys), were more into masks.

Also, when covid started to spread you officially were a weirdo for being concerned. Pelosi told people to go to Chinatown and hug an asian.

Normies don't decide what's popular. They adapt to what people with power tell them is.

This statement is false.

If it were true, the 45th president of the United States would have been either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, not Donald Trump.

Hillary and Jeb were both pretty universally hated by the normie class. The reasons likely to do with decades of the priestly class hating on them, sure, but it's the truth.

Hillary and Jeb were both pretty universally hated by the normie class...

...and universally beloved by those in power. If normies only adapt to what people with power tell them to, one of them would have become president.

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