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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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If the deep state career civil service can draw blood with a trick as old as “drag-up old racist internet comments”, then DOGE really are toothless. No one will take them seriously anymore.

How is this a "trick"? He posted comments that most people would find racist under his real name. Why should that be ignored? And they're hardly old, he was doing this last year.

Outside of X, among actual voters (including Trump voters), the things he said are at a minimum very distasteful. DOGE and Musk are increasingly being seen as petty and impulsive; hiring 20-year-old racist shitposters on X doesn't help their image and doesn't help Trump.

posted comments that most people would find racist

Uncharitable small minded people, perhaps.

Of the online comments attributed to him which is the most racist?

eugenic immigration policy

Aren't most points based selection criteria or 'skilled' immigration policies broadly eugenisist?

you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity

'Most people' don't marry outside their ethnicity. This 'controversial' interview from 1971 with Muhammad Ali seems to be broadly supportive of the sentiment. It's not something you hear much in current year, so much has fallen to 'you do you'. A desire to marry within your ethnicity is not racist. While I would agree that 'most people' would say you should be able to miscegenate, 'most people' in fact do not. His expression that there is no dowery large enough to induce him into miscegenation, seems consistent with the observed behavior of 'most people'.

Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool

In current year, where so much is 'racist', espousing non-DEI, non-antiracist, views is called racist. The term is used so widely and frequently as to have lost substantive meaning. He's a twenty-something being edgy on the internet.

Of the online comments attributed to him which is the most racist?

"normalize Indian hate"

I'm not parsing every statement in isolation because I've been on the internet long enough to know that cumulatively the tweets place him firmly in the alt-right/dissident right sphere.

alt-right / dissident right isn't necessarily racist.

A more charitable understanding, in the context of edgy SV adjacent kids might be

Normalize opposition to mediocre Indian H1b immigration.

What a coincidence you forgot "normalize Indian hate".

Wasn't included in the coverage I read. There are more charitable interpretations were you inclined.

In context with his age, industry and medium and other posts attributed to him

99 percent of Indian H1B [visas] will be replaced by slightly smarter [large language models], they’re going back don’t worry guys.

Normalize opposition to mediocre Indian H1b immigration. Fits well enough, and is absent the inflammatory language.

That's not what he wrote.

I'm sorry, are you disputing that he wrote "normalize Indian hate" or are you just refusing to address that sentiment?

I addressed it in responses to both you and wowwowwow.

In context with his age, industry and medium and other posts attributed to him, there are more charitable interpretations were you inclined.

A more charitable understanding, in the context of edgy SV adjacent kids might be

Normalize opposition to mediocre Indian H1b immigration.

That's not interpretation. That's re-writing.

More comments

I'm 100% on team HBD, because that's where the evidence strongly points, and I'm sick of midwits trying to smear those of us who can actually follow the science as racists, but "normalize Indian hate" sounds an awful lot like actual racism to me.