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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33245 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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By vague request of interest in the topic, I am copying over a post I made elsewhere to this thread.

The Chagos Islands Deal, or, The Next Westminster Scandal Is Already Here, You Just Haven't Noticed It Yet

The British-owned Chagos Islands, in the Indian Ocean, host a major US military base, Diego Garcia. Our government is now planning to sell the islands to Mauritius, and to pay them for the privilege.

Brief on the background. The Chagos Islands were originally uninhabited until France brought slaves from Africa to work on plantations in the late 18th and early 19th century. The descendants of these workers became known as Chagossians. The islands, along with Mauritius, came under British control in 1814 through the Treaty of Paris, and were administered as a dependency of colonial Mauritius for administrative convenience rather than any historic connection. In 1965, three years before Mauritius gained independence from British colonial rule, the UK separated the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius to create the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Then, the UK removed around 2,000 Chagossians from the islands to make way for the Diego Garcia base. Mauritius maintains that the separation of the islands was illegal under international law, and has waged a legal battle to get them. In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion that the UK's ownership of the Chagos Islands was unlawful. The UN General Assembly subsequently passed non-binding resolutions demanding the UK withdraw.

Alright, onto the actual scandal. Over the last few months, the British Government has been rushing to put together a deal that would hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. This rush was likely prompted by fears that the next US administration would oppose the handover, and seemingly because of this rush, the British government has kept giving in to new concessions that Mauritus is demanding to seal the handover. So now the UK will also pay $9bn over 99 years to lease the base. Oh, and it'll be inflation-linked. Oh, and front-loaded. Oh, and maybe it'll actually be $18bn instead. A substantial amount of money for a government that is raising taxes, cutting spending, and claiming there's a £22bn 'black hole' in the finances. In addition to the loss of a strategic military base, There are further concerns that the islands would likely end up hosting the Chinese military at the end of all this, too.

And in return for all this, in return for the territory and all that money, the UK gets... Nothing.

So to justify the seemingly impossible, the government has offered an increasingly bizarre list of reasons to hand over the territory, none of which hold up to scrutiny.

  • It is good for the Chagossians, and redresses their grievance for being expelled.

No, it is not. The Chagossians hate Mauritius and reject this deal because it doesn't give them self-determination and ownership of the Chagos Islands. In 2021, Mauritius criminalized "Misrepresenting the sovereignty of Mauritius over any part of its territory" i.e criminalized Chagossians stating they should own the islands themselves.

  • It is required by international law.

Nothing that would be binding. And besides, international law and what army? This is a US military base. If we care to hold it, it will be held, and there's no force that can take it from us.

  • It will increase Britain's soft power by showing commitment to international law.

No. It will cause other countries with dubious territorial claims on the UK, like Spain and Argentina, to smell blood in the water. Not to mention generally making the government look like gullible idiots.

  • As a former human rights lawyer, Keir Starmer can't help but autistically lawmax, so when he hears international law, he is compelled to obey it.

Unfortunately, it is untrue that Keir Starmer monomaniacally follows international law. For example, his support for arresting Britons over speech crimes violates international law. "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." - UN General Assembly, Resolution 217A (III), Universal Declaration of Human Rights, A/RES/217(III) (December 10, 1948)

  • The Tories also started negotiating to hand it over so really it's their fault.

In 2022, they agreed to enter negotiations. And then in 2023 they realised how stupid handing the base over would be and pulled out of negotiations. This is also, of course, not an argument in favour of the deal.

  • If we don't hand over the islands right now, a Swiss Quango might magically change the laws of physics to create a zone over the islands where the electromagnetic spectrum is shut off, disabiling communications for the military base.

I wish I was joking, but this is actually the argument they're currently using.

  • The Islands are next to R'lyeh and we don't want to be holding the ball when Cthulhu wakes up

Okay, I did make that one up.

So what's actually going on here? There's not much that can be said with absolute certainty, but there is certainly some plausible alternative reasons that the government aren't so willing to state. For example, Keir Starmer was well aware of this case before becoming Prime Minister. In fact, Mauritius's chief legal advisor, Philippe Sands KC, is one of Keir Starmer's friends. Sands has seemingly (and maybe illegally) entered the islands in the past. Oh, and that last thing about changing the laws of physics to switch off the electromagnetic spectrum. That's also Philippe Sands. In other words, what's been presented as a national security claim from our own government is, in fact, smuggling a claim made by an adversary instead. There's another figure involved, too. Lord Hermer, who is seemingly involved in negotiations on the UK's side in some capacity, while also harbouring life-long anti-British sympathies. But his involvement seems less obvious here.

Anyway, now we have multiple opposition figures accusing Keir of, effectively, treasonous corruption.

Conservative MP Robert Jenrick:

Keir and his mates are colluding against the British people to surrender the Chagos Islands

The cast of characters involved in this ‘negotiation’ absolutely stink - and they all link back to Starmer 👇

Representing the Mauritian Government as their lead negotiator is Philippe Sands KC. Sands campaigned to elect Starmer as Labour leader and described him as a ‘great friend’. Sands has previously spoken about ‘humiliating’ Britain through his legal work.

Reform MP Nigel Farage:

Lord Hermer hates our history and our country. His role in the betrayal of our national interest over the Chagos Islands is unforgivable. Starmer should fire him.

Dominic Cummings:

When we recapture No10 we’ll then retake Chagos, fuck Starmer’s treacherous sell out using his scum lawyer friends getting rich from betrayal - and investigations into everybody involved in the deal. We can roll that into the investigations into Grieve et al and the need for jail sentences for those who worked with foreign enemies to overturn British democracy…

I am gleefully awaiting the next reason the government presents for why we need to hand the islands over in full expectation that it is even more hilarious than the last.

While I agree that the Chagos deal is terrible for the UK, I don't think it is Starmer's folly, and I don't think it is worth trying to psychoanalyse Starmer to understand why it happened. The decision to do the deal stems from the British Deep State. The opening of negotiations was formally announced to Parliament by Tory foreign secretary James Cleverly in November 2022. If you read these columns on conservativehome.com where Deep Stater David Snoxell defends the likely deal to grassroots conservatives (again, while the Conservatives were still in office) you will get the gist. The change of government in the UK does not appear to have affected the progress of negotiations at all.

Tory caterwauling about the deal in opposition is entirely dishonest and opportunistic (I know, politicians. I don't even want to blame them) given that they could have blocked it when in government and didn't. But I think the reason why they didn't is that they didn't care and were letting the Deep State make decisions. So the first interesting question is "why did the British Deep State do such a terrible deal?" And the most obvious answer is that the Americans asked them to. (The British Deep State set a lot of store in maintaining the so-called Special Relationship with the US Deep State).

This David Allen Green post is the best summary of the argument. One piece of evidence he misses out is that Snoxell repeatedly cites to remarks by Blinken praising progress in the negotiations. DAG's key arguments are

  • Firstly that (while apologising to the Speaker for making an important but apparently not time-sensitive announcement when Parliament was in recess) the Foreign Secretary said that the timing was forced by a foreign election. Both Mauritius and the US had elections in November 2024, but the negotiations weren't an election issue in Mauritius because both parties supported them. And after the US election, lame-duck Blinken puts a lot of effort into trying to get the deal over the line before inauguration day.
  • Secondly that the Biden administration put out an announcement (now taken down by the Trump administration, screencapped in the DAG post) praising the deal sufficiently quickly that it is obvious that they knew about it before it was announced.

The deal failed because the incoming Mauritian government realised that the British (and the lame duck Biden administration) were desperate to seal the deal before Trump came in, thought this gave them leverage to ask for more money, asked for too much, didn't get it, and ran out of time. The deal is now presumably dead unless the US Deep State manages to roll the Trump administration - certainly the Mauritian government says that they are not willing to do a deal that the US don't sign off on.

The second interesting question is "Why does the US Deep State support the deal?" Lawcellism is part of the answer, but the US is not a particularly lawcelled country, and nobody in a position of power is willing in the US is willing to let international law interfere with a vital interest like retaining Diego Garcia. But (unless the US is secretly paying for the lease) the deal isn't that terrible for the US. There are some obvious pragmatic reasons why the US might prefer a Guantanamo Bay-style arrangement where Diego Garcia is nominally Mauritian sovereign territory but US-controlled under a long lease to sharing the island with an ally:

  • There is no loss of control - Mauritius has even less ability to assert sovereignty over Diego Garcia than Cuba does over Guantanamo Bay
  • There is a potential gain of control in that the UK has a degree of veto power over US operations out of Diego Garcia that Mauritius would not.
  • Guantanamo Bay was useful to the US Deep State when they wanted to break their own laws without embarrassing an ally by doing it on their territory. Diego Garcia could serve the same purpose.
  • Regularising the status of Diego Garcia would increase the willingness of countries who pretend to take international court rulings seriously to allow the base to be resupplied from their ports or by flights through their airspace. At the moment Diego Garcia is resupplied from Singapore, but India is much closer.

And of course the third question, which is the one which is culture-war salient, is "Why is Starmer still noisily supporting the deal?" The anti-Starmer case has been made ably below. The pro-Starmer answer is that the deal is dead, Starmer knows this, but he wants (mostly for the benefit of elite opinion in relevant neutral countries who pretend to take international court rulings seriously, especially India) to ensure Trump gets the blame. So he is continuing to noisily support the dead deal until Trump unambiguously kills it.

No one's talking about the most important thing: if this goes through, it would be the first time in over 200 years when the sun sets on the British empire.

When we recapture No10 we’ll then retake Chagos, fuck Starmer’s treacherous sell out using his scum lawyer friends getting rich from betrayal - and investigations into everybody involved in the deal. We can roll that into the investigations into Grieve et al and the need for jail sentences for those who worked with foreign enemies to overturn British democracy…

There is something deeply ratlike about Dominic Cummings. His ideology is entirely amorphous, and always has been, spanning everything from technocratic neoliberalism to a form of nativism. As Boris’ most senior adviser, he did nothing in office or beyond it to stop the “Boriswave” of 2m third world immigrants (which, yes, was set in motion while he was in office); he was more concerned with bureaucratic efficiency. Today, of course, he has very convenient justifications for why none of it was his fault, and who exactly is to blame (never him; he never admits fault except forgivable naïveté in dealing with people far more stupid / evil than he possibly imagined). Plus, his physiognomy is terrible.

I think it's fine to focus on bureaucratic efficiency. He could never have done everything, and that seems like as reasonable a thing to focus on as any.

Ratlike, as in rationalist?

There is something deeply ratlike about Dominic Cummings. ... Plus, his physiognomy is terrible.

To be clear, do you think he looks like a rat, or are you just insulting him? He doesn't look ratlike, to me.

I’m saying he’s a rat in terms of his level of loyalty and lack of willingness to admit any real fault on his part, and also his physiognomy is terrible. He doesn’t have a ratlike face (would be uncommon for his people).

How is his physiognomy relevant, if it's not ratlike? (And who do you consider to be "his people?")

No, she's right, it's the unfortunate wide but shallow forehead to chin ratio and hairline. He looks a lot better in hats

Of course 90% of the people photographing him are deliberately choosing the worst possible photo, but still.

My nerdtribe (a quant team at a bank) used the expression "a stable genius in an ill-fitting gilet". At the time Dom's enemies (and, because British sense of humour, his supporters) tended to focus on his dress sense and not his receding hairline (always an easy target) or eminently punchable* face.

* You couldn't say that, because in British political discourse at the time the expression "eminently punchable face" had become attached to far-left Grauniad columnist Owen Jones, who looked about 12 at the time. (Googling, he looks noticeably less punchable in more recent photos).

Real rats don't have large, domed heads, though, and his face is fairly flat.

To be fair, an advisor who was bounced out as the Boriswave began can't really do anything. He didn't hold "office" in the sense of being an MP who might influence the government.

In the counterfactual where you think Cummings took big actions against the wave of immigration, what do you suppose he would have actually done?

He was the person who was speaking to Boris every single day for his entire first year in office. He coordinated the entire Covid response (and was ultra pro lockdown for a long time while Boris was opposed, another thing that he has conveniently memory holed). Boris himself has no real ideology, and Cummings was the man who insisted that Brexit was the best way to “neuter” British nativism by offloading rage onto the EU even as he (and the campaign he led with an iron hand) openly acknowledged that Brexit would see big increases in non-EU immigration, so I find it hard to believe he bears no responsibility.

Perhaps, we probably won't ever know. Cummings own story was that Boris simply couldn't bear having the liberal media against him and wanted to bring them onside, but of course he would make himself look good. The best evidence in favour of Cummings is that none of the other Tories have mentioned him or even come out against the Boriswave, with Patel the most recent to defend the legacy. Seems like the Tories are quite happy to own the disaster entirely

Jenrick came out heavily against it, Braverman and Patel basically blamed the treasury. They seem to realize they can’t get away by denying all responsibility, whereas Cummings knows that it isn’t survivable for him given his main future is in the US right-sphere (Farage doesn’t like him and he has no place in Reform) and he was a liberal (including on immigration) for many many years until the early 2020s, plus he seems more craven.

Perhaps there’s a simple reason for this anti-British deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Philippe Sands and Lord Hermer, are both Jews. You even mentioned that Lord Hermer harbors anti-British sentiment. Subversive Jews are trying to undermine the UK’s geopolitical power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Starmer, though not a Jew, fits the role of the useful idiot here.

Since you’re looking for possible explanations for this seemingly irrational behavior, I thought I would supply an explanation.

  • -11

This isn't a simple reason at all. You're supposing the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy to explain an odd policy decision. You're raising more questions than you're answering. That's the opposite of an explanation!

You really don’t have to reach for antisemitism to explain left-wingers doubling down on doing stupid things. It’s like Ford Prefect about vogons- ‘the scary thing about vogons is their absolutely mindless determination to do whatever mindless thing they’ve mindlessly determined to do’. The tories pulled out because it was an obviously bad deal. Now labour wants back in because ‘fuck tories’, and they’re not going to reconsider their course of action because left wing parties don’t do that- and Mauritius knows it and is using the opportunity to try to grift, they know Trump won’t shut the base down no matter what some courts say. They might as well try to get something out of Britain while they’re at it.

You're breaking so many damn rules in one comment I'm mildly impressed. You have not proactively (or on demand) produced any evidence to suggest a conspiracy of the Jews. Or that they have anything to gain from weakening the British state. Inflammatory, boo-outgroup, throw it all in, toppings are free with this sandwich.

You've been warned in the past, and I'm giving you a short ban so you know they have teeth. Even our most fervent anti-semites hustle to meet posting standards, and I'd advise you do so too.

You're breaking so many damn rules in one comment I'm mildly impressed.

'Perhaps there's a simple reason for this anti-America deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Alice and Bob are both radical leftists. You even mentioned that Bob harbors anti-America sentiment. Subversive radical leftists are trying to undermine America's power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Biden, though not a radical leftist (I know, I know), fits the role of senile idiot here.

Since you're looking for possible explanations for this seemingly irrational behavior, I thought I would supply an explanation.'

Surely the above would just be Tuesday at the Motte rather than a banworthy post, no? I'm fairly confident I can find a number of comments like the above with minimal effort. Posts without any evidence to suggest a conspiracy, things that are inflammatory and boo-outgroup, etc.

The Jew-haters' brigade is right, tbh. Their comments mostly aren't treated the same. I just happen to think that's a good thing and think you should just ban anything that crosses the line to clear anti-semitism, while they don't.

Tongue-in-cheek suggestion: Replace janitorial duty with an AI that flips the political valency of a given comment before someone is asked to judge it. Bonus points if you can train the AI to learn a given user's ideology. If we manage to abstract reality enough, it's the first step towards black mirror!

The Jew-haters' brigade is right, tbh. Their comments mostly aren't treated the same. I just happen to think that's a good thing and think you should just ban anything that crosses the line to clear anti-semitism, while they don't.

Should we also ban anything that crosses the line to clear racism, misogyny, *phobia, etc.?

You should:

  1. Yes. Safe space. I think we all know the failure mode of this one.

  2. Double down on your commitment to free speech. Let the Jewposters have their say, and treat them like anyone else. If they're polite and they bring receipts, who are we to judge their speech any more than judge those who hate democrats or think that mandatory schooling is the greatest injustice of all time? You'd win my respect, although we probably also all know the failure mode of this option too.

  3. Give me the satisfaction of admitting to ourselves that we're basically reddit with a rightward slant and that free speech maximalism is dumb. Moderation (heh) in all things.

  1. No.

  2. I disagree with you that we treat Jewposters differently.

  3. No.

Saying that groups are conspiring to do the thing that the group would describe themselves as doing is different from accusing them of an unrelated conspiracy. For instance, stating that groups of Jews are plotting to enjoy Passover is, I would hope, uncontroversial. Similarly, stating that groups of Communists are plotting to abolish the private ownership of capital is also uncontroversial. All accusations of conspiracy fall somewhere on this scale but accusing self-identified left-wing people of wanting to do left-wing things (even uncharitably) is definitely different from accusing Jews of wanting to do things unrelated to Judaism.

I assume this is the more detailed reasoning for why one claim is considered inflammatory without sufficient evidence, while the other wouldn't be.

Saying that groups are conspiring to do the thing that the group would describe themselves as doing

I had said:

'Perhaps there's a simple reason for this anti-America deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Alice and Bob are both radical leftists. You even mentioned that Bob harbors anti-America sentiment. Subversive radical leftists are trying to undermine America's power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Biden, though not a radical leftist (I know, I know), fits the role of senile idiot here.

Radical leftists is usually a stand in for anyone who voted blue in the last election cycle, and I doubt that any significant number of democrats would describe themselves as being anti-Americans trying to undermine America's power.

Saying that 48% of the US electorate are "radical leftists" is more controversial a statement than saying radical leftists are anti-American.

We definitely also mod stuff like that. The ceteris is never paribus, sure, but it’s still against the rules.

I recognize that we don’t see or choose to act on everything.

It would be helpful to understand sometimes why you don't mod particular posts, such as this one. Reporting, most of the time, just feels like a waste of clicks these days; raising a stink in a comment sometimes attracts a statement, but between poisoning the atmosphere (you can't really publicly call out a comment without it coming across as a personal attack) and most likely putting whatever moderator chooses to respond on the defensive from the outset, it's also not really a good way to go. Would it be possible for the mods to aim to make a public statement on every post that receives more than a certain number of reports, even if just to explain why they disagree with the reporters' view of it violating rules?

(I don't think "you are the only one who reported that particular post though" would be a slam-dunk retort; if you look further downthread, there were definitely more people who were unhappy with it, so if this didn't translate to reports that is just a sign that this part of the community has given up on the reporting mechanism)

I feel called out at the moment, so, first, my mea culpas.

@Amadan I am aware that being a rightist partisan is not very conducive to the kind of space that the moderates wish to nurture. I, myself, personally moderate spaces where I have to manage people being political. Knowing this makes my behaviour even more unacceptable, and for that I apologize. I don't really have an excuse for my rhetoric, for liking the heat instead of the light. But I am not a passing internet troll, or fishing for responses from outraged liberals. I have been here in one form or another, and I actually like being here.

Moving forward, I will try to not clog up your moderation queue with my hot takes. I'll try.

@4bpp I disagree with the notion of reports as an enforcement mechanism because it is trivially easy to game, if one is a motivated bad actor. If an individual post is bad, one can downvote it. If it annoys one sufficiently, one can rebut it (although I concede the effort may not be worth the squeeze in nearly all cases.) Reporting is the tool of last resort, when something is noisome and of no value whatsoever.

But you report so much that the lack of response feels like a waste of effort?

I can't recall the last time I reported anyone. That's how little I use the feature. Do you want to be a moderator? You have a thousand posts... a lot more than me. Obviously you have opinions on what the Motte should be. But the demos has an opinion, too. Expressed through upvotes. Metathoughts about the pernicious nature of such social media systems nonwithstanding, is that not the fairest way of determining the merit of what someone is saying?

(I admit that the proposition of 'being maximally evil in posture to EA people' is horrifying, but no more so than the people who constantly talk about 'race realism'.)

I am also aware that the Motte has problems with ideological diversity. But that isn't my fault, that those on the left evaporatively leave. It's not like I'm running around conspiratorially reporting the TracingWoodgrains of the world. They left. Cannot I talk to those of a similar ideological bent? It's not like I'm pretending to be objective or anything. Am I being asked to keep it down to make sure the last leftists don't just pull up stakes and leave, leaving the Motte a witch-chamber?

I've been on a hot streak of hot takes recently, so I'll probably take a step back for a while. But if you have a problem with my posts or you believe that I don't belong here, you can say so. You don't have to write me up in a post complaining about moderation. That's all I have to say.

@Amadan I am aware that being a rightist partisan is not very conducive to the kind of space that the moderates wish to nurture.

We aren't trying to nurture a "moderate" space. I personally am a moderate, but many of the mods are not and being "moderate" is not the Motte's ethos. We have lots of rightist partisans here (and a few leftist ones). The problem is not being partisan; the problem is being antagonistic and inflammatory just to dunk on your enemies.

In what way are reports an "enforcement mechanism"? They do not enforce anything - unlike votes and comments, they don't even leave a public record. Reports are a mechanism for drawing the attention of moderators, and nothing else.

I do not come here for a discussion that is curated solely or primarily by the demos, as defined by everyone who has an account and bothers to click arrows getting a vote. There are plenty of spaces like that all across the internet, many with bigger crowds, and they generally don't work, or at least they don't work to produce a space in which political discussion that is worth reading can be had. An internet forum, in its natural form, is an island in Scott's meta-libertarian archipelago, not a community of people who are chained together by birth and geography and are thus compelled to organise in a way that to them feels fair - it is easy to join, and fairly easy to leave. The appeal of the archipelago is that any island can offer whatever it wants, be it democracy or compulsory-two-buckets-of-shit-a-day Soviet hell; and if you don't like it, you can just leave for a different island, or go and create your own and hope that the customers will come. The Motte's pitch was not a democracy, but a carefully tended autocratic garden with a particular prominently stated set of rules. If it devolves into a democracy, and if these rules are being enforced selectively or not at all, then in the best case it is simply because its operators are inattentive, in which case reporting helps draw their attention to the right place. In a worse but more realistic case, they are failing the criteria they promised to uphold due to bias or the human fear of social censure, as hinted at by @Amadan in his parallel response, in which case reporting serves to convey my disapproval, thus levelling the social censure incentive landscape a little. In the worst case, they are simply committing sticker fraud. I cling to the hope that that is not the case, because exit, while cheap, is not free, and the archipelago is actually finite and shrouded in a fog of imperfect information.

On top of this, on the object level, the main signal that our demos sends by up- and downvoting is "we want more content that helps the right wing". I can see that from my own posting history easily enough - I generally make posts in a fairly narrow range of length, type and sophistication, and the only ones that reliably get over +20 upvotes are those that contain strong unhedged defenses and concurrences with right-wing talking points. Conversely, any attempt to directly argue against right-wing positions is capped at +10, and without careful hedging and gratuitous but-of-course-leftists-also-bad disclaimers it's easy to land in the negatives.

I can't recall the last time I reported anyone. That's how little I use the feature.

That's perfectly consistent with a scenario in which the community heavily leans towards your preferences, and you trust that the mods will take care of it when it doesn't even without your prodding.

Do you want to be a moderator? You have a thousand posts... a lot more than me. Obviously you have opinions on what the Motte should be.

At this point I am so exasperated with the moderation that the answer to that is "yes", which of course categorically disqualifies me. So, reinterpreting your question, the reason I am reporting is not that I want to be a moderator. If I were to aim to become one, what I did (picking fights with and getting myself personally loathed by most of the current staff, antagonizing the ideological core of the community and saying we actually need more of that, ...) would be among the dumber approaches - I should instead have made a point to defend the mods in public, posted solidly right-wing but slightly more thoughtfully and measuredly than everyone else, and perhaps helped Zorba with backend work at some juncture.

I am also aware that the Motte has problems with ideological diversity. But that isn't my fault, that those on the left evaporatively leave.

Of course it is also your fault. When you make posts that are actively unpleasant to a class of readers, such as ones that are pitched to rally your tribe to bring about their defeat or ones that say it's "always acceptable to [engage in the act of harassing, intimidating, or abusing them, especially habitually or from a perceived position of relative power]" (circumscription courtesy of dictionary.com) (here), you encourage them to leave. The obvious mirrored example is unfortunately not so effective because American online right-wingers have all grown a thick skin out of necessity, so maybe try to imagine how inclined you would feel to stay in a forum where a bunch of Mexicans are circlejerking each other about plans on how to illegally immigrate into the US and defraud dumb gringos out of their money, or Russian soldiers planning torture of American volunteers they caught in Ukraine if you want an even more colourful example.

At this point I am so exasperated with the moderation that the answer to that is "yes", which of course categorically disqualifies me. So, reinterpreting your question, the reason I am reporting is not that I want to be a moderator. If I were to aim to become one, what I did (picking fights with and getting myself personally loathed by most of the current staff, antagonizing the ideological core of the community and saying we actually need more of that, ...) would be among the dumber approaches - I should instead have made a point to defend the mods in public, posted solidly right-wing but slightly more thoughtfully and measuredly than everyone else, and perhaps helped Zorba with backend work at some juncture.

Why do you think the current staff loathes you? I have no negative feelings about you. Your record is 2 AAQCs and no warnings! You're a good poster. You're just on the left which means you get downvoted a lot. Sorry about that, but that is how the community is, as you've observed.

Whether or not Zorba uses his "doge" mechanism next time he needs new mods, the way to become a mod is not by kissing our asses.

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At this point I am so exasperated with the moderation that the answer to that is "yes", which of course categorically disqualifies me. So, reinterpreting your question, the reason I am reporting is not that I want to be a moderator. If I were to aim to become one, what I did (picking fights with and getting myself personally loathed by most of the current staff, antagonizing the ideological core of the community and saying we actually need more of that, ...) would be among the dumber approaches - I should instead have made a point to defend the mods in public, posted solidly right-wing but slightly more thoughtfully and measuredly than everyone else, and perhaps helped Zorba with backend work at some juncture.

It doesn't disqualify you, and none of that would have helped you. If you want the job, I'll be more than happy to vote for you if I'm nominated for nominator the next time around.

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Would it be possible for the mods to aim to make a public statement on every post that receives more than a certain number of reports, even if just to explain why they disagree with the reporters' view of it violating rules?

Fuck no.

Well, maybe if someone else wants to do it. But no, we get enough flack when we do mod posts and people are unhappy about it; now you want an open forum for people to bitch every time we don't mod a post? Fuck if I'm going to explain myself for every post I mod or don't mod. (As for "a certain number of reports," it's pretty rare for a post to receive a large number of reports and not get modded. Usually those are unambiguously pretty bad.)

Look, I think we are pretty damn transparent. We usually explain ourselves, we let people argue with us, we engage civilly on threads where people are calling us shitty mods. Sometimes we are too transparent, because it just invites ankle-biting and rules-lawyering. I go through phases where I will patiently explain to someone why I modded them and let them argue with me for an entire thread, and phases where I just say "Banned, bye" because I feel like it's a waste of time explaining things to bad-faith grudge-holders who don't really care about our reasoning, only that we didn't mod the way they think we should.

We do read every single report. Including yours. I would guess we actually act on about 5% of all reports.

Why does any particular mod not mod a particular post? It might be because the mod thinks it's okay, it might be because it's borderline and the mod isn't sure whether they think it merits action. It might be because the mod thinks it merits action but doesn't want to be the one to make the call, for various reasons. I will frequently look at a mod queue full of "borderline" posts and think "I don't want to deal with these right now." Maybe I don't have time to think about them, or maybe I'm in a bad mood and am afraid I might be too trigger-happy, so I will hope some other mod makes the decision. Then maybe I see three days later no one has made the call and it's still in the queue, and I sigh and approve it because clearly no one felt strongly about it and I'm not going to come and ban them three days later.

As it happens, that particular post by @crushedoranges was discussed in the mod channel. It was definitely borderline. We were split about 50/50 between "It's a bad post but not a rules violation" and "This deserves a warning." In the end we defaulted to no action. On a different day, a different mod might have warned or banned him. @crushedoranges posts a lot of crappy comments like that so he's on thin ice, but this time he skated. Does that mean we are not always 100% consistent and that sometimes a much worse comment will pass while a less bad comment earns the poster a ban? Yes, yes it does mean that! Yes, that definitely happens!

So it goes.

This is a false equivalence.

First of all, "Radical leftists want to undermine America" is itself a bit more Fox News than I think we normally go. I would probably say something more like "The left wants to weaken America's military, so of course they support closing overseas bases." I think a lot of leftists would actually agree with my framing, and would disagree that closing bases counts as 'undermining' America. They would probably say that America should spend its money on welfare rather than overseas bases, and that closing bases actually strengthens America in all the ways that count. Thus, they don't want to undermine America, they just want to close bases.

The Jewish conspiracy angle leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I do not actually accept the reasoning that Jewish people want to undermine the UK any more than I accept the reasoning that the American left wants to undermine America. I think that the thing you most need to justify when making that argument is the premise. Any time anyone posits a Jewish conspiracy, they never explain the alleged motivation of the alleged Jewish conspiracy. I believe that the American left wants to close military bases, because it makes sense according to their goals (spend less on military and more on welfare). I do not believe that British Jews want to 'undermine the UK’s geopolitical power when the nation is weak and vulnerable' out of sheer evil Jewishness, because that is not a real motivation.

I think if someone went around suggesting that the Vegans were the masterminds behind every Islamic terrorist plot, they would be banned in short order. The problem with the Jewposting isn't the form, it's the sheer nonsense of it. You can't post crazy gibberish and expect to be taken seriously.

The Jewish conspiracy angle leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I do not actually accept the reasoning that Jewish people want to undermine the UK any more than I accept the reasoning that the American left wants to undermine America. I think that the thing you most need to justify when making that argument is the premise. Any time anyone posits a Jewish conspiracy, they never explain the alleged motivation of the alleged Jewish conspiracy. I believe that the American left wants to close military bases, because it makes sense according to their goals (spend less on military and more on welfare). I do not believe that British Jews want to 'undermine the UK’s geopolitical power when the nation is weak and vulnerable' out of sheer evil Jewishness, because that is not a real motivation.

Au contraire, I can promise you that we have some very elaborate explanations for the motivations of the Jewish conspiracies.

Paging @SecureSignals - What do you think?

I doubt that there is a 'Jewish Conspiracy', but if it exists, its motive is probably something along the lines of 'not being murdered or driven from their homes.'

The mods are very clear that single or few-issue posters are treated much more harshly for completely reasonable reasons, namely that they end up using the community as their soapbox for their ONE thing. It happens that floating around right-leaning forums with lenient speech policies are a not insubstantial number of people for whom their One Issue is the Jews. The main reason treatment of secure signals actually improved recently is that he decided, in a welcome shift, to start discussing other things in addition to his single issue.

Unless this is someone's alt, doesn't look like they're a regular Jewposter.

Anyways, object level aside since obviously I don't like the people obsessed with Jews either, this is just a much less lofty expression of free speech ideals for a community to follow. What @self_made_human articulated was more or less reddit with a right-shifted Overton window, but not far right enough (yet) to tolerate regular Jewposting. What's the difference between 'we treat anti-semites more harshly because our userbase finds their opinions inflammatory' and 'we moderate conservative opinions much more harshly because they're just sealioning single-issue posters?' There's plenty of garbage posts here with nary a fact in them and packed chock-full of opinions I find plenty inflammatory (and even articulated in a much cruder and more inflammatory way than the Jewposter!), and the only difference between them is the opinions of the majority.

Sure, if the mods make enough unpopular decisions the community dies. Sure, nobody can reach some platonic ideal of objectivity or impartiality. But abandoning the pretense so easily is a bit of a letdown.

What @self_made_human articulated was more or less reddit with a right-shifted Overton window, but not far right enough (yet) to tolerate regular Jewposting. What's the difference between 'we treat anti-semites more harshly because our userbase finds their opinions inflammatory' and 'we moderate conservative opinions much more harshly because they're just sealioning single-issue posters?'

I will push back against this claim. The Motte isn't just reddit with a right-shifted Overton window.

Our Overton window is wider. Enormously so, though not as unique these days as Twitter competes in terms of permissivity if not quality.

There are very few topics that are outright verboten on this site. Most of them would be spam, harassment and the like. You can just about advocate for any viewpoint as long as you do it politely and with enough explanatory force behind the views you endorse.

There's plenty of garbage posts here with nary a fact in them and packed chock-full of opinions I find plenty inflammatory (and even articulated in a much cruder and more inflammatory way than the Jewposter!), and the only difference between them is the opinions of the majority.

Report them! Few of us mods have the time to read each and every comment posted on the site. I once did, when I was rather underemployed, but if something doesn't show up in the report queue, it is much less likely to be moderated, at least promptly.

It's inevitable that unpopular topics will get reported more often, and will thus be moderated more often, even while holding the quality of the comment equal.

For this particular one, the volunteer janny system flagged it as a bad comment, it had multiple reports to boot. We take that into account when making moderation decisions, but it certainly isn't the only thing that matters, our discretion overrides it if we deem a comment to be within the rules despite people (rarely) reporting on vibes rather than the merits of a comment. There are users so consistently downvoted that they'd never leave the filter queue if we didn't override it. This place isn't a majoritarian free-for-all, we do our best to accommodate unpopular viewpoints.

Cirrus had multiple warnings, and was hit with a ban for a single day. That's a slap on the wrist as punishments go, and he is welcome to reframe the same point as long as he meets our other guidelines.

You're correct that that hypothetical comment wouldn't be moderated, even if it's not quite the level of quality we hope users aspire to.

If you had to ask for my rationale in not moderating it, my reasoning would be along the lines that it is a far less inflammatory claim. It doesn't take much effort to show a dozen examples of far-leftists strongly advocating for the death of the American Empire. I'm sure if we asked politely, we'd find a few on the site itself!

Our rules about inflammatory comments and evidence implicitly assume a subjective reference frame. That is sadly unavoidable. Someone advocating for the death penalty for pedophiles and rapists would be treated very differently from people saying that miscegantors and homosexuals should be put to death, in the former cases, the arguments being made draw on significantly more cultural consensus and common-knowledge (implicitly). We allow the latter class of argument, you can call for homesexuality and race-mixing to be made illegal, we demand additional explanation and rigour to your argument even if it bottoms out in subjective personal beliefs.

Speaking ill of the Jews is allowed, or else Secure Signals wouldn't be posting here. That he is, is a sign that he (usually) meets our standards of discourse.

It would be too much to expect that we can keep everyone happy when it comes to our judgement about what counts as inflammatory and needing justification versus what is a clear and self-evident Truth™, but that's unavoidable, and we try to find a balance.

The comment isn't especially rule-breaking on any of those fronts. It brought useful context to the original post. I learned something from it. If there were a top-level post about, say, people behaving in a strikingly unruly manner in public, and a reply added that they were black as a partial explanation (and obviously it could only be a partial explanation), there is no way that would get modded, let alone as casually as this. Just like the ungovernable black, the far-left Jew who loathes his host country's past glories and dominant ethnic group, and is politically engaged enough to act on it, is a recognizable type. Both Jews and gentiles have been writing about it for over a century, sometimes sympathetically. It shouldn't be necessary to break out the stats/conspiracy board every time one wants to gesture at it (and doing so would probably only derail the conversation and make the pile-on worse).

I'm mostly a lurker here, but I've noticed that when I do find the motivation to post, it's often to defend others from anti-anti-semitic dogpiling and mod action. Maybe this is my own bias talking, but it seems to be the one topic where The Motte loses all reason in its eagerness to shut down conversation, and the quality of the responses drops off a cliff. Besides the ban itself,

@2rafa

If he is interested in advancing Jewish interests, he is doing a very poor job of it [by opposing Israel]

It's common knowledge (I hope this point is simply consensus so that I can't be accused of building one) that far-left, white-hating, anti-colonial Jews are often, perhaps usually, also anti-Israel. Obviously this would make it hard to argue that Hermer and Sands are part of a conscious international conspiracy to promote Jewish world domination or whatever, but @Cirrus said no such thing. While, if Cirrus took your rebuttal on board, he might have to posit a more complex motivation for the antagonists in this story than raw will to racial supremacy, that is not really a problem for him, as highly prominent Jewish public figures are obviously smart enough to have more complex inner lives than that (that still, demonstrably in some cases, reserve a place for hating white gentiles). For me, learning that both the key figures in the Chagos story happened to be Jewish had the total effect of minimizing the cognitive dissonance/surprisal/confusion I had on first reading OP, and learning that Hermer favors Palestine did little to increase it again.

@Quantumfreakonomics

This doesn’t even make sense from an antisemitic standpoint. If anything Jews want English-speaking nations to dominate geopolitics because they already have ready-made English-language propaganda infrastructure

OP established that whether or not it has anything to do with their Jewishness, Hermer and Sands appear to be acting against national interest, even out of contempt for the English people, as some have alleged. So taking that as given, do you think it is more natural that they should be ethnically English or Jewish? Of course there are many self-hating English people as well so it's not a slam dunk, but I think the point stands. I might have predicted that Hermer and Sands were Jewish on first reading the story, and although I can't honestly say the thought occurred to me, I attribute that to being less vigilant than I could have been (to be honest "Phillippe Sands" should have been a dead giveaway). Thanks to Cirrus' comment I am less slightly less likely to miss such details in the future.

@TitaniumButterfly

Random accusations toward Jews

"Random accusation" would be if the key figures in the story weren't literally Jewish.

@jeroboam

There are people who are obsessed with Jews for some reason, and this is one of the few places that won't immediately shut it down so we get all the witches.

It's honestly not even offensive, just boring and annoying.

It's not that that aren't any decent anti-Jewish takes. It's just that the ones we tend to attract are low-IQ by the standards of this forum.

You're a thoughtful poster most of the time, but here we go with the anti-anti-semitic tropes. It's always the same "low-IQ" verbiage.* What's conspicuously low-IQ about his comment, of all the comments on here? It is at least coherent and well-structured (though short), and it contains no spelling or grammar mistakes. Most commenters who can meet those standards don't have to worry about being tarred as "low-IQ", at least not based on a single post. Admittedly it doesn't take a very high IQ to google someone's ethnic background, but the same goes for any low-effort reply that just serves to add context. "Low-IQ" is boo lights for any criticism of Jews that falls below @SecureSignals' standard of eloquence (which is met by maybe two or three other posters forum-wide).

For every "boring and annoying" antisemitic post on here, there are 10 NPC-level rebuttals. I urge all of you anti-anti-semites to consider if the fact that every drive-by post like this spawns a chorus of affronted Jews yelling "Shut it down!" helps your case.

*I saw a lot of this in the weeks after Oct. 7: according to several prominent internet Jews, not supporting Israel makes you "low-IQ" of all things. Other positions might be perverse, misguided, unsound, averse to facts, ideologically motivated, evil, even dumb, but somehow the word cloud for opposition to Israel and other positions that are facially unfavorable to Jews usually contains "low-IQ". What seems pretty plainly to be going on is that these Jews are leveraging their reputation for high IQ to give their attacks on the "low-IQ" extra bite. After all, they are the final authority on IQ.

It's common knowledge (I hope this point is simply consensus so that I can't be accused of building one) that far-left, white-hating, anti-colonial Jews are often, perhaps usually, also anti-Israel

But are they then distinguishable in any way from non-Jewish far-left white-hating anti-colonialists? If not, then what explanatory power does harping on about their Jewishness bring to the equation?

I urge all of you anti-anti-semites to consider if the fact that every drive-by post like this spawns a chorus of affronted Jews yelling "Shut it down!" helps your case.

Very few of those people are Jewish at all. The majority of Jews on this board just don’t engage with those posts except occasionally.

which is met by maybe two or three other posters forum-wide

Not a bad writer but ridiculous suggest only two are three are on his level (many more are better).

that is not really a problem for him

That is kind of the point, the argument is so poorly made that it doesn’t exist, it’s noooticing with no backing, it says very little. If the argument is some KMac group evolutionary strategy, Hermer has clearly acted against Jewish group interests by using his extremely prominent position in what is still a major nuclear power to relentlessly and publicly bash the only Jewish homeland. If it’s that there some progressive and powerful Jews (for relatively dull HBD reasons especially overrepresented in wordcel careers like law) who fully buy into anti-colonialist ideology, then sure, although there is absolutely no shortage of those among the native population. But it’s not really clear what he’s saying, beyond saying nothing except that he can look someone up on Wikipedia, then click early life.

Very few of those people are Jewish at all.

I at'd 4 people. You are Jewish, and unless you are including yourself in "those people" you must know at least one of the others to be Jewish. In which case that's half.

I'm sure The Motte has a fair number of Jewish users, and given the highly disproportionate reaction every time a Jew's being Jewish is brought up, it seemed reasonable to expect Jews to be amply represented in the pile-ons. I didn't seriously mean to suggest it was all Jews.

But it’s not really clear what he’s saying, beyond saying nothing except that he can look someone up on Wikipedia, then click early life.

Well, his post (unlike all the replies to it) was an observation about the topic at hand. It wasn't about how finely wrought a theory of Jewish group behavior he could shoehorn two relatively obscure public figures into (and again I don't think Motte users would actually appreciate every throwaway antisemitic comment turning into a paragraphs-long screed about group evolutionary strategy and so on). As a reply, it was up to par. It reduced perplexity. I can see why it would be annoying to be faced with refuting a direct association between an isolated fact and a statistical pattern without any mediating causal link. That said, I feel like that's not an uncommon form of argument around here, so if you don't dispute the pattern (i.e. that Jews are overrepresented compared to non-Jews in radical left-wing/anti-white politics/culture production, and more overrepresented than can be predicted from their verbal intelligence alone), you could just let it go.

For every "boring and annoying" antisemitic post on here, there are 10 NPC-level rebuttals that add no substance.

This is why boring and annoying antisemitic posts are strongly discouraged -- maybe the antisemites should try posting something interesting?

Like, SS is not my favourite poster (and I hate to encourage him), but his holocaust denial posts do bring in some interesting history at times -- I don't believe that a meticulously researched post about the connections these two Powerful Jews have to the International Zionist Conspiracy, and the specific actions they took to broker this ridiculous deal; maybe wrapping up with the was in which the ridiculous deal makes these Jews more Powerful and will enable the IZC to take over the UK -- would face mod sanctions.

It would probably still get a lot of pushback, but steel sharpens steel, right? Have at 'er.

I agree with this, but I also had the impression lately that these rules have become much more relaxed when its not about the Special People.

Eh, I’ve gotten banned for ranting about Haitians.

Do you have concrete examples in mind? I don't think we treat Jews any different, it's just that they're probably the ethnicity most singled-out by our resident witches. I'm pretty sure we'd at least warn if not ban for similar comments for other groups that don't meet our standards for effort or pro-active production of evidence.

If you can look up what I got in janny duty the last few days, there where a few in there that I didnt recognise a distinguished comment responding to in modlog now. But I dont remember in particular - I kind of thought this is just the new standard until now, so I didnt make a note of them. I guess I will going forward.

I don't have any way to do that, though I think Zorba might. I recall there was a measure of how close someone's volunteer janny choices correlated to final moderator action. It's just not exposed with my current privileges.

Do you have concrete examples in mind?

our resident witches

This is a good one. Scott's Seven Zillion concept has normalized deprecatory terms towards those people that would be auto-banned if used against other groups.

Do you think Cirrus is a witch?

I'm a witch. Or a principled libertarian advocating for free speech, if one cares to split the difference.

The Motte grew out of a desire for more free speech, including speech on topics that are/were verboten on most of the internet. There is absolutely no pejorative intent, we invite all comers as long as they're polite about things. https://www.themotte.org/post/1657/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/293159?context=8#context

You happen to have a quasi-ideological dispute going here, but I must remind you that this place is a watering hole for heathens and witches, and often all we ask is that we don't bare wands or claws at each other. Even if someone pisses you off, especially so

There you go. I'm on record saying the same thing with a mod hat on. It's a term I use with pride, and if it's deprecatory, then it must be conceded that it's also self-deprecating. Ever wonder why the volunteer janny page uses a picture of a quokka?

That's fair. A Yankee-Doodle style "We are taking it back" approach to has been successful in the past for sure.

See "Keep Your Rifle by Your Side" for the modern version.

If Ubisoft didn’t want us to identify with it then they shouldn’tve made it such a banger.

In the original metaphor, libertarians or principled free speech advocates were explicitly distinguished from witches. The witches are posting here because they can post things that are banned for ideological reasons elsewhere- HBD advocates, the pedo guy, securesignals, etc.

I think most of us who considered the original metaphor have realized that, whatever label we might prefer to apply to ourselves, we are in fact witches by the lights of the other side of the culture war; that is, we are not at risk of being targeted because of a mistake or a misunderstanding, but because those doing the targeting wish to target people with our actual views. We are not temporarily embarrassed members of "polite society". We left "polite society" behind a long, long time ago.

I've argued at length against the HBDrs and race-essentialists and white-identitarians here. All the same, here at least, I've long ago bothered arguing over the label "racist"; the people using it know what they mean, and I know what they mean. We both agree the Progressive definition of Racist applies to me, and there's no amount of MLK quotes that will change their mind.

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The rules are as equally enforced and many recent bans for vulgar racial hatred haven’t been for antisemitism iirc.

No mod hat?

Oops. Thanks for the reminder.

As a side note, I moderate less than I could because I have to switch themes every time, and the default white flashbangs my eyes. Trivial inconveniences stack up :(

Lord Hermer is a hardcore very pro-Palestinian Jew, though, who has implicitly (not explicitly, since as AG that would contradict Starmer’s own position) defended the ICC’s warrant for Netanyahu among other things:

In May 2023, Hermer was amongst many lawyers who signed a Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights letter addressed to Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, which called on the government to constructively participate in the International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the legal consequences of the actions of Israel in occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem.[15] In July 2023, Hermer stated that he believed that the "continued Israeli occupation of the West bank" was "unlawful, deeply damaging to the interests of Israel and wholly contrary to the values of tikkun olam" which Hermer grew up with and continued to be guided by.[2]

In October 2023, Hermer was amongst eight prominent Jewish lawyers, which included former Supreme Court President Lord Neuberger, who signed an open letter to call on Israel to follow international law in its response to the 7 October attacks.[193] Later that month, in an interview with LBC whilst speaking to Sangita Myska, he said that it was "impossible to conceive" how Israel's siege was "in compliance with international law".[194] He went on to say that "for a very long time" Israel has had "effective control" over the borders of Gaza, which he said was reliant on the "need to have electricity, water and food coming in"; and that the "cutting of that off" was "very, very difficult to reconcile with obligations of international law" and described that as a "deliberate understatement" from him.[194]

If he is interested in advancing Jewish interests, he is doing a very poor job of it.

As an aside, international law is a dumb concept when it obligates you to actively help your enemies in a war. It is one thing to say “don’t aggressively torture PoWs.” It is another thing to say “power your enemies stronghold.”

Can not the international law types see the obvious futility of demanding these kinds of “laws?” They invite contempt and thereby prove out the weakness of international law as a concept.

I'm pretty sure that's specific to Israel. The theory is that Israel isn't at war with Gaza, they're an occupying power with responsibility to their population. This is a stupid theory, of course, but twisting international law into pretzels to reach the conclusion that Israel should assist its own destruction is pretty much par for the course. Fortunately for Israel, Netanyahu isn't Keir Starmer.

This doesn’t even make sense from an antisemitic standpoint. If anything Jews want English-speaking nations to dominate geopolitics because they already have ready-made English-language propaganda infrastructure

Why would Jews want to weaken British power? England generally stacks up in favor of Israel and/or Jews, does it not?

Anglos aren't ready for ethnic cleansing. They are convenient allies but the strings attached to their aid are a nuisance.

A Jewish hegemony would put their vassals only in the position of following and giving tribute, not complaining.

So the best way to do this is by making the UK look dumb and kneecapping American power in the Pacific so that the United States is more likely to lose a war with China, making it more likely to pull back its Middle Eastern commitments, including the missile shield that's been protecting Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles and the foreign aid they've been receiving ever year?

I don't think that this conspiracy is likely or that anything is so rationally planned, but Israel might prefer a more multipolar world. China doesn't care which tribe occupies a particular piece of land or how it governs it, so long as it's pliant to China's national interests. A realignment with China would mean much less finger wagging, no threats of boycotts, no constraints around solving security issues. It's not altogether clear that access to weaponry would even suffer too much, especially a decade from now (and if Israel's primary problem is controlling an insubordinate population, China already has the US beat there in technology). And, if nothing else, Israel could play the US and China against each other, hoping to get the best deal from both. The only big question is whether Israel can offer more to China than China's Middle Eastern allies can (which seems unlikely, but maybe China could find a way to thread the needle and work with both).

Uh, Israel has strong interest in a world police existing, and china’s local Allies are firmly anti-Israel.

China is relatively pro-Palestinian and long had been. Not to the extent of actually becoming involved in the conflict or ending diplomatic ties with Israel (at least since they were established in 92), but it was part of the general anti Israel shift observed in the communist world from the 1970s onward. In addition, the useful Chinese diasporas in Malaysia and Indonesia, which China has worked hard to build ties with and be seen as defenders of, are dependent to some extent upon Islamic tolerance.

Which nations are ready? If Jewish interests are in line with Israeli interests, then seems like they should push the West towards more revanchist focus, assertive actions, and more power. Then these nations have fewer reasons to denounce actions of Israel abroad. If Israel does want to commit an ethnic cleansing. If Jewish interests are separate from Israeli interests it would make sense that Israeli policy would be a focus rather than irrelevant Britain.

Random accusations toward Jews seem to have become commonplace enough that I just sorta started screening them out. So what occurred to me as odd here is the idea that any organization with that sort of capacity would be so bothered with the UK. Pretty sure it's at the point where you could just leave it alone for a couple/few more decades then come back and declare victory.

My biases would have been much better-flattered by a tenuous insistence that this is some sort of Chinese plot.

Random accusations toward Jews seem to have become commonplace enough that I just sorta started screening them out.

Agreed. There are people who are obsessed with Jews for some reason, and this is one of the few places that won't immediately shut it down so we get all the witches.

It's honestly not even offensive, just boring and annoying.

It's not that that aren't any decent anti-Jewish takes. It's just that the ones we tend to attract are low-IQ by the standards of this forum.

"When they send their anti-semites, they're not sending their best."

One good thing about having Trump as your head of state is that he would never negotiate a deal like this. Because a cursory look at the deal makes it look bad the idea would be toxic to Trump even if a full understanding of the context would make the deal seem more reasonable. I assume if Trump was negotiating he would try to get the lease for free but maybe that just incentivises the Mauritians to walk back the lease in the future.

Small oversea territories provide little value to a high cost. The UK has to be able to control and defend a bunch of insignificant islands half way around the world. This ranges from peacetime patrolling of fisheries to a potential falklands like war. Having small islands doesn't provide any real strategic benefit, it just provides a few thousand citizens for whom providing NHS services will cost a fortune and provides the military with a continuous headache.

The UK would be far better off if it stopped larping global hegemon and simply accepted that it is a mid sized country like Holland and stopped getting involved in far away places.

This may be true of other outlying possessions, but one of Diego Garcia's larger tenants would probably help with defense of this particular small island.

Diego Garcia is extremely important for it's location. There are no islands that can replace it

Britain does have an aircraft carrier and enough H-bombs to put a real dent in any country on the planet. The weakest of the strong powers is still a strong power.

it is a mid sized country like Holland and stopped getting involved in far away places.

The Netherlands has claims on its own small overseas territories in the Caribbean.

It's not just claims, there are three Caribbean countries that are a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint-Maarten)

Bonaire too! Or at least sort of. I suppose it's not really a country though.

Half an island in the case of St Marteen.

Uhhhh Diego Garcia is there, the United States will defend the islands for free I would imagine :p

Also, checking a map shows that the islands are about 1200 miles away from Mauritus.

Thanks for cross-posting this!

I think that all the talk on DSL/reddit/twitter about Starmer secretly being secretly anti-British, receiving bribes from China or even trying to enchance Britain's mythical "soft power" is missing the point. My impression is that Starmer is a lawcel for whom the idea of not following the ICJ ruling - or whatever it is - is unthinkable at a deep personal level. My read is that from his perspective, the UK isn't paying Mauritius to take a group of strategically valuable islands of their hands; rather the UK will be paying Mauritius to lease land that is now legally indisputably in the possession of Mauritius. In his view, legal declarations are imbued with their own power, regardless of whether they can be enforced or not, and ignoring this one would make the UK a hostile occupying force on the islands.

As already explained in the post, Starmer is not a lawcel dispassionately following the letter of the law, because it's possible to find areas of international law he's happy to ignore.

There are multiple possible explanations here. Regarding the Chagos Islands, the ICJ made a direct ruling requiring the UK to take a specific action. Locking up people for free speech might go against the spirit of some international law or other but unless he was specifically ordered not to I could imagine him feeling less constrained by that. It also wouldn't surprise me if he personally feels the jurisdiction of international law is solely that covering disputes between nation states, and not domestic affairs. He might also feel that as PM, he's in a sense above the law as it relates to domestic issues, but that international law as decided by various global bodies exists on a higher level that the UK must be subservient to. Someone showing authoritarian tendencies when they have power but being a stickler for rules imposed on them by what they feel to be higher bodies isn't displaying a particularly unusual personality type.

Nearly all of us are hypocrites one way or another. It'd be very human and understandable for Starmer to consider himself a staunch defender of and believer in the International Order and Liberal Democracy while maintaining a position at odds with that. All it takes is one tiny brain worm and his mind works it out for him. Plus, he is a politician. A major one! Has he been questioned on this inconsistency?

Brits seem set on hate speech laws as amenable to their society or even righteous. If it's dissonance it is a form he shares with a a significant number of his constituents. A politician expressing ideas he thinks his population is fond of isn't a mystery, even if it is at odds with what he says his values are.

Enjoyed the post!

I would say the traditional British sense of ‘free speech’ is pretty similar to the Motte’s: modding for tone rather than content. People should be able to have intelligent conversations about sensitive subjects without fear of censorship or retribution. But that doesn’t mean that every place is appropriate for those conversations and it doesn’t mean that you aren’t bound by conventional standards of politeness in the way you have those conversations.

I was always raised to believe in standards like “no politics or religion at the dinner table”. Thus the strong libel laws and the laws against Gross Offence and so on. Ideally they’re meant to protect you from berks who want to ruin free speech for everyone.

Like the Motte, it held up pretty well for the most part but falters when any faction gets strong enough, especially the “wokeness is human decency” crowd. And like the Motte, the way those rules are enforced is unavoidably tinged to some extent by the dominant mood amongst the public and the modders.

Though my American sensibilities lean more toward tolerance for all but the most immediately threatening or dangerous speech, I understand the British impulse. In a truly civilized society, it would be reasonable to restrict the most annoying, uncouth, rude, harassing, cruel, generally ungentlemanly behavior, legally speaking. But the laws Britain has (even its jury trial system, as that recent case of the footballer acquitted of anti-white racism by a jury shows) are unfit for the situation in which it now finds itself.

They are a remnant of a bygone age, a time of that unspoken concept of ‘fair play’, of what is and isn’t ‘cricket’, of unspoken honor, that simply no longer exists. Like the newspaper sellers who would leave their carts and simply expect their customers to drop the purchase price in a collection box (and expect nobody else to steal it) who Lee Kuan Yew saw as the very height of civilization, they were designed not only for a high trust society but for a very particular high trust society at that.

The American system, in its own way, after 200 years of the Anglo inhabitants being replaced by various outsiders, is more hardened against that kind of thing. It expects greed, selfishness, dishonorable behavior. Sometimes it even revels in it.

Yes. When I was younger, it always seemed to me that “Americans expect very little, and get it”. Now I watch the British impulse towards fair play drive us to suicide - conservative friends and family who, even now, expect gentlemanly behaviour in combat with people who have no honour.

In fairness, it was the Marxists more than the foreigners who broke the system, taking gleeful pleasure in the bewilderment of their elders. With the advent of Thatcher that was mostly pushed down again. I think the British model can work, we just need to replace the mods. Trump has shown it’s possible.

The end run around the “tone” thing is what makes it useless in a state — the way to prevent criticism is to be offended easily. Islam has weaponized the concept as any negative statement about Islam is blasphemy and therefore rude. Any criticism of certain parts of woke are offensive just because those things have been defined as sexist, racist, X-phobic. And thus you can rudely defy it (and risk arrest) or simply remain silent and let them win.

Not exactly. What was offensive and what was not was determined by tradition, and not by the feelings of the people in question.

As an example, I could pretend to be offended by your post and call it a dismissal of British cultural values or whatever, but the mods wouldn't mod your for offending me. If anything, they would mod me. The culture here (rightly!) doesn't consider your post offensive.

The Motte attempts to provide a venue for 'free speech' (the free exchange of ideas) in a way that requires restricting free speech (your ability to boo-outgroup, recruit for a cause, etc.). It's impossible to do that without having some requirement for what speech should be restricted (the rules in the header) and people who interpret them (the mods). If the mods go woke, we as users can't stop them. It's the same in the UK - the relevant systems were taken over by the woke and now we can't do anything about it. You could say 'no modding' or you could say 'new mods'.

The UN and EU / ECHR don’t prevent hate speech laws; in fact all have officially endorsed them and numerous challenges to hate speech laws from across Europe have failed at the ECHR with rulings that explicitly upheld national laws restricting speech as entirely acceptable.

The failure of the UN and ECHR to enforce hate speech laws does not mean those laws aren't on the book. Starmer could be the one to start enforcing them in the UK, if he wished, but instead he seems very selective about what parts of international law he wants enforced.

No, the point is that the international legal framework, such as it is, encourages Euro-style hate speech laws.

You missed the part (in this article you posted at DSL) about Mauritius closing the airspace over the the Chagos Islands thereby requiring the US and UK to supply the base only by boat.

Mauritius closing the airspace over the the Chagos Islands

🇬🇧: You and what army Air Force?

I can go there with a sling and shoot down the Mauritius airforce if push comes to shove. If they have something heaver you may need to add one Australian with a boomerang.

Lizzardspawn has made the the anti-Mauritian forces so efficient that now all the work is done by a single Australian man.

To be clear, the airspace is not closed. That is merely a "possibility" in a world where swiss quangos declare that the chagos islands are rightful Mauritius clay.

How do they do that? They can close their own airspace, but you could fly around that, no?

The theory is that because the ICJ said the islands are theirs, they could close the airspace over the islands too.

That's a theory. How would an airspace closure work in practice?

Mauritius announces the airspace is closed. The UK immediately halts all flights until Starmer is out of office. The US military has a hearty laugh and continues to fly there. The UK protests to the US. The US sends some statement from a State Department lawyer saying the terms of the US lease say they can fly. Paperwork goes back and forth until Starmer's successor confirms that the islands are the UKs and the US lease is valid.

US levies a 10% tariff on British goods. 15 minutes later, Karmer and Trump have a "productive phonecall" and Karmer does whatever Trump tells him to.

Genuinely not sure it would work. Starmer is a fanatic, he treats the Rule of Law (as he sees it) like a fundamentalist treats Jesus. I suspect he would just see it as a test of decency and dig in. Might get him thrown out of office though.

Might get him thrown out of office though.

It's an interesting possibility. "Standing up to Trump" would probably be pretty popular to the UK electorate, but things that that cause damage to the economy tend not to be. I wonder how that would play out.

More comments

A consequence of just copying over the original post and not any follow-ups.

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