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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32961 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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This seems completely opposed to Yarvin's pleas for "formalism" where he says we should stop trying to figure out which people ought to be in charge of what land ("It is very hard to come up with a rule that explains why the Palestinians should get Haifa back, and doesn’t explain why the Welsh should get London back"), simply accept current borders as correct and stop fighting over them: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted/

I mean, he did write that back in 2007, so maybe he's changed his mind in the subsequent 15+ years.

Interesting, I didn't know about that. I admit that trying to analyze Yarvin is very difficult since he likes saying things unclearly.

Isn't Yarvin basically calling for history to end? But this has different consequences based on when it happens. In 1988 he would've called for East and West Germany to remain divided, the USSR to remain whole. In 2013 he would've said for Crimea to stay Ukrainian. Suppose in 2030 the war is over and the Russians control Kherson or Kharkov. He'd be saying they should remain with Russia.

I hold to a different position than Yarvin. I think Palestinians have a better claim to Haifa because they controlled it more recently than the Welsh controlled London. If the Russians invaded and conquered Belize somehow, they wouldn't have a claim on it for a very long time if ever.

The 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British authorities, recorded Haifa as having a population of 9,377 Muslims, 8,863 Christians, 6,230 Jews, and 164 others. By the time of the 1931 census of Palestine, this had increased to 20,324 Muslims, 13,824 Christians, 15,923 Jews, and 332 others.

By 1945 the population was 33% Muslim, 20% Christian and 47% Jewish.[63][64] In 1947, about 70,910 Arabs (41,000 Muslims and 29,910 Christians) and 74,230 Jews were living there.

Yarvin has always been a campus radical at his core.

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