I notice that Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, from 1453 to the Present is on sale. Am I a sucker for cheap Kindle books with high page counts? Yes. But I stopped eating out over the past year, so what’s a few dollars here and there?
Chris Wickham’s Medieval Europe is also on sale. If you can afford Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800, get that. But this is a decent book.
Here is the book club event page. I’ll update the links to the posts and the date periodically.
Some people ask me how I see book deals. I check Kindle Daily Deals. But not all price drops show up there. For example, Shape of Ancient Thought regularly is discounted. But, I do check my Amazon referrals and I often see readers of this weblog buying books that are surprisingly cheap and interesting. Unfortunately, that’s not a “secret” that others can make recourse too.
There are now estimates of Bangladesh’s nominal GDP per capita being higher than India. This masks high regional variation in India, but, it also shows how far Bangladesh has come. I’m mildly skeptical that Bangladesh can move up the value chain, but you take what you can get.
A Spectral Theory for Wright’s Inbreeding Coefficients and Related Quantities.
Life in Manchuria is so normal:
Is Warren Buffett the Wallet Behind Black Lives Matter?
Establishment of a new sex-determining allele driven by sexually antagonistic selection.
Michael Fortner and the Black Silent Majority. Interview on the Brown Pundits podcast. This is a really important book and Fortner is an important voice.
The Return of Indoor Dining in New York City Doesn’t Mean Business as Usual.
Has Covid become less dangerous?
A General Birth-Death-Sampling Model for Epidemiology and Macroevolution.
I don’t know much about K-Pop. Probably because I’m old now. But is this the sort of cultural synthesis we can expect from the 21st century?
I stopped eating out over the past year
Not even carryout?
Yes, the Plutocracy is financing Cultural Marxism, and they doing so for decades – right now the push “Black Lives Matter”:
“Behind the street level activism and emotional outpouring is a calculated machinery built by establishment money and power that has seized on racial politics, in which some of the biggest capitalists in the world are financially backing a group of self-described “trained Marxists”—a label that Cullors enthusiastically applies to herself and the group’s other co-founders.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/warren-buffett-black-lives-matter
Thanks for the article, great read and so important. People need to realise that its not about “conspiracies”, its happening in the open, they just do it, like they will reboot the monetary system, since they have to and the (predominantely white) middle and middle-upper class will suffer. The investment fraud, the financial bubble and the ideological distraction & control are no independent factors, the decisive element is the Oligarchy and Financial Circles in New York & London.
If you read something about “philanthropy” from members of the Plutocracy, more often than not, its agenda driven social engineering. Most of the time at first, the rest of the time at the second, more rigorous look. And some names just pop up over and over again, not counting the innumberable foundations, trusts, NGO’s and strawmen which connection to the very same people might be less obvious.
They pay the Cultural Marxists and back them up with their communication channels, in return they cooperate for the societal transformation they prefer and don’t question or touch the Oligarchy or the Plutocracy’s privileges – which are by far more important and greater than any “white privileges” which might be – if there were ever any.
I listened to Michael Fortner and the Black Silent Majority podcast and I agree with a lot he said, connecting it with I wrote above, its what he calls “elite” being not interested in changing anything to the better for either the black or white folks, to stay in his diction, because they just abuse the “race card” for the interests of the Oligarchy. They listen, its not like they don’t see whats taking place, they just don’t care and prefer the cheap way which helps their very own plans instead of changing the status of communities and individuals on the ground to the better.
Do you all (and Razib in particular) let your kids use playgrounds and parks?
I’ve been a nut on the cautious side for most of COVID. Almost all groceries delivered. Look like I work for Road Warrior’s Humongous when I’ve gone in. Until a month ago our only restaurant food was curbside pizza that sat in a 200 degree oven for an hour (box and all) before we ate.
Distancing is really taking a toll on the almost 3 year old.
We have no yard. I’ve been toting balls, scooters, a rope-swing around to parks and fields. Doesn’t work that well. Boring to them quick (have an older one too.)
They’ve just reopened playgrounds. I let her use them as long as the other kids have masks. But a lot of them don’t. A lot. So depending on the time of day, we spend longer shuttling between potential playgrounds than getting to use any.
And the kid is absorbing this. So effing spirited. But scared of people now. Sometimes won’t take the mask off inside the car or apartment.
Just not sure how to handle the playgrounds. Godsend when she gets to use them. Worse than nothing when we go then can’t.
Do you let your kids play in the open air near others? How much to you sweat masks?
I did and always would, because in the open and if trying to keep the basic distance, and for the very small the risk is minimal anyway. For many kids drastic measures are more harmful in a sure way than the possible minimal risk of infection, especially in the open, especially if caring for some basics and avoiding “sick looking” individuals.
We are looking for our kids health and hygiene and did so long before Covid-19, more than the average, and while I take it serious, there is no reason to freak out and no reasonable options for the well-being and a normal way of life. This crisis might last for years to come, one way or another, and many things in the economic and political field will get far worse, soon. I wouldn’t do psychological or physical harm to my kids for this issue, we all have to live with some risk, all the time, unfortunately. Its not the plague, after all and life has to go on.
Do you all (and Razib in particular) let your kids use playgrounds and parks?
we started to this summer. it doesn’t look like surface contact is a major issue. basically i’ve pivoted to avoiding indoor super-spreading events and repeated interactions.
i’m not super worried about masks outdoors. it’s not 100%, but there’s only so much you can sustain. i’ll mask up if i have to get close to someone, but otherwise we breath free.
yes, grocery deliveries since feb and we don’t eat in.
twinkie, we get delivery every now and then. but since covid19 it’s probably been about 6 times total.
It’s relaxing to see that family life in a civilized state *. The Chinese and East Asia in general can be a secondary backup if the West falls. It’s too bad that it’s come to this
It’s notable that the Chinese Communists theoretically love their country, while our homegrown hate ours.
* in spite of whatever dark secrets that state may have in their closet.
Seeing Indians in China I can’t help but be reminded of the Sogdian ancient letters:
https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/sogdlet.html
BEGIN
——
And, sirs, it is three years since a Sogdian came from “inside”[i.e. from China]
————
And, sirs, the last emperor, so they say, fled from Luoyang because of the famine, and fire was set to his palace and to the city, and the palace was burnt and the city [destroyed]. Luoyang (is) no more, Ye (is) no more! Moreover, the . . . Huns(?), and they . . . Changan, so that they hold(?) it(?) . . . as far as N’yn’ych and as far as Ye, these (same) Huns [who] yesterday were the emperor’s (subjects)!
And, sirs, we do not know wh[ether] the remaining Chinese were able to expel the Huns [from] Changan, from China, or (whether) they took the country beyond
————
And, sirs, if I were to write to you everything (about) how China has fared, (it would be) beyond(?) grief: there is no profit for you (to gain) therefrom. And, sirs, it is eight years since I sent Saghrak and Farn-aghat “inside” and it is three years since I received a reply from there. They were well . . ., (but) now, since the last evil occurred, I do [not] receive a reply from there (about) how they have fared. Moreover, four years ago I sent another man named Artikhu-vandak. When the caravan departed from Guzang, Wakhush[akk] the . . . was there, and when they reached Luoyang, bo[th the . . .] and the Indians and the Sogdians there had all died of starvation.
—–
END
What’s a bit funny at a remote context from this tragedy is that the chief of the initial Hunnic uprising was campaigning to restore the Han dynasty!
@Difference Maker: “It’s notable that the Chinese Communists theoretically love their country, while our homegrown hate ours.”
Stalinism is one thing, post-Stalinist Communism yet another and the Chinese autocratic version something completely different. The Marxists in the USA are practically all “Cultural Marxists” by now, based on the Frankfurt School’s teachings, which is a particularly nasty version which doesn’t care as much for economics and social well-being, or any sort of functionality. This ideology’s main goal is the destruction of Europeans and the occidental culture, its everything about “power relations”, “lack of equality” and supposed “exploitation” they see everywhere and use as an excuse for the destruction, social enginnering, censorship and the developing control & surveillance state.
Its not by chance that the Eastern European countries under “Communist rule” had more traditional gender role models overall, a more conservative family life and culture, national pride and self-esteem, a better birth rate and generally more European ways of living despite the horrible mismanagement, material shortages, Marxist suppression and indoctrination from above. And I’m talking about the West in the 1980’s, not what’s up now, which is much worse.
I think this tells you a lot about how destructive the combination of Cultural Marxism and Oligarchic Capitalism in the West was and still is, now more than ever, if actual, true European Marxists, being the better version in comparison, in all too many ways.
The reason is that every protection from Cultural Marxist propaganda, which runs in the West through all communication channels and the whole educational system, on the job place and at work, being helpful in keeping a more sane standard. Therefore especially for family values and relations, it almost doesn’t matter which kind of filter you use, because almost everything is better than being fully exposed to that nonsense.
If this unholy alliance of the Oligarchy and Cultural Marxism goes on for yet another 30 years, what will be left by then?
Make sure to also check out the monthly deals; there are tags on the sidebar that let you filter by category. I can’t remember if I discovered them on this blog or not, but finding the Kindle book deals has been a real joy. A surprising amount of serious, recently-published non-fiction is on sale there for $5 or less.
To me, this is a small datapoint in favor of Tyler Cowen’s argument in Big Business that the major corporations in the modern US have had, on the whole, beneficent effects. Amazon’s rise has made acquiring, reading and storing books much easier and cheaper. That’s good, if you actually enjoy reading books and learning from them.
My kids are teenagers. Back in April and May, we limited them to outside contact with their friends. We got a projector to allow the kids to watch movies while sitting in our driveway.
Now we let them live as normal a life as legally possible including being indoors with their friends and competing in outdoor sports. They have lost too many once in a life time opportunities and I do not see the current situation ending for another year.
They are young and healthy, so I think the risk is low.
Appreciate the replies about Covid parenting. I think I’ll follow y’all’s lead and let them run relatively wild outside.
Few links I found interesting enough:
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-forearm-artery-reveals-humans-evolving.html – claims of a recent genetic selected evolutionary change in Australian population
https://unherd.com/2020/10/its-time-china-got-over-the-opium-war/ – article itself didn’t tell me much new, but did make me think about a kind of theme I think I’ve seen before on GNXP about mass media treatment of history receiving a bit of a new “Eurocentrism”, this time from the Western left and from governments outside that with a bit of a post-colonialist flavour.
If your Western college educated largely buying into Star Wars like narratives of “Before the Empire came, people lived in peace and harmony” (rather simple, moralised narrative sharply at odds with self perception of greater sophistication), and post-colonial authoritarians pushing narratives of “We keep you safe from bullying (so despite everything, you need us)”, then where’s space for this sort of history? Increasingly in “esoteric secrets” of the academy, and in deliberately contrarian, counter mainstream media online magazines?
https://unherd.com/2020/10/why-young-asians-are-now-woke/ – another sort of example of this take, on why young Asian Americans “convert” to Wokeness; all as an assimilation strategy to white Upper Class norms, apparently, which the cunning blighters have devised as their latest scheme to block Asian American upward mobility.
Seems kind of meta-Woke; denouncing Wokeness for the most Woke of reasons – that it’s all a scam invented by the unworthy and privileged white Upper Class to protect their status and defend themselves from those who justly deserve power. Fairly implausible account of the actual “origins” of Woke culture (or even why young Asian folk in English speaking countries have been pretty significant in leading the way all the way through its evolution, not mere followers!) but… You have to appreciate the sheer chutzpah and irony of the argument. Perhaps a bit of general human “Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan”, Woke being shifted onto those groups that it’s most socially acceptable to deride, rather than all of its true authors – perhaps in a couple of years people will somehow believe a social fiction that it was all the product of wealthy straight white male protestant Christians (the group it seems most socially acceptable to deride right now, among the chattering classes).
(I won’t post many of these unherd links that anyone can find easily, and which aren’t that information dense, in future 😉 . Moment of self indulgence.).
My question remains why the “oligarchy” or the “cathedral” or whatever you want to call it has been so interested in promoting cultural Marxism? There is clearly a disconnect between the values they practice and the “luxury beliefs” that they are pushing. What is the end game they have in mind? I get why the slightly above-average IQ academe and college educated kids parrot the talking points and don’t know any better but to buy in but what about the power players who are in no way connected to this world. There seems to be a lot of discourse about what they are doing and how, but not much discussion as to the why, the utility they see in it all. Are there historical examples we can draw from?
we started to this summer. it doesn’t look like surface contact is a major issue. basically i’ve pivoted to avoiding indoor super-spreading events and repeated interactions.
i’m not super worried about masks outdoors. it’s not 100%, but there’s only so much you can sustain. i’ll mask up if i have to get close to someone, but otherwise we breath free.
This!
I think takeout food is pretty safe too. Saliva and stomach acid are very good at killing a virus like this. The main danger seems to be breathing in from a super spreader in an enclosed space or in close proximity.
On the other hand, it’s possible my wife and I were already infected last year and have some immunity. My locality had a mysterious respiratory illness that killed several elderly people in a nursing home last year. About that time, my wife (who runs a hospital) came down with a flu. I got it from her and suffered relatively badly (my wife and I had not contracted a flu in years). I tested negative for flu at the time, but chalked it up to the test having a high false negative rate.
For reasons I won’t discuss online, she and I have been discouraged from getting a Covid test, so I don’t know for sure. Nonetheless, we currently take proper precautions. All our children’s extracurriculars are being done via Zoom (we homeschool, so that didn’t change). We avoid crowded areas or enclosed spaces with others (the only exception being the grocery store where we wear N95 masks). All my meetings are likewise on Zoom.
why young Asian Americans “convert” to Wokeness; all as an assimilation strategy to white Upper Class norms
Why is this surprising? Immigrants and their children want to be accepted by the host society and doubly so if they want to succeed and move up the class ladder. Most institutions, esp. elite ones, in the country are now in the grips of the Dictatorship of the Woketariat.
If you were a smart, striving Asian immigrant’s child who wants to move beyond dad’s corner grocery store to Yale and then the upscale white-shoe job and neighborhood, would you follow the people who can open the door to those or would you listen to (white) rightists, aka the losers in the Kulturkampf, who might not even want you here in the first place?
This is exactly why – as a rightist – I am an immigration restrictionist. Whatever the immigrants might actually believe in their heart of hearts, they will fall in line with the leadership in charge of the major institutions. From a rightist perspective, mass immigration is simply letting in lots of allies and cannon-fodder for our opponents in the Social War we are having.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t see the connection between the Woke “successor ideology” and the Frankfort School. It seems that French post-structuralism is more of an influence. A commenter above wrote “The Marxists in the USA are practically all “Cultural Marxists” by now, based on the Frankfurt School’s teachings, which is a particularly nasty version which doesn’t care as much for economics and social well-being, or any sort of functionality.” Yet Adorno wrote in Minima Moralia that “There is tenderness only in the coarsest demand: that no-one shall go hungry anymore”. Doesn’t sound like a lack of care for social well-being to me. I don’t see any kind of straight line between works like Dialectic of Enlightenment or Minima Moralia and today’s nonsense.
@twinkie, I think it may be a reason, just not the only reason, I just don’t really buy the author’s spin on why Woke culture exists. Young Asian Ams aren’t just good young bourgeois strivers who’ve been corrupted by a wholly exogenous cultural norm in order to harness success (which would be a massive moral failing of its own anyway). It seems to me like they as much as everyone else *invented* this stuff through the ’00s – ’10s, in their case somewhat enhanced as a battering ram to enter the academy, jobs, etc. It seems an ironic attempt to me to distance from that, and reduce to passive participants. “Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan”. Authors take not totally implausible just too reductive, monocausal, with a certain spin, motivated by trying to present ingroup in best possible light (least responsible).
Like, let’s go back to this piece by Cathy Young on Quillette – https://quillette.com/2018/08/18/the-forgotten-story-of-how-punching-up-harmed-the-science-fiction-fantasy-world/
In this, “Requires Hate”, Sarah Jeong clearly not adopting Woke ideas to conform to social norms and gain opportunity for normal bourgeois aspirations. Did so because it gave them power to bully and intimidate and abuse social inferiors, superiors, rivals without punishment. Same as for large number of Woke, from all ethnic backgrounds. No difference, no better, no worse. (only some have fewer intersectional cards to play, which means some ppl invent fake identities and backgrounds to play).
Ppl will want to blame the socially acceptable scapegoat, the rich man, for all this*, that they were forced to by a rigged game of social status… but the true reason is more, like the quote, “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really — I was alive.” . They like it, they are “good” at it, it makes them feel alive.
*”The Corporations and Universities inflicted the devilish ideas of those devious Cultural Marxists on me, Your Honour! I had to play their game to honour the dying wish of my sick mother, and become a university professor/top lawyer? What was I to do?”
Fairly ignorant about India, I am curious to know whether this (Why are North and South India so different on gender?) is (i) sensible/plausible and not widely recognized; (ii) all but conventional wisdom; or (iii) mistaken (and a brief explanation of why).
The conclusion is that cultural differences across regions of India with respect to gender correlate strongly with characteristics of pre-colonial history: the staple crop (wheat vs. rice) & its associated labor needs: the degree of ancient (steppe) pastoralist ancestry: the degree of Islamic influence & conquest (also a pastoralist culture). Several characteristics associated with British rule are quickly discarded.
A take on woke-speak in Tablet (not one of my usual sources) that I think is similar to Matt’s & Obs’ views above: whatever it once may have been, woke-speak has been for sometime a way for the economically (and socially) privileged elite to signal who they are and to divide and conquer those less privileged. It appeals to me, both more and more an old-fart and a (recently retired) economist with lefty pretensions whose views are sympathetic[1] to those of Adolph Reed — see here, here (again not one of my usual sources but it scores high in google) & here — and William Julius Wilson.
[1] Since I am an economist, it is perhaps not surprising that I find myself sympathetic to explanations which stress the relative importance of economic factors.
Quote Investigator: The earliest published evidence located by QI appeared in editor Terry Carr’s introduction to the anthology “Universe 3”. The introduction was dated June 9, 1972, and the book was released in 1973:
“Years ago a friend of mine, Pete Graham, tersely answered the question ‘When was the golden age of science fiction?’ by saying, ‘Twelve.’ He didn’t have to explain further; we knew what he meant.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/10/14/golden-age/
What do you think of this fellow
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/guillotines-motherfcker-colorado-democratic-committee-member-caught-hidden-camera
In general, greater masculinization results in increased assertiveness for themselves, in economic and other matters. Put that way it’s almost obvious. *
I’m sure he has some elaborated moral framework that makes sense to him, but overall this fellow has taken the “revolutionary” avenue that has been left open to him. This is why I call them slaves of their corporate masters.
Nevertheless, (relative) youth has its own quality. Biden would indeed be a puppet as we all know, and though Bernie is a flameout, it is not certain that the next generation would remain under the thumb of the powers that be. Brave New World is not that far advanced yet.
When enough people think or want something, there are consequences.
It may be that we will descend into civil wars of relatively masculine men vs masculine men, hearkening back to historical example. The pithy hard men-good times-soft men-bad times cycle in progress. Any society that becomes too effeminate will simply be taken over.
* Depending perhaps on perceived social standing, the particular container and label of the politics will vary accordingly. Indeed, the authors of the study on masculinization and political orientation had described this phenomenon. (If you could not glean that from the study then it’s over for you)
That said, I didn’t want to be (unnecessarily) disrespectful but from his statements alone one could suspect the lack of sufficiently cold dark-triadness
And indeed, from the first few seconds of a video he sounds like a typically childish up talker
@Gob:
“My question remains why the “oligarchy” or the “cathedral” or whatever you want to call it has been so interested in promoting cultural Marxism? There is clearly a disconnect between the values they practice and the “luxury beliefs” that they are pushing. What is the end game they have in mind? I get why the slightly above-average IQ academe and college educated kids parrot the talking points and don’t know any better but to buy in but what about the power players who are in no way connected to this world. There seems to be a lot of discourse about what they are doing and how, but not much discussion as to the why, the utility they see in it all. Are there historical examples we can draw from?”
The parallel is very simple, its about distraction and excuses, as well as common interests, like going together a part of the way together, even if you know that one day, you might part from each other in hate.
I want to use general examples of what its about: If the Oligarchy would have told the American public that women should work more and consume more, get less children, don’t listen to their husbands any more, beginning to look at their male partners as competitors and opponents, because it makes individuals easier to control, revolutionary or nationalist politics less likely, what would the people have said?
Instead they just used the Cultural Marxist mantra of the “big patriarchal suppression”, these too wanted to deconstruct the occidental and any more “natural” or conservative structures, to make individuals ready for “their revolution”.
If the Oligarchy would just have said what they really wanted, bluntly, they would have been attacked from all sides at the time, now they can communicate the same in their corporations, and get a nice smiley from the PC mob, because “they are on the same side”.
Isn’t that much nicer for that kind of goal of the social engineering?
Or the Oligarchy could have said they want a totalitarian surveillance & control state, in which nobody is allowed to “talk aggressive” or “hostile” any more, especially if this “hate speech” being directed against their rule. They could have said that they want the police to go down in every house, take down any “offender”, blame him in public, take away his weapons, his rights, make him a practical slave without wife, family, children, tradition, community, freedom of speech and expression, without means to defend or organise himself, in the face of corporate and money power, which will control everything in the “new big money society”, even worse after the monetary reboot, with just digital, centrally organised money and no alternative.
They could have said so.
But instead, they preferred to send out minorities and “suppressed people”, whining about how bad everything is, and that society has to change, people have to be controlled about what they say, do, how they live. That everything must be “politically correct” and the rest being banned.
Still bad, but much better than “we determine what’s right and what’s wrong, resistance to our plans and rule will be banned and punished.”
Isn’t it nicer? And they even got at least one half of the population on their side, as the “big money” plays “Robin Hood” for “the intersectionally discriminated” while taking away all alternatives and freedoms from anybody not in their club. Why shouldn’t they?
Cultural Marxists are also very weak, they have no militaristic approach at all, no military, manly tradition. They can just win when being protected from above, by the state & law, the Plutocratic media control and without having to fight on their own. Its like it was in Syria: If it gets bloody, others would take over. The “Liberal intersectional feminists” are no true revolutionaries, they are bourgeois parasites, or at best symbionts, of the Plutocracy, that’s what they are.
That means they are cheap allies. As soon as the Oligarchy takes away its protection, the whole thing would crumble. And if the Oligarchy itself would be attacked and replaced by something from the Cultural Marxist horizon, in the end it would be something different, more social revolutionary or more ethnocentric. In any case not the Liberal and individualist intersectional theory crap, because that doesn’t work out, it never will. It will always on life support.
Any other movement they could have used for their goals of societal transition and engineering would have been more dangerous. Many Socialist and Fascist-like experiments of that kind showed it. In the end some politicians or the military might take over, and their billions and grip on the money could be just taken away.
The next thing is, its not even full scale Cultural Marxism, but its an castrated, mutilated and distorted version of it.
@Jay: “Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t see the connection between the Woke “successor ideology” and the Frankfort School. It seems that French post-structuralism is more of an influence. A commenter above wrote “The Marxists in the USA are practically all “Cultural Marxists” by now, based on the Frankfurt School’s teachings, which is a particularly nasty version which doesn’t care as much for economics and social well-being, or any sort of functionality.” Yet Adorno wrote in Minima Moralia that “There is tenderness only in the coarsest demand: that no-one shall go hungry anymore”. Doesn’t sound like a lack of care for social well-being to me. I don’t see any kind of straight line between works like Dialectic of Enlightenment or Minima Moralia and today’s nonsense.”
That’s also a question of chronology. The French Marxists were for the most part more Liberal, but still largely “orthodox” Marxists until the 1950’s and some even beyond. The big “awakening” came with the anti-Stalinist, anti-totalitarian turn and especially Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reports. When they looked around and searched for new ways for the Left, they all ended up with the Frankfurt Schools approach.
People like Derrida mostly added a lot of philosophical blabla and an even stronger emphasis on culture and history, to the same narrative, the same principles the Frankfurt guys already developed. There were direct connections between those and they can’t be separated.
So if you take any author and “school” after the 1950’s which follows the same path as the Frankfurt School, they are “Cultural Marxists”, whether they added something or left something out. Its the general approach on social and societal questions.
The Frankfurt School had economic concerns, sure they had. I mean what would be any kind of Marxists without. But the real question is the priority and approach they had. And the economic rearrangement was for them, in comparison to classical, orthodox Marxists, absolutely secondary. Much more important for them was the deconstruction of the Western system, the occidental culture, of all social and cultural fundaments of the European people.
If you read and listen to these ideologists, and they were among the first, they made the big step in this direction, they didn’t do it for the love of women, minorities of all kinds or other races, no, that wasn’t their motivation.
Their main motivation was that the conservative white working and middle classes have rejected their ideas and themselves! So they thought about how they could “turn” their societies, even the whole world into their revolutionary paradise, in which they would be the “philosopher kings”, and their conclusion was, by using all other groups against the “male white block”, which they couldn’t break before.
That’s the whole story, that’s how it came up. Everything else is just the drivel around this. And whether other people, their followers and successors took “the moral” more seriously or had real compassion for other people, is up to everybody’s best judgement. But I know very well where these guys came from and how they thought. It drips through every third sentence they wrote or said.
If people come up with “poststructuralism” and “postcolonial theories” or whatever they may come up with, if you break it down to its essence, its always the same mantra from these Frankfurt guys: Break the white middle class block, rearrange the whole society and world into the new, colourful and matriarchal paradise.
That’s also the stupidity of the current New Left, they are so naive, because they don’t even think about “what’s then”. Like if you have a societal plan in your head, if you have rational premises and conclusions, on which base you want to create a new society – let’s talk about it. But in fact, beyond that “deconstruct it” narrative, there is not much more there, its that shallow, it really is. They have “big evils” they fight, but their alternative is some kind of super-naive dream: “If these evils are no more, society and the world will be equal, peaceful, ecological and still prosperous.”
Yeah sure, in your head!
That’s the great thing for the Oligarchy – about which I wrote above, they can use them and if they are lucky and smart, after they have used them to deconstruct what they don’t like and allow the policy of control they like, they can just throw these dreamers away and work on with the opportunists they bought long time ago. At least that’s the plan, I guess.
@Difference Maker: “What do you think of this fellow”
Walter Sobchak (and not the one that posts here). Reincarnated as a Millennial Socialist. I mean, he even said “This is the line in the sand”! “I’m talking Versailles shit, Dude! Guillotines! Shut the fuck up Donny”.
Some kind of “Oh, I know some serious people” type blowhard like that seems just a gift for whoever his political opponents are IMO. But probably not taken seriously enough even for that to work.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31421-4 – 47kya Homotherium ancient dna.
Not a topic I know/knew anything about, but seems kind of weird that you have all these sister lineages of big cats and the one ones that survive all come from the same specific subclade as today’s small cats, though geographically widely dispersed.
Interesting finding: “(T)he fossil record for Homotherium is considerably more fragmentary than those of other contemporary large cats, including Smilodon and Panthera (especially lions), tentatively suggesting that Homotherium occurred at lower population densities”. Reasoning then poss that low thresholds for this species to go extinct?
But: “However, it is striking that our Homotherium latidens genome exhibits medium to high levels of genetic diversity, higher than that inferred for the other big cat species. This inference held true regardless of whether autosome-wide (Figure 3) or exome-wide heterozygosity (Figure S3) was compared. “
They note: Although it cannot be known for certain, some of the exact adaptations/specializations that led to Homotherium’s success could also have led to its downfall. Toward the end of the Late Pleistocene, a decrease in large prey availability may have caused more direct competition with other cat species that were likely more effective at capturing the remaining smaller prey species.
Or maybe more competition with humans. Panthera survives because not competing for same large prey niche?
A notorious Canadian child abduction and murder from the 1980s has been solved through genetic genealogy: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/christine-jessop-news-conference-1.5763673
The details of the genealogical work aren’t in the article, and the suspect has been dead for several years.
This case is particularly famous in Canada because it led to a wrongful conviction (later overturned based on a DNA mismatch): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Paul_Morin
Razib,
After watching that video on the Indian bride in China you linked above, I can’t resist this question:
How kosher/not kosher are East Asians in terms of the “marriage material totem pole” for Indians in general (i.e. better/same/worse than whites, blacks, Muslims, etc.)? Is it more OK for Indian men to marry East Asian women than it is for Indian women to marry East Asian men?
Never thought I would ever ask this kind of question, but then I never thought I would see that kind of marriage existing in reality….
How kosher/not kosher are East Asians in terms of the “marriage material totem pole” for Indians in general (i.e. better/same/worse than whites, blacks, Muslims, etc.)? Is it more OK for Indian men to marry East Asian women than it is for Indian women to marry East Asian men?
i assume higher than blacks and definitely muslims, but probably not as high as whites? honestly it’s not something ppl think of much.
singapore and Malaysia has a fair number of “chindians” who are products of marriages btwn these groups, and it’s mostly indian men and and Chinese women. but here are exceptions. doesn’t seem like ppl are angry at ruchi for marrying a Chinese guy.
(actually I’ve known several indian guy+e asian women couples in bay area etc…east asian guy with brown woman is again rarer, but happens)
Razib,
Do you plan on eventually rolling over your Patreon podcasts to the free Brown Pundits library (like how I believe you run the normal BP podcasts, where you release them to patrons first and then eventually make them public), or will those always be exlcusive to strictly Patreon subscribers?
I really enjoy your BP podcasts (Omar is a great host too) so I might have to start shelling out some cash money if you’re going to start offering exclusive content separate from the normal show.
The most interesting thing in these tweet (even more than the White Somalis and Djiboutians) is that Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Circassians and Georgians are non-Caucasian Whites
https://twitter.com/JeremyMcLellan/status/1317051156640763904
i’ll ungate the podcasts at some point. on a new thing.
i’ll be posting the interview with eric cline tonight. for patrons 🙂 i doubt the new podcast will be out before the election
Razib, do you know whatever happened to John Emerson? It’s been years since I’ve seen him post.
he was taking care of his ailing mom last i heard. he still shows up liking/commenting on facebook posts (pics of my kids) about once a year. so he’s around. but ‘online’ really stressed him out i think, and i can’t imagine that social media world is easier. i just checked and he’s still leaving comments on facebook, but less heated/political than a few years ago
eric cline 1177 interview posted on the patreon
I sooo need to hear that one. I’m a bit of a Cline fan.
Razib,
From Googling around, it appears you haven’t read/reviewed “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations” by David R. Montgomery or “Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States” by James C. Scott.
It seems like with your background in both science and ancient history, you would be the ideal reviewer for these.
If I’m right, what would it take for you to read/review them or put them on a GNXP Book Club list?
If I’m wrong, where are your reviews posted?
Thanks,
Chris
Razib hasn’t posted yet, but I highly recommend his piece in Quillete.
https://quillette.com/2020/10/17/not-all-identities-are-created-equal/
Apropos Not All Identities Are Created Equal, a small point.
In the Hebrew Bible, the Lord God has given the land of Canaan to the children of Israel. As a consequence, the Hebrews under Joshua and his successors enter into a program of conquest and genocide…
Over 1,000 years later, the Jewish revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucid Greeks was also characterized by violence.
The last sentence excerpted treats the Hebrew Bible as history rather than as legend. We would not do the same with Homer nor the epic of Gilgamesh nor … well you get my point. While this is perepective conventional and long has been in our society, that does not make it right.
William Dever (also here) has written extensively for the lay reader about what can be inferred from archaeology of ancient Canaanite sites, especially the lack of evidence for anything like the Joshuaite program of conquest and genocide. (Dever also has a number of interesting lectures that can be found by googling him and clicking on Videos at the top).
Just to be clear, most of the essay is interesting and sensible. This bit is lazy (or perhaps a rhetorical device to avoid alienating readers who might otherwise miss the main point of the essay).
MP, you make a good point…and lean toward the position that the genocides are myth. but, LIKE gilgamesh and homer the myths actually reflect mores of the time. e.g., human sacrifice and extermination were pretty common in the late bronze age. the assyrians record their war crimes proudly.
this is similar to the arguments about muslim genocide of hindus. it mostly didn’t happen because premodern societies didn’t have capacity and muslim raiders really wanted to steal and tax. BUT, the muslim boasts of killing kufars reflects some incidents and mores
“A strong sense of racial purpose and solidarity amongst whites imbued the cultural elites with the sense of a zero-sum world of racial competition. It was either to eliminate the non-white peoples, or be swamped by what racial thinker Lothrop Stoddard termed “the rising tide of color.””
This strikes me as pretty reductive and misses the critique of colonial atrocities which was already quite prominent in the early 20th century (notably regarding the Congo Free state, but socialist and Catholic delegates also voiced strong criticism of the atrocities against the Herero in the German Reichstag). And pan-white solidarity proved to be just as much a chimera as working class solidarity during WW1, with the British and French employing millions of subcontinental and African troops (including on the European theatre) and the Germans trying to incite Islamic jihad against their enemies.
yeah, it was reductive. did you want me to write a lot about racialism in 1900 so that i’m more nuanced?
in any case, it’s like ‘clash of civilizations.’ amalfi or the french would opportunistically ally with muslims. this doesn’t mean that the muslim-xtian divide wasn’t relevant over the long-term.
the russian defeat by the japanese and the nature of the peace and bickering among white european powers during and after are hard to understand without remembering that an asian power defeating a white power was a psychic shock at the time. this was the general framework everyone operated under. even if there were liberals and conservatives.
this was not the framework in 1750. so something changed. and eventually unchanged.
The last sentence excerpted treats the Hebrew Bible as history rather than as legend.
I don’t understand this. Were there no Maccabees and no revolt?
@Offen: I don’t understand this. Were there no Maccabees and no revolt?
I was pointing to the opening phrase Over 1,000 years later.
The Maccabean revolt, in the 2nd C BCE, seems pretty well documented by other sources. But everything up to and including Solomon (allegedly most of a millenium earlier), as well as much thereafter through the Babylonian captivity, is the stuff of myth so far as anyone can tell. And even with the Babylonian captivity, there is dispute about both its extent and duration; according to the Book of Ezra the Hebrews returned c. 540 BCE and the Temple was rebuilt c. 520 BCE. However evidence from coins and Persian documents suggests that it was more likely in the middle of the 5th century BCE.*
Note also that the tale of the Macabees is not part of the Hebrew scriptures.
*Edelman (2014) The Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem
“did you want me to write a lot about racialism in 1900 so that i’m more nuanced?”
I’m not the target audience of your piece, since I’m not an American liberal disturbed by the excesses of wokeism, but more like the white nationalist bogeymen you allude to as the real threat. But yeah, nuance can’t hurt, e.g. regarding the quote by H.G. Wells which many readers will no doubt interpret as a call to genocide. When one looks it up one finds that it was actually written in the context of Well’s calls for a “world state” and is preceded by the following statement: “Whatever men may come into its efficient citizenship it will let come – white, black, red or brown; the efficiency will be the test. And the Jew also it will treat as any other man”. That’s rather far from Nordicist racialism (even if the hope that the “inefficient masses” will die out sounds quite Social Darwinist) or any view which treats all members of entire races as unredeemable. But I doubt most Quillette readers will bother looking up the quote, so they’ll conclude there was a straight line from the likes of Wells to Auschwitz.
@marcel proust
I don’t find the ‘economic’ explanation of wokeness very convincing (perhaps just a reflection of my pro-capitalism bias). ‘Woke capital’ is a popular target because it’s something everyone can hate, lefties and righties alike, but corporations are clearly followers, not leaders, and the idea of wokeness as a means of ‘dividing and conquering’ seems inconsistent with the on-the-ground politics of wokeness: wokeness and anticapitalism are strongly correlated. The supposed tension between wokeness and socialism, for example, is greatly overstated by many writers (Matt Taibbi for example) for the sake of a right-leaning audience that want to believe that ‘wokeism’ is a cynical bourgeois ideology. If anything, I think wokeness serves as a Trojan horse for left-wing economic politics. Ibram Kendi has actually helped mainstream anti-capitalism by racializing it. It’s harder for well-to-do white progressives to defend capitalism when its victims are black people, rather than just uneducated poor white people (many of whom are their main political opponents).