Christopher Hitchens writes in Slate:
Reviewing the sudden spasm of violence between the Uzbek minority and the Kyrgyz majority in Kyrgyzstan recently, many commentators were at a loss to explain why the two peoples should so abruptly have turned upon one another. Explanations range from official pandering to Kyrgyz nationalism, to sheer police and army brutality, to provocations from Taliban-style militias hoping to create another Afghanistan, but none go very far in analyzing why intercommunal relations became so vicious so fast. As if to make the question still more opaque, several reports stressed the essential similarity—ethnic, linguistic, cultural—between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek populations.
But that in itself could well be the explanation. In numerous cases of apparently ethno-nationalist conflict, the deepest hatreds are manifested between people who—to most outward appearances—exhibit very few significant distinctions. It is one of the great contradictions of civilization and one of the great sources of its discontents, and Sigmund Freud even found a term for it: "the narcissism of the small difference." As he wrote, "It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of hostility between them."
Not necessarily. In general, people who are vastly different don't live near each other so they don't have much to fight over. And, if they do, they learn not to compete all that much for the same resources. For example, Pygmies are better adapted to life in the forest than Bantu, so they tend to stick to forests the Bantu find unprofitable. When they emerge into deforested agricultural land, they subordinate themselves to Bantu farmers as laborers.
When highly different people do compete, however, the competition can be so nasty that pretty soon they aren't competing much anymore: see the story of Ishi, for example, to understand why there aren't any wild Indians left in Northern California to compete with white men for land.
The partition of India and Pakistan, for example, which gives us one of the longest-standing and most toxic confrontations extant, involved most of all the partition of the Punjab. Visit Punjab and see if you can detect the remotest difference in people on either side of the border. Language, literature, ethnic heritage, physical appearance—virtually indistinguishable. Here it is mainly religion that symbolizes the narcissism and makes the most of the least discrepancy.
I used to work in Northern Ireland, where religion is by no means a minor business either, and at first couldn't tell by looking whether someone was Catholic or Protestant. After a while, I thought I could guess with a fair degree of accuracy, but most of the inhabitants of Belfast seemed able to do it by some kind of instinct. There is a small underlay of ethnic difference there, with the original Gaels being a little darker and smaller than the blonder Scots who were imported as settlers, but to the outsider it is impalpable. It's just that it's the dominant question locally.
Hitchens is an acute observer to notice physical difference on average in Northern Ireland.
Likewise in Cyprus, it is extremely hard to tell a Greek from a Turk. The two peoples have been on the same island for so long that they even suffer from a common sickle-cell blood disease called thalassemia. I once interviewed a doctor who specialized in the malady, and he solemnly told me that, from a blood sample, it was not possible to tell if the donor was Greek or Turkish. I had to stop myself from asking him if he had hitherto thought that different nationalities were made out of different genetic material. There have been almost no recorded cases of intermarriage between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and the island remains sternly partitioned.
Hitchens should reread this last sentence of his and he might start to get a clue about the forest that he can't see for the trees.
In his book The Warrior's Honor, Michael Ignatieff spent some time trying to elucidate what it was that made soldiers in the Balkan Wars—physically indistinguishable from one another—so eager to inflict cruelty and contempt upon Serb or Croat or Bosnian, as the case might be. Very often, the expressed hatred took the form of extremely provincial and local rivalries, inflamed by jealousies over supposed small advantages possessed by the other. Of course, here again there are latent nationalist and confessional differences to act as a force multiplier once the nasty business gets started, but the main thing to strike the outsider would be the question of "How can they tell?" In Rwanda and Burundi, even if it is true, as some colonial anthropologists used to claim, that Hutu and Tutsi vary in height and also in the delimitation of their hairlines, it still doesn't seem enough of a difference upon which to base a genocide.
In Sri Lanka, where again it takes a long time to notice that Tamils are prone to be slightly smaller and slightly darker than the Sinhala majority, it is somehow the most important information that either population possesses. And it doesn't take long for one population to start saying that the other one has too many children, takes too much leisure, is too casual about hygiene. Every time he heard a Shiites or Sunni Iraqi saying that religion didn't really count, said my friend Patrick Cockburn in his book on Baghdad, he noticed that every single one of them knew the exact faith allegiance of everybody else in the room. And if you want to see an expression of sheer racial disdain, try giving to an Iranian Shiites the impression that you think he and his Iraqi co-religionists are brothers under the skin.
The next example of this phenomenon will be among the most serious as well as the least dramatic. One of the most unobtrusive differences in the world—the line that separates French from Flemish-speaking Belgians—is about to be forcefully reasserted in a bid to split Belgium in two. If this secession occurs, then the headquarters country of NATO and the European Union will rather narcissistically cease to exist, undone by one of the smallest distinctions of all.
So pity the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz as they peer suspiciously at one another during a sudden time of scarcity and insecurity. Their mutual miseries may be just beginning. And all this contains the true ingredients of tragedy—and of irony. One of the great advantages possessed by Homo sapiens is the amazing lack of variation between its different "branches." Since we left Africa, we have diverged as a species hardly at all. If we were dogs, we would all be the same breed.
Dogs have been genetically engineered into more varieties than any other species. Human beings differ in looks roughly about as much as do house cats, another species to which people have devoted a lot of effort to differentiate.
But, all this is just barking up the wrong tree ...
We do not suffer from the enormous differences that separate other primates, let alone other mammals. As if to spite this huge natural gift, and to disfigure what could be our overwhelming solidarity, we manage to find excuses for chauvinism and racism on the most minor of occasions and then to make the most of them. This is why condemnation of bigotry and superstition is not just a moral question but a matter of survival.
Well, why do Montagues and Capulets fight in Romeo and Juliet? The Hatfields and McCoys? The Corleones and Barzinis in The Godfather? The Lancasters and Yorks? The children of Jacob and the children of Esau? Is it because of their differences in looks? In language? In religion?
No, it's because they are different extended families. They contend with each other to gain advantages and to prevent themselves from being subjected to disadvantages.
The other differences enumerated by Hitchens serve to help keep them different extended families through less than random levels of intermarriage and other forms of alliance. And, reduced intermarriage causes the various markers of genealogical difference (looks, language, religion, cuisine, customs, dress, etc.) to become more obvious over the generations.
The other differences enumerated by Hitchens serve to help keep them different extended families through less than random levels of intermarriage and other forms of alliance. And, reduced intermarriage causes the various markers of genealogical difference (looks, language, religion, cuisine, customs, dress, etc.) to become more obvious over the generations.
Hitchens, like 99% of current intellectuals, gets all this backwards, starting from the top down of observable difference, rather than building solidly from the ground up of genealogy.
Hitchens writes "but the main thing to strike the outsider would be the question of 'How can they tell?'" But there is a more fundamental question than how do you tell what group some other person belongs to. Instead, how do you tell what group you belong to? But nobody asks that question because the answer is so obvious most of the time: you belong to the racial group that your relatives belong to. (When it's not obvious to an individual, he sometimes writes a 150,000 word book, such as Dreams from My Father, to justify his answer).
Similarly, you can tell what group somebody else belongs to generally by whom their relatives are.
It's not very complicated to figure this out. All you have to do is to read a little history. The modern fashion is simply historically obtuse. The Old Testament, for example, goes to great lengths to explain the genealogical basis of various conflicts.
Similarly, the Sunni-Shi-ite split started as a family feud among the Prophet's relations over leadership after Mohammed's death. The Sunnis go back to the followers of Abu Bakr, Mohammed's father-in-law, while the Shi'ites go back to the followers of Ali, Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law.
Moreover, how did the Lancasters and Yorks of the War of Roses stop warring? Shakespeare explains in the last speech of Richard III, in which the victorious Richmond (Henry Tudor of the Lancaster clan) announces he will marry Elizabeth of the York clan:
Hitchens writes "but the main thing to strike the outsider would be the question of 'How can they tell?'" But there is a more fundamental question than how do you tell what group some other person belongs to. Instead, how do you tell what group you belong to? But nobody asks that question because the answer is so obvious most of the time: you belong to the racial group that your relatives belong to. (When it's not obvious to an individual, he sometimes writes a 150,000 word book, such as Dreams from My Father, to justify his answer).
Similarly, you can tell what group somebody else belongs to generally by whom their relatives are.
And that's what different racial groups are: large extended families that possess more coherence and continuity over time than typical extended families due to higher than random levels of in-marriage. A racial group is merely a partly inbred extended family.
It's not very complicated to figure this out. All you have to do is to read a little history. The modern fashion is simply historically obtuse. The Old Testament, for example, goes to great lengths to explain the genealogical basis of various conflicts.
Similarly, the Sunni-Shi-ite split started as a family feud among the Prophet's relations over leadership after Mohammed's death. The Sunnis go back to the followers of Abu Bakr, Mohammed's father-in-law, while the Shi'ites go back to the followers of Ali, Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law.
Moreover, how did the Lancasters and Yorks of the War of Roses stop warring? Shakespeare explains in the last speech of Richard III, in which the victorious Richmond (Henry Tudor of the Lancaster clan) announces he will marry Elizabeth of the York clan:
O, now, let Richmond and Elizabeth,
The true succeeders of each royal house,
By God's fair ordinance conjoin together!
And let their heirs, God, if thy will be so.
Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace,
With smiling plenty and fair prosperous days!
It's frustrating to me that I've been explaining since the 1990s that there is a simple, Occam's Razor explanation for much of the group conflict in the world that's staring everybody right in the face and but the current worldview works to keep people, even ones as generally sharp as Hitchens, unperceptive and ignorant.
Steve, you are 100% correct. Different extended families will find reasons to fight each other.
ReplyDeleteI think of all the blogs on the web, your blog has a readership that is most in tune with these differences between extended families.
Some of your readers really feel these family differences in their bones, these readers have the primal tribal instinct. When they are forced to live side by side with people who are different from them, they have almost an alergic reaction. These members of your readership are to be lauded for the intense feelings they have - for millions of years of human evolution, the people with intense ingroup / outgroup orientation were the ones that survived. The most basic thing about being human is to favor your own extended family / your own tribe over all others.
So one category of your readers realy feels these ingroup / outgroup differences intensely.
Another group of your readers ( and I put myself in this category) don't feel these differences much at all. We are lacking much of that thing that makes humans tribal, lacking that which connects us to our past. But even though we don't feel these intense emotions, we find them to be incredibly interesting, worth studying, worth thinking about in an effort to understand the world.
What is really interesting to me is that if a tribe has too many people like me who are detached and not too concerned about this, that tribe will die out. It will lack the will to defend itself and it will be absorbed in to some larger more determined tribe.
What you often see here, and at all the other blogs in the steve-o-sphere, is some man who defines himself as "white" lamenting the fact that he feels intense tribal loyalty to the white race, and feels angry and disappointed that other members of the white race just don't feel this.
ReplyDeleteOften, this man will look forward to the day that open armed warfare between the races will break out, so that all other whites will come over to his way of thinking, he wants the covers to be lifted off the eyes of his fellow whites so they can see he was right all along, see that tribe is all that matters.
Here in the USA, all high IQ groups are aggressively welcomed in to the American community, and all high IQ groups that want to can and do marry in to the larger society. Distinctions that used to matter never matter after 100 years in America.
Steve in your own neighborhood 100 years ago Japanese and whites were forbidden to intermarry. Fast forward 100 years and the majority of japanese families have married in to the white community.
Madison Grant, in his seminal work "The Passing of the Great Race" (well worth buying) talked about the visceral scorn he felt for Slovaks, Italians, and other people from Southern and Eastern Europe. Yet 100 years later most of the members of these immigrant groups have melted in to the white majority.
I think that some white people here in America feel a little void in their lives due to the absence of these intense tribal feelings here.
ReplyDeleteI think this is why some white Catholic Irish people in Boston give money to the IRA to pay for the IRA to set off bombs in Belfast. If you are born white Catholic in America, and you find yourself with this numbing intense desire to express ingroup / outgroup orientation then giving money to the IRA and taking pride in the actions of the IRA scratches that itch so to speak.
Similarly, people of Sri Lankan ancestry living in the USA who are born with ingroup / outgroup orientation gave lots of money to the Tamil Tigers.
Ethnic conflict is driven by instincts that were fit for hunter/gatherers with their savage wars (kill their men, then their kids, rape their women etc.) against people very much like themselves. I don't think it's always accurate to describe ethnic cleansing as "evolutionary rational" though, the distribution of ethnic ancestry in europe, for example, was probably on a continuum just like the languages were before the nation state ("a language is a dialect with an army"), the war between the french and germans was not about survival of kin but evoked emotions used for such wars.
ReplyDeleteLiberals lie to themselves all the time. As a self-identified Jew, Hitchens probably gets it, but doesn't want to come clean about it.
ReplyDeleteTalk about leaving something out, watch Richard Wilkinson explain homicide rates, life expectancy, stress, and whatever else, with one parsimonious variable: income inequality!
ReplyDeletehttp://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/the-situational-effects-of-inequality/
Of course, he omits from his analysis all but the richest countries, which would exclude a great deal of unfriendly... data, which his wonder variable says nothing about. He has also analyzed our 50 states, singling out New Hampshire and lauding it for its great equality.
It's frustrating to me that I've been explaining since the 1990s that there is a simple, Occam's Razor explanation for much of the group conflict in the world that's staring everybody right in the face and nobody notices it.
ReplyDeleteIs this the same writer who just last week was ignoring his own explanation:
I'm always struck by how white people are constantly admonishing each other
Occam's Razor, what Occam's Razor?
But how does this explain anti-semitism? As most Jews are taught from an early age, anti-semitism is a unique, viral, almost magical hatred that all other people on the face of the earth suffer from, Christians and white people most of all.
ReplyDeleteEven atheists and agnostics suffer from it!
And all Jews are taught, it has nothing to do with what Jews actually do or think or believe. It is "the 2000 year old hate", utterly inexplicable and eternally infecting the minds of everyone else on earth. That's a big part of what makes Jews so special all over the world.
"You may think you are different, but speaking as an outsider I'm telling you that you're all the same."
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to dig far to see the arrogance of this position.
Madison Grant, in his seminal work "The Passing of the Great Race" (well worth buying) talked about the visceral scorn he felt for Slovaks, Italians, and other people from Southern and Eastern Europe. Yet 100 years later most of the members of these immigrant groups have melted in to the white majority.
ReplyDeleteThe Jersey Shore begs to disagree.
I dont even understand what Hitchens means about hesitating to ask about genetic differences in nationalities. It seems so obtuse I can't believe he means it. I guess he is suggesting that of course there is no genetic difference between Greeks and Turks, or any nationalities, and that the doctor was crazy to think there would be. It's one thing to deny that genetic clusters differ in averages of politically sensitive traits, but to deny that there are genetic clusters, good lord...
ReplyDeleteI think Diamond expressed intense love and admiration for the men in New Guinea specifically because of the intense ingroup / outgroup orientation that such men had.
ReplyDeleteI sensed some yearning in Diamond's heart to be part of a violent ingroup / outgroup confrontation.
Everyone wants to be part of something bigger than themselves. For most high IQ people, I think they translate that in to loyalty to a meme, loyalty to an idea.
I think many of the people that talk loudly about a meritocracy, how they love the idea of giving people IQ tests and distributing society's rewards on the basis of IQ test really mean it. I mean, plenty of people that want our society's rewards distributed on the basis of IQ are doing it because they really want all high IQ people to benefit not just their tribe.
I mean look at Derbyshire. He doesn't care about preserving his tribe's bloodline - Derb married an asian. Same thing with Noah Feldman - Feldman married an asian, so clearly preserving his bloodline isn't that important to him.
Charles Murray admits that his racial group is lower on the IQ totem pole than a few others and yet Murray is in favor of IQ testing to distribute rewards.
The point is that many of the more ingroup oriented people on this blog just can't believe that there is not some hidden agenda when the rest of us call for IQ tests to determine things. They think there is a hidden scam of some sort. But the truth is that there ARE many of us in the HBD blog o sphere that are loyal to the meme and not loyal to one race or the other.
I would stick my neck out and say our esteemed leader Steve Sailer himself, is an advocate for the meritocracy/IQ testing meme. That meme is as close to a religion that Steve has.
I don't mean to insult or disparage those that define their ingroup on the basis of blood, but may of us here define it in terms of a meme.
Charles Murray is from
Jonah Goldberg has made a similar point. The Bulgarians have never fought a war with Honduras. And because Communists fought Nazis in WWII doesn't mean they're not ideological cousins.
ReplyDeleteIt is "the 2000 year old hate", utterly inexplicable
ReplyDeleteThe 2000-Year-Old Hate is very real, but has dimmed compared to the newer, 1300-Year-Old Hate. Unfortunately many Jews, mostly the older generations, have trouble seeing this.
"The most basic thing about being human is to favor your own extended family / your own tribe over all others."
ReplyDeleteSo basic, everyone fights it in himself, and accuses others of "racism" if it is expressed openly.
The Hitchens article misses your point I suppose, but your remarks also miss some other points.
ReplyDeleteThe Hitchens article isn't really a serious piece of analysis. It more of a "Dear Me" essay. It's prevailing attitude is regret. He in effect is adopting a Rodney King "Why can't we all just get along" stance.
As such it's a bit unfair to criticize him for publishing a piece aimed at nothing more than collecting his writer's fee.
I also think both of you miss the simple "animal spirits" argument. Hitchen's tacitly assumes that similar people should be less contentious than more dissimilar peoples. You try to refute his argument but in turn assume that there is something to explain.
I would contend that people just like to fight because of our animal spirits - the way we are made. If there is another group that differs from us we will use that difference as an organizing principal to contend with them, but if there aren't any real differences we will just make some up.
Consider "The Curse of the Bambino". New Yorkers and Bostonians enjoy their rivalry. What is the basis of this long term conflict? It's not genetic certainly - no extended families here. It's rare that any modern ball player comes from the city he represents. Ruth could have stayed in Boston or not. It's irrelevant to this sports feud. Yankee fans root for the Yankees even if many of them can't speak English, are Black, Mexican or even Japanese. They will root for a Yankee who came up through the Red Sox organization and played for Boston last week.
Gym teachers know this very well. They will say something like - "everyone to my right, take off your shirts". He knows that the shirts and skins will fight to the death over a completely arbitrary group distinction he just created. The young boys enjoy hating the other side. It adds spice to their play.
It's just a short step to "Kill a commie for Christ".
Albertosaurus
My Lebanese friend, a Sunni who went to a Catholic school, and counted Assyrian Orthodox kids as his closest friends, once remarked that you could identify the Shiites in the south by their grey eyes. He also said that their women were the most beautiful in the region.
ReplyDeleteThis would seem to argue for rapid integration and interbreeding among all the various ethnic groups in the U.S. as the surest and quickest way to head off such conflicts. Do you agree?
ReplyDeleteEach extended family should have its own territory. This is the closest humans can come to mitigating the inevitable conflict between tribes or peoples: each extended family on its own territory. Since this is no longer possible in the modern world, or at least the modern western world, the next best solution to the problem of the inevitable friction between different peoples is an ever expanding economic pie, the pursuit of which takes up so much energy that little is left over to kill thy non-extended family neighbor. Of course the hatred remains. But it is reduced to back burner hatred. This is why prosperity, the maintenance of a diffused ongoing prosperity, has become more than a good thing, it has become the difference between low level simmering hatred and a sea of blood. Our coming economic meltdown is going to be no fun, no fun at all.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's Steve and others on the "HBD" front who are missing the point here. Of course ethnicity is related to familial/genetic relationships. But the point is that the intensity of ethnic conflicts do NOT depend on the degree of genetic relationship. Ethnic groups that are incredibly similar from the U.S. perspective find all kinds of internal splits when they are isolated in their home countries. The human impulse to hate is ever-renewing and is not driven by the level of genetic difference. In large diverse countries people tend to conflict with those that are most distant genetically, but in more genetically homogenous countries there's just as much conflict, just with closer relations.
ReplyDeleteMadison Grant, in his seminal work "The Passing of the Great Race" (well worth buying) talked about the visceral scorn he felt for Slovaks, Italians, and other people from Southern and Eastern Europe. Yet 100 years later most of the members of these immigrant groups have melted in to the white majority.
ReplyDeleteThe Jersey Shore begs to disagree.
Indeed. I tend to watch snippets of the "real housewives" series. Looking at the people in New Jersey or New York, I find them utterly alien (as well as having about zero taste in clothes and interior decor) while the women of OC I can from their manor, the interior of their houses, and their general lack of serious viciousness (compared with the east coast groups) that they are my people.
I think one of the reasons why there is so much hostility between groups that look similar to each other may have to do with the issue of paternity. Lets say that there is a white man married to a white woman and she gives birth to a black child. The white man automatically knows the child is not his. The same is true if his white wife gives birth to a child with East Asian physical features. But what happens if his wife is impregnated by a white male from a different ethnic group? In this situation, the man will probably never find out that he is not the baby's father and will end up investing in another man's child. In order to prevent this from happening, the man's greatest hostility will be towards white males from neighboring ethnic groups. This may at least partially explain the ethnic hostility that we have seen in places such as Northern Ireland.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the joke:
ReplyDelete"Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
"He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant."
I said, "Me, too! What kind?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
"Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
Yep, it's not about religion, it's about tribe, family or whatever.
Here in the USA, all high IQ groups are aggressively welcomed in to the American community, and all high IQ groups that want to can and do marry in to the larger society.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting alternate reality you live in.
The actual reality is that two hundred years ago Tom Jefferson was complaining about certain groups refusal to assimilate into the American populace. And two hundred years later, people are still complaining about the same "high IQ group" and its insistence on seeing itself as apart from other Americans.
But then, you did use the escape clause ".. that want to.." So perhaps the problem is, there is no earthly reason for these "high IQ groups" to want to became part of the larger society. And the same applies to low IQ groups.
The path to power in modern America lies in setting yourself apart, not in submerging yourself in the whole.
Religion trumps race
ReplyDeleteThe Tsar of Russia allied with the King of Ethiopia due to same orthodox church
The Sri Lankan Sinhalese are mostly descended from Tamil Buddhists
In 1947, Hindus-Sikhs killed muslims of the same caste and vice versa
I doubt that Hitchen's finding that the Irish are short and dark compared to the Scots can be backed up by any physical evidence. There are more likely psychological reasons that explain why the Brit Hitchen and his co-workers believe their people have superior physical traits to the enemy tribe.
ReplyDeleteLast time I checked the data the Irish (of the Republic of Ireland, admittedly) were taller than the Scots on average, and had the highest incidence of blue eyes on the planet. Perhaps the Irish of Northern Ireland are shorter, though (for similar reasons that the North Koreans are shorter than their southern cousins?).
What his Northern Irish colleagues were doing was picking up clues from accent or names... the information from either of those two sources is overwhelming. They can tell if a fellow local is a Catholic or Protestant as soon as the stranger opens their mouth. And no need to start measuring "Declan"'s skull to make a good guess about his religion or ethnic origin.
I think many of the people that talk loudly about a meritocracy, how they love the idea of giving people IQ tests and distributing society's rewards on the basis of IQ test really mean it. I mean, plenty of people that want our society's rewards distributed on the basis of IQ are doing it because they really want all high IQ people to benefit not just their tribe.
ReplyDeleteWell, no. High IQ people are their tribe, and they are proposing a scheme which rewards themselves.
Modern tribes can be constructed on many different grounds. Some form of ideological ground ( liberalism, communism, fascism, libertarianism, etc) is increasingly the basis for modern "tribes".
Everyone wants to be part of something bigger than themselves. For most high IQ people, I think they translate that in to loyalty to a meme, loyalty to an idea.
Yes, they are loyal to the idea of themselves as technocratic rulers of society. How very selfless of them.
It's not a new idea, its the original basis of scientific socialism as laid out by Henri de Saint-Simon. Per Wikipedia
"In opposition to the feudal and military system he advocated a form of state capitalist-technocratic socialism, an arrangement where industrial chiefs should control society. In place of the church, he felt the direction of society should fall to the men of science. Men who are fitted to organize society for productive labour are entitled to rule it."
"The school of Saint-Simon insists strongly on the claims of merit; they advocate a social hierarchy in which each man is placed according to his capacity and rewarded according to his works. This is, indeed, a most special and pronounced feature of the Saint-Simon socialism, whose theory of government is a kind of spiritual or scientific autocracy."
Someone should ask Christopher, "what's with the rivalry with your brother Peter?"
ReplyDeleteEven though I am not big and strong, the next time some MF'er confronts me on my side of the (right side) sidewalk, I will expend holy hell and the rightous will thriumph. So says the Lord, so shall it be.
ReplyDeletePeople will fight over anything. Groupthink and 'my side right or wrong' is built into our genes.
ReplyDeleteIn highschool, if you divide kids into different groups and make them play against eachother, the kids within each group will develop a bond and camaraderie. Over time, they'll even feel that the bond is natural or divine or cool. But if you reorganize the teams by mixing different kids, everyone will feel disoriented at first but then eventually develop new bonds.
Bonds could be racial, ethnic, ideological, religious, political, or whatever. Anglos fought Anglos over politics and ideology in the Civil War.
Hindus fought Muslims in India-Pakistan over culture, politics, religion.
Germans fought Russians over race, but Germans wanted to be friends with racial brethren Anglos. But Anglos fought Germany over ideology and politics.
Initially, German and French Jews despised Eastern European Jews, but after the Holocaust, all became one people in Israel.
German-Americans fought Germany in WWII. Culturally and ideologically, they'd become democratic Americans with hatred for tyranny(even if it was German).
Stalinsts and Trotskyites duked it out.
French Revolutionaries were soon murdering one another.
Pepsi and Coca Cola fight it out.
It's just in our genes. We all want a good fight. Hitchens, a leftist, duked it out big time with other leftists over the Iraq War.
"I also think both of you miss the simple 'animal spirits' argument. Hitchen's tacitly assumes that similar people should be less contentious than more dissimilar peoples. You try to refute his argument but in turn assume that there is something to explain."
ReplyDeleteI agree with this, but certain issues or matters are more conducive to firing up animal spirits than others.
For instance, it's more likely for Jews and Arabs to fight each other over land and power than it is for Ringling Brothers clowns to fight it out with Barnum and Bailey clowns over who are more, well, clownish.
Also, certain conflicts are more easly forgotten and forgiven--and more arbitrary--than others.
Suppose softball teams of Burger King and MacDonalds have a match. During the match, both sides are really fired up and wanna win. They got the animal spirits flowing. But after the game, they can shake hands, go to a bar, and share drinks. No hard feelings. (Besides, someone who works for MacDonalds can easily switch jobs and work for Burger King. There is no deep emotional investment with a particular company unless it happens to be one's family business.)
But can you imagine Jews and Palestinians sharing beer and chips after slaughtering one another for a week?
"Occam's Razor, what Occam's Razor?"
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crabtree%27s_Bludgeon
Aint no match for Crabtree's Bludgeon.
I'll say this about ethnicity or race. It can be real or it can be perceived to be real.
ReplyDeleteConsider that lots of Japanese and Chinese 'look alike'. If you were to take a Chinese kid and raise him as a Japanese, he would very well feel and think Japanese. And vice versa would also be true.
Germans and Poles are racially similar, but Nazis made a big stink about their 'aryanness' and enough dumb Germans believed it. So, German racial uniqueness became as perceived(and exaggerated) as real.
Turks took Greek children and raised them to be Muslim soldiers, the Janissaries and they were indeed loyal servants of Islam.
On the other hand, if you took an Irish baby and raised him as an African, he would start wondering... "I don't belong here."
I don't know if that hurts or helps your point, but Henry VII in reality faced several Yorkist rebellions or threatened rebellions during his reign.
ReplyDeleteExtended families reinforce genetics with economics, through the institution of inheritance.
ReplyDeleteLanguage is trying to tell us something about the reality of human differences when it uses the same word - inheritance - to describe the process by which ancestors endow descendants with both identity and property.
Of course Darwin proved that humanity itself is one big partially in-bred somewhat happy family. So it all depends on what scale one is looking at.
Another problem with Hitchens argument, which you hint at with your Bantu-Pygmy reference, is that "the narcissism of small differences" is really a superficial proxy for the competitiveness of individuals and species that share the same ecological niche. This is an inconvenient truth of Darwinian economics.
ReplyDeleteApple and Microsoft share a similar niche so are always at each others throats. Neither of them care very much what Exon is doing.
Interestingly predators are not competing with prey. A predator has a strong interest in thriving the population of his prey.
But lions and tigers are competing. It would not surprise me to see those two species get into some nasty cat fights.
"Everyone wants to be part of something bigger than themselves. For most high IQ people, I think they translate that in to loyalty to a meme, loyalty to an idea."
ReplyDeleteYou know, I wouldn't be surprised if some high IQ people (particularly those with poor social skills), due to a long period of alienation, consider _that_ their tribe. Consider 'nerd pride' and such things. And note that Derb and Feldman married Asians, not Mexicans or Africans.
"It's just a short step to "Kill a commie for Christ".
ReplyDelete- Albertosaurus"
Burns and Schreiber, "The Evangelist". I remember that routine - Dr. Demento used to play it occasionally. "The communists are breeding huge man-eating frogs in Cuba."
obsession with "observable differences" just shows that pinko globalism makes one stupid. Really stupid... What observable difference is there between a white guy who votes Green and demands Arizona to be destroyed for contempt of Mexico and another white guy who votes Republican and wants illegals out and government workers unions abolished? They both look exactly the same, but they would not be happy in each other's company... or in each other's country. Likewise, if we were to go ask the Cypriots or the folks in Central Asia or the Sinhala/Tamils, they would surely tell us plenty of very real political differences that underlie their conflict. Not that the globalists want to hear any of that.
ReplyDeleteHere in the USA, all high IQ groups are aggressively welcomed in to the American community
ReplyDeleteAggressively welcomed?
How about grudging acceptance or tolerance?
Its being imposed so we might as well just resign ourselves to it. That sounds more plausible to me.
And you never did quite get around to addressing those low IQ groups, where welcomes might be somewhat less aggressive.
If American communities had the the choice between high IQ asians and high IQ europeans, if they were actually given that choice as opposed to having it thrust upon them which do you think they would choose? I suspect from your pov its very important that said choice is never formally made, otherwise the aggressive welcome meme might falter.
Hitchens didnt mention another infamous conflict between peoples of similar origins living in a shared territory. No doubt thats a quite different matter, quite beyond the scope of his article - for some reason.
ReplyDeleteI sensed some yearning in Diamond's heart to be part of a violent ingroup / outgroup confrontation.
ReplyDeleteSopme might say he had got that wish, that in fact that his work is an extension of that confrontation.
The communists are breeding huge man-eating frogs in Cuba.
ReplyDeleteThere was recent case of a man eating Frog, but he wasnt in Cuba.
Perhaps a minor quibble in this comment section, but the whole Irish-Americans supporting the IRA meme is extravagantly overblown. I don't say that because I want to downplay that support, and the commentator does have a point about some Whites fleeing the barreness of 'whiteness' for a romantic and illusory 'Irishness'. However, the overwhelming source of IRA funds come from 1- The British State, in the form of welfarfe payments and fraudulent damage claims, 2- fuel and cigarette smuggling, 3- EU agriculture funds, 4- extortion, drug smuggling (or extorting drug smugglers), and 5-robberies. Furthermore, their arsenal of weaponry is derivede from Libya and Eastern Europe. Most of their recent (in the last 15 years) attempts to smuugle weapons from the US have failed, precisely because they have such a small pool of not so bright supporters. So, both their funding and purchasing are largely independent of Irish America. This is an argument brougth up repeatedly by those who 1- hate the IRA (with good reason), and in so doing often conflate genuine concern for Catholic rights with slovenly IRA support, 2- like to show that, um, vigorous support for foreign entities is, um, natural and common and acceptable. In other words, a ruse to show that, because a very few number of Irish Americans give a very few number of dollars to the IRA (most of which pass through NORAID, which is registered as the agent of a foreign power, and is thus known to the authorities), it is perfectly acceptable to steal government secrets and sell them to the Russians (Pollard et al). Please put this meme to rest, and realize that in so doing you are not supporting the IRA and its useless legacy. These things are known, IRA weaponry is known (see Jane's defense), IRA funding is known, and neither come from the proles of South Boston nor the noveau poseurs of allegedly anti-British, embittered Wall Street Irish Americans.
ReplyDelete“But how does this explain anti-semitism? As most Jews are taught from an early age, anti-semitism is a unique, viral, almost magical hatred that all other people on the face of the earth suffer from, Christians and white people most of all.”
ReplyDeleteGenerally, market-dominant minorities (to use Amy Chua’s terminology) that attain disproportionate economic success through banking, finance, and mercantile enterprise (Mercurians, to use Slezkine’s terminology) are not beloved by their more Appolianian (i.e., non-mercantile, financial) neighbors. One can see this around the world. In addition to Jews being persecuted in many places and at many times, other market dominant minorities have also faced persecution (e.g. Armenians by Turks, Indians in E. Africa, Lebanese in W. Africa, overseas Chinese in SE Asia, whites in Latin America and Southern Africa, etc.). Market dominant minorities tend to be smarter than their more Appolonian neighbors and, undoubtedly, possess other behavioral/personality traits which make them good at mercantile and financial undertakings. These traits are not necessarily those that endear them to their less sophisticated neighbors.
Now, anti-Semitism does seem to go beyond these other animosities directed at other market-dominant minorities in its longevity, ubiquity, and intensity. Why? My guess is that, while most market-dominant minorities stick to themselves and are content with economic success (and perhaps political influence narrowly focused to further that success), Jewish culture is, in addition to being highly mercantile, also intensely intellectual, with its history of Talmudic scholarship and argumentation, and seeks to branch out beyond its own ethny to shape and influence nearly all aspects of the surrounding gentile cultures, often through intense criticism of them, often probing and assaulting their most cherished and fundamental core beliefs in an effort to make such cultures more amenable and comfortable, not just for Jewish economic interests, but also for Jewish sensibilities.
http://www.vdare.com/stix/100629_raceless.htm
ReplyDeleteCheck the sketches. Too funny!
Anonymous: "As a self-identified Jew, Hitchens probably gets it, but doesn't want to come clean about it."
ReplyDeleteSeriously, that's what you're going with? Because Hitchens has said that he's 1/32nd Jewish and it comes from his mother's side that makes him a self-identified Jew? But it fits your paradigm so you're gonna stick with it.
Look, I'm sorry that your mom keeps nagging you about how successful Josh Feldstein from down the block has become. But maybe she's right. Maybe you should quit beating off in the storage closet at the Dairy Queen and try to make something of yourself.
Now, anti-Semitism does seem to go beyond these other animosities directed at other market-dominant minorities in its longevity, ubiquity, and intensity. Why? My guess is that, while most market-dominant minorities stick to themselves and are content with economic success (and perhaps political influence narrowly focused to further that success), Jewish culture is, in addition to being highly mercantile, also intensely intellectual, with its history of Talmudic scholarship and argumentation, and seeks to branch out beyond its own ethny to shape and influence nearly all aspects of the surrounding gentile cultures, often through intense criticism of them, often probing and assaulting their most cherished and fundamental core beliefs in an effort to make such cultures more amenable and comfortable, not just for Jewish economic interests, but also for Jewish sensibilities.
ReplyDeleteThis shows an ignorance of Jewish history. Judaism traditionally was extremely inward-oriented, kept things within the community and there was zero interest in "reaching out" beyond the ethnicity to the wider gentile culture. This changed only in the late 19th and 20th centuries with the influence of Enlightenment thought and nationalism.
Anti-semitism has been more durable than other forms of hostility toward "market minorities" simply because it's sort of baked into Christianity, and Christianity dominated European culture for thousands of years. Jews were the only prominent non-Christian sect in Europe for that entire time, and of course Christianity begins with a conflict with Judaism, when Paul separates the religions.
Anti-semitism has a perfectly obvious explanation within the religious history of Europe, was not evident in non-European locations, and requires little explanation beyond that.
"The Scots who were imported"
ReplyDeleteTalk about dehumanizing; they weren't bottles of whiskey, they went of their own accord, not on the order of some merchant. Also, many already had relatives over their, espcially in Down and Antrim, the far east coast of Ulster. Malice in every sentence from that posionous toad of a man.
"Anonymous: "As a self-identified Jew, Hitchens probably gets it, but doesn't want to come clean about it."
ReplyDeleteSeriously, that's what you're going with? Because Hitchens has said that he's 1/32nd Jewish and it comes from his mother's side that makes him a self-identified Jew? But it fits your paradigm so you're gonna stick with it.
Look, I'm sorry that your mom keeps nagging you about how successful Josh Feldstein from down the block has become. But maybe she's right. Maybe you should quit beating off in the storage closet at the Dairy Queen and try to make something of yourself."
Notice how Jews always make these kinds of obscene, foaming at the mouth ad hominem attacks on people who don't follow orders.
What we have here is simple. some Isteve readers identify themselves primarily as "white survivalists" and see America as a place that should be run by fellow "whites"
ReplyDeleteOther Isteve readers identify themselves primarily as "high IQ people" and see america as a place that should be run by fellow "high IQ people"
The problem is that every time a high IQ person makes his argument, the "white survivalists" make the silly claim that racial tribalism is what is really motivating the high IQ people.
Reason this claim is silly is because so many of the high IQ people like Derb decide to marry someone of another race. And Steve has frequently posted on the topic of assortive mating.
The racial tribalists just can't see beyond their own frame
Anti-semitism has a perfectly obvious explanation within the religious history of Europe, was not evident in non-European locations, and requires little explanation beyond that.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm glad to hear that Jews in the Middle East were treated so nicely. It does make you wonder why Jews left the hospitable lands of their origin and moved to Europe though.
(What? Yes, that was sarcasm.)
Regarding the idea that inhabitants of Northern Ireland can tell the difference between Protestants and Catholics by physical appearance... It might be that an experienced observer can pick up on subtle differences in dress or comportment or facial expression that mark the different groups, unrelated to any genetic characteristics.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, I have heard (though I have no direct personal experience) that in the mountain west of the U.S., some people claim that they can tell the difference between Mormons and non-Mormons simply by the way they look.
What many Europeans - and especially Anglo-Saxons - don't get is that human genetic warfare can take place in other ways than on just the battlefield. In a closed society nuclear family Anglos are at a big disadvantage to clanish Middle Easter tribes who are at a disadvantage to Africans. The latter sides fight via capturing choke points of power and via pure psychological dominance while the former sides fight via physical isolation, stripping of resources, and outright genocide.
ReplyDeleteThe extremely swift ethnic cleansing of certain groups such as Russians in the ex-Soviet republics and Chechnya, West Europeans in Africa are interesting because they are hardly ever acknowledged and yet should tell Europeans something... yet they are hardly ever analyzed. The flow of genes is from Asia and Africa into Euro controlled zones. Euros create fairy tales to deny the reality of the situation. Reality is not nice sometime. Euros need to acknowledge that others are much better at selling fairy tales of stories of why Euros should give up space and resources.
"On the other hand, if you took an Irish baby and raised him as an African, he would start wondering... "I don't belong here."
ReplyDeleteUh, would you believe Pass the Tom-Toms.
"But can you imagine Jews and Palestinians sharing beer and chips after slaughtering one another for a week?"
A comparison of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict to a softball game between McDonald's and Burger King employees...
Good going there F-F-F-Falstaff!
"Good going there F-F-F-Falstaff!"
ReplyDeleteGood shaking there, F-F-F-Funkmeister.
"Similarly, I have heard (though I have no direct personal experience) that in the mountain west of the U.S., some people claim that they can tell the difference between Mormons and non-Mormons simply by the way they look."
ReplyDeleteMormons always dress like they're going to church.
Nobody has mentioned, so far, Belgium, which is a curious case of how mutually averse ethnic groups might be expected to go around massacring each other all the time, but don't.
ReplyDeleteEvery occasion on which the Belgian government collapses, which seems to happen about three times per year, the broadsheets' op-ed thumbsuckers go into overdrive about how this time, the Belgian state is absolutely, absolutely, TOTALLY going to fall to bits, civil war will start tomorrow, the Flemings are going to secede and become part of the Netherlands, the Walloons are going to become part of France, blah blah blah. To my certain knowledge the thumbsuckers have been producing columns on this subject since about 1984. You'd think that the place was like Yugoslavia in 1990, say.
Then you actually visit Belgium and realize that, for all the shrieking headlines, not all that much has changed since your previous visit. Still, somehow, Belgium moseys along, the same suits turn up in much the same cabinet jobs they were occupying before the last prime minister resigned, and the overall standard of infrastructure beats the hell out of two-party political systems like Britain and the U.S. I have never traveled on cleaner or more efficient trains in my life than Belgium's. Nor do I know any country where the mail is more promptly delivered than I've found it to be in Belgium.
You end up suspecting that, for all the obvious linguistic gulfs between Flemish-speakers and French-speakers in the nation, the thumbsuckers might've cried wolf once too often.
Anon 6.29,
ReplyDelete'Watching the door' by Kevin Myers gives a hilarious account of Catholic glaziers making a fortune out of IRA bombs in 1970s Belfast.
To all white Americans: why aren't you campaigning for an immigration policy that would allow native Europeans to settle in the USA? After all you are still the majority of the population and you are descended from these folks!
Richard London
"Likewise in Cyprus, it is extremely hard to tell a Greek from a Turk."
ReplyDeleteFor the outsider, yes. I suspect that most Cypriots would say they're good at discerning who's who. Likewise with Hutus and Tutsis, Croats and Serbs, Tamils and Sinhalese, etc. The 'objective third-party' is always at a loss to explain ethnic rivalry.
I get the feeling reading militant atheist/Trotsky cultist Hitchens that it's "the narcissism of the small difference" that fuels his antagonism toward the more totalitarian religions. How does a dedicated commie process the collapse of the Soviet Union? Lash out at Mother Teresa, pimp for the carpet-bombing of Muslims, etc.
But lions and tigers are competing. It would not surprise me to see those two species get into some nasty cat fights.
ReplyDeleteLions live in africa and tigers live in asia.
Well, I'm glad to hear that Jews in the Middle East were treated so nicely. It does make you wonder why Jews left the hospitable lands of their origin and moved to Europe though.
ReplyDeleteMuslims treated Jews similarly to Christians (actually better in most cases) up until the mid to late 19th century or so, and then the founding of Israel accelerated the growth of anti-semitism. Also, Jewish communities in the Middle East stayed stable for thousands of years and certainly did not move to Europe; they are today's "sephardim" and are visibly biologically different than European Jews because of how long the separation was.
All non-Muslims were second class citizens in Islamic countries; Jews and Christians were the only ones allowed to keep their religions (dhimmis) and Jews were usually treated better than Christians.
(What? Yes, that was sarcasm.)
So easy to sling the sarcasm when you don't know what you're talking about.
RE Anon & the IRA. Good points about funding.
ReplyDeleteIts also noticible that most active IRA members come from Northern Ireland itself. Then a few from the Republic and handful from the US and mainland Britain.
"Similarly, I have heard (though I have no direct personal experience) that in the mountain west of the U.S., some people claim that they can tell the difference between Mormons and non-Mormons simply by the way they look."
ReplyDeleteWell of course Mormons are easy to identify, they dress dowdy and weird. There were only a few in my hometown (obviously not in the mountain west) but it was always obvious upon seeing them. They dress only a notch less dowdy than the mennonites/pentecostals/freewill baptists whoever they are who wear the long blue jean skirts all the time.
As if to make the question still more opaque, several reports stressed the essential similarity—ethnic, linguistic, cultural—between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek populations.
ReplyDeleteRight, because Protestant, Germanic-speaking Germany and Great Britain would never, ever go to war with each other and, in the rare case they did, one of them would certainly never align itself with a Catholic, Latin-speaking nation like oh, say, Italy.
Hitchens was a major advocate for the Iraq War, and, no matter how smart he is, the fact that he fails to catch simple logical problems like this one is revealing.
FWIW, though, I don't think the "extended family" problem is really the important distinction. It's that two neighboring populations/countries simply tend, for obvious reasons, not to be all that different from each other. In the rare cases that close nations are quite different - English colonists and Native Americans, for example - they either fight bitterly or the relative closeness is mitigated by huge geographic barriers, like a desert or mountain range; or the disparity in technology may be so great that one avoids deliberately inciting the other.
Kyrgyzstan is pretty stupid to allow any ethnic harrassment of its Uzbek minority, however. Uzbekistan has 5 times their population and is roughly 80% ethnically Uzbek. If they feel any ethnic loyalty at all they could easily crush K-stan.
Yet 100 years later most of the members of these immigrant groups have melted in to the white majority.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Blacks and whites have lived side-by-side for 400 years and still tend to avoid each other in the mating game. Tellingly, the most interbreeding between the two groups occurred when female members of one of the groups qualified as commitment-free nookie for their male masters.
Asian- and European-Americans find each other mutually attractive and of roughly equal intelligence, so intermarriage is not uncommon. Europeans tend not to find Africans all that attractive and certainly not of equal intelligence. Mestizos tend to fill the same role at the lower end of the white IQ spectrum as Asians fill at the higher end.
The family/clan/tribe thing, which is really the basis of race, is an innate part of 90% of the human race. Americans do not sense this so much because we are a frontier nation that people came to to get away from the old rivalries and biases to create a new life for themselves in an open world. This is what makes America special.
ReplyDeleteWhen Hitchens asks "how can they tell?", he is really asking how can they tell who the random stranger on the street it. Everyone in a village knows whom everyone else is and what family they come from. Its in a larger town that strangers mix and match. However, one characteristic that is common to all of these places is automatic suspicion of any stranger that is not personally known, unless that person is an obvious foreigner.
"The Jersey Shore begs to disagree."
ReplyDeleteAs anyone comparing hamburg with naples also would.*
*http://unclestinky.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/stench-figurative-and-literal-naples-garbage-crisis-deepens/ (don't miss this link).
>This would seem to argue for rapid integration and interbreeding among all the various ethnic groups in the U.S. as the surest and quickest way to head off such conflicts. Do you agree?<
ReplyDeleteSteve does seem to be arguing for everyone to become a Barack Obama, especially with War of the Roses reference.
More distantly related large groups have worked out a way to minimize conflict: remain in different areas. (And defend them.) But people with smaller differences are the very people who mixed - and they are therefore fighting over the same goods.
>some people claim that they can tell the difference between Mormons and non-Mormons simply by the way they look<
ReplyDeleteMormons are the white people riding bikes while wearing ties. Pretty obvious.
“This shows an ignorance of Jewish history. Judaism traditionally was extremely inward-oriented, kept things within the community and there was zero interest in "reaching out" beyond the ethnicity to the wider gentile culture. This changed only in the late 19th and 20th centuries with the influence of Enlightenment thought and nationalism.”
ReplyDeleteYou don’t have to be so patronizing. I’m well aware of Jewish history and know that Judaism was inward looking until emancipation in the latter half of the 19th C. But before this time, anti-Semitism was also qualitatively different. It more resembled the type of prejudice directed against market-dominant minorities all around the world (i.e., it was based on resentment at their success, often combined with the perception that because they weren’t engaged in manual labor that their wealth was somehow acquired in an underhanded way not through productive labor but though some sort of financial alchemy, as well as ethno-cultural and religious antagonisms). This persecution manifested itself in legal disabilities imposed on Jews and sporadic outbreaks of relatively disorganized popular violence (which gentile elites often tried to suppress because they valued the services that Jews were able to offer). This is similar to what the overseas Chinese endure in SE Asia.
With Jewish integration starting in the later 19th C. this all changed and Jews began to integrate into European society (and heavily critiquing it and lobbying for fundamental changes in it as evidenced by their heavy involvement in socialism, communism, the New Left, Freudian psychology, the Frankfurt School, the Feminist, Gay, and Civil Rights movements, etc.). In addition to the old economic resentments and cultural-religious antagonisms the idea began to emerge that Jews were a cultural cancer eating away the very foundations of society and the idea of exterminationism to save Western civilization began to take seat, this unprecedented hatred reaching its apogee with the Nazis. This intellectual theory, as opposed to popular resentment, based persecution was qualitatively different from anything that other market-dominant minorities have suffered. When the Nazis executed the Holocaust, they viewed what they were doing as saving their civilization, which they felt was endangered by “Jewish ideas.” When the Turks massacred the Armenians, the Malays and other SE Asians the Chinese, the E. Africans their Indian minority, etc. they were mainly motivated by economic and cultural resentments, not the thought that these minorities were undermining their culture and social cohesion.
Muslims treated Jews similarly to Christians (actually better in most cases) up until the mid to late 19th century or so
ReplyDeleteThat's not response to the point you were supposedly responding to.
If Muslims treated Jews as well or better than Christians did, what explains the exodus of Jews to Christian Europe in the period before the mid 19th century?
All non-Muslims were second class citizens in Islamic countries; Jews and Christians were the only ones allowed to keep their religions (dhimmis) and Jews were usually treated better than Christians.
Is that supposed to refute my question - " I'm glad to hear that Jews in the Middle East were treated so nicely. It does make you wonder why Jews left the hospitable lands of their origin and moved to Europe though"?
You're not even disagreeing with me, simply agreeing in a disagreeable way. You yourself say that Jews were treated better in Muslim lands - what then explains their migration to Europe?
Other Isteve readers identify themselves primarily as "high IQ people" and see america as a place that should be run by fellow "high IQ people"
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that every time a high IQ person makes his argument, the "white survivalists" make the silly claim that racial tribalism is what is really motivating the high IQ people.
I don't know, I think I'd have to see some evidence that those "high IQ people" are less likely to take race into consideration where marriage is concerned than are the "racial tribalists". One or two anecdotal examples does not suffice. Certain high IQ groups (you know the one) are famous for their reluctance to marry outside their own group.
”But lions and tigers are competing. It would not surprise me to see those two species get into some nasty cat fights.”
ReplyDeleteLions and cheetahs both live in Africa and prey upon the same herds. They don’t get into cat fights for obvious reasons. However, lions do kill unattended cheetah cubs.
ATBOTL: "Notice how Jews always make these kinds of obscene, foaming at the mouth ad hominem attacks on people who don't follow orders."
ReplyDeleteOh, no! I've been discovered! And I don't even have the 1/32nd Jewish ancestry that Hitch has. But I guess that's how ingenious the dastardly Jewish conspiracy is - that it can co-opt someone without a single drop of Jewish blood and who hadn't even met a Jew for the first half of his life.
Really, I have no problem with frank, non-PC discussion of HBD. But some of you conspiracy mongers need to put down that copy of Stormwatch and go outside and see the world a little bit.
"Lions live in africa and tigers live in asia."
ReplyDeleteYou've not heard of asiatic lions then?
"
"Are ye a Protestant or a Cat'lic"?, they demanded. Shaking with fear, he stammered "I'm an athiest."
Without a momemt's hesitation, their leader boomed, "Well, are ye a Protestant athiest or a Cat'lic athiest?"
Or perhaps "Protestant Jew or Catholic Jew?".
Hitchens said: "...at first couldn't tell by looking whether someone was Catholic or Protestant."
ReplyDeleteWell, that's 'cause he was not used to looking for the physical traits that distinguish the two groups.
I'm an Irish-American, as in a descendant of Irish-Catholics relatively recently arrived from Ireland (in other words, I'm not Scots-Irish), and on my first trip to Northern Ireland, I could quite readily tell the difference between "them" and "us".
Basically, the Protestants in Northern Ireland generally look like the Scots Irish in this country, whereas the Catholics look like -- well, me! Yes, shorter than the Protestants, dark hair, lots of blue eyes, of course, but that's the Irish phenotype.
If I could do it quite readily and with fairly good accuracy (but not anywhere near 100%, of course), imagine how well the locals who grew up looking for such differences can spot one of "them".
Similarly, I have heard (though I have no direct personal experience) that in the mountain west of the U.S., some people claim that they can tell the difference between Mormons and non-Mormons simply by the way they look.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't doubt it. I'm in Idaho, and I notice a definite difference in mannerisms and, to a lesser extent, speech, between Mormons and non-Mormons. For example, Mormon men seem to be quite a bit more likely to be thought gay, even if they aren't. Then there's more obvious things like how they swear, or whether or not they frequent bars.
Also, the ethnic background of Mormons (largest three ethnicities being English, Danish, and Swedish) is quite different from non-Mormons (German, Irish, and Norwegian).
Of course, some are better than others. My younger brother seems to have a somewhat better "Mormon-dar" than I do.
Steve said: Similarly, you can tell what group somebody else belongs to generally by whom their relatives are.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I think you (like most Americans) grossly underestimate how well peoples in traditional societies can spot the differences between different families/groups, and how much time they spend on this. (This is probably because the U.S. is, compared to traditional socities, a hodge-podge of different groups, so spotting who's a Montague and who's a Capulet is not so important.)
For example, one time when I was visiting the area of Ireland where my mother came from, an old man, who I didn't know from Adam, stopped me on the street and said "you must be one of the so-and-so's" mentioning the name of my GRANDmother's family. I told him he was absolutely right and asked him how he knew. He said I was a dead ringer for one of my GREAT-GREAT-aunts on that side of my family, someone he remembered seeing when he was young.
People in traditional societies are very well tuned to the small differences between the members of local families/villages/towns. I even got pretty good at spotting people from one small area near where my mother is from because most of them had really big ears! :-p Plus, a long, lanky physical build, compared to the surrounding population.
People in societies like the U.S. and places like London that are more cosmopolitan are no longer in tune with these differences, 'cause we don't really need them and they don't really apply.
Anonymous said: "Last time I checked the data the Irish (of the Republic of Ireland, admittedly) were taller than the Scots on average, and had the highest incidence of blue eyes on the planet."
ReplyDeleteYou're mixing up the population of modern day Scotland and the descendants of Scots who now live in Northern Ireland.
The modern day Scottish population includes various types of people, including the peoples of the Hebrides, who look quite Irish (not surprisingly). The Protestants of Northern Ireland are the descendants mostly of Lowland Scots who have quite a lot of Anglo blood in them.
As if to make the question still more opaque, several reports stressed the essential similarity—ethnic, linguistic, cultural—between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek populations.
ReplyDeleteThose reports are completely wrong. Uzbeks are for the most part descendants of the indigenous Indo-European population of Central Asia, closely related to Iranians and Afghans. Kyrgyz are East Asian Turks - closely related to Mongols and Manchus. Kyrgyz look very Asian, Uzbeks much less so. Uzbeks are farmers and traders and traditionally live in the valleys, Kyrgyz are shepherds and nomads who occupy the mountains. A good cultural comparison might be Highland Scots vs. Norman English. Uzbeks do, mostly, speak a Turkic language because they were overrun by the Turkish/Mongol hordes, but genetically they are not at all the same people as the Kyrgyz and even most Americans could probably distinguish between the two populations. Hitchens picked a very bad example.
But nobody asks that question because the answer is so obvious most of the time: you belong to the racial group that your relatives belong to. (When it's not obvious to an individual, he sometimes writes a 150,000 word book, such as Dreams from My Father, to justify his answer).
ReplyDeleteGenius.
Perhaps it's time to forbid anonymous comenting. Six in a row to start the thread?
ReplyDeleteThis shows an ignorance of Jewish history. Judaism traditionally was extremely inward-oriented, kept things within the community and there was zero interest in "reaching out" beyond the ethnicity to the wider gentile culture. This changed only in the late 19th and 20th centuries with the influence of Enlightenment thought and nationalism.
ReplyDeletePreposterous. The Jews played a huge role in bringing about the Enlightenment three centuries before the 19th. Read your Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Israel. Around the same time, Sabbatai Zevi and the Dutch Jewish community exported crazed millennialism to England, resulting in the regicide. Read Heinrich Graetz and David S. Katz. Before that they spread heresy and atheism, going back to the 9th century. Read Popkin et al. And don't overlook Louis Israel Newman's "Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements". Before that, at least some of them preached the Gospel. Read Paul. Inward-oriented my ass.
Similarly, I have heard (though I have no direct personal experience) that in the mountain west of the U.S., some people claim that they can tell the difference between Mormons and non-Mormons simply by the way they look.
ReplyDeleteAnd why not?
ricpic,
ReplyDeleteThis is the closest humans can come to mitigating the inevitable conflict between tribes or peoples: each extended family on its own territory.
Oh sure. Because when arranged that way humans always leave each other alone and never attempt to appropriate others' territory.
It was precisely the carnage of the two world wars that moved so many liberals to support "multiculturalism." Far better, they implicitly argued, to have groups squabble internally than to attempt to destroy each other over magnified trivialities. Yes, it's not without its problems, but a person focused on mitigating the travails of diversity is a person all that much less likely to yearn to settle some historical hatred on the battlefield.
Since this is no longer possible in the modern world, or at least the modern western world, the next best solution to the problem of the inevitable friction between different peoples is an ever expanding economic pie
I would argue that it's still possible in the modern world, at least in the modern new world. People still very much do prefer to be around people like themselves. They don't require racial/ethnic exclusiveness but they do prefer to be the majority type around where they live (and work) and will go to quite some lengths to achieve that for themselves. WNs never tire of making this point. What WNs get wrong is the reason why people do it. It's not always (or even often, I would say) because they just hate, hate, hate the other races so much that they can't wait to get away from them and it's only PC brainwashing that sees them suppressing their innermost felings and admitting what they really think. In my opinion, they don't have all that much against blacks or latinos or whatever. They just want their diversity served a little more distant. It's much easier to appreciate the variety other kinds provide so long as your kind is the majority and I believe that's typically the motivating factor.
Now, a bit of unblinkered racial analysis might intensify those racial feelings into fully fledged WNism, but very often it will assuredly not. Personally, I'd like to see this debate held publicly. I think it can be done maturely and inoffensively. Whatever comes of it, at least society will be based on something more closely approximating reality than the present lunacy. (Of course, killing immigration should take priority. This stuff is the next step.)
But lions and tigers are competing. It would not surprise me to see those two species get into some nasty cat fights.
ReplyDeleteLions live in africa and tigers live in asia.
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Within the last 3000 years, in
India, Indian Tigers have slowly taken over most of India at the expense of Indian Lions
Those reports are completely wrong. Uzbeks are for the most part descendants of the indigenous Indo-European population of Central Asia, closely related to Iranians and Afghans. Kyrgyz are East Asian Turks - closely related to Mongols and Manchus. Kyrgyz look very Asian, Uzbeks much less so. Uzbeks are farmers and traders and traditionally live in the valleys, Kyrgyz are shepherds and nomads who occupy the mountains. A good cultural comparison might be Highland Scots vs. Norman English. Uzbeks do, mostly, speak a Turkic language because they were overrun by the Turkish/Mongol hordes, but genetically they are not at all the same people as the Kyrgyz and even most Americans could probably distinguish between the two populations. Hitchens picked a very bad example.
ReplyDeleteI suspected it might be something like this... the Uzbeks are indeed Turkic, but they do seem to have picked up a large fraction of Persian blood and many seem more Caucasoid than Mongoloid. Kyrgyz and Kazakhs, however, both look like they could pass for Chinese.
I don't get it, have none of you been to Utah or the surrounding territories? Something like 50% of Mormons have "Mormon hair" while something like only 5% of the rest of the American white population does. Mormons are the most easilly identifiable multi-generational genetic group in America and everyone is going on about their manner of dress?
ReplyDeleteI'll admit to being more anthropologically aware than most people (yesterday I predicted the country of origin and immigration date of an elderly bookseller woman in central California) but the Mormon look is so obvious and blatant and pervasive that I can't believe that a bunch of race obsessives like this crowd manages to miss it so totally.
"I doubt that Hitchen's finding that the Irish are short and dark compared to the Scots can be backed up by any physical evidence. There are more likely psychological reasons that explain why the Brit Hitchen and his co-workers believe their people have superior physical traits to the enemy tribe.
ReplyDeleteLast time I checked the data the Irish (of the Republic of Ireland, admittedly) were taller than the Scots on average, and had the highest incidence of blue eyes on the planet. Perhaps the Irish of Northern Ireland are shorter, though (for similar reasons that the North Koreans are shorter than their southern cousins?).
What his Northern Irish colleagues were doing was picking up clues from accent or names... the information from either of those two sources is overwhelming. They can tell if a fellow local is a Catholic or Protestant as soon as the stranger opens their mouth. And no need to start measuring "Declan"'s skull to make a good guess about his religion or ethnic origin."
The Irish are swarthy theme is simply part of a nordic master race theology which is rarely stated openly but always referenced by british supremacist writers. Ironically, nordic supremacism is common in the anglo-sphere but rare in actual Scandinavian countries. In my experience, most anglo-saxon don't meet the criteria for a purely nordic phenotype.