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I know that 1984 is a commentary on Stalin’s purges. And it also prefigures what happened in China later on. But it’s general commentary on human psychology was prescient. I was recently talking to a friend who is a pretty conventional liberal American (Sander’s supporter, but OK with supporting Clinton in the general). We were talking about Donald Trump’s appeal to many people. On the specific issue about banning Muslims I think he has tapped into a broad vein of American opinion which observes rightly that Muslim majority nations are very illiberal. In response to this, my friend looked behind her (we were in my living room, and I don’t have a roommate), and whispered under her breath “Well, Muhammed was a pretty bad guy, so what do you expect?” My point is that it’s as if there are Telescreens monitoring people, even though they aren’t.
Many people have “taboo” thoughts all the time, but are aware that we live in a social environment where we can’t express them (to be fair, this is a pretty universal human norm). There are a laundry list of things that are “not OK” for American liberals to believe, but they believe them often anyway. Similarly, there was a laundry list of positions which were supposed to be held by all conservatives by the conservative elites (e.g., extreme pro-Israel support without any qualification or moderation). Donald Trump has violated these norms, and lived to tell the tale. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the near future a Bernie Sanders type figure emerges who is able to overturn the power of the Democratic establishment. Social norms are strong and hard to change…until you change them. Things can happen fast.
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The irony is these same people are the ones who want America to become more illiberal.
Stalin, totalitarianism, psychology in general, of course the novel is about all of those things. But a friend of mine who used to work for the BBC likes to point out that Orwell was connected to the BBC when he was writing 1984. And my friend assures me that his experience at the BBC could be described in precisely the words Orwell uses to describe Winston Smith’s time as an employee of the Ministry of Truth. My friend is several decades younger than Orwell, of course, but perhaps the inner life of the institution hasn’t changed that much.
Razib, you’ve said this in a couple of posts. Which examples of this change happening fast do you find most interesting? The obvious examples are social liberalisation (e.g. on the role of women, homosexuality etc.) but to me these changes seem to have taken place over decades.
Some one might listen to you in your home.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35639549
Well, you never know.
I would have thought that vein would be more of an association between Muslims and terrorist attacks, rather than any kind of judgement about the illiberality of Muslim-majority nations –which I’m not sure most casual observers are educated enough to make.
As CupOfCanada mentions, some conservatives might find aspects of the “illiberality” of Muslim-majority nations appealing. It brings to mind the Canadian conservative movement’s attempt to boost its support base by playing on the social conservatism of immigrant and religious-minority groups living here. It seemed to work well, for a while — then backfired spectacularly, at least at the federal level.
I have yet to hear anyone in North America arguing that women without headcovering will inevitably turn men into ravening beasts unable to control their lust at the sight of women's hair. [Maybe there are American Christians who take this line. Dunno.] I admit I'm picking on an argument from the Muslim world that has always struck me as especially ridiculous, but it seems to be very widespread and enforced as a social norm if not also by law. The only two possible explanations are, 1) these societies believe this because they are insane; or 2) these societies believe this because it is true and therefore by definition their men are insane.
Neither have I heard anyone on the North American right, exercised though they may be by the idea that there is a 'rape culture' and as much as they suggest women have some responsibility not to place themselves in dangerous positions [so do men; being drunk to the point of incapacity is always unwise, and in some places it is so for men too], argue that it is natural and inevitable that women will be raped by crowds of barbarians if they show their faces at public events, even protests. This appears to be a normal event in Egypt, one for which Egyptian society seems to have many apologists.
There is therefore a huge gulf between the allegedly more illiberal America that the right might create in its fever dreams , and the type of society from the Middle East whose norms they do not wish to see imported to North America.
I am not sure if the case is finished, but here in Canada lawyers are appealing an honour killing case from Ontario from a couple of years ago. Afghans. Husband, son, and wife #2 shoved wife #1 and three daughters in a car into a canal. The basis of the defence counsel's appeal has something to do with it being improper for the prosecution to have brought in generic experts to explain honour killing. Biased the court, of course.
Most of the right's arguments are against importing these social norms into Canada, not in favour of creating Canadian versions of them. I do not consider myself illiberal for opposing these things nor supporting our citizenship guide calling them "barbaric" practices. [The new Liberal government seems disposed to eliminate this unwarranted racist judgmentalism.]
Similarly, most of the hysteria against 'conservative Muslim' modes of female dress is drawing more on the liberal/progressive heritage. Indeed, influenced as it has been mainly by Quebecers, it's drawing on the French policy of laicite that Quebec basically adopted out of thin air over the past 50 years. If anything, the right adopted a very liberal and even partial feminist line in arguing against Muslim dress. The resulting conflict more represented civil war between the secularist and multicultural wings of Canadian progressivism, with the right adopting the former tack for attempted electoral gain. It was a high risk and ultimately low reward gambit.
I'm a sort of Canadian conservative, and would not for a second want to be thought either progressive or liberal in most senses of those terms... But I'm from the Anglo side of the house and French republican laicite never sits well with me. It's an alien import only present since the 1960s. And I don't recognize much Canadian tradition of telling people how to dress, save that they not be naked in public [it's illiberal to impose ugliness on fellow citizens, which would be the majority of cases]. So I don't expect the law to outlaw any of these costumes. I can't say I'm all that chuffed to see them more frequently, though.
gay marriage last 10 years. civil rights btwn 1960 to 1970. the rise of modern american evangelical religiosity in the 1820s. the attitude toward jews in germany in the 1930s (from one of the most philosemitic to antisemitic european nations).
It took people some time to notice that there was no longer strong enforcement, so some brave individuals started to shift the Overton window. Than some people at the top (communist bigwigs) jumped on the 'democratization' bandwagon, after which enforcement of communist speech norms became all but impossible, and the whole repressive apparatus of the state became disoriented. (They were still busy monitoring the whole process, even signing up thousands of new informers as late as 1989, as well as trying to influence the transition to democracy by using their informers - who were everywhere, including among the leaders of the new opposition parties - to tone down the anti-communist messages of the political parties, and informally giving them dire warnings of what might happen if "things got too far" and "the Soviets would start cracking down on the whole country"... It appears they would've followed orders if a strong communist party leadership gave them the go-ahead to crush the opposition, but there was no strong communist party leadership in any event.)
If anyone is interested in intelligence or embryo selection, I’ve tried to model the current costs and benefits: http://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection
“from one of the most philosemitic to antisemitic european nations”
If you read about the social dynamics and art criticism of turn-of-the-century German philosophers like Nietzsche, you realize that they were in exactly the kind of philosemitic period we have been in for the past few decades.
People fearing reprisal published criticisms of jews in pamphlets using pseudonyms, in stead of on the internet, but there are very striking similarities. Then, like Razib says, the underlying buildup of resentment reached a critical mass within a very short time, and the public tone changed extremely rapidly.
Trump isn’t seem as a problem for Israel by most actual Israelis, 61 % of those polled think he is a friend. He is not particularly interested in protecting Arabs in the occupied territories. Nor does he think it is America’s responsibility to freeze an increasingly fluid Middle East, where Israel may quietly be seeing benefits in a 1948 situation arising.
What Trump is a problem for is the US immigration lobby, in which US resident Jewish commentators articulate the liberal establishments. Obama or Clinton type policies are not in Israel’s long term future as a Jewish state.
While most Western people, whatever they may or may not think, would never openly say Muslims (or followers of any other religions) are bad, being opposed to mass immigration into one’s country is hardly taboo. Trump has got this far because of people with status in their community, who are openly campaigning for him on the basis of his immigration stand. I think the Republican party were over stretching the people’s ideas of what core Republican values are.
One wonders if SJWs’ extreme racial awareness combined with the growing cynicism of old age will have toxic consequences in the future…
Razib, i’m trying to come up with a good definition of race (race is a natural phenomenon whereby there is a correlation between ancestry and genetic similarity).
The only problem is that I’m not sure how to measure how ancestrally similar two people are. Would counting back the number of generations until two people are descended from a common ancestor with no divergences thereafter be a good measure of how ancestrally similar two people are?
A racial group is a partly inbred extended biological family
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/05/definitions-race-ethnicity-and-now.html
I am not sure what kind of measure you are trying to create, but do we really need one? Asking them is usually good enough. For medical significance more complete scans can be obtained. Perhaps if you gave an example of how one might use your measure my small brain could understand what you are driving at.
http: //www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297(07)62578-6?cc=y=
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/gb-2002-3-7-comment2007.pdfThat
fran rather than reinventing the wheel here is one from iSteve:
A racial group is a partly inbred extended biological family
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/05/definitions-race-ethnicity-and-now.html
I am not sure what kind of measure you are trying to create, but do we really need one? Asking them is usually good enough. For medical significance more complete scans can be obtained. Perhaps if you gave an example of how one might use your measure my small brain could understand what you are driving at.
http: //www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297(07)62578-6?cc=y=
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/gb-2002-3-7-comment2007.pdfThat
> Many people have “taboo” thoughts
I have many thoughts that would make me lose many friends.
Oddly, I can’t think of many thoughts that others could express that would make me lose them as friends.
I wonder if I am self-deluding.
Certainly, if a friend said he supported, say, ISIS (a rather extreme example of thoughtcrime), I might be disturbed. But I’d be more likely to make a note and think, that’s interesting, and want to know more.
However, I may be fooling myself. A guy who said he liked ISIS would in many automatic ways be removed from my circle of friends. And, except for a very good friend, I might shrug and say, good riddance.
So if, say, questioning gay marriage or supporting Drumpfitler is seen by my friends as equivalent to sympathizing with ISIS… well, hello, loneliness…
Interesting. Can you give examples of such pamphlets?
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2016/01/review-nietzsches-jewish-problem-part-one-of-two/
The musician Wagner produced one, under the pseudonym of K. Freigedank (“K. Freethought”), about Hollywood-style Jewish mafia behaviour, censorship, and negative influence in general. Nietzsche and Wagner would eventually get into a relationship-ending fight about Wagner’s anti-semitism. Read this:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2016/01/review-nietzsches-jewish-problem-part-one-of-two/
Pew polls on attitudes towards religious groups show that Muslims are the least liked group, even less liked than atheists. For Republicans, Islam appears to be the least acceptable religion; on the Democratic side there appears to be a mix, for some the issue is that Muslims are too obviously religious (grouping them with Evangelical Christians and Mormons). The sad part is that knowing someone that belongs to one of these groups improves that group’s ratings, but Muslims are the only group that retains a negative rating (just barely) in that circumstance.
Is this open thread a safe space where I can confess that I hate and despise International Women’s Day?
A startling recent example of blackwhite: “KKK is a leftist group”.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/02/29/cnns-jeffrey-lord-defends-trumps-refusal-to-dis/208874
When I visited Jewish Museum Berlin, the impression was that anti-Semitism was long tradition in Germany. Well, the museum might be wrong too.
History is like puzzle.
http://www.newrepublic.com/book/review/philosemitism-history-sutcliffe-karp/Replies: @Razib Khan, @AG
History is like puzzle.Replies: @AnonymousCoward, @PD Shaw
Anti-Semitism is a long tradition everywhere that Jews have lived. But Germany comparatively less so, and was famously welcoming of Jews throughout the 1800s, it was literally the time and place where the term “philosemitism” was coined.
http://www.newrepublic.com/book/review/philosemitism-history-sutcliffe-karp/
this is false. anti-semitism was never a problem in india. while the jewish community of kaifeng succumbed to assimilation in the 19th century. anti-semitism seems to be a problem in the xtian and muslim world because both these religions notionally tolerate jews, but toleration of any religion which broke their monopoly has been difficult for them.Replies: @BobX, @AnonymousCoward
http://www.newrepublic.com/book/review/philosemitism-history-sutcliffe-karp/Replies: @Razib Khan, @AG
Anti-Semitism is a long tradition everywhere that Jews have lived
this is false. anti-semitism was never a problem in india. while the jewish community of kaifeng succumbed to assimilation in the 19th century. anti-semitism seems to be a problem in the xtian and muslim world because both these religions notionally tolerate jews, but toleration of any religion which broke their monopoly has been difficult for them.
Kirk:
Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.Replies: @Razib Khan
A) The jews of India never grew to much more than a handful of thousands, immersed in a gigantic native population. Never grew to much power. And most of these few thousands are Bene Israel. IE, so interbred with the local Indian population as to generally be visually indistinguishable, very cross-cultural. A lot like with Ethiopian Jews.
http://www.jewsofindia.org/who_are_we.html
B) While there weren't surveys back then, the current ones indicate that there's plenty of anti-semitism now.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/adl-global-100-survey-anti-semitism-hinduism-india/
Of course, this is all very tangential to the subject of rapid societal change.Replies: @Razib Khan
http://www.newrepublic.com/book/review/philosemitism-history-sutcliffe-karp/Replies: @Razib Khan, @AG
From Jewish Museum Berlin, the status of Jewish people were almost like a caste in India, which had specific social and biological segregation from the rest of society. Like India, there was economical need for such caste existence. In India, slaughter and funeral service are reserved for lower caste. In medieval Europe, money management/tax collection/loan/trading middle men were reserved for Jews. The dependency on Jews for such service create love/hate relationship just like your feeling for car sales men at car dealership. If you thought you got good deal, you loved that dealer. Until you found better deal, your love turned into hatred for dealer scamming you believe `good’ deal you got.
It is not simple answer. But overall is very negative attitude to this specific `caste’. As landlord, I also like to have Jewish agents to collect my lease since they are pretty tough and did their jobs right. For good cooperating famers, I deal with them myself. For difficult ones, I like to have lease management agents to handle (for a fee).
depends on the time and place. ask the medici's and fuggers. actually, jews occupied even a subsegment of the finance operation from what i'm to understand. high risk propositions and underserved markets.
this is false. anti-semitism was never a problem in india. while the jewish community of kaifeng succumbed to assimilation in the 19th century. anti-semitism seems to be a problem in the xtian and muslim world because both these religions notionally tolerate jews, but toleration of any religion which broke their monopoly has been difficult for them.Replies: @BobX, @AnonymousCoward
Razib you hold anti-semitism out as a xtian and muslim problem with India as an exception with the implication that it is dominant religion that is the differentiator (if you intended something different please correct me). Don’t China, Japan, and even Uruguay have similar trajectories with Judaism? So perhaps there are some other confounding factors than just straight up religious competition.
Kirk:
Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.
there were no jews in japan. s. america at the elite culture and uruguay in particular is like europe.
china and india are similar, though different. in china the elite culture of the mandarins slowly absorbed the jewish elite. the rest of the jews who didn't become han seem to have become hui, though with some memory of their difference. in india some of the same may have happened, but it seems that india's endogamous nature allowed for persistence of their identity despite the assimilative aspects of the dynamic.
As CupOfCanada mentions, some conservatives might find aspects of the "illiberality" of Muslim-majority nations appealing. It brings to mind the Canadian conservative movement's attempt to boost its support base by playing on the social conservatism of immigrant and religious-minority groups living here. It seemed to work well, for a while -- then backfired spectacularly, at least at the federal level.Replies: @random observer
The gap between the most illiberal ideas I have heard from the Canadian right, and possibly even the American right, and the everyday life of even a fairly progressive Muslim country like Egypt is nevertheless vast. [I’m being a bit provocative here. Bangladesh would be a much better example of a relatively progressive Muslim country, I suspect, but Egypt is still considered not too bad by the standards of such places as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.]
I have yet to hear anyone in North America arguing that women without headcovering will inevitably turn men into ravening beasts unable to control their lust at the sight of women’s hair. [Maybe there are American Christians who take this line. Dunno.] I admit I’m picking on an argument from the Muslim world that has always struck me as especially ridiculous, but it seems to be very widespread and enforced as a social norm if not also by law. The only two possible explanations are, 1) these societies believe this because they are insane; or 2) these societies believe this because it is true and therefore by definition their men are insane.
Neither have I heard anyone on the North American right, exercised though they may be by the idea that there is a ‘rape culture’ and as much as they suggest women have some responsibility not to place themselves in dangerous positions [so do men; being drunk to the point of incapacity is always unwise, and in some places it is so for men too], argue that it is natural and inevitable that women will be raped by crowds of barbarians if they show their faces at public events, even protests. This appears to be a normal event in Egypt, one for which Egyptian society seems to have many apologists.
There is therefore a huge gulf between the allegedly more illiberal America that the right might create in its fever dreams , and the type of society from the Middle East whose norms they do not wish to see imported to North America.
I am not sure if the case is finished, but here in Canada lawyers are appealing an honour killing case from Ontario from a couple of years ago. Afghans. Husband, son, and wife #2 shoved wife #1 and three daughters in a car into a canal. The basis of the defence counsel’s appeal has something to do with it being improper for the prosecution to have brought in generic experts to explain honour killing. Biased the court, of course.
Most of the right’s arguments are against importing these social norms into Canada, not in favour of creating Canadian versions of them. I do not consider myself illiberal for opposing these things nor supporting our citizenship guide calling them “barbaric” practices. [The new Liberal government seems disposed to eliminate this unwarranted racist judgmentalism.]
Similarly, most of the hysteria against ‘conservative Muslim’ modes of female dress is drawing more on the liberal/progressive heritage. Indeed, influenced as it has been mainly by Quebecers, it’s drawing on the French policy of laicite that Quebec basically adopted out of thin air over the past 50 years. If anything, the right adopted a very liberal and even partial feminist line in arguing against Muslim dress. The resulting conflict more represented civil war between the secularist and multicultural wings of Canadian progressivism, with the right adopting the former tack for attempted electoral gain. It was a high risk and ultimately low reward gambit.
I’m a sort of Canadian conservative, and would not for a second want to be thought either progressive or liberal in most senses of those terms… But I’m from the Anglo side of the house and French republican laicite never sits well with me. It’s an alien import only present since the 1960s. And I don’t recognize much Canadian tradition of telling people how to dress, save that they not be naked in public [it’s illiberal to impose ugliness on fellow citizens, which would be the majority of cases]. So I don’t expect the law to outlaw any of these costumes. I can’t say I’m all that chuffed to see them more frequently, though.
In medieval Europe, money management/tax collection/loan/trading middle men were reserved for Jews.
depends on the time and place. ask the medici’s and fuggers. actually, jews occupied even a subsegment of the finance operation from what i’m to understand. high risk propositions and underserved markets.
Kirk:
Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.Replies: @Razib Khan
Razib you hold anti-semitism out as a xtian and muslim problem with India as an exception with the implication that it is dominant religion that is the differentiator (if you intended something different please correct me). Don’t China, Japan, and even Uruguay have similar trajectories with Judaism?
there were no jews in japan. s. america at the elite culture and uruguay in particular is like europe.
china and india are similar, though different. in china the elite culture of the mandarins slowly absorbed the jewish elite. the rest of the jews who didn’t become han seem to have become hui, though with some memory of their difference. in india some of the same may have happened, but it seems that india’s endogamous nature allowed for persistence of their identity despite the assimilative aspects of the dynamic.
As Razib’s list of whiplash social transformations demonstrates, normative structures and boundaries of acceptable discourse are remarkably malleable and easily dislocated. (And there are many many more examples. I was just reading an account of the Kosovo war where neighbors turned from children playing together and borrowing cups of sugar to raping and killing children in front of parents literally in a matter of days.)
The fact is that most people don’t think about things too deeply. Trump exposed the reality that the conservative political neo-con/neo-lib coalition which coalesced around Reagan’s three-legged stool (social conservatism, nationalism/militarism, neo-liberal economics) was built on sand. Reagan simply was able to sell a scapegoat to the people who weren’t doing so well: “the government is the problem.” The entire theoretical scaffolding of the neo-con/neo-lib coalition was constructed around this political message. Once built, the edifice appeared beautiful and unshakable. In reality, however, the support of the edifice by base of the conservative movement was a shallow ephemeral fabrication strung along by coercive social enforcement of norms and discourse boundaries. As soon as Trump offered a different scapegoat (immigrants, Muslims) and shifted the discourse window by “telling it like it is,” a big chunk of the coalition split off and demonstrated that it has very little use for the conservative principles that seemed sacrosanct just a minute ago.
Neo-con/neo-lib establishment (in which I include Clinton) is fooling itself if it thinks the coalition can be put back together. Prols are suddenly allowed to crimethink such heresies as “redistribution of wealth,” “Bush lied,” “torture those assholes and kill their families,” etc. This signals a sudden reconfiguration of the body politic. It’s a dangerous and uncertain time.
Worth noting also that this isn't really a mark against the validity of that coalition- no coalition of ideologies or interests is ever without tensions or lasts forever.
I share your assessment of the dangerous quality of the times -- I wouldn't mind a reconfiguration, I just sense I won't get quite what I want, a coalition that is-
lightly populist [bringing in real popular support is needed and just but I have a soft-elitist sensibility and can do without too much pandering to creationists, to pick only one example from one end of the spectrum; My equivalent categorization for people at the other end of the spectrum I would like to marginalize is a bit hard to name- I'll have to fall back on some combination of consciously retro reference to 'hippies' and more up to date reference to whatever one calls millennial PC enthusiasts],
lightly socon [I like modern urban life existing and do not wish to persecute people for their sexual orientation, but I can do without PC cant about human nature and wouldn't mind social norms based on restraint]
medium-well nationalist- [countries are sovereign and entitled to pursue their interests in foreign policy, and to determine their security policy, immigration policy, and so forth; but cooperation among like-minded countries is nice, justifies compromise, and neither wars of ideology nor teenage rhetorical posturing/boasting are helpful]
strong but sane on national security [interest-based, cognizant that diplomacy and force are complementary rather than exclusive; aware that problems can be managed as well as tackled whole-hog, and that sometimes the former is the better choice, sometimes not; willing to use force but not enthused about its capacity to effect massive social change unaided; not necessarily believing that massive social change is a necessary outcome of policy; broadly aware that there are laws and working within them; conscious that there isn't really much reason at present to torture people and kill their families, still less reason to make such an extreme tool a matter of policy and boast about it in public];
Trump gives me a fair bit of that but falls far short on other counts, which are probably easy to identify. The existing American establishment as a whole seems to oscillate between the idea that war is the only tool and the idea that war is not a tool, yet in both cases it has assumed the ability to remake the world in its preferred image, without really articulating a means or a connection to American interests [it's not impossible- there is an interest-based case for America's role in both world wars and much of the Cold War, and for a forward policy in the Middle East and Central Asia]. It sometimes has seemed as though policy is made for very narrow interests and covered by absurd ideology because the latter is what Americans have been trained to think is the right basis for policy. I think even the establishment believes it.
One other note that somewhat applies to both the security and economic realms- a willingness to govern in the interest of the country and its people and to say so and be seen to do so, with the hope of recreating some trust when the government has to turn around and say no.
Examples might be:
No, the world cannot be made 100% safe all the time everywhere and neither can America- it never was quite that safe; No place ever was. [I am still traumatized by NRO writers ten or more years ago shrieking in print about how the government had to keep people SAFE!!! with the implication being, all the time, everywhere, even abroad, without much concern for the responsibility of a free people to take some ownership and heed Ben Franklin]. It should be possible to run a security policy in the interests of the country, aggressive but lawful, that works well without the occasional modest gaps becoming the basis for national panic. 9/11 was a major terrorist attack and a serious national security failing. San Bernardino was a localized attack and a modest failing, of the kind that a free country with real enemies might do more than it has to prevent, and which might reveal specific failings needing remedy, but which alone would not justify massive new expansion of the security state or massive new restrictions on free people.
No, other countries don't have to be mini-Americas or even like America for America to work with them; No the world isn't all democratic and that's OK; And, alas,
No, the economic world of 1955 is never coming back unless there is another world war that devastates all of Europe and Asia and leaves America intact; the worldwide cataclysm that briefly made America a bubble of unheard-of prosperity for all classes isn't being replicated again. The government can make policy and implement it with its best eye toward managing problems, helping citizens, and maximizing America's position in this world, and should be doing those things, but even the greatest possible success, even an America as or more relatively prosperous than in 1955 [which I remain unconvinced is possible] will not look exactly like 1955 and the requirements for individuals to prosper may not be the same or as comparatively easy to access. Just reminding the voters who remember 1955 that their America didn't get that way solely through the efforts of its people or the wisdom of its leaders, but as a consequence of the massive annihilation of competitors both by others and directly by America, and by a series of attendant circumstances that favoured US industry and bankers, would be a useful corrective.
In the end, it won't be for me to say. I'm a Canadian [I try to say this at least once per ten comments over on Sailer's page...]. My interest is threefold:
1. America is an ally of old and a country I respect and whose positive future I hope for
2. My country is similar to America in some ways and has some of the same issues and attitudes to choose among or balance, and as a conservative in Canada I watch to see what new forces are in play regularly
3. My country needs America as an ally and trading partner, and a friendly society on the level of communities and individuals, and I want my country to prosper in the future, first and foremost among my concerns;
Apropos of 3, I figure such compromises as we want on economic issues are usually fair enough, so I hope for a US that doesn't want to either go full autarky [you should never go full autarky] or to go for continental autarky that includes us;
And I figure we cooperate pretty closely on security, so we should have bought some credit even with whoever staffs those departments in a Trump Administration. So long as someone points out to him that Canada's infamous diversity and immigration problems and role as a generator for terrorists are all actually pretty small potatoes compared with the diversity, immigration problems and role as a generator of terrorists of the United States itself. So maybe build a wall in the south, take a few steps to clean up the local American neighbourhood, and come talk to us about our 'hood, see how else we can help one another.
I am sure we can make a deal...
[Sorry for the length- I realize this is more Sailer material than Razib material.]
History is like puzzle.Replies: @AnonymousCoward, @PD Shaw
“When I visited Jewish Museum Berlin, the impression was that anti-Semitism was long tradition in Germany.”
There were three strands that combined in the 1930s:
1. Religious-based prejudice, dating back to at least Luther, which was widespread throughout Continental Europe. The worst was probably Poland at this time, though it was the most religiously-tolerant European country at one time. This was inadequate in and of itself because it was religious, and the churches pushed back on NAZI race-policy to the extent it attacked Christian Jews.
2. Folk-Darwinism. The intelligentsia in many countries bought into eugenics and survival of the fittest. Some of its noted proponents believed that Jews were self-evidently successful and therefore fit, so this was not an explicitly, or at least necessarily, anti-Semitic p.o.v.
3. “Stab in the Back.” Surrendering to end World War I, while German troops occupied lands far to the east and west, was incomprehensible. Conspiracy theories emerged which combined the long established otherness of the Jew, with the importance of racial hygiene for national survival in a world of invisible hostile actors.
"The Jew" is an archetypal figure for a certain kind of otherness in European mythology, and such figures hold tremendous power. German philosemitic posture was a frail superstructure adopted by some urban intellectual types. In the end, the myth will rear its head. It may not win every war over the long term, but will win many battles along the way.
The conditions you list look right, but to me they do not seem sufficient to fully explain the rise of Nazism. Without a charismatic leader like Hitler they might have remained below the surface, or at least not expressed so radically. Was Hitler inevitable? Trump and Sanders seem like an inevitable backlash in our new Gilded Age (hate to group those two together like that since I am a Sanders supporter.)Replies: @PD Shaw
this is false. anti-semitism was never a problem in india. while the jewish community of kaifeng succumbed to assimilation in the 19th century. anti-semitism seems to be a problem in the xtian and muslim world because both these religions notionally tolerate jews, but toleration of any religion which broke their monopoly has been difficult for them.Replies: @BobX, @AnonymousCoward
While I take your point,
A) The jews of India never grew to much more than a handful of thousands, immersed in a gigantic native population. Never grew to much power. And most of these few thousands are Bene Israel. IE, so interbred with the local Indian population as to generally be visually indistinguishable, very cross-cultural. A lot like with Ethiopian Jews.
http://www.jewsofindia.org/who_are_we.html
B) While there weren’t surveys back then, the current ones indicate that there’s plenty of anti-semitism now.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/adl-global-100-survey-anti-semitism-hinduism-india/
Of course, this is all very tangential to the subject of rapid societal change.
this is a bullshit analogy. if you're going to talk genetics with me you need to bring your shit. there's plenty of indian jewish and ethiopian genetic data out there (you can download it from the estonian biocentre).
1) indian jews clearly have jewish ancestry, especially paternal
2) ethiopian jews don't seem to be any genetically different from tigray people. they may actually be judaizers (that is, orthodox xtians who slowly judaified their identity)
and they are visually distinctive, as most indians can tell you. it is only that they overlap a lot with other indian groups, such as the the chitpavan brahmins, though that is coincidental as opposed to due to common ancestry. that is all.
also, i don't see where their admixture is that relevant in the indian case. ashkenazi jews clearly have western european ancestry as well. it looks like pretty much all jews outside of mizrahi jews in places like iraq and iran have exogenous maternal ancestors.Replies: @AnonymousCoward
A) The jews of India never grew to much more than a handful of thousands, immersed in a gigantic native population. Never grew to much power. And most of these few thousands are Bene Israel. IE, so interbred with the local Indian population as to generally be visually indistinguishable, very cross-cultural. A lot like with Ethiopian Jews.
http://www.jewsofindia.org/who_are_we.html
B) While there weren't surveys back then, the current ones indicate that there's plenty of anti-semitism now.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/adl-global-100-survey-anti-semitism-hinduism-india/
Of course, this is all very tangential to the subject of rapid societal change.Replies: @Razib Khan
And most of these few thousands are Bene Israel. IE, so interbred with the local Indian population as to generally be visually indistinguishable, very cross-cultural. A lot like with Ethiopian Jews.
this is a bullshit analogy. if you’re going to talk genetics with me you need to bring your shit. there’s plenty of indian jewish and ethiopian genetic data out there (you can download it from the estonian biocentre).
1) indian jews clearly have jewish ancestry, especially paternal
2) ethiopian jews don’t seem to be any genetically different from tigray people. they may actually be judaizers (that is, orthodox xtians who slowly judaified their identity)
and they are visually distinctive, as most indians can tell you. it is only that they overlap a lot with other indian groups, such as the the chitpavan brahmins, though that is coincidental as opposed to due to common ancestry. that is all.
also, i don’t see where their admixture is that relevant in the indian case. ashkenazi jews clearly have western european ancestry as well. it looks like pretty much all jews outside of mizrahi jews in places like iraq and iran have exogenous maternal ancestors.
this is a bullshit analogy. if you're going to talk genetics with me you need to bring your shit. there's plenty of indian jewish and ethiopian genetic data out there (you can download it from the estonian biocentre).
1) indian jews clearly have jewish ancestry, especially paternal
2) ethiopian jews don't seem to be any genetically different from tigray people. they may actually be judaizers (that is, orthodox xtians who slowly judaified their identity)
and they are visually distinctive, as most indians can tell you. it is only that they overlap a lot with other indian groups, such as the the chitpavan brahmins, though that is coincidental as opposed to due to common ancestry. that is all.
also, i don't see where their admixture is that relevant in the indian case. ashkenazi jews clearly have western european ancestry as well. it looks like pretty much all jews outside of mizrahi jews in places like iraq and iran have exogenous maternal ancestors.Replies: @AnonymousCoward
Mea culpa for my language, though not for my meaning: I do not mean to say that Bene Israel are equally as genetically similar to the local Indian population as Ethiopian Jews are to local Ethiopians, though I can see how that meaning came across. My point is that the majority Jewish group, Bene Israel, are much less distinctive that the other two Indian groups. Which factors into my larger point that the Jews of India are relatively small, relatively powerless, and both culturally and visually integrated in India.
My father, who lived most of his life as a Jew in the Soviet Union, told me one day that he was married once before my mother. He had never talked about that before or since. He married an ethnic Russian woman after the war when he was in his early 20s. They were happily married until one day he overheard her say something while she was beating out their rug: “I am beating the Jew smell out.”
“The Jew” is an archetypal figure for a certain kind of otherness in European mythology, and such figures hold tremendous power. German philosemitic posture was a frail superstructure adopted by some urban intellectual types. In the end, the myth will rear its head. It may not win every war over the long term, but will win many battles along the way.
The conditions you list look right, but to me they do not seem sufficient to fully explain the rise of Nazism. Without a charismatic leader like Hitler they might have remained below the surface, or at least not expressed so radically. Was Hitler inevitable? Trump and Sanders seem like an inevitable backlash in our new Gilded Age (hate to group those two together like that since I am a Sanders supporter.)
"The Jew" is an archetypal figure for a certain kind of otherness in European mythology, and such figures hold tremendous power. German philosemitic posture was a frail superstructure adopted by some urban intellectual types. In the end, the myth will rear its head. It may not win every war over the long term, but will win many battles along the way.
The conditions you list look right, but to me they do not seem sufficient to fully explain the rise of Nazism. Without a charismatic leader like Hitler they might have remained below the surface, or at least not expressed so radically. Was Hitler inevitable? Trump and Sanders seem like an inevitable backlash in our new Gilded Age (hate to group those two together like that since I am a Sanders supporter.)Replies: @PD Shaw
I certainly agree Hitler was a necessary condition to the rise of NAZIsm, but I think he is simply a product of these three strains of antisemitism: religious, scientific and political. I may not have been clear as to the third, but blaming the Jews for losing WWI was akin to the conspiracy theory of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. My theory is that all three of these strains emerged in Germany in the 1930s, and one can observe in the degree to which other countries assisted in the German project the degree to which these strains existed there.
The fact is that most people don't think about things too deeply. Trump exposed the reality that the conservative political neo-con/neo-lib coalition which coalesced around Reagan's three-legged stool (social conservatism, nationalism/militarism, neo-liberal economics) was built on sand. Reagan simply was able to sell a scapegoat to the people who weren't doing so well: "the government is the problem." The entire theoretical scaffolding of the neo-con/neo-lib coalition was constructed around this political message. Once built, the edifice appeared beautiful and unshakable. In reality, however, the support of the edifice by base of the conservative movement was a shallow ephemeral fabrication strung along by coercive social enforcement of norms and discourse boundaries. As soon as Trump offered a different scapegoat (immigrants, Muslims) and shifted the discourse window by "telling it like it is," a big chunk of the coalition split off and demonstrated that it has very little use for the conservative principles that seemed sacrosanct just a minute ago.
Neo-con/neo-lib establishment (in which I include Clinton) is fooling itself if it thinks the coalition can be put back together. Prols are suddenly allowed to crimethink such heresies as "redistribution of wealth," "Bush lied," "torture those assholes and kill their families," etc. This signals a sudden reconfiguration of the body politic. It's a dangerous and uncertain time.Replies: @random observer
Probably pretty close to the right depiction of the times, but worth remembering that the Reagan coalition was never all that tight nor seen to be- its internal divisions have been many, loud, and widely discussed for 40 years. I wonder to what degree it was ever all that real at ground level.
Worth noting also that this isn’t really a mark against the validity of that coalition- no coalition of ideologies or interests is ever without tensions or lasts forever.
I share your assessment of the dangerous quality of the times — I wouldn’t mind a reconfiguration, I just sense I won’t get quite what I want, a coalition that is-
lightly populist [bringing in real popular support is needed and just but I have a soft-elitist sensibility and can do without too much pandering to creationists, to pick only one example from one end of the spectrum; My equivalent categorization for people at the other end of the spectrum I would like to marginalize is a bit hard to name- I’ll have to fall back on some combination of consciously retro reference to ‘hippies’ and more up to date reference to whatever one calls millennial PC enthusiasts],
lightly socon [I like modern urban life existing and do not wish to persecute people for their sexual orientation, but I can do without PC cant about human nature and wouldn’t mind social norms based on restraint]
medium-well nationalist- [countries are sovereign and entitled to pursue their interests in foreign policy, and to determine their security policy, immigration policy, and so forth; but cooperation among like-minded countries is nice, justifies compromise, and neither wars of ideology nor teenage rhetorical posturing/boasting are helpful]
strong but sane on national security [interest-based, cognizant that diplomacy and force are complementary rather than exclusive; aware that problems can be managed as well as tackled whole-hog, and that sometimes the former is the better choice, sometimes not; willing to use force but not enthused about its capacity to effect massive social change unaided; not necessarily believing that massive social change is a necessary outcome of policy; broadly aware that there are laws and working within them; conscious that there isn’t really much reason at present to torture people and kill their families, still less reason to make such an extreme tool a matter of policy and boast about it in public];
Trump gives me a fair bit of that but falls far short on other counts, which are probably easy to identify. The existing American establishment as a whole seems to oscillate between the idea that war is the only tool and the idea that war is not a tool, yet in both cases it has assumed the ability to remake the world in its preferred image, without really articulating a means or a connection to American interests [it’s not impossible- there is an interest-based case for America’s role in both world wars and much of the Cold War, and for a forward policy in the Middle East and Central Asia]. It sometimes has seemed as though policy is made for very narrow interests and covered by absurd ideology because the latter is what Americans have been trained to think is the right basis for policy. I think even the establishment believes it.
One other note that somewhat applies to both the security and economic realms- a willingness to govern in the interest of the country and its people and to say so and be seen to do so, with the hope of recreating some trust when the government has to turn around and say no.
Examples might be:
No, the world cannot be made 100% safe all the time everywhere and neither can America- it never was quite that safe; No place ever was. [I am still traumatized by NRO writers ten or more years ago shrieking in print about how the government had to keep people SAFE!!! with the implication being, all the time, everywhere, even abroad, without much concern for the responsibility of a free people to take some ownership and heed Ben Franklin]. It should be possible to run a security policy in the interests of the country, aggressive but lawful, that works well without the occasional modest gaps becoming the basis for national panic. 9/11 was a major terrorist attack and a serious national security failing. San Bernardino was a localized attack and a modest failing, of the kind that a free country with real enemies might do more than it has to prevent, and which might reveal specific failings needing remedy, but which alone would not justify massive new expansion of the security state or massive new restrictions on free people.
No, other countries don’t have to be mini-Americas or even like America for America to work with them; No the world isn’t all democratic and that’s OK; And, alas,
No, the economic world of 1955 is never coming back unless there is another world war that devastates all of Europe and Asia and leaves America intact; the worldwide cataclysm that briefly made America a bubble of unheard-of prosperity for all classes isn’t being replicated again. The government can make policy and implement it with its best eye toward managing problems, helping citizens, and maximizing America’s position in this world, and should be doing those things, but even the greatest possible success, even an America as or more relatively prosperous than in 1955 [which I remain unconvinced is possible] will not look exactly like 1955 and the requirements for individuals to prosper may not be the same or as comparatively easy to access. Just reminding the voters who remember 1955 that their America didn’t get that way solely through the efforts of its people or the wisdom of its leaders, but as a consequence of the massive annihilation of competitors both by others and directly by America, and by a series of attendant circumstances that favoured US industry and bankers, would be a useful corrective.
In the end, it won’t be for me to say. I’m a Canadian [I try to say this at least once per ten comments over on Sailer’s page…]. My interest is threefold:
1. America is an ally of old and a country I respect and whose positive future I hope for
2. My country is similar to America in some ways and has some of the same issues and attitudes to choose among or balance, and as a conservative in Canada I watch to see what new forces are in play regularly
3. My country needs America as an ally and trading partner, and a friendly society on the level of communities and individuals, and I want my country to prosper in the future, first and foremost among my concerns;
Apropos of 3, I figure such compromises as we want on economic issues are usually fair enough, so I hope for a US that doesn’t want to either go full autarky [you should never go full autarky] or to go for continental autarky that includes us;
And I figure we cooperate pretty closely on security, so we should have bought some credit even with whoever staffs those departments in a Trump Administration. So long as someone points out to him that Canada’s infamous diversity and immigration problems and role as a generator for terrorists are all actually pretty small potatoes compared with the diversity, immigration problems and role as a generator of terrorists of the United States itself. So maybe build a wall in the south, take a few steps to clean up the local American neighbourhood, and come talk to us about our ‘hood, see how else we can help one another.
I am sure we can make a deal…
[Sorry for the length- I realize this is more Sailer material than Razib material.]
Perhaps because I spent my childhood and teenage years in 1980s and 1990s Hungary, the collapse of communism comes to my mind first.
It took people some time to notice that there was no longer strong enforcement, so some brave individuals started to shift the Overton window. Than some people at the top (communist bigwigs) jumped on the ‘democratization’ bandwagon, after which enforcement of communist speech norms became all but impossible, and the whole repressive apparatus of the state became disoriented. (They were still busy monitoring the whole process, even signing up thousands of new informers as late as 1989, as well as trying to influence the transition to democracy by using their informers – who were everywhere, including among the leaders of the new opposition parties – to tone down the anti-communist messages of the political parties, and informally giving them dire warnings of what might happen if “things got too far” and “the Soviets would start cracking down on the whole country”… It appears they would’ve followed orders if a strong communist party leadership gave them the go-ahead to crush the opposition, but there was no strong communist party leadership in any event.)
Where the Ghost Pepper Stores Its Heat
In Hitchen’s _Why Orwell Matters_, he reported that Orwell said _1984_ was set in Britain to stress that Fascism can occur anywhere.