We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

Most white people (& indeed most people) aren’t obsessed with race. That is why the Identitarian obsession with racial taxonomies, and labelling everyone, just makes such folk seem like drunks peeing on a public sidewalk who then become indignant when others look at them askance.

– Perry de Havilland

46 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Mr Ed

    Yes, but they have the ear of the State and sometimes its fist at their disposal.

    Here is an amusing video illustration from Carl Benjamin (Sargon) on how ‘orcs’ trended on Twitter as some SJW took ‘orcs’ in Dungeons and Dragons to be a coded reference to people who are black, which makes the OP’s point well.

  • Paul Marks

    As Mr Ed points out the post rather overlooks everything that is important.

    The Identity Politics “Diversity” totalitarians control almost every power centre – Conservative Central Office just as much as the Labour Party, and the major Corporations (Big Business) as well as the schools, the universities and the bureaucracy – including that of the POLICE and even the armed forces.

    So telling us not to worry, that it is just a drunk propping himself up on a lamppost, is just not true.

    I wish it was true – I wish there was no real problem. But it is not true – there is a very bad problem.

    The “Diversity” (and so on) doctrines of the Frankfurt School of Marxism and Post Modernism (officially not Marxist – but with the same totalitarian objectives) have us by the throat – and they are choking the life out of us.

  • As Mr Ed points out the post rather overlooks everything that is important.

    It is quite possible my remark overlooked everything that is important to you. But that was not your conversation, Paul, it was mine, and what I said is true, a rock solid social fact. That identitarians have “marched through the institutions” is also certainly true, but was not the conversation I was having and the quote stands on its own merits just fine.

    Make your own points, go ahead, but do not tell me what I am supposed to be talking about.

  • bobby b

    “That is why the Identitarian obsession with racial taxonomies, and labelling everyone, just makes such folk seem like drunks peeing on a public sidewalk who then become indignant when others look at them askance.”

    The lesson that the American progressives have taught us – on the West coast, at least – is that there is no shame in drunkenly peeing on the sidewalk in broad daylight. Given that, why would they worry if their race obsession gives them that particular appearance? 😛

  • Given that, why would they worry if their race obsession gives them that particular appearance?

    That is why they lose national elections outside the enclaves of the True Believers. The cultural disconnect is how Trump won, and also how Brexit won the referendum. Not for entirely the same reasons, because US & UK have different political cultures, but they do have that ‘cultural disconnect’ factor in common, and it is not trivial.

    Also, I am far less pessimistic than Paul Marks (but then who isn’t?) as I see the culture war starting to go in kinda sorta the right direction.

  • bobby b

    You mean the cultural disconnect that allows them to call us deplorables out loud, and that allows us to laugh at them out loud?

    Yeah, I’m hearing a lot more out-loud laughter these days. From some surprising sources, too. I remain optimistic.

  • Flubber

    “That is why they lose national elections outside the enclaves of the True Believers.”

    Its also why they try to open the borders for anyone who can get there.

    That track record of winning elections wont last. Neither will democracy when they get their way.

  • APL

    PdH: “Most white people (& indeed most people) aren’t obsessed with race.”

    It’s not race, it’s culture. To persist in characterising every dispute as one of race, apart from being untrue is a Bolshevik ploy.

    PdH: “That is why they lose national elections outside the enclaves of the True Believers.”
    Flubber: “Its also why they try to open the borders for anyone who can get there.”

    Really, Perry’s pet racists are for open borders? I hardly think so.

  • Paul Marks

    It is NOT about “race” (skin colour) and it is not about “gender” either.

    If it was then, for example, the Home Secretary could get the Home Office report on Islamic rape gangs published – the Home Secretary has brown skin and is female, and the Home Secretary is opposed by white males in the Home Office.

    Guess who the “Identity Politics” people will side with (clue it will not be the lady with brown skin). The Home Office will not even use the term “Islamic Rape Gangs” (see the Youtube video by Carl Benjamin “Sargon” on this) – indeed they call anyone who opposes the theology of these gangs a dangerous “extremist”.

    It is NOT (according to the Home Office) the ideology of Muhammad that is “dangerous” or “extremist” – it is anyone who OPPOSES it. So the mass rape and enslavement can continue – the Home Office is “cool” with that. The old while males of the Home Office are “cool” with that – as is the rest of the left establishment (including my dear friends at Central Office).

    And it is NOT (not, not, not) really about Islam either – these people (the left establishment which controls everything) despise Islam – they do not even believe in God. They have vastly less in common with and vastly less respect for the followers of Islam than I do – after all I believe in God and I regard Muhammad as a military and political leader of genius, and I agree with his stress on the family and on loyalty (and so on).

    The people in the Home Office (and Central Office – and so on) despise Muhammad and they despise his followers – they just want to USE them for the Progressive cause (even though the followers of Muhammad are NOT “Progressive”), any ally against the “reactionary” West is fine by them – the wealthy background white males of the Home Office and-so-on (including Central Office).

    “This is only important to you Paul”.

    Well unless you are planning to move out of the United Kingdom it had better be important to you as well – and where are you going to move to?

    Almost every Western country has the domination of the institutions by the “Progressive” – and these Frankfurt School Marxists (or Post Modernists) call their opponents “racists”, “sexists”, “homophobes”, “transphobes” and “Islamophobes” for such crimes as opposing Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030.

    Let us say their opponent was female, brown and Muslim – that would MAKE NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL.

    Let us say that their opponent was black and transexual – again that would MAKE NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL.

    The opponent would still be “racist”, “sexist”, “transphobic”. “homophobic” and “Islamophobic”.

    And might well be arrested and punished for these so-called crimes.

    Even if you moved to Budapest in Hungary (as John O’Sullivan did) you would find that these leftists now control the city.

    People with the same ideology as the insane and evil rulers of San Francisco, New York and London now control Budapest. The international “liberal” elite (the Economist magazine and the rest of the Usual Suspects) were gloating about this little take over some months ago

    So where are you going to go? The Moon?

    Have you forgotten about the international space treaty?

    The left (even in the 1960s in control of the American bureaucracy – as well as that of the opponents of the United States) closed off that escape possibility many decades ago.

    If any of the above is not true – then why this morning can I not turn on a single television news station (out of the dozens allowed to broadcast to the United Kingdom) that is AGAINST the “Social Justice” and “Diversity” crowd.

    There used to be one (one) television station that opposed them (at least some of the time) – now even that is not allowed in the United Kingdom.

    About 20 television news stations – and not one (not one) opposing the mass house arrest of “Lockdown”.

    Instead they are just full of Orange-man-bad lies. Pushing the latest lies about President Trump (all 20 or so stations), whilst SUPPORTING (not opposing) the totalitarian Fascism of “lockdown”. That is the “choice” of media we are offered on the television in this country – and yes indeed there are media sections in the various international agreements (such as the one we signed up to in 1992 – thank you John Major) about eliminating dissent, and pushing the Progressive line.

    If crushing dissent is about COVID 19 – why has the British bureaucracy been committed to this task (the task of brainwashing the population, especially the young, and crushing dissent against the Progressive cause) since at least 1992?

    It is NOT about the virus. Just as it is NOT about “race” or “sex” or “gender” or whatever.

    It is about POWER – it has always been about POWER.

    To take an image from “George Orwell” (Eric Blair) the aim of the international “liberal” elite (including the Home Office and Central Office and so on in this country) is a boot coming down on the face of liberty.

    A boot coming down on the face of liberty – for ever.

  • Paul Marks

    As is often pointed out….

    President Trump has been “head of the American government” for more than three years- how many government departments does he control?

    The correct answer is – NONE. Not even the military.

    There are Progressives in middle management roles in all the departments (including the military). People that the President has never heard of really control most things – day-to-day (people who hate him, hate his family, and above all HATE AMERICA). People with much the same Death-To-America opinions as the mainstream media and the education system (the schools and universities), they hate “reactionary” America – and their loyalty is to the “international community” and “world governance” as long as it is “Progressive”

    So the Progressive line of policy continues – with grants of taxpayer money to organisations who would like to utterly destroy the “reactionary” United States (and burn Donald J. Trump and his entire family – alive). And many regulations continue to be pushed.

    It is true (I do NOT deny it) that President Trump and some (some) of the people he has appointed to high positions do sometimes resist some of it – the irony is that it is they (not their opponents) who are “The Resistance” – but they do not oppose it very well or very competently. Perhaps because they do not fully grasp the level of evil that dominates the education system, the media, and the bureaucracy (both government and corporate business bureaucracy).

    Still even incompetent resistance is better than no resistance at all – which is the case in the United Kingdom.

    In the United Kingdom the very organisations that are supposed to be resisting the left establishment that controls the institutions are themselves PART OF THE LEFT ESTABLISHMENT.

    There is still some dissent here (one can see it the “Daily Telegraph” most days – the so called “establishment” newspaper is actually the dissent against the establishment), but no real resistance in government.

    I wish there was – but there is not. Or very little. I doubt that most ministers have any grasp of the basic fact that “the experts” (including the “scientific experts”) are totalitarians whose aim is the utter extermination of liberty.

    Most of the leaders of the Progressive (i.e. Totalitarian – for that is what “Progressive” really means) forces are actually “straight, white males” and always have been.

    The charges of “racism”, “sexism”, “Islamopbia”, “Transphobia” and so on – are just a tactic (at least for the leaders of the Progressive International Totalitarian movement – if not for their mislead followers, who are sometimes sincere).

  • Paul Marks

    In case I am accused of being to “Anglocentric” let us look at what has been happening just a few miles away – in France.

    Many weeks of “Lockdown” Fascism – people only allowed out of their homes with WRITTEN PERMISSION – which they have to show on demand to police officers (it is the same in Putin’s Moscow).

    Police officers, waving firearms, bursting into a Church because a priest was conducting a service for seven (7) people.

    And on and on – the banker regime of Macron has shown itself to be utterly Progressive (Totalitarian).

    Who has resisted this? Mostly the Muslim community – they have not kept the police out of their communities, but they have made it clear that they will not allow Macron’s thugs to treat them like dirt – the way Macron’s thugs treat everyone else.

    And I fully support the Islamic community in making this clear to the Macron regime (now that will confuse the Guardian newspaper and Central Office).

    If the French government announces any major retreat today (to come in early May) the French people should thank the Muslim community – who are almost the only people to have shown any backbone in their relationship with the state.

  • It is about POWER – it has always been about POWER. (Paul Marks, April 28, 2020 at 7:26 am)

    Fundamentally I would agree. Edmund Burke said of the French revolutionaries that when it came to improving the economy and suchlike serving of the people they pretended to care about, they were happy to espouse any quack’s ridiculous ‘modern’ nostrum, but when it came to gaining control of the state they used all the tried and trusted methods known since ancient Rome and Greece

    because there they were in earnest

    The extraordinary crudity with which the nominal pretexts are switched on and off to serve party needs, do indeed shout (shout!) that it is all about power.

    Paul would have written “Do indeed SHOUT that it is all about POWER.” I, of course, prefer the reading style offered by my writing style, but readers and fellow commenters doubtless have their own preferences: chaq’un a son gout is a very proper libertarian sentiment. 🙂

  • APL (April 28, 2020 at 6:41 am), I guess you were being sarcastic but the point got lost, at least for me – I had no idea who “Perry’s pet racists” were (or whether they were or were not really or sarcastically in favour of open borders). I’m not sure other readers would have either. (If the joke is now too old to be worth elucidating, by all means just ignore this comment.)

  • Snorri Godhi

    It is about POWER – it has always been about POWER.

    Agreed! Please note that this is what i have been saying for a few years with different words, using the concepts of ruling-class theory. The ruling class used various narratives over the centuries to justify its power, and grabs for more power. Just a few examples: Divine Right of Kings (Mandate of Heaven, in China); Social Contract (not so bad in the Lockean formulation); General Will; Class Struggle; and now Social Justice.

    SJWs are the henchmen of the ruling class; or more properly, of the establishment, since only the majority faction of the ruling class use Frankfurt Marxism to justify itself.

    One more piece of evidence that the Social Justice crowd doesn’t care about Muslims, or women for that matter: the way they deal with honor killings is denial. (Who was it that mentioned honor killings a few years ago on Samizdata?)

    Needless to say, i do not agree with Paul Marks’ pessimism, especially when he tells us about countries that he is not familiar with.

  • Chester Draws

    I really, really hope Nikki Haley runs and is elected the President of the US after next.

    The progressives are going to tie themselves in knots trying to explain why a brown female of recent immigrants with a good track record in government is unsuited to become President. The contortions will be marvelous.

  • bobby

    I just wish Ted Cruz was a more likeable guy.

  • Mr Black

    Native Americans didn’t care about immigration either. And then suddenly they had to and it was too late. Whites aren’t better for pretending race is invisible, they are foolish and suicidal. All of a sudden they’ll notice… at the point it’s too late.

    Human evolution is one culture displacing and then destroying the others it competes with. Whites are not even holding their ground on that score.

  • Whites aren’t better for pretending race is invisible

    I have far more in common with someone like Damien Counsell (for example) than with Jeremy Corbyn or indeed you, because Damien & I see the world in similar ways & have more in common culturally. How could you & I defend “our” culture when you & I don’t share one? The corrosive influences I see in the western world both culturally & politically are overwhelmingly driven by people who just happen to be white, running from [insert Hollywood turd of the week here] to Jeremy Corbyn, Andrew Adonis, Tony Blair, all the way back to Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau & Marx. If I could push a magic button & disintegrate the 100 worst people in the world, most of them would just happen to be white. Race doesn’t matter, no matter how much you obsess about it & buy into the Indentitarian world view.

  • APL

    PdH: “no matter how much you obsess about it & buy ”

    Person A posts ‘out of the blue’ an article about race.

    Person B responds to that post.

    Person A claims person B is obsessed with the topic.

    It that what you call chutzpah?

  • It that what you call chutzpah?

    But that is pretty much all he posts about, I post about many different things. Context is everything 😉

  • Nullius in Verba

    “Person A posts ‘out of the blue’ an article about race.”

    I thought it was about identitarians?

    As in:
    Person A posts a comments about race-identitarians peeing on a public sidewalk and then getting indignant when others look at them askance.
    Person B, a race-identitarian, pees on the sidewalk.
    Person A looks at that behaviour askance.
    Person C becomes indignant at the chutzpah of commenting about race-identitarians peeing on the sidewalk and then getting annoyed when one immediately turns up and does exactly that.

    I thought you’d set it up that way? Either way, it was very funny! 🙂

  • Rich Rostrom

    White people who live in overwhelmingly white communities or countries don’t have to think about race very much. They don’t have a lot of interactions with non-whites.

    People who live in communities where they are a minority (or narrow majority) do have a lot of such interactions and do have to think a lot about race. E.g. whites in South Africa and the American Deep South, who were obsessed with race. As those whites were also the ruling class, that forced the non-whites in those places to think about race a lot.

    ISTM that much of what we see now is a hangover from that past.

  • Mr Black

    Perry, I consider people with your views as a greater threat to western civilization than any marxist. When marxism fails, we can always pick up the pieces. When your mass immigration and white displacement idea reaches its natural end point, there isn’t anyone left to pick up the pieces. The fact that you think the 100 worst people in the world are white tells us eveything about your general disdain for whites and you “noble savage” view of the rest of the world. Libertarian in your world can translate to “transient parasite”, as you value nothing of your people or history. Only what you can get from them while they still exist.

  • bobby b

    Mr Black
    April 30, 2020 at 2:37 am

    “The fact that you think the 100 worst people in the world are white tells us eveything about your general disdain for whites.”

    Alternatively, it might tell us that he believes that you need power to be “one of the worst people in the world” (else who would even notice), and so whites, who tend to have more power in this world than others, are more likely to be within that Top 100.

  • Mr Black

    Nah, it says that the person speaking knows little of the world outside his immediate view and couldn’t even name 100 brown people worth killing, he just assumes whites are the problem because it suits his anti-white politics.

  • Nullius in Verba

    “The fact that you think the 100 worst people in the world are white tells us eveything about your general disdain for whites and you “noble savage” view of the rest of the world.”

    Perry said “The corrosive influences I see in the western world…”.

    And the point of the worldview isn’t that outsiders are Noble Savages, but that they’re people, just like us. We’re all people, and whether you divide us along lines of blood type or eye colour or skin colour or language or nationality or religion or height or a taste for Marmite, we’re all the same – a mixture of good people and bad people.

    The sensible, logical view is to judge people based on the actual characteristic of interest: whether they are good people or bad people. The Identitarian instead divides people into ‘us’ and ‘them’ along some other line, which they then try to use as a proxy for ‘good’ and ‘bad’. That’s stupid. That’s wrong. But it’s also universally human. We all have the ‘tribal’ mindset wired in to our thinking.

    Savages (Noble or otherwise) do it. But so do we. Savage/Civilised is just another dividing line, and there are good and bad people – noble and ignoble – on both sides of it.

  • and so whites, who tend to have more power in this world than others, are more likely to be within that Top 100.

    Exactly so, bobby. What Mr. Black is baffled by is the people trying to criminalise saying unkind things about shitty Third World cultural practices imported into the West, such as mass rapes & consanguineous marriage, are overwhelmingly white Identitarians. But as Mr. Black is himself a white identitarian, just one whose favoured identity mashes up culture with race, he is unable to understand the nature of the problem.

  • Mr Black

    You live in a fantasy world. None of this shit is real, its armchair philosophizing no different from any marxist, theories on how you can remake man into your chosen political mold. As I said, you are a greater threat to civilization than marxists because your insanity has no recovery option. Whites are disposable because you have a political agenda.

  • Ferox

    I don’t share Mr. Black’s fervor on the point. I don’t think Perry is a greater threat to civilization than the Marxists. I don’t even think Perry dislikes white people.

    If I could push a magic button & disintegrate the 100 worst people in the world, most of them would just happen to be white.

    That, however, is (I hope) at least a great exaggeration. And there is a sizeable contingent of smug, anti-tribalist lefties in the West who take great satisfaction in saying sh*t like this, as a way of sticking their thumbs in the eye of people they don’t like.

    As a counter-example, I think if you eliminated 100 people from the Chinese Communist Party apparatus alone, at random, you would probably get at least 15 or 20 of the “worst people in the world”. It’s a kind of western paternalism quite common in Hollywood and western popular culture in general to think nobody else in the world has much power, or is capable of being very bad.

    We (the West) are neither the most powerful, the most immoral, nor the most evil, group. We run about on par with everyone else in the world – what a comedown, eh? There isn’t much special about us at all.

  • Ferox

    anti-tribalist

    Damn. Edit that to read “counter-tribalist”.

  • bobby b

    ” . . . the people trying to criminalise saying unkind things about shitty Third World cultural practices imported into the West, such as mass rapes & consanguineous marriage, are overwhelmingly white Identitarians.”

    This one baffles me.

    The people wishing to criminalize the act of publicly complaining about, say, the the Muslim grooming gangs, are mostly white Identitarians? The far-right Identitarians?

    Did you sneak an extra negative in there somewhere? London’s mayor is a white Identitarian? Or is my knowledge of the Identitarian movement off?

  • Bobby, your comment makes no sense. Where did I use the term far-right? Mr. Black is an identitarian racist (dislikes non-whites). The Labour Party are identitarians (here is a glorious example, but for them race is just one of many forms of segmentation, gender works too, so does religion, provided it is Islam of course). Most of the Labour Party are… white. Indisputable. Not by any means all, but certainly the higher you move up in all the Parliamentary parties, you will find more diversity in the upper echelons of the Tory Party, which is quite amusing. I didn’t say all political identitarians are white, but the majority in the west most certainly are. You think otherwise?

    Identitarianism only has any traction because lots of white people support it, most on the left but also the so-called “far-right” (which is why left-right kind of breaks down).

  • bobby b

    OK, I know what the problem is now. “Identitarian”, to me, is a specific far-right movement. I Googled it just now, and Wikipedia agrees with me, but I also see other sites treating it as both left and right.

    So, chalk it up to definitions. If you take your statement in the context of how I define identitarian, you’ll see why I was confused.

  • Outside of deeply unreliable Wikipedia, the term Identitarian is used far more often to describe people on the self-described Left (particularly certain ilks of feminist) than it is for people on the self-described Alt-Right (such as Mr. Black) (& the Identitarian ‘Left’ are vastly more common than the Identitarian ‘Right’).

  • Shlomo Maistre

    When marxism fails, we can always pick up the pieces. When your mass immigration and white displacement idea reaches its natural end point, there isn’t anyone left to pick up the pieces.

    So true

    The fact that you think the 100 worst people in the world are white tells us eveything about your general disdain for whites and you “noble savage” view of the rest of the world.

    Wait, Perry does not think that President Xi of China is one of the worst 100 people in the world? Really??

    Libertarian in your world can translate to “transient parasite”, as you value nothing of your people or history. Only what you can get from them while they still exist.

    So true.

  • Don’t be a moron, Schlomo, which bit of “most” do you not understand?

  • Mr Black

    What is your race, religion and nationality, Perry?

  • Niall pedant Kilmartin has to agree with Ferox (May 1, 2020 at 12:02 am) that the idea of the 100 worst people in the world being disproportionately white rather than disproportionately non-white requires some confounding of the idea of ‘worst’ with the idea of ‘most powerful and therefore dangerous’ – and even then faces challenge from the modern power of China.

    The achievements of Western culture mean that, in a group of equally-depraved people, the odds are the white ones will average more power, so be more able to effect harm. But the self-same reasoning leads to another point. Long ago, discussing a PC beeboid’s disdain for William Wilberforce, I wrote:

    “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”, said Lincoln. It is an obvious thought to us; who would deny it? Answer: most of the past. Wilberforce and the movement he led stand at the fulcrum of that change. Our minds inherit their achievement. “I cannot understand why for so many centuries mankind allowed such a trade”, said the presenter (“for so many millennia”, she should have said). We share her feelings, if not her limited timespan, easily, without needing a trace of Wilberforce’ moral grandeur because she and we live after Wilberforce, not before. But to the politically-correct mind, that origin of this knowledge is unwelcome; better to sneer at him.

    Western culture has moral achievements, not just physical ones. If you accept the reasoning that, in a group of equally-depraved people, the white ones will average more power because they inherit more of the power of that more powerful culture, then you should accept the reasoning that, in a group of equally-innately-capable-of-being-depraved people, the white ones will on average develop that depravity less, because they inherit more of the morality of that more moral culture. If ‘worst’ were taken literally, not confounded with power (as opposed to mere inclination) to do the worst, and as meaning depravity of developed character, not some innate invisible capacity to become depraved assessed independently of cultural effects, then the 100 worst should be disproportionately non-white.

    Just a ‘sauce for the goose’-type argument – my usual somewhat pedantic 0.02p. If you include cultural inheritance effects on power, you should include cultural inheritance effects on character.

  • Mr Black (May 3, 2020 at 6:17 am), my name (Niall Kilmartin) gives a clear and strong statistical indication (which is correct in my case) that my ancestors hail from north of the Scots border and were predominantly some mix of Pict, Viking and Scot. The name ‘Perry de Havilland’ similarly gives a clear indication of the owner of this blog, and if you don’t already know more to the same effect then you haven’t been reading and remembering some of his posts and comments that would have informed you.

    I think it just a little impertinent that you ask Perry for his “race, religion and nationality”, despite the literal meaning of your own name suggesting a skin tone which would be surprising (high-mindedly so, if so, I grant 🙂 ) in the light of some comments.

    It is overwhelmingly on the left that people say, “Speaking as a [… some identify group …] …”, or “Toxic whiteness …” as if an argument were better or worse because the speaker had a selfish identarian interest in it. If an argument has faults, it should be possible to expose them independent of its speaker. Recently, I posted about immigration in a historical context where all involved were white, which (among other things) permitted analysing some modern concerns all the better for ancient comparisons. I was surprised not to see you in the comments.

  • Mr Black

    Perry may well have given indications in the past, but as I don’t know him or care for what he writes I’m hardly going to remember what he says about himself. However a person does not grow up to hate his own race and culture without some serious psychological issues at play, usually from being an outcast and holding society at fault for their inability to bond with its other members, an affliction not uncommon to many who LARP at being “libertarian”. Taking delight in seeing ones native culture ruined isn’t a normal thing and yet it is common in such circles, as it is on the radical left.

    Observe his reaction to me and others of my view, for the simple desire to preserve my own nations racial and cultural heritage, I am a right-wing racist or something and not part of his club. For holding a belief probably shared by 95% of humanity. No one wants to be occupied or ruled by foreign, hostile people. Obviously. And yet he longs for this future only for whites and supports policies that will hasten that outcome. I say again, this is not a normal thing.

  • Nullius in Verba

    “However a person does not grow up to hate his own race and culture without some serious psychological issues at play”

    You’re missing the point. We don’t hate our own race and culture, because we don’t share your definitions, we don’t draw the dividing lines in the same place.

    Our race is the human race. Our culture is libertarian – everyone should be free to do as they like, to believe as they like, to speak as they like, to trade and travel as they like, except where restrictions are needed to prevent more serious unconsented harm being done to others. Free market Libertarians believe in dropping barriers to trade. Libertarian culture believes in no punishment without a fair trial, in the presumption of innocence, in Blackstone’s ratio, in not presuming someone to be guilty because they share some random characteristic with guilty people, like blood group, or surname, or skin colour, or nationality, or religion.

    There is the culture of people who draw lines dividing people into ‘us’ and ‘them’, and hating ‘them’, and there is the culture of people who have realised that’s stupid and tribalist and have stopped doing it. You’re on the tribalist side, with the Islamists. To the extent that tribalists like the Islamists are dangerous, so are you. It’s the same mentality, just a different set of traditions being enforced.

    “Observe his reaction to me and others of my view, for the simple desire to preserve my own nations racial and cultural heritage”

    You can’t preserve it. Culture changes all the time. The culture we have today is totally different to the culture we had in the 1960s, which was totally different to the culture we had in the 1920s, which was totally different to the 1800s, and so on back to the Druids. Cultures mutate and shift constantly.

    And this has always been a problem. Children are born in the culture of their parents, which they rebel against and change to something better, and then as they grow old find their own children rebelling against and changing out of all recognition. The old lament the imminent end of civilisation as its essential standards and norms are eroded. The past was a golden age, and we have fallen from grace. Even the music is rubbish. Every generation is a new revolution.

    You can’t ‘preserve’ the culture, fixed immovably for all time. That’s what the Islamists tried to do, stuck forever in the 7th century. How stupid is that?

    “For holding a belief probably shared by 95% of humanity. No one wants to be occupied or ruled by foreign, hostile people.”

    Just as we don’t want to be occupied or ruled by *you Tribalists*. But this seems to be the mental block preventing comprehension – that you are so used to a world in which each tribe continually vies to occupy and rule the others, that you can conceive of no other way of living. Your version of the future is a boot stamping on a human face forever, you’re all just fighting to be the one wearing the boot.

    Our desire is that nobody is occupied. Nobody is ruled. Nobody makes rules telling us what culture we are ‘allowed’ to have. Nobody raises barriers or starts wars to drive particular cultures out. We all have a free choice. And we allow open competition in a free marketplace of cultures to evolve the best, strongest culture.

    Lions and gazelles are fast and agile because the ones that aren’t are allowed to die. Dodos are not, because they lived on a remote island protected from predators. Private businesses are more efficient than government because businesses that aren’t go bankrupt, while government officials are protected from the consequences of failure by the bottomless pockets of the taxpayer. You can certainly understand why a Dodo or a government official would argue for protection.

    But in the long run, protection weakens any culture, and leaves it ripe for destruction the moment a stronger culture penetrates the barrier. At the moment, our culture is the strongest, because it went out there, adapted, adopted the best of the rest, competed, and won. It won’t be for long if we become timid, and slam up the barriers out of pants-wetting terror of a backwards 7th century Dodo culture that only gets treated slightly more politely because it’s sitting on a load of oil. They’re gonna get eaten.

  • Snorri Godhi

    There is the culture of people who draw lines dividing people into ‘us’ and ‘them’, and hating ‘them’, and there is the culture of people who have realised that’s stupid and tribalist and have stopped doing it.

    If you’ll excuse my intruding in this debate:
    I’d like to point out that what Perry said:

    The corrosive influences I see in the western world both culturally & politically are overwhelmingly driven by people who just happen to be white

    can perhaps be reformulated as follows:
    Most of the people who hate the White race are White themselves. They side with ‘them’, not with ‘us’ — but the problem is not ‘them’, the problem is those of ‘us’ who take ‘their’ side.
    The Mr Blacks of the world just do not get this.

    IFF ‘them’ were against ‘us’, then I would obviously take ‘our’ side: I am a Darwinist.
    But i see no evidence that ‘they’ are.

    Oh yes, i see evidence about a specific religious group — but that has less* to do with the precepts of that religion than with the incitement by the NY Times and the BBC, most of whose contributors are White.
    And i hope that most of their contributors remain White: otherwise i might be called a racist for loathing them.

    * though more than nothing

  • Taking delight in seeing ones native culture ruined isn’t a normal thing

    As usual, Mr. Black mistakenly thinks race & culture are inseparable, even though he has more in common with certain continental European strains of thought than British ones. I have more in common culturally with a black skinned classical liberal than I do with a white skinned racist.

  • Our race is the human race. (Nullius in Verba, May 4, 2020 at 11:32 am)

    My race is caucasian. My species is human. I’m familiar with the colloquialism ‘the human race’, but in any debate with people whose views may differ from mine, I generally prefer the accuracy of defined scientific terms (when available) to the vagueness of a virtue-signal-sounding colloquialism, especially if the effect is to make it appear one is trying to win an argument by redefining a term. (YMMV.)

    Our culture is libertarian

    Judging by the disagreements that sometimes pepper our threads, there are subdivisions within libertarianism. (In particular, NiV has often accused the majority of a thread’s commenters of violating some basic principle of libertarianism.) So I think whatever could be called ‘our’ culture in the quote above must be a broad church.

    Thomas Sowell is a very intelligent man, who thinks himself fortunate to have been born in Harlem in a decade so long ago that “the prejudices that held blacks back in the past were dying and the PC prejudices that would hold blacks back in the future had not yet replaced them.” In his book ‘Race and Culture’ (and other works – he is a prolific writer), Sowell analyses situations in which using race as a proxy for culture makes economic sense, and others where it does not (i.e. where it indicates prejudice). His analyses are impressive – and high-minded, since Mr Sowell is a black man (unlike Mr Black, whom I suspect of not being black 🙂 ).

    Just as Perry has

    more in common culturally with a black skinned classical liberal than I do with a white skinned racist

    so it is not impossible that Mr Black would find he has some ideas more in common with Mr Sowell than with many a white PC intellectual – if, that is, Mr Black were to read him.

    (The Sowell quote above is from memory.)

  • Nullius in Verba

    “I generally prefer the accuracy of defined scientific terms (when available)”

    I don’t think the historic definition of “race” is considered scientifically valid nowadays. I’m sure there’s an ongoing debate about it, though.

    “So I think whatever could be called ‘our’ culture in the quote above must be a broad church.”

    And of course Mr Black too may well consider himself a member of this broad church. He, too, is a member of our little community, about who I’d also argue that he had sometimes violated some basic principle of libertarianism. At the same time, he and those others who agree with him would not hang around here if they thought they had nothing in common with us culturally. So is the church broad enough to encompass Mr Black?

    Again, it all depends on where you choose to draw the lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’. In some senses, we’re all ‘us’, in others, we disagree about fundamentals. So whether anyone is ‘in’ or ‘out’ depends on the topic of conversation.

  • Snorri Godhi

    I don’t think the historic definition of “race” is considered scientifically valid nowadays.

    The definition (whatever it was) before evolutionary theory, genetics, and DNA sequencing, can hardly be scientifically valid today.

    In any case, i should think that human geneticists avoid the word “race” to avoid being associated with you-know-whom. (The latter died before DNA sequencing, anyway.)