#ethnopol

[mitigatedchaos]

The thing about Affirmation Action - most people are actually just ok at their jobs, and aren't Einsteins or Ramanujans or whatever. If they meet the minimum requirements to be a surgeon you're not in particularly worse hands than you really otherwise would be, because the bulk are always going to be first standard deviation. It's just now you have a tool to prevent communities in your society from self segregating (because people get jobs through connections) into unstable subclasses and can collect data to actively monitor for things like the name disciminatory effect. You don't even cut off the upper deviations with this, either, it's just about your mixing of the middle 95 in attempt to prevent things like gangs other issues with insular ethnic or income based subclasses.

Allow me to introduce you to The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development.

The basic gist of that article is that a long, high-value production chain, where that high value doesn't kick in until the end, requires a high probability of success at each node in the chain.

What you just said is fine for an insurance salesman. It is not fine for semiconductor design and manufacturing, which is an input into the production of the entire rest of the economy.

The amount of disruption will depend on 1) the discrepancy of the input labor pool from the ideal equality politically demanded, 2) the magnitude of the imposed ethnic quotas, and 3) the degree to which the job requires abilities far from the average.

If we have a dial labeled 'ETHNIC QUOTAS' and we turn it to 1 or 2, people might not notice, and we may have disrupted hiring network effects. There's a natural amount of noise in hiring.

The problem is that the political economy of the EQ dial is not really based on liberal ethnic conflict management by light-touch reduction of hiring network effects. That was something that was more reasonable for a young liberal to believe in 2010, or might be more reasonable to believe in a small state under a firm hand, like Singapore.

The jobs which require the highest and most reliable capability will be among the best-compensated and the most prestigious.

The political economy of the EQ dial is based more on compensation and prestige. The most prestigious and well-compensated jobs will tend to be both the most unequally distributed, and the ones that suffer the most - for O-Ring reasons.

Political entrepreneurs (rhymes with "norm entrepreneurs") can see this and bring those discrepancies into high visibility to emotionally motivate voters, build consensus within their coalition to go after firms of this class, etc.

Now at this point, you might say, "Well, can't the firm just hire a bunch of underperforming personnel in order to meet the quota? And if it turns out that the firm underestimated their performance, then great, or if it turns out that wealth and social connections cause performance, then maybe their kids do very well, and the problem is solved in the next generation."

The problem is that this is a multiple-round game and the political entrepreneurs can change their actions on the next round.

If you officially hire someone to do aerospace engineering and then sideline him because you're actually just using him to fill a quota, this can be detected from other metrics, which political entrepreneurs can then use to argue that you're still "cheating," and demand more resources and concessions. They have you over a barrel.

If your production system depends on Einsteins, well, you can't just make someone into an Einstein. The social technology for that doesn't exist at this time, so political entrepreneurs can make as high of a demand as they want, because they've locked you into a contradiction.

The political entrepreneurs will always try to turn up the dial, because the amount of difference forms a gradient that they can use to gain power (like exploiting a difference in temperature, a thermal gradient, to drive a geothermal power plant), and you are depending on the other members of their coalition to not cooperate, to shut them up and make them go home.

If the mismatch is bad enough, and you turn the dial high enough, you can crash the production system as a shortage of some bottleneck resource causes a cascading failure.

At that point, you'll probably be replaced by someone who was less willing to turn the dial, and then you'll no longer be in control of the situation.

Liberals have been indulging the political entrepreneurs since 2014, but this is a mistake - their programs are not connected to real life success, which means they'll end up promoting conflict and poverty regardless of whatever they say their intentions are. Liberals should care about good things happening, which requires they be rooted in real reality, even if it's a bit uncomfortable.

[mitigatedchaos]

Antisemitism 1 is particularist.

Antisemitism 2 is more universalist, and is based on the theory that group differences in outcomes are primarily caused by oppression, and not culture, religion, behaviors, or other factors. This approach views any group that is doing better than another group as immoral, under the theory that they must be committing oppression somehow even if it isn't visible.

Proponents of Antisemitism 2 will sometimes ally with proponents of Antisemitism 1 when they perceive the Antisemitism 1 supporters to be members of a 'marginalized group'.

in general i think the idea of a form of bigotry that is unique to progressive/leftist movements is at best poorly thought through and at worst actively disingenuous, and either way it fails to address the root cause of bigotry emerging in these movements by acting like becoming communist will infect you with antisemitism 2 instead of the much simpler explanation that people who align themselves with communism will retain the biases and bigoted beliefs ingrained in them unless they actively question those beliefs. like the rcp pamphlet saying homosexuals can never understand class struggle was not a new kind of unique leftist homophobia it was just plain old homophobia dressed up in leftist language

[zarya-zaryanitsa]

This may be unusual question, do you know/are you familiar with any studies, research, books,...about Slavic social laws and structures befire christianity?

It’s not my specialty but definitely look up Roman Zaroff’s work, lots of good information there, I’d pretty much have to link half of his articles here.

You might get something useful out of Slavonic Pagan Sactuaries by Leszek Paweł Słupecki.

And a couple more articles:

Notes on the tribal organization of the Polabian Slavs by Jan Tomášek

Sovereigns and sovereignty among pagan Slavs by Patrice Lajoye

Slavic Ethnopolities: A few Remarks on the «Tribal Question» as Answer to the Questionnaire of «Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana» by Krzysztof Fokt

[robinsoncenter]

Ethnic Politics & Nationalism Course Summer A term

JSIS B 436 A & POL S 436 A

Ethnic Politics & Nationalism in

 Multi-Ethnic Societies

Summer 2019 Term A

University of Washington

Instructor:           Denis Bašić

Contact:               denisb@uw.edu

Course website:   http://courses.washington.edu/ethnopol

Meeting on:         MTWTh 09:10 AM to 11:50 AM

Meeting at:          THO 119

Office hours:       Mondays 12:30 PM to 02:00 PM & by appointment

Office location:   Thomson 035 D

Course Description: In this course students first familiarize themselves with different theories of nationalism and then test them on four case studies. For more details, please check the course website.

[mitigatedchaos]

Is it just me or are you getting bolder in your heterodoxy?

[ @sapphiresonstrings​ ]

One major factor in the outbreak of revolution is the establishment of mutual knowledge - this is a known political science thing. The original part of my stance is applying this condition to racial organizing.

I legitimately believe in the prior effectiveness of the use of liberal individualism to suppress mutual knowledge of "whiteness" in order to prevent white racial organizing.

Previously I was relatively quiet about it specifically with the intent of preventing mutual knowledge of white identity, so I would use one-layer obfuscatory language as I attempted to warn people about the negative consequences. Now "White Fragility," a book by a white racial diversity corporate consultant which explicitly (and with 14 words, no less!) calls for the formation of shared white identity, is a national bestseller. Alongside it is "How to be an Antiracist," a work that reportedly argues that it's literally impossible for anything to be race-neutral, which fundamentally puts it in conflict with human freedom.

Primary containment has failed, and we are now relying on secondary containment - the interpersonal lack of racism between American citizens and the ongoing attachment of the conservatives to formally race-neutral policy. This is precarious; the American people have virtue, but it's dangerous to rely on personal virtue alone.

We are entering a new phase. The Successor Ideology is damaging our civilization's sense-making institutions and long-term it will damage real production and scientific output. The rate of technological advancement may fall below the levels necessary to outpace resource depletion and environmental catastrophe, and all for the sake of move towards a formalized system of ethnic and racial discrimination that, in practice, incentivizes common and conventional racism.

[mitigatedchaos]

Remember US asians marching against "white supremacy," meaning increased attacks by conventional criminals? They were renegotiating their position within the 'progressive' coalition by demonstrating that they were willing and able to leave that coalition.

Jewish people as a group are having their position within 'progressivism' renegotiated due to the Israel-Palestine conflict, the rise of "decolonization" ideology, and demographic change within Western countries including the US. While it's true that Jewish people have historically been oppressed as a group, they can no longer have it both ways - 'progressives' see Palestine (~$4k GDP/cap) as the underdog, and Israel (~51k GDP/cap) as the (European) oppressor.

Previously people with pre-X blue checkmarks (effectively endorsement of the establishment) would make an unprincipled exception on opposition to borders, cultural policy, etc, for Israel, and rejected calls to adopt a more consistent position, presumably due to feeling comfortable within the 'progressive' coalition and not wanting to spend the resources (reputational, cognitive, etc).

Right-wingers are demanding a show of coalitional loyalty. Blaming the rise in antisemitism on white rednecks is easy because no 'progressive' will call for your employer to fire you for criticizing conventional neo-nazis. However, evangelical Christians have some of the highest favorability ratings towards Jewish people.

What is being demanded is to punch left - to attribute antisemitism towards left (and Democratic) coalition members.

This puts Jewish people as a whole in a tough position, as the contemporary Democratic Party leadership support Israel, but the next generation of leadership will have different demographics and will, unless "decolonization" ideology is dismantled, have much higher opposition in 10-20 years.

A better approach would likely have consisted of two prongs: In the US, fight the left-identitarian ideology during 2014-2022 to prevent it from getting into power. In Palestine, build the cultural capability to wind down the conflict instead of just letting Iron Dome shoot down the rockets. (That second one does sound pretty difficult, though.)

(Note that the Rationalists are disproportionately Jewish, and while many of them support increased immigration, pretty much not a single one embraced 2014-2022 left-identitarianism.)

Recent conflict has right-wingers pushing farther into anti-semitism, saw it from Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, but in ways that don't focus on Israel, not sure what's going on other than just a raise in salience.

[mitigatedchaos]

Ice: Race is a social construct, and therefore not truly meaningful.

Spice: Race is a social construct, therefore if we tattoo a cryotographically-signed national seal featuring a kangaroo and an emu onto the forehead of each Australian, regardless of ancestry, we can turn Australians into a race.

[mitigatedchaos]

So you’ve just realized that Islamic Terrorism was really Right-Wing Religious Terrorism all along.

Congratulations!  You are now one step further on the expanding brain meme.

Now, I want you to hold that thought for a few minutes.

If Islamic Terrorism is right-wing religious terrorism, might softer followers of Islam, like softer followers of Christianity, also have right-wing ideas?  Might they, like Christians, retain those ideas when they move from place to place?  

When they have a majority, might they use it to impose their religious viewpoints on others, like Christians have?  Would that be in any way unusual?  In countries where they have the majority, what do they do with it?

Might Islam be... like an Abrahamic religion?  Might it be that independent of the race/ethnicity of its dominant practitioners?  What if the reasons that religious followers do what they do is because of the content of the religion and not because they possess ancestral virtue or lack thereof?

Just, you know, for your consideration.

Okay, that’s enough.  You can forget you ever realized the crossover in the categorization of Islamic Terrorism and Right-Wing Religious Terrorism now until you need to Twitter Dunk on some conservative boomer you don’t like.

[mitigatedchaos]

Post going around about how White Nationalists might do better by doing better, gaining community support and then political support through taking practical action to help other whities.

However, do they even help each other?  That seems like it would be a prerequisite.

[mitigatedchaos]

Look at the notes.

(Yeah it’s probably a bit soon to re-use that image, but it’s fitting, here.)

Shame, shame, shame.  Collective guilt, collective responsibility.

Collective identity.  The denial of Individualism.

You are witnessing it in the womb - the likely eventual rebirth of white racial consciousness.  White identity as distinct, as non-default, as special.

Given how it went last time, this probably isn’t a good thing.

A few dissenting liberal voices cry out, perhaps realizing the path this must inevitably go down if it continues, for all ethnic politics empowers all other ethnic politics.  Others ride the tide of reaction, perhaps not even realizing they are doing so, as seeds of identity take root inside them.

(Not all of the presentations in the Buzzfeed article have titles quite as identity-inducing.  “Everyone Wanna Be A Nigga, But Nobody Wanna Be a Nigga” for instance, probably relates to cultural cross-over without corresponding cross-racial increases in social status, or colorism, or something along those lines.)

Edit:

ok but the top one is fantastic tho

Yeah I’m not so worried about that particular one, either, and it has good meme qualities.  Probably should have put it in the parenthetical also.

19 PowerPoint Presentations That Should Be In Every School Curriculum Ever

[mitigatedchaos]

Today’s hot take:

Wokeness is colorblindness.

[mitigatedchaos]

The Progressives are always talking about increasing cultural diversity, but they won’t enact my plan to cause mass ethnogenesis through induced geographic cultural fragmentation by reducing national internal cultural membrane permeability, which is totally a good and not dangerous idea!

Hypocrites!

[mitigatedchaos]

"But also, any approach that just makes a transfer payment but doesn’t increase the demographic’s economic production won’t work in the long term." That's backwards, that works a lot better over time because you can keep making the same play instead of having to look for new ways to extract payments.

In that scenario, I assume you are either playing as the government, one of the majority, or a member of the minority that wants actual improvement.  They do exist, really!  It’s not all cynical!

[mitigatedchaos]

Annual Elf Discourse Primer

(~1,700 words)

Been seeing some confusion about elves lately with this “Real Elf” discourse.  Since I’m closer to this situation than a lot of you, I’ll cover some of the details.

“HWEBs?”

A lot of people wanted to know the meaning of the term HWEBs, which is used by TEREs.  It stands for "Humans With Elven Bodies," and is used to cover people who were born human, although there is some disagreement on whether it also covers humans with body modifications (conventional surgeries, “human bodies with elf ears”), or whether it only refers to full body replacement.  For those who missed the previous round of discourse earlier this year, TEREs stands for Trans-Elven Racial Exclusionist.

“The North Pole Metropolity?”

The North Pole Metropolity (NPM) was originally founded in the far north of Siberia to assess space colonization and recycling economics, with founding stakes by a number of multinational industrial concerns and a few governments.  As such, it had restrictions on the amount of materials that could be received. The North Pole Collective Purchasing Company was created to enforce these conditions - you probably know it as “Northco.”

Many of the restrictions have now been reduced.  However, internet access to the broader world is still delayed by a lag set by the distance from Earth to Mars, between 3 to 22 minutes, which means that internally, most network services (including websites) are NPM-specific, which has lead to cultural divergence.

“How do elves figure into this?”

The late North American Union (NAU) period, when the NAU government still held on to most of the continent, was marked by an economic boom thanks to the advance of bio-engineering, including both tissue engineering and genetic engineering.  As a side effect, this lead to the “Neo-Racial Explosion,” where individuals used tissue engineering to realize fantasy races such as orcs and elves, then used genetic engineering to pass on these visual traits to their children.  People who could afford tissue engineering were mostly in the middle and upper classes, but to pay back the compute costs basic genetic packages were sold to millions.

About 25 years after this, Ken Bullet (the politician, not the rapper, who was placed under house arrest as a political dissident at the time[1]) and his movement came to power and voided the network of treaties that was the basis for the NAU, as this interfered with their plans, causing the NAU Crisis, which is an entire separate discussion. 

Subsequently they implemented their program of biosocialism[2].  Part of building support for the program was intraclass competition - under biosocialism the neo-races were to be systematically discriminated against, opening up highly-paid positions for Ken Bullet’s supporters.

The interests involved in the North Pole Metropolity project saw this coming, and also sought a fully augmented workforce due to the expected challenge of the project.  Several of the major players at Northco were themselves elves (who at this time had poor relations with orcs due to the Greater Los Angeles Neo-Racial Gang War, another separate discussion) or had elven children that they wanted to evacuate from the continent.

Thus, we finally get to the heart of the matter:

“Why do people argue so much over who is and isn’t an elf?”

North Pole Metropolity is, constitutionally, a neo-racial elven ethnopolity, as recognized by the Russian Federation.  However, the term “elf” is underspecified in the NPM’s constitution.

“Arctic Elves” are mostly the descendants of the original population of modified humans that moved to the NPM.  Cut off from the network, they underwent cultural divergence from elves outside, and their synchronized genetics package is managed by a government committee there, and has differences from the five major outside genetics packages (as well as the minor ones that crop up in e.g. China, where there is a huge market (search “why are so many elves asian” on a curated search engine if you want more information[3])), although it is frequently updated.

Other kinds of elves are from outside the NPM, but of course there are similarities, and some cross-flow of NPM culture.

The reason there is so much dispute over who is a “real elf” is because it relates to the legal status to immigrate to NPM.  As there are still many polities that discriminate against neo-races, and often elves particularly, including a number under the banner of the World Union (using biosocialism as their justification), and NPM has been doing well economically, there are a number of people that want to immigrate to NPM.  At the same time, there are concerns that if it became ‘non-elven’, it would no longer act as a safe zone for elves, and might end up joining the World Union and no longer being part of Neo-NAU.

“So wait, who is an elf, really?”

Personally, I would say, “For what purpose?” but there are around three or four major considerations that are usually used in the discourse.

1) Was someone born with the elven genes (”pureblood”), or were they born without them?  Some say that to count as a true elf you must be born as one, but this is quite contentious as much of the original population (some of whom are still alive) started out as humans, and indeed the entire neo-race was, at the start, a human invention - thus why it’s called a “neo-race.”

2) Was someone raised as an elf?  This can also get contentious.  Some like to press the idea that someone can’t “truly” be an elf unless they possess racial consciousness of the ways in which the neo-races generally and elves specifically have been discriminated against.  Others just point to continuity with the original culture and various shared assumptions that are difficult to pick up automatically.

Some of you are probably familiar with Deep VR Cultural Born Again practices in some communities, and those are also used for re-acculturation by some would-be entrants to elven communities.

3) What kind of body do they have?  Purists insist on a fully natural, ‘born’ elven body.  At the next layer out are vat-grown bodies, which are very expensive due to the 18 years of supervised time and controlled muscle motions necessary to grow one.  This is followed by biosynthetics, a recently-developed technology which uses advanced tissue assembly to put together a whole low-% non-biological body, usually in a matter of a few months.  This is followed by biomechanoids, which are synthetic bodies composed of separately-contained tissue packages (a very popular option since the war).

Finally, there is argument over whether to include high-% synthetics, who had very little biological tissue, as “elves” at all,

Complicating the matter is that most people over the age of 60 are biomechanoids if they can afford it.  It’s by far one of the most economical options.

4) Generally, there’s the matter of having membership in an elven group or polity.  Some people choose to look non-elven[4], or have descendants who look non-elven, but who still identify as ethnically elven.  This results in even more arguments.

“But why does this discourse always resurface in December?”

Biosocialists and the World Union did not abolish multinational corporations when they came to power, as this would have done too much damage to the systems of production, and instead co-opted them.

When the World Union decided, as part of child enrichment, to launch a “One Child, One Toy” program, this was contracted out to Walmart (just before the merger with Target as part of retail consolidation), who subcontracted it out again, until the contract for a major part of the program was eventually given to Northco and the North Pole Metropolity.

For similar reasons to the Anno Domini and Common Era notations being based on the same starting year, the toys were to be delivered on the 24th of December until sunrise on the 25th at the latest.  As such, the companies run by the Arctic Elves decided to run with a Christmas Elf theme.  Originally this was done out of a miscommunication, later it was done out of spite, and currently it’s done for tradition.

In accordance with advertising regulations, the rooms full of Arctic Elves in funny hats hand-crafting wooden toys really exist, and you’ve probably seen it if you took the factory tour, but they’re a very small part of the operation.

By the time the World Union politicians realized what had happened, the goods had already been delivered.  The program was too popular to get rid of, so they attempted to hand it off to other firms, only for that to either fail or for the program to get subcontracted out to Northco and NPM again.

So basically,

December is the one time of year that people who don’t normally think about North Pole Metropolity and the Arctic Elves end up thinking about it, which leads to thinkpieces being published, which leads to discourse, etc.

“How do you know all this?”

It’s a long story, but basically I’m not an elf, I just look like one.  (My appearance is based on late NAU biocosplay; it’s complicated.)  So I often get mistaken for elven.  A lot of my friends are elves.  I live in and work for a biocapitalist polity, so we also have a lot of elves and members of other neo-races who left the World Union.  When I had to spend some time in the World Union, I registered as an “elf” as this simplified the paperwork dramatically.

So I’m exposed to this discourse every year.

If you’re reading this Primer because this is the first time you’re hearing about the Annual Elf Discourse, consider yourself lucky.

“Isn’t this a bit much for pointy ears?”

Technically the internal body plans of late elven designs actually differ more substantially from baseline humans than you might think, plus there’s the cultural or ethnic issue.

But if we’re talking about whether you can join a skateboarding group in New California, yes, it gets obnoxious and over the top.

On the other hand, “serious” discourse isn’t always better - e.g. the recurring ‘control chip’ discourse around military and paramilitary-grade cyborgs.

Notes:

[1] His most influential album, Orc Right, was released at this time.  You’ve probably heard Kydunk’s MonsterSmash at some point lately, which samples extensively from this album.

[2] The original Biosocialist Manifesto calls for, “the removal of biological inequities which are an obstacle to the formation of a global classless society,” but this has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways.  (Obviously I’m fairly partisan about this issue.)

[3] Broadly, this is the result of Western influences, including the spread of secular Christmas practices and fantasy tropes into East Asia, as well as events specific to China.  

[4] Usually, human, though not always.  Sometimes just “human-passing.”

[mitigatedchaos]

Bright (aka Will Smith Shadowrun)

Plucked from Drafts folder.

Is it entertaining? Yes.

But it's awkward.

The fantasy race metaphor isn't handled terribly, it's handled awkwardly.

The two main characters are both fairly relatable. Joel Edgerton's character, the orc police officer Jakoby, is trying to be the goody two shoes (where did that idiom even come from?) Lawful Good cop. But he's awkward and makes various social stumbles - however, we all feel like outcasts and we all are awkward sometimes, and he means well, so he's sympathetic.

Will Smith's character, Officer Ward, is an honest but weary cop. Ward doesn't like Jakoby, and he probably doesn't like orcs, but as we see early in the movie, this is tied into not only Jakoby missing social cues (and thus actually being annoying), but the shit he gets not only from his squadmates but from everyone else, and from being a target. However, as a bit of a Knight in Sour Armor, he refuses to act against Jakoby unless Jakoby actually does something that crosses the line.

And that is definitely not very woke. However, that attitude of "yes, I don't like him, but it would be immoral to do anything unless he actually breaks the rules" is important to maintaining society. It gives people room within which to operate to help overcome initial negative impressions, maintain impartiality of the state bureaucracy, etc. It needs to be repeated from time to time, but the rhetoric has moved past it, so now it's awkward.

Another way it's awkward is that fantasy races actually have differing stats.  Saying “human races have naturally different stats” doesn’t go well right now on account of what was done by the people that said it when it was last popular.  Of course, a number of them would have been the kind to potentially kill someone over lactase persistence, something that does vary (statistically) by whether one has a dairy culture associated with one’s regional ancestry.  

So, what happens when ideology encounters a world where differences are more obvious and more potent than whether you can easily drink milk?  The overall view held by the movie itself is a kind of meritocratic liberal individualism, which, when encountering these differences, questions the amount that is truly due to ancestry as compared to culture and individual will.  Jakoby may have an impeccable sense of smell, but much of what we see of orc behavior is defined culturally rather than biologically.

That liberal meritocratic individualism is a viewpoint that has fallen out of fashion.  The vanguard of the previous generation is the status quo of the next.  Awkward.  But the viewpoint itself isn’t necessarily bad - while it has its own failure modes, it lacks some of the failure modes of alternative, more ethnicity-focused systems.