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Crandar
03-17-2019, 12:27
I am sure we all know the details of the terrorist attack (https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/16/asia/christchurch-new-zealand-mosque-shooting-latest/index.html) by now. To give a very brief summary, a young Australian citizen entered two mosques in the town of Christchurch in New Zealand, killing at least 50 people and wounding many others. After half an hour, he was arrested by the authorities, which suspect that he acted alone. Presumably, he chose New Zealand, as the security there is less advanced than in Australia, due to the latter's experience with the Port Arthur massacre.

His motives are pretty clear, according to his published manifesto (https://pastebin.com/bzZyMduP): He focuses a lot on the conspiracy theory of White Genocide and the hysteria of white Europeans being replaced by brown barbarians. The document is the epitome of alt-right trolling and Internet memes, as he's self-described as a "kebab-remover" and spammed the Navy Seal copy-pasta. I believe he was active in the notorious community of 4chan and he even called his rambling an "effortpost" and not a "shitpost". He idolised his fellow mosque-shooter of Canada and pretended to act in the defense of the Rotherham victims. Even one of the rifles he used is full of weird graffiti.

"Turkofagos" for example means Turkish-eater in Greek and was used as an epithet to describe the vanquisher of the Turks. The perpetrator obviously copied it from obscure Islamophobic sites, who fetishize Vienna, the Crusades and Lepanto. Internet slang and stupid memes aside, I think it's time to give some attention to the radicalisation provoked by edgy communities, who turn idiots with a bad sense of humour into murderous psychopaths. Perhaps the /pol/ should be monitored as closely as the various jihadist websites recruiting disenfranchised youths for daesh.

The incident was of course internationally criticized, although many far-right clowns secretly sympathize with the perpetrator and justify his killing-spree as a necessary response to the modern "cosmopolitan dystopia". An Australian Senator (https://www.vox.com/2019/3/15/18267077/australian-senator-new-zealand-attack-muslims-immigrants) not only excused the murderer but also called his actions as a show of "vigilantism". I wonder how he will perform in the next elections.

I personally wish rest in peace to the victims and my sincere condolences to their families, while I hope that the town of Christchurch and the society of New Zealand will manage to overcome this terrible tragedy.

Husar
03-17-2019, 15:06
I think it was 8chan, not 4chan. Apparently 8chan is the even less moderated bastard child of 4chan, where racists like to meet since they're not welcome on 4chan.

The massacre is absolutely disgusting, I'm not going to read his manifesto or watch his video though because that's just what the pervert wants. It's especially rich to talk about replacing the white man in Australia, the continent where the white man threw the original inhabitants off the cliffs to replace them...

Idiocy really seems to be on the rise again everywhere, I hope that this trend stops at some point, preferably before we have destroyed the planet.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-17-2019, 17:22
I believe 8Chan and 4Chan ARE monitored quite closely (so is Reddit) but you can't catch everyone.

I saw this about that Senator today: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/17/australias-prime-minister-says-anti-muslim-senator-should-charged/

Someone cracked a raw egg on his head whilst filming it for teh loz. The Senator punched him in the face. I feel like both parties deserved what they got in that exchange.

With Regards to the massacre itself - what to say? It's obviously terrible, but also cunningly well executed. He managed to get his video out there and you can't stop it; he managed to survive his attack and have his day in court, and he reckons he'll be out in 20 years and haled as a "hero" once all the Sheeple wake up.

He also said he was inspired by Brevik - and we're doing it again, feeding the murderous troll all the publicity he craves. This guy basically wrote a manual for how to shoot up a Mosque and get away with it. He's not even going to have a hard time inside probably, he'll just gang up with the other racists/

Pannonian
03-17-2019, 17:39
I've seen it cited in numerous places that Anning won just 19 votes in the election that got him his seat. What was the size of the electorate?

Pannonian
03-17-2019, 17:43
I've seen it cited in numerous places that Anning won just 19 votes in the election that got him his seat. What was the size of the electorate?

Answer: 2.7 million. 2.7 million Queenslanders voted in the last elections, 19 of whom put down Fraser Anning as a first choice. And due to various shenanigans, that was enough to get him a place in the Australian senate.

Tuuvi
03-17-2019, 18:43
I believe 8Chan and 4Chan ARE monitored quite closely (so is Reddit) but you can't catch everyone.

4Chan has a board called /pol/, short for "politically incorrect", which is a designated nazi safe space. Reddit leaves moderation up to individual subreddits and has left boards like The_Donald alone, which allows racism as long as it's thinly veiled by dogwhistles and the like.


I saw this about that Senator today: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/17/australias-prime-minister-says-anti-muslim-senator-should-charged/

Someone cracked a raw egg on his head whilst filming it for teh loz. The Senator punched him in the face. I feel like both parties deserved what they got in that exchange.

Free speech absolutism and civility fetishism are what allowed racist, far right ideas to fester and inspire attacks like the one in Christchurch. Racists like Senator Anning need to be mocked, shamed, humiliated, and shut down so they will be too afraid of the social consequences to air their vile views in public.

If we want to live in a society where bigotry is taboo then we have to do the work to make it taboo. If our response to racism is to shrug our shoulders and think, "well, he's a terrible person but he's entitled to his opinion" then the white nationalists will find it easier to spread their beliefs and gain converts to their movement, which will inspire more and more attacks on Muslims, immigrants and other minorities in the future. If the white nationalists manage to gain mainstream acceptance or capture state power then we could have a full-scale genocide on our hands.

Besides all that, eggs are harmless and I don't think punching a kid in the face, tackling him to the ground and putting him in a chokehold is an appropriate response to having one smashed on your head.

Tuuvi
03-17-2019, 18:43
double post

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-17-2019, 19:32
4Chan has a board called /pol/, short for "politically incorrect", which is a designated nazi safe space. Reddit leaves moderation up to individual subreddits and has left boards like The_Donald alone, which allows racism as long as it's thinly veiled by dogwhistles and the like.

No, they're monitored by Law Enforcement.

All your racists in one convenient place, see.


Free speech absolutism and civility fetishism are what allowed racist, far right ideas to fester and inspire attacks like the one in Christchurch. Racists like Senator Anning need to be mocked, shamed, humiliated, and shut down so they will be too afraid of the social consequences to air their vile views in public.

If we want to live in a society where bigotry is taboo then we have to do the work to make it taboo. If our response to racism is to shrug our shoulders and think, "well, he's a terrible person but he's entitled to his opinion" then the white nationalists will find it easier to spread their beliefs and gain converts to their movement, which will inspire more and more attacks on Muslims, immigrants and other minorities in the future. If the white nationalists manage to gain mainstream acceptance or capture state power then we could have a full-scale genocide on our hands.

Besides all that, eggs are harmless and I don't think punching a kid in the face, tackling him to the ground and putting him in a chokehold is an appropriate response to having one smashed on your head.

Suppression of Far-Right ideas is what allows them to fester. In this case egging the Senator is likely to engender sympathy if not admiration for his response. He hit him, the kid then threw a pathetic counter so he hit him again, then his aides dragged him away. The same thing happened to John Prescott some years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UhME8dcOqc

In this case the kid looks particularly pathetic for trying to film it on his phone.

a completely inoffensive name
03-17-2019, 22:44
In this case the kid looks particularly pathetic for trying to film it on his phone.

Nah, the politician looks pathetic for hitting a kid.

This is what happens when a politician who is comfortable with the people he represents gets egged:

https://youtu.be/zw97LIBGbR4

"this is all just part of, you know, the free speech. [...] that's why I love this country, you have to take the whole package when you love something..."

Alt-right going to go straight for the violent solution every time...

Furunculus
03-17-2019, 23:25
Besides all that, eggs are harmless and I don't think punching a kid in the face, tackling him to the ground and putting him in a chokehold is an appropriate response to having one smashed on your head.

All he received from the person in question is a slap.

Tackling him to the ground and putting him in a chokehold looks to be the response of the security.

Let it be noted right now that if someone did that to me I would feel completely justified in slapping them, tackling them to the ground, AND putting them in a chokehold.

I think he was quite restrained, all told.

a completely inoffensive name
03-18-2019, 03:10
All he received from the person in question is a slap.

Tackling him to the ground and putting him in a chokehold looks to be the response of the security.

Let it be noted right now that if someone did that to me I would feel completely justified in slapping them, tackling them to the ground, AND putting them in a chokehold.

I think he was quite restrained, all told.

How do you justify an escalation of violence? This is like saying you are justified in shooting at kids trespassing on your property. The response must be proportional to the threat.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-18-2019, 04:19
How do you justify an escalation of violence? This is like saying you are justified in shooting at kids trespassing on your property. The response must be proportional to the threat.

Most people would probably punch the kid.

Hitting someone who assaults you is a fairly natural response. Picking up a weapon and attacking them is the escalation.

Furunculus
03-18-2019, 08:45
How do you justify an escalation of violence? This is like saying you are justified in shooting at kids trespassing on your property. The response must be proportional to the threat.

not my problem. a situation not caused by me, not invited by me, not wanted or expected by me.

if someone is rude enough to assault me then they get to live with the consequences, which is whatever I deem to be a proportionate response.

none of response listed above is aiming to do anything more than suppress further response, it's not like anyone started giving him a thorough shoeing while he was down on the floor.

rory_20_uk
03-18-2019, 11:30
Thoughts and prayers to those shot. Since of course like almost everyone I'm not going to do anything else.

Humans pretend that we can after billions (or if you're American, thousands) of years of evolution / intelligent design where violence and winning at all costs was the only rule we can pretend we are all lovely and all would get on well if only we knew each other better since we are all deep down such wonderful people.

Frankly, I am surprised how few events occur around the world. We have increased movement of people and ideas which creates a situation where the nucleating of poisonous thoughts to views to action is all too easy. In the West we have a somewhat schizophrenic approach to law enforcement and stating we are all the same and then mention different communities in the next breath which makes it easier for proper fringes to hide behind the freedoms that we say we want.

So - thoughts and prayers.

~:smoking:

Strike For The South
03-18-2019, 13:46
I'm not sure if I agree wth the "don't feed the troll" mentality. His stuff is out there and easily searchable. To not address it head on allows it fester and spread. There is a reason he cast such a wide net with all the memes. This a far right, white supremacist attack and needs to be pursued as such. I've seen a lot of "this crazy guy" takes but thats not really what this is. There is an ideology behind it.

Seamus Fermanagh
03-18-2019, 18:56
Most, like me, will not read it and will shake our heads in sadness that this kind of stupidity keeps regenerating itself.

Some will read it, intrigued but appalled, and then shake their heads in sadness.

Some very few will read it and find comfort, validation, and purpose. This was his target audience. Some of those will seek to emulate his fame and "success."

Sadly, this is a cost associated with free speech. For all the universe of good that it does and can do to promote human freedom, it can also be used as a tool for hatred and bigotry. Communication is a process all humans engage in, with varying degrees of skill. Sadly, a skilled communicator is not always thoughtful, smart, ethical, or empathetic.

Strike For The South
03-18-2019, 21:27
Most, like me, will not read it and will shake our heads in sadness that this kind of stupidity keeps regenerating itself.

Some will read it, intrigued but appalled, and then shake their heads in sadness.

Some very few will read it and find comfort, validation, and purpose. This was his target audience. Some of those will seek to emulate his fame and "success."

Sadly, this is a cost associated with free speech. For all the universe of good that it does and can do to promote human freedom, it can also be used as a tool for hatred and bigotry. Communication is a process all humans engage in, with varying degrees of skill. Sadly, a skilled communicator is not always thoughtful, smart, ethical, or empathetic.

I have to disagree. This can not be passed off as some crazy fringe individual. This can not be considered the proverbial price of speech. People were gunned down in cold blood.

We don't treat any other kinds of terror this way. There is no reason to make an exception here. To hand wave this is to ignore a growing tide of hate.

Montmorency
03-18-2019, 22:58
Thoughts and prayers to those shot. Since of course like almost everyone I'm not going to do anything else.

Humans pretend that we can after billions (or if you're American, thousands) of years of evolution / intelligent design where violence and winning at all costs was the only rule we can pretend we are all lovely and all would get on well if only we knew each other better since we are all deep down such wonderful people.

Frankly, I am surprised how few events occur around the world. We have increased movement of people and ideas which creates a situation where the nucleating of poisonous thoughts to views to action is all too easy. In the West we have a somewhat schizophrenic approach to law enforcement and stating we are all the same and then mention different communities in the next breath which makes it easier for proper fringes to hide behind the freedoms that we say we want.

So - thoughts and prayers.

~:smoking:

You are looking in the wrong place, at future possibilities and not present realities.

All extant political philosophies must recognize the basic truth that dispossessed the Angel of History: every single hegemonic political system ever has failed and collapsed.

For 3 generations, the failure of integrated national states to spring forth from decolonial territorializations in Africa and the Islamic world - and the antique, as far as modernity goes, struggles of the Latin American and Asian states - has been misinterpreted. 'Oh, they're so primitive, so corrupt, so unsophisticated and underdeveloped', most derided. 'Manifest is the natural incapacity of the dark races; we are but innocent strangers', the Right rumbled. 'Exploited under the yoke of oppressive economy and perpetuated legacy', the Left moaned. The reality they submerged transcends them all. The European and European-colonial states, nation-states and national-states, that effervesced into modernity owe so much to their history that they have neglected, and had they not neglected it we would have immediately understood from the outset that the white man cannot redeem his humanity beyond that of the brown, that the human exertions of the "developing world" mark and marked out a warning, a blazing alarm. We were too arrogant and complacent to heed it.

That warning: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. "Numbered, numbered, weighed, divided." Apocalypse.



*eyes roll back down from skull*


So, Egg-boy, huh?

The difference in Left and Right mindsets on display ITT??!

https://i.imgur.com/wr6oD9f.jpg

I have a compromise. The boy gets put in a chokehold, the goon doing the chokehold gets some wall therapy (http://www.ncoer.com/wall.htm). :smartass:

Anyway, the Australian PM (https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/434430-australian-prime-minister-suggests-senator-should-be-charged) is pro-egg-boy, and egg-boy wants his Go Fund Me proceeds donated (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12213889) to the shooting victims.

Seamus Fermanagh
03-19-2019, 14:10
I have to disagree. This can not be passed off as some crazy fringe individual. This can not be considered the proverbial price of speech. People were gunned down in cold blood.

We don't treat any other kinds of terror this way. There is no reason to make an exception here. To hand wave this is to ignore a growing tide of hate.

Soma everyone and make irrational hate a thing of the past? Imprison all of those whose ideologies are abhorrent to us? Confiscate all firearms of any kind? I've gone on record here before to note that racism and white supremacy is stupid and flies contrary to any discernible fact. I don't know of a practical way to outlaw stupidity.

Short of a 'Big Brother' -esque police state, how could you truly deter such deplorable things as this massacre. And I am talking practicality here, not desirability. I am certain all of us on this site would love to see such events vanish from the human experience.

Strike For The South
03-19-2019, 18:01
Soma everyone and make irrational hate a thing of the past? Imprison all of those whose ideologies are abhorrent to us? Confiscate all firearms of any kind? I've gone on record here before to note that racism and white supremacy is stupid and flies contrary to any discernible fact. I don't know of a practical way to outlaw stupidity.

Short of a 'Big Brother' -esque police state, how could you truly deter such deplorable things as this massacre. And I am talking practicality here, not desirability. I am certain all of us on this site would love to see such events vanish from the human experience.

To not address the root cause allows this to fester and allows Montys pessimism to start becoming realism.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-19-2019, 20:38
To not address the root cause allows this to fester and allows Montys pessimism to start becoming realism.

That would be a basic breakdown in Democracy - and also a failure to recognise that what we now classify as "extremism" used to be government policy somewhere​.

Strike For The South
03-19-2019, 20:45
That would be a basic breakdown in Democracy - and also a failure to recognise that what we now classify as "extremism" used to be government policy somewhere​.

I'm not sure I follow. I'm not advocating for any sort of draconian laws. What policy?

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-19-2019, 20:57
I'm not sure I follow. I'm not advocating for any sort of draconian laws. What policy?

"Segregate all the Blacks"

"Disenfranchise all the Christians"

"Drive out the Jews".

These are extremist views now, they have been at one time or another (more than once) official government policy somewhere, some time.

So, to see the views of racists and other bigots as somehow inherently abhorrent to human behaviour is clearly wrong, because these traits are innate to human behaviour.

Montmorency
03-19-2019, 22:10
That would be a basic breakdown in Democracy - and also a failure to recognise that what we now classify as "extremism" used to be government policy somewhere​.

This is a very important point about "extremism". For example, in Nazi Germany harboring Jewish refugees and promoting jazz music would have been extremism. In the Soviet Union, having reservations about the Party was extremism, to the point it was sometimes treated as pathology.

Strike For The South
03-19-2019, 23:10
"Segregate all the Blacks"

"Disenfranchise all the Christians"

"Drive out the Jews".

These are extremist views now, they have been at one time or another (more than once) official government policy somewhere, some time.

So, to see the views of racists and other bigots as somehow inherently abhorrent to human behaviour is clearly wrong, because these traits are innate to human behaviour.

I mean this kind of thing has the real possibility of undercutting the social fabric. It's not really the point if it's innate or not. Things are like that and sometimes people is not particularly good policy.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-20-2019, 02:20
I mean this kind of thing has the real possibility of undercutting the social fabric. It's not really the point if it's innate or not. Things are like that and sometimes people is not particularly good policy.

The point is that the social fabric is already rather thin. About the only thing most people can agree on these days is not killing each other and in America even that's not a given.

No shared culture, no shared religion... Some countries like the UK have a monarch to rally behind but that's an inconsistent glue at best.

Basically, our lack of extremism makes us vulnerable to extremism. Kinda "virtue is a double-sided sword" situation.

Husar
03-20-2019, 03:36
Soma everyone and make irrational hate a thing of the past? Imprison all of those whose ideologies are abhorrent to us? Confiscate all firearms of any kind? I've gone on record here before to note that racism and white supremacy is stupid and flies contrary to any discernible fact. I don't know of a practical way to outlaw stupidity.

Short of a 'Big Brother' -esque police state, how could you truly deter such deplorable things as this massacre. And I am talking practicality here, not desirability. I am certain all of us on this site would love to see such events vanish from the human experience.

Education and enlightenment? It's easy to say that some people are just dumb while you call for tax cuts, slash school budgets and give preference to private schools that many can't afford. Yes, some argue that the humanities degrees are useless, but how many humanities students have massacred >20 people so far?

Montmorency
03-20-2019, 03:40
I mean this kind of thing has the real possibility of undercutting the social fabric. It's not really the point if it's innate or not. Things are like that and sometimes people is not particularly good policy.

Lecture on the normalcy of disequilibrium and the rupture of safety (1940, colorized):


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHIX7O8wQNQ

"What is today but tomorrow's yesterday?"


Tangentially, I saw a fascist make a scary but true point: The vast majority of people living in the Western hemisphere are governed under an ideology and system of white supremacy. In response to the massacre and the Trump-Bolsonaro meeting (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47633940). Indeed, think of counter-examples: Bolivia? Venezuela and Cuba, at least in theory. Haiti, I guess.



A what?

?

Reply to the rest of the other post if you please.


Education and enlightenment? It's easy to say that some people are just dumb while you call for tax cuts, slash school budgets and give preference to private schools that many can't afford. Yes, some argue that the humanities degrees are useless, but how many humanities students have massacred >20 people so far?

It's not too late for PVC if the EU gets its army.

Strike For The South
03-20-2019, 03:55
The point is that the social fabric is already rather thin. About the only thing most people can agree on these days is not killing each other and in America even that's not a given.

No shared culture, no shared religion... Some countries like the UK have a monarch to rally behind but that's an inconsistent glue at best.

Basically, our lack of extremism makes us vulnerable to extremism. Kinda "virtue is a double-sided sword" situation.

So, que sera sera? Let the chips fall where they may? Time to take a bow? Unable or unwilling to change?

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-20-2019, 04:14
Reply to the rest of the other post if you please.

I do not understand.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-20-2019, 04:18
So, que sera sera? Let the chips fall where they may? Time to take a bow? Unable or unwilling to change?

No, you confront it.

However, you need to do so in a measured way - with carefully considered responses.

a completely inoffensive name
03-20-2019, 06:21
The Spongebob quote is "What is today but yesterday's tomorrow."

You whole arguement clearly falls apart.

a completely inoffensive name
03-20-2019, 06:33
The point is that the social fabric is already rather thin. About the only thing most people can agree on these days is not killing each other and in America even that's not a given.

No shared culture, no shared religion... Some countries like the UK have a monarch to rally behind but that's an inconsistent glue at best.

Basically, our lack of extremism makes us vulnerable to extremism. Kinda "virtue is a double-sided sword" situation.

Your description in the first chunk seems to be a general description of human society in all its forms.

What exactly makes pluralistic societies any weaker than homogeneous ones? Are we to believe that violence and tension in society only became a thing about when 20th century multiculturalism arrived?

CrossLOPER
03-20-2019, 06:35
I think it was 8chan, not 4chan.
4chan, in general, has a large amount of boards, some of them serving as containment cells for more annoying or extreme content. /pol/, for example, is an extension of /news/ which was killed TWICE because it became a stormfronter haven. The newer board basically holds all the frog memes, while /r9k/ holds all the incels.

There are other boards dedicated to nature and animals, transpeople, various types of (specifically legal) porn, and computer hardware.

8chan essentially consists of loli porn and fascist memes.

Viking
03-20-2019, 10:51
Your description in the first chunk seems to be a general description of human society in all its forms.

What exactly makes pluralistic societies any weaker than homogeneous ones? Are we to believe that violence and tension in society only became a thing about when 20th century multiculturalism arrived?

You are to believe that heterogeneous societies on average are more violent and less functional than homogeneous societies.


When you look at the 2018 Human Development Index (http://hdr.undp.org/en/2018-update), you'll notice that the top is dominated by relatively ethnically homogeneous societies (Switzerland's position is interesting, but that's ironically also a country that banned the construction of new minarets in a popular referendum).

One could also note that the list is dominated by countries from the West and Europe. At the same time, a large and resourceful country like Russia scores well below all the other European big powers. Incidentally, by many measures, Russia is also the most ethnically diverse European country, with several of its republics dominated demographically by ethnicities other than the Russian one.



If I did my counting right, among the European countries that used to be part of the Eastern Bloc, 9 score better than Russia (Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania and Estonia) and 10 score worse (Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Ukraine, Belarus, Albania, Serbia, Northern Macedonia, Bosnia, Moldova).

Of the 10 countries scoring worse, 4 (Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Northern Macedonia) were part of the multi-ethnic disaster that was Yugoslavia, and the country that retains the most ethnic diversity of these, Bosnia and Herzegovina, scores the fourth lowest among all European countries.

The lowest-scoring European country is Moldova, which incidentally contains the frozen conflict zone of Transnistria, which has a significantly different ethnic composition compared to the rest of the country (Russians and Ukrainians form more than half of the population in Transnistria). The country scoring second lowest is Ukraine, which also has significant ethnicity-related tension between the eastern and western parts, and between Crimea and the rest. The third lowest is Northern Macedonia, which is also very ethnically heterogeneous, with ethnic Macedonians forming only 60-70% of the population.


On the other side of the divide, you mostly find relatively ethnically homogeneous countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania and Croatia. You also find Latvia and Estonia, which both have sizeable Russian minorities, but I get the impression that both of these countries have successfully been building nation states based on the Latvian and Estonian ethnicities, respectively, rather than opting for a more inclusive model.

Similarly, you can say that the US traditionally have been building a nation state centred on predominant European ancestry (perhaps we can also add the adjective Protestant), a project that only recently truly has been reshaped into to something less European-centric and generally more pluralistic, together with a massive change in demographics. Not long afterwards, the US got Trump as president. I don't think that is a coincidence.

Gilrandir
03-20-2019, 11:04
The country scoring second lowest is Ukraine, which also has significant ethnicity-related tension between the eastern and western parts, and between Crimea and the rest.


It is not correct. Nowhere in Ukraine (except the now occupied Сrimea) Russians dominate.
22340

Moreover, "tensions" is too strong a word. "Differences" would be closer to the mark, and they are rather worldview- than ethnicity-related.

Viking
03-20-2019, 12:40
I did not say that ethnic Russians dominate in the east, but that there is a difference between the west and the east in terms of ethnic identity, which has had an impact on national politics. As your map shows, there are clear gradients relating to ethnic identity (north-south could also be mentioned, I forgot about Odesa).

Whether you want to use the word ethnicity or not is more a question of definition: small regional differences and groups of people that have had separate lineages and no direct contact for thousands of years are all on a spectrum.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-21-2019, 01:13
Your description in the first chunk seems to be a general description of human society in all its forms.

What exactly makes pluralistic societies any weaker than homogeneous ones? Are we to believe that violence and tension in society only became a thing about when 20th century multiculturalism arrived?

We define what we are by what we are not. We suppress our differences by emphasising the differences we share with another "out" group.

For the Greeks and Romans this was the Barbarians; for the Christians, the Pagans (and later the Muslims); for the Europeans it was the non-whites.

Now we suppress the instinct to other people - we are all equal, all beliefs, all cultural practises are equally valid. This emphasises all our differences, which undermines social cohesion.

That's not a problem when everyone has enough money and enough to eat - it becomes a problem if/when times are hard.

We got Trump, and Macron, and Brexit, in part because times are hard and in part because our societies are fragmented and therefore our social currents have become unpredictable.

This guy picked his out-group - Muslims - and he then went ahead and started killing them because they threaten his in-group (non Muslims). How do Muslims threaten non Muslims you ask? Simple, Islam is a missionary faith that seeks to subsume all of humanity and the Christians are no longer actively trying to stop them (via counter-conversions).

You want my advice? We should all be less accepting and more tollerant.

Now, can we talk about saving your eternal soul from fiery damnation? Or would you prefer to discuss reintegrating america into the Empire?

I mean SPQR, obviously.

a completely inoffensive name
03-21-2019, 05:46
You are to believe that heterogeneous societies on average are more violent and less functional than homogeneous societies.


When you look at the 2018 Human Development Index (http://hdr.undp.org/en/2018-update), you'll notice that the top is dominated by relatively ethnically homogeneous societies (Switzerland's position is interesting, but that's ironically also a country that banned the construction of new minarets in a popular referendum).

One could also note that the list is dominated by countries from the West and Europe. At the same time, a large and resourceful country like Russia scores well below all the other European big powers. Incidentally, by many measures, Russia is also the most ethnically diverse European country, with several of its republics dominated demographically by ethnicities other than the Russian one.

If I did my counting right, among the European countries that used to be part of the Eastern Bloc, 9 score better than Russia (Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania and Estonia) and 10 score worse (Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Ukraine, Belarus, Albania, Serbia, Northern Macedonia, Bosnia, Moldova).

Of the 10 countries scoring worse, 4 (Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Northern Macedonia) were part of the multi-ethnic disaster that was Yugoslavia, and the country that retains the most ethnic diversity of these, Bosnia and Herzegovina, scores the fourth lowest among all European countries.

The lowest-scoring European country is Moldova, which incidentally contains the frozen conflict zone of Transnistria, which has a significantly different ethnic composition compared to the rest of the country (Russians and Ukrainians form more than half of the population in Transnistria). The country scoring second lowest is Ukraine, which also has significant ethnicity-related tension between the eastern and western parts, and between Crimea and the rest. The third lowest is Northern Macedonia, which is also very ethnically heterogeneous, with ethnic Macedonians forming only 60-70% of the population.


On the other side of the divide, you mostly find relatively ethnically homogeneous countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania and Croatia. You also find Latvia and Estonia, which both have sizeable Russian minorities, but I get the impression that both of these countries have successfully been building nation states based on the Latvian and Estonian ethnicities, respectively, rather than opting for a more inclusive model.

Similarly, you can say that the US traditionally have been building a nation state centred on predominant European ancestry (perhaps we can also add the adjective Protestant), a project that only recently truly has been reshaped into to something less European-centric and generally more pluralistic, together with a massive change in demographics. Not long afterwards, the US got Trump as president. I don't think that is a coincidence.

This a lot of conjecture and half cocked assertions. Your argument looks weak when you make a generalization like that. We would need to take that list and deep dive into the data country by country, to see if there exists a real correlation with demographic composition.
Australia is #3 and according to it's 2011 census has 26% of its residents born overseas. native born citizens with one foreign born parent make up another 20% of the population. (https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/2071.0main+features902012-2013)

For Germany at #5 20% of the population has foreign roots (i.e. not ethnically German). Singapore at #9 is a 75-14-9 breakdown for Chinese, Malay, and Indian. This is just a sample of what stood out to me in the top 10. Are these not multicultural countries?

The evidence presented is essentially that the remnants of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and countries under the Iron Curtain, which under went civil war and economic collapse (respectively) twenty five years ago are lower on the index...because of multiculturalism?
Viking, I don't mean to sound dismissive, but the argument has to be better than this. Russia is struggling because of it has an oligarchical economy and a tyrannical government interested in preserving the oligarchy.


We define what we are by what we are not. We suppress our differences by emphasising the differences we share with another "out" group.

For the Greeks and Romans this was the Barbarians; for the Christians, the Pagans (and later the Muslims); for the Europeans it was the non-whites.

Now we suppress the instinct to other people - we are all equal, all beliefs, all cultural practises are equally valid. This emphasises all our differences, which undermines social cohesion.

That's not a problem when everyone has enough money and enough to eat - it becomes a problem if/when times are hard.

We got Trump, and Macron, and Brexit, in part because times are hard and in part because our societies are fragmented and therefore our social currents have become unpredictable.

This guy picked his out-group - Muslims - and he then went ahead and started killing them because they threaten his in-group (non Muslims). How do Muslims threaten non Muslims you ask? Simple, Islam is a missionary faith that seeks to subsume all of humanity and the Christians are no longer actively trying to stop them (via counter-conversions).

You want my advice? We should all be less accepting and more tollerant.

Now, can we talk about saving your eternal soul from fiery damnation? Or would you prefer to discuss reintegrating america into the Empire?

I mean SPQR, obviously.

Western liberal democracies by their nature hold certain philosophies above others. We define ourselves by those philosophical underpinnings and against those who do not share those same values.

In my opinion, the emphasis on managing race/demographics is the endgame for those that commit these shootings. We are feeding into their plan and further undermine social cohesion by framing the situation in this way.
We already have a perfectly suitable framework of competing ideas regarding individualistic expression and the relationship of a population and their government with which we can call ourselves "us" and other nations/groups "them".

Those that are German are the ones who believe in upholding the German constitution and the values it espouses. Same with the Americans, and the British...
When you start to worry about law abiding "paki's" who are there to live in peace, in accordance with the law, simply because their appearance and behavior in society is no longer statistically insignificant leads us to policies that can only result in the type of racial policing ripe for Nazi's/bigots to abuse.

That's my take on the situation at least.

CrossLOPER
03-21-2019, 06:57
I would like to interrupt the current line of discussion and ask: "When are we going to arm the Muslims?"

There have been constant proposals to arm teachers in the wake of school shootings, so why not give guns to Muslims to protect them from Frog Worshipers??

Viking
03-21-2019, 10:58
Australia is #3 and according to it's 2011 census has 26% of its residents born overseas. native born citizens with one foreign born parent make up another 20% of the population. (https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/2071.0main+features902012-2013)

For Germany at #5 20% of the population has foreign roots (i.e. not ethnically German). Singapore at #9 is a 75-14-9 breakdown for Chinese, Malay, and Indian. This is just a sample of what stood out to me in the top 10. Are these not multicultural countries?

I distinguish between ethnic diversity that has been part of a country traditionally (for centuries) and ethnic diversity stemming from migration in the last years and decades. This latter type of diversity has had much less time to have an effect on a country. I.e. the legal framework of the country, its form of government and e.g. the amount of trust in society and the state.

For example, ~12% of Germany's estimated population of September 2018 of about 83 million (https://www.destatis.de/EN/FactsFigures/SocietyState/Population/CurrentPopulation/Tables/Census_SexAndCitizenship.html) did not even have German citizenship. I imagine migrant workers constitute a sizeable fraction of this group, most of whom may eventually return to their home countries.

Singapore is an interesting example, but it's very much an oddball, being a city-state. It's also considered authoritarian by many. If it tried to convert into a liberal democracy, would that work as well?


The evidence presented is essentially that the remnants of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and countries under the Iron Curtain, which under went civil war and economic collapse (respectively) twenty five years ago are lower on the index...because of multiculturalism?

No, that among countries from the former Eastern Bloc, the more ethnically diverse tend to score the lowest; and that Russia scores poorly despite being so big and resourceful. It has had plenty of time to build and rebuild since the fall of the Soviet Union (I'll return to this topic below).


This a lot of conjecture and half cocked assertions. Your argument looks weak when you make a generalization like that. We would need to take that list and deep dive into the data country by country, to see if there exists a real correlation with demographic composition.

[..]

Viking, I don't mean to sound dismissive, but the argument has to be better than this. Russia is struggling because of it has an oligarchical economy and a tyrannical government interested in preserving the oligarchy.

The analysis was made on the fly, so it can only go uphill from here..

It would be interesting to do a more thorough analysis, but there are many different metrics to use, and it's very important to include all relevant variables in the analysis; a sample size of 189 for this kind of complex analysis is rather small, I'd think.

Comparing countries originating from the former Eastern Bloc has the advantage that they share significant back story, while at the same time being very different in terms of ethnic composition. Comparing countries like, say, Iceland, Spain, Togo and East Timor means accounting for many more variables that do not directly relate to ethnic diversity; something that makes the analysis for all the 189 countries difficult to do. Miss one variable important for just one country, and maybe the conclusion of the analysis changes.


But why is Russia an authoritarian oligarchy? My hypothesis is that this strongly relates to its traditional ethnic diversity, which has made the Russians not relate to the state as being of and for the (Russian) nation. The Russian state is instead an instrument to keep the ethnically diverse Russian federation together, a relatively intact remnant of the Russian Empire; therefore, the Russian state in its current form can be seen as fulfilling its duties to the Russian people: the empire hasn't crumbled. Quite the opposite, in fact: Crimea was recently reacquired, even if the rest of Ukraine is slipping away, and this gave Putin a popularity boost (https://www.apnews.com/e40386d7452749a8886d9196751f66c4) that makes perfect sense when you view the role of the Russian state this way:


“After Crimea was annexed, there was a sense of almost universal euphoria,” said Masha Lipman, a Moscow-based independent policy expert. She noted the majority of Russians still feel proud about the annexation of Crimea but “it no longer works the way it had, it does not improve the mood.”

A poll this month by the Public Opinion Foundation, a Moscow-based survey firm, said most Russians continue to support the annexation, but also indicated an increasing public awareness of its costs.

If you compare Russia with the UK, you can see that whereas the UK has let go of most of its imperial acquisitions; in some sense, most of the Russian Empire is, as mentioned, still intact. Imagine if the UK contained several Northern Irelands as well as many mini-Waleses and mini-Scotlands, each with its own distinct culture and language. I don't think that would be very good for British democracy at all (even Scotland in its present form manages to complicate matters, not to mention what Northern Ireland does), although it's of course difficult to tell how severe the impact would have been.


Western liberal democracies by their nature hold certain philosophies above others. We define ourselves by those philosophical underpinnings and against those who do not share those same values.

If this is all that defines you as a person, you'd be quite a nebulous individual. What about your ideas of good manners and bad manners? What about your views on moral right and wrong? What about your views on appropriateness (or lack thereof)? What about the choices you make about which clothes to wear and which not to? What defines you here? Where does those definitions come from?


We already have a perfectly suitable framework of competing ideas regarding individualistic expression and the relationship of a population and their government with which we can call ourselves "us" and other nations/groups "them".

Those that are German are the ones who believe in upholding the German constitution and the values it espouses. Same with the Americans, and the British...

It's a bit ironic to use the the term individualistic expression in this context, considering that multiculturalism in practice is the opposite of individualism. People tend to follow the culture they grew up in, and to a great extent, the religion they were raised with.

Regarding laws, often people don't simply want to uphold the them or the constitution, but to change them. Ethnicity can be an important predicting factor for whether an individual want the law changed, and how. What's a German then?

Gilrandir
03-21-2019, 15:08
I did not say that ethnic Russians dominate in the east, but that there is a difference between the west and the east in terms of ethnic identity, which has had an impact on national politics. As your map shows, there are clear gradients relating to ethnic identity (north-south could also be mentioned, I forgot about Odesa).

Whether you want to use the word ethnicity or not is more a question of definition: small regional differences and groups of people that have had separate lineages and no direct contact for thousands of years are all on a spectrum.

It was you who inacurately used the word "ethnicity", not me.

And once again, there is no difference in ethnic identity. The extant differences may relate to language, culture, history, worldview, confession, but not to ethnicity. All of the people who may differ in those still call themselves Ukrainians.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-21-2019, 16:53
That's my take on the situation at least.

Only Rome and a Good Emperor can save us, ACIN, there is no other way.

Only when Rome stretches from Sea to Sea and all therein are Roman will we be safe.

Viking
03-21-2019, 17:23
The extant differences may relate to language, culture, history, worldview, confession [...]

Precisely such things relate to the concept of ethnicity.

Gilrandir
03-21-2019, 17:55
Precisely such things relate to the concept of ethnicity.

Yet they don't constitute it. People may belong to one ethnicity, but worship different gods, speak different languages, have different views on their history, but acknopwledge the fact that they still have something in common which is not cancelled by these differences.

Montmorency
03-22-2019, 06:07
We define what we are by what we are not. We suppress our differences by emphasising the differences we share with another "out" group.

For the Greeks and Romans this was the Barbarians; for the Christians, the Pagans (and later the Muslims); for the Europeans it was the non-whites.

Now we suppress the instinct to other people - we are all equal, all beliefs, all cultural practises are equally valid. This emphasises all our differences, which undermines social cohesion.

That's not a problem when everyone has enough money and enough to eat - it becomes a problem if/when times are hard.

We got Trump, and Macron, and Brexit, in part because times are hard and in part because our societies are fragmented and therefore our social currents have become unpredictable.

Modern cohesive factors cut across divisions like European and Muslim, while internally each of these continue to find cohesion historically out of reach. Don't fear the "outsider", the fragmentation was inside us all along!

Thankfully, one side effect of global civilization has been to widen the moral circle or whatever they call it. Thus new societies will be poised to form from the motley refuse of the old. The SPQR is dead forever, long live &c. Any new project of similar scale will look like Imperium of Man Human Commonwealth.


Simple, Islam is a missionary faith that seeks to subsume all of humanity and the Christians are no longer actively trying to stop them (via counter-conversions).

Damn, why do you think Muslims are doing more aggressive missionary work than Christians today? Ongoing missionary efforts in Asia and Africa (https://www.asiabyafrica.com/point-a-to-a/chinese-in-africa-christianity-religion) seems to decisively dispel that impression, even where large-scale conversions in the Western Hemisphere are mostly intrafaith, Catholics being targeted by bastard forms of Calvinism and evangelism.



You are to believe that heterogeneous societies on average are more violent and less functional than homogeneous societies.


When you look at the 2018 Human Development Index (http://hdr.undp.org/en/2018-update), you'll notice that the top is dominated by relatively ethnically homogeneous societies (Switzerland's position is interesting, but that's ironically also a country that banned the construction of new minarets in a popular referendum).

One could also note that the list is dominated by countries from the West and Europe. At the same time, a large and resourceful country like Russia scores well below all the other European big powers. Incidentally, by many measures, Russia is also the most ethnically diverse European country, with several of its republics dominated demographically by ethnicities other than the Russian one.

Generally, what reason is there to abstract "homogeneity/heterogeneity" per se as an important causal factor, compared to others, in postulated dysfunction or violence? Or to the extent that it can be, I think one of the biggest weaknesses in your worldview is to emphasize ethnic dimensions as paramount, when there are actually many meaningful axes. As an example, there is a thesis that Nordic cultural homogeneity on the specific axis of social responsibility norms may in part be linked to large immigrant outflows in the 19th century - or contrarily to the underlying trends and pressures that drove those outflows. See how intricate it all is?

Australia (#3 for HDI) is in some respects more diverse than the United States, with IIRC the majority of the population being 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. Similar with Canada (#12). Germany, Switzerland, and the UK are famously diverse even with respect to their white European populations. You'll have to be careful to specify in what ways Hong Kong and Singapore are very homogeneous. Is there any correlation between homogeneity (however you mean) and levels of functionality and violence among the countries of the Caribbean and Latin America? Seems like a rich source for comparisons. Countries in Eastern Europe may be more homogenous than those in Western Europe in terms of ethnicity, yet they score lower on HDI. Plus, how are Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania and Croatia particularly less diverse than Eastern European countries? Hungary and Poland are outliers, far more mono-ethnic than any of the Nordics, really on the extreme end demographically for the continent - interestingly also the vanguard for the European fascist resurgence, corruption, etc. Clearly a monocausal theory is inadequate for explaining why the "multi-ethnic disaster" of Putin's Russia should be fascist, alongside ostensibly near-mono-ethnic Hungary and Poland.

And do not forget that the large countries of Western Europe - UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain - have always been multi-ethnic.

More plausible is that there are multiple historical and material contributors to why Europe looks the way it does. If you wanted to reverse-engineer European history by positing an influence of "homogeneity" (which would then have to be specified) in systematic differences or correspondences between states and societies, I think you would be left unable to accurately describe or explain much of European history as it happened. A more worthwhile angle might be to look at how institutions such as those of bureaucracy or mass education arise to mediate diversity.

Studies (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x) of ethnic diversity in America often indicate that its long-term social cohesion is bolstered by immigration and the presence of many groups:

Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross‐cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.

At a glance, a more interesting generalization for Nordic countries, city-states, and countries like Japan, UK, United States, etc. (add in Kuwait, Qatar, UAE...) is 2/3 or 3/3 of relatively-small population size, commodity capitalization, and/or maritime-ready geography.


I distinguish between ethnic diversity that has been part of a country traditionally (for centuries) and ethnic diversity stemming from migration in the last years and decades. This latter type of diversity has had much less time to have an effect on a country. I.e. the legal framework of the country, its form of government and e.g. the amount of trust in society and the state.

AHA! So what you're saying is, it's a matter of time for social and civic institutions to adapt - and by corollary, for old "homogeneous" arrangements to fragment.

James Baldwin on "traditional" diversity" in the United States:


This is one of the greatest errors Americans can make. The identity they fought so hard to protect has, by virtue of that battle, undergone a change: Americans are as unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be. I do not think, for example, that it is too much to suggest that the American vision of the world — which allows so little reality, generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life, which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and white — owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain between themselves and black men a human separation which could not be bridged. It is only now beginning to be borne in on us — very faintly, it must be admitted, very slowly, and very much against our will— that this vision of the world is dangerously inaccurate, and perfectly useless. For it protects our moral high-mindedness at the terrible expense of weakening our grasp of reality. People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact faced, with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.


For example, ~12% of Germany's estimated population of September 2018 of about 83 million did not even have German citizenship. I imagine migrant workers constitute a sizeable fraction of this group, most of whom may eventually return to their home countries.

Speaking of traditional diversity, as mentioned above Germany is famously diverse in the sense of its deeper history. Germans are not "just" Germans - ask Austria. And Bavaria. And...


Singapore is an interesting example, but it's very much an oddball, being a city-state. It's also considered authoritarian by many. If it tried to convert into a liberal democracy, would that work as well?

The United States was not really a liberal democracy until basically the 20th century, but certainly not until after the Civil War. I think when local arrangements (whether in terms of granular axes or broad attributes) persist on the scale of decades, we can say that societies have found their equilibrium phase for their extant conditions. For instance I am given to understand that in the Nordics the welfare state, while generous, is stricter than most other Western countries' in pushing applicants to work. You can't mix and match instantaneously and arbitrarily what develops organically. Liberal democracy is neither automatic nor the "highest stage" of political being. If Singapore becomes more socially liberal in governance it will be because of a confluence of external world politics and internal popular upheaval. As for the present, don't take my word for it but my impression is that the general osmosis of recent history has shifted the social baselines for Singapore in many areas (e.g. cultural attitudes toward race/gender egalitarianism, LGBT, resistance to overt government repression). From the top, the interventionist Singaporean government maintains (relatively) decent levels of wealth/income inequality (https://www.valuechampion.sg/2018/07/how-big-problem-income-inequality-singapore). Money is proven to be one of the best lubricants.



No, that among countries from the former Eastern Bloc, the more ethnically diverse tend to score the lowest; and that Russia scores poorly despite being so big and resourceful. It has had plenty of time to build and rebuild since the fall of the Soviet Union (I'll return to this topic below).

Does Russia lack cohesion because of its ethnic diversity - or does it have ethnic diversity because of its geographic extent, which itself depletes cohesion and incentivizes state coercion as the center of gravity?

Remember that even the core Muscovy at the dawn of the modern era was geographically far-flung, even though it had not yet absorbed the majority of the territory and ethnicities that forms modern-day Russia. If 1520 Muscovy and 2020 Russia follow similar coercive models with top-down control and weak institutions, and 1520 Muscovy was less ethnically diverse in its subjects on paper (in fact modern Russia has the advantage of inheriting from the Soviet Union that state invention called "nation"), then Eurasian geography is probably a stronger factor. It also fits well into models that weigh geography heavily in the formation of states and societies.

Let's up the ante (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/File:Russians_in_Russian_regions_2010.png): Russia gives independence to each of its regions with fewer than 50% ethnic Russians, and all those Russians migrate to the heartland. Or to simplify the scenario, all individuals of Uralic, Turkic, or Caucasian background are deported to reservations. Russia is now even more overwhelmingly mono-ethnic, with maybe a little less total territory.

What exactly changes? Do you think Russia somehow becomes more coherent and functional? Does Petrograd become a liberal democracy because Moscow is no longer overseeing a client government in Chechnya? What exactly is the relevant positive effect of removing a few million scattered minorities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia) here and there, all of whom are far too few in number to challenge the Russian majority in any way except for the 2 or 3 largest in their enclaves (e.g. Chechnya)?

In fact, we have a historical scenario for just this kind of retrenchment: the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I don't think the difference between Soviet Russia and Putin's Russia supports your theory.


Imagine if the UK contained several Northern Irelands as well as many mini-Waleses and mini-Scotlands, each with its own distinct culture and language. I don't think that would be very good for British democracy at all (even Scotland in its present form manages to complicate matters, not to mention what Northern Ireland does), although it's of course difficult to tell how severe the impact would have been.

Why do you think the existence of governed minorities overseas is itself corrosive to British democracy, rather than the - you know - imperialism. Notably, the point I was making above is that Russia has always been an empire, and that this is tied more to territory and geopolitics than to who inhabits the territory. As long as we're sweepingly theorizing, I contend that a more effective way to make Russia less coercive would be if it lost Siberia and the Far East (overwhelmingly Russian-majority) than if it gave up Chechnya.


It's a bit ironic to use the the term individualistic expression in this context, considering that multiculturalism in practice is the opposite of individualism. People tend to follow the culture they grew up in, and to a great extent, the religion they were raised with.

While it would be fallacious to allege you are conversely implying that cultural exclusivism contributes to individualism, I'd like to establish outright that this is clearly historically untrue (though individuality emerges despite it).

Independent of that, saying multiculturalism in principle - and here let me point out that pluralism and multiculturalism are not necessarily the same thing - mitigates individualism needs some justification beyond sophistry. First of all, when using "individualism" do you mean as a theoretical social form, as a political or moral philosophy, or some concrete measure of differences between persons?

Strike For The South
03-22-2019, 17:52
Monty wrote a dissertation but I will just add that there is a great book called "From peasants into Frenchmen" that describes how the French nation became so out of a bunch of squabbling polities. Social cohesion is important but it hardly has to come out of a sacred connection of "these people to this land". Historically that has never really been the case, especially for large nations. It is very much a creation of the French revolution, cemented in the imperialist era before the first world war.

A lot of European issues come from governments saying "oh yes we welcome immigrants" and then essentially creating an underclass of under skilled labor who they then blame (unfairly) for societal ills. There was a great times a while ago about the children of immigrants to Denmark. Part of "becoming Danish" was learning how to celebrate christmas. Which is insane considering they were muslims and christmas is the second most holy day in christendom. So the kids go through all of this "danishization" and the article ends with the parents co workers explaining to them how they will never be Danish. If I was those parents, I would be pretty miffed, to say the least.

The goal should be social cohesion not some supermajority of whatever your perceived social group is because it was never like that.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-23-2019, 00:32
Modern cohesive factors cut across divisions like European and Muslim, while internally each of these continue to find cohesion historically out of reach. Don't fear the "outsider", the fragmentation was inside us all along!

Thankfully, one side effect of global civilization has been to widen the moral circle or whatever they call it. Thus new societies will be poised to form from the motley refuse of the old. The SPQR is dead forever, long live &c. Any new project of similar scale will look like Imperium of Man Human Commonwealth.

Sadly, my reference flew right over your head.

"Romanitas" was a function of being Roman, acting like a Roman, dressing like a Roman, talking like a Roman. It did not, in the main, include modern concepts of ethnicity or even religious observance beyond lip service to the Imperial Cult.

However, Modern Western Society has no such centralised concept of itself, it is a fragmented mish-mash that can mean very different things to different people.


Damn, why do you think Muslims are doing more aggressive missionary work than Christians today? Ongoing missionary efforts in Asia and Africa (https://www.asiabyafrica.com/point-a-to-a/chinese-in-africa-christianity-religion) seems to decisively dispel that impression, even where large-scale conversions in the Western Hemisphere are mostly intrafaith, Catholics being targeted by bastard forms of Calvinism and evangelism.

Well, "aggressive" is your word not mine, and I was talking about the West - the arena from which the gunman hails. Westerners often find Islam attractive because it is stricter and more moralistic than forms of Christianity they are usually exposed to. Similarly to Evangelical Christianity, but more so, it fills a need for structure and authority that many people crave.

Christianity doesn't really offer that anymore in its main guises because it has moved from being tollerant of other beliefs to accepting of them.

Montmorency
03-23-2019, 00:41
Sadly, my reference flew right over your head.

"Romanitas" was a function of being Roman, acting like a Roman, dressing like a Roman, talking like a Roman. It did not, in the main, include modern concepts of ethnicity or even religious observance beyond lip service to the Imperial Cult.

However, Modern Western Society has no such centralised concept of itself, it is a fragmented mish-mash that can mean very different things to different people.



Well, "aggressive" is your word not mine, and I was talking about the West - the arena from which the gunman hails. Westerners often find Islam attractive because it is stricter and more moralistic than forms of Christianity they are usually exposed to. Similarly to Evangelical Christianity, but more so, it fills a need for structure and authority that many people crave.

Christianity doesn't really offer that anymore in its main guises because it has moved from being tollerant of other beliefs to accepting of them.

What is your evidence that the ancient world had a centralized concept of self beyond that the imperial elite upheld a certain pseudo-traditional image? And do you believe that even this image had all the elements for a comprehensive worldview?

Check it out, I'd bet Muslim immigrants to Europe leave Islam at a higher rate than Christian or secular Europeans convert to Islam.

Furunculus
03-23-2019, 09:34
Viking, I don't mean to sound dismissive, but the argument has to be better than this. Russia is struggling because of it has an oligarchical economy and a tyrannical government interested in preserving the oligarchy.


maybe russia has a tyrannical government [because] it struggles to maintain cohesion as a common society in consequence of its heterogeneity? In which case the oligarchical economy is a consequence of a tyrannical (and thus corrupt) government, rather than being directly attributable to heterogeneity in the first instance.

Viking
03-23-2019, 15:52
Generally, what reason is there to abstract "homogeneity/heterogeneity" per se as an important causal factor, compared to others, in postulated dysfunction or violence?

On a fundamental level, what is it that motivates H. sapiens, or other (social) animals, to act antisocially - i.e. to use violence or cheat - and cooperatively?

I'd imagine that the expectation of reciprocation is key here, and that individuals expect more reciprocation from individuals that are similar to themselves. The homogeneity of a society should correlate strongly with the expectation of reciprocation in the average social interaction. Thus, the amount of both cooperative and antisocial behaviour in a society should correlate strongly with its homogeneity.


Or to the extent that it can be, I think one of the biggest weaknesses in your worldview is to emphasize ethnic dimensions as paramount, when there are actually many meaningful axes. As an example, there is a thesis that Nordic cultural homogeneity on the specific axis of social responsibility norms may in part be linked to large immigrant outflows in the 19th century - or contrarily to the underlying trends and pressures that drove those outflows. See how intricate it all is?

I classify homogeneity not as paramount, but as fundamentally important. I am not familiar the thesis you refer to.


Is there any correlation between homogeneity (however you mean) and levels of functionality and violence among the countries of the Caribbean and Latin America? Seems like a rich source for comparisons.

Haven't looked at those yet, may do so later.


Countries in Eastern Europe may be more homogenous than those in Western Europe in terms of ethnicity, yet they score lower on HDI. Plus, how are Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania and Croatia particularly less diverse than Eastern European countries? Hungary and Poland are outliers, far more mono-ethnic than any of the Nordics, really on the extreme end demographically for the continent - interestingly also the vanguard for the European fascist resurgence, corruption, etc. Clearly a monocausal theory is inadequate for explaining why the "multi-ethnic disaster" of Putin's Russia should be fascist, alongside ostensibly near-mono-ethnic Hungary and Poland.

Homogeneity is not a panacea. The countries of the former Eastern Bloc have some catching up to do after the end of the Cold War, and that may take a while. The democracies of Eastern Europe tend to be relatively young, and I think that democracy needs some time to become properly entrenched in a country, and that first and foremost time spent as a relatively well-functioning democracy (minimal amounts of rigging, and so on) counts toward that goal. My prediction is that the less diverse countries of Central and Eastern Europe on average will catch up sooner than the more diverse ones.


And do not forget that the large countries of Western Europe - UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain - have always been multi-ethnic.

[...]

Speaking of traditional diversity, as mentioned above Germany is famously diverse in the sense of its deeper history. Germans are not "just" Germans - ask Austria. And Bavaria. And...

Diversity relating to ethnicity comes in many forms. To start with Germany, the concept of a German ethnicity is so strong that subdivisions are entirely glossed over in many contexts. What is the ethnicity of Merkel? How easy is it not to forget that the leader of one of the most ethnicity-intolerant countries in world history had his roots in a neighbouring country?

I already touched on this when I mentioned the US in the first post, namely the construction of new a new larger ethnicity from smaller existing ones. The same applies to the rest of the countries you mention, and you can note that many of them have troubles relating to mergers that never happened or didn't go far enough. Spain, for instance, have had significant issues and continues to do so.

The most important thing is that the vast majority of people either identify with the new ethnicity, or at least don't identify themselves too strongly in opposition to it.

Creating new ethnicities was easier in the past, when states were more authoritarian (can openly suppress languages and other expression of cultural identity), people were less educated and had fewer legal rights.



Studies (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x) of ethnic diversity in America often indicate that its long-term social cohesion is bolstered by immigration and the presence of many groups:

In the abstract, there is this sentence


In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits.

The section titled "The Prospects and Benefits of Immigration and Ethnic Diversity" seems to be the part that is supposed to elaborates this. The supposed benefits are a diverse bunch, so I'll address them one by one.

The first point (creativity) does not directly distinguish between different sources of immigration, which is crucial for a proper analysis.

The second point (economic growth) doesn't make this distinction either, and it is not explicitly made clear that this also concerns the longer term (which I imagine would also be difficult to measure).

The third point (ageing populations) is tricky, you risk just postponing the problems.

The last point doesn't even concern the country that is becoming more diverse, but the countries where the immigrants come from.


Liberal democracy is neither automatic nor the "highest stage" of political being. If Singapore becomes more socially liberal in governance it will be because of a confluence of external world politics and internal popular upheaval. As for the present, don't take my word for it but my impression is that the general osmosis of recent history has shifted the social baselines for Singapore in many areas (e.g. cultural attitudes toward race/gender egalitarianism, LGBT, resistance to overt government repression). From the top, the interventionist Singaporean government maintains (relatively) decent levels of wealth/income inequality (https://www.valuechampion.sg/2018/07/how-big-problem-income-inequality-singapore). Money is proven to be one of the best lubricants.


Liberal democracy is referenced here as a presumed favoured form of governance among the participants of the debate.

I presume that a liberal social order works the best for a homogeneous population, because then the extra freedoms afforded to the individual will have less severe consequences for the social cohesion. That is so because the majority of the population will still lead relatively similar lives. Per definition, the aspirations of people will be more similar in a homogeneous than a heterogeneous society.


Does Russia lack cohesion because of its ethnic diversity - or does it have ethnic diversity because of its geographic extent, which itself depletes cohesion and incentivizes state coercion as the center of gravity?

It could be interesting to note here that Denmark and Norway have a very similar population size, but are very different in terms of area. Both countries are among the smaller ones in Europe in terms of population size, but Denmark is also among the smaller countries in terms of area, while Norway is actually among the largest, being larger than countries like Italy and the UK (and even Germany if you include the archipelago of Svalbard).

Yet I don't see that the difference in social cohesion between Denmark and Norway has ever been that very large. Iceland is also in a similar situation as Norway: it is among the very smallest European countries by population size, but medium-sized in terms of area; and it ranks very well.

Granted, Russia is huge; but so is Canada, and fares much better.


Let's up the ante (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/File:Russians_in_Russian_regions_2010.png): Russia gives independence to each of its regions with fewer than 50% ethnic Russians, and all those Russians migrate to the heartland. Or to simplify the scenario, all individuals of Uralic, Turkic, or Caucasian background are deported to reservations. Russia is now even more overwhelmingly mono-ethnic, with maybe a little less total territory.

What exactly changes? Do you think Russia somehow becomes more coherent and functional? Does Petrograd become a liberal democracy because Moscow is no longer overseeing a client government in Chechnya? What exactly is the relevant positive effect of removing a few million scattered minorities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia) here and there, all of whom are far too few in number to challenge the Russian majority in any way except for the 2 or 3 largest in their enclaves (e.g. Chechnya)?

There would be a change in the metrics that the Russians subconsciously and consciously evaluate the Russian government by.

More or less since its inception, insurgency within the borders of the Russian Federation remains a threat that its military has to be prepared to deal with. The prospect of an open revolt withing the borders of a country is never a good one; if many soldiers die every year to fight insurgency, that is going to have an impact on a country. Depending on the exact hypothetical scenario, this threat could be eliminated, and keeping the peace internally in Russia through militarily means would no longer be necessary. This change should have a big impact on what kind of people are deemed eligible to lead the country, and what kind of policies that seem sensible to implement.

Another impacts relates more directly to homogeneity. There could be more sympathy towards people affected negatively by a dysfunctional state. If the poorest people in a country belong to a different ethnicity than a given person, then that person might be more likely to assume that the poverty is a result of the person belonging to that ethnicity; i.e. the people from that ethnicity and/or their culture are deemed inferior in some way by this person.

When you do feel sympathy for the poorer and think that poor governance has a lot to blame for it, then you may want to change the governance. The more people that want to change the governance, the more realistic such a change is.

The sum of these two examples is that it is no longer relevant to show skill in keeping peace internally through military means (something which an authoritarian government might be better at), and more people will feel sympathy with those negatively affected by poor governance (or be more dissatisfied with the way it affects themselves) and more strongly desire a change in governance, and perhaps be willing to take greater risks to achieve it (no need to worry about internal revolts flaring up).


In fact, we have a historical scenario for just this kind of retrenchment: the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I don't think the difference between Soviet Russia and Putin's Russia supports your theory.

The Soviet Union was much more authoritarian than the Russian Federation is today. It could also rely much more on ideology to pacify subjects. The Soviet Union could rely on local communist parties, while the Russian Federation relies on the former warlord Kadyrov in Chechnya, and might not be able to do much better. Relying on ideology should be much more preferable.


Why do you think the existence of governed minorities overseas is itself corrosive to British democracy, rather than the - you know - imperialism. Notably, the point I was making above is that Russia has always been an empire, and that this is tied more to territory and geopolitics than to who inhabits the territory. As long as we're sweepingly theorizing, I contend that a more effective way to make Russia less coercive would be if it lost Siberia and the Far East (overwhelmingly Russian-majority) than if it gave up Chechnya.

Imperialism doesn't make that much sense without a country subsuming lands dominated by ethnicities other than the ethnicity, if any, dominating the country doing the conquering. Otherwise, you would just be creating a new large national state, like Germany.


First of all, when using "individualism" do you mean as a theoretical social form, as a political or moral philosophy, or some concrete measure of differences between persons?

Not sure what you mean by the first, but let's say all of them.

If you have multiple cultures in a society, then that places an upper bound on individualistic expression, because you need to have a certain number of people adhering to the same (relatively arbitrary) standard, or you wouldn't have multiple cultures.


There was a great times a while ago about the children of immigrants to Denmark. Part of "becoming Danish" was learning how to celebrate christmas. Which is insane considering they were muslims and christmas is the second most holy day in christendom. So the kids go through all of this "danishization" and the article ends with the parents co workers explaining to them how they will never be Danish. If I was those parents, I would be pretty miffed, to say the least.

It would be great to have sources so that information can be verified.

Per definition, they can never become ethnic Danes, which is what effectively defined a 'Dane' in the past. The only type of 'Dane' they can become, is some yet-to-be-determined future concept of 'Dane', one that will probably remain a construction site for a while.

If you want the concept of a 'Dane' to mean anything, it should be stricter than 'has Danish citizenship', yet, by contemporary standards, excluding people from such a concept is mean, and, ultimately, the math might just not add up. In the end, it's just a word, and a group of people does not become more or less alike other people in a society whether or not you stick a given label on them.

In theory, anyone can become an 'American', but in practice, I don't know if it's that much easier for a person of non-European descent to become an 'American' than it is to become a 'Dane'.

Like elsewhere, Christmas in Scandinavia has become a very secular celebration, and it is not necessary to take part in any strictly religious ritual to celebrate it. In Scandinavia, Christmas celebrations has roots that precede the introduction of Christianity, something which is reflected by the fact that the name of the celebration hasn't changed since then.

Shared celebrations is one of many things that contributes to cohesion in a society, while different groups having different celebrations emphasizes outgroup and ingroup relations.

Husar
03-23-2019, 18:50
On a fundamental level, what is it that motivates H. sapiens, or other (social) animals, to act antisocially - i.e. to use violence or cheat - and cooperatively?

I'd imagine that the expectation of reciprocation is key here, and that individuals expect more reciprocation from individuals that are similar to themselves. The homogeneity of a society should correlate strongly with the expectation of reciprocation in the average social interaction. Thus, the amount of both cooperative and antisocial behaviour in a society should correlate strongly with its homogeneity.

[...]

Homogeneity is not a panacea. The countries of the former Eastern Bloc have some catching up to do after the end of the Cold War, and that may take a while.

Catching up in what? Socialism should have provided them with a lot more homogeneity than capitalism does. You're making a big argument for socialism here and then you suddenly assume that formerly socialist countries had some kind of disadvantage in homogeneity, as if they had to catch up in inequality to become more homogeneus. Homogeneity can't just be applied to ethnicity after all.

The DDR for example tried to ban rap music because it was too subversive and threatened the homogeneity of socialist paradise. Would you agree with such measures given that rap is not part of European culture and ethnic identity?

Gilrandir
03-24-2019, 06:38
if many soldiers die every year to fight insurgency, that is going to have an impact on a country.


It depends on how many is many, where is the limit after crossing which the country starts to be dissatisfied. If its population is huge and if the authorities are good at keeping the information on casualties secret (as it happens with Russian casualties in Donbas now) the country may feel fine indefinitely.




The Soviet Union was much more authoritarian than the Russian Federation is today.


It is a debatable statement. Besides, how can you measure authoritarianism?


It could also rely much more on ideology to pacify subjects.

The ultimate pacifier was KGB and police and even the army (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre), not the ideology.


The Soviet Union could rely on local communist parties, while the Russian Federation relies on the former warlord Kadyrov in Chechnya, and might not be able to do much better. Relying on ideology should be much more preferable.Relying on ideology should be much more preferable.

The communist parties were never local, they were under command of the Central Committee.

And modern Chechnya (as whole Russia indeed), has ideology all right - the co called staples (skrepy). But that doesn't cancel dependence on the law enforcement bodies or/and former warlords.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-24-2019, 16:25
What is your evidence that the ancient world had a centralized concept of self beyond that the imperial elite upheld a certain pseudo-traditional image? And do you believe that even this image had all the elements for a comprehensive worldview?

Check it out, I'd bet Muslim immigrants to Europe leave Islam at a higher rate than Christian or secular Europeans convert to Islam.

Not the "Ancient World", the Roman Empire. If you want to know how strong that sense of identity is just look at how long it lasts after central authority collapses. Many cities continued to consider themselves "Roman" and operate along Roman legal and cultural lines well into the 10th and 11th Century, even in parts of Germany.

In some ways that sense of identity persists today, it is one of the things that is supposed to help hold the U together.

Viking
03-24-2019, 22:08
Catching up in what? Socialism should have provided them with a lot more homogeneity than capitalism does. You're making a big argument for socialism here and then you suddenly assume that formerly socialist countries had some kind of disadvantage in homogeneity, as if they had to catch up in inequality to become more homogeneus. Homogeneity can't just be applied to ethnicity after all.

Which means that could and should be used to increase or maintain homogeneity in a society is a separate topic. The pros have to be weighed against the cons for each method.

Most or all of the ex-communist/socialist countries of Europe had little experience with democracy before their most recent spell as authoritarian states, and the recent decades spent as dictatorships did not help to prepare them for an existence as well-governed democracies. So they have some catching up to do.


Would you agree with such measures given that rap is not part of European culture and ethnic identity?

I'll use this opportunity to state that I don't know if I find concepts like European culture or identity to be very useful in most contexts. Probably a bit too abstract and/or vague.

International cultural exchange should be able to help reduce global heterogeneity, while within individual countries, the consequences seem less obvious.


It is a debatable statement. Besides, how can you measure authoritarianism?

Could start by looking at number of massacres committed by the government (cf. your link), the number of people sent to gulags and the ability of the average citizen to influence governance (e.g. by voting).



The communist parties were never local, they were under command of the Central Committee.

And modern Chechnya (as whole Russia indeed), has ideology all right - the co called staples (skrepy). But that doesn't cancel dependence on the law enforcement bodies or/and former warlords.

The point is that you can recruit and convert people locally to the ideology of communism by agitating for things like global revolution, equality for all, rights to the worker etc. This should be much more exciting and convincing than stationery.

Gilrandir
03-25-2019, 09:46
Could start by looking at number of massacres committed by the government (cf. your link), the number of people sent to gulags and the ability of the average citizen to influence governance (e.g. by voting).

The former two are good in distinguishing totalitarianism (dictatorship) from authoritarianism, but not the degree of the latter. The third criterion is pretty much equal for the USSR and modern Russia, since elections are/were held in both, but were/are they true elections?

Seamus Fermanagh
03-25-2019, 17:50
It will serve, I hope, as a good test case for the preferred mantra of anti-gun activists here in the USA. NZ has enacted a law banning semi-automatic weapons, banning magazines holding more than 5 rounds, and requiring the owners of such weapons to turn them in (with compensation) to remove all such weaponry from non-government hands. This is, more or less, everything the US anti-gun movement is seeking regarding weapons in the USA. I am not sure if there was a measurable degree of gun violence in NZ prior to this catastrophe, but perhaps we can test this approach's efficacy.

Issues surrounding mental health and firearms, white supremacy idiocies, and terror threats are also important strains of thought. I will be interested to see what NZ is doing on those issues.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-25-2019, 23:44
It will serve, I hope, as a good test case for the preferred mantra of anti-gun activists here in the USA. NZ has enacted a law banning semi-automatic weapons, banning magazines holding more than 5 rounds, and requiring the owners of such weapons to turn them in (with compensation) to remove all such weaponry from non-government hands. This is, more or less, everything the US anti-gun movement is seeking regarding weapons in the USA. I am not sure if there was a measurable degree of gun violence in NZ prior to this catastrophe, but perhaps we can test this approach's efficacy.

Issues surrounding mental health and firearms, white supremacy idiocies, and terror threats are also important strains of thought. I will be interested to see what NZ is doing on those issues.

The UK did the same in the 1980's and banned handguns in the 1990's. Australia also followed suit in the 1990's - New Zealand is following the pattern of other Anglophone countries of banning semi-auto weapons after the first major mass shooting.

Whilst the bans will not reduce the likelihood of criminals using illegally obtained guns they appear to have been effective in largely preventing repeat massacres perpetrated using legally purchased firearms, which is the sole purpose of the ban.

The alternative appears to be the situation in the US, multiple massacres per year, primarily targeting schools and places of worship.

There has to come a point when you ask yourself if your theoretical, non-explicit, personal right to own a military-grade penis extension is really more important than knowing no one else in your neighbourhood is going to take their own legally owned extension and use it to kill your children.

Automatic weapons are awesome, speaking from personal experience, but they're also of no practical utility unless you're in a war zone.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-25-2019, 23:47
Parliament has finally taken control: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47701591

a completely inoffensive name
03-26-2019, 02:27
Parliament has finally taken control: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47701591

Was this meant for the Brexit thread?

a completely inoffensive name
03-26-2019, 02:55
Damn, I can't really build anything of value on what Monty already said. I guess I should just enjoy the discussion my original reply has generated...

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-26-2019, 03:36
Was this meant for the Brexit thread?

Yes, sorry.

Montmorency
03-26-2019, 04:26
Not the "Ancient World", the Roman Empire. If you want to know how strong that sense of identity is just look at how long it lasts after central authority collapses. Many cities continued to consider themselves "Roman" and operate along Roman legal and cultural lines well into the 10th and 11th Century, even in parts of Germany.

In some ways that sense of identity persists today, it is one of the things that is supposed to help hold the U together.

I acknowledge that Roman institutions and culture have had a lasting impact on European and Mediterranean aristocracies, but what is the evidence for a "centralized sense of self"?

I don't believe the vestiges of Romanitas are what underlie the political activities of contemporary Europe, any more than a contemporary Mongolian PM signs mineral rights deals in the name of the Хаант улс (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xZUr0BEfE)


It will serve, I hope, as a good test case for the preferred mantra of anti-gun activists here in the USA. NZ has enacted a law banning semi-automatic weapons, banning magazines holding more than 5 rounds, and requiring the owners of such weapons to turn them in (with compensation) to remove all such weaponry from non-government hands. This is, more or less, everything the US anti-gun movement is seeking regarding weapons in the USA. I am not sure if there was a measurable degree of gun violence in NZ prior to this catastrophe, but perhaps we can test this approach's efficacy.

Issues surrounding mental health and firearms, white supremacy idiocies, and terror threats are also important strains of thought. I will be interested to see what NZ is doing on those issues.

I predict it will do fine, but ultimately the execution of the concrete policy can't hold too many lessons for the United States. We are of course a special case for gun proliferation, but New Zealand is in many ways the opposite. It is a small island nation in the ass end of global trade routes, making imports easy to monitor and interdict. The civilian market for semi-automatic guns was always miniscule, despite the otherwise-robust gun-ownership profile. The NZ government will have to confiscate a few thousand guns basically.

It's not that the US is too big for gun control, but we need to be more comprehensive and supply-sided. Per my revelation after the Parkland shooting a year ago, we are too focused on "preventing guns from getting into the wrong hands". A whole suite of measures on the demand side, especially if systematically implemented across the states, would by all evidence save at least hundreds of lives every year. If we were really aggressive and the SCOTUS threw out the Federalist jurisprudence on guns, I wouldn't be surprised if gun deaths could be cut by a third or more over time. But the fact still remains that gun manufacturers are pushing millions of units into the market every year, and by the laws of supply and demand these units, along with pre-existing ones, circulate. We need "arms control", not mere gun control.

American gun violence (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/02/the-american-gun-glut-is-a-problem-for-the-entire-world.html) does an order of magnitude more damage outside the US than within. Mexico, Latin America, warlords and insurgents around the world: powered by US guns. Sure, Russia has a significant share of the grey/black market, and China would probably like more, but just as with climate change we have to take responsibility for ourselves and recognize the global dimensions of the problem.

So what does that mean? A moratorium on most new firearm manufacturing (really military too, the DOD can't escape accountability). Price controls or other onerous restrictions on ammunition. A long-term multilateral commitment to reduce the number of serviceable firearms in the world every year, just like with carbon emissions or landmines or missiles or whatever. That's a start. How do we get to that point? By confronting gun ideology, inextricable from reactionary revanchism, the other side - the "cultural" side - of our gun problem.

Basically never stop beating the Right, all their ideas are Bad. Good luck. :shrug:

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
03-26-2019, 13:46
I acknowledge that Roman institutions and culture have had a lasting impact on European and Mediterranean aristocracies, but what is the evidence for a "centralized sense of self"?

I don't believe the vestiges of Romanitas are what underlie the political activities of contemporary Europe, any more than a contemporary Mongolian PM signs mineral rights deals in the name of the Хаант улс (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xZUr0BEfE)

The point, Monty, is that we are so heavily Romanised that we mostly don't notice it, what we call "Western Democracy" is really an outgrowth of the Roman concept of "mixed" government that is neither Despotic, nor Oligarchic, nor Democratic. The US is one of the most heavily Romanised societies on Earth, from its obsession with personal armaments to its oligarchic wealth-based class system where the plebs depend on the largess of Patricians to survive.

The US is also the nation most obviously experiencing strain due to massive wealth inequality and the rise of populism. This is exactly the issue which toppled the Republican Government in Rome, starting with the Populism of the Grachii.

Viking
03-26-2019, 14:22
The former two are good in distinguishing totalitarianism (dictatorship) from authoritarianism, but not the degree of the latter.

The spectrum of the degree of force a government is willing to use against its own citizens to achieve goals is what I am looking at. It may be common to use 'totalitarianism' as something distinct from 'authoritarianism', but I don't see that there could exist a massive discontinuity between totalitarian regimes and other non-/not-so-democratic regimes on a spectrum, or that totalitarian regimes and other non-democratic regimes could not even lie on the same spectrum.


The third criterion is pretty much equal for the USSR and modern Russia, since elections are/were held in both, but were/are they true elections?

In Russia, you have parties like Yabloko and PARNAS that actually manage to get in representatives at different levels, and a political agitator like Navalny that managed to get a big share of the vote in the Moscow mayoral election in 2013.

Gilrandir
03-26-2019, 15:09
In Russia, you have parties like Yabloko and PARNAS that actually manage to get in representatives at different levels, and a political agitator like Navalny that managed to get a big share of the vote in the Moscow mayoral election in 2013.

That is true, yet both in the USSR and in Russia there was/is no doubt as to the outcome of the elections.

Greyblades
04-04-2019, 06:34
The impression I get, from listening to those who have read the manifesto, is that the shooter intended to cause a moral panic that would trigger a massive overreaction by the government who would curb civil liberties ala the patriot act and socially suppress the right wing.

Thus he would kick start social conflict between right and left, increase tension between secular society and the islamic minority, and accelerate New Zealand down the path of right wing populism that nations in europe and the americas have previously travelled.

I can imagine he would have been able to predict the enforcement of gun laws, or the inevitably futile suppresion of white nationalist discussion (https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-newzealand-shooting/new-zealand-prime-minister-welcomes-facebook-bans-on-white-nationalism-separatism-idUKKCN1R9066). Perhaps he even forsaw the labor Prime Minister would denounce capitalism (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/new-zealand-new-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-capitalism-blatant-failure-a8012656.html).

I have to question if he had predicted the Prime Minister would go so far as to don a hijab and broadcast a call to prayer (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/22/new-zealand-broadcasts-muslim-call-prayer-day-mourning-mosque/).

Bit of a odd move that.

CrossLOPER
04-05-2019, 19:41
I have to question if he had predicted the Prime Minister would go so far as to don a hijab and broadcast a call to prayer (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/22/new-zealand-broadcasts-muslim-call-prayer-day-mourning-mosque/).

Bit of a odd move that.
So donning a kipa and taking a pilgrimage to the Western Wall is fine, but showing solidarity with a local population that experienced a massacre is odd?

I also fail to understand the reasoning of these particular terrorists.

"Hmm, I feel like my right to have heavy arms is going to be infringed upon. Let me do everything in my power to show why having easy access to these weapons is a bad idea. That'll show the libtards why my white seed is superior."

Greyblades
04-06-2019, 00:51
So donning a kipa and taking a pilgrimage to the Western Wall is fine, but showing solidarity with a local population that experienced a massacre is odd? Both is odd when you are not of the relevant faith.


I also fail to understand the reasoning of these particular terrorists.

"Hmm, I feel like my right to have heavy arms is going to be infringed upon. Let me do everything in my power to show why having easy access to these weapons is a bad idea. That'll show the libtards why my white seed is superior."

The logic is that they will intice the left to panic and ditch the tried and true salami slicing, bit-by-bit erosion of civil rights. Best case scenario for the terrorist is that the authorities overreach such that it inflames the opposition and accelerates the pendulum effect.

CrossLOPER
04-06-2019, 23:23
Both is odd when you are not of the relevant faith.

It isn't when your politics are based on centuries of diplomacy and civil rule, and not something a handful of underachieving incel neckbeards pulled out of their ass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religious_pluralism

It's something that the politically incorrect, and to some extent the politically correct, have difficulty understanding; namely on how not to be self-centered assholes.


The logic is that they will intice the left to panic and ditch the tried and true salami slicing, bit-by-bit erosion of civil rights. Best case scenario for the terrorist is that the authorities overreach such that it inflames the opposition and accelerates the pendulum effect.

The problem is that rabid gun-clinging has resulted in an extremely unregulated market where anyone can buy a gun at anytime and go out and depopulate a populated area of their choice, while livestreaming it for likes and dislikes. If you see nothing remotely wrong with this situation, you are a total sociopath.

But let's not get off-topic. Remember, this manifesto was written by a man who is a foreigner, who murdered people who were born locally, on an island where most of the native population has been driven to the brink and "civilized", to prove that someone with a superiority complex fueled by racism and entitlement is a much greater threat than some brown people praying together. He did a great job. No amount of conversations about toxic masculinity and rape jokes are going to top what he did. He is truly a hero for the left.

Just to be clear, I am not calling YOU a sociopath, nor am I saying that gun ownership should be banned. I do think that there are such things as limits to what society has to find acceptable, and I believe we have long reached that point, especially where a man can end his manifesto justifying wanton murder with a phrase like "subscribe to pewdiepie", where the latter man merely responds by posting a single message on twitter, then pretending that everything is OK. I don't like Forbes, but I think this article does a good job of exploring this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2019/03/31/what-i-dont-understand-about-pewdiepie/#708ace4642d5

Greyblades
04-07-2019, 10:35
It isn't when your politics are based on centuries of diplomacy and civil rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religious_pluralism

I am confused, your wikipedia page seems to be lacking this centuries of pluralistic rulers playing dress up with the religion at the center of heightened societal tension in the aftermath of great tragedy.
Perhaps the philosophy you are looking for is Trudeauism, or more specifically the somewhat more modern sect of justin-trudeausim; a tad more superficial philosophy of rulership?



The problem is that rabid gun-clinging has resulted in an extremely unregulated market where anyone can buy a gun at anytime and go out and depopulate a populated area of their choice, while livestreaming it for likes and dislikes.

New Zealand didnt have that lax gun laws before the shooting, in fact I was under the impression of somewhat the opposite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_New_Zealand):

"Gun licenses are issued at the discretion of the police in New Zealand provided the police consider the person to be of good standing[3][4][citation needed] and without criminal, psychiatric or drug issues as well as meeting other conditions such as having suitable storage facilities."

I have come to believe, and the various truck attacks over the years have proven, that the most dangerous weapon is the one thing you cant restrict: the human brain.

To restrict the means often serves just to hurt the law abiding. Prohibition never truly works and is often an excuse to ignore the core problems that lie behind it: the will to kill another.


But let's not get off-topic. Remember, this manifesto was written by a man who is a foreigner, who murdered people who were born locally, on an island where most of the native population has been driven to the brink and "civilized", to prove that someone with a superiority complex fueled by racism and entitlement is a much greater threat than some brown people praying together. He did a great job. No amount of conversations about toxic masculinity and rape jokes are going to top what he did. He is truly a hero for the left.

Just to be clear, I am not calling YOU a sociopath, nor am I saying that gun ownership should be banned. I do think that there are such things as limits to what society has to find acceptable, and I believe we have long reached that point, especially where a man can end his manifesto justifying wanton murder with a phrase like "subscribe to pewdiepie", where the latter man merely responds by posting a single message on twitter, then pretending that everything is OK. I don't like Forbes, but I think this article does a good job of exploring this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2019/03/31/what-i-dont-understand-about-pewdiepie/#708ace4642d5

The largest youtube channel was a hotspot of controversy long before christchurch, it had survived multiple pushes for censorship by less than reputable media outlets and was one of the most visible voices on the "against" side of internet censorship debates accross multiple western countries. By associating Pewdiepie with the incident the shooter gave ammunition to those wishing to extend corporate and governmental control over the internet to "fight the evil nazis". By associating meme culture with the shooting he directs much of that attention against those who partake; which the last few years have shown is quite a wide field indeed, including much more of the population than just that "handful of underachieving incel neckbeards".

The modern NZ left being diametrically opposed to the shooter's politics will see a rise in support and, being the (marginally) more censorious wing of politics, it will be empowered to enact a major uptick in internet censorship. As with all moves to censor media it will inevitably fail to really hurt those targeted and much will be hit as collateral; as time goes resentment against the censor will grow, leaving the ground fertile for eventual pushback.

If the summary of the manifesto i've been described is to be believed this is one of the intended outcomes of the shooting, so far has been a depressingly accurate prediction.

Quite what will be left for that pushback to save after however many years of an unrestrained left wing resurgeance running roughshod over New Zealand society is anyones guess. This btw is why accelerationism is a goddamn stupid idea, even without this one's prerequisite mass murder putting a bullet through basic morality.

It is in essence giving the other side the keys to the castle and hoping the free reign drives them them detroy themselves before they do something irreperable. And that is not even going into the uncertainty over whether that pushback will manifest as something even worse.

CrossLOPER
04-07-2019, 23:05
I am confused, your wikipedia page seems to be lacking this centuries of pluralistic rulers playing dress up with the religion at the center of heightened societal tension in the aftermath of great tragedy.
Perhaps the philosophy you are looking for is Trudeauism, or more specifically the somewhat more modern sect of justin-trudeausim; a tad more superficial philosophy of rulership?

It's a clear indication to the opposite side that the person in charge does not in any way share the views of the killer, tryhards notwithstanding.



New Zealand didnt have that lax gun laws before the shooting, in fact I was under the impression of somewhat the opposite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_New_Zealand):

"Gun licenses are issued at the discretion of the police in New Zealand provided the police consider the person to be of good standing[3][4][citation needed] and without criminal, psychiatric or drug issues as well as meeting other conditions such as having suitable storage facilities."

It's not remotely restrictive if no one even knows how many weapons are about.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47584603


I have come to believe, and the various truck attacks over the years have proven, that the most dangerous weapon is the one thing you cant restrict: the human brain.

To restrict the means often serves just to hurt the law abiding. Prohibition never truly works and is often an excuse to ignore the core problems that lie behind it: the will to kill another.

And the reason there is a will:


The largest youtube channel was a hotspot of controversy long before christchurch, it had survived multiple pushes for censorship by less than reputable media outlets and was one of the most visible voices on the "against" side of internet censorship debates accross multiple western countries. By associating Pewdiepie with the incident the shooter gave ammunition to those wishing to extend corporate and governmental control over the internet to "fight the evil nazis". By associating meme culture with the shooting he directs much of that attention against those who partake; which the last few years have shown is quite a wide field indeed, including much more of the population than just that "handful of underachieving incel neckbeards".

There are a large amount of social media channels that propagate "white replacement" and other white supremacist nonsense. They do so in a specific way that incites violence, or associates with philosophies that see violence as an immediate solution to a perceived threat.


The modern NZ left being diametrically opposed to the shooter's politics will see a rise in support and, being the (marginally) more censorious wing of politics, it will be empowered to enact a major uptick in internet censorship. As with all moves to censor media it will inevitably fail to really hurt those targeted and much will be hit as collateral; as time goes resentment against the censor will grow, leaving the ground fertile for eventual pushback.

You think allowing for innumerable sources of white supremacist content to exist freely with no regulation is perfectly acceptable? You think that having such a thing be thoroughly disseminated isn't going to influence someone? I also find this "the government can't do anything right" logic to be puzzling. What is the solution? Not have the government do anything at all? Not have a government? Feudalism? If the only issue is that the "government dun did it wrung", why not push for a method that you feel would be more effectual? Unless you are just opposed to it because you are opposed to the policies?


If the summary of the manifesto i've been described is to be believed this is one of the intended outcomes of the shooting, so far has been a depressingly accurate prediction.

Quite what will be left for that pushback to save after however many years of an unrestrained left wing resurgeance running roughshod over New Zealand society is anyones guess. This btw is why accelerationism is a goddamn stupid idea, even without this one's prerequisite mass murder putting a bullet through basic morality.

It is in essence giving the other side the keys to the castle and hoping the free reign drives them them detroy themselves before they do something irreperable. And that is not even going into the uncertainty over whether that pushback will manifest as something even worse.
It's interesting that you seem to be far more interested in nazi Nostradamus's predictions, rather than everything else in the manifesto:

https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/3/15/18267163/new-zealand-shooting-christchurch-white-nationalism-racism-language

"White genocide". "I'm just a regular white bloke trying to remove kebab". Guns aside, these tactics and words have a history, and it's a very nazi history, and they clearly provoke politically motivated violence.

Tell me this: what is the public benefit of allowing white supremacist/racist/sexist media channels to operate unrestricted? You yourself frequently chirp the sentiments and messages of some of these channels. "The left". "Pushback". Anti-government. Vague enemies for specific objectives of destabilizing the current regimes to make place for more right-wing white supremacist regimes. You can't possibly think that any administration run by people who tacitly support acts of violence to be remotely democratic?

Forget about white supremacists for a minute. What about gun lobbiests? What if one of them showed up to your house to ask you why you don't want more guns?

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/6/18298181/texas-constitutional-carry-concealed-gun-rights

Unrelated: Tell me what is the public benefit of allowing media channels that push antivaxxer propoganda to operate unrestricted?

a completely inoffensive name
04-08-2019, 05:57
Meme's are just co-opted codes for the alt-right to lure frustrated young white men into Nazi ideology.

First you find some fun video game/anime/cartoon/comic community. You enjoy the jokes and start talking to people on the regular. Turns out some of those frequent posters are alt-righters and invite you into their private chat/discord.
Once you are in their bubble, they push the memes hard and try to simultaneously make you feel welcome but only if you continue to speak in the common manner of the "group", because hey, it's still all memes right?
That's the hook, and from there its a slow burn in the bubble where your frustrations turn towards the objects of ridicule (the memes like "remove kabab'), the irony and humor are slowly stripped away. The smart ones think that by keeping this incrementalist approach they can 'red-pill' the world given enough time.

Then you have the reality that violent Nazi ideology that de-humanizes others and amplifies frustrations of the youth will bring about meme spouting terrorists. These are coyly rejected publicly by the alt-right on the most superficial levels since their disagreement isn't the motive nor the end goal but the speed at which the action was taken, which they believe hurts their credibility to those not yet red pilled.
One day if they, god forbid, get enough sucked into this hate cult, they will move from fake condemnation to silent operation to making it public policy.

Strike For The South
04-08-2019, 15:44
Meme's are just co-opted codes for the alt-right to lure frustrated young white men into Nazi ideology.

Insert "he's right know" .jpg.

The policing and regulating of the internet was coming either way. It's really not worth dying on meme mountain with a bunch of "race realists" and people JAQing off. These massive companies are content to milk whatever racist/anti-science/meme out there until the bad press or government comes in. They then use the whole "free speech" thing as a cudgel in order to escape tighter regulation.