One of the most articulate eugenicists of the era was a man who survived until 1950, and remains one of the world’s most famous and respected dramatists. George Bernard Shaw, literary giant, author of more than sixty plays, and winner of the Nobel Prize.
The Irishman’s opinions are, however, coming back to mangle and even smash his reputation. A group of students at RADA have called for Shaw’s name to be removed from the drama school’s theatre as part of an anti-racism action plan. This matters, because Shaw provided for the school in his will, and last year the royalties from his work contributed more than £78,000 to RADA. Yet the accusation that the renowned theatre college “celebrates historical figures who embraced racist ideologies” does have a certain merit. Problem is, as has been debated myriad times: do, can, and should we separate an artist’s work from their period, character and ideas? If the ghosts of anachronism and historical assumptions are never to be exorcised, there are an awful lot of people who will fail and fall to the wide-awake litmus test.
Shaw did indeed write, that, “The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man” and, chillingly, “A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.” He lectured for the Eugenic Education Society, praised Stalin (naturally) the early Mussolini, and even Hitler as late as 1935. He abandoned most of all this in his old age but never made any formal apology.
He was also an incisive critic of imperialism, mercilessly exposed establishment hypocrisy, opposed war and oppression throughout his career, and cared passionately about actors and writers – the very people at RADA trying to expunge his name from their place of learning. And here’s another challenge and even embarrassment for those who would remove the social engineers from the litany of the great and the good: many of their harshest opponents were not others on the left but, in Edwardian Britain and in the 20s and 30s, conservative Roman Catholic writers led by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.
Michael Coren, “Eugenics and the intellectual left”, The Critic, 2020-09-16.
January 6, 2021
January 5, 2021
Lockdowns are inducing a kind of cultural autism (but especially among our self-imagined “betters”)
Last month, Douglas Murray looked at how the various shades and degrees of lockdown in most western nations have disrupted normal socialization patterns and created odd and unusual social feedback to various stimuli:
A building burning in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Photo by Hungryogrephotos via Wikipedia.
This year has seen a series of extraordinary events. First and foremost are the unprecedented lockdowns, which have removed from almost all our societies not just our ability to congregate, but also almost all of our social antennae. It is not just actors, comedians or public speakers who have lost that mechanism: we all have to some extent.
“Will this statement/opinion/joke go down well or badly?” is a fine judgement call. In public and relative private we all try things out and experiment all of the time. Take away all audiences beyond your immediate household and we must all subject ourselves to some other way of testing which way the wind is blowing. The only such device left is the online world, which — as should be obvious to all by now — has its own problems.
And so, during the middle of the oddest mass psychological experiment in history, came the death of George Floyd in May and the rapid escalation of the Black Lives Matter movement. A movement that attempted to push, inveigle and eventually intimidate itself into almost every walk of life inside America and beyond.
In Britain, institutions as far away from the scene of the crime as the British Library and Cambridge University seemed to think that the death of an unarmed black man at the hands of a Minnesota police officer (currently awaiting trial on a charge of murder) demanded some kind of response, lest they be accused of being insufficiently devout.
In ordinary times, people might have been able to get a sense of where other people stood on such a matter. Did users of the British Library really feel any culpability for events in Minnesota? Were things so bad in the state of race relations in America and across the western world (only the western world, naturally) that a stance was required — indeed demanded — of everyone? For a time, it seemed so. Almost every major British institution, including all its universities, issued statements about the death of a man in police custody on another continent, in a jurisdiction over which we have precisely zero control, and similar levels of influence.
“Taking the knee” became one of the emblems of obedience, or subservience, to the cause. Soon, even questioning the reverence of that hallowed, brand new tradition was cause to be pummelled online. And when all gatherings of more than six were banned by law, what other world mattered?
January 4, 2021
QotD: Repressing the facts in genetic research
In fact, given the state of our present knowledge, I judge all three of these outcomes are near certain. I have previously written about some of the evidence in Racism and Group Differences. The truth is out there; well known to psychometricians, population geneticists and anyone who cares to look, but surrounded by layers of denial. The cant has become thick enough to, for example, create an entire secondary mythology about IQ (e.g., that it’s a meaningless number or the tests for it are racially/culturally biased). It also damages our politics; many people, for example, avert their eyes from the danger posed by Islamism because they fear being tagged as racists. All this repression has been firmly held in place by the justified fear of truly hideous evils – from the color bar through compulsory sterilization of the “inferior” clear up to the smoking chimneys at Treblinka and Dachau. But … if the repressed is about to inevitably return on us, how do we cope?
It’s not going to be easy. I saw this coming in the mid-1990s, and I’m expecting the readjustment to be among the most traumatic issues in 21st-century politics. The problem with repression, on both individual and cultural levels, is that when it breaks down it tends to produce explosions of poorly-controlled emotional energy; the release products are frequently ugly. It takes little imagination to visualize a future 15 or 20 years hence in which the results of behavioral genetics are seized on as effective propaganda by neo-Nazis and other racist demagogues, with the authority of science being bent towards truly appalling consequences.
Eric S. Raymond, “A Specter is Haunting Genetics”, Armed and Dangerous, 2010-06-19.
December 31, 2020
Louis Armstrong and the Beginning of the Jazz Age | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! I E.08 – Summer 1920
TimeGhost History
Published 30 Dec 2020Louis Armstrong will be one of the greats of the American Century. But before that, others have to blaze a trail for him. No mean feat in a land of racial tension…
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Michał Zbojna
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Colorizations: Mikołaj Uchman and Spartacus OlssonSources:
Some images from the Library of CongressFrom the Noun Project:
world by Arafat Uddin
Stamp by Made
questions by Gregor Cresnar
Money by DARAYANI
Money Bag by HAMEL KHALED
people by Florent LenormandSoundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
“Epic Adventure Theme 3” – Håkan Eriksson
“You’re Trouble” – Rich in Rags
“1920s Chicago 2” – Magnus Ringblom
“It’s Not a Game” – Philip Ayers
“Weapon of Choice” – Fabien Tell
“On the Edge of Change” – Brightarm Orchestra
“For the Many STEMS INSTRUMENTS” – Jon Bjork
“Easy Target” – Rannar Sillard
“Step on It” – Golden Age RadioArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
QotD: The “noble savage” belief system
***When the ancestors of North America’s Indigenous peoples entered the New World some 16,000 years ago via Siberia, they hunted many of the mammals, reptiles, and birds, from the Arctic down to Tierra del Fuego. Mammoths, mastodons, and enormous ground-dwelling sloths, as well as giant bears, giant tortoises, and enormous teratorn birds with 16-foot wingspans — animals that had never had a chance to evolve in the presence of humans — were among the many species that disappeared from the Americas. Some medium-sized animals — such as horse, peccary, and antelope species — were also wiped out. But others survived: Bison and deer species, tree sloths, tapirs, jaguars, bear species, alligators, and big birds such as rheas and condors are, at least for the time being, still with us. The existence of these survivors, along with the relatively unspoiled forests, grasslands, and rivers seen by the first Europeans to enter the Americas, served to support the illusion that America’s first peoples had been maintaining what popular environmentalist David Suzuki calls a “sacred balance” with the natural world. Throughout history, however, humans killed animals that were tasty, numerous, and huntable. For kin-groups, staying alive meant making life-and-death cost-benefit calculations about where to send your berry-pickers and hunters. “Sacredness” had nothing to do with it.
This is not to say that the Indigenous peoples who migrated from Asia to the Americas were especially bloodthirsty (though Europeans typically reported that their hunting and fishing skills were excellent). In every known case where humans entered continents formerly uninhabited by our species, the bigger animals tended to disappear, since they provided the most sustenance per kill. The first humans to enter Australia some 70,000 years ago wiped out giant kangaroo species, rhino-sized marsupial herbivores, jaguar-sized marsupial carnivores, big flightless birds, and many other megafauna. The same thing would happen in Europe: After sapiens completed its occupation of that sub-continent some 30,000 years ago, the mammoths, woolly rhinos, giant deer, and lions they recorded in their cave paintings and carvings also disappeared.
Baz Edmeades, “The Myth of Harmonious Indigenous Conservationism”, Quillette, 2020-09-06.
December 30, 2020
QotD: The sting in the tail of genetic research
Eric S. Raymond, “A Specter is Haunting Genetics”, Armed and Dangerous, 2010-06-19.
December 23, 2020
Our “systemically racist and patriarchal society” which oppresses “people of color, women, and LGBT”
To hear some people (especially on social media in these locked-down pandemic days), there has never been a human society that more greatly benefits white heterosexual men and oppresses everyone else like the modern west. Here are some stats from Rav Arora to challenge that claim:
We are frequently told by commentators and theorists on the progressive and liberal Left that we live in a systemically racist and patriarchal society. The belief that Western societies privilege white men and oppress people of color, women, and LGBT citizens is especially popular within academic institutions, legacy media, the entertainment industry, and even sports. However, newly released statistics from the US Department of Labor for the third quarter of 2020 undermine this narrative. Asian women have now surpassed white men in weekly earnings. That trend has been consistent throughout this past year — an unprecedented outcome. Full-time working Asian women earned $1,224 in median weekly earnings in the third quarter of this year compared to $1,122 earned by their white male counterparts. Furthermore, the income gap between both black and Latino men and Asian women is wider than it has ever been. The income gap between white and black women, meanwhile, is much narrower than the gap between their male counterparts.
These outcomes cannot exist in a society suffused with misogyny and racism. As confounding to conventional progressive wisdom as these new figures appear to be, copious research finds that ethnic minorities and women frequently eclipse their white and male counterparts, even when these identities intersect. Several ethnic minority groups consistently out-perform whites in a variety of categories — higher test scores, lower incarceration rates, and longer life expectancies. According to the latest data from the US Census Bureau, over the 12 months covered by the survey, the median household incomes of Syrian Americans ($74,047), Korean Americans ($76,674), Indonesian Americans ($93,501), Taiwanese Americans ($102,405), and Filipino Americans ($100,273) are all significantly higher than that of whites ($69,823). The report also finds substantial economic gains among minority groups. Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute reports that from 2018 to 2019, Asian and black households had the highest rate of median income growth (10.6 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively) of all main racial groups (although she cautions that overall disparities remain “largely unchanged”). On a longitudinal scale, Hispanics, not whites, had the highest income growth in 2019 relative to the start of the Great Recession in 2007 (although many of these gains have been reversed by the pandemic).
Rapidly rising female economic success is partly a product of higher academic representation. 2019 was the 11th consecutive year in which women earned the majority of doctoral degrees. Women accounted for 57 percent of all students across American colleges in 2018 according to the latest US Department of Education figures and earned the majority of associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees. According to University of Michigan economist Mark J. Perry, “By overall enrollment in higher education men have been an under-represented minority for the last 40 years.” Sex differences in cognition can help to explain differential performance along gender lines — although men typically perform better on quantitative and visuospatial tasks, several studies have found that on average women perform better in verbal and memory tasks and on reading and writing tests.
December 17, 2020
Henry Ford and the Mass Marketing of Hatred | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! | E.07 – Spring 1920
TimeGhost History
Published 16 Dec 2020Racist conspiracies are on the rise in America. But other hysterias are also lessening. Will there be a return to normalcy?
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Image Research by: Daniel Weiss
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorizations:
Daniel Weiss – https://www.facebook.com/TheYankeeCol…
Spartacus Olsson
Mikolaj UchmanSources:
Some images from the Library of Congress
Portrait from Bibliotheque Nationale FrancaiseFrom the Noun Project:
– agreement by Vectors Point
– film camera by Chanut is Industries, TH
– cowboy man by Adrien Coquet
– Protest by Juan Pablo Bravo
– Immigrants by Luis Prado
– pair figure skating by Andrei Yushchenko
– singles figure skating by Andrei Yushchenko
– Letter by Mochammad Kafi
– speech by Juan Pablo Bravo, CL
– universe by Icongeek26
– Arrow by IconTrack
– Galaxy By VictorulerSoundtracks from Epidemic Sound
– One More for the Road – Golden Age Radio
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “Guilty Shadows 4” – Andreas Jamsheree
– “Slow Discovery” – Cobby Costa
– “Try and Catch Us Now” – David Celeste
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Deviation In Time” – Johannes Bornlof
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian AndersenArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
December 12, 2020
Pearl Harbor and the Global War Against Humanity – WAH 024 – December 1941, Part 1
World War Two
Published 11 Dec 2020December 1941 marks the shift to a new chapter in the War Against Humanity. New fronts open up, exposing millions more to the horrors of war. Other developments continue their path of continuous escalation.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources
—Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Joram Appel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorized by:
– Daniel Weiss
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
– Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
– Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
– Mikołaj Uchman
– Klimbim
– Spartacus OlssonSources:
– Yad Vashem: 76CO9, 3150-122, J3065-2, 85DO1, 1427 83, 1007_31,
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– National Archive NARA
– Library of Congress
– Bundesarchiv
– Berlin Gestapo Museum
– United States Holocaust MuseumSoundtracks from epidemic sounds:
– “Guilty Shadows 4” – Andreas Jamsheree
– “For the Many STEMS INSTRUMENTS” – Jon Bjork
– “Remembrance” – Fabien Tell
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “London” – Howard Harper-Barnes
– “Moving to Disturbia” – ExperiaArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
3 hours ago
Before we get comments about the countries currently participating in World War Two: in December 1941 there are more countries that are still neutral than we list here, but that won’t last, or as Sparty said these are the ones that will REMAIN neutral. They are without a doubt not at war, not occupied, and not in a state of war. All the other ones are – more or less. Mongolia? Has been in a de-facto state of war with Japan since the Manchurian incident. Ethiopia and Iraq? Both occupied, or at least on the lines of contested territory. The South and North American states? They will mostly enter the war later – but we’d argue that already now the Panama declaration ties them to each other to an extent that the fate of the “neutrals” has been complicated by the countries joining the war in December ’41. Now that you know our reasoning behind this, we encourage you to offer any alternative or additional thoughts on this in the comments.
December 11, 2020
“Politically correct language … seemed like a nice, polite, and Canadian sort of thing to do”
Meaghie Champion discusses politically correct language in The Line:
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/blamethe1st/art/Statist-And-Anarchist-063-Political-Correctness-589944623
I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s. I have never lived in a world without what we now call “political correctness” — typically understood to mean using a kind of stilted and artificial language in order to atone for the disadvantages and slights suffered by marginalized groups and avoid inflicting new ones. Politically correct language required more effort to communicate, but it seemed like that effort was worth it to not offend people. It seemed like a nice, polite, and Canadian sort of thing to do.
I went along with political correctness out of a sincere desire to be accommodating to disadvantaged and dis-enfranchised groups. This became especially true after I learned about the “Sapir Whorf theory of psycho neurolinguistics.” The theory suggests that language shapes our perception of reality; that by altering the way we talk, we can shift the way we think — and, thus, collectively, we can shape reality itself. From this, it seemed logical to “de-gender” language or stop using stereotypes. It seemed like a small ask. Maybe I personally couldn’t solve big problems that concerned me as a good liberal … i.e. things like poverty or world hunger, but I could be nice in how I expressed myself and try to use language that everybody was using to be equitable and more fair.
What I didn’t understand, then, was that this precedent set a trap in which many good, well-intentioned liberals are finding themselves stuck. It’s no longer about ameliorating past sins: there is a project afoot to re-make the English language. The purpose of this project is to re-engineer how people think about certain subjects like gender, sex, and race, while skipping the necessary prerequisites of persuasion and logic. Conservative positions are declared off limits, even bigoted, simply by shaping the way we are allowed to talk about them.
Right now, even as I type this, there is a veritable army of academics hard at work on what they call “de-colonizing” and “de-gendering” language at many universities and colleges. There are tens of thousands of activists and academics in universities and online organizing and pushing for ever-changing rules to be enforced as it relates to the English language. It’s a multi-million-dollar industry in academia and woke corporatism. And it’s already starting to spill over into government regulations and enforcement.
I love the English language. I have been a voracious reader since childhood. I thrill at well-spoken and written prose and poetry. A finely turned witticism or fantastic mot juste can break my heart with its perfection. Further, I’m First Nations, and that love of the English language has also carried me into a love of the study of my tribal cradle tongue “Hul’qumi’num.” Shouldn’t I, as a First Nations person, be in favour of de-colonizing the English language? No. No, I do not think so. I have little patience or regard for any effort that makes language a less workable and functional tool of human endeavour. I identify strongly as a writer, and I take this assault upon the tool with which I conduct my craft very personally.
November 23, 2020
QotD: The social poison of hypersensitivity
And yet, this hypersensitivity is absolute and complete social poison.
Read that again, please. This is a poison pill. When you read Drew’s piece, you will notice how everything is colored through the lens of racism. He literally cannot see anything without suspecting secret racism behind it. And, furthermore, I have no doubt his friends are fully cognizant of this. They, not wishing to anger him or appear racist themselves (who does?), almost assuredly feel a constant social pressure to micromanage their words, gestures, and behavior around their friend. This, in turn, makes interacting with him less pleasant. This becomes self-reinforcing. Drew detects his friends act different about him, which fuels an assumption that the difference is due to racism, which in turn is detected by the friends, who now act even more different in an effort to avoid this very thing.
Everybody gets caught in a spiral of stupidity that no one can escape from.
All until somebody, in the heat of the moment, not thinking, breaks out a slur. Whether driven by bad luck, too much to drink, or some other mechanism, the micromanagement of offense is broken. And not even knowing how to handle this, the relationship of the man and his friends entirely breaks down, requiring him to write a letter to his friend, and considering abandoning the friendship altogether.
See how this works? Drew, like many American blacks, has a wall between him and the rest of us. Piercing that wall takes extra effort. He may even be entirely justified in how he arrived at the notion that the wall was necessary, just as a Jewish person is quite justified in worrying about pogroms and other such things, given the course of history.
However justified, though, the hypersensitivity works against healing and normalization of relations. It poisons relationships.
Thales, “Hypersensitivity and Race”, Declination, 2018-08-08.
November 21, 2020
Brendan O’Neill: My Beef With Millennials
Independent Man
Published 13 Aug 2017Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV5Qv…
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November 19, 2020
White Lives Matter More – A Summer of Blood | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! | E.04 – Summer 1919
TimeGhost History
Published 18 Nov 2020Technology promises a better and more connected world in the summer of 1919. But battles still rage everywhere over who will inherit it.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Subscribe to our World War Two series: https://www.youtube.com/c/worldwartwo…
Like TimeGhost on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TimeGhost-16…Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Image Research by: Miki Cackowski and Michał Zbojna
Edited by: Michał Zbojna
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorizations:
Mikołaj Uchman
Spartacus OlssonSources:
From the Noun Project: bridge by Adrien Coquet, Delete by Kevin Eichhorn, Fire by Sweet Farm, Model T by Alex Valdivia, people by Anastasia Latysheva, peoples by Musmellow, revolt by Symbolon, Smoke by Krish, people by Nithinan Tatah, explosion by Aldric RodríguezArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
TimeGhost History
21 hours ago
Four episodes into this new series and we think it’s going pretty well. Behind-the-scenes we have been getting ahead with our planning to make make things as laser-focused as possible and we have some pretty fascinating pieces of history we want to talk about.But we know that there is always a learning curve with a new series and we care what our community thinks. It’s the TimeGhost Army who make our content possible so we’d like to hear from you what you think about Season Two of Between 2 Wars. What are you enjoying about it? Is there anything you think we should work on? How do you feel about Indy’s outrageous suits and ties?
November 17, 2020
QotD: Prejudice
Or just think about how much ink has been spilled arguing that it is unfair and unjust to assume that one black youth is a criminal or a threat just because he resembles in some way a negative stereotype. I’m not mocking this argument; I am agreeing with it.
As I’ve been saying until I’m blue in the face on my book tour, one of the greatest things about this country is the ideal — always in tension with the lesser devils of our natures — that says we should take people as we find them. My objection to identity politics is that it reduces millions of people to a single attribute or grievance. It assumes that, simply by accident of birth, some people are more noble or more evil than others.
If you think that all you need to know about an African-American person to size up his character or humanity is his skin color, then you’re a racist. […]
You can run similar thought experiments about virtually any group. If all you need to know about Oscar Wilde is that he was a gay dude, just like Richard Simmons or Milo what’s-his-name, you’re a bigot. If Meyer Lansky and Albert Einstein are merely two Jews to you, you’re an anti-Semite. If Margaret Thatcher, Joan of Arc, and Lizzie Borden are just three chicks, you’re a sexist.
And again, historically, this is mostly a left-wing or liberal (both in the classical and modern senses of the word) insight. But for some bizarre reason, for many people, this idea evaporates like water off a hot skillet when you replace any of these categories with “white” or, very often, “male.”
Suddenly fancy words and phrases fly like sawdust from a wood chipper: “structures of oppression!” “decontextualized!” “ahistoricized!” etc. It’s all so clever and complicated. The same people who take to the streets at the slightest suggestion that Muslims can be judged by the evil deeds of other Muslims will lecture and harangue you for hours, mob you on Twitter, or condescendingly dismiss you for not understanding that all white people have it coming.
I am not denying the history of white racism in America. I’m more than eager to acknowledge it. But what these people are basically saying is that you can say bigoted things about all white people based on things other white people have done. And spare me the argument that some 70-hour-a-week truck driver in Appalachia has it coming because he’s a grand beneficiary of white supremacy.
Jonah Goldberg, “The G-File”, National Review, 2018-08-03.
November 7, 2020
Trump-supporting ethnic minorities were “enacting a form of white mimicry, or ‘white adjacency'”
In The Line, Kaveh Shahrooz looks at the accusations among the ultra-woke that members of ethnic minorities in the United States who voted for Trump can no longer be considered ethnic minorities and are guilty of variant forms of white supremacy:
Did self-hating racist Hispanic and Black people help Donald Trump? Did sexist women stop the promised Democratic blue wave?
Those may seem like bizarre questions, but according to the woke left, the answer is: yes.
A new narrative began to emerge on election night, after it became clear that Miami-Dade County — a heavily populated area in southern Florida — would go to Trump, thus preventing an early Joe Biden blowout. To the woke left’s chagrin, it was Trump’s significant support among Miami-Dade’s Hispanic voters, namely those in the Cuban-American and Venezuelan-American communities, that kept the state in the Republican column.
In a direct challenge to the widely held belief that Trump’s presidency is the result of a simple racist white patriarchal backlash, the incumbent president actually increased his support among Latinos, black males, Muslims, and Native Americans on election night. He also appears to have maintained much of his support among women.
To compensate for this cognitive dissonance, standard bearers of the woke left explained this phenomenon by implying that these ethnic minorities were enacting a form of white mimicry, or “white adjacency.” First out of the gate was the New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, fresh off the controversy surrounding her 1619 Project, who tweeted that “white Cubans” should not be lumped in with “Black Puerto Ricans and Indigenous Guatemalans.”
Insofar as ethnic communities should not be assumed to share political interests simply because they speak the same language and come from roughly the same broad geographic region, it is hard to disagree with her. But her point was not anything nearly so straightforward. As she made clear in subsequent tweets, she believes that the Miami Cubans should more accurately be viewed as white because they sit atop “racial hierarchies based on whiteness.”
