Just to establish something, What is a good example of the worst example of racism in MMs blog?
What is considered an unacceptable level of "racism", or racism at all differs wildly between people.
What is considered an unacceptable level of "racism", or racism at all differs wildly between people.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/why-c...
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/under...
MM is rarely explicitly racist; it's more like he espouses ideas that obviously entail racial superiority and then stops shy and pretends like you're an idiot if you actually believe those "obvious" entailments The Progressives or whoever have been selling you.
(Preface: It's hard to explain, and the following might sound like a bit of an ad hom, but that's not how I mean it. It's just a really useful lense through which to view MM's writing -- especially if you find yourself thinking "he's just saying kinda true things that aren't very PC!". Understanding the rhetorical ploys an author is using can help you see through the trees to the heart of the author's argument and then -- in MM's case -- be sure you're well-founeded in summarily rejecting it.)
Reading MM is like reading an above-average-but-not-exceptionally-bright high schooler who went on a depth-first search of Google for every topic he writes about. The authority emaninating from a depth-first search is obviously flawed because it ignores the forest for the trees, but can be oddly convincing if you don't notice what's going on. Or at least difficult to refute in a clear-headed and logical way because you get stuck in the quagmire of meaningless specificities.
Concretely, MM's writing generally has a well-developed thesis with logical arguments and reasonable citation, but falls flat on its face for reasons that can only be described as "common sense". MM's hope -- or maybe his own blieve -- is that his authoritative knowledge of particularities supporting his point trumps the forest of "common sense" generalities.
But the dozens of obvious objections that aren't addressed by MM -- or are just hand-waved away with a bit of rhetoric about some evil other (progressives, etc.) -- really are at the heart of the matter. A few historical examples really are no replacement for a global view of historical reality.
Of course MM is smart enough to be well-aware of the elephants in the room. However, he's maybe more interested in trolling than in debate. Or maybe really does blieve they're unsubstantiated progressive lies. IDK. In any case, instead of addressing these elephants head on, he kind of summarily dismisses the most obvious rebuttals with a bit of a literary eye roll.
For example, in one comment he rambles on about colonialism being not-so-impeachable because those Africans were brutes prior to and after colonization. The problems with a statement like this really are quite obvious, but his comment goes on at length about particularities of specific European leaders and African dynasties instead of addressing head-on the litany of common-sense high-level objections to his poisition.
It's like when a high schooler puts forth a totally untenable position that is just wrong, and considers himself unimpeached because no one in the room has a response to the particular arcane knowledge he used to backup his point. Even though that knowledge was totally tangential or at best provided one supportive data point in an infinite sea of data suggesting he's dead wrong.
I think people who disagree that MM's writing is racist are mostly just hoodwinked by the above rhetorical ploy -- getting so specific about a few trees that the reader forgets about the forest, and therefore conclusing that the author doesn't need to be held responsible for the obvious historical entailments that follow from his advocacy.
It seems to me you could divide African history into several phases:
1. Pre-Colonialism 2. Era of conquest, enslavement, and plunder (1500s-1900) 3. High Colonialism (c1920-1960) 4. Rule by Cathedral (ie, nominal rule by Africans, but with massive meddling by NGOs, academic experts, leftist activists, and the US State Department)
I took classes on this in college, followed this debate over time, and read many Moldbug cited materials. It seems to me quite clear that era 3 was better for Africans than era 1 and era 4. What Moldbug de-emphasizes in those debates is that era 2 was probably the worst of all. And I think it is ok to criticize him for his lack of emphasis to that point.
However, I think he is right to be upset over the denial that era 3 was better than era 4. Or if it is admitted, the blame always goes the colonialists for not preparing the people for independence, or the blame goes to the CIA, or the blame goes to companies that still maintained a presence in Africa. Never is it admitted that Cathedral meddling has had a massively bad influence.
It seems obvious to me that in the countries of the Congo, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the Ivory Coast, that replacing the prior system (which was either colonial rule, limited suffrage) with an attempt at universal suffrage democracy, resulted in massive destabilization and those countries much more violent, and made them materially worse off (I list these because I have actually looked into their history, the same is probably true of the other countries, but I am less sure). Yet it is completely forbidden to make this argument in academia or any establishment media. On this point, Moldbug is very much in the right, and the official point of view is wrong.
Well damn. Better go back to colonization.
But seriously, what the fuck is supposed to be the take-away from this non-argument? Progressivism is bad?
This is kind of my point wrt MM. He says a lot of True Things that, in the end, amount to nothing. And then pretends he's substantiated some grand thesis about the evils of the Cathedral. But it's often all just inane bullshit when you stop to figure out how the pile of highly specific factoids actually substantiates the overall claim. This isn't always true; there are always diamonds in the rough, and MM wrote prolifically. But the style of argument and accompanying rhetoric lends itself to these sorts of logical leaps from cherry-picked particular to validation of over-arching thesis.
Edit: Also, pre-colonialism is a shitload of time. Asserting Africans were categorically better off during High Colonialism than during the millions of years of human history that is lumped together as "pre-colonialism" is a pretty bold assertion.
In any case, I think your interpretation is an interesting one, even if it doesn't ring true for me, have an upvote.
I think MM's answer to the racism charge was much better here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677367 - he wrote:
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The word "racist" and its conjugations does not appear in the English language until the 1920s - see Peter Frost's cultural history [0]. If you asked Shakespeare if he was a "racist," he would not know what you meant.
"Racist" is essentially a term of abuse which no group or party has ever applied to itself. Like most such epithets, it has two meanings - a clear objective one, describing a person who fails to believe in the anthropological theories of human equality which became first popular, then universal in the mid-20th century; and a caricature of the vices, personal or political, typically engaged in by such a foul unbeliever.
I actually like the answer given by Steve Klabnik above [1]. To call Steve a communist is a serious personal insult, and you can get banned for it [2]. However, Steve reserves the right to call himself a communist, or not, as he likes. This is actually kind of cool... [0] - http://www.unz.com/pfrost/age-of-reason/ [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676630 [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676861
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This debate over whether MM is a racist is silly. The word is just an epithet with an ever changing meaning. It's not a descriptive label.
1. It dismisses an obvious truth. You know, that there actually really were/are actually people who actually thought black/latino/etc. people were actually inferior... actually. For Real. Historical Fact. Period. That the term "racist" clearly and unambiguously identifies those people, regardless of whether people disagree about the edge cases.
2. MM dimisses this totally obvious objection by quoting historical inanity (who the fuck cares if the word wasn't in common usage until the 20's? What does that actually have to do with anything?! "Cathedral" didn't enter common usage (under MM's defintion)... ever. Guess the term means nothing in the context in which he's using it? This observation is pure unadulterated inanity)
3. And also while making some unsubstantiated comment about those icky Progressives for those In The Know.
4. Note that what MM literally said (that in addition to being an epithet, "Racist has a clear objective meaning") actually directly contradicts your interpretation of what he said:
> The word is just an epithet with an ever changing meaning. It's not a descriptive label.
I'll excuse you for the lapse in reading comprehension since you actually perfectly translated MM's true meaning. MM said X. He gave unimpeachable evidence for X. And you interpreted X to mean the slightly different Y. Unsurprisingly, since it's totally clear that Y is what MM actually intends his reader to walk away beliving. The rub is that MM didn't actually provide any cogent argument for Y. But his defense of X sure did sound authoritative and unpeachable!
No it does not. For it is not at all defined what it means to view "black people as inferior".
For instance, it is a fact about the world that across a vast number of tests of cognitive ability -- SAT's, NAEP, LSAT's, AFQT, IQ tests, etc, -- the average score among blacks is about a standard deviation lower than the average among whites. This is not controversial, I read articles in the NY Times all the time about closing the test score gap. If I believe have read evidence that convinces me that 1% of that gap is due to differences in gene frequency between the races, am I a racist who believes that "black people are inferior"? What if I believe that genes explain 10% of the gap? 50%? 100%? At what percentage am I an evil bigot who should be excluded from polite society?
At exactly the point where you think this actually fucking matters when evaluating the value of those people. That's the "clear, objective" meaning MM refers to. If The Cathedral invented demonization of racism then I'll happily attend the sunday mass.
Or maybe just before that, where you take some raw statistics and draw wild conclusions from it in order to prove your prior. Like people used to do by measuring skull sizes, just slightly more refined this time 'round.
As a matter of fact, people using the term "Racism" in the 1920's-1950's were often referring to people who genuinely believed they had scientific evidence that jews/blacks were inferior.
Racism accompanied with the epistemology du jour is still objectionable. Just because you earnestly believe something doesn't make that belief impeachable.
In that case, you must believe that Yarvin is not a racist, because he has stated at great length (not that he's capable of talking at other lengths, of course) that the value of other people has absolutely nothing to do with their intelligence, whether it's 0% genetic or 100%.
1. It's not
2. It's not what he says. It's what is totally completely obviously entailed by what he says but he refuses to actually come out and say point blank.
Well I certainly would wish that the entire issue of the racial test score gap would be dropped. We should only worry about treating individuals based on who they are as individuals, and that does not require using statistics broken down by race.
But the racial test score gap is a huge issue, and blame does get assigned, and action is taken based on that blame. So if I am in a conversation and someone says, "Well if you don't think schools/culture/racism/poverty causes the gap, what does?", then I'm going to give my honest opinion. If that explanation includes genes, then am I a racist bigot who should be ostracized from polite society?
In contrast, there are groups that have applied to itself the word "communist", and so far as it applies to them, it is clear and (somewhat) unambiguous. The scope, however, of who it doesn't apply to, and who it may be used against is ambiguous e.g. McCarthyism.
This doesn't mean that I agree that the word is purely abusive (and as such agree with MM), but I don't think his opinion is either completely wrong, without merit, or obviously so.
This is a little disturbing, the idea of something being wrong due to "common sense", (or maybe popular perception?) despite being logically argued and well cited.
If MM cherry picks historical examples, fair enough, but then the work needs to be matched to refute - to present all the counter-examples that where omitted.
My comment was not meant as an indpendent discrediting of MM.
My comment was meant as a reading guide for someone who wants to read MM in good faith without wasting their time "down in the (irrelevant) weeds". A guide to the systematic flaws in MM's reasoning and writing style.
The process really is common sense:
1. Figure out what MM is actually saying, the evidence he provides, and then -- instead of engaging with that evidence -- first look for the obvious counter-evidence.
2. Beware of implicit theses. If the post doesn't directly and unambiguously address some point of interest -- but instead of just kind of rhetorically implies a position on that point of interest -- then ignore it.
It's not that MM is wrong "because common sense". It's that he's wrong, and the way of demonstrating he's wrong is by using common sense reasoning techniques instead of engaging with his inane details.
Usually "common sense" refers to popular opinion, or at least in my humble experience, so I usually object tot he term.
Bringing this back to topic though, sounds like MM should be refuted, not censored.