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Comment by michaelchisari | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know if white nationalist is even the same as a supremacist?

It's coded language. Even people on Stormfront call themselves white nationalists.

There is a big difference. You're a "supremacist" if you think one group is better. You're a "nationalist" if you think these groups should be separate. Many white nationalists will freely admit that Japan is much more law-abiding than the US or Europe. But they might still want the US to be a whiter country (the way Japan is very Japanese, with <1% of the population having non-Japanese ancestry).

Perhaps you should call the VDare people "White Nationalists and Japanese Supremacists," to clarify your position.

If you read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, you'll see that he's a "white supremacist" and a "Jewish supremacist" in some respects, but still a "black nationalist" in terms of how he wants to live.

People whose political agenda is shaped by "want[ing] the US to be whiter country" are no more likely to give an impartial analysis of the relevance of differences between races than those who openly proclaim their own race's superiority.

The point is moot; in reality the overlap between people holding a belief in white supremacism[1] and white nationalism is almost total and Steve Sailer claims to be opposed to both philosophies despite his willingness to articulate their arguments.

It doesn't really matter what motivates the author's obsession with proving innate racial differences though. The problem is, it's exactly the sort of clumsy analysis you'd expect to be produced by a racist think tank; it's a series of grotesque simplifications leading to a non-sequitur

It happilyy to take into account the possibility that very white European Austria's relatively poor test performance might be down to lack of teacher and student motivation before failing to extend the same consideration to the [almost certainly much worse] institutional failings and test aversion of the average school filled with underperforming US ethnic minorities and Latin Americans. Instead, we're left with the daft non-sequitur conclusion that the way to fix test scores of black kids whose lineage dates back further than your average Asian American is not to fix their underfunded, gang-ridden schools or their broken homes or the pervasive myth that their race will hold them back even if they are able to overcome those obstacles, but to impose a ban on immigration and hope they go away.

[1]Acknowledging the superiority of Asian tests scores is entirely compatible with white supremacist beliefs so long as one is prepared to make arguments that white people have a better balance of characteristics due to being superior in many other ways; usually by trotting out the dubious stereotype of Asian societies being uninventive. You won't find many "Japanese supremacists" on VDARE.

It is odd that you're demonizing Malcolm X and Steve Sailer, while refusing to address their arguments. Apparently they are "clumsy," "racist," and "grotesque," producing "simplifications" and a "non-sequitur." But in the time it took you to tell me all about the hypothetical explanations for the data you refuse to believe but even more ardently refuse to check ("My dog didn't bite you, it's not my dog, and what do you have against bulldogs, mister?"), you could have, well, fact-checked Sailer's claims.

It is striking that you've mustered so much rhetoric about conclusions in order to avoid looking at the facts behind those conclusions. It is a little like preachers talking up hellfire when someone questions the 6,000-year-old-earth thing.

He didn't demonize Malcolm X, he simply ignored your random introduction of him into the discussion, and he didn't demonize Steve Sailer, just accused him of having an agenda and as evidence made an observation that Sailer had different explanations for the lower performance of Europeans in Austria as opposed to ethnic minorities in the US.

You, however, accused him of being intentionally obtuse then compared him to a young earth creationist.

I'm not convinced of that and you're not doing much in the way of helping to that end. To me it sounds like you just already believe they're racist either way for their position. If they want to help white people only then they must be racists? Pretend I know nothing about these groups because I don't, but you do apparently, so please go into more detail beyond naming groups and calling them racist.

Just so we're clear though I'm not 'unconvincable' of this, but the barrier is a little high because you almost can't be pro-white without also being called racist. A unique issue for whites, who are not allowed to ever express anything related to pride for their race.

William Pierce, who wrote "The Turner Diaries", a fictional book about a race war which inspired Timothy McVeigh, was a white nationalist. Here's some wikipedia pages to start with, you could read "The Turner Diaries", but even despite it's awful politics, it's a terrible book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Luther_Pierce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Alliance_(United_State...

I have little doubt in my mind that William Pierce was a racist. He makes it pretty evident. I'm not even going to argue for his case, let's put it that way. He is named as the "principle ideologue for the white nationalist movement" but he was the leader of the white separatist National Alliance organization. The article doesn't mention that he himself was ever part of the white nationalist movement. To me that doesn't necessarily mean that all members of this "movement" identify themselves as racists, but after doing some reading it's clear that they at least have a history of racist groups claiming white nationalism for their misdeeds.

I think I've got an idea now of at least the bigger picture. Thanks for the links and the background information.

Pretend I know nothing about these groups because I don't, but you do apparently, so please go into more detail beyond naming groups and calling them racist.

I'll give you some reading suggestions. Start with the books mentioned as the best books in a wikipedia user page with bibliography on these subjects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol...

Begin with the books in the section "Best literature on 'race.'" That will expose you to history, biology, and sociology related to the subject of "race," and help you understand the context of race-advocacy groups. Then read the book The funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund by William Tucker (mentioned in a listing of better monographs on the subjects covered by the bibliography page). I learned a lot of interesting facts I had never known before when I read Tucker's book, including interesting facts about where some advocacy groups get their money, which was long a mystery to me.

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