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Comment by bl0rg | Hacker News Reader

People think he's a racist because they think he implies non-whites are stupid because they got their knowledge of civilization from survivors from Atlantis. They don't really touch upon the fact that literally all civilizations would have spawned out of them, including "white" ones.

I've never seen, read, or heard anything indicating that Graham is racist. Is there any substance to this, or it about as solid as his theories?

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No, the racist charge is just ham-handed ad hominem, and demonstrates his claim.

Certainly the accusation was valid applied to numerous others, notably von Daniken. It probably is reflexive in this case, lumping him with them.

That is the implications because the Atlantis myth has become white supremacy through deeply racist works from Helena Blavatsky and Ignatius Donnelly. Spoiler: the Nazis were really into this stuff.

It boils down to that that all the non white peoples could not have done any of these things and needed help from a superior white race, robbing these peoples from their own ingenuity and heritage.

Just because he isn't an outright racist doesn't mean that his theories imply that. I've not read his books but from what I've seen he likes to quote works built on the authors above that are just as racist.

I don't know what the nazis thought (or think) about Atlantis, but who cares? If it ever existed, and Graham is 100% correct, how is that fact not infinitely more interesting than what race they were? I certainly don't think about my own ancestors, which were verifiably "uncivilized" up until the 13th century AD, as being lesser than anyone else.

He's clearly wrong, and it's easy to discredit him scientifically. Why not do that instead of playing the race card? Everything's a nail when you have a hammer I guess.

It certainly would be interesting, I would certainly enjoy reading about something like that. But as this is extremely unlikely as Platos own students believe he invented the myth as a vehicle to teach philosophy. And the specific Atlantis myth that Graham subscribes to is racist, as its derived from the works of the authors in my previous post, which previous generations of psuedo archeologists have been using since then, with more or less in your face racism.

His works may be a nice story, but is fiction that is rooted in racism. Why not call it out for what it is?

Is eliminating the credibility of the accuser, and vindicating the accuseds' complaints, as happened here, not a reason?

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