Liberal Jew here. Respectfully, my Left plays the same game, with much of the Democratic Socialists normalizing, if not calling for, anti-Semitism because of their objections to Israel's policies. My, more centrist, Left all too often tolerates this expressing "understanding" what drives "globalize the intifada."
Unfortunately the tactics of the left are also based on making you judge and hate others - ironically this sometimes circles round to both ends of the spectrum focused on hating the same groups of people.
The wisest comment: "It turns out that individualism is a bit like free speech — a principle that lots of people tend to support when their tribe is losing, only to abandon it as soon as they’re back on top."
And people tend to forget that blades / policies can cut in both directions, so thinking of how something can turn against you if you are on the downside is prudent.
One of the best weapons individualists have against racists is that racism tends to correlate with a bunch of really loathsome personal traits. And just as it behooves liberals not to become racist against white people, it also behooves them not to echo those negative traits.
Racist coalitions tend to be made up of unpleasant people. Racism is an ideology that appeals mostly to fools, failures and the unhappy. You'll get a few Calvin Candy skull-measurers who try to cover it all in an academic gloss, but most of the rank-and-file coalition tend to be very stupid, simple, and unpleasant to be around. The kind of people who will go on about the glory of the White Race are typically made up of the worst examples of it, unpleasant people with few accomplishments of their own. It's a fundamentally evil ideology, traditionally endorsed by the simplest thinkers and the most polluted souls.
This is a lot of why liberalism was able to win so thoroughly in the 20th century, even when the Klan and its supporters were endemic and powerful in American life. Being around racists all the time is really unpleasant and ordinary people just don't like it. For liberals, this means that part of fighting effectively against racism is policing bad actors in our own coalition to make sure we draw an effective contrast.
When fighting against something like MAGA makes it vitally important to aggressively target antisocial behavior among our own, proving that we won't accept lawbreaking or cruelty or anarchy in the name of emotional catharsis. The single best weapon we have against racism is that being around racists is horrible. We need to contrast that by making sure that liberalism is fun and positive and accepting. This is the other place Wokescolds in the 2010s really messed up. Not only in their ideology, but in their willingness to allow a lot of cruelty and norm-breaking against potential allies in their attempted defense of it.
Excellent point. But I think its not quite that simple. That 'endemic Klan' period lasted for generations, from say the 1870s to the 1930s. Our modern eyes would label the US culture of that six decades in the US as one of widespread and institutionalized racial violence and ethnic cleansing. While I am certain that there were many Americans who were disgusted by that during that period, they were not numerous or loud enough to put an end to it.
Following a recent comment of Noah's he said that what happened in US politics recently is that all the folks that remember WWII have effectively died off... I would say that WWII is what broke the back of the US's entrenched racism. It is established that the Nazis were inspired by and studied aspects of Jim Crow. But the horrors of the holocaust (and perhaps that they were applied to nominally white people) shone a light on the logical endpoint of racism as a philosophy.
So the fact that we had a (very strongly opposed) Civil Rights Movement, finally, a decade after WWII is not a coincidence. But now that that generation is gone, many Americans may have lost the thread of why racism is bad, exactly, and individualism is good.
It's interesting how much of MAGA consists of importing to the right the victimology that leftists have practiced for decades.
I think the victory of gay marriage was such an overwhelming vindication of the politics of victimhood that much of the right concluded "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Ever since, right-wing politics has consisted mostly of white people, mostly the less educated, posturing as victims and lashing out against their imagined victimizers.
This is an uncharacteristically weak and incoherent argument from Noah. It’s well-intended as a counterpoint to the Stephen Miller types but full of double-standards and wishful thinking. E.g., mentioning selection effects in Indian vs Somali immigration but not taking them seriously and claiming that Fremont CA proves anything. It’s a larger scale version of “well, my roommate at Harvard was from x country, therefore people from that country have y characteristic.” That kid who made it to Harvard was probably four standard deviations from his country’s mean in intelligence, conscientiousness, etc. And the same effects are true to a lesser degree of most Indian immigrants to the US. Yes, MAGA is terrible and Stephen Miller is a horrible person. Maybe they are all motivated by racism and trying to hide behind a veneer of economic and cultural concerns. But this intentional obfuscation of the role of cultural norms and selection effects on immigrant outcomes is not helpful in building a robust and fair immigration system that will be acceptable to the average American.
No sorry Noah, we shouldnt have to deal with somali misbehavior and welfare use even in the off chance it turns out to be growing pains. Somali immigration is straightforwardly bad.
If you are unwilling to admit this you arent interested in having a functioning country
As with so many things, I actually think the important thing is to be able to move back and forth between different conceptual frames, to think about things on different levels of abstraction, to draw conclusions and heuristics from each frame, and then to synthesize all of it into a complicated picture that offers different advice for different contexts.
I think this is the only way to ever hope to be an adult person living in the real world who is, as much as humanly possible, usually both fair and kind AND wise.
For certain, if I’m sitting across from a Somali on the bus, I should treat them with respect and as an individual.
But also, I would be insane to support a political proposal to bring 100,000 Somali immigrants into my town.
Any political outlook that ignores the truth of that last observation is doomed to fail. But, worse, it is practically guaranteed to ultimately empower political movements that ignore the truth of the previous observation.
Hi Noah - Your most recent two posts are just a few paragraphs above the length limit at which substack seems to say, "This post is too long for email. Continue in the Substack app." It's disappointing to have to set aside for later a post whose first 90% one just finished reading ...
Liberal Jew here. Respectfully, my Left plays the same game, with much of the Democratic Socialists normalizing, if not calling for, anti-Semitism because of their objections to Israel's policies. My, more centrist, Left all too often tolerates this expressing "understanding" what drives "globalize the intifada."
Let's call out hate everywhere, ok?
The DSA "Calling for Antisemitism because they object to Israel's policies."
Citation needed.
Are they saying, "Fight the perfidious jews because the Jewish State of Israel is doing bad things."
Also, this seems to minimize Israel's own role in claiming to speak for and represent Jewish people worldwide.
Unfortunately the tactics of the left are also based on making you judge and hate others - ironically this sometimes circles round to both ends of the spectrum focused on hating the same groups of people.
The wisest comment: "It turns out that individualism is a bit like free speech — a principle that lots of people tend to support when their tribe is losing, only to abandon it as soon as they’re back on top."
And people tend to forget that blades / policies can cut in both directions, so thinking of how something can turn against you if you are on the downside is prudent.
One of the best weapons individualists have against racists is that racism tends to correlate with a bunch of really loathsome personal traits. And just as it behooves liberals not to become racist against white people, it also behooves them not to echo those negative traits.
Racist coalitions tend to be made up of unpleasant people. Racism is an ideology that appeals mostly to fools, failures and the unhappy. You'll get a few Calvin Candy skull-measurers who try to cover it all in an academic gloss, but most of the rank-and-file coalition tend to be very stupid, simple, and unpleasant to be around. The kind of people who will go on about the glory of the White Race are typically made up of the worst examples of it, unpleasant people with few accomplishments of their own. It's a fundamentally evil ideology, traditionally endorsed by the simplest thinkers and the most polluted souls.
This is a lot of why liberalism was able to win so thoroughly in the 20th century, even when the Klan and its supporters were endemic and powerful in American life. Being around racists all the time is really unpleasant and ordinary people just don't like it. For liberals, this means that part of fighting effectively against racism is policing bad actors in our own coalition to make sure we draw an effective contrast.
When fighting against something like MAGA makes it vitally important to aggressively target antisocial behavior among our own, proving that we won't accept lawbreaking or cruelty or anarchy in the name of emotional catharsis. The single best weapon we have against racism is that being around racists is horrible. We need to contrast that by making sure that liberalism is fun and positive and accepting. This is the other place Wokescolds in the 2010s really messed up. Not only in their ideology, but in their willingness to allow a lot of cruelty and norm-breaking against potential allies in their attempted defense of it.
Excellent point. But I think its not quite that simple. That 'endemic Klan' period lasted for generations, from say the 1870s to the 1930s. Our modern eyes would label the US culture of that six decades in the US as one of widespread and institutionalized racial violence and ethnic cleansing. While I am certain that there were many Americans who were disgusted by that during that period, they were not numerous or loud enough to put an end to it.
Following a recent comment of Noah's he said that what happened in US politics recently is that all the folks that remember WWII have effectively died off... I would say that WWII is what broke the back of the US's entrenched racism. It is established that the Nazis were inspired by and studied aspects of Jim Crow. But the horrors of the holocaust (and perhaps that they were applied to nominally white people) shone a light on the logical endpoint of racism as a philosophy.
So the fact that we had a (very strongly opposed) Civil Rights Movement, finally, a decade after WWII is not a coincidence. But now that that generation is gone, many Americans may have lost the thread of why racism is bad, exactly, and individualism is good.
It's interesting how much of MAGA consists of importing to the right the victimology that leftists have practiced for decades.
I think the victory of gay marriage was such an overwhelming vindication of the politics of victimhood that much of the right concluded "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Ever since, right-wing politics has consisted mostly of white people, mostly the less educated, posturing as victims and lashing out against their imagined victimizers.
This is an uncharacteristically weak and incoherent argument from Noah. It’s well-intended as a counterpoint to the Stephen Miller types but full of double-standards and wishful thinking. E.g., mentioning selection effects in Indian vs Somali immigration but not taking them seriously and claiming that Fremont CA proves anything. It’s a larger scale version of “well, my roommate at Harvard was from x country, therefore people from that country have y characteristic.” That kid who made it to Harvard was probably four standard deviations from his country’s mean in intelligence, conscientiousness, etc. And the same effects are true to a lesser degree of most Indian immigrants to the US. Yes, MAGA is terrible and Stephen Miller is a horrible person. Maybe they are all motivated by racism and trying to hide behind a veneer of economic and cultural concerns. But this intentional obfuscation of the role of cultural norms and selection effects on immigrant outcomes is not helpful in building a robust and fair immigration system that will be acceptable to the average American.
No sorry Noah, we shouldnt have to deal with somali misbehavior and welfare use even in the off chance it turns out to be growing pains. Somali immigration is straightforwardly bad.
If you are unwilling to admit this you arent interested in having a functioning country
As with so many things, I actually think the important thing is to be able to move back and forth between different conceptual frames, to think about things on different levels of abstraction, to draw conclusions and heuristics from each frame, and then to synthesize all of it into a complicated picture that offers different advice for different contexts.
I think this is the only way to ever hope to be an adult person living in the real world who is, as much as humanly possible, usually both fair and kind AND wise.
For certain, if I’m sitting across from a Somali on the bus, I should treat them with respect and as an individual.
But also, I would be insane to support a political proposal to bring 100,000 Somali immigrants into my town.
Any political outlook that ignores the truth of that last observation is doomed to fail. But, worse, it is practically guaranteed to ultimately empower political movements that ignore the truth of the previous observation.
Hi Noah - Your most recent two posts are just a few paragraphs above the length limit at which substack seems to say, "This post is too long for email. Continue in the Substack app." It's disappointing to have to set aside for later a post whose first 90% one just finished reading ...
I'm just surprised we have to actually write down and say obvious stuff like this again.
One anecdote is not a trend, a few anecdotes are not reality.