On a quixotic quest to find a cheap watering hole around central Moscow. So far the best price/quality ratio I’ve found is 190 ruble beer (Siberian Corona) at the Duckstar’s chain.
There are 150 ruble beers at the Kristiss cafe by the Patriarch Ponds but it’s really bottom-tier stuff.
My favorite central Moscow bar for casual meetups remains Dati Rayka, though the beers there are pricier at 250-300 rubles.
I went to my first Indian restaurant in Moscow, Aromass, last Tuesday. Unimpressive, at least relative to what I was used to in West and Tandoor in SPB. The samosas were cool and bland, the naan seemed store-bought, the curries and palak paneer were underwhelming, the masala chai had a predominantly bitter flavor instead of the mix of spices it should be, though the service was nice. Are there any other Indian restaurant recommendations in Moscow?
- Ron Unz has some new improvements to the site.
Science
* William D. Hill et al. – 2017 – A combined analysis of genetically correlated traits identifies 107 loci associated with intelligence
- James Thompson has a writeup of the Zabaneh, D. et al. 2017 paper.
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Timeline of anti-ageing developments since 2015.
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G.K. Chesterton on eugenics: In this sense people say of Eugenics, “After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marrying a mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists.” Again one can only answer, “Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys as are naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may exult in the title of Eugenist, all the more proudly because that distinction will be rare.” (h/t Anon)
Russia
- Russian economics/demographics blogger zemfort1983 estimates Russia’s population, adjusting for undocumented longterm Central Asian residents and other factors, at 150.1 million versus the official 146.7 million as of 2016.
- Sputnik i Pogrom has an update on why they were blocked. Roskomnadzor sent their YouTube channel a takedown notice, and YouTube sent it on to Sputnik i Pogrom.
Here is one example of their extremism:
In the article “The Kyrgyz again got a gift of $240 million Russian money” it says the following: “The Russian Federation has sinned against the Kyrgyz. Russian skinheads forced a simple guy from the town of Osh, Akbardzhon Djalilov, to blow himself up in the metro.” (This is in reference to the SPB metro terrorist attack).
Which social/ethnic group, exactly, is this supposed to “insult”? Russian skinheads? /s
Or maybe, as Israel Shamir posits, this is a Jewish plot to sabotage Russian relations with the great superpower of Kyrgyzstan.
Anyhow, as I suspected, the lameness of the justifications goes to confirm that the authorities have had it with Sputnik i Pogrom and with nationalists who refuse to toe the Kremlin line.
- One LDPR deputy is going to send an official request for clarification to the Prosecutor General asking for an explanation as to why it was blocked. Reminder that Zhirinovsky has also come out against this, as has at least one Communist deputy.
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Incidentally, I can still access Sputnik i Pogrom without any workarounds with Rostelekom. #BasedISP
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John Helmer: The new proposed US sanctions directly target Kremlin-friendly oligarchs: “… lines of credit to international banks; the brokers, repositories and clearinghouses of their shares and bonds; their trade with the US and Europe; their US companies, bank accounts, boats on the high seas and homes abroad. If targeting the oligarchs is followed by formal sanctions, the aim will be to destroy their power at home and abroad.“
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Leonid Bershidsky on how Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer figuring in the latest round of the Russiagate scandal, is actually a minor, unimportant figure.
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Leonid Bershidsky’s obituary for Ilya Glazunov.
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Russia’s leading libertarian Mikhail Svetov appears to have written an inordinate amount of pro-pedophilia blog posts several years back (according to some cyber-sleuthing by ROGPR contributor @pigdog).
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Eric Garland overdosing on the ROGpill. That entire Tweetstorm is amazing.
World
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Andrey Martyanov: The Russo-Chinese Alliance Explained. Incidentally, there’s a great discussion in the comments (see especially Thorfinsson and Randal).
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Friedrich Zauner: Is it Too Late for Germany?
He cites an article by Jochen Renz, a German professor in Australia, who has some interesting statistics on crime rates by immigrant group in Germany.
Unsurprisingly, it tallies with my post and Emil Kirkegaard’s paper. He also has data per year.
- Chinese tertiary enrolment rises to 40%. Yet another gap is closed.
Culture War
- The Guardian: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children. (White children, to be precise).
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Israel Shamir on the Jewish Question:
Anatol, being against Jews is the essence of Right Nationalism, and Left Nationalism. It is not “weird obsession”. You can read a very anti-Jewish author Simone Weil (d. 1944) who explains that by “Jews are the poison of uprooting”, the sentence that T.S. Eliot used much. Jews-friendly Nationalism is a clear sign of manipulated lot. Your “do not care” shows that you are not aware of metaphysical depth of Nationalism. For you it is just a form of Neo-Darwinism. But people are not squirrels, and nationalism without metaphysics is tribalism, like a Georgian-Abkhaz quarrel.
- Macron is becoming even more of a /pol/ meme. His comments on African fertility have managed to trigger Ross Douthat.
Anyhow, it’s not yet time for existential panic. He’s still liberalism.txt to a tee.
- SoundCloud might be close to bankruptcy. Good riddance.
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TIL Nick Land has a book called Fanged Noumena and it is as impenetrably arcane as you’d expect.
http://www.darbar.ru/about.html
Decent food, good view. I’d be up for meeting there sometime. Probably lunch is more affordable.
How bad at the potholes in Russia? Is the infrastructure generally good only in the major metropolitian areas?
Could be pretty bad. Generally you are correct–major urban centers fare better. Having said that, in the last 10 or so years road infrastructure improved very much, dramatically, really. You can easily find on Youtube videos, compressed for time, of Russians traveling from, say, Moscow to Sochi, or St. Petersburg, or elsewhere in European part of Russia–you will not be able to tell the difference between highways there and same in US. So, it is improving–in fact, it never was better in Russia’s history. So, two major Russian historic problems: Fools and Roads are being reduced pretty much to one–Fools, and there are, certainly, plenty of those there too.
What on earth are the Georgians doing in Germany, there’s a lot of pan handling in Tiflis, though very little serious crime, yet over there they’re worse than the Somalis?
Still, rewarding an Atlanticist government with visa free travel and pinocchio-esque assurances that they’re “real Europeans” takes priority I suppose.
How then is the person who supports Russia’s national interests (in fact, able to clearly formulate them) but disagrees with Putin’s internal policies, especially economic ones, called? I am not talking about me. Are those people “nationalists” or are they not worthy to be enrolled with the same company as such hacks as Prosvirnin or whoever goes under the title of “nationalists’ in Russia. I have a very good case to make that neither Prosvirnin nor Girkin are Russian nationalists–in fact, they are anything but. But it will be interesting to read other people’s opinion on that issue. Especially if they can give a good definition of Russian nationalism, especially contemporary one.
#CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation #CulturalAppropriation
Yes, Martyanov is correct, there are far fewer of them than there used to be, though I can only really speak for Moscow and SPB.
I’ll be traveling to provincial towns like Bryansk and Samara around August/September so I’ll be able to provide more complete observations then.
They also dominate the “Russian” mafia.
I suspect it has a lot to do with the extreme ethnonationalism of Caucasian societies. They don’t tend to screw each other over too much on account of that, but foreigners are fair game.
I suggested three criteria for being considered a Russian nationalist here in my Russian Nationalism 101 post.
I would also perhaps add opposition to the federal system.
Obviously, economic considerations are secondary. Russian nationalists range from libertarian (Prosvirnin) to statist (Kholmogorov) all the way to NatsBol (Limonov).
Thanks. Another person also recommended Khajuraho and Jai Hind.
I’m always up for meeting readers. Please feel free to write to me here:
https://akarlin.com/contact/
They come as organized gangs of burglars, with Germany their looting ground. That problem has been known for years, but despite that Georgia still got visa-free travel to the Schengen area (before that they came as fake asylum seekers, I suppose that has gone down now). Obviously there are more important considerations than the security of German homeowners.
Article in German newspaper FAZ about Georgian burglars (from 2016):
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/fluechtlingskrise/der-kampf-gegen-georgische-diebesbanden-14296509.html
I wouldn’t call Samara provincial. A major industrial city, plus venue for World Cup 2018. After all, a former second capitol of USSR in WW II (Kuybyshev)
Some of the spicier Georgian dishes have a bit of an overlap with Indian food, even sharing names.
Failing that, wander around near a medical school and there’s a 95% chance of there being a curry house of some kind near there. The stuff that’s ubiquitous in the UK is Pakistani food pastiched for the English by Bangladeshis, so there won’t be much of that in Russia.
Hey Mr. Karlin,
This is a very fair criticism. They even used to screw each other over historically – the Dune term of ‘kanly’ derives from the blood-feud inter-tribal warring that has characterized the Daghestani/Chechen experience.
The only force that actually got them to settle down were the Qadiri and Naqshbandi Orders. Once they were able to drop it and get over their differences to unify enough, they became a fairly formidable force to be able to take on the Tsar’s army for decades.
It’s a cultural thing about them that has never fully been rooted out, and they will be tackling it for a good long time.
Peace.
This reminds me. Makluka Maklaya Street, by the People’s Friendship University, has a bunch of good restaurants. Since they serve mostly international students, they are cheap and (so far as I can tell) authentic. Haven’t tried the Indian place, though, and the Ethiopian place unfortunately got taken over by the Chinese.
There don’t seem to be any Ceylonese restaurants in Moscow. I suppose and to some extent am told that all the JVP people have come home by now.
It’s a pity because (in my completely unbiased opinion) I think Ceylonese food is on average better, and probably healthier as well since it doesn’t load you up with ghee.
Is our gift to the world – no, no don’t thanks us. It is our pleasure – enjoy.
Though I have to say, this brings into question the whole high IQ thing. I mean with such high IQ societies, you’d think White people would have been able to figure out how to make a solid dish of biryani or behari kebab or palak paneer. I mean, all my aunts in Pakistan (that didn’t go past grade school) can do it.
Peace.
Dang – now I have a hankering for some haleem!
More suggestions for casual reading, please. The Harry Potter fanfic linked some time ago was a hoot.
The grounds in the picture look very clean and tidy. Do they have a full complement of the old comrades as street sweepers?
Exactly how do Jews fit into your Russian nationalism?
What are you on about? Ghee is one of the best and healthiest foods out there.
White people cooking shouldn’t be underestimated. I think Europeans are the only ones who have really mastered dessert (not to mention all sorts of alcoholic drinks).
That said, I agree there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between national cuisine quality and IQ. Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine is pretty depressing, IMO.
BTW. Is haleem what Pakistanis usually serve at weddings? Thanks.
Don’t you think you’re somewhat obsessive about this topic? iirc you’ve already asked pretty much the same question several times (and got answers).
AK’s most recent statements are in this thread:
https://www.unz.com/ishamir/they-spoke/
But seriously, just give it a rest, it’s starting to look like trolling.
I am not sure who appointed you as critic for my comments. This is the 2nd time you have criticized my comments. Use the CTI tab. Of course if it is like mine it only works part of the time and has been that way since Unz put it in.
I don’t read Shamir anymore and consequently I don’t read the comments.
AK laid out his criteria for Russian nationalism and I didn’t see a place for Russian Jews or other ethnic groups in Russia. I wanted to know exactly how minority groups would fit into his nationalism.
I am interested in the modern concepts and permutations of nationalism. I want to understand how different nationalists conceptualize their nation state and the relations of minorities within.
The aftermath of WW II saw a lot of forced migration and displacement of peoples into nation-states of like ethnicities. Many nation-states seem intent upon jumbling the picture again, Germany for one.
I want to know from the people proposing some sort of strict ethnic nationalism exactly how they intend to deal with other ethnic groups.
About the only obsessions that I have are reading history and trying to understand the current political scene in the US.
That’s not what you asked…you asked about Jews because like many Americans of an evangelical background you seem to have some weird pro-Jewish obsession, sort of the mirror image of obsessive antisemites. You could have asked about AK’s stance on Caucasus peoples, Tatars etc. (all probably much more relevant for Russia’s future), but once again you ask about AK’s views on Jews. To me that almost looks like you intend to keep asking him the same question over and over until he finally writes something you can regard as antisemitic.
But maybe AK will give you yet another answer (I wouldn’t).
I asked about Jews because they are a minority that seems to give many nationalists more heartburn than other groups.
I asked him some questions about Jews, and he answered, and as far as I can see he is not anti-Semitic. That still doesn’t explain how his Russian nationalism will deal with them and others.
And I will defer to you as an authority on obsession.
You should really give that CTI tab a try.
What is the “CTI tab”? I guess something to hide comments from a specific commenter.
I used something like that on a forum like ten years ago, and it’s not very good. Instead of spending mental energy and time to ignore and scroll down on all the stupid comments, I was just reading comments answering his comments and spending time and mental energy on trying to guess what he might have written… then there came an upgrade and it became possible to hide the replies to his comments, too. Of course it only moved the problem one step to trying to guess what the comments answering the replies to his comments were answering to, etc. And to top it off, once I accessed the forum without logging in, I noticed interesting ideas in the answers to blocked commenters (by that time there already were quite a few), often unrelated to the original comments, so eventually I decided that it was not worth it.
So whatever this “CTI tab” is and wherever it can be found, I think an equally efficient way would be to just call out your obsession of finding any incriminating “anti-Semitic” opinions in others. It has the additional benefit of informing other commenters that they are not alone in finding your obsession weird.
Haleem is a bit like meaty porridge with some, but not a lot of asspice. It probably is served at weddings, but not exclusively as there’s nothing special about it.
I certainly agree with you on deserts. Northern European food in general is bad, though not without exceptions. I think early industrialization and lack of an enlightenment era revolution entangled food with class.
Impressive non-criminality by the Han in Germany, especially when you consider that Uygurs must be considerably overrepresented among Chinese nationals. Of course those who do break the law are more likely to be clever enough to get away with it.
LOL, Milton Friedman used to claim that European Jews really knew how to cook, but Israelis had forgotten. I could only think, WTF are you smoking?
Mind you, I hate all spicy and especially subcontinental food, so we will hardly see eye to eye.
I love the newly emerging civil society in Russia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOHatxhrEcw
Obviously, there is a wide spectrum of opinion about Jews among Russian nationalists. There is no official position.
Vincent Law says that young nationalists are less hostile towards Jews than the Alt Right and he is correct on that:
My impression is that Ashkenazi cuisine is (1) adopted from general East European and Balkan cuisine – the good bits of it, that is; (2) bagels, gefilte fish, matzah, chopped liver… thanks but no thanks.
If anything I would imagine Israeli cuisine would be better since they’d at least have far more opportunities to pilfer from the Arabs! 🙂
Crackpot-sounding article about Russian govt backing Alt Right and WN groups in the West for subversive purposes. Echoes of the FDR-J. Edgar Hoover Brown Scare of the 1930s and the Red Scare of the 1950s:
http://theantimedia.org/alt-right-white-nationalists-russians/
Hey Mr.Karlin,
Well, I have to say, I love Indo-Pak desserts, but I think the Europeans do hold the top prize in this category. When I went to visit in-laws in Sweden, all the food was bland – but the sweets were amazing!
Haleem definitely qualifies as wedding food (but not as a necessity). Much more common is Biryani (goat or chicken, lamd or a rarer occasion) and Nihari and Chicken Tikka usually makes a showing – Naan of course. But all of this is also predicated on which part of the country you are talking about; Balochis, Sindhis, Punjabis, Pashtun all have their local take on cuisine. I’m talking what is more kind of branded “national fare” usually coming out of famous restaurants in Karachi that people will drive great distances to taste.
Peace.
Hey iffen,
Don’t worry about it – maybe the third world migrants will simply stay for a couple of centuries and then leave back to their original countries after redrawing the borders in Europe. You know, kind of like the favor Europeans did for them.
A proposal…aren’t nice straight lines (like the one’s in the Muslim world) just so much easier to manage:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-gSp9nXkAAdI_-.jpg
What could possibly go wrong?
Peace.
Civil Society activists battle with the Chechens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a2lcP0texg
What, are the Alt Right just better informed? More curious and well-read?
You referenced G.K. Chesterton, so here I will quote his good friend Hilaire Belloc:
“As for anyone who does not know that the present revolutionary Bolshevik movement is Jewish in Russia, I can only say that he must be a man who is taken in by the suppressions of our deplorable Press.” (G.K.’s Weekly, February 4, 1937)
And I would add, for anyone who doesn’t know that the current hatred of Russia and the push to destroy Russia is the same very crowd referenced by Hilaire, she must be a women who is taken in by the fabrications of our deplorable Media.
There’s an option “Ignore commenter” when you click on the “Agree/Disagree/etc.” button.
I don’t use it myself for the reasons you mentioned.
I don’t see why they would. There are lots of Chinese students at German universities, can’t see a reason why Uighurs would be overrepresented among them; and I don’t think there are many Uighur asylum seekers in Germany.
Northern Europe has cold weather, food needs to keep through the winter. Sweden has a limited cuisine with far too many pickled items for example.
Of course France has a good climate and the chefs had to sell to the public when their aristocrat bosses lost their heads.
The average Russian must be a hundred times more knowledgeable on the revolution than the average American alt-righter who thinks “the Jews did it!” is a full elaboration of history. For most of us in the former Russian empire it’s surprising that stuff taught in high school history is some forbidden secret in the West – my Bolshevik sympathizing textbooks had adoring stories about Jewish revolutionaries who were supposedly on our side because they, too, were oppressed.
There’s not as much reason for frustration about Jews in Russia or Eastern Europe as in the Anglo countries where media and academia have been completely filled with Jewish narratives but you’re supposed to never notice it or very powerful Jewish pressure groups will ruin your life. The revolution was a hundred years ago and most of the revolutionaries were killed by the system that they had created.
As I understand it, modern Russian nationalists blame Latvians, not Jews for the revolution, and this makes more sense.
Looking at CC of VKS(b) from 1917, the people who really made the revolution:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Committee_elected_by_the_6th_Congress_of_the_Russian_Social_Democratic_Labour_Party_(Bolsheviks)
6 of 21 are Jewish and 2 are Latvian, while Jews were 4% of Russian Empire population, and Latvians about 1,1% (Finns were represented only by 1/4 Finnish part of Alexandra Kollontai. Sad!). And after the revolution, there were the Latvian Riflemen who allowed the revolution to survive.
(population data from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire_Census)
Don’t forget that Bolsheviks got 71,9 % of the votes in Livonia during the election in 1917.
What could possibly go wrong?
We could end up where we are. 🙂
Do not forget guy called Janis Rudzutaks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%81nis_Rudzutaks
Never heard about him? Me neither until recently.
Sadly, great Vladimir Ilych died and both Elders of Zion and Elders of Lietuva were outplayed in the great game of comissars. But there is one alternative history never written yet.
There’s always something worse than artificial-looking blocks for borders (though looking at your map angers me more than it should, like the Prussia that doesn’t even include Prussia).
Try restoring European borders (even if only the Holy Roman Empire, Balkans and Anatolia) back to what they were in, say, 1347. Now that is bordergore!
You mean like in 1815 or (sort of) 1870 or 1918 or (sort of) 1945?
I agree with Tamako in that the naming on that map is just bizarre, unless that’s intentional. Fun, though.
It is intentional, meant as analogue to European drawn borders in Africa and Middle East.
I meant asylum-seeking rather than study.
I actually found it almost immediately after sending that comment. Should’ve edited it so that nobody will bother to explain to me. CTI = Commenters To Ignore.
But thanks anyway!
It’s totally tongue-in-cheek. Making England and Wales into “Wingland” should have been a dead give away. I like how it has a place carved out of Spain for Andalusia- presumably for all the Muslims to be moved to.
Peace.
Some Germans suggested it too.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Brandenburg#Preu.C3.9Fen
All minorities were attracted to Bolshevism, in Romania it was full of Jews and Hungarians, whereas in Hungary there was a preponderance of Jews and (to a lesser extent) ethnic Germans. The ethnic Hungarians were also weirdos, like Kádár, the later dictator, was an illegitimate child of a servant maid. Being a bastard made him hate the society as much as if he had been a minority.
OT
Twitter keeps blocking my account for “unusual activity”. I’m getting tired of it.
Yes, but I don’t think there are really many asylum seekers from China in Germany.
German Wikipedia claims there are only 600 Uighurs in Germany (mostly in Munich):
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiguren#Verbreitung
No idea if that’s accurate, but I don’t think there’s much of an Uighur presence in Germany.
(edit: this was supposed to be a reply to Darin, somehow I messed up)
Blaming Bolshevism mainly on Latvians would be silly, especially in comparison to Jews and their generations of revolutionary leftism when those Balts mostly joined in the last moments of the empire and were lured in with promises specifically made to them (which of course the Bolsheviks quickly broke so pointing out the high initial support for Reds in Baltic provinces isn’t as good of a rebuttal to Baltic bitterness as some seem to think it is).
The reason you didn’t see Finns among the Petrograd revolutionaries is that Finland had separate but similar politics so there was a revolutionary Finnish left that evolved in parallel to plan a revolution in Finland. They tried to follow the example of Lenin’s coup but lost our Civil War, though the Reds would have won if it was only up to ethnic Finns.
In Finland things were reversed and it was the White Army leadership that wanted to get involved in Russian politics, attack Petrograd and have Russia ruled by generals as a transitional government to some form of monarchy. They got stabbed in the back by “our” politicians and that chance was lost but it would have required more forces anyway.
One reason for very high support for socialist revolutionaries in Baltic provinces and Finland was actually similar to one motivation of Jews: we were people with very high literacy coupled with very little access to education and political power which remained almost entirely in Germanic hands. Finland in particular had the radicalizing combination of wealthy, literate people denied opportunities because of ethnicity.
This isn’t actually true of German and Swedish minorities in Finland, Baltics or Petrograd where they were heavily elites – industrialists, merchants, aristocrats and so on – and not very likely to join revolutionaries.
There were non-elite communities like Volga Germans and Finland’s coastal Swedes but Volga Germans were far away from the capital and non-elite Swedes in Finland mostly stayed passive during the revolution and the Civil War, leaving the Finnish Whites mostly a team of Germanic professional military leading ethnic Finnish volunteers (of landowners, those tenant farmers who figured Whites are a better bet etc).
We did see some renegade Swedish aristocrats joining the Reds but every time I have heard about that I’ve found that they had some estrangement from their family (scandalous relationships, homosexuality etc). Some of these Swedes were an early version of the deranged social justice warrior who views everything Germanic as oppressive and evil and seeks to erase his own people from history…
But Finland is super weird because the Reds weren’t really driven by resentment of being a minority, they were driven by resentment of being a majority without respect and the ethnic and cultural resentment in the movement was mostly anti-Germanic. Finnish Reds were not cultural russophobes back then (though today they are).
an equally efficient way would be to just call out your obsession of finding any incriminating “anti-Semitic” opinions in others
FWIW, my interest in anti-Semitism is in correctly identifying it, not who expresses it.
False charges of anti-Semitism are frequently used to end legitimate debate and “tar” political opponents.
Politically, one needs to take a position on the subject, if you are going to be politically effective anyway.
My observation of the alt-right and other non-establishment political thinking in the US is that it is an unsettled question. Apparently it is unsettled in Russia as well, as AK has shown himself to be a reliable reporter.
It seems to me that charges of anti-Semitism play an important role in European politics. For example, I think that Le Pen was hurt by these charges and the historical ties of the party to anti-Semitic individuals.
Charges of ant-Semitism were made against Trump. Armed only with my meager understanding I knew that the charge was false and that the accusers were either partisan, ignorant or both.
In order to accomplish this, I had to know what constitutes anti-Semitism and what does not.
It is a very complicated subject and I claim no position of authority, just enough to make a personal heuristic work most of the time.
I try to be as fact based as possible and it is not logical to me to try and discern anti-Semitism (or any other political trend) if you don’t know what it is or is not.
Now, you may see flaws in my reasoning and you may disagree, or you may think that it is rubbish, I don’t care. Read my comments if you want to and if you see me pointing out anti-Semitism where it is un-warranted, by all means explain how I am mistaken if you so desire.
If you don’t understand my method for gaining understanding, or if you think it is faulty, or if you think it is a pile of nonsense, that’s okay with me.
Lots of people like to argue politics without a clear understanding of the terms; that’s not me.
Seems pointless to me, commenters on Unz review who have strong negative feelings about Jews are usually quite open about it. There’s free speech and anonymity here, this isn’t comparable to discussions between professional politicians with all their taboos.
Btw, writing “anti-Semitism” instead of “antisemitism” is supposedly antisemitic as well, since it presupposes the existence of “Semitism” as a racial category opposed to “Aryans” etc. (and no, I’m not making this up, I’ve really seen this argument made by leading expert on Nazism Richard J. Evans). Someone with a similarly inquisitive nature as yourself could wonder why exactly you’re using that spelling.
Someone with a similarly inquisitive nature as yourself could wonder why exactly you’re using that spelling.
Being curious is not my only trait. I am somewhat set in my ways. I learned it as anti-Semitism and would have to be persuaded by good cause to change. I have never heard of that idea before. I will keep it in mind and try to see if I can see what he might be talking about. I hope that it is more substantive than the notion that some people have that since there are other peoples who are Semitic, anti-Semitism is a faulty construction, so just go ahead and hate dem Jews. Anyway, like I said, it is complicated, at least to me.
The way how Anatoly admires and relishes the Oriental cuisine says that the kebab genes of his kebab grandad are extremely dominant. Anatoly’s face has said that a lot already, but his tastes are another sign.
Anatoly, have you never got any impulses to study Daghestan, its culture, to travel there, etc.?
Not particularly, no. I have no immediate relatives or perspective contacts there, and it doesn’t seem to be a particularly interesting place.
I am indifferent towards Caucasian cuisine, it is specifically South Asian that I’m a big fan of.
Didn’t you plan to visit Dagestan?
Re: Chinese tertiary enrolment
A sleight of hand of statistics. The left axis is ‘Gross Enrolment Ratio’ (GER) while the right axis is enrolments/population, 4000/100,000 is 4%.
GER: Number of students enrolled in a given level of education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the official school-age population (5-year age group post secondary) corresponding to the same level of education. GER can be more than 100%
With the one child policy that figure is highly magnified.
Corresponding GER data for USA.
China 2014 Female Percent 42.53359
China 2014 Male Percent 36.56567
China 2014 All genders Percent 39.39039
United States of America 2014 Female Percent 100.70205
United States of America 2014 Male Percent 73.4684
United States of America 2014 All genders Percent 86.66396
If the fertility rate that resulted for that Chinese age group was double, the GER could be 20%, compare to the 86% for USA. It is this gap that artificially raises the Chinese university selection scores and has driven the Chinese students unable to attend their local universities to oversea places.
Chinese fertility rate in 2014 was 1.56, corresponding number for the USA was 1.86. While it does distort the statistics, it’s hardly justified to divide the Chinese numbers by two. The “one chile policy” doesn’t mean that the Chinese literally have just one child, while the lack of such doesn’t mean that the Americans are necessarily having two or more children.
I think that I already explained to you that anti-Semitism (or antisemitism, whichever) has been used to describe such a broad range of meanings that it now means basically nothing. Originally it was meant to describe a set of political beliefs, namely, the belief that Jews should be deprived of their political rights (and that perhaps some of their economic rights need to be restricted, too). Now it got extended in two directions.
The first extension happened when Hitler – along with a number of his associates and some others- wanted not merely to restrict their rights, but first to expel them from Germany and then to exterminate them. Since depriving someone of some of his his rights and killing him are two very different things, it makes the word quite broad. Hitler called himself an anti-Semite, but of course it took on a different meaning, since it now encompassed the total extermination of all Jews, wherever they could be found, which earlier anti-Semites didn’t even think about.
Let me give an example of a similarly too broad expression: Social Democrats wanted to tax rich people to pay for welfare programs, while communists wanted to expropriate them and send them (or many of them, at any rate) to the gulag. Yet they both called themselves “Marxists”, which thus became a word with too broad meaning. Hitler exploited this when during the 1920s and early 30s he rarely talked about Bolshevism, instead using the term “Marxism”, which thus included Social Democrats, too. Similarly, anti-antisemites exploit this ambiguity in meaning during their witchhunts.
However, the broadening of the meaning of antisemitism happened in the other direction, too. It started to mean anybody who disliked the Jews in any way (even if he didn’t want to restrict their rights, or even if it was just a very mild feeling), and slowly, by the late 20th century (and probably earlier) it was used to describe anyone who criticized the Jews in any way. Now since all groups have negative as well as positive traits, and since even qualified criticisms were described as “anti-Semitic”, this now includes anyone who thinks that Jews could be described as any other group with positive and negative traits. Or if you don’t openly say anything negative about them, but deep in your mind you think that, besides the many positive traits, they do indeed have some negative traits (do you think that?), then, well, you are a secret antisemite. This latter broadening of the meaning was done by the anti-antisemites.
So now you basically think that unless someone thinks that a) Jews only have positive traits, or no traits at all, or b) no groups have any traits at all, you can basically be called an anti-Semite.
Trump is obviously not an anti-Semite (or antisemite, I use the two versions interchangeably) in the original meaning, and of course he doesn’t want to exterminate them. He probably even likes them, given that his own favorite child is married to a Jew and is a convert herself, but can we be sure he doesn’t think Jews have, on average, any negative traits at all? Because if he does, and he ever expressed that opinion, and there’s a videotape of that… You get my point.
Just imagine that Trump, for example, thinks that Jews are a wonderful people, very talented, reliable, with a good sense of humor, etc., but that for some reason they tend to be liberal, and on average they support Hillary over him. Maybe they are also a bit paranoid that he’s an antisemite? If there was a recording of him saying that, well… in the eyes of many, that would be proof positive of his antisemitism. “Trump thinks Jews are paranoid liberals!” Because in the eyes of many, anything negative you say about the Jews, no matter how qualified, no matter how many positive things you say simultaneously about them, will automatically make you an antisemite.
Then there is the question of “coded anti-Semitism”, where criticism of not Jews but something else (the Israeli government? the Iraq war? international finance? George Soros?) could mark you as an anti-Semite. So you will never be able to prove that you are not an “antisemite”, unless you are positively philosemitic and support any and all Jewish causes, whatever those might be in the eyes of the witchfinders.
Accusing someone of antisemitism cannot really be false, unless the accused is braindead or maybe himself Jewish (with fervently nationalistic views). It’s just meaningless.
In Hungary Orbán’s government has recently started a huge propaganda campaign against Soros, with huge posters reading “Don’t Let Soros Have the Last Laugh!”, and there’s a picture of Soros laughing. His hooked nose is also relatively prominent (though I’d wager it’s difficult to find a photo of Soros laughing where you cannot notice it), so naturally it’s “antisemitic”. A week ago on Saturday (which is an odd timing, given how it’s not a workday in either Hungary or Israel, especially in light of Jewish religious rules regarding work on Saturday…) the Israeli ambassador issued a very sharply worded statement condemning the posters as antisemitic and demanding that the Hungarian government removes them. However, Netanyahu, who is scheduled to arrive in Budapest today, a couple days later countermanded his ambassador, and issued a statement to the effect that Soros is an anti-Israel thug and that his criticism is not in and of itself antisemitic, but Israel is against any and all expressions of antisemitism in general. (I think there is currently no foreign minister, so the ministry is led by Netanyahu personally. Which makes the whole affair even odder.) He also didn’t cancel his trip to Hungary, and is scheduled to arrive this afternoon.
It definitely made me respect Netanyahu more, it required some courage to reverse course. He will also find it difficult now to criticize Orbán or else he’ll look like a clown.
In the long run, cultural Marxism is bad for the Jews, so breaking with it as quickly as possible would be good for them, probably.
Mr. Karlin,
Beyond “regathering Russian lands”, what do you consider the most important aims of Russia in the sphere of foreign policy specifically?
Here’s the story of the ambassador’s retracted statement. Apparently the ambassador still has his job, though…
It’s just meaningless.
This is an argument put forth by anti-Semites.
What is your definition of the word?
In any event, you sound exactly like an anti-antisemite witchhunter. Like labeling people without explanation, and using reductio ad hitlerum. If anti-Semites put forth the above argument, then the anti-Semites are using a good argument. Can you refute it?
Should be here reductio ad antisemitum. “If anti-Semites say this, it must be false!”
Well, it depends what you consider interesting. Have you read Burns’ account of a Dagestani wedding?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/76763
then the anti-Semites are using a good argument
No, it is a not a good argument.
Saying something doesn’t exist because it can’t be precisely defined or it is extremely difficult to define only satisfies some people and I am not one of those.
Should be here reductio ad antisemitum. “If anti-Semites say this, it must be false!”
Obvious de facto: If most anti-Semites believe and promote it, chances are very good that it is anti-Semitic.
What is your definition of the word?
Wiki has a working explanation. I doubt the sincerity of your interest.
Well, that’s not what I wrote, so that’s not quite relevant here. It’s easy enough to define the word, the problem is that most definitions are either too broad so as to encompass basically all sensible opinions of Jews, or else they are not broad enough to cover all or even most usages of the word.
So do I.
Your genetic memory just substitutes the Caucasian cuisine for the Indian one as the most approximate. I doubt they have enough restaurants with the Caucasian cuisine in the UK and in CA, so you’ve just picked up what was most approximate from the available list. And your love for ajika and wine… 😉 As a man who promotes HBD you simply cannot deny such obvious signs of the genetic influence of your immediate ancestors.
Birth rate nearly halved from the peak shortly before the one child policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#Introduction
“””During the period of Mao Zedong’s leadership in China, the birth rate fell from 37 per thousand to 20 per thousand.”””