don't have time to read the whole thing, but this really incorrect thing jumped out at me: "if Frank Salter’s volume On Genetic Interests is correct. According to Salter, studies have found that no more than 20% of European genetic material is derived from Near Eastern infusions"
salter was writing 20 years ago. our understanding of the genetic origins of europeans have been radically revolutionized in the last generation (salter's assertion is "not even wrong").
if you are going to have someone write about "white identity" maybe have them be at least cursorily fluent in the latest archeogenetics. we don't need to speculate, we have facts. if you can't even get the biological basics correct, who cares about the rest? (or maybe not, it's all cultural identity? idk)
The Middle Eastern haplogroup J seems to have been absent from the Anatolian farmers but is very common in southern Europe today, wouldn't this indicate a Middle Eastern tribal conquest of southern Europe after the Anatolian one but before the Indo-European conquest?
Thank you, that's interesting. I knew the three groups, but not that the percentages had been nailed down in that way.
I think much of what the author says comports with what we broadly assume about the Yamnaya... at least in the first part of the essay. But then his latter conclusions don't fit with this, which is why -- as per my criticism above -- I think he's retconning "white" to fit too easily with democratic/liberal society. Any meaningful description of "whiteness" would have to include not just agrarian tendencies, but primitive and barbaric ("herdsmen") ones as well.
Incidentally, and in regard to the connection of this issue to Russia/Ukraine, I appreciated the piece you did a couple of years back on Russian and Ukrainian genetics. I can't say I've kept up since then, but I go back to that piece and have recommended it to others. Did you ever revisit it or find new/surprising data?
The underlying assumption of this poorly argued essay is Whiteness = Liberalism. It is a spit to the face of every person of European heritage. A racial identity cannot be reduced to a political preference for certain institutions, for if that was the case, African and Asian liberals could also be categorized as White.
A White identity is biological racial consciousness. Nothing else.
Russian cultural differences mainly stem from the fact that it is a frontier Empire. If you dig deeper, all the epic Russian myths are about the kings and their heroic warriors.
Mongols have left practically zero genetic trace in the Russian populace. Not much cultural imprint, too.
However being a frontier state, and being a subject of constant raids by Tatars (~1.5 million of Eastern Slavs were captured and enslaved) shaped the national character. As influences go, Poland, Eastern Roman Empire and Iran had more. Why Iran – look at the National Armory exposition.
Authoritarianism of the modern Russia is grossly exagerrated here. Authoritarism in historical Europe is conversely ignored.
I think I agree with the central thesis here, if not quite the way it's hashed out.
There is no good reason for white identitarians to be bothered by the so-called "clinal" objection. Human races are not mere agglomerations of genes, but functionally interrelated sets of dispositions, traits, biological features. Admittedly, these relationships are difficult to describe in full, but cultural analysis of the sort the author does is one indispensable aspect of any good description.
My quibble is in the way he does this in particular with respect to a would-be "Orthodox/Western" break. There's something stubbornly whiggish in the latter parts of this essay's analysis, taking its bearings too much from latter European history, and even, from a particular slant on the current Russia-Ukraine problem. The argument seems to be that Russia is "autocratic," a singular exemplar in the "Orthodox" category, standing against the underlying liberal-democratic impetus of the west, and by extension, "whiteness."
For one, this sits uneasily against “the aristocratic warlike culture of Indo-European speakers” cited favorably earlier in the article. Was Locke expressing fundamentally whiteness, or was Plato? Careful how you answer, because the Russian can with some good justification object that Locke is a mere flavor, and a passing one at that. Further, he can can adduce most of Catholic civilization, and indeed a lot of Protestant authoritarian culture as additional data in his favor.
It's all well and good to quibble over Jews, Albanians, and Georgians. But the more salient and portentous case here is the Greeks, who would certainly object to having Russians as the Orthodox avatar.
"There is no civilisational fault line that runs through Ukraine, as evidenced by the occurrence of war with Russia and the non-occurrence of any endemic split in Ukrainian society."
The war between Russia and Ukraine is a proxy war. The United States initiated it in an effort to maintain a unipolar hegemony.
Alexis de Tocqueville was quite short-sighted when he wrote, 'The American struggles against obstacles that nature opposes to him; the Russian is grappling with men. The one combats the wilderness and barbarism; the other, civilization clothed in all its arms. Consequently the conquests of the American are made with the farmer’s plow, those of the Russian with the soldier’s sword.' That sure is not the case for the last hundred years.
"As I have argued in an earlier article, we Jews are fundamentally a European ethnic group. Accordingly, I would classify us as “white” in the present sense."
The Russia = Asia, Ukraine = Europe thesis is contradicted by the fact that Belarus was exposed to all of these Western institutions and unlike Ukraine wasn't even in the Mongol Empire but never managed to become a democracy even in the 1990s unlike Russia, and is in general still more authoritarian than Russia.
Furthermore, Russia started off as an authoritarian slave state ruled by Vikings in which all (including people) was the property of the Knyaz, while serfdom largely occurred after the Tatar Yoke and has been greatly expanded over the Romanov German monarchy.
Also, the Mongols have never ruled Russia to the same degree that Poland ruled had Ukraine, they have collected tribute, stole manpower and picked rulers. That's it.
The Mongolian thesis is further complicated by the fact that it was a secular and tolerant society with a decentralized structure while Russia was a hyper-centralized religious and intolerant state.
Also Europe embraced democracy in the 20th century, it would be pretty dumb to determine racial classification in accordance to a preferred form of government. Under this logic a far more authoritarian National-Socialist German state would not be considered White. which questions the entire assumptions and motivations of this post.
I live in Russia and, you know, some of my compatriots have a way of laughing at the ideas of a "common white identity of Europeans." Usually people say something like "ahaha, idiot, they don't consider us real white people" or "Hitler didn't consider us Aryans and wanted to genocide us all."
I usually tried to dispute this, assuming that the very concept of white is determined by genetics, and people who claim that "Russians are Asians" are representatives of peoples historically offended by Russians, like Poles, with whom Russians had conflicts for many centuries in a row and in the end Russia rather won.
But maybe my compatriots were right. The article is actually funny - Georgians with an IQ of about 90, who have genetic differences from Europeans and a social status in Russia like Latin American immigrants in the United States, presumably have a more "European" country, because the freedom house rating evaluates them more positively. I was thinking of writing about Ukraine, but that would be too much text.
It seems that Westerners really like to rationalize foreign policy conflicts with such articles. Interestingly, if a dictator like Francisco Franco had seized power in Spain again sometime in the late 1990s, achieving economic growth and arguing with the United States in international politics, "international policy experts" would also have written articles saying that Spaniards are historically characterized by authoritarianism because they were once captured by Muslims, and Catalan separatists are "real Europeans who have become familiar with the institutions of Western Europeans."
I took a DNA test awhile back, it came back 100 percent European. Not a single mention of White. When you adopt the White label you're essentially saying there's no difference between city dwellers and hillbillies. Or no difference between Italians and Irish. White is also a weaponized term now. I'm a Euro mix. So if anything I'm going with European. However, for as long as we have unwanted diversity these black/white labels will persist.
I am surprised that neither Aporia nor Simon Maass replied to Khan's denigrating comment. It is one thing to disagree, but not in a snide, insulting way.
don't have time to read the whole thing, but this really incorrect thing jumped out at me: "if Frank Salter’s volume On Genetic Interests is correct. According to Salter, studies have found that no more than 20% of European genetic material is derived from Near Eastern infusions"
salter was writing 20 years ago. our understanding of the genetic origins of europeans have been radically revolutionized in the last generation (salter's assertion is "not even wrong").
if you are going to have someone write about "white identity" maybe have them be at least cursorily fluent in the latest archeogenetics. we don't need to speculate, we have facts. if you can't even get the biological basics correct, who cares about the rest? (or maybe not, it's all cultural identity? idk)
Fair enough, but can you give us a back-of-the-envelope summary of what that number is thought to be today?
10% WHG (so ice age europeans; which salter above gives as 80%)
50% anatolian farmers (neolithic)
40% steppe yamnaya (bronze age)
in northern europe closer to 50% steppe yamnaya and 40% anatolian farmers
in southern europe closer to 30% steppe yamnyaya and 60% anatolian farmers
The Middle Eastern haplogroup J seems to have been absent from the Anatolian farmers but is very common in southern Europe today, wouldn't this indicate a Middle Eastern tribal conquest of southern Europe after the Anatolian one but before the Indo-European conquest?
Thank you, that's interesting. I knew the three groups, but not that the percentages had been nailed down in that way.
I think much of what the author says comports with what we broadly assume about the Yamnaya... at least in the first part of the essay. But then his latter conclusions don't fit with this, which is why -- as per my criticism above -- I think he's retconning "white" to fit too easily with democratic/liberal society. Any meaningful description of "whiteness" would have to include not just agrarian tendencies, but primitive and barbaric ("herdsmen") ones as well.
Incidentally, and in regard to the connection of this issue to Russia/Ukraine, I appreciated the piece you did a couple of years back on Russian and Ukrainian genetics. I can't say I've kept up since then, but I go back to that piece and have recommended it to others. Did you ever revisit it or find new/surprising data?
i didn't find anything new.
The underlying assumption of this poorly argued essay is Whiteness = Liberalism. It is a spit to the face of every person of European heritage. A racial identity cannot be reduced to a political preference for certain institutions, for if that was the case, African and Asian liberals could also be categorized as White.
A White identity is biological racial consciousness. Nothing else.
> A White identity is biological racial consciousness.
What does that even mean?
Russian cultural differences mainly stem from the fact that it is a frontier Empire. If you dig deeper, all the epic Russian myths are about the kings and their heroic warriors.
Mongols have left practically zero genetic trace in the Russian populace. Not much cultural imprint, too.
However being a frontier state, and being a subject of constant raids by Tatars (~1.5 million of Eastern Slavs were captured and enslaved) shaped the national character. As influences go, Poland, Eastern Roman Empire and Iran had more. Why Iran – look at the National Armory exposition.
Authoritarianism of the modern Russia is grossly exagerrated here. Authoritarism in historical Europe is conversely ignored.
"Authoritarianism of the modern Russia is grossly exagerrated here. Authoritarism in historical Europe is conversely ignored."
Agreed.
I think I agree with the central thesis here, if not quite the way it's hashed out.
There is no good reason for white identitarians to be bothered by the so-called "clinal" objection. Human races are not mere agglomerations of genes, but functionally interrelated sets of dispositions, traits, biological features. Admittedly, these relationships are difficult to describe in full, but cultural analysis of the sort the author does is one indispensable aspect of any good description.
My quibble is in the way he does this in particular with respect to a would-be "Orthodox/Western" break. There's something stubbornly whiggish in the latter parts of this essay's analysis, taking its bearings too much from latter European history, and even, from a particular slant on the current Russia-Ukraine problem. The argument seems to be that Russia is "autocratic," a singular exemplar in the "Orthodox" category, standing against the underlying liberal-democratic impetus of the west, and by extension, "whiteness."
For one, this sits uneasily against “the aristocratic warlike culture of Indo-European speakers” cited favorably earlier in the article. Was Locke expressing fundamentally whiteness, or was Plato? Careful how you answer, because the Russian can with some good justification object that Locke is a mere flavor, and a passing one at that. Further, he can can adduce most of Catholic civilization, and indeed a lot of Protestant authoritarian culture as additional data in his favor.
It's all well and good to quibble over Jews, Albanians, and Georgians. But the more salient and portentous case here is the Greeks, who would certainly object to having Russians as the Orthodox avatar.
"There is no civilisational fault line that runs through Ukraine, as evidenced by the occurrence of war with Russia and the non-occurrence of any endemic split in Ukrainian society."
The war between Russia and Ukraine is a proxy war. The United States initiated it in an effort to maintain a unipolar hegemony.
Alexis de Tocqueville was quite short-sighted when he wrote, 'The American struggles against obstacles that nature opposes to him; the Russian is grappling with men. The one combats the wilderness and barbarism; the other, civilization clothed in all its arms. Consequently the conquests of the American are made with the farmer’s plow, those of the Russian with the soldier’s sword.' That sure is not the case for the last hundred years.
"As I have argued in an earlier article, we Jews are fundamentally a European ethnic group. Accordingly, I would classify us as “white” in the present sense."
That is not the consensus among Jews.
Russia started the war, not the US. One could argue that the US did not give good signalling that it would oppose such a war, that is true.
The war was initiated by the United States in 2014 when it overthrew the ELECTED leader of Ukraine and replaced him with the current puppet.
Um, you do realize Poroshenko lost the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election to Zelenskyy?
Contra Tocquevile, a further point can be marshaled on behalf of the Russian: he has constructed -- gradually -- a genuine multiracial confederation.
Americans (and westerners more broadly) substitute for this a haughty ideology of diversity, giving the world dogma instead of comity.
The Russia = Asia, Ukraine = Europe thesis is contradicted by the fact that Belarus was exposed to all of these Western institutions and unlike Ukraine wasn't even in the Mongol Empire but never managed to become a democracy even in the 1990s unlike Russia, and is in general still more authoritarian than Russia.
Furthermore, Russia started off as an authoritarian slave state ruled by Vikings in which all (including people) was the property of the Knyaz, while serfdom largely occurred after the Tatar Yoke and has been greatly expanded over the Romanov German monarchy.
Also, the Mongols have never ruled Russia to the same degree that Poland ruled had Ukraine, they have collected tribute, stole manpower and picked rulers. That's it.
The Mongolian thesis is further complicated by the fact that it was a secular and tolerant society with a decentralized structure while Russia was a hyper-centralized religious and intolerant state.
Also Europe embraced democracy in the 20th century, it would be pretty dumb to determine racial classification in accordance to a preferred form of government. Under this logic a far more authoritarian National-Socialist German state would not be considered White. which questions the entire assumptions and motivations of this post.
I live in Russia and, you know, some of my compatriots have a way of laughing at the ideas of a "common white identity of Europeans." Usually people say something like "ahaha, idiot, they don't consider us real white people" or "Hitler didn't consider us Aryans and wanted to genocide us all."
I usually tried to dispute this, assuming that the very concept of white is determined by genetics, and people who claim that "Russians are Asians" are representatives of peoples historically offended by Russians, like Poles, with whom Russians had conflicts for many centuries in a row and in the end Russia rather won.
But maybe my compatriots were right. The article is actually funny - Georgians with an IQ of about 90, who have genetic differences from Europeans and a social status in Russia like Latin American immigrants in the United States, presumably have a more "European" country, because the freedom house rating evaluates them more positively. I was thinking of writing about Ukraine, but that would be too much text.
It seems that Westerners really like to rationalize foreign policy conflicts with such articles. Interestingly, if a dictator like Francisco Franco had seized power in Spain again sometime in the late 1990s, achieving economic growth and arguing with the United States in international politics, "international policy experts" would also have written articles saying that Spaniards are historically characterized by authoritarianism because they were once captured by Muslims, and Catalan separatists are "real Europeans who have become familiar with the institutions of Western Europeans."
absolutely outrageous article
I took a DNA test awhile back, it came back 100 percent European. Not a single mention of White. When you adopt the White label you're essentially saying there's no difference between city dwellers and hillbillies. Or no difference between Italians and Irish. White is also a weaponized term now. I'm a Euro mix. So if anything I'm going with European. However, for as long as we have unwanted diversity these black/white labels will persist.
Who did the American Indians, Muslims, and Chinese pick as “white”?
I am surprised that neither Aporia nor Simon Maass replied to Khan's denigrating comment. It is one thing to disagree, but not in a snide, insulting way.