I believe that they understood very well how to build a unified and cohesive society, free from ethnic division. They managed to do this until their political class lost its way and allowed ethnic nationalism to develop in the Soviet republics and the Russian republic itself.
This is ahistorical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in ... viet_UnionRussia has a lot of history with ethnic issues and they continued during the soviet.
Yes, I agree that there is no culturally perfect view and none of us can escape racial bias.
But would you deny that this applies to anyone, regardless of their race or ethnicity?
Of course, which is why I prefer social institutions that work to weed out such biases. Not social institutions that sweep them under the rug like the USSR did.
Except that guilt always accompanis any discourse on race.
It shouldn't and doesn't have to. You are not guilty directly from slavery. In so far as you are guilty of anything it's not weeding out your own biases.
There is an implication that I must feel some sort of responsibility and must attone for something.
Racial minorities aren't looking for you to give them something or have higher status than you. They want equality and a less discriminatory society. This is only you giving them something in so far as you imagine you would lose something by black people being shot less often by cops or whatever.
But the guilt is forever. No act of contrition seems to erase it.
Because the idea of white guilt and demands for some kind of contrition are fictitious and not at all what groups like BLM are looking for. They are rhetorical tools made up by the opponents of these groups and put out there so that people will be angered by the perceived messages of BLM rather than sympathetic to the real ones.
And what do you exactly mean by social change?
A change in the structure of our social institutions. This would mean different things in different specific cases. None of those cases are about you giving up anything.
But surely you cannot deny that there are a lot of people in this world who hate whites. And it is not hyperbolic or extreme to mention this, but a recognition of fact.
So? Seriously, why would this make any difference? I can point to dozens of issues where blacks are treated materially worse than whites (specifically in the context of the US which I'm most familiar with). My desire is to rectify these material differences. Not battle with some anti-white racism that doesn't actually effect any of us.
Except these groups like to portray whites as a privileged overclass and never acknowledge the existential reality.
Because whites do have privilege. It's not about some specific legal right that whites are an overclass or anything like that. It's the privilege to be treated fairly by the law, to be treated fairly by police forces, and to be treated equally in society. It's not that our privilege puts us higher than blacks, it's that blacks lack a lot of the basic legal privileges that we have IN PRACTICE. Even in something like the resume example I continuously bring up. Our privilege is not that we get put in the top of the stack for job applications, it's that we are considered in terms of our own merit, all it means for blacks to get that privilege isn't for us to lose it but for them to be equally considered on their personal merit.
The difference between me and these types of people is that I do not deny that the American police are racist and mistreat blacks. But these types of people will not acknowledge that whites can experience racism.
You are confusing the specific racism of someone not liking you because you are white and the generalized racism that creates things like the disparity between interviews for equal resumes that differ only in the race of the applicant. It's not the sort of racism where the person reading the resume thinks to themselves that they hate black people so they won't call them for the job, it's the sort of systematic bias that people don't even realize they or society have.
They will not reciprocate any acknowledgement of their situation.
Because they are fundamentally different. Blacks as a group get MATERIALLY harmed every day, white people who experience some anti-white racism are just really weirded out for a day but are materially unharmed.
This is an example of what I mean when I say you have a "liberal" attitude towards race. You see anti-white racism as equivalent to anti-black racism because there is an in principle similarity. Then you simply ignore the vast gulf in the material reality between the two cases. I argue that the material difference is an important and indeed defining difference, while all you seem to care about is that black people don't care about anti-white racism on idealistic grounds.
If they do not recognise the possibility that whites can face discrimination or ever be at a disadvantage then they are denying an objective reality.
This subtly shifts between classes of people being disadvantaged to individuals being disadvantaged. Certainly anyone could admit that there is some scenario where an individual white person is harmed by racism in some way. However black people as a class are harmed several orders of magnitude more by anti-black sentiments and social structures than white people are harmed by individual cases of anti-white racism.
Which country, now or in history is more racialised than America?
All the other ones that had slaves? NAZI germany? The united Kingdom for centuries before north america was even "discovered." The moors being massacred? The stuff with Ireland? On and On and on.
I don't deny the existence of systemic racism. The diference between me and leftists is that they do not recognise that this exists in other countries in situations where non-whites discriminate against other non-whites.
Sure but we live in the countries we live in and seek to improve the countries we live in. Why should racial stuff being bad in Togo mean we can't improve things here?
And they also do not acknowledge that whites can ever be discriminated against given the right conditions.
As I've pointed out, it's because the difference is vast between the actual effects black people feel and the effects the few cases of anti-white racism have on white people.
It is obvious that black Americans are discriminated against but what about discrimination against Uyghurs in China or the Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia?
Would you propose that if we are to be serious about eliminating systemic racism in the US we must be willing to invade China and do the same there? That's just really ridiculous PI.
The problem is that white Western discrimination is viewed as something exclusive to white Western societies.
No it isn't. We focus on it because we are westerners and it is our domain and indeed responsibility to fix it here. Yes other countries also do terrible things but I would be shocked to find out that you thought we have to stop those countries from doing it too before we are allowed to fix it here.
And I do not deny that the discrimination has been historically more virulent, hence why I call America a hyper-racial society. But I do not deny that when an ethnic majority is in a position of demographic strength it is in a position to discriminate against minorities, regardless of if the majority is white or non-white. Therefore it is not a case of 'white privilege' but 'majority privilege'. But leftists want to say that this type of discrimination only happpens in white Western societies and no where else.
It is white privilege in the west though, the west is predominantly white. I want to make things better in the west. China and their problems be damned. Nobody is saying discrimination only happens in the west. Literally nobody I have ever met, known, or spoken too has ever suggested that leftists think that except right wingers claiming that they do.
Where did I deny this is a reality? But will you acknowledge that non-whites and non-Westerners also discriminate when they are in a position of power?
I don't think that, in principle, it is impossible for anyone to discriminate against others. I want to build a society that prevents this though.
Except we are imagined this way. I have no problem acknowledging what you said, but what I do have difficulty accepting is that racism is something only we can be guilty of.
again you are doing this thing where suddenly you think I care if china or togo or something has discrimination. Sure, probably it does, I do not however care when it comes down to the practical goal of fixing where I actually live and not flying half way around the world to wag my finger at them while ignoring the problems at home.
So you think that some ethnicities are more moral than others or that some are more inclined to immoral behaviour than others?
No, I don't think that at all. But you are confusing the in principle possibility of a thing with the material reality. The material reality is that black people have the shit end of the stick in the US.
It is not liberal. Even the most illiberal societies would have been appalled at the way blacks were treated. Interestingly enough it was the liberal maritime societies which were far more aggressive and had the slave trade whereas the insular continental empires were known to be far more tolerant of ethnic and religious minorities.
My calling you essentially liberal is about the way you continue to confuse in principle possibilities with what the material reality here and now actually is. Is like patting yourself on the back about how there is in principle free speech in the west when the materially reality is that some people have bigger megaphones and speech is not particularly free and certainly not equal.
So then you agree that other societies, including non-white ones can be racist and in many cases are racist? But maybe American racism is the most extreme?
You say this like it makes any difference to the material reality here and now.
It is a measurable effect but what I reject are narratives which paint whites solely as oppressors and the historic struggles of the white working class are downplayed or not even acknowledged at all.
Again, nobody has ever done this, said this, or claimed this to me except right wingers trying to frame the other side as believing this. This isn't about fucking over white people in america or downplaying our struggles. It's about making black peoples lives less systematically filled with disadvantages that, all else being equal, a white person wouldn't experience.
Yes, this is true. All I am saying is that this can happen in other national contexts as well, not only in Western English speaking societies.
Again, and? So? I want to fix my own country, not be a crusader riding across the lands and forcing china to do better as well.
I have no problem acknowledging systemic racism and never denied it existed. What I have a problem with is the idea of 'white privilege' because it seems to suggest that whites are privileged all over the world, including in non-Western societies. It also seems to suggest that their privilege is based on their whiteness as opposed to their hegemonic position within Western societies, including their demographic majority.
You can claim that it seems to suggest whatever you want. It's not what it actually means and I prefer to use the actual definitions rather than ranting about what I think it seems like it might mean.
It is nothing you could not hear from Soviet propaganda and surely you do not think that was middle class?
What I meant by that slogan was that instead of resisting the liberation struggles of many oppressed peoples it would be in Europe and America's interest to support them or allow them to get on with it.
It would also be in our interests to deal with our own issues. What I mean by this being middle class is that you are essentially taking an abstract ideal and running with it as if it were a material reality.
How so? I post a Soviet propaganda poster saying 'always together' and this is cultural liberalism?
Just because you found a soviet poster that says a phrase you like doesn't make it communist. You could literally make the same poster with hillary and obama without changing the meaning you are trying to extrapolate from it. Cultural liberals also wear che shirts.
Just because you are appropriating soviet immagery does not change the fact that your hiding behind idealizations as a justification for not doing anything to fix the actual material disparities and problems in our societies.
If I was a cultural liberal I would believe that we need to export democracy to the whole world and that the Anglo-American order must be global.
That is the logical conclusion of your claims that other countries are racist and we can't do anything to fix our own because they are. That is the sort of thing that happens when you universalize an idealistic principle like you have been doing.
I am only accusing the far right and Alt-Right of not understanding the ideology they profess to believe in. I am probably more right wing than the majority of them but they call me a cuck because I reject racism and Islamophobia. In fact they are cultural liberals and they base their world view on Anglocentrism and WASP supremacist ideas. They have combined WASP racism with a strange misunderstanding of continental European fascism.
That's all well and good, and I don't entirely disagree with that point. However I still think your views on racial issues are really screwed up, idealistic, out of touch with the material reality, and fundamentally culturally liberal and misguided.
My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.