So tell us, @JimJim, what are “the benefits of being an ethnostate” ?
12 Likes
Ok, very easy to answer by answering the inverse of the question, in two forms: what are the benefits of diversity, and what are the disadvantage of being or becoming a minority?
I won’t even get into what are the drawbacks of diversity, at least not in this comment, but what about the disadvantages of being or becoming a minority? Fortunately there’s extensive literature and research on this subject. Just reading the blurb from this book, it sounds bad: "If you’re the only person from your ethnic or cultural background in your organization or team, you probably know what it’s like to be misunderstood or marginalized. You might find yourself inadvertently overlooked or actively silenced. " Pretty much says it all! Apparently there are health consequences too. There are plenty of academics who study all this. It does not sound desirable. Among all the negatives of being a minority, there is one positive, which is affirmative action, which is the one thing that will absolutely never apply to whites when / if whites become a minority. So however bad it is to be a minority, when / if whites become one, whites will not even have the one advantage that minorities currently have.
Given all the literature out there, it seems very obvious that that’s an outcome to be avoided, right? Or am I reading it all wrong, and everything is peachy if you’re a minority? Or maybe there’s so much love and good will towards whites that when whites will be a minority they will be treated well?
Israel, a country I know well and am very connected with, has had exactly this same type of issue before it since even before 1948. It’s obvious that Arabs outnumber Jews many to one, and if Israel allowed Arabs to come in, or gave full citizenship to the Palestinians in the occupied territories, Israel would quickly become minority Jewish and would be just another Arab country with a hated and abused Jewish minority which would have literally nowhere on earth to call home. Jews figured out, no thanks, that’s not for us, never mind democracy and all that, we like having a country. Israelis are strongly criticized for this, but they prefer to be criticized than to be a minority.
The Palestinians surely are not opposed to ethnostates in general, they just want their own ethnostate, and I can’t fault them for this of course. If they had one it would be no gentler or more tolerant than Israel, that I am sure.
Wow, it’s like he’s trying so hard to not cry “white genocide” he’ll pop an aneurysm.
“let’s not talk at all about any benefits of an ethnostate, let’s talk about all the problems minorities have when they are living within an ethnostate.”
Hey bud, maybe there’s a better alternative, like a pluralistic society built with many different ethnicities?
What a disingenuous and frankly insulting answer.
20 Likes
There are basically two reactions a white person can have when they finally accept that their society often doesn’t give minorities a fair shake.
- Resolve to help make society more equitable toward minorities
- Resolve to never, ever let white people become a minority
Guess which approach @JimJim seems inclined towards?
18 Likes
23 Likes
I think the answer, in this thread, is “Yes, yes they are.” There is a strain of nihilist ethno-nationalism I’ve seen pop up lately that basically goes “Yup. Minorities get a raw deal and are second-class citizens, wherever they may go. I don’t want to be one of those, so everyone should just stay home.”
8 Likes
Reminds me of that episode of South Park where Cartman discovers white people are the minority in the water park.
In fact JimJim reminds me of cartman in a lot of ways.
8 Likes
Honest question: Has there ever been an ethnostate? Like at all?
Has there ever been a region of even tens of thousands of people where the people didn’t subdivide themselves into races, clans, tribes, families, or highschool catchment areas such that they could have disputes, wars or persecution between the different groups?
I’m pretty sure if you want a nation where everyone treats each other well and doesn’t covet others or shun others you should teach compassion to school kids, not make sure everyone has the same colour eyes. Because undoubtedly someone’s eyes are going to be paler than someone else’s.
16 Likes
That’s one of your typical BS dodges, not a:
Now let’s dismantle your wall o’ text:
You just said you’d answer by discussing the benefits of diversity. You’re already flailing so hard to avoid answering the question that you’ve muddled up your own thinking. And you won’t get into it because you have nothing.
All that says is the racism and bigotry exists in people to one degree or another in certain situations and that it can be hard on minorities. It’s not an acknowledgement that everyone is as bigoted as you are and that therefore we need ethnostates.
First, affirmative action is a policy provided in response to a history of generations of deliberate discrimination against a minority. It is not a policy that African-Americans are happy to avail themselves of, and it’s not a policy that would make any sense to apply to an historically privileged group like white Americans.
Second, thanks for showing us (as @LDoBe notes) that your real concern here lies with saving the poor, downtrodden white people.
Side note: that’s the third time in that paragraph you made a broad and vague appeal to authority (the first being “there’s extensive literature and research on this subject” and the second being “There are plenty of academics who study all this.”). Just wanted to let you know you’re leaning very hard on a logical fallacy as you struggle to hide your true answer.
Speaking of which…
Back to the always-oppressed whites, who’ve done nothing to earn the animosity of racial minorities over the past centuries.
You’ll forgive us for doubting your superlatives there. You certainly don’t know the history of the country or its current political-economic state or diversity of thought.
My guess is you’re the kind of American Jew or evangelical Xtianist that my Israeli friends sometimes laugh about: a big-talking dilettante living far away who’d piss his pants at the prospect of having to serve in the IDF, work on a kibbutz for more than a week, or actually live under the extended threat they do.
If you are Jewish, by the way, you should be aware that gentile ethnostate proponents don’t consider you white and never will, no matter how pasty your skin (a lot of Sabras could be confused with Arabs on that basis). That’s one of the many reasons it’s incredibly foolish for a Jew to get in bed with ethnostate fans.
Again, Israel does allow Arabs to come into the country to work. It also already grants citizenship to law-abiding Palestinians in Israeli territory who want it. I guess not knowing this is an aspect of deep connection to the country.
In any case, very few Israelis support a one-state solution, but if one came to pass it’s more than likely that liberal-democracy would be eliminated lest the Palestinian majority be allowed to vote. At that point it the label of “apartheid state” would be more than the current hyperbole. Apparently you’d be fine with the end of liberal-democracy in Israel:
“Never mind democracy and all that”?! Sure, the religious fundies and ultra-nationalists are willing to throw it out the window in the name of their bigotry, but most Israelis take great pride in being the only country in the region that’s close to being a Western-style democracy. A lot of them take additional pride in the Jewish homeland being a secular place, their ideal being a nation-state that doesn’t discriminate against Jews – or anyone else.
That they fall short of living up to this second ideal is a separate matter, but the point is that Israel was not founded as a nation-state where license would be given to discriminate against anyone but Jews and where pogroms against non-Jews could be perpetrated “if necessary” (to use your own formulation).
Hint: saying “Israelis should be more like followers of Hamas and vice-versa” isn’t going to win over anyone who isn’t already a hateful and muddle-headed bigot like yourself.
All that your pile of mush demonstrated is that you not only can’t articulate your convictions but that you don’t have the courage of them.
16 Likes
No. I did read a book not too many years ago, which I’m blanking on the name of now, which argued that some of the most successful and long lasting empires were built on diversity, not homogeneity. The Persians, the Romans, the Ottomans, all had diverse populations and in the case of the persians and romans incorporated those differences into their empires.
18 Likes
There was one day at work where two things happened: A very large person was able to take a box down off a high shelf, and an extremely petite person was able to reach into a secure bin destined for shredding to retrieve something someone dropped in by accident. Diversity is strength!
(Pedants take note: that’s a parable not an analogy)
22 Likes
Not likely, ethnostates like this don’t last long or scale up since the population always winds up mixing with others even if they refuse immigrants citizenship or those who are of mixed heritage (so-called). Ultimately, humans like to move around, mix up, and just not be these purebred livestock that racists love. Life is messy and so are nation-states. Too bad racists can’t accept this and grow out of their infantile disorder.
15 Likes
10 Likes
Petites, FTW! 
BTW, I think this was the book I was thinking of… if not, it’s one similar to it:
11 Likes
I feel it worth pointing out that these experiences and studies and i’d wager most of the academics’ foci to be about what it’s like to be a minority in a society where there is a majority. On the other hand, you are worried about losing majority status and becoming “merely” the group with a plurality*. White people are not suddenly going to be discriminated against the moment their proportion of the population goes from 50.1% to 49.9%.
* In the sense of definition four:
A number or part of a whole which is greater than any other number or part, but not necessarily a majority.
15 Likes
But even being the minority doesn’t guarantee being the oppressed group. Think about South Africa. For a while there white people dominated the society and actively oppressed black people despite being a minority. But even now white South Africans have largely maintained that standing. They are richer by far than black South Africans.
It is very bad to be in an oppressed or marginalized group, but that doesn’t always mean a minority group. It’s very possible for small minorities to oppress large majorities. And that’s not up to debate based on some study, it’s just a fact of reality observed over and over.
18 Likes
That also goes to my point above about the willingness of ethnostates to toss the ideals of liberal-democracy out the window to oppress a majority that is not the preferred ethnic group. This is why right-wing populism is so deeply enmeshed with the Identitarian movement and vice-versa.
Unfortunately, Israel is heading down that dark path, and the re-election of a corrupt right-wing government that panders to bigots and religious fanatics is being taken as a mandate to travel on it.
16 Likes
As one of the oft-mentioned ‘minorities’ in question, I have to laugh at some of the sheer audacity in this thread:
-
Answering a direct question with other questions; that’s a form of evasion.
-
Asserting that affirmative action somehow = privilege… according to a person who has never known what’s it’s like to live without any privilege.
-
Completely ignoring the fact that affirmative action has been dismantled in many states and institutions; which means that it’s not a “privilege” that’s afforded to all PoC and other minorities.
-
Assuming that losing the false ‘majority’ means some sort of automatic ‘reversal of fortunes’ where the past 400+ years of worth of oppression, denigration, exploitation, and the facilitation/maintenance of White supremacy will be suddenly inverted somehow.
-
Finally (although inadvertently) admitting that maintaining the unearned ‘superior social status’ of being White, which is inherent in systemic racism, matters more than working to create a just society that’s actually equitable to everyone in that society.
22 Likes
