Still in 2019
It amazes me to think that the selfsame people that are lauded and admired for building this are now being derided as "shitskins" and for being "rapefugees".
Proofs? Ancient and modern Egyptians and Romans have been proven to be more or less the same people living there now, with only slight shifts. In Europe populations have stabillized at the Bronze Age despite later migrations. I doubt things changed much with Babylonians, the populations were too big to suffer new founder effects and Arabs were relatively small if that's what you're implying. Compare the case of Hungarians, who are local Pannonian inhabitants that adopted an Asiatic language and have almost no no genetic influx from the Asians.
Completely and utterly cringe.
I read "Guns, Germs and Steel" some years ago, and provided many "aha" moments. Diamond's explanations are extremely compelling, even to someone with more than a passing education in history, geography and historiography. Of course, they are all a "just so" story, rather than an accurate representation of how things turned out. Geography *of course* is important in the historical development of different nations and civilizations. Is geography (along with associated factors of agricultural technology, domesticated animals and his pained explanation about why Europeans were better with guns than the Chinese who invented them) the only factor in why Western Civilization grew to dominate others? Of course it isn't. Europe had no unique access to these things: Asian civilizations had arguably superior such advantages.
Victor Davis Hanson makes a similar "one factor" argument in his book "Carnage and Culture." Hanson's argument is that Westerners are simply better at war than other civilizations, because most Westerners were influenced by the Ancient Greeks, who developed a superior method of combat and of developing innovations than other nations did. Is Hanson's theory 100% the One True Answer? No, the rise of Japan and the invincibility of Mongol raiders rather puts his theory to fault, but it's at least as important as geography. There are all kinds of "one factor" arguments possible, all of which could make for as convincing a book as this one.
Victorian historians thought it was the vigor of "Nordic" civilizations which made Western world domination inevitable: also convincing if that was the only book you had read on that particular day, and also ultimately deeply silly (basically, this means the West dominates because it is dominant). Other Victorian historians made out human history to be the product of great battles, all of which had a huge element of random chance.
Spengler also famously thought of civilizations as "cultural organisms" which eventually get old, become frail and die, just like any other organism whose telemeres have gotten shorter. I would imagine, like in, say, finance, the actual explanation for history is kind of complicated. I bet the Greek way of war has something to do with it, along with geography, culture, the Catholic Church, language and a whole lot of random chance. It's nice to think we know exactly why something happened, but a lot of what happens in the world, especially the world of human beings, is just plain random noise. Putting one factor explanations on history as Diamond does is not particularly helpful.
There is also the matter of historical perspective. Diamond writes as if everything leading up to the present time of European world cultural domination were some kind of historical inevitability, and that *of course* -thus it will always be. This is the sheerest nonsense. At various times in human history, "Western Civilization" consisted of illiterate barbarians living in mud huts. In very recent times in human history (like, say, the 1930s), it kind of looked like that's where the West was heading again. Other civilizations culturally and physically eclipsed or dominated the West through history: the Japanese, the Chinese, the Islamic civilizations, Egyptian, Assyrian, Mongolian, Persian or Russian (if you count them as different, which I do) civilizations made Western civilization irrelevant through vast swathes of human history. Such civilizations may again eclipse Western civilization. Just to take one example, the Zoroastrian Persian civilization lasted longer than Rome, covered more territory and was in many ways more advanced: they even generally beat the Romans in warfare in the middle east. Why should I privilege the Romans over the Persians, just because some nations who were rather vaguely influenced by Rome now dominate the nations who were influenced by the Persians? I privilege them because they are my cultural ancestors, though in 1000 years, the poetry of Rumi may be more important than that of Martial.
Finally, there are the matters of Diamond's historical veracity and bigotry. To address the second thing first, he seems to take a sort of perverse glee in making racial pronouncements to the detriment of "Western" people. According to Diamond, Western people are dirty, and have developed special immune systems; something I find hard to believe, and doubt is backed up by anything resembling statistical fact. Why wouldn't east Asians have developed superior immune systems? They lived in cities longer than the ancestors of most Westerners. Also, according to Diamond, he can tell that the average New Guinean is "on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive and more interested in things and people than the average European or American. (page 20, along with a tortured explanation of why Diamond's vacation perceptions are supposed to be superior to a century of psychometric research)" This is the sort of casual bigotry that used to inform Nordicist history about the dominance of the West, except somehow it becomes politically correct when pointed at Western people in modern times.
Personally, I figure this just makes Diamond a garden variety modern bigot: a late 20th century version of a pith helmeted Kipling type who yammers on about "lesser breeds without the law." To make matters worse, he's also empirically wrong: New Guineans have an average IQ of around 85, wheras Europeans and Americans are closer to 95 or 100, depending where you look (source; wakipedia). His historical veracity leaves rather a lot to be desired as well. I don't think he actually *knows* any history, other than the type of silliness you pick up in High School history classes. Diamond is a professional zoologist by trade, and it shows. For example, his ideas about China would be laughable to a Chinese person conversant with their history. He also got some of the dates and a lot of facts wrong about the conquest of South America. Sure, lots of Aztecs and Incas died of disease: most of them *after* they were conquered by the Spaniards. In fact, the few Spaniards there were were far more afflicted by tropical diseases than were the Aztecs: this is recorded historical fact. Yet, it doesn't fit Diamond's "Westerner as plague rat" theory, so he doesn't think to bring it up. Either he learned his history of the conquest of South America in a comic book, or he's deliberately misleading the reader. This is a complete travesty, and rather indicates you shouldn't trust anything else he's stated either.
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It's a well written post regardless of its origins.
Nordic genetic determinism is laughable to me because aside from being refuted by the historical and archaeological record, it's circular logic: Nordic countries are supposed to be so great because they're made by Nordics, and Nordics are great because they come from Nordic countries. Bravo. Nevermind that not a single nordicist can tell you which alleles exactly that differentiate Nordics from others are supposed to be responsible for this supposed superiority.
A common talking point among critics of White Nationalist Rock music address the Black origins of the genre. It's certainly not only liberals and leftists who bring this up. Indeed, there's historical precedent found in the NSDAP's banning of Entartete kunst, although prohibitions on Jazz and Swing music were considerably less enforced than physical artwork. Still, a good share of baby boomers and hippies recall their parents calling Rock "nigger music". Even so, Oi!, Punk, Hard Rock and Heavy Metal which form the basis for RAC's compositional grammar sound far from anything you could call "Black music". You certainly won't be finding too many White Power Funk Rock bands, although that doesn't mean one hasn't tried. However, declaring to be "Down with the Klan" and promoting segregation all while claiming to be "true to Hip-Hop" seems downright unconscionable, especially given Hip-Hop's definitive roots in the indelibly Black Soul and Funk alongside its long tradition of anti-racism (or anti-Whiteness, if you will).
Ideologically speaking, White Power Rap isn't too much of a stretch. Antisemitism, conspiracy theories and homophobia are all common themes for many Rappers, especially those in Hardcore Hip-Hop and Gangsta Rap, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before someone in the world saw fit to forge an "Aryan conscious" Rap that was consistent in all themes as their Black counterparts with White Nationalism replacing Black Nationalism.
Enter North Carolina's Hope, also known as White Hope. Released in 1994 on White Terror Record's imprint Rampage Records, "Hope For the Future" may be the earliest known White Power Rap album. Hope misses his mark in selling his style by describing his music as "White Funk", and sampling Bee Gees and Bow Wow Wow do him few favors. In spite of those shortcomings, the album manages to be surprisingly competent, if incredibly derivative. Those who crave Old School Hip-Hop and are willing to suspend their judgement on Hope's politics will enjoy the Boom Bap-inspired beats.
Highlights: "Flo in a Neck Mode", "Red Neck", "Just Out of Reach", "Ever Meant to Be", "The Untold Tale (The Devil Made Me Do It)" and "Kaucasian Kan Kick It"
Side note: The earliest known White Power Rap song was a goofy parody from RAC legends No Remorse titled "N.R. Rap". To add an extra layer of ham, Paul Burnley styled himself as MC Mugabe. Later on, Paul Burnley's solo project recorded "You Gotta Fight for a White Country" to the tune of Beastie Boys' hit song "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)". Both songs are the most offensively White attempts at Rap, but at least "You Gotta Fight..." has its own lo-fi charm. "N.R. Rap" is just next level awful.
Also, this German fellow is much less charitable than me:
http://www.ugrap.de/reviews/album-reviews/hope-hope-for-the-future/
