Steve Sailer has come out as an essentially uncritical supporter of the NATO/US/Ukraine side and of the Zelensky government.
One detects little gap between his and the standard, “mainstream media” position on this matter.
This from the man who coined the subversive slogan “invade the world, invite the world” as a satirical summation of the prevailing U.S. Regime foreign-plus-domestic policy-package, which had support from both sides for years but was generally bad for the nation and its core population, as well as reckless and destabilizing in other parts of the world.
What do we make of Steve Sailer’s new pro-Ukraine, pro-war, pro-intervention position in 2022?
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[6800 words]
My intention here is to make an overview of the lopsided war-coverage situation, then a brief calculation of changes in territory held for a bird’s-eye-level view of the “great counter-offensive” they are crowing about. Then, the bulk of this post consists of selected material from some of the best of the Steve Sailer commentariat, full of excellent insights.
The Steve Sailer commenteriat is mostly critical of Sailer for his promotion of the Ukraine side in the war, his apparent “pro-Ukraine, pro-intervention, pro-NATO, pro-war” stance seen as some combination of based on faulty assumptions or bad info, politically naive, unhelpful, risky, dangerous, unproductive.
More than a few are reminded of the basic idea behind the “Venn diagram” I proposed in March 2022, between the overt Ukraine supporters of 2022 and the active Corona-Panic supporters of 2020-21 (“In search of a “Ukraine-War-Panic”–“Corona-Panic” Venn diagram,” Hail To You, March 2022). Some of the Sailer commenters make this same connection to varying degrees in this September re-warming of the Ukraine unpleasantness.
There are many good insights from the Sailer commentariat, some quite directly addressing this question of “Why does Steve Sailer support the war in Ukraine.”
Despite all the insights, I still do not see a fully satisfactory explanation for why Steve Sailer has embraced the US “Deep State” / NATO / Ukraine-regime cause. I have to consider it an open question worth asking and thinking about, one small part of the Ukraine Question.
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Ukraine war cheerleading surge, September 2022
In the second week of September 2022, after some months of usually-minimal and sporadic interest in the Ukraine war, the U.S. media began a lockstep and enthusiastic promotion of the idea of a bold and stunning offensive, majorly successful, by the Ukrainian military. All Russians in its way, we hear, have fled in disorganized terror. The Russian military and government are humiliated. Will Putin survive?
We see stories in big-media outlets that resemble, in outline, what you’d expect in the old Stars & Stripes military newspaper in wartime on behalf of U.S. forces, such as “heroic president hoists flag over town liberated from enemy”; “enemy abandons equipment after bold thrust liberates latest city.” You get the picture. The New York Times and such ran puff-pieces to the effect that “Townspeople rejoice at liberation from evil enemy occupation.”
Here is a very recent actual intro-paragraph to a Business Insider article. See if you can count the ‘loaded’ or propagandistic words and phrases here:
“Following a weekend of conclusive military defeats at the hands of Ukraine’s unexpectedly capable troops, Russia is being forced to confront its glaring manpower problem — and an obstinate president who refuses to offer reprieve.”
By my count, there are a lot more propagandistic words than neutral ones there. This is a news article and not an editorial. (I know, it’s gotten hard to tell the difference.) If you’re one of those who just skims news-titles, the recent trend in ‘loading’ titles with content to make them almost mini-articles in themselves gets you the message: “Putin’s insistence that the war is going great is shooting Russia in the foot as it desperately tries to find new soldiers, experts say” (Business Insider, Sept. 14, 2022). The credited author is an Erin Snodgrass (born circa 1998; previous work as a Congressional intern, where she “Wrote constituent letters, press releases, media statements, social media posts, and policy memos” according to her LinkedIn — which sounds a lot like what this Ukraine war article is).
The idea is the Ukrainian military is taking the country back from illegal incursions and occupation by foreigners — a great positive good for truth, beauty, honor, and cosmic justice in defense of a holy nation (For them. DON’T YOU DARE even think of doing the same in your country, Western Man.)
The idea is the holy Ukrainian nation’s glorious forces are rapidly and easily routing the Russians, and that this means something for us. A characteristic Bloomberg editorial informs us on our duties to the holy Ukraine: “Give Ukraine What It Needs to Win” (Bloomberg News, Sept. 13, 2022). Bloomberg’s editorial board demands the pipeline of billions of U.S. government dollars continue to flow to Ukraine, to keep up the pressure on the evil Russian oppressors while the iron is hot. There is talk of regime-change in Russia. Stupid, stupid, talk; reckless.
I cannot detect any pushback against this. Tucker Carlson has apparently been silent throughout the first half of September on the Ukraine war amid this jubilation and crowing and calls for expanded war. Instead he sticks to his script of Biden-bashing in his characteristically choreographed way.
I notice also that the big prestige-media in the U.S., acting in unison, all call it a “counter-offensive,” as if there had been one of those “policy memos” dispatched to all loyal media outlets that this shall by the term used (“policy memos” of the kind which the new Business Insider reporter used to write). The way they are using this term is not a technically accurate usage.
A “counter-attack” or “counter-offensive” should refer to an immediate attack by your forces, often against an ongoing enemy offensive to disrupt it or try to break the enemy’s offensive in progress. It doesn’t work for a fresh attack against a static or already-withdrawing enemy. The neutral designation of the action of early September 2022 in northeast Ukraine would be “an offensive.” “Counter-offensive” is a good PR term, which, as usual, makes the Ukraine side look saintly and heroic. This would be like the British press all calling the U.S. Civil War “the War of Northern Aggression in America,” acting like that were a neutral term.
Sailer and the “feint”
As for Steve Sailer, the great coiner of “Sailerisms,” he did something similar to the murky “counter-offensive” business. He has begun claiming that a previous Ukraine offensive in the south some weeks ago, which was defeated, had actually been a giant “feint” all along.
Not many are pushing back hard against this claim of a “feint” — be it dubious or false or otherwise, it’s possibly interesting speculation — but one of the estimable members of the Sailer commenter of long standing, Intelligent Dasein, is pushing back. Intelligent Dasein compares the “feint” business in direct analogy to Steve Sailer’s 2021-22 promotion of the idea of “deaths of exuberance” explaining away the mysterious rise in death rates unrelated to the flu virus obsessed over by two years or more in the social phenomenon I like to call the Corona-Panic.
The idea is, Mr. Sailer has still today not yet been able to fully look the CoronaPanic-Monster in the eye. He instead chooses to look elsewhere and explain-away the Monster by other means when possible.
Intelligent Dasein sees the “deaths of exuberance” line as a cover for the lockdown and CoronaPanic-disruption-and-dislocation-related deaths, ongoing in the early 2020s. Steve Sailer coined “deaths of exuberance” in about April 2021, as a cutesy analogue to “deaths of despair,” an idea he had promoted back to the 2010s as the sign of malaise in White Middle America (after White life-expectancy, and only White life-expectancy, dropped).
Intelligent Dasein was one of the early, consistent, uncompromising, and evangelistic Anti-Panic voices in 2020 and even before that had won the respect of intelligent men for this contributions to the Sailer commentariat. He is one of those whom I quote below several times, in the main part of this post.
He is also one of the many estimable members of the Sailer commentariat whom the pro-Ukraine, pro-war, pro-intervention side would call “pro-Russian,” but is actually basically a neutral and critical of NATO and the U.S. imperial commitments and the “Deep State” activities, who over the years have endeavored to make of the Ukraine regime a quasi-protectorate, with powerful “swamp creatures” like Paul Manafort and the Biden family all involved. The goalposts have shifted, and Neutrals do now look like partisans of the other side. Ground-up “goalpost shifts” can only come from outsiders applying pressure, and Steve Sailer is not willing to do so in this case.
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The scale of the Ukraine offensive
It’s hard to believe much of anything on the Ukraine war, but one line, widely quoted and originating with the Ukraine defense ministry, claims the Ukrainian army had taken control of 6000 square kilometers in twelve or so days. Possibly some thousand more square kilometers when all the smoke clears and the apparent Russian readjustment is complete.
The “scale” is this: Ukraine gained 1% to 1.5% of total land area of the country. The total of Russian-occupied territory within Ukraine was about 21.7% before the offensive, and is now about 20.5% (+/-).
This kind of scale gives credence to the view of some neutrals and pro-Russians, who say the whole thing was just NATO-armed and perhaps heavily-NATO-assisted Ukraine regime forces scooping up easy gains after Russia began readjusting its forces to focus on the areas more critical, just as they withdrew from north-central areas entirely months ago to focus on the disputed east and the land-bridge to Crimea, both of which they hold firmly.
To Ukraine’s fighting men’s credit, they performed well, a lot better than the kleptocratic Afghanistan government which did almost no fighting after Biden pulled out the rug in mid-2021 and allowed the Taliban to walk into Kabul.
But the result in the northeast Ukraine was pre-ordained, if Russia was already in process of strategically re-adjusting. Celebrating as a major victory such gains during a strategic readjustment, if we accept that framing, really does amount to thinly-veiled, one-sided war propaganda. Reminiscent, it is, of peak-Ukraine-War-Panic conditions in late February, March, and April 2022.
Before returning to the puzzle of the Sailer position on the Ukraine war and the views of his many critics, I derive the territory loss in the “counter-offensive” in this ay:
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Territorial losses and gains in Ukraine, quantified
UKRAINE, Jan. 2014 borders: 603,000 square kilometers (100% of total area) (comparable in size to Texas without its northern “panhandle”).
— Crimea: 27,000 sq. km. (4.5% of total area)
— The disputed “Donbas” region of eastern Ukraine: 65,000 sq. km. (10.5% of total area)
—– of which, occupied by Russia or pro-Russian forces, circa 45,000 sq. km. (7.5%)
—– of which, occupied by Ukraine military: circa 20,000 sq. km. (3%)
—– (no substantial change in this split in recent weeks)
As of August 2022:
— Russian-occupied territory in southeastern Ukraine, excluding Donbas: up to 45,000 sq. km. (7.5%)
— Russian-occupied territory in northeastern Ukraine (Kharkov/Kharkiv area): up to 14,000 sq. km. (2.5%)
— 21.7%: approximate TOTAL area of Ukraine was occupied by Russia as of August 2022 (i.e., Crimea + occupied portions of “Donbas” + occupied portions of southeastern Ukraine + occupied portions of northeastern Ukraine) (131,000 sq. km.; 21.7%).
As of mid-September 2022:
— Territory supposedly retaken by Ukraine in the Kharkov/Kharkiv area of northeastern Ukraine: 6000 sq. km. (1%).
A fluid situation, but if reports are correct Ukraine has re-occupied up to half of the territory which, as of August 2022, had constituted the “Russian-occupied territory in northeastern Ukraine” excluding the disputed Donbas region (where there has been no movement). There could be more territory added to this when all is said and done, the total plausibly rising to 1.5% of pre-2014 Ukraine territory re-occupied by Ukraine in September 2022.
The new total: The Russian-occupied area of Ukraine in late August 2022 was about 21.7%, and in mid-September is around 20.5%, but virtually none of that 1%+ net change in land-holding is in the key disputed area (Donbas) or the other key strategic area (the land-link to Crimea).
Crimea has been fully under Russian control and administration since spring 2014 and has not been not part of the war, except as a base-of-operations for the original Russian offensive into south-central Ukraine.
The eastern “Donbas” region has been a fortified and largely static front-line since the chaotic civil-war conditions of 2014 yielded to stalemate in 2015 and ever since, little change until the intervention by Russia in early 2022. (Within international-relations theory, there is nothing shocking or even surprising about a major power wanting to resolve frozen conflicts that are literally on its border.)
Parts of the disputed region were long occupied by the pro-Russian militias. small-scale actions continued into early 2015. The most dramatic was the weeks-long fight between lightly-armed militias over control of the key buildings of bombed-out regional airport, the leaders of which became social-media stars with cool noms-de-guerre (one pro-Russian militia captain called himself “Motorola”). The airport battle was the final one, and after he pro-Russian militias finally won out, an unstable ceasefire deal came into effect, repeatedly violated by both parties ever since.
The Russian intervention that began in late February 2022 allowed the Russians and pro-Russians to take a lot more of the Donbas, but they still lack control of key parts of it, as the US-backed now-substantial Ukraine regime military is very forward deployed in parts of the Donbas disputed region, having focused on fortifying a lot in the 2015-2021 period. The rationale for the Russian invasion, for its apologists, was that the major fortification of the disputed area was a Maginot Line situation, and to resolve the problem only thrusts through other areas would make sense.
The Ukraine offensive retook around 1% of Ukraine territory in conjunction with a Russian readjustment but it does not change the fundamentals of the war, despite the tone of the U.S. and other Western media.
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The hype, and the hands visible behind the curtain
The German foreign minister, Baerbock, paid a personal visit to Kiev to celebrate the “counter-offensive” at its height, September 10. She gloated over the supposed major Russian humiliation and vowed billions in aid. In previous days, Ukraine’s government had again attacked Germany for not “paying up,” for failing to deliver enough unliteral aid which holy Ukraine deserves and Germany is morally bound to give for [reasons].
Foreign minister Baerbock is a left-wing Green politician of the usual type. She follows in the footsteps of the first Green foreign minister of the politicak sick-man of Western Europe (capital: Berlin). This earlier Green foreign minister was a curious man of the Sixty-Eighter generation named Fischer (he went by the kid-like nickname of “Joschka”). Fischer made a name for himself by self-righteously, angrily, and insistently demanding a war against Serbia to protect Muslims in the 1990s. He got his wish, including German military involvement with the NATO/US mission, the first such case of German military operations since 1945, but it was okay because they were protecting holy Muslims (?) in Europe against ogre-like Christian oppressors.
The creation of the NATO client-state protectorate of “Kosovo” followed that series of 1990s-interventions in the Balkans, along with a quasi-permanent occupation of a new country called Bosnia, the elevation to the pantheon of European political-mythology of something called the Srebrenica Massacre in which evil Christian-nationalists had supposedly killed a holy minority through which Europe is so blessed (though the Oppressor did not use Zyklon-B this time).
Also following the Balkan interventions of the mid-late 1990s was a demonstrated, and ongoing-implied, commitment to keep “down” Christian-nationalists or any Russia-friendly forces in Europe. There is a clear through-line from this 1990s Balkans policy by the NATO countries, through to today and the current Ukraine war.
I could go on like this, but suffice it to say the complicated situation in Ukraine yells out as a voice in the night for neutral analysis from the West which is neither pro-Ukraine nor pro-Russia. We seem to get none of this. So one-sided is the coverage that “neutral,” to the extent it exists at all, is seen as “pro-Russia.” The USA is far too closely involved, as if Ukraine were a territory of the United States itself, or at least a member of NATO. I expect large numbers of people do believe Ukraine is a member of NATO; and who can blame them, from the coverage they see, hear, and read.
(It’s also arguably true that the Ukraine regime is a kind of quasi-protectorate of the United States’ informal empire, an embarrassing one, a kind of Wild West. Consider how much of the endless headache-inducing “RussiaGate” of the late 2010s was really about Ukraine; recall that Alexander Vindman, a Ukrainian-Jew and military officer promoted by the U.S. media as a heroic whistleblower during one of the Trump impeachments, was a Ukrainian with regime ties. Why was the decades-long Washington D.C. political operative “swamp creature” Paul Manafort so deeply involved in Ukraine for years? Why was Biden’s son involved, also for years and so lucratively?)
When a commentator like Steve Sailer refuses, in such a situation, to provide neutral commentary or analysis, and instead cheerleads for one side, it is disappointing, maybe a little troubling, and worth asking “Why?”
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The Sailer commentariat speaks
Much of the regular Steve Sailer commentariat has pushed back on the pro-Ukraine, pro-war, pro-intervention views Steve Sailer has offered up in the past six months. The pushback is similar to his enormous “wrong call” on the Corona-Panic in 2020 and beyond, and many of his critics make cautious or not-so-cautious approaches to why.
Some comments of the critics:
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Hypnotoad666 writes:
“I find it disappointing that Steve is toeing the deep state/MSM party line on the Ukraine war. He’s all in on the MSM media strategy of being silent on the downsides of the geopolitical debacle caused by this war of choice, like the self-destruction of the EU economies, the realignment of half the world into an anti-US economic bloc, the movement to de-dollarize world trade, the mass slaughter of Ukrainian cannon fodder, and the spectacular waste of US tax dollars. That kind of trivia just isn’t on the “noticing” radar. But any temporary success for this retarded neocon project is suddenly super-interesting and cause for celebration.
For example, Steve parroted the MSM by touting the big Kherson offensive to come. When it came and was a military disaster, that just wasn’t worth noticing. But when a second offensive caused the Russians to pull back, that was really interesting and Kherson was retconned as just a “feint.” (But wait, I thought only Pootin stooges believed in “feints,” like the attack on Kiev).
Oh well, Steve’s entitled obviously to draw his own conclusions based on available data. I guess he reads that data as saying it’s now a good policy for the U.S. to invade the world as long as it does so by proxy. After all, if Victoria Nuland and the CIA came up with the plan, and it’s being enforced by the MSM, you know it’s a good one. These people are so transparent, smart and aligned with the interests of the American people that nothing could possibly go wrong. Slava Ukraini!”
[End quote from Hypnotoad]
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Greta Handel writes:
Beyond serving as copium denmother for disaffected white guys, Mr. Sailer himself AFAIK has scarcely dissented from the Exceptional! narratives in which Americans are marinated from infancy by Hollywood, sportsball, and every other Establishment source.
We live in the most thoroughly and constantly propagandized society ever. And most of us…succumb most of the time.
What has been revelatory about Mr. Sailer’s twin COVID and Ukraine obsessions these past few years is watching commenters who have always been welcome here in the HBD tree fort because they’re clever at denigrating black people show their true colors.
[End quote from Greta Handel]
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Intelligent Dasein writes, in response to a Steve Sailer post titled “Some Technical Details on How the Ukrainians Pulled Off Their Strategic Feint”:
No. You are not going to be allowed to meme your stupid idea of a “Strategic Ukrainian Feint” into existence the way you did with your equally stupid “Deaths of Exuberance” idea. This is not a game. The kind of pure propaganda you’re up to, running cover for some very nefarious Deep State machinations, has real world consequences which now include the deaths of millions of people.
It seems as if The Narrative has nominated you to be its apostle to the contrarians. You peddle narrative ideas to the dissidents, wrapped in a candy coating of HBD to make it palatable to them. It’s all very Jesuitical.
There won’t be many here who wake up and see the truth, but for those who can, you have been exposed.
[End quote from Intelligent Dasein]
Someone questioned Intelligent Dasein’s use of the phrase “the deaths of millions of people,” to which Intelligent Dasein responds:
I’m including all deaths attributable to things Steve has been wrong about. It’s not just the war in Ukraine, but deaths due to Covid lockdowns, deaths of despair, suicide, economic hardship, lack of proper medical care, and of course the mRNA injections. Steve’s idiotic “Deaths of Exuberance” is a particularly cynical and sadistic attempt to shoehorn lockdown deaths into an HBD narrative that has nothing to do with it.
Now he wants to propound the “Ukrainian Strategic Feint,” when it’s quite obvious a mere 24 hours later that the Russians made a planned, orderly withdrawal and are using this opportunity to smash what’s left of Ukraine’s Nato-reinforced army. The only ones feinting here were the Russians, and they did it so wonderfully that everybody was fooled, even their own partisans.
[End quote from Intelligent Dasein]
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An anonymous commenter says:
The USA is at war with its geopolitical foe, Russia. A war by proxy but a war nevertheless. Basically, all the boomers – like Steve, Charles Murray and Greg Cochran – fell for the patriotic duty to support their country. It’s that simple.
They will be disappointed. Russia cannot lose this war and will not lose. The Ukrainian soldiers are motivated, brave and smart. But even with all the support of the entire West, they are outmatched – and that’s a simple reality. Ultimately, Russia, in the same way as Ukraine, will pay whatever it takes for the victory. It’s going to be a tragedy for both Slavic countries and a very dangerous development for the world. Because once Russia does decisively defeat Ukraine in what is going to be an incredible bloodbath, it will want to punish those who instigated and made this war possible.
[End quote from Anonymous-131.]
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In response to steady stream of criticism from his commenters asking why he is doing it, Steve Sailer inserts this one-liner into the discussion:
“I’m against starting wars of conquest in Europe.”
To this, Mr. Sailer got nine replies, each one of them critical.
There are some pro-war, pro-Ukraine voices in the commentariat, including two right-wing Jewish regulars, Jack D and HA; also on the pro-Ukraine, pro-war side is the longtime commenter AnotherDad, a hothead named Pixo, and on the of the resident contrarians, Corvinus (as the bulk of the Sailer commentariat is ‘contrarian’ when it comes to mainstream matters such as you would see in prestige media or hear on NPR, Corvinus is actually a contrarian-contrarian, always taking the “politically correct” or Regime line on everything, this Ukraine war being no exception). An unusually vulgar commenter named SimpleSong also adds his voice to this group of the pro-Ukraine, pro-war, pro-intervention minority in the Sailer commentariat in 2022. This man, SimpleSong, makes a point not just of attacking skeptics and critics of the pro-war/pro-Ukraine side, but celebrating Russian deaths in a tone outside the norm for this venue.
A handful of other commenters, besides the above-listed, express pro-war, pro-Ukraine, and/or anti-Russia views, but on the whole they are outnumbered by a margin of at least two-to-one and maybe three-to-one or so, by those against the Ukraine government and/or against US/NATO involvement and meddling and adventurism and all that has gone on, or who find need or cause to take an anti-anti-Russian line for any reason. This view is corroborated by the lopsided margins seen in the use of the “Agree” button.
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PhysicistDave writes, addressing Steve Sailer:
Like you, I am against war in Europe, but this war was basically started by the US Deep State.
The Kremlin tried for years (and some Western powers gave some cooperation) to work out a peace deal via the Minsk accords. But the West[‘s] Ukraine puppet regime, with strong, material US backing, kept violating the Minsk accords.
Finally, Putin had enough and decided to counter the aggressive actions facilitated and encouraged by the US Deep State in Russia’s own back yard.
I don’t think anyone can counter the facts I have just laid out: this has all been very, very public knowledge.
Steve, you popularized the phrase “Deep State”: I think you are the main source for the phrase now being widespread across dissident media.
But you are still naive about the actions of that Deep State, even when those actions are very public knowledge.
Here is PhysicistDave‘s appraisal of the war at its six-month mark:
I thought it would be over quickly because I thought Putin would be much more ruthless and much less humane than he has been.
And because I thought Zelensky would be much more humane and much less ruthless than he has been.
Putin could easily have knocked out the Ukrainian infrastructure: electric power plants, water and sewage treatment plants, bridges, etc. So far, he has chosen not to do so — I think because he wants to have friendly relations with the Ukrainian people when the war is over.
And Zelensky has thrown his people into a meat grinder even though they have no hope of winning this war militarily.
Probably not a good idea to let a pornographic standup comic lead your country: not the best background for dealing with reality.
[End quote from PhysicistDave]
Buzz Mohawk, a moderate of long standing in the Steve Sailer commentariat, writes:
Vietnam…was another case of our America sticking its dick into a deep, dark hole it should not have. We do not belong in the Ukraine — but we are there virtually, remotely.
We are there to the tune of $Billions, and we are there with our Jewish Hollywood personalities shaking hands with the Jewish “Volodymyr” (Vladimir) Zelenskyyyyyy, and we are there with our Jewish rock-n-roll photographer Annie Leibovitz glamorizing the Jewish leaders of the Ukraine.
It’s showbiz!
Steve’s support of all this is suspicious. I will just say that, and I could be wrong, but remember that Steve is himself Hollywood.
Please don’t include the Ukraine as “just trying to survive as an independent people/nation”…It isn’t, and it isn’t. It’s something else entirely and you and I and Steve don’t understand it and we don’t belong there.
[End quote from Buzz Mohawk]
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PhysicistDave writes:
Steve,
You still seem to be focused on taking or holding territory.
That is not what war has been about for more than two centuries.
The goal is to get the other side’s army to stop fighting — either because they can’t fight (they are dead, captured, or injured, bereft of their command or unit structure, or out of supplies) or because they are no longer willing to fight (they see that the struggle is hopeless, or that it is just not worth the cost, or that they no longer have popular or regime support).
That is all that matters.Again and again and again, armies have taken huge swathes of territory and lost. IN WW I, the Allies never invaded Germany; on Armistice Day, the Germans still held part of France.
But they still lost.
Gain territory, lose territory, advance, retreat, none of it matters until one side or the other either cannot or will not fight.
I’m surprised you do not know this: most of the guys in your and my generation had a rather keen interest in war — WW II, which our dads or uncles or grand-dads had fought in, and Vietnam, which our brothers or ourselves might have to fight in. Both wars are examples of my point.
[End quote from PhysicistDave]
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Back more directly to the topic of why Steve Sailer has embraced a role as a pro-Ukraine partisan, Greta Handel asks:
[C]an anyone around here recall any coolly detached posts about Warball preceding Ukraine? It reminds me of how COVID inspired Mr. Sailer’s sudden interest in virology, another field beyond HBD where he has accepted the Establishment narratives. […]
My take is that on COVID and Ukraine he’s chosen to Notice only the overwhelming Establishment propaganda. […]
What do you make of a long-standing dissident public intellectual on HBD, who also dabbles in pop culture and sportsball, obsessively amplifying Establishment narratives on two subjects in which he’s apparently never shown much interest?
[End quote from Greta Handel]
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James B. Shearer has one hand grasping the Corona-Panic banner as he responds to Greta Handel:
What’s the mystery, [Steve Sailer] agrees with the conventional wisdom about many things.
As for ‘obsessively’[:] covid and Ukraine are both topical. Naturally he had little reason to post about them 5 years ago.
He might post more about covid for which there is lots of data to analyse which is sort of his thing except that so many of his commenters are lunatics on the subject.
[End quote from James B. Shearer]
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Steve Sailer supported the nationalist uprising in Ukraine in 2014, as did many of us to the extent we followed it, but Sailer found distasteful or worse some of the events related to the “making of the sausage” of which caught glimpses, namely the Neoconservative operatives who inserted themselves into the scene.
The mystery of what motivates Steve Sailer’s position on Ukraine in 2022 rather deepens when the commenter Hypnotoad drags up something Sailer had written in 2014, before the revolution.
(The ‘revolution’ refers primarily to events over several days in late February 2014, which started when pro-government snipers shot hundreds of people, aiming presumably for anti-government nationalists who were among tens of thousands camped out for months in the Maidan Square in Kiev demanding the government resign over corruption. When the situation reached a critical point and organized teams of nationalists had begun storming the police/sniper positions, many were shot, about one hundred killed. But those special-police snipers were not evil monster movie-cast villains. They were mostly drawn from the same general population as the protestors. Such men don’t “sign up” to shoot protestors. In the chaos, the snipers’ morale broke and they fled. The nationalists then seized control of events, fully activated their militias for immediate action and moved to seize armories and prepared to fight a civil war against the government if it refused to step down, knowing that momentum was totally on their side. The government rapidly collapsed as senior leaders fled to Russia; the civil war in the east began as pro-Russians there rapidly organized their own militias. The first battles were in April 2014 or so, a few weeks after the Maidan revolution of late February.)
Steve Sailer had written in early February 2014, on the Neocon operative and curiously permanent State Department fixture Victoria Nuland (a woman as well-connected to power as any you will find in Washington, a relative of the power neocon Kagan dynasty, and someone who does well no matter who’s in the White House):
“[I]f the 2016 election is between, say, Hillary Clinton and Paul Ryan, [Victoria Nuland] won’t be sweating about whether or not she’ll have a job in 2017.
Considering their catastrophic track record on Iraq and their continued ascent in the stratosphere of power players, is there anything the Kagan-Nulands could screw up that would hurt their careers? (Other than publicly recanting and apologizing, of course.)”
[End quote from Steve Sailer, Feb. 7, 2014]
In the 2022 Ukraine crisis, we see none of this spirit in the Sailer commentary on Ukraine. Why?
Hypnotoad666 comments on the contrast:
“2022 Steve could learn a lot from 2014 Steve, who had more skepticism of the neocons and anticipated their cosmic screw-up in Ukraine.”
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Steve Sailer doubles down in TakiMag
Steve Sailer publishes articles in Taki’s Magazine every Wednesday morning, and his latest bout of interest in the Ukraine war made it a safe bet what he’d write about this time. Sure enough, rah-rah for Ukraine it was.
The title of his weekly TakiMag article: “An End to Conquering” (Or, “Is the Age of Conquest still over?“)
The success of Ukraine’s surprise northeastern offensive suggests a fundamental problem for the invaders: When it comes to seizing and holding land in Ukraine, the average Russian soldier’s heart just isn’t in it.
But why should it be? After all, unlike Patrick Swayze’s guerrilla in Red Dawn, the poor Russian doesn’t live there.
That the modern male is less interested in conquest than his progenitors were seems like a general pattern. Men will still fight bravely for their homelands or for what they see as a good cause, but less so to raise their flag over their neighbor’s fields. […] (end quote from Steve Sailer, the first lines of his TakiMag article of Sept. 14, 2022)
In response, Hypnotoad666 offers this:
You are pushing the propaganda line that this war was a sudden, unprovoked, illegal attack by Pootin, to conquer the freedom loving Ukrainians for profit. (Except that he’s too stupid to figure out that he will lose money on the deal). But if that’s true, why have the Russians offered peace if only Ukraine would stay out of NATO and the DPR and LPR Russians would be respected? (These offers were both pre-war in December and in April in Istanbul but were rejected by the West).
Rightly or wrongly, this war is waged for national security, not profit and conquest. The US wanted to threaten and dominate Russia with a militarized puppet state, and to have an excuse to crash the Russian economy with sanctions. So far it’s the US and EU which have miscalculated. If they were “coldly rational” they would have chosen peaceful coexistence. But they have other agendas. There is a whole worldwide security and trade realignment at issue. That’s what’s going on. It’s not some cartoonish scheme to steal land.
Finally, this Ukrainian “victory,” is a PR victory only. The Russians retreated in good order from a relatively useless part of the front. They are keeping their reserves available to crush the next Ukranian offensive (probably starting tomorrow in the Donetsk area), like they did at Kherson a couple weeks ago.
So your article is basically wrong about everything. The facts, the motives, the consequences. Everything.
P.S., Believing anything you read in the MSM is the surest way to be misinformed about the Ukraine war.
[End quote from Hypnotoad666]
_______________
Loyalty Over IQ Worship says this on the Sailer TakiMag article:
A lot of mind-reading and acceptance of the Narrative in this piece.
Everyone in the Lying Media keeps telling us what Russians are doing, as if they know. But what the Lying Media tells us doesn’t agree with what Russians say. So who knows. Russia has never referred to this as a ‘war of conquest’ or anything like it. That was our Lying Media’s spin.
[End quote]
_______________
Steve Sailer responded to his critics with a long quote from a New York Times article that triumphantly proclaims the glory of Ukraine’s latest unstoppable victories.
MLK writes:
A word to the wise, beware of bias confirmation in this raging information war.
It’s similar to during the 2016 election. Whatever else you might say about her, Hilary was indisputably the most unlucky candidate ever. That made me wary every time the media, especially that of the prestige variety, announced her latest royal straight flush.
The war will continue but Ukraine has lost. Yet, with the midterm elections weeks away, the illegitimate Biden regime has conjured a glorious victory and renewed hope just in time.
Believe me, no one has more respect for your incisive thoughts than I do. But “I read it in the New York Times” should have led you to find a better occasion to reprise them on wars of conquest.
[End quote from MLK]
Cagey Beast writes:
The New York Times is an unreliable source, especially now and especially on this topic. As far as I can tell the same is true of the other prestige media outlets.
The rest of us need to learn to live with not being able to trust what the media and our officials say. We have to live with the current state of Russian forces in Ukraine as a “known unknown”. We are told things about this but the people telling us are proven liars who admit they’re engaging in an “information war”.
If the local newspaper had a decades long track record of deliberately lying about local events and inaccurately printing the flyers from local stores, wouldn’t we be fools to build a shopping trip around the news that prime rib is on sale at store X for five cents a pound?
“Trust but verify” doesn’t even apply here. We should not trust and not put too much time or effort into verfiying the verifiable.
[End quote from Cagey Beast]
Chrisonymous writes:
Steve, You’re getting caught up in the sportsball cheering, and it’s breaking your brain. The forces in that region were outnumbered by the Ukrainians. When you’re outnumbered, you retreat. If they get the drop on you, maybe you have to leave quick. (And maybe, just maybe, there’s some propaganda in that article, too.) However, if the decisive factor were that Russian soldiers simply don’t have the will to fight, what happened to the Ukrainian offensive around Kherson?
Or, do you have a explanation for why the Kharkov troops lacked the will to fight but the Kherson troops didn’t? What’s that rattling sound? Are you searching for a butterknife?
[End quote from Chrisonymous]
I could continue with more to this effect, but these are among the best, most incisive, and also representative of the majority of the commentariat’s views. Recall that these are mostly long-term fans, reader, and followers of Steve Sailer. It’s telling when one’s own ‘base’ turns against you to such a degree.
_____________
Conclusion: Why does Steve Sailer support the war?
As we have passed the six-month mark, the “Ukraine-War and ‘Covid’ Venn-Diagram” comes back to mind.
In the representative excerpts I have posted here, from (generally) well-established members of the Steve Sailer commentariat, we cannot avoid that some of the same voices as were backers to some degree of the Corona-Panic (or at the least not opponents of the Corona-Panic) are also on the pro-Ukraine, pro-war, pro-intervention side in 2022. The two things do not seem to be related and the alignment is surprising at first glance.
I started here with a question, Why does Steve Sailer support the Ukraine side in a complicated war the details of which are often slimy to the touch?
This is an especially interesting question because in the 2000s and 2010s, Steve Sailer was known in part as the man who coined “Invade the world, invite the world” as the six-word summation of U.S. ‘Regime’ policy, especially embodied in the person of John McCain at the time.
A lot of answers are proposed for what happened to this Steve Sailer, the man against foreign-adventurism at the expense of the interests of the USA. (In some thinking of late, there is no distinction between domestic concerns and global meddling.)
Many of the critics focus higher than the immediate matter of Ukraine (and its sacred and holy borders) onto the kind of position Steve Sailer occupies in our politics, with the Ukraine business supposedly symbolizing his role.
The sharpest critics essentially outline a theory to the effect that Steve Sailer is a gatekeeper, intending to corral ethnonationalist-leaning dissidents and keep them on the political reservation. I have quoted from some such comments here. The ‘gatekeeper’ allegation is not new and could already be heard in places in the late 2000s. A long-running theme is that Steve Sailer’s curious proposal of “citizenism” is a form of gatekeeping. Defining what a ‘gatekeeper’ is, that’s not easy to do. It’s too relative. THe concept is useful.
One long-standing member of the Sailer commentariat, Buzz Mohawk, darkly insinuates that Sailer may have been paid off by Ukraine agents or something to take a pro-Ukraine line. I suppose that is meant ironically.
The more general criticism is that he is now a man over age sixty who remembers to an extent Peak-America and the leftover flag-waving from that era. This blinds him to certain things younger men see rather more clearly (according to this theory).
I briefly mentioned Tucker Carlson in this post, to the effect that during this upsurge in Ukraine-cheerleading, he has been silent. He had been one of the view to give a platform to anti-war voices, but this time has not (as far as I know). Tucker Carlson is also sometimes called a gatekeeper.
[End.]
Hail To You 
John Mearsheimer as a distinctive US voice against the Ukraine war is mentioned in mainstream publications. I think Tucker Carlson did quote him too if remember this correctly – and he talked to Tulsi Gabhard***, another outspoken Ukraine war critic.; and the New Yorker ran a lengthy interview with him. And the Economist covered him too. He can also easily be found via google etc. and on youtube. One of his youtube lectures has had 26 million page views, when Ron Unz wrote about him a few weeks back.
John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis | The Economist
Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine | The New Yorker
*** https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1559495016652759041
I don’t care too much about Steve Sailer’s view here. For some reason he is not quite on top of this subject.
He explains in his Taki-Mag article, that he feels a personal Putin-disappointment because he fantasized for some time about Putin being part of the non-interventionist team Sailer, so to speak. – So – one more case of shame for him here, because he did have the wrong expectations / hopes. I found these remarks honest.
To fantasize about Steve Sailer being corrupt or some such strikes me as a matter of thoughtlessness. Let me put it this way: A dead-end (= unwitty (=wrong)) use of irony.
The sports analogy is limited and doesn’t work very well quite often, mainly because politics is no game (or more complex – and more – profound (daunting****) – also than games).****the part when life feels like being .t..h.r.o.w.n. into it for example (Martin(us) Heidegger) ….
Steve Sailer too makes a popular mistake of overstretchign the sports-analogy. There are existential depths in which this simply is too simple.
Dr. Goethe in Faust: Man is wrong as long as he tries to achieve somehting. Another version of this thought: Especially the productive ones are wrong. – Don’t worry.
Since we are all human, we are not delivered without mistakes. – Making mistakes is part of our DNA…. it is innate and unavoidable alltogether. Item: Watch out for the mistakes you make, they are prescious (as are those of others…)! (JWv Goethe again – in About the Granite).
Good afternoon, Dieter,
Happy Friday! I hope this message finds you well.
Thanks for your (as usual) great comment and the Tulsi link. I didn’t know she was guest hosting Tucker’s show. Seems like she pretty well understands what’s going on here. Certainly better informed than Mr. Sailer. Not sure why he’s dropped the ball on this but I guess it doesn’t matter. As you say, we are not delivered without mistakes.
Cheers to a great weekend, Dieter!
☮
I appreciate your defense of Steve Sailer here, assuming good-faith on his part.
I don’t know when you started following Sailer’s writings. I read him in the 2000s, after discovering him via VDare. He was the major inspiration for me starting Hail To You in its earliest days.
In the earlier years that I followed his writings (before commenting was much established; in the earliest years, there were no comments at all), I came to be a big fan and for stretches of time I made sure to read everything he wrote, catching up when I got behind.
I always assumed Steve Sailer was either right or at least had a useful viewpoint to share on everything he wrote. I don’t recall ever thinking Steve Sailer was dangerously wrong about anything. That ended in annus terribilis 2020 with his position of the Corona-Panic and his unwillingness to re-evaluate. This Ukraine war position feels similar to me. His position just doesn’t work, or let’s say it isn’t to the level of rigor of the Sailer of earlier years.
On Mearsheimer (who, btw, has said his ancestry is German-Lutheran; some have assumed, for some reason, that he is Jewish. He confirmed in an interview about ten years ago that he has no Jewish ancestry):
What you say is true, which is why the loudmouthed Zelensky government put him near the top of their Enemies List (a list that includes also Senator Rand Paul).
I wish the US had a political culture in which people like Mearsheimer had real influence, and their views and writings or lectures were taken seriously. But I don’t think I have heard his name in months, at least in the agenda-setting U.S. media.
Millions of Ukrainian refugees have arrived in the EU since the war began, but they have not caused any kind of backlash. The main reason for this is no doubt that 90% of them are women and children, plus they are white. This is quite a change from the Syrian “refugees” who were mostly young men and thus deserters rather than refugees. The “invite the world” aspect of the Ukrainian war is therefore rather benign from the Western European perspective–receiving millions of white women and children is hardly a burden for nations with below-replacement fertility.
What you say is true, and also an ideological fervor allows the European governments and populaces to largely ignore potential negatives.
(Ukraine, sadly, has major social problems, long being Europe’s poorest and maybe its most overall-dysfunctional country, with major corruption and crime problems, there is bound to be spill-over and long coat-tails of this, just like the Merkel Migrant Crisis of 2015-16 was partly an after-effect of Mideast wars.)
The same governments that take in Ukrainians also continue to take in Muslims, Subsaharans, and other miscellaneous peoples, as policy and as patriotic-duty. The “Invite” part of the equation is not primarily about Ukraine.
As for the Ukrainian presence being benign, Dieter Kief wrote this at Peak Stupidity yesterday, which is more negative than your appraisal:
https://peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=2390
No wonder, all applications by Ukrainians for welfare programs are fast-tracked and approved with minimal checks, if any happen at all.
For example: Any Ukrainian “refugee” who goes to Germany university and applies for a state-sponsored student grant will get it approved instantly and receives the maximum amount possible.
Something I’ve observed personally due to my current job is that at least ~33% of the public housing mostly ostensibly used for refugees simply sits empty for months to end.
Municipal gov workers told me they suspect the people absconded either to their homelands or are living somewhere else in Europe.
Definitely happening.
I see that Germany (the political “sick man” of Western Europe) officially says it has 1 million refugees from Ukraine in 2022, and what that number means is the taxpayer is paying large sums of support money to 1 million individuals who claim to be Ukraine refugees, not a statement on their exact whereabouts.
I presume there are also many earlier ones, one way or another, as Ukraine has had serious problems since the 1990s.
Stuff like this is why I’m very sceptical about official numbers.
It was bad before, became worse after 2015 and turned insane after 2020 due to even rudimentary means testing being absolished by decree and many gov workers disappearing into non-productive work-from-home schemes under the guise of “stopping the spread”.
Nowadays we have people double, tripple and quadruple dipping on welfare payments with fake idents and from what I hear there is also a sizeable crowd of obvious non-Ukrainians turning up with brand new documents claiming refugee status too, suggesting the notoriously corrupt bureaucrats in Kiev are running a nice side hustle there.
What was Sailer position on the Balkan wars and kosovo?
Good question. He was not yet blogging at the time but the was writing occasional newspaper columns while he still had a desk job in Chicago, I think.
I think he started blogging in 200o, and his early blogging as less substantial and less frequent.
Anyone know?
Sailer on Kosovo 1999, pro or anti
I’m pretty sure Sailer has made some critical remarks about the bombing of Serbia. What he said at the time (1990s) I’ve no idea. He also drew attention to neocon support for Chechen terrorists. Several times throughout the years he’s also made negative remarks about Putin – along the lines of “Putin’s not a good guy” – in response to pro-Putin commenters.
He’s always wanted to be more mainstream. Perhaps now that he gets some fairly positive mainstream responses, particularly on twitter, he just wants to build on that and doesn’t care too much about Ukraine.
Jules: Your idea (“now that [Steve Sailer] gets some fairly positive mainstream responses, particularly on twitter, he just wants to build on that”) makes sense. These pressures (can) affect even the best of us, and in ways we may not realize or understand.
What is DeSantis position on the ukraine war?
Governor Ron DeSantis calls Vladimir Putin an Authoritarian Gas Station Attendant”…
☮
Thank you for finding and posting this, Mr. Smith.
Date of press conference: March 2, 2022. The point of the line was to call for Energy Independence.
The three youths standing behind him make for a surreal contrast as DeSantis denounces Putin and the Soviet Union as “the most evil regime of the 20th century.”
Greetings, Mr. Hail,
Thanks for writing about this. I too have been wondering why Sailer is so pro Ukraine and why he doesn’t notice that this war was started by NATO (Washington) in 2014. Why he doesn’t notice that the criminals running the so called west are non-agreement capable as they have broken every treaty and accord regarding NATO expansion. Why he doesn’t notice that Russia has legitimate security concerns, that this was/is a completely unnecessary escalation and a senseless loss of blood and treasure. Perhaps Sailer, like most people, simply believes what he is told to believe by regime media, especially when it comes to things like foreign policy and the CoronaPanic?
I think he should stick to the topics he knows best…
Golf course architecture, black dysfunction and World War Hair™.
☮
Hello, all the regulars!
First, Mr. Hail would know from reading comments there under iSteve posts that I’ve generally stayed out of the Russia/Ukraine threads for quite a while. This is one of the very few Steve Sailer Takimag columns that I’ve skipped, and this was on purpose. (He usually does a great job on those, with the occasional abrupt ending and lack of conclusion is all.)
That’s because I see this war as Big Distraction for Americans. Of course, it’s serious as can be for the Russians and Ukrainians, and it’s a fairly big deal for Europe. I mean that that constant media bombardment that coincidentally started right near the end of the Ottawa trucker protest (and an American one starting which got NO publicity) is too much for this story.
I understand that a lot of guys are “armchair generals”. I don’t mean that in a bad way – for most – war and war history is interesting. Additionally, one thing I am missing out on is discussion of the armament details. One could probably learn things that may unfortunately apply here in America not so long from now.
Steve Sailer is not usually into that type of thing, but I think he’s gotten hooked a tad. Let me write more regarding the main topic here in another comment.
See my reply below.
As for Mr. Sailer himself: It seems to me that, just as with the Kung Flu nonsense, but at a much lower intensity*, he has let himself get sucked into the Lyin’ Press narrative. I don’t see how though! He wrote – and no way I could find this – that he either doesn’t have a TV, or it’s not hooked up to cable, hulu, etc.**
I agree with Adam Smith, and likely others here, that the US got this thing started back in ’14, we’ve pushed Russia up against the wall with NATO since ’89, and we have no business in that war at this point either.
Mr. Sailer does espouse “invade-the-world/invite-the-world” (sometimes with”ad-hoc-to-the-world” added on), and he HATES HATES HATES the Neocons like Max Boot – I agree completely, of course. However, Mr. Sailer doesn’t seem to know the history of the American involvement there, that is Neocon through and through.
Here’s what I think: Mr. Sailer wants to provide insight and analogies on/with tactics and strategy of war. However, it’s not so much his thing. I give him credit for not harping on this topic so much, but when he does, I’m afraid he’s using the Lyin’ Press Neocons as his sources for the story.
* He had this one Takimag column, and maybe has 2 or so posts a week on this, by my best guess. That’s out of lately 25-35 post weekly (also, just a guess.)
** That’s pretty much what I mean when I say “I don’t have TV”. Yes, we have the device, but the receiver is doing nothing, no over-the-air, no cable, not hulu, etc, It’s just connected to a DVD player. (Yes, my family is a bit behind, but we like it this way.)
One last thing for now. This is in regards to the commenter Buzz Mohawk. On a thread a few days back he had really good one that I meant to ask if I could use myself. The O/P was about violence in Sweden. I will paste in the whole comment, except for the flag Buzz inserted ironically – since it’s the same colors as the Ukraine one:
That was not only a big dig regarding what (I think) should remain Steve Sailer’s biggest issue (he does work for VDare). but it’s a great case for the stupidity of worrying about somebody invading the Ukraine, while all the freaking West has been under invasion for years now!
Help me remember Buzz Mohawk’s age. I think he has said he’s of similar age to Mr. Sailer.
There are many counter-examples of the theory that age or generational-identity explain ill-advised or uncritical Ukraine-intervention-support. Nostalgia from remembering the height of the rivalry with Russia, or whatever exactly this age-based theory rests on.
Does the tendency exist at all in 2022 in any significant way? If it does, and if Buzz Mohawk is about the same age as Sailer, what makes Buzz Mohawk “immune” to this supposed generational tendency?
I think you are right that Buzz Mohawk is around 60 y/o, maybe a couple of years younger than Steve Sailer, or down to 55 y/o.
I’d thought about the age factor, with those who still think of The Russians as The Soviets. However, all it takes is reading a little news over the last 33 years to know better. That’s definitely not Steve Sailer’s excuse – he keeps up pretty well.
For some reason, Mr. Sailer has gone along with the Lyin’ Press hype more than I’d have expected, though not nearly as seriously as he did during the Kung Flu PanicFest.
BTW, a sample of iSteve commenters may not mean much. They are really a bright sort, with lots of world experience, most of them. That’s why I like reading comments there, usually as much as I do the posts.
I screwed up my link in that comment 2 days ago. Just to make it easier for someone: Buzz Mohawk’s comment
Thanks for chiming in, Achmed,
I agree, the real story is how “all the freaking West has been under invasion for years now”. White people are 8% of the global population, are being subjected to replacement migration in every country we live in and are systemically denied any sense of racial identity. I believe NATO’s war against Russia is really cover for the Cabal’s economic war against White people. It’s also a good excuse to filter yet more debt based dollars up the chain to the usual array of weapons manufactures, arms dealers (black market and otherwise), military industrial complex apparatchiks, money launderers and various other well connected parasites while lowering the standard of living across Europe and America and further indebting the peasants. I think it is also an attack on the euro to artificially prop up the dollar to help preserve the dollar’s reserve status and slow it’s collapse. Unless something changes, it looks like Europeans will enjoy a long cold winter this year. Hope the winter is mild.
Happy weekend, Achmed!
☮
It’s fair to say the architects of the US/NATO intervention in Ukraine view themselves as empire-builders. Empire has a logic of its own.
It’s probably not the case that the “architects” of the extension of an unofficial soft-protectorate status to the Ukraine on off days sit in a room plotting anything in particular against White-Christians (like that SPLC headman who tracked White population declines year-by-year in charts he kept in his office). But there is a great deal of overlap between those who do.
Even most charitably, if we say it’s unintended, the result is the same.
“Stupid foreign policy has consequences.”
RE: a comment by Peak Stupidity. above, on the Ukraine-Russia war as a “big distraction”:
I cannot agree that the Ukraine war is a big distraction if by that it is implied that we are better off ignoring it.
Unfortunately, it now involves the US in a major way. For one thing, as the closest proxy war with Russia in all US history. And with one of the worst possible client-regimes, as Ukraine is rather like a gangster-state, a lot like Russia except even worse; used as a forward-base of a soft-empire, unofficial client state, and as James Kunstler put it, a “black hole of money-laundering and racketeering.”
The use of Distractions does go on all the time, and we constantly fall into them. As much as I like the “Martha’s Vineyard” publicity-stunt by America’s Best Governor, to be honest when I think about it, that too seems rather like a distraction. Fox News has gotten huge numbers of giggles in, but it’s just “endzone dancing” and taunting. Coaches and players that play to win should focus on something other than the intricacies of the latest taunt, right?
A more pure distraction as far, as foreign wars go, would be if the U.S. media began obsessing over the war in Myanmar (which, as far as I know, is ongoing). Or maybe the almost-never-mentioned war in Yemen, now on a truce but with hundreds of thousands dead and involving regional interventions on a scale to US-level involvement in Vietnam in the late 1960s. Obama and some of his circle created the Yemen war. Someone did a study of some of the flagship MSNBC news-commentary shows for an entire year in 2018 or 2019, and found the word “Yemen” had been mentioned exactly ZERO times in that whole year! That is certainly less coverage than it deserves.
What percent of Americans over the past seven years have known there was a bigger-scale-than-Ukraine war ongoing on the Arabian peninsula? And so little coverage it got, that a Google site-search of PeakStupidity.com picks up zero instances of the word “Yemen” since you began publishing in Dec. 2016.
A week from this writing, the Ukraine war will reach its seven-month mark (Wow…). The saturation-level coverage in the early weeks eventually yielded to a remarkable loss of interest, a sign of how our media works (a disturbing sign in its own right, on how the media now works, always chasing the latest “distraction”!). As US/NATO intervention continues and the general stupidness of it all continues, it’s also not a good idea to ignore it, and by “it” I also mean the phenomenon of US/NATO reactions to it.
There was an article today in Al Jazeera praising the war because the longer it goes on the more it improves Turkey’s position in the region and vis-a-vis Europe. Great job, State Department and co.
Meanwhile, US-Regime-aligned media coverage continues to be a mix of child-like naivete, cheerleading, and classic “black propaganda” or atrocity propaganda (which the Russians are also using, trust none of these reports on someone’s word alone), and warmongering. I realized after publishing this that the title is ambiguous, “Why does Steve Sailer support the war in Ukraine.” but then I catch myself. The pro-Ukraine people really do want the war to continue, it seems, even without any resolution-scenario that makes sense, so it is fair to say they “support the war.” These, anyway, are not distractions, but major foreign-policy mistakes that make international-relations theorists and Realpolitikers across the globe annoyed and astounded at what’s been done…
Well, no, I don’t ignore the Neocon impetus and support for the war. I don’t ignore the issue of the US involvement and spending of tens of billions of dollars* (the involvement should be ZILCH).
It’s the battle strategies, who’s winning, the armchair generalship, and the whole scene that it seems to me is the new Infotainment to replace the 2 year-long Kung Flu Infotainment that I want no part of. I didn’t know it was tailing off, as your write. I still see the flags up (even in a Boy Scout parade!) and the headlines.
You are right that Peak Stupidity hasn’t written a thing about the war in Yemen. I’ve personally heard of it, but that’s among how many wars now the the US instigated or supported there in the Middle East over the last 20 years, a dozen or so? No, PS is not a really news site, so I didn’t bother.
I agree with your last paragraph completely.
.
* On that score, Peak Stupidity posted “Hundreds of Rand Pauls…” about that one $40 billion dollar
griftaid bill. The sickest part of that was Rand Paul was only adding an amendment about accountability of the spending of that money. Nope, that was NOT OK.Sailer is a bit of an idiot savant. He’s good on migration politics, not so much on anything else.
BTW, how much Ukie land is occupied by Russia is way down the list of Russian priorities. The Russians gladly trade land for dead and disabled Ukie troops and equipment. The West will fight Russia to the last Ukie body, and Ukraine is willing to take that trade for another Zelensky mansion or two in the West.
I think you’re right on the strategic goals comment (land occupation versus other goals).
But there is more than one strategic player. Vlad is in a quagmire against the strategic enemy (US/NATO) which doesn’t want to provide an “out” and the US/NATO side will do everything possible to make and land-occupation changes look like a major defeat, retreat, loss of face, a “meme” that can take on its own logic.
UP (@SignorPallina) writes:
Oooh fah! Just seeing this post. Too much stuff to read out there, and then there’s makin’ a livin’. Well anyway. My thoughts are likely to be random, though I will note today with the UN Conference going on, I’m seeing military helicopters circling around New York City. Got to protect the prostitutes and pimps that make up the UN!
My basic position on the Uki war is the same as my position on Covid. What everyone should have done is absolutely nothing. The rational response for both the U.S. and Europe to Russians incursion should have been, “well, it’s not our business.” Because it’s not our business.
That said, it was hilarious and, by this time, entirely predictable to see millions of people on Twitter dutifully adding Uki flags to their profiles, so often right next to rainbow flags. For a while it was the “new thing,” and the waves of moronic propaganda were delightful. The Ghost of Kiev was shooting down 100 Russian planes a day using a slingshot and walnuts! Or whatever. But it was a complete and utter lie, fabricated out of whole cloth. Yet it captured millions of imaginations for a while, just like that. Say it, and they will believe it. And many more lies followed, all believed. Incredible levels of brain-dead stupidity, and this is now true for basically anything that Regime Media wants to spin up. At least for a while until people get tired of it.
One aspect of Ukraine that nobody ever mentions is that everything of value in Ukraine is owned by Jews, who are less than 1% of the population (ok, and one Muslim Oligarch too). As part of the USSR, Ukraine was looted just like Russia was. Only since they never had a Putin to claw some of it back, it stayed that way. Ukraine is not a “poor” country. Russia in the 90s was not a “poor” country. Both were simply blood-sucked countries, with Jews extracting every bit of wealth they could, sharing as little as possible with the natives. Ukraine has vast resources. It should be a reasonably well off place, but it’s not, because everything is up for sale, including the women and children. Ukraine has a massive human trafficking problem, something which is also mainly run by Jews.
None of this is mentioned. Even the idiot leader Zelensky is a Jew, which everybody knows by now, but they don’t add it all up. Ukraine is a Jewish satrapy. But you know, it’s all about “saving democracy!” for a nation that has outlawed opposition parties and closed opposition media. Very democratic, indeed.
The other aspect is that Ukraine has been used for decades to launder money to US and other politicians. Both parties are involved. What the hell else is all the Hunter Biden stuff about? Open, obvious bribery, yet nothing gets done, because the uni-party doesn’t want to disturb the cash cow. And now we just send billions of dollars there, and nobody knows where it ends up, but Zelensky sure has a lot of mansions, and many of the Jewish oligarchs bolted at the start of the war to Tel Aviv. What a shock.
Meanwhile, Russia is playing with both hands tied behind their back, on purpose. I get they didn’t want to follow the U.S. way of war, which is wiping out the civilian infrastructure. But why have they not yet tried a strike on Kiev to take out the government? Zelensky shows up for photo ops everywhere. Killing him might or might not effect the course of the war, but it would certainly be justice. He doesn’t care how many Slavic cattle get killed for his little war, as long as he can keep raking in the cash before he eventually bolts. Which he will.
You know it wasn’t that long ago that fanatical Uki war boosters The NY Post would publish articles about Jewish Ukrainian money laundering.
https://nypost.com/2021/03/06/businessmen-accused-of-ukraine-money-laundering-gave-millions-to-ny-charities/
Oh and wasn’t there some little dustup about bio labs? Whatever happened to that story? Forgotten.
The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
Good to hear from you, as always, PeterIke.
Your comment is excellent.
There was a time when there was a considerable political force in the USA that urged a “do nothing” as the best course of action in most cases, especially something like the Ukraine dispute. The default should be “do nothing.” This is fairly called a principle of Realpolitik. Conserve forces; don’t flail around without clear purpose; don’t be an idiot, especially not on a global stage against major powers.
There has been a great temptation to adventurism ever since the USA became a continental power, and given how weak the near-neighbors of the USA were. But there was also a considerable, mainstream voice urging against any such things. US history is just full of these, many which people have never even heard of. One is the harebrained early-1870s scheme to move towards annexing the Dominican Republic, blocked by the Senate.
Another example, you had these huge public-opinion margins in the USA against intervention in the idiotic European war that began in 1914; the same in in the other war, the “do nothing” attitude prevailing throughout 1939, 1940, and even holding pretty strong in 1941 (which doesn’t fit with the Good War myth as popularly understood and filtered by Hollywood).
Even something like “Iran-Contra” in the 1980s was considered such a scandalous outrage in part, I think, because there was still this influential default of “don’t meddle or do imperial interventions.” It was a position with adherents on all sides but quite a lot on the Left. (Gore Vidal apparently unironically believed that Reagan could himself face prison time because of that set of militaristic-adventurism scandals; the is a laughable idea today.) Would an “Iran-Contra”-like scandal in the 2020s even get covered? Did anti-interventionism fade into becoming being a dissident view in the 1990s?
The historical white American nation was very anti-interventionist. Indeed, the scoundrel Wilson won his election on a “he kept us out of war!” platform, right after which he got us in. But it did take a concerted propaganda campaign — Germans bayonetting babies! [totally fake] the Lusitania! [carrying weapons, shhhh] — to turn the American people against the Germans.
I think the shift to interventionism was a “necessary” after effect of the Cold War ending. As long as we had the big, bad Soviets, we could spin up crap like “the arms race” or “the missile gap” to justify ever-expanding budgets. And we could fight in Korea and Viet Nam because the big bad Commies were taking over the world.
Well, no more Commies! Now what? Youngsters may not remember that for a brief, shining moment everyone was talking about “the peace dividend,” how all that Cold War MIC spending could now rain down on negro ghettos and the like. Nope, never happened.
We soon got very interventiony, because the MIC needs dat scratch, and naturally the Left came around too. They were never anti-war, just anti-Republican, so while the dolt Booosh was President, they were rabidly anti-war (good). But the split second the Saintly Obama won, the anti-war movement vanished. The Obama reign was really when the entire Deep State was flushed of patriots, military included, and stuffed with wokesters and Commies. The CIA had always been Left, the FBI and military much less so. But Clinton started the big purges, stupid Booosh did nothing to reverse it, and Obama finished the job in grand style. Trump should have fired everybody, everywhere, on his first day, but it took him way too long to figure out that those Generals with all the medals — who, as a proper Boomer, he always respected — were just faggot Commies and not Sgt. Rock.
Yet Trump, also, threw cash at the military to “build it back up” (for what?). Friggin’ Boomer. I love Trump, but he was never Red Pilled in certain key areas, and his respect for the institutions was his undoing.
So here we are, in the Current Year, where the Left is fervently in bed with the CIA, the FBI, the military, the Surveillance State and everything else. And why not? It’s all on their side. Now there’s never a war they don’t love. We could gin up a reason to invade Ireland (“an Irishman insulted an African!”), and all of Leftie Bluecheck Twitter would be in a feverish rage inside of five minutes to wipe Ireland off the map.
Anyway, I never addressed the original question about Steve S. Honestly, I don’t know why he’s so brain-dead on the Uki situation. I get Covid: he’s a cancer survivor, and frankly it just scared the hell out of him and he was overtaken by emotionalism. I gave him a pass for it originally, though BY NOW he should have done way more recanting. But why on the war?
It doesn’t make sense. If he were more important, I could see maybe someone paid him to take that position (JackD?). Such things happen all the time. But with the ENTIRE media apparatus all-in on the Uki war, what possible difference could it make that iSteve supported it? I don’t get it. Maybe he’s just getting soft and/or tired.
Peter,
I’ve written numerous times about the wrong direction that America has gone in, in foreign policy, since the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War there was a GOOD cause, but of course that didn’t stop the CIA and those types from making lots of stupid moves, abusing their power and making enemies. Nonetheless, the US was generally a force for good.
We were promised that “peace dividend” that was to accrue to us since we could stand down from all the various 100’s of military bases and cut back on the strategic weapons production, seeing as we didn’t have an arch enemy potentially causing havoc anywhere around the globe. Besides that, if you recall, American had a metric s__t tonne of goodwill built up around the world.
My opinion – see Toward Peak Neocon? (Part 1 – Definition) and Toward Peak Neocon? (Part 2 – Unavoidable, one of 2 ways) – was that the Neocons who cropped up were former frustrated lefties that had to be anti-war for so long to be against the anti-Soviet Right. They wanted to be able to blow up things and do regime change themselves. (Then there was the Jewish/protect Israel factor.) Starting with Gulf War I (to ostensibly save poor little Kuwait), they had their chance.
The peace dividend money was blown, and the goodwill was scattered over the last 30-odd years.
While personal biases and political socialisation play a role I think the most obvious choice for an explanation here would be normally hidden networks (both influence and finance) making their presence felt because the RU-UKR war is a lynchpin.
I’m reminded of the time during the Harvey Weinstein trial where suddenly an “odd coalition” of right-wingers began running interference for Weinstein and loudly proclaiming that the precedent established there would be used to send every single heterosexual white man to prison. Which was really, really weird because said coalition included people who are open and unabashed antisemites.
And now we have another “odd coalition” takes a side against Russia and uses memes that are a wild mix of the Cold War era (muh communism), the WW2 era (Russian are the asiatic horde! Mongolian!) and appeals to pan-white solidarity.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…
Interesting comment, Demi.
(If this is my mutual twitter-friend, whose tag-line is “this planet is a penal colony,” welcome to the comment-section here).
I had forgotten about the Harvey Weinstein scandal. And now that you mention it, I realize I haven’t heard that name in a long time. (The Google info-funnel tells me Harvey Weinstein goes on trial for one of his crimes in October 2022. The scandals broke and the drama around Harvey Weinstein was a late 2017 to mid-2018 phenomenon, with a spring 2018 arrest for crimes. Why trials take so long to even get started, I don’t know. It seems like a sign of decadence.)
From my recollection of the Weinstein aftermath (in late 2017 and early-mid 2018), what you say is right. I assume that when you make the analogy to the Ukraine of 2022, that you are saying there is a lot of coordinated manipulation and “non-organic” opinion and opinion-shaping going on. That is true.
Where you think Steve Sailer fit into it. Not many are willing to “close the book” on the matter by saying “Sailer fell for propaganda,” or that when someone waved a flag he dropped everything and saluted (see comment by UP, above). These are unsatisfactory explanations.
A harder-edged theory (into the realm of fantasy) would be that Sailer is some kind of deep-plant sleeper-agent, who for years was just waiting for a Russian military action in Ukraine to “activate” as an agent of NATO-proxy and of the corrupt Ukraine regime, or some other fantasy of similar type. I don’t think there is anyone you can find who would believe that unironically, or even watered-down versions of it, though Buzz Mohawk did insinuate it, from his writing-style I am quite sure he was being ironic.
Some of Sailer’s sharpest critics do argue a version of this, but in softer and generalized. I think you are arguing for something close to what one of Sailer’s many critics on this matter, Greta Handel, wrote last week:
The intense propaganda did not change his opinion, but it did ensnare him. Poor Mr. Sailer as well-meaning fly, buzzing around doing the usual things, until caught in a well-crafted, well-placed, big-enough, strongly-enough-weaved spider-web.
This also relates to the suggestion from the commenter Jules:
“Now that [Steve Sailer] gets some fairly positive mainstream responses, particularly on twitter, he just wants to build on that,” doesn’t actually “care about Ukraine” and views it as a chance to get firmer footing in the world of political and social commentary.
The SPLC “scarlet-lettered” him as “The extremist, Steve Sailer” in the 2000s, and their profile on him remains one of the top Google hits in 2022. But would a “right-wing extremist” really side with Ukraine?
This sort of explanation makes Ukraine-war-support from Mr. Sailer as a conscious gambit of his own design, an important difference from the “spider web” theory as outlined above with Sailer getting trapped.
Steve Sailer is of the “don’t invite don’t invade brand”, which, as we know he even created. This is a very important aspect of his worldview.He is also a principled man, and he likes to keep things simple, which is good.
It is enough to look at the claims above to see Steve Sailer taking a stand against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine.
Now, I don’t think that this is the only valid conclusion that we can draw from his ideas, which goes to say, that I don’t draw the same conclusions as Steve Sailer does with regard to the Ukraine intervention. Btw: A John Mearsheimer does not exist in the Russian public sphere. A Steve Sailer or Mr. Achmed and Mr. Hail can’t be seen or read either. Russia lacks serious public debates of this cause. German ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder made a mistake, when he said that Vladimir Putin ‘d be a quasi perfect democrat/republican. Bottom line here: The Ukraine war is important (and I’d say therefore something that it has to be a subject of serious debates in both public spheres – the one in the West as the one in the East).
Does everybody have to take part in it? No. Are those debates rather a necessity or a distraction? A necessity.
II
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas pointed out in his Ukraine-essay in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of the important aspects of the Ukraine war is that there is a certain danger that it might cause an escalation in even more destructive ways than it already has. So, the philosopher goes on: The West should not talk (and act…) in ways that don’t take into account how they could be read/ understood by the Russian side. In other words, the old man goes on, serious analyses of the situation have to be undertaken not only from one’s own perspective, but also through the Russian eyes. – This is the consequence of the nuclear threat: Both perspectives on the conflict should not be ignored.
III
The idea to aovid this analytical (and political!) necessity by aiming at a regime change is therefore subcomplex (no realpolitic / wrong).
>Where you think Steve Sailer fit into it.
In short, I think Sailer is part of such an network. I don’t know whether he writes what he does because he has to adhere to an “editorial policy” or because he really believes what he writes.
Probably a combination of factors because it’s not as jarring as coming to the rhetorical defense of a Jewish Hollywood producer after you either explicitly or implicitly attacked ((())) for years.
>But would a “right-wing extremist” really side with Ukraine?
Human capacity for rationalisation is near limitless.
There is a cross section of the right wing normally excluded from polite society ranging from nationalist conservatives to Atomwaffen-esque nutjobs who’ve cheered the war from the start because they think it offers them a way to power one way or the other (collaboration with Western power or DOTR coup fantasies).
Their stated reasons are many: “Russians are actually Mongolian”, “Russia is merely ZOG East, prosecuting nationalists and holocaust deniers just as the West does”, “Russia never repudiated the USSR and is therefore culable for it’s historical subversion of the West and Cultural Marxism”, “Russia isn’t the bastion of based trad nationalism but actually an Africa-tier craphole but has nukes for some reason”, “Russia has always been our mortal enemy” yadda yadda yadda…
We can pick apart these statements or the logic behind “helping the GAE/GloboHomo win against their few remaining geopolitical adversaries will lead to a RW takeover” but I think it’s mostly futile.
I can’t imagine the type of person you are describing, pro-war racial-nationalists in Europe or the USA, is common (“Atomwaffen-esque nutjobs who’ve cheered the war from the start because they think it offers them a way to power one way or the other”).
Are there any specific examples?
“In short, I think Sailer is part of such an network.”
See below on the recent case of a large network of Pentagon-controlled fake accounts being exposed. The way it happened, we have to assume, anti-war elements of the Deep State are trying to undermine the pro-war elements over the Ukraine intervention.
Not directly related to Steve Sailer, who is a well-established real person and not a “fake account,” but thematically related. I think the “network” you have in mind is real people and not fake accounts run by the Pentagon directly, which would be supplemental.
RE: Dieter Kief
I agree with everything you have said in your comment of one hour ago .
But it seems you have walked past the question of what explains the position taken by Steve Sailer (“a principled man [who] likes to keep things simple”). His Ukraine war position is simple, but also I think uncharacteristically unnuanced.
I never remember Mr. Sailer being either a pro-Russian or an anti-Russian in general.
To his credit, Sailer allows his critics to publish freely in his comments-section. Some of the sharpest commenters, such as Intelligent Dasein and Hypnotoad and many others, poke holes in the Sailer position. All data we have from comment volumes and “reaction button” use suggest large majority of his regular followers are against his position on Ukraine.
It may be an honest difference of opinion, but that doesn’t satisfy my curiosity, rather restates the question and returns us to: why did he come to that honest-difference-of-opinion, and why he has kept with it after six months and more (instead of re-evaluating or moderating).
Is the Habermas essay you have just referenced the one titled “Krieg und Empörung” (April 28, 2022)? What would Steve Sailer say in response to the points in the Habermas essay as you have summarized them?
To Mr. Hail and Mr. Kief and back to the O/P subject for me:
Yes, of course, any insinuations of Steve Sailer being some secretive plant must have been said in jest or by the type of commenters that, rather than argue points, bring up wacky ideas about him that go against (for me) 6 years of steady reading of his writing.
I think it’s pretty simple. Steve Sailer knows lots about the American political scene, pols and pundits alike. He rightly hates the Neocon and ctrl-left pushes for both invade-the-world and invite-the-world. He knows some foreign policy, but he’s no more of a historian than I am. He may know more than I about one thing, and I more than him on another. I gather he doesn’t know or never paid much attention to the background of this Ukraine struggle, especially as it went down in ’14. OK, fine, I didn’t either very much until recently.
Mr. Sailer thinks it’s a principled stance to write that “hey, you can’t just go invading another country”, while my principled stance is “none of this is the business of the US, and it should not have been before. Stay out of it!” Is this like another Kuwait ’90 for him? I’ll admit I was fooled by Gulf War I as a “good war”* as were most other Americans. Remember that goodwill I wrote of to PeterIke. It was massive back then.
As with the Covid nonsense, this
has becomewas made into the big story this year. If they don’t know that much about it, some people, cough, cough, will go with the Lyin’ Press narrative barrage out of habit(?) But, why wouldn’t Mr. Sailer know better than to do this? Gell-Mann amnesia? – I hope I got the right hyphenated theory this time, haha..
* I have the excuse of having been much younger then.
One of the things I’ve been surprised to learn is the magnitude, breadth, and quality of opposition to the 1990-91 war against Iraq.
That 1990-91 war was sleekly packaged and sold, and all happened relatively swiftly enough (and with the Soviet bloc in pretty full disarray) that they could claim victory and be done. It was then remembered in glowing terms.
When people claim to have supported the “Gulf War” (“Iraq War One”), I suspect a lot of that it is based on political-memories not of what they thought in 1990-91 itself, but remembering it being referenced positively in the rest of the 1990s and into the 2000s, as a mini-“good war.” At the time it was happening, a lot of people opposed it. Even much of the so-called mainstream media were skeptical to that bit of opportunistic adventurism and empire.
There was stronger opposition in 1990-91 than there was to the even-stupider 2002-03 events that began with bullying and went in bizarre and shameful directions (demonization almost out of nowhere; accusations of evil plans by Iraq for chemical, biological, or even first-strike nuclear attacks on random parts of the US to kill hated Great Satanites, unless the US invades NOW; also getting the median centrist Homo Americanus to believe such fantasies) and finally the full-invasion-and-occupation of Iraq.
I don’t know that the the US bullying of and invasion of Iraq in the 2000s had an important impact on Steve Sailer, who was already in middle age at the time, but I think it was ‘formative’ for a lot of the younger critics of Sailer I have been referencing.
See, now that’s not my recollection at all, Mr. Hail. The Conservatives that I hung out with (of course) were not your gung ho “USA! USA!” types, but we all thought (OK, were sold the idea) that this was the deal in the new Sole Superpower Era: The US would take care of the World’s problems like this – saving the oil supply.. the poor Kuwaitis (I didn’t know then they were just a bunch of the usual Moslem f__k-up with oil riches.)
Perhaps it’s my location, but I DID watch TV back then, and I don’t remember anyone in serious opposition. Of course, as is the case now, the Shock & Awe and all that were sold to us – it was a feel-good war with hardly anyone getting hurt (on OUR side) – was the Lyin’ Press narrative, but there was no internet for me to get anything otherwise.
Also, even in the high political realm, yes, there were the normal naysayers against anything a Red-Squad President would do*, but I just don’t recall major arguments in Congress or the prosecution of this war being significantly resisted by the opposition politically. Were there rallies against the war and such? I don’t remember a thing about that, and I was around, coherent, and paying attention to politics at this time.
I would appreciate any links you have to material you have read on this opposition.
.
* Keep in mind, that doesn’t mean I have much good to say about Senor Booosh either.
See reply below in a fresh thread.
Mr. Hail, this is the Habermas-SZ-Urkaine-essay War and Indignation, yes: “Is the Habermas essay you have just referenced the one titled “Krieg und Empörung” (April 28, 2022)?”
Steve Sailer adds a few aspects to this Ukraine war like Sweden and Finnland opting for NATO after the Russian’s invasion. So – he was disappointed about himself and about Putin a bit too. About himslef, because he had thought Putin would avoid a military conflict – and a bit angry about himslef for having thought (even hoped?) so…
If you look a this conflict as a wish come true of the US (and Israel-, and GB-, and Baltics-… – who else? – the Poland-) falcons – then we have this double helix-structure here: A dream come true and – a terrible loss not avoided.
After this dilemma, we reach territory about which Steve Sailer does not say much – J. Habermas and J. Mearsheimer territory. I don’t blame him for not saying much in this hindsight. I don’t expect him to do so.
I have the impression that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz did read the Habermas essay – as did some others. – Henry Kissinger at the WEF/ Davos conference sounded not that far away from his thoughts too.
Klaus von Dohnanyi, former SPD minister and ex-mayor of Hamburg got that stuff too. He was publicly derided for that by his SPD-comrade Heinrich-August Winkler, a well known historian. All are around or above ninety, btw.: Von Dohnynyi, Winkler, Habermas …
The eastern-policy of these old men was always aware that we should not try to speak for the Russians – but for ourselves. That was Helmut Kohl, Egon Bahr, Willy Brandt, George F. Kennan, the former Russian US-ambassador in Moscow Jack Matlock et. al.
For some reason, the new generation of politicians working in this field neither act nor think much like that.
I hesitate to say too much about what that thinking was made of. I’ve said a bit already. The rest is: Philosophy, Geistesgeschichte, the history of mentalities…The social psychologists did step in here, but right now they seem to be a bit on the weaker side. This might have to do with the way in which they did study – and the way in which they did study philosophy too (I’m now thinking of Peterson/Haidt/Pinker – Peterson, as so often, again the most courageous one of the three. But he too – does not perfectly well understand his quite clear connection to the hermeneutic/ dialogical Western tradition. Which is at the core here.
Since you too mentioned him a few days ago: I was really pleased to read Matt M. Briggs’ approach to science via philosophy lately. I even made a post here covering that subject under your article Germany’s Wrongest Man Karl Lauterbach. Briggs too, as Peterosn, is clearly on Habermas territory in his essay about science and philoosphy that I’ve linked in my comment under your Germany’s Wrongest Man article.
The most delicate thought in Habermas’ Süddeutsche Zeitung-essay is, that in this situation, a reasonable leader should not say things that could be misundertood or misread by the Russians. He asks for clarity, honesty, reliability and – the will to make sacrifices with regard to our own (= the West’s..) goals.
Thought experiment – after having skipped through Habermas’ – new book (!!!) last saturday- – – – about our constantly changing public sphere*** – – -it might well be, that Putin and Habermas have now more in common than most people would think. – And this is not least so, because the old man is now also thinking about ways to cut back free speech… -Now: Isn’t that ironic?!!
In heaven – or on a stage, – we could have a discussion about science and religion (!) and free speech between Valdimir Putin, Jürgen Habermas, – – – -Donald Trump* and Matt Briggs…
*** a re-examination of his classic Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere book from 1968.
* Donald Trump did speak out against the restrictions of free speech at the universities (most likely a Stephen Miller cameo… – Miller must have written these apssages (that would be my bet)).
(In this theatre play, Stephen Miller could be the man sitting in a bar in Anchorage, late at night, debating the progress the old men and Matt Briggs are making… with Dominic Cummins – both always a bit impatient and confused even, but benevolent – but not following too closely and making more and more mistakes in all kinds of regards as the thing proceeds and culminates in Habermas’ futile but crystal clear distinctions between the systmatical relvance of Hegel (high) and Max Weber and Pope Paul II for twenty-first century thinking… – which sends everybody to sleep…
Putin puts a pair of ancient bone-dices out of his pocket and a travel-chess play out of his other pocket and explains to Matt Briggs a new game: A combination of rolling these dices and chess. The chess figures grow taller and taller, until Briggs is unable to move them. Putin still is. He seems to win, but the crowd can’t decide whether that is true, because they too get lost in this huge play and can’t really tell what is happening here.
Then the lights are out – and in the darkness of the room / there was only Putin and him // Matt Briggs is explaining to himself with his mellowed out clear voice, humming a bit of Dylan’s Lilly, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts from Blood on the Tracks. – Then a marchin’ band appears on the scene playin’ Sgt. Pepper’s theme song – which melts into Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombone’s earworm In the Neighborhood. – That then fades out too – the last lines that can be heard are: …and the kids can’t get icecream / ’cause the market burnt down…In the neighborhood, in the neighborhood in the neighborhood!”
Here are some possible signs of some people changing views on the Ukraine war or its dreary consequences:
The AfD is back at its support-levels from pre-March 2020 in every poll.
The latest BILD poll has the AfD back to 14% (not seen in this poll since early March 2020). Forsa poll this week, 13% (best since Jan 2020) and up from a March 2022 low in that same poll of 7%!
Mr. Hail, this is the Habermas-SZ-Urkaine-essay War and Indignation, yes: “Is the Habermas essay you have just referenced the one titled “Krieg und Empörung” (April 28, 2022)?”
Steve Sailer adds a few aspects to this Ukraine war like Sweden and Finnland opting for NATO after the Russian’s invasion. So – he was disappointed about himself and about Putin a bit too. About himslef, because he had thought Putin would avoid a military conflict – and a bit angry about himslef for having thought (even hoped?) so…
If you look a this conflict as a wish come true of the US (and Israel-, and GB-, and Baltics-… – who else? – the Poland-) falcons – then we have this double helix-structure here: A dream come true and – a terrible loss not avoided.
After this dilemma, we reach territory about which Steve Sailer does not say much – J. Habermas and J. Mearsheimer territory. I don’t blame him for not saying much in this hindsight. I don’t expect him to do so.
I have the impression that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz did read the Habermas essay – as did some others. – Henry Kissinger at the WEF/ Davos conference sounded not that far away from his thoughts too.
Klaus von Dohnanyi, former SPD minister and ex-mayor of Hamburg got that stuff too. He was publicly derided for that by his SPD-comrade Heinrich-August Winkler, a well known historian. All are around or above ninety, btw.: Von Dohnynyi, Winkler, Habermas …
The eastern-policy of these old men was always aware that we should not try to speak for the Russians – but for ourselves. That was Helmut Kohl, Egon Bahr, Willy Brandt, George F. Kennan, the former Russian US-ambassador in Moscow Jack Matlock et. al.
For some reason, the new generation of politicians working in this field neither act nor think much like that.
I hesitate to say too much about what that thinking was made of. I’ve said a bit already. The rest is: Philosophy, Geistesgeschichte, the history of mentalities…The social psychologists did step in here, but right now they seem to be a bit on the weaker side. This might have to do with the way in which they did study – and the way in which they did study philosophy too (I’m now thinking of Peterson/Haidt/Pinker – Peterson, as so often, again the most courageous one of the three. But he too – does not perfectly well understand his quite clear connection to the hermeneutic/ dialogical Western tradition. Which is at the core here.
Since you too mentioned him a few days ago: I was really pleased to read Matt M. Briggs’ approach to science via philosophy lately. I even made a post here covering that subject under your article Germany’s Wrongest Man Karl Lauterbach. Briggs too, as Peterosn, is clearly on Habermas territory in his essay about science and philoosphy that I’ve linked in my comment under your Germany’s Wrongest Man article.
The most delicate thought in Habermas’ Süddeutsche Zeitung-essay is, that in this situation, a reasonable leader should not say things that could be misundertood or misread by the Russians. He asks for clarity, honesty, reliability and – the will to make sacrifices with regard to our own (= the West’s..) goals.
Thought experiment – after having skipped through Habermas’ – new book (!!!) last saturday- – – – about our constantly changing public sphere*** – – -it might well be, that Putin and Habermas have now more in common than most people would think. – And this is not least so, because the old man is now also thinking about ways to cut back free speech… -Now: Isn’t that ironic?!!
In heaven – or on a stage, – we could have a discussion about science and religion (!) and free speech between Valdimir Putin, Jürgen Habermas, – – – -Donald Trump* and Matt Briggs…
*** a re-examination of his classic Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere book from 1968.
* Donald Trump did speak out against the restrictions of free speech at the universities (most likely a Stephen Miller cameo… – Miller must have written these apssages (that would be my bet)).
(In this theatre play, Stephen Miller could be the man sitting in a bar in Anchorage, late at night, debating the progress the old men and Matt Briggs are making… with Dominic Cummins – both always a bit impatient and confused even, but benevolent – but not following too closely and making more and more mistakes in all kinds of regards as the thing proceeds and culminates in Habermas’ futile but crystal clear distinctions between the systmatical relvance of Hegel (high) and Max Weber and Pope Paul II for twenty-first century thinking… – which sends everybody to sleep…
Putin puts a pair of ancient bone-dices out of his pocket and a travel-chess play out of his other pocket and explains to Matt Briggs a new game: A combination of rolling these dices and chess. The chess figures grow taller and taller, until Briggs is unable to move them. Putin still is. He seems to win, but the crowd can’t decide whether that is true, because they too get lost in this huge play and can’t really tell what is happening here.
Then the lights are out – and in the darkness of the room / there was only Putin and him // Matt Briggs is explaining to himself with his mellowed out clear voice, humming a bit of Dylan’s Lilly, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts from Blood on the Tracks. – Then a marchin’ band appears on the scene playin’ Sgt. Pepper’s theme song – which melts into Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombone’s earworm In the Neighborhood. – That then fades out too – the last lines that can be heard are: …and the kids can’t get icecream / ’cause the market burnt down…In the neighborhood, in the neighborhood in the neighborhood!”
“For some reason, the new generation of politicians working in this field neither act nor think much like that [the born-1900s to born-1930s? groups, who were “always aware that we should not try to speak for the Russians”]
The easiest guess for the reason: for the younger men (“and women”), there has been more than thirty years of “water under the bridge” of US/NATO geopolitical dominance without real rivals, which distorts thinking and weakens pessimistic voices of reason.
The deeper explanations are ideological, going beyond just the temptation to arrogance from power. See my comment quoting Wayne Allensworth, below, for some glimpses of what I have in mind.
Pentagon-controlled fake accounts targeting Russia, revealed by “Washington Post”
This week we hear confirmation: “The Pentagon has been operating fake social media accounts to promote pro-US narratives and anti-Russia propaganda.” Many of the fake-accounts were involved in posts “from the summer [of 2022] that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin’s ‘imperialist’ war in Ukraine…”
It was yesterday in the Washington Post that we get confirmation from the highest level. A very strange front-page story. From it we see confirmed that a lot of those involved in online-commentary were actually fakes being “run” directly by the Pentagon. This includes some who appeared to be real commentators with real pictures–the pictures were actually AI-generated composites.
The story has not made many waves in the US itself, being hardly even reported on. The ‘regime’-aligned media MUCH PREFERS stories about a Trump feud, or something else shiny to look at. This story of swarms of Pentagon-controlled fake accounts is too uncomfortable for many reasons.
This is also the kind of thing Steve Sailer might take interest in. He might avoid it for the same reason the agenda-setting media does, and in part because it raises uncomfortable questions about the Ukraine war.
The Washington Post article was strange, in part, for being totally crammed full of “quoted on the condition of anonymity” government and military people. (If they are all anonymous, how can be be sure these too aren’t fake? Isn’t this also a potential close cousin of the “fake accounts” problem?).
I agree with what the left-wing dissident WSWS editorializes on this matter:
“The fact that unidentified Defense and White House officials are now disclosing to the press that the Pentagon is and has been operating the very same kind of social media disinformation campaigns that the Democrats and Republicans along with the corporate media have accused Russia of conducting for years indicates that sharp conflicts continue to rage within the American military-intelligence establishment.”
In other words, some elements of the Deep State decided to pull the plug on some of these “influence-ops.” The same or other people decided to tell the Washington Post about it. The two actions are separate and both significant. It could signal there are some close to power who are not happy with the madman policy of “permanent war against Russia.”
This is Paul Craig Roberts – technically*** – thinking like Habermas does (the magic word here is: He is taking over the perspective**** of the Russians in order ot reflect on his position) – :
“Here is the Russian point of view which you don’t hear from the whore Western media. Regardless of what you think, it is what the Kremlin thinks that will determine whether you continue to exist:
https://sputniknews.com/20220921/putin-wests-goal-is-to-weaken-disunite-and-destroy-russia–1101028273.html
*** not stylistically…
***** to take over the perspective of (at times very different) others is one of the great features of the novel (and the essay). (I know that it is also done in other kinds of fictions but I tend to think that the reader experiences the controlled loss of his own worldview in a hopefully (at least: possibly) reflected way. This is what can be learned with the help of decent fiction.
The link is broken for me.
From Wayne Allensworth, May 2022, in Chronicles (“Come Home, America”):
“The proxy war in Ukraine is a globalist creation that has little to do with American interests.”
“The Blob [“The globalist Washington-Brussels-media-corporate nexus”] does, in fact, viscerally hate Putin and Russia as intolerable impediments to the global expansion of what it calls democracy (that is, woke anarcho-tyranny), and that hostility is an extension of their hatred for Middle America. At the same time, many of our countrymen on the Right (mainly Trump supporters) have tended to view Putin as the kind of decisive leader for which they have long waited, and they have thus taken a pro-Russian position.”
“It’s now clear that in the collective hive mind of the woke, as well as in the popular imagination of the deplorables, Ukraine has become a battle ground for a proxy war. Each side has chosen its good guy champion and its bad guy nemesis. Dear readers, we should not put our trust in princes, especially foreign surrogates.”
“In my view, Ukraine’s best chance for freedom and stability would be as a neutral state. Russian security concerns must be taken seriously. The anti-national, ideologically driven Blob, however, cannot even imagine the concept of national interests, and cannot, therefore, think in terms of a traditional balance of power. But it’s important for us to understand how this all came about.”
“Am I alone in thinking that some globocrats might wish to prolong the war, savoring their nauseating sanctimony, and playing the great game they all love so well?”
“Unlike the destiny of Ukraine, what’s happening at what used to be our southern border is of vital interest to our people and is indeed related to the Blob’s efforts to erase the nation as such, replacing us in the process.”
In response to Peak Stupidity, above, on opposition to intervention against Iraq in 1990 and 1991:
I don’t have any of the anti-war essays and editorials immediately handy. I do find this one: “Why the Gulf War was not in the national interest” (Christipher Layne, The Atlantic, July 1991). My memory, of finding this material (in the 2010s), is the editorial stances of many major publications were skeptical or anti-war. And further that neutral news reporting was skeptical and antagonistic. It was a different media environment for sure.
One thing to remember is an “anti-war Left” still existed at the time, such a thing being a distant memory now, we may need to remind ourselves such a thing existed in the past. Another quaint thing to see is somebody using the phrase/concept “national interest.” That, too, is harder to picture twenty to thirty years later (i..e, 2010s and early 2020s), at least harder to picture appearing in agenda-setting media. Two signs of a real cultural shift.
Another clue is that when G. W. Bush requested “authorization” from Congress to attack Iraq in early 1991 with underwhelming results when it came to a yes-or-no vote: 52 to 47 in the Senate, 250 to 183 in the House.
“One thing to remember is an ‘anti-war Left’ still existed at the time, such a thing being a distant memory now”
Indeed, but as I noted, this was always just a pose. They don’t give a damn about war. It was in actuality an “anti-Bush Left,” just like it would be in Gulf War 2.0. The “anti-war Left” vanished when Obama came in. Just like there’s no anti-war Left now. But if Trump were President, there would be screaming from the rooftops at how we can’t be sending money and weapons to Ukraine (assuming Trump acted as Biden is).
Our big problem now is that the Republican stooges are also nearly all-in on the Uki war. So we don’t have an anti-war Right either.
War! Huh, good God ya’ll. What is it good for? Grifting lots of money, say it again, yeahhhh!
Sign of true principled anti-war Left : position on Palestine?
Anti-zionist, pro-zionist, neutral (or silent). Principled antiwar left mainly the anti-zionists . maybe some of the neutrals.? Caveat: only truly applies if person is without islamic ties.
(reply-comment got long and moved to a fresh thread).
Dieter Kief wrote: “Btw: A John Mearsheimer does not exist in the Russian public sphere. A Steve Sailer or Mr. Achmed and Mr. Hail can’t be seen or read either. Russia lacks serious public debates of this cause. German ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder made a mistake, when he said that Vladimir Putin ‘d be a quasi perfect democrat/republican.”
The points on which we can criticize Russia generally also apply to Ukraine, often more so. I am reminded somehow of the leftist criticism of the 1914-1918 war: all sides are bad; why pick one side and just make things worse.
Is the “anti-war Left” an illusion?
A reply to PeterIke, writing above.
Going way back to 1966, 1967, and up to the end of March 1968, the coalescing “anti-war Left” was very much against a Democrat, LBJ.
On the evening of March 31, 1968, LBJ announced live on TV that he was not running again, said to have been a surprise to all at the time. After that, some of the specifically anti-LBJ energy would have weakened. But LBJ was still in office to 11:59am Jan. 20, 1969, after which the same anti-war Left had Nixon to “kick around.” But if Nixon’s opponent Humphrey had won, all evidence suggests the same forces would have opposed him.
The 1968 Dem convention was famously split three ways: hardline anti-war, moderate anti-war, one necessarily anti-war in the sense of the time. The latter had institutional backing. That was Hubert H. Humphrey, the “not necessarily anti-war” candidate. Humphrey was understood as the policy-successor to LBJ. The major riots outside the convention in Chicago in 1968 may be understood in that sense. To the extent the protestors and rioters were interested in the nomination, they wanted ‘Clean Gene’ McCarthy, the hardline anti-war candidate, to be nominated.
The anti-Vietnam War movement was against D-team figures about as much and as long as it was against Nixon. History sticks Nixon with it unfairly.
In more recent times, I think throughout the Clinton 1990s you had a reasonably active anti-war Left with pet issues like East Timor, the Cuba ‘blockade,’ and even Iraq (still occasionally being bombed, “no-fly-zones,” and sanctioned).
In the 2000s and 2010s, and now in the 2020s, it’s true we can take this view that the anti-war Left seems like a kind of con, smokescreen, or illusion. The image of it rests now much more on either nostalgia or political-mythology that elements of the Regime and pro-Regime “narrative”-shapers have imposed and use for their purposes more than any observable reality.
In the 2000s, the website Anti-War.com was close to being a voice of a principled “anti-war Left.” It’s still around, but is now highly niche and not really a political actor.
Has Ukraine had some success? Yes. Has Putin been forced to call up reserves? Yes. Will Russia ultimately win? Yes. Given all this, if your plan is to decimate the Ukrainians and degrade the Russian military capabilities as much as possible, they’re doing a fine job. The Biden regimes insistence on including Ukraine in NATO is nothing more than his feeble attempt to distract from his terrible record.
I’m not sure it has much to do with Biden himself, being rather a long-running plan run by the Regime, intelligence agencies, and permanent foreign policy coordinators.
Steve Sailer was stunned by the bombing of the gas pipelines known as NordStream 1 and 2 by unknown actors.
To his credit, he refused so far to kneejerkedly blame Russia.
Two days ago, he promoted the theory that it was a rogue team of Ukrainians that did it. The obvious candidates include the CIA and Poland. These options are not mutually exclusive.
Sailer shaken by NordStream bombing, blames Ukraine, but still embraces Ukraine cause
It was a case of self-consciously opening himself up to easy attack over his uncritical Ukraine-regime support when Steve Sailer wrote the following headline yesterday: “Americans Warned Germans That Russians Were Concerned Ukrainians Tried to Rent a Boat from Swedes.”
That is a summary of some of the chatter about the gas pipeline bombing. It fits the theory that it was done by Ukrainians. Sailer supports the Ukraine-did-it theory. Sailer also, for some reason, believes Ukraine doing it is ok. A major geoeconomic attack on Germany and Western European NATO is justifiable because Ukraine Ukraine something something.
The longtime ironist commenter Reg Caesar replies:
______________
Steve Sailer re-asserts his justification for why he backs the Ukraine regime and the anti-Russia / NATO side to the hilt:
An arbitrary enforcement of borders, including those that don’t necessarily make sense, transmuted into sacred principle. This is not very rigorous or creative thinking. I don’t think the same Steve Sailer which I remember first encountering in the 2000s would have gone down this path.
The commenter Hypnotoad says:
________________
On the topic of “annexations,” Citizen of a Silly Country says:
Cagey Beast offers this, more philosophical or based in theory of states and international relations:
Come to think of it, the stated Steve Sailer position on the Ukraine war is almost indistinguishable from the cringeworthy Kamala Harris position:
Kamala Harris, speaking in early May 2022: “So, Ukraine is, uh, a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong.”
He’s turning into a neoconservative. A lot of suburban American boomers really are little more than neocons.
BTW am I alone in thinking Greg Cochran is the single most overrated ‘intellectual’ to ever arrive on the paleocon scene? Ever see his Twitter account? Trite, one word responses to almost every topic.
Intellectual judgements based on twitter are easily misleading, Jule. “The 10 000 Year Explosion” is a great book!
Have you read this book?
I have not read it, but I remember ongoing discussions of it on the Sailer blog. I have long linked to the Greg Cochran West Hunt blog on my list of links.
I liked The 10 000 Year Explosion quite a bit. Excellent prose style. Lots of interesting stuff about the fastness of biological human development. Also some concise findings about the Ashkenazi-jewish development. Thilo Sarrazin quoted their work in his megaseller Germany Does Away With Itself – and as it turned out, that was seen as one of his major mistakes.Btw. – Cochran made me aware of Henry Harpending’s text about his experiences as a young man helping out some south-african !Kung tribesmen hunting Cape Buffalo – a piece I love. See:
Henry Harpending on how not to hunt a Cape Buffalo, by Steve Sailer – The Unz Review
Btw. 2 – since you asked: I’ve read Steve Sailer’s blog since may 2016.
I liked the 10 000 Year Explosion quite a bit. Excellent prose style. Lots of interesting stuff about the fastness of biological human development. Also some concise findings about the Ashkenazi-jewish genepool.
Jules wrote: “Greg Cochran…Trite, one word responses to almost every topic”
This applies to his comments at the Sailer blog over the years:
https://www.unz.com/comments/all/?commenterfilter=gcochran
On the first page of his comment-archive, you’ll see that his contributions are usually rude one-liner dismissals of arguments or ideas or people. In 2020 and 2021, attacks on Covid-skepticism or Corona-heresy.
His decision to become an extreme Lockdowner caused me to lose respect for Dr Greg Cochran in 2020.
He had previously been just cantankerous, most often dismissive of perceived attacks on Greatest Generation-ism (his latest tweet as of this writing: “The Japanese _chose_ war with the US”), the mythology of our modern world. Younger men than he have every reason to pry at, poke up, re-think, and so on, the inherited gods and idols of 1945, but he doesn’t get that and stands ready to enforce the old beliefs no matter what.
Here is Dr GC in 2018 dismissing me, and a relevant study I had cited to a discussion, with the words “wrong on all counts”, followed up a few hours later by “never said anything true”:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/epigenetics-true-or-false-revolutionary-or-trivial/#comment-2692725
His engagements with people in online discussions I think can fairly be called “neither pleasant nor productive.” But for those curious, this is not due to Twitter but was his standard policy from back before he became a regular Twitter-guy. He only began seriously using Twitter in about 2019. In the early years he would just post links to his West Hunt blog. By 2022, he primarily uses Twitter and neglects his blog.
(EDIT: The content of this comment has been moved and incorporated into a new post, where it belongs: “Why does Greg Cochran support the Ukraine war?“)
In his latest blog Greg Cochran demands assassination of Putin, attacks those who say no as uneducated idiots and cowards !!
Wow. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
“Promising Ukrainian strategy” (Sept. 29, 2022, West Hunt), by Greg Cochran.
Commenter ASR reacts to Cochran’s proposal:
“Eliminating Putin? Is that what you are suggesting Professor Cochran?
If so it’s pure madness, at about the same level of insanity as openly sabotaging Nordstrom 1 and Nordstrom 2. Whether it was the Ukraine, Poland, or the USA that did this–in any case certainly with US collusion–this achieves the immediate goal of preventing Germany from deserting the US/NATO/EU proxy war against Russia, but at the longer term costs of destroying Germany’s economy, permanently alienating the German public, launching a new Great Depression, and bringing Europe one step closer to a nuclear exchange that may be the start of WW III.”
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