Choices

Posted by Spandrell on

I hadn't thought about it, but my last post on Whites converting to Islam has a somewhat similar theme to a very famous episode in Chinese history. It's been a while since I write another Chinese history tale, and this is one of my favorites. So let's talk about Wu Sangui 吳三桂.

The year is 1644. The Ming Dynasty is in ruins. It is actually in ruins; a peasant rebellion led by a man called Li Zicheng 李自成 has been ravishing the country for a decade, conquering and utterly destroying much of the central and western areas of the country. The rebel leader had already conquered the largest city in the west, Xi'an 西安, and had proclaimed himself as the king of the Shun 順 Dynasty. The Shun army raced from Xi'An up through the province of Shanxi 山西, where most of the cities openly surrendered to him without bloodshed. In no time he crossed the western passes close to Beijing, and on May 26, the capital fell. The emperor of the Ming Dynasty stabbed his wives and daughters with his own hand, and then hanged himself on a nearby hill.

A resistance had formed in the south, where several imperial princes were proclaimed as emperors in different provinces. The north though was completely in control of the rebels of the Shun Dynasty. They felt safe, and spent 10 days sacking Beijing, raping the wives and daughters of the mandarins and merchants, and torturing them to extort untold quantities of gold and silver. Then one advisor to the rebel army came with news: we haven't completely conquered the north. There is still Wu Sangui.

Most maps you can see of the Ming Dynasty are complete bullshit, because they throw in every place where the Ming ever had a garrison during its 270 years of life. And this guys had lots of garrisons around at first, but they soon abandoned most of them. For all purposes, the effective northern borders of the Ming Dynasty were the Great Wall, which they built. Here's an accurate map of the north.

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By this time, May 1644, mostly everything south of the wall and north of Yang-tze river has fallen to the Shun rebels, and most Ming generals in the area had surrendered and joined the fun. All except the most important. You'll see in this map that there's a weird discontinuous piece of wall up in the Northeast. That's Liaodong 遼東. That used to be firm Ming territory, settled with Han farmers, but since the 1600s a nearby tribal people, the Manchus (Jurchens back then) had built a very strong state, and conquered most of the Ming settlements in the area. The Manchus were extremely good fighters, they had managed to beat the Mongols and put them in their army, and had been raiding inside China for decades, doing massive damage. By 1644 there was only one fortress left in Liaodong, the castle of Ningyuan 寧遠. And Wu Sangui was its commander.

Weeks before Beijing fell to the rebels, the Ming emperor had sent an edict to Wu Sangui, ordering him to abandon the fortress and come with his troops to defend the capital. He was actually on his way, not far from Beijing, when the city fell and the emperor killed himself. Unsure what to do, Wu Sangui got his army and moved back to the Northeast, and set camp at Shanhaiguan 山海關, the last fortress of the continuous Great Wall, where the wall meets the sea. The fortress was very strong, and he decided to hold up there.

Soon the rebels having fun at Beijing decided that all Ming generals had surrendered, surely this one would surrender too. What is he going to do, fight us? The conquerors of the capital? Good luck with that. The rebels soon found that Wu Sangui's family was all in Beijing, 38 persons in all, led by his father, who had been chief of the capital's garrison at the time. They... persuaded the man to write a letter to his son, saying how virtuous and sagely the rebels were, that the game was over, and his duty as a filial son was to obey and surrender to the rebels. He'll be given a title of nobility and treated with all the honor he deserves.

The letter gets to the fortress, alongside shitloads of gold and silver for his soldiers. Wu Sangui sees that this is a pretty good deal, gets his army and marches towards Beijing in order to formally surrender to his new lord. On his second journey to Beijing in a few days, he suddenly bumps into two servants of his household. "What are you doing here?”

﹣Oh you have no idea, young lord.

- What happened? How is my father?

- They got him, my lord.

- Who got him? What happened to him?

- One rebel general came to father, and asked him for your concubine, Chen Yuan. Your father refused, said she wasn't there, that she was with you, but they refused to believe, and they tortured him. They tortured all of us, it was awful, only we two were able to escape. Father Lord was tortured so badly that he's likely to be dead by now. You should prepare yourself, young master.

Not good. Not good at all. These rebel bastards were scamming him. They didn't want him to surrender and join their army as a general. No, they wanted to lure him to the capital to kill him and get rid of a problem. That they didn't wait to steal my women and torture my father is proof that nothing good expected him at Beijing. Oh, this won't do. Wu Sangui again got his army and led them back to the Great Wall fortress.

What could he do, though. His army was perhaps the best in the empire. Tough, hardly men from the Northeast frontier, seasoned by constant war with the fierce Manchus. He had a sizable army, but could he beat the rebels? All of them? Soon he heard that Li Zicheng, the rebel emperor himself was personally leading a 100k strong army to kill him. And behind his back, on the other side of the Great Wall, Dorgon, the effective king of the Manchus had departed from their capital with two thirds of the fierce Manchu army. He obviously knew that his Chinese enemies had collapsed and he wanted part of the fun.

So there he is, our famed general, holding the strongest fortress on the Chinese empire, facing a 100,000 rebel army on his front, and another 100,000 army of Manchu riders on his back. What can he do now? The Manchus are on his back. His uncle are with them; he was captured years ago, and had surrendered to the Manchus. He was now a very high status nobleman in the Manchu state, and he sent letters to his nephew to surrender. These are good people too, manly, virtuous, just men, not like the corrupt and decadent mandarins who used to rule over us. You cannot trust them, nephew. They maybe Chinese like you and us, share our culture and language. But they are evil, false men, and you know that. Join the Manchu army, they know of you, admire your martial skills, they'll make you into a prince and give you untold riches and honor.

The rebel leader though has brought Wu Sangui's father with him. He tells him it has all been a misunderstanding. One of the top rebel generals got a bit carried away. But the Shun emperor guarantees his safety, and he seems to mean it. He calls him to fulfill his duty towards his father and his country. The Mandate of Heaven has changed, the Shun now has it. His duty as a general is to follow him, and start a new glorious dynasty. Once the old corrupt mandarins of the Ming Dynasty are dealt with, the new, vigorous armies of the Chinese nation will come back north, where he can take part on the glorious retaking of the Northeast from the evil barbarians. Do the right thing, general. Your family and your nation need you.

Guess what he did? 2 days later his father alongside the 38 members of his family were killed. 2 days later he was made a prince. The Manchus ruled China until 1911.

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  • Come on, White people can do better than that. It would make as much sense to convert your whole family to Judaism and move to Israel as converting to Islam. If you're really concerned about the Islamic invasion you can always go to a Slavic country and practice your Christianity or atheism there. Better than converting to a foreign faith.

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    • Jewish dietary laws are even more retarded than Islam's. You don't get to control your women, and you have to move to Israel, which is starting to suck so much there's Israeli immigrants all over the world. Islam in place is a better deal. Let's see how long Slavic countries manage to hold up.

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      • Bad counter argument! Every Islamic country sucks right now. And every country that gets taken over is going to be horrible. Definitely worse than Israel is right now.

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        • You are comparing Muslim Europe to a fantasy where White nationalism overthrows progressivism. A more realistic comparison is Muslim Europe, i.e. something like Bosnia or Turkey, vs. a mixture of Brazil, Morocco and South Africa. I'll take Turkey any day.

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        • As Jim noted, Islam tends to turn its practitioners brown over time. At least Christianity allows you to object to the Arab occupation of Europe on ethnic grounds; what excuse would a "White Muslim" country have to exclude Muhammad's cousins from immigrating into it? The Caliphate is multi-racial and dysgenic. Israel is a multi-racial dysgenic disaster as well, so the Slavic option makes the most sense.

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          • But it doesn't. The Christian churches all over the West are welcoming brown and black people, not all of them Muslims. Christianity as practiced today is universalist just as Islam is. Arabs have black admixture because of screwing African slaves, not because of Islam. Portugal had the same problem. A White Muslim country has the same excuses a White Christian country has; but being Muslim allows you to be more brutal about it. Syrians go to Europe because Arab countries don't want them and feel no problem justifying their refusal.

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            • But Islam is unique in that it was the first to systematically use slaves militarily to spread itself. Read Pipes's review of (the late) Patricia Crone's work: http://www.danielpipes.org/8264/slaves-on-horses Basically, the fuel for expansion of both Christianity and Islam has been their adoption by slaves, albeit the dynamics were different. Brownization then has occurred and is occurring in both. Also, plenty of elite Muslims are copying Western ways, which is reflected in size of their families. I have seen statistics regarding that. Think a bit more carefully before switching to Islam as a panacea to low-TFR issue, albeit it is an interesting idea. Btw, I think your knowledge of China is deep, and I got to learn some details about the Ming to Manchu transition I didn't know. Sorry for my mistake about your knowledge, made on Jim's blog.

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              • Thanks. It's usually safe to assume that nobody on the internet know what they're talking about, but I happen to know my Chinese history. To read on the Qing conquest you can't go wrong with Wakeman's book, it's great, if quite long and dense. I made a post about Muslim fertility, and it has decreased a lot, but it's still above fertility in most countries, and not dropping anymore. So at any rate they have the advantage. Also check this https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261133206\_Fertility\_Patterns\_of\_Native\_and\_Migrant\_Muslims\_in\_Europe

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                • Thanks for the book recommendation. I added it to my long list of books to read. (I'm already reading 3 semi-concurrently) Regarding Muslim TFR, no doubt it's higher than their host societies'. However, the TFR of urban, educated Muslim folks, especially, in their native lands is below replacement. Which kind of goes back to where B is pointing out: you can officially convert to Islam, but your procreation patterns will still mostly persist if you don't genuinely believe. Hence, I don't deem it a good exit strategy. It's along the Russian saying: "Best medicine for healing dandruff is guillotine." If you are a smart guy, you ought to discover God in a new, deep, rationalistic way. Heck, we both know it's not easy, but it must be done. I think Schopenhauer's/Nietzsche's Will is a pretty good approximation from where one can start. I don't see it hard to rationalize God, actually. We further have Godel (incompleteness theorems), Parfit (Selector, Personal identity illusion, mere addition "paradox" (not a patadox!)), M. Nowak (evolution of cooperation), quantum physics (which I actually took in my senior year), and dynamic systems (with emergence of brand new laws/rules/SOPsfrom very complex interaction of more basic ones). What I, personally, struggle with is internalizing a "personal God." This is something that is being used by many religions. But to me, a naturally lazy, secular person raised in pro-selfish fashion, it is hard to pray if I don't see that my prayers are answerable, that I really am "special." Hence, I probably need to focus on the social aspect of prayer. Maybe that's where "personal God" really comes from: your community. The other motivation is very simple: fear, fear of ultimate loneliness in life and deathbed and unknown future, where people who were my neighbors yesterday (I live in America) turn on each other and me, in an angry, inverse-Walmart-smile fashion, ushering in a Hobbesian. I guess there is still a lot of life in that old "God-fearing" term. This is just my own take, and I provide it as example.

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          • Israel has a TFR over 3 even among Jews which is quite good and I'm pretty sure it doesn't suck that much. Jews just spread out to avoid all the enemies they've made over the centuries killing them all at one time., Secular Jews are at replacement also pretty good. In the US non Orthodox Jews are much bred with Whites though. Here they've lost some identity. Probably natural in the worlds only other philosemitic nation. Also the West doesn't have to give in to despair or take the easy way out.We can what we do best and shape the world the way we like it. Yes its mostly internecine and its probably bloody but so? That's our whole history. What happened is that the peasant mentality has taken over, people want good rulers rather than to rule. The US is worst of all, our revolutionaries are Libertarian and terrified of actually ruling . Its the stupidest philosophy ever. The only group that actually has a useful philosophy in the Northwest Front . They have a solid useful idea of governance that if applied at they had the force to keep it could make a workable state I don't want to live there since National Socialism Lite isn't my bag but its not stupid on its face. They don't however have the power to get what they want because well, Neo Nazis enough said. If you are going to revolt its so you can impose the system you and yours want over an area of land and for you and yours to be in charge. If you can do it with elections, great. If not? In any case it won't be comfortable but I suspect in the long run we'll find it more comfortable than become Muslims or "The Happening"

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        • It's a much better option than most western whites will admit. Becoming a Muslim requires repeating the shahada in front of a practicing Muslim, and that's about it. Living in NYC for 25 years, I've gotten to know Muslims from many different countries. Muslims from the Balkans are largely secularized and barely practice the faith, if at all. Converting to Islam does not mean learning to speak Arabic and disappearing into the masses of Arabs and Pakistanis. There are many millions of blond haired, blue eyed Muslims in the Balkans, Caucasus and Anatolia. If anything, large scale conversion would allow western whites to maintain ethnic cohesion in a way that Christianity no longer affords. The points you make are valid and worth consideration. It's not nearly as painful or constricting as most westerners imagine, and progressives will not, cannot attack it successfully.

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          • [] Source: Bloody Shovel []

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            • I rebut on two points. First, while it's true that currently progs see Muslims as clients -- no threat to their power; indeed enhancing it -- that's because (a) Muslims are a minority, (b) low-functioning, and (c) Muslims are not white. If whites converted in sufficient mass to Islam, Muslims ceased being dependent, and/or Islam become popular enough to form its own parties not controlled by progs, I'd not expect tolerance to continue. Then you'd get the same treatment as progs currently dish out to polygamist Mormons, which is to say, you'd be treated as even worse dogcrap than most whites. Second, even granting the premise that progs would just let Islam take power from them, the problem is democracy. Islam as a majority in democracy has the same incentives to evolve and progress as Christianity did. You might buy a couple generations of relative sanity, but then the insanity would return. Meanwhile, the Muslims dynamite all our cultural heritage.

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              • They can treat old Mormons like crap because there's a few dozen of them. I'd like to see the progressive state deal with 70% Muslims. And where do you get the idea that Europe would remain democratic after a Muslim takeover? The laws come from Allah, you see, not from the people. David Friedman has written about Islamic law, and the traditional Muslim resistance to state power is actually fairly appealing to libertarian sensibilities in some ways.

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                • My statement about unreformed Mormons is just to give an idea of how progs would feel about Muslims who were enemies and not clients. Obviously, it's much easier to repress a tiny minority than a majority. Regarding democracy the question is what's more important in determining politics, race or religion? I hold that it's race. White people do democracy. So democracy would remain, unless they opened the borders so wide that white people were a small minority. Islam may be better than Christianity at resisting state power. I have no opinion. However, I don't think either is anywhere near strong enough to actually stop progress. Indeed I don't think either was that strong even before television. Now? Ha. As such, progress will progress until progressives progress us right back where we are.

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                  • They can treat old Mormons like crap because there’s a few dozen of them. I’d like to see the progressive state deal with 70% Muslims.

                    You're skipping over a crucial step: getting to that 70% without the state noticing all those shiny new White Muslims. Unless the progressive elites convert too, there is bound to be a point when the former will be perceived as enough of a threat to warrant drastic action while still not strong enough to resist it. Opposition to Islam as a religion is on a back burner for the moment, sustained by the likes of Dawkins and Dennett, but those guys pull quite a lot of weight and I daresay could be moved to the fore in short order. It may be a nice thought experiment, but I'm just not seeing a mass conversion on a short enough time scale. The coordination problem is too big, and there are too many committed socialists, see all those CDU/SPD voters in Germany and Socialist voters in France, to say nothing about Die Linke, Melenchon and all that crap, to go over the percolation threshold. If conversion is slow, the state is bound to take notice and switch over to race-based profiling as in America. If going to convert, might as well convert to New Religion(tm) straight off.

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                    • All good points. But New Religion(tm) would be an obvious target more so than White Islam. The trick is to be quietist about it. And obviously the time frame isn't right. Short term nothing is gonna happen. Medium term, the progressive state is going to devolve into South American levels of incompetence, so you could do something there. Unless Turkey invades as in the comments to my last post.

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                      • So it would if it would look like a religion. Recall that basically religion by now means superstition and antiquated rituals. E.g. 'The Fourth Religion' R7 mentions below doesn't look like that at all. By the way, if he's right (and I did dip into PZ's comment section) the idea about organizing the religion around interstellar colonization starts sounding not that far-fetched.

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                        • ETA: of course passivism is a must (as far as compatible with self-preservation, which is very far). I agree with the rest of your comments except that Turkey invading sounds rather improbable to me. NATO member invading other NATO members? I don't imagine Turkey wants a war with Russia, Russia would love chewing off old Armenian lands in East Turkey for its client Armenia and of course there's still the Constantinople thing.

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                          • A Turkish invasion implies the total collapse of USG's power projection capability. 30 years off at the least. Interstellar colonization was my original plan for the New Religion; but I got convinced that it's not really feasible, and I'd rather we didn't waste more resources for impossible aims.

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                            • Luckily, Mars and other places in the Solar System aren't interstellar.

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                              • I see. The point about Russia still stands, though. As for interstellar colonization, I think it's quite feasible technically and unless conceived of as mass colonization wouldn't consume all that much resources compared to, say, worldwide switch to electric vehicles or renewable electricity.

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                    • Kapitulieren? NEIN!

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                      • The Constantine option. I've actually thought about shitlords adopting Islam as a new ethnoreligion and way to royally mindfuck the left. I still think it has promise. I can't tell if you're just being tongue-in-cheek, though.

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                        • With all due respect, Spandrell, (and I mean that - you have a lot of good insights) this just seems like an elaborately disguised way to surrender, and I don't believe that the Progressive establishment isn't as powerful as you think. But even if it is, I couldn't do it. I was born a man of the West, a white, and a Christian, and I'll die as one. And, after all, all men must die. Personally, I think that I'll live to see those causes victorious, but if not, at least we'll go down honorably.

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                          • It's not even elaborate. It's naked capitulation. You're (I guess) already old, you have a family, you've done your thing. But put yourself in the skin of a 18 year old kid, or an unemployed working class single man in his 20s or 30s. Thought experiment: got a gun on your head, you can either surrender to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, or to Ta-Nehisi Coates and Caitlyn Jenner. What do you do?

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                            • You're right, I'm certainly not 18 or anything like it. I like to think that I am still doing "my thing", but your point is well taken. As for who I would surrender to, that's a difficult question, since in political beliefs, I am probably closer to Al-Baghdadi, but who is a man who has a reputation for burning his prisoners to death. Whereas with Coates and Jenner, I would probably only be bored to death with talk of microagressions and gender fluidity... In answer to your suggestion, I honestly don't know. IMHO, we should all be working to avoid such a horrific choice, and I believe that pondering surrender makes it more likely that this choice will have to be made. Of course, this choice is made more difficult for me by the fact that I actually believe that my religion is true, and the gateway to salvation. Others may find the choice easier...

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                              • Well, that's an important factor. But Coates and Jenner would probably get you burnt and your children sodomized if they could. You never know how bad things are going to get with progressivism down the line. Many perished in the Siberian gulags who never saw it coming. See my new post for an example of a tough choice.

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                          • [] By spandrell []

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                            • Spandrell said, "Muslims historically also used to drink and be merry." Well, that answers my main objection to Islam... I see four religions dominating the human species in the Twenty-First Century. 1\. Progressivism: •It will dominate but will start to decline because of the other three religions. 2\. Islam: •Parts of Europe and North America become Islamic. I can see Spandrell's scenario of whites converting to Islam... and then proceeding to behead the Progressives. An ironic end for Progressivism in those places. 3\. Christianity: •Remains strong in the Third World. But in the Western World, the places where it remains strong or regains its power, Christianity will have a distinctively Eastern flavor... Or should I say Slavic... •American Evangelical Christianity is so cucked that Progressivism is practically wearing its skin. 4\. Now onto the Fourth Religion: •Spandrell said, "And, like it or not, the progressive state has the capability of crushing any attempt at subversion, and is going to have it for the foreseeable future." I disagree, this leads me to the Fourth Major Religion of the Twenty-First Century... And it's already deeply subverting Progressivism. •Check this out: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/12/15/elon-musk-is-a-terrible-human-being/ •Here is Progressive Reverend PZMyers preaching a sermon against Prophet Elon Musk. FreeThoughtBlogs strictly controls the comment sections. Every single commentator is a hardcore SJW. And yet, many of these SJW commentators are excoriating Reverend PZ Myers, not Prophet Elon Musk! •PZ Myers is just a village priest for The Cathedral. Elon Musk is freaking Davos Man! •Progressives are really vulnerable to this new religion because black transsexual midgets in wheelchairs just aren't as inspiring as Big Fucking Rocket is. And besides, the SJWs can't call themselves Neo-Puritans or The Church of Social Justice-ology, the white masses will fall asleep. Gotta stay with _Progress_ivism. And to the masses, Progress is Big Fucking Rocket.

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                              • More Rev. PZ Myers vs Prophet Elin Musk: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AgJMXAcrLNY

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                                • The first three have a rock-paper-scissors relationship: Christianity defeats Islam by producing smarter offspring. Though Islam keeps its females pumping out babies from puberty to menopause, those kids receive so little parental investment that they aren’t good for much besides raping and pillaging soft targets. Progressivism defeats Christianity because it’s a heresy of Christianity, a cluster of memes selected for their ability to undermine and destroy Christian faith from within. Islam defeats Progressivism by beheading its men and raping its women. Progressive mind tricks don’t work on Muslims. If white men convert to Islam en masse, behead the Progressive mandarins, take control of white women, and start fathering lots of white babies, but otherwise don't take Islam very seriously, that solves the problem for now. I fear, however, that our great-grandchildren might not get the joke, and become jihadi suicide bombers. Democracy is an entirely Progressive idea (ever heard of Christians adoring "Christ the Democratically Elected President"?) so good riddance to it. Why should people who own nothing, produce nothing, and pay no taxes have any say over government policy?

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                                  • dave1941 said, "Democracy is an entirely Progressive idea (ever heard of Christians adoring “Christ the Democratically Elected President”?) so good riddance to it. Why should people who own nothing, produce nothing, and pay no taxes have any say over government policy?" Those Howard Stern videos show how stupid the average voter is when you have a system that allows every talking oxygen breather to vote. As for the Fourth Religion... it doesn't even have a name yet. To get a gist of what the Fourth Religion is, watching Interstellar is a good start.

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                                    • I suppose you could call it "frontierism". A religion of intelligent, hardy pioneers exiting their sclerotic, idiocratic welfare-state societies and founding free nations on the open frontier. Pretty much what America was before its frontier filled up and mass immigration of Catholics put Roosevelt in the White House. Nothing prevents the same happening to Mars eventually, but moving there buys time for Musk's descendants to invent interstellar spaceships before all their capital is taxed away to feed the starving masses.

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                                • you've got to be more real. they don't target whites because they're white. they target whites because of success. muslims kill each other all the time, and they'll kill white muslims just as readily as otherwise. the best strategy is to get cozy with the chinese and ask them for backdoor help, or to establish a white nationalist government in exile somewhere within the confines of china, building up capital, support, etc.

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                                  • Lol. Get cozy with the Chinese. Right. I got a little surprise to you. The Chinese aren't very fond of whitey since the Opium War.

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                                    • they're looking for world stage legitimacy to contest the cultural legacy of democracy. hosting a government in exile could give them leverage over the west to capitalize in a time of crisis. one issue in particular stands out: the nuclear stockpiles sitting in the US, britain, and france. the same stockpiles which are already controlled by a monkey in a suit in the U.S. and will soon be controlled by muslims in europe. In terms of strategic priorities this has to be near the top of the list for chinese leadership. american leadership, unable to build even websites, will not be trusted with nuclear armaments on a world stage. china may be able to fool america's own stupid voters into disarming themselves. a government in exile would act as a tool to coerce them into misstepping, or outright capitulation on key issues.

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                                      • China is going to be the new home of Christianism along with all what I would agree to call "civilization" and "culture". it is going to be the chief hope against globalist totalitarianism — that is as foolish and destructive as all totalitarianisms —, and the place where people who can think with their own head happening to be born in the West will dream of emigrating into. They also have another quality that Western whites lost, a quality they share with the Russian: they don't like to obey to supremacist internationalist circles drunk with power. Even more important perhaps: they would not let a supremacist minority install within their country and take all the levers of power. They still have the healthy tendency to stand upright, instead of bowing. At the same time, they aren't supremacists either, which is a great thing as well because it means that, no matter how much power they come to hold, it likely won't derange their psyche: a lucky thing that is not always the case.

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                                      • Do Slavs count as white people in that reckoning? During the Kosovo War, a T.A. from China was remarkably open with a faculty member having a Serbian last name, volunteering that the US bombing of the Chinese embassy was to send China a lesson not to mess with America's interest in Taiwan. Interesting point of view, and interesting that anyone from China would be emboldened to share that perspective during a very jingoistic Serb-hating time in America. Interesting that a student from China could distinguish a Serbian from a Croatian last name, at a time when Croatian-Americans were stoking the anti-Serb flames as part of the Croatian nationalist struggle. OK, according to some accounts, the Sino-Soviet split once deepened to the point where the Soviets were going to wage atomic war on China until Nixon threatened US atomic retaliation to get them to back down. But the split between Soviet Russia and Red China, it is said, was over the Russian suppression of the Prague Spring. Apparently the Chinese took the Russian tanks in Central Europe as a lesson that Russia would brook no deviation from Russian Socialism, whether of the Czech-Slovak kind or Chairman Mao's brand, and they took this as an insult to national honor. I don't think it is only being brothers in Socialism, there is a regional and perhaps even a racial affinity. There are Slavic people, who along with some Hungarians, have an East Asian cast. Spandrell, am I wrong that the Slavic countries and China get along OK?

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                                        • To the extent that it's expedient because there's a common enemy. Don't see any affinity. And China on principle isn't into long term alliances. They won't make you a favor if you don't offer a good deal.

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                                          • I see. The point about Russia still stands, though. As for interstellar colonization, I think it's quite feasible technically and unless conceived of as mass colonization wouldn't consume all that much resources compared to, say, worldwide switch to electric vehicles or renewable electricity.

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                                    • This plan reminds me of the following exchange on Vox Day's blog: - A little patience and precision are all that is required to dismantle any leftist argument. - Patience and precision are not my forte. How about we just shoot the bastards?

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                                      • [] Source: Bloody Shovel []

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                                        • Pretty flawless argument. Catholicism or any christianity wont work as the entire liberal structure is built on its destruction. If catholics asserted themselves, they get prison. It is all parasitic on the catholic base. It is basically protestantism pushed to logical terminus. That such an obvious gambit sounds (and is ) reasonanble speaks to the unspeakable stupidity of liberalism and liberals. Its a mob.

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                                          • Islam is not your enemy. Progressivism is your enemy. The Balkans remain white after 500 years of Islam. 70 year of progressivism and many white countries are firmly in the course of race replacement. Breivik is pretty dumb but he got that right.

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                                            • This post and your last post are connected. I can see the parallel between converting to Islam and Wu Sangui joing the Manchu. The timing seems an important Point. Wu Sangui joined the Manchu at the very latest. At that time his options where very limited and he had to make a decision. The situation in Europe is not yet that dire. I understand your point about the benefits, but don't quite see why a man might not simply wait another 5 years. Although I'm very pessimistic about Europe future and agree that an Islamic Europe is likely, I don't think it's certain. I think that a civil war in Europe is quite possible. An ethnic and/or religious minority can be purged. I happend (locally) in former Jugoslavia and I believe that the Serbs and Croats would have been much more thorough if NATO had not intervened. Whether the USA or any other European Country will be able to something similar in a European country in 5 or 10 year seems doubtful. Keep in mind that there have once been 6 million jews in Germany. Intelligent, law-abiding, tax paying people. Now there are 5 million or so muslims. History suggests that this is not irreversible. Even the low fertility of Europe might be reversed without mass conversions. I have read recently that in Russia fertility has been for the last two years above replacement level (among non-muslim Europeans - sorry I have no citation for that). Russion Society is, of course, much less progressive than western Europe, but even so it's a start and a sign of hope. Another point is that families choose the number of childer according to they (esoecially the woman) considers to be the socially accepted or expected nor. In Germany, 2 children are socially OK, three are unusual. 4 or more and the family stands out. Now the government is forcing all Germans to have lots of Muslims in their immediate neighborhood. People will get used to large families. It might even become prestigious amongst Europeans like it is amongst Arabs. Of course, that won't increase the fraction of women who have families, but those who do might have more children. So what are the reasons for converting now? I guess for a woman approaching the wall it's to have any family at all. Better an illiterate foreign man than no man at all. For a man the main benefit that I see is protection from divorce rape. European law varies a lot, but prenuptial agreements offer some protection. A protection (however weak or strong it might be) most men (in my experience) are not using. Any other benefits should still be available by converting in 5 or even 10 years. You mentioned that converting would offer protection from the progressive state religion. Maybe so, but at least in German it would presently be rather limited. Sure the Courts treat muslims much more softly than native Europeans, but the legal reason is (mostly) that they are immigrats who grew up in a different culture and therefore cant be held to the same standarts as Europeans. The other reason is that they often have large clans willing and able to intimidate judges, prosecuters and witnesses. Coverting won't give a European those benefits.

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                                              • A better example might be Fan Wencheng. He joined the Manchus in 1618, voluntarily, when the Manchus weren't even doing so well. He was their foremost minister for decades, and one of the architects of the conquest of China proper. He did very, very well. Wu Sangui ended up rebelling and having his whole family destroyed, so there's that.

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                                              • Probably the worst decision ever made since Vortigern decided inviting Hengist and Horsa over to fight against his fellow Britons was a smashing idea. It saw China plunged into a barbaric dark age from which it has yet to recover. It's civilization stained by nomadic filth. The idea of Chinese "stagnation" is false, what actually happened was degeneration. China during the late Ming was as prosperous as Europe at the time only to see everything wither and die under the Manchu yolk. The average Chinese was 2/3's wealthier in 1600 than they were in 1900. The historians who write grandly of a so-called Qing "Golden Age" are odious fork tongued liars and propagandists, usually shameless Communist lickspittles both Chinese and Western. The Chinese historians who advocate such are cowardly quislings who believe in the great lie of "multiracial" China and think the root of all of China's problems begin in the 19th century. The Western historians are simple nihilists in the same vein as those champions of so-called Islamic "civilization" and other primitive peoples who have spent their entire academic careers turning black white. Wu Sangui is a race traitor. The capitulation you advocate will be worse for you in the long term than you can imagine.

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                                                • Keep telling yourself that. If the Qing were so bad and the Ming so awesome, you can still give back all the territory out of China proper that the Manchus conquered for you. You should break your skull kowtowing to thank the Manchus that they conquered the Mongols and Dzungars so you could have some coal and oil. You are not a historian, read some more on the Ming. It sucked. Not that the Qing were that great, but the Ming sucked very, very badly. That 100k Manchus were able to conquer the whole thing says a lot about what kind of laughable mess the Ming Dynasty was. Note that Dorgon didn't need Wu Sangui to open the gates. The Manchus had entered China 5 times already and they could've come back again and conquer without a problem. Wu Sangui just made it marginally easier.

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                                                  • Reviewing multi-generational dynasties is stupid. How do you generalize that the Ming sucked any more than the Qing? With Chinese dynasties, who are you blaming exactly? The family in power? The individual emperors who happened to live and rule at the time? The culture of power that develops? All of that could vary greatly within any dynasty that lasts longer than a century.

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                                                    • Well, to the extent that you can do a comparison, the Qing had vastly more territory, more political stability, 4 times the population, etc. As to who to blame, well of course the game is everybody blaming everyone else. The question is that since the 20th century, the mainstream current of Chinese intellectuals have blamed the Manchus for fact that Europe surpassed China in technology and used it to beat China militarily. Apparently if the Ming dynasty had continued, none of that would have happened. The godly Han race would've had an Industrial Revolution and used its might to kick whitey's ass, if only those perfid Manchus hadn't oppressed the Chinese so much. If anything I'd blame the Manchus for pulling off the conquest of the whole country plus the whole of Mongolia. Li Zicheng wouldn't have been able to hold the whole country, and a divided China might have had the right incentives to introduce European technology faster.

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                                                      • I think both the Ming and the Qing were perfectly great dynasties that did much to advance China as a civilization and as a polity. Quantitative analysis between the two needs to be couched by the fact that the Qing existed centuries after the height of the Ming, and so benefited from the technological and economical advances that came later. The Yuan was also pretty good. I just think that you bashing the Ming as a response to revisionist history that bashes the Qing are both wrongheaded, because dynasties that span centuries are very difficult to compare and cannot simply be ranked, as if in a listicle.

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                                                        • If the Mongols hadn't invaded, China might have had the industrial revolution in the Song dynasty. "The Song dynasty saw intensive industry in steel production, and coal mining. No other premodern state advanced as nearly as starting an industrial revolution than the Southern Song." See: Bulliet & Crossley & Headrick & Hirsch & Johnson 2014

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                                                    • Manchus won only due to internal chaos in China. No part of China belongs Manchus. They should all go back to Siberia.

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                                                    • The land that China controls today isn't the legacy of the Manchus, but rather Communist force of arms. There was no bequeathed land and armies alas the British Raj to modern India. Every inch of it had to be recontested. You also completely avoided my point. Even by the early 17th century collapse period of the Ming State, the Chinese were still more prosperous than nearly 3 centuries later by a significant amount. You cannot refute that. Shit they were actually still wealthier than Japan at around the time of the Meiji restoration. This was the result of the "Not great" qing rule compared to the "terrible" Ming. Even worse of all, the degenerate Manchus fostered among the Chinese the insipid multiracial imperial ideology that they used to legitimize rule over subject peoples that now tolerates barbarians in a Chinese state. The presence of thieving Uyghur and Tibetan gypsies in China's cities is a result of this. Yet most Chinese foolishly regard them as "colorful" natives and an examples of Chinas greatness and "diversity" than as alien threats that need to be done away with. I would rather have a China that is 99% Han and territorially reduced to its Ming core if it meant that China were as prosperous today as South Korea or Taiwan.

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                                                      • Dude. China in 1900 had 4 times the population of 1600. That average living standards where 2/3s is pretty neat. Japanese population and living standards didn't improve much at all during that time frame. Chinese communists were able to reconquer Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia because those regions had had a Chinese presence for 200 years thanks to the Manchu conquest. If the Manchus hadn't conquered it, the Russians or British would have ages ago. No chance of China having access to those natural resources. Now you seem to think that China would be richer without Mongolian minerals. Why don't you give them back? I agree that thieving Uyghurs and Tibetans are a blight in Chinese cities, but you can't blame the Qing for that. The Qing had no multiracial imperial ideology; certainly nothing that the vast majority of Han people gave a shit about. Communist ideology comes from Lenin. Blame him for Chinese nationality policy. All the Manchus did was kick Mongol ass so that Chinese peasants in Gansu and Shanxi could live in peace. You obviously have no idea about what you're talking. Chinese anti-nationalism comes from Communism. The Qing had no ideology besides Confucianism, and the Manchu people as a whole had completely sinicized by the 1750s. That the Ming could have developed to British is laughable. Read a book. If you want to blame foreigners for the plight of your people blame the Russians. They brought you Communism.

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                                                  • [] and reckless, and they go on Twitter rambling about how White Men should behead all the traitors. I posted a humble thought experiment about how perhaps we should do a collective Flight from White to troll the progressives into []

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                                                    • "Given present demographic trends, at this rate large swathes of the West will be Muslim in 20 years time" That's a common line of thinking. Not going to dismiss it with a citation needed gag. But how true is this claim? This is a completely debatable point, and it's the linchpin of the entire Eurarabia argument. Consider a few decades ago women were educated in Afghanistan, Iraq, many of the places that are *currently* gripped by fundamentalist and jihadist groups. Doesn't that signify that trends change? Who's to say that the Muslim immigrants in Europe will gravitate towards power-taking and devotion? That their kids won't turn out as fat and apathetic and decadent as any other second generation immigrants?

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                                                      • There is a video making the rounds on the AltRight recently showing a German woman interviewing 3rd generation Turkish teenagers in Germany. The Turkish kids openly revile German people and proudly proclaim they have no German friends and would be much happier if Germans simply disappeared. Of course, if a group of German teens said the same thing they would be brought up on charges of incitement, but the reality is that many 2nd and 3rd generation muslims in Europe despise Europeans and aren't afraid of acting on that revulsion.

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                                                        • What's the background of the Turkish kids. Are they middle class? Poor? What kind of neighborhoods are they in? What kind of schools do they attend? Are they truly representative of average Turkish immigrant kids?

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                                                      • [] latest thought experiment is quite frankly brilliant, and gets to the problem of the Liberal/ empiricist/ []

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                                                        • [] in Europe (1, 2, 3). A modest suggestion. Molyneux and Watson soothe your concerns (video). Hmmm. “Sorry, what was the question []

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                                                          • Fuck Islam. Stand up and fight. Fight dirty, if you need to. Go to Europe and gain street-fighting and combat experience.

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                                                            • [] has a Modest Proposal. I prefer to think of it as a swift kick in the []

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                                                              • [] is another of Spandrell’s patented Chinese History Tales: Choices—Mandate of Heaven []

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                                                                • Add a kicker to Muslim conversion. Declare yourself to be a "pre-conversion bull dyke lesbian transsexual." Think about it. As a "pre-conversion bull dyke lesbian transsexual" you can dress like a guy. You can act like a guy. You can chase women like a guy. You can swear like a guy, wear boxers like a guy and p!ss standing up like a guy. Nothing changes, and all you have to do is declare that "deep down inside I am a woman". You go from being a stale, pale white male (0) to being a Muslim ( 1), female ( 1), lesbian ( 1), bull dyke ( 0.5), transsexual ( 1). That is 4.5 diversity points! Hell, if any of your ancestors ever settled in New Spain (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas) you can even claim to be Hispanic ( 1) for a total of 5.5 diversity points. What employer wouldn't LOVE to get 5.5 diversity points for one employee? Even better, now that Bruce Jenner has kept his junk and STILL maintains he is a transsexual, you may be able to drop the "pre-conversion" stuff and never have to have surgery. Heck, go full hog and call yourself an "ANTI-conversion" transsexual. Why should society force you to get chopped to "prove" you are a woman, anyway? That's sexist oppression!

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                                                                • [] have probably guessed where I’m going. I won’t repeat myself. Europe now is in decline and all Europeans of good faith are trying to find a solution. We are []

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                                                                  • High-fertility White people with funny beliefs and pretty-functional family systems? Mormons.

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                                                                  • [] of course my series elaborating on Houellebecq’s Submission. Europe might turn Islamic, and that may not be a bad thing, considering feminism and present demographic trends. There is a reason that second-generation []

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                                                                    • [] was in part pretty much a holiness signaling by Confucius and his pals. The great story of how the Ming dynasty fell and the Manchus took over with the enthusiastic help of Chinese generals. And of course my series (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)on the []

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                                                                      • [] that Spandrell is depressing and that he leads his readers astray. Hasn’t he suggested that European conversion to Islam is an option? I write this picturing to myself the boiling blood of some of my high thymos readers. But []

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                                                                        • [] As the attacks step up, and the intimidation increases, more and more Europeans will convert to Islam. []

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                                                                          • [] of what to do: whether to try to patch-up the old belief-system, build a shiny-new one, or take the easy way out and hitch a ride on one that still seems to []

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