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Lumifer comments on Neo-reactionaries, why are you neo-reactionary? - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Capla 17 November 2014 10:31PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 21 November 2014 01:15:18AM 1 point [-]

but I still wouldn't want to live there

Me neither, but I think in general NRx likes Singapore -- does it not?

In general, ethnostates look like a Europe-specific phenomenon to me.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 November 2014 02:56:27AM 4 points [-]

Me neither, but I think in general NRx likes Singapore -- does it not?

Because they're libertarian and from American cities.

Libertarianism leads them to fail to look beyond "safe and not communist"; being from American cities leads them to think that's a high bar. Which it is for America, but America's political situation is insane.

In general, ethnostates look like a Europe-specific phenomenon to me.

In addition to Japan and China, both Koreas and Mongolia.

(North Korea and Mongolia aren't counterexamples; they were Communist puppet states.)

Comment author: Lumifer 21 November 2014 03:19:24AM 1 point [-]

Libertarianism leads them to fail to look beyond "safe and not communist"

I am not sure what you are getting at, can you expand..?

both Koreas and Mongolia

Both are states now, but historically their statehood varied.

In any case, I can see the advantages of a single ethnicity, I'm just not sure that they override everything else.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 November 2014 09:20:00PM 4 points [-]

I am not sure what you are getting at, can you expand..?

@sarahdoingthing would be able to explain this better than I can, but Moldbug consistently ignores questions of social life, identity, and the rites.

Safe is preferable to unsafe, and not communist is preferable to communist -- and the possibility of a social life is preferable to atomization, and a stable identity is preferable to anomie and lack of context, and so on.

Comment author: Azathoth123 21 November 2014 02:20:40AM 2 points [-]

Japan. Also China for a looser notion of "ethnostate".

Comment author: Lumifer 21 November 2014 02:30:40AM *  0 points [-]

True. China, actually, is a stronger example since Japan is nicely isolated geographically.

And speaking of pragmatic forms of government, Japan, um, has problems. China, too, of course.

Comment author: Azathoth123 21 November 2014 08:55:39AM 1 point [-]

China, actually, is a stronger example since Japan is nicely isolated geographically.

Until western contact, China had no other state of comparable power to define itself against.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 November 2014 10:49:40PM *  0 points [-]

Not only that, they also are a relatively recent phenomenon. The Austro-Hungarian Empire wasn't an ethnostate either. AFAICT ethnic nationalism mostly dates back to Romanticism.