Racism, or statism?

Human nature and behaviour evolved to be not just very sociable, but also deeply tribal. This is as true now as it was 10,000 years ago, the only difference being that the material dependency on our tribe has been replaced by a dependency on the STATE and a MONEY economy. Our emotional need for a sense of tribal belonging remains, however. Under different circumstances and in varying degrees it is now projected onto the state (masquerading as our NATION), the company we work for, the football team we support, a political party, a religion, an ideology, or whatever.

The state did not replace our original tribes by democratic consent (Social Contract, indeed!), but by force, through the swords of an aristocracy, aided by the "moral", intellectual and organizational support of the priesthood, i.e. Church, which received its material reward.

Thus was the state originally created, by a coalition of aristocracy and clergy, to facilitate exploitation of both the natural and human resources at their disposal, to their mutual advantage; notwithstanding the, sometimes deadly, rivalries within and between these two groups (or classes).

Central to facilitating society's exploitation by its ruling elites was the creation of the myth of NATIONHOOD (a nation being the natural extension of our original tribe, a federation of closely related tribes, as when the Greek tribes, which had developed into city states, exploiting slaves rather than their own people, united into a nation to face down the Persian threat). The state was thus able to harness people's powerful sense of tribal belonging and loyalty for its own exploitative purposes.

Effectively, though not consciously, the state domesticated society, just as we domesticate a dog, for example, based on the animal's dependency and a regime of rewards and punishments (or promises and threats thereof) to gain control of and exploit for our own purposes its innate behaviour.

Returning to human nature: when football fans, for example, jeer a player on account of his race, i.e. ethnic difference, it is not usually an expression of racism, as politicians and the media would have us believe, and claim the "moral high ground" for (on which they base their authority and power, on which, in turn, their livelihoods depend), but a healthy, though rude and impolite, expression of tribal belonging. They are jeering at players they FEEL do  not belong to their tribe, or maybe the opposing tribe. Imagine the Japanese sending a football team, half of whom were not ethnic Japanese, but ethnic Europeans or Africans . . . Would that not offend one's sense of ethnic identity in respect to who the Japanese are?

Anyone with a healthy sense of their own, and other's, ethnic identity, would, of course. But the state demands that we suppress and deny (even to ourselves) any sense of ethnic identity, and direct our need for tribal belonging at itself instead.

The answer to my question - racism or statism? - is clearly STATISM.

But how are we (any more than a dog its master) to oppose the mighty STATE?

By peacefully and respectfully cultivating a sense of our ethnic identities, thereby giving rise to a New (multi) Nationalism.

On the "hatred" that Michael Tomasky detects in the "white crowd"

LINK to Guardian article, Hate Obama? You may not be a racist. But you will be white, by Michael Tomasky

The president's critics are not all prejudiced but the crowd is mutating to the extremes . . . It has to do with the difference between the individual and the crowd.

Michael Tomasky, I think, is making an extremely important point here, but his response is to demonize and condemn, rather than to understand, what is going on.

To do that, one must turn to evolutionary psychology, which reveals humans to be not just very social animals, but also very tribal. Thus the difference between the individual and the crowd, standing in for one's tribe.

It is no good (but on the contrary, very bad) ridiculing, demonizing, condemning, denying and seeking to suppress our tribal nature. We have to understand and learn to live with it, in a humane and civilized fashion.

But, of course, we don't - and couldn't possibly - suppress our tribal nature, it being far too much a part of us. Instead, it is manipulated and exploited by the STATE, capital and organized religion for their own ends, which, since dawn of civilization, revolve around facilitating the self-exploitation of human society (under the guise of "service"), as an artificial ENVIRONMENT, to the advantage of wealth, power and privilege.

The state has always wrapped itself in the gab of NATION (the natural extension of our tribe), in order to legitimize itself and lay claim to the powerful emotions of shared identity and loyalty we evolved to feel towards it.

Like other American presidents, President Obama is always referring to the "American PEOPLE" and the "American NATION", but both are a LIE and (self)-deception, taken over from its British origins and necessary to maintain the authority and POWER of the American STATE, along with the status quo of wealth, power and privilege, which of course includes its liberal elite, who are as keen to maintain the LIE and self-deception which equates STATE and NATION as anyone else, and in the form of Liberal Fascism, (see Jonah Goldberg) even more so.

The "hatred" that Michael Tomasky detects in the "white crowd", I suggest, is the sub- or semi-conscious expression of European-Americans' tribal nature, rebelling against its suppression and forced redirected towards a multi-ethnic American STATE, masquerading as a NATION, when its natural tendency, of course (notwithstanding the taboo against admitting it, even to oneself), is towards its own ethnic group, i.e. towards people it can relate to spontaneously, even strangers, as members of one's own, or of a closely related, tribe.

State interest in suppressing ethnic identity as "racism"

LINK to Guardian article, How volleyball and pop have shaken China's idea of race, by Isabel Hilton

Mulefish wrote:

Hybrids are genetically superior generally. That's the science of it, and the top and bottom of it, and the beauty of it.

That is not just "racism" of the kind generally equated - quite wrongly, in my view - with "racial prejudice", but something altogether much nastier: the assumption of a mixed-race MASTER RACE - a complete, but equally vile, inversion of the Nazi notion of a German master race.

This notion of a mixed-race master race is, of course, being promoted vigorously, but implicitly, by the "liberal fascist" state (see Jonah Goldberg), with its self-serving ideology of "colourblindness", of indifference to ethnic different, and of "race doesn't matter", i.e. is of no social or political importance, except to evil "racists".

It will be interesting to see whether the Chinese state attempts to impose the same ideology. I doubt it, some how, since it would surely bring about its own rapid demise. Because in reality, when not suppressed, people are not "colourblind", i.e. indifferent to ethnic difference, and race DOES matter, because of its role in determining an individual's sense of personal and group identity, thereby making it of great social and political importance.

It is an importance which the STATE currently refuses to acknowledge, suppressing it instead (very effectively, by condemning it as evil "racism"), just as it originally suppressed tribal identity and loyalties amongst racially indistinguishable peoples, in order to claim them for itself.

The state got away with the deception of covering the - essentially, though perverted, Darwinian - power structures of statehood with the stolen mantle of nationhood, when racial and ethnic differences were minimal, but won't be able keep up the pretence for much longer, now that they are so much larger - especially if China faces up to the social and political significance of race.