culture

The anti-anti reactionary FAQ Part 2, Crime.

A major reactionary argument is that since the early eighteenth century, since the reign of throne and altar, war, state political repression, state violence against respectable citizens, underclass crime, and minority crime have all risen enormously, that the overclass and underclass are attacking the productive, and the attack has been escalating.

Scott’s anti reactionary FAQ  points out that murder is pretty much the same as ever it was.  Quite so.  Those crimes that the state tolerates are increasing – thus burglary, assault, and mugging has soared everywhere, whereas home invasion burglaries, where the criminals riotously enter an occupied dwelling, have only soared in those countries such as Britain where home invasion is tolerated.

Scott tells us that Victorians felt profoundly unsafe from crime:

Violent attacks by strangers were seen as grave cause for concern. There was a disproportionate amount of attention paid to violent nighttime assaults by strangers in urban areas, called “garroting” and similar to what we might call “mugging”. There were garroting panics in 1856 and 1862

He neglects to tell us why the Victorians panicked.

The Victorians panicked because, over the course of several weeks, two people in the city of London were mugged, a crime that they had no words for, never having experienced it before.

Scott points out that crime has diminished over the last few decades, neglecting to acknowledge that this is a short term and small decline compared to the long term trend of a gigantic rise in private and state violence.

The cause of the decline is pretty obvious in San Francisco. Police are kicking black ass. The highly progressive far left elite piously averts its eyes while its police force does extremely racist and reactionary things to protect them from minorities.

It seems the same thing has been happening everywhere.

Although progressivism moves steadily ever leftwards, in any one area of policy there are waves. First a large movement left. Disaster ensues, as with freeing the slaves, then a small movement right, as with Jim Crow. Then after a while, another large movement left.

Crime has diminished somewhat because we are in the small movement right phase with respect to crime. From what is happening in New York city, looks like the next large movement left phase is about to resume, whereupon we will see gentrification end, white flight resume and New York head off in the footsteps of Detroit.

Crime has risen because of movement left. It fell because, for a little while, we moved a little bit right on crime.  But since progressives always need each to be lefter than the other, they can only move rightwards on crime by moving leftwards on something else – and in due course, are coming back to moving leftwards on crime.

30 comments The anti-anti reactionary FAQ Part 2, Crime.

red says:

Actual violent crime is up 15% in 2012(National phone servery). 15% in one year! Fscking insane. Official numbers don’t reflect this increase indicating that all the crime metrics are being fudged.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20131024/DA9KK1C02.html

red says:

And 17% the year before:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv11.pdf

Wow. All the gains from 94 on are going to be wiped out in 5 years.

jim says:

Recall how Martin Trayvon was not punished for being possession of burglary tools and stolen jewelry. That is the class of crime that is being allowed to increase – crime that will not show up looking bad on you tube.

red says:

Trayvon Martin attacked a bus driver for asking for his ticket on the way to his dads house. He wasn’t charged for that crime either. The general trend is impunity or very light sentences for black criminals again. Lots of cases of horrible group beatings being charged as simple assault and murder being plead down to 10 years in jail.

I don’t know if they intentionally opened the flood gates again or if it’s the natural result of trying to be holier than with a black president, but quality of life anywhere near a big city is about to crash. And the plan to put a section 8 building in every neighborhood is going forward.

Toddy Cat says:

Yes, it’s significant that Alexander could not have written his “rebuttal” in 1979. It’s only been the slight rightward movement on some essential issues since then that has made even weak argumnts like Alexander’s possible.

New topic for Scott Alexander; “Ronald Reagan – America’s Greatest Progressive President” – because that’s what his argument comes down to.

peppermint says:

Will crime every return to how it was in the late ’60s?

This was the time of Eldridge Cleaver and two other Black Panthers ambushing and trying to shoot some police. Cleaver then left the country, designed a line of pants in Paris, and wrote a book in which he bragged about all the Black and White women he had raped (“Brilliant and revealing” — New York Times Review of Books). He got another book published ten years later. Eventually he returned to the United States and pleabargained for a simple assault charge with no jail time.

It was also the time of Bill Ayers bombing the Pentagon. From his organization we get the famous question, “Is it the duty of any good revolutionary to kill every newborn White baby?” Ayers would mentor a future President and end up writing national education policy.

It was also a time of race riots, spurred by a mainstream media carefully pointing the cameras and feckless governors refusing to call in the national guard for fear of being compared to kkk nazi jim crow slavers by that media.

I just don’t see the late ’60s coming back. Not until the proggies manage to kill the Internet, at least. In particular, race riots are pretty much impossible in the age of YouTube.

jim says:

The proggies don’t repeat their past failures in exactly the same way, but neither do they learn from their mistakes.

To have equal treatment of blacks and whites in New York, without the place turning into Detroit, would need some sort of efficiently run police state. Maybe they will do that. Maybe they will make New York resemble an airport boarding lounge, where just as little old ladies and their four year old granddaughters get the same treatment as men in white robes yelling “Allah Akhbar”, little old ladies and their four year old grand daughters will get the same treatment as pimps in hoodies.

[…] The anti-anti reactionary FAQ Part 2, Crime. « Jim’s Blog […]

VXXC says:

Great point on “muggings”. Good riposite.

But what would be Brilliant!! is Alexander’s response.

Do keep the conversation with our Prog Brethren going…

[Sir Aspie of Camelot was foolish to accept challenge and to enter lists against the Dark Esquerry…]

Any kind of debate or conversation is like holy water to them. They just will not, not, not do it. Scott is an uncertified amateur. Their are a couple of black anti-reactionaries but in general the progressive position is to say that any dissent cannot possibly be valid and to debate it is to imply its validity.

On any occasion that they will acknowledge any dissent other than by screaming “RAAAAACCCIIIIISSSSTTTT!!!!” they take an exasperated tone of “OK we know we have a few people on the short bus who haven’t gotten all the scientific progress on race and gender equality and socialist economics in the last century so we will have a brief review” which is mostly what Scott is doing.

He is also using straw men to the extent he selects Moldbug and Annisimov, most nationalists don’t want a monarchy or a corporation.

Erik says:

They’re not strawmen, if you ask me; reactionaries are suffering from a common problem for rebel coalitions where we all agree that progressivism is bad and the cathedral has got to go, but we don’t agree much on what to replace it with (except at the meta-level of city-states, secession, nationalism, patchwork, and generally letting each reactionary faction go its own damn way instead of trying to vote them into accord).

VXXC says:

“…a common problem for rebel coalitions where we all agree that progressivism is bad and the cathedral has got to go..”

What you are calling a common problem is Best Practice.

Common problem ____ we all agree that ____is bad and the ____has got to go.

This is actually best practice solution to the real common problem of being an debate society descending into endless taxonomy.

What is being counter-proposed is to blunt or reverse momentum in a futile debate of what to do with power when you have none.

Play to your strong points and opportunities. In action the perfect is the enemy of survival, the baseline good.

jim says:

Monarchy not a straw man, since it is the anti reactionary faq, not the anti nationalist faq.

But, if you are going to criticize reactionary monarchy, try comparing Western civilization after throne and altar was victorious over Napoleon, with western civilization today. No fair looking at past left singularities, and blaming their bloodshed on the crowned heads that they overthrew.

King Louis peacefully handed power over to the left, who then executed him, then executed the aristocracy, and then executed each other. That is not evidence against monarchy and aristocracy, that is evidence that monarchy and aristocracy should damned well hang on to power.

peppermint says:

What the hell, Moldbug is the central figure in neoreaction. He was writing against neoreaction, ergo, he better discuss Moldbug.

What is neoreaction?

(1) the Polygon model of our present government
(2) the Cathedral narrative for how it came to be
(3) the Brahmin/Dalit/Helot vs Optimate/Vaisya thede narrative for how it sustains itself
(4) the Fnargl gedankenexperiment, intended to demonstrate that a hostile but sane government would be better than our incompetent, incapable-of-competence government

It’s also darkly enlightened. Which means acknowledging
(1) human nature, especially with respect to gender roles
(2) evolution, especially with respect to race

Neoreaction is not
(1) White nationalism. The plan to try to convince White Brahmins to join with the Whites of the other thedes is a fool’s hope and a distraction. More ominously, an activist attempt to sieze power could lead to fascism.
(2) A religious revival. Acknowledging human nature doesn’t mean we revert to Catholicism or Anglicanism because they were more willing to acknowledge human nature than the Cathedral is, it means we acknowledge human nature.
(3) Neocameralism. It’s kind of a cool idea, but there are a lot of cool ideas out there. Moldbug appears to agree with this assessment.

VXXC says:

Jim,

Why did the Apostle Paul never simply say; You shall not covet thy neighbors soul?

Paul in sum was heading off the last 4 centuries at the pass. Christianity would have elsewise been destroyed as a pathogenic virus, and justly.

[…] Astute commentary, in addition to my own simple thoughts, on Scott Alexander’s long-winded, substantive, but not entirely well-aimed rebuttal to Reaction are now available from Foseti, Bryce, Jim part 1 and part 2. […]

Leonard says:

I did not make it through the FAQ — it is long. Did Mr. Alexander deal with Moldbug’s favorite stat, of the crime rate increase over 100 years? 50x — 5000%?

Jim, I have a minor disagreement. San Francisco and other largely intact unsprawlable cities have a new trick for fighting crime: economic segregation. It is not blacks as such that are held out, it is anyone who earns less than six figures. Some blacks make the cut; the other 99% don’t.

Of course the economic part is based in scarcity which is itself based on political factors. And who is it pushing for no development, nothing in my backyard, green space, bikes, etc.? Government jobs of many kinds, and the elimination of all industry? Progs, naturally.

So, while it is safe to say that the cities already ruined will stay that way, I disagree with your assessment that New York will go Detroit. I don’t think so, although IMO New York is closer to the edge than most cities. San Fran will stay very white and nice and safe enough. Washington will ethnically cleanse itself and become another whitopia.

jim says:

For ideological reasons, and in order to stuff the ballot box, San Francisco has a substantial amount of welfare housing, where poor people live in filthy rotting run down buildings that would otherwise be given a face lift and occupied by people on six or seven figure salaries. Consequently, it has quite a lot of crime, but not nearly as much crime as one might expect with a less fascist police force. Although the criminals often live a single block away from the rich, they seem to have learned to prey primarily on each other. Possibly this is less likely to attract punishment. Or possibly the police enforce apartheid block by block. One can walk a block or two, and suddenly find oneself in a frighteningly non white location, suggesting that patches of underclass are kept around at enormous expense for their votes, but restrained from straying too far.

San Francisco is about fifty percent underclass, about fifty percent people living on crime and welfare. If the police were not a bunch of nazis, the underclass blocks would be on fire. If you don’t see the underclass in San Francisco, this suggests that the police enforce apartheid block by block.

anonymous says:

I’m not sure where you’re getting your “fifty percent underclass” figure. At least the official poverty rate states at 11.8 percent. On might take issue with the methodology, but I’d like to see the data that you base your 50 percent figure on.

Also notable is that San Franciscos’s black population has collapsed from 12.7 to 6.1 percent since 1990: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_francisco#Demographics It’s now a predominantly white ad Asian city. Also a potential game changer are the apartment and condo towers being constructed throughout the SOMA area and along Market Street, which will allow the city to house a greater number of tech workers who commute to Silicon Valley. The left progressives of SF have long opposed the “Manhattanization of SF” because of it’s potential to bring in yuppies who have a different set political priorities, and have intentionally limited construction of new housing, but apparently political and economic incentives within the city have finally changed enough to cause them to lose this battle. Silicon Valley has been using SF as a dormitory for their tech workers for awhile now (one can read the SF progs complain about the private buses that ferry techies to Mountain View and Cupertino), and perhaps the tech industry’s push for more capacity was finally enough to defeat the NIMBY’s. SF’s techy population is more “liberaltarian” than reactionary, but they have decidedly less pc views on how to handle the underclass than the established left-prog crowd, who are now being priced out across the bay toward Oakland. I expect SF to be a very different place in ten years, and quite possibly a more pleasant one.

jim says:

Fifty percent underclass was just a feeling I got wandering around the city about ten years ago.

Looking up statistics, crime levels in San Francisco are worse than 90% of cities and double the California crime rate

Still, my gut feeling was that it was considerably worse than double, which data is contradicted by present day statistics. Maybe it was considerably worse than double ten years ago.

The impression of menace is what gave me that feeling that the place was fifty percent underclass, forty percent overclass, five percent working class and five percent middle class – that plus the fact that one of the most progressive cities in the world, the west coast epicenter of political correctness, was relying on nazi stormtrooper methods to keep the n*****s in line. They were practicing anarcho tyranny in most of California – minor crimes were legal, and still are, but they were not practicing anarcho tyranny in San Francisco. In San Francisco, minor crimes got you roughed up by the cops and sent to jail.

[…] The cause of the decline is pretty obvious in San Francisco. Police are kicking black ass. The highl… […]

Red says:

Off topic:
“By switching to gold, we can measure both wages and prices on an absolute scale—in ounces—and we can make precise comparisons. To convert the price of anything to gold, just divide the price by the current gold price. For example, in 2011 if a big-screen TV was $785, then divide that by the gold price of that year; the television set cost half an ounce of gold.

The bottom line is that, in terms of gold, wages have fallen by about 87 percent. To get a stronger sense of what that means, consider that back in 1965, the minimum wage was 71 ounces of gold per year. In 2011, the senior engineer earned the equivalent of 63 ounces in gold. So, measured in gold, we see that senior engineers now earn less than what unskilled laborers earned back in 1965.

That’s right: today’s highly skilled professional is making less in real, comparative terms than yesterday’s unskilled worker.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/10/09/measured-in-gold-the-story-of-american-wages-is-an-ugly-one/

[…] covered in various comments. Besides Michael‘s piece with which I agree with, here are some of the responses to it I may not. In one of his responses Jim elaborated somewhat on my […]

[…] Jim Donald, “The Anti-Anti Reactionary FAQ” (Series, Part 1, 2, 3, 4, Sluts, War and Democide, […]

[…] James Donald: crime […]

doux says:

Societies with politics far to the left of usa have lower crime rates. practicing lenient sentancing policies and rehabiliation is vastly more economical and effective than the cruel, vindictive right wing solutions to crime.

that said, most of the crime spike in the postwar usa and its sudden decline in the late 90s can be entirely and conclusively explained by … lead in gasoline and its prohibition by the government. read the article ‘america’s real criminal element: lead’ by kevin drum of motherjones.

jim says:

Societies with politics far to the left of usa have lower crime rates. practicing lenient sentancing policies

What you mean is that there are societies far to the left of us with fewer blacks.

However, they have been industriously importing blacks to give themselves the vast advantages of multiculturalism and diversity, and now, according to the International Crime Victimization survey, Sweden has contact crime (muggings, etc) equal to the US, and rape at higher levels.

doux says:

ther is debate as to why sweden has a higher rate of reported rape. i think the ‘reported’ part here is crucial, since almost any legal detail can increase or diminish the amount of measured instances of rape. in arab countries, for example, the amount of reported rapes is very low mainly because authorities decide not to count various forms of sexual violences as rape. swedeno in contrast has a very progressive regime. you are foolish if really think that sweden is some kind of sexual violence hell hole, as you no doubt do since i can’t imagine you reading any other sources except those that closely match your preconceptions.

crime in general and recividism rapes in praticular are lower in liberal justice systems. the actual evidence has never been on the side of harsh sentancing. it certainly doesnt explain the decline in us crime rates, as the removal of lead from gasoline does. lead and its effects on the human mind, combined with poverty and limited education, also explain almost entirely the black iq gap and crime rates.

jim says:

why sweden has a higher rate of reported rape. i think the ‘reported’ part here is crucial, since almost any legal detail can increase or diminish the amount of measured instances of rape

Which is why everyone uses the international crime victimization to compare crimes between nations. The international crime victimization survey uses a common standard, and reports Sweden to be a hell hole.

Gegen Cro-Mags says:

“Which is why everyone uses the international crime victimization to compare crimes between nations. The international crime victimization survey uses a common standard, and reports Sweden to be a hell hole.”

I’m a Swede (and sympathetic to Neo-reaction FWIW), but somehow this just doesn’t fit with my impression of the situation. There’s no reason to exaggerate the problems – there are enough of them here to go around without adding hyperbole.

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