Censorship

Like a frog boiled, we have now reached Stalinist levels of censorship.  They won’t send you to the gulag, but in the later days of Stalinism they seldom did that.  Rather, your career depended on compliance

I was listening to Chris Rock’s hilarious rant “We hate black people too!” and my son became alarmed, lest some one sneak up on my house and listen near the windows.

Everyone in America tells the official story of the banking crisis: “de-regulation”.  The Israeli central bank correctly blames government intervention aimed at making loans available to poor people with bad credit – though even the Israeli central bank somehow neglects to mention that in America, those poor people were not poor white males.

Observe that every fiction book must have properly counterstereotypical characters to rebut the characteristics of race and sex.  Thus, for example, John Ringo, having committed the unpardonable sin of a few lines about stereotypical blondes in “live Free or Die” has to make the main character of the sequel (“Citadel”) a counter stereotypical blonde.  In the sequel, the rhetoric about freedom mysteriously mutates into anticolonialist, or decolonist, rhetoric, perhaps because merely having a counter stereotypical blonde as main character is insufficient penance for making a joke about blondes.  Everything published must serve the higher purpose of inculcating correct political attitudes.

If you are an executive, and you use the word “blonde” as a noun your company can get whacked with a multimillion dollar lawsuit, and if you are an untenured academic and use the word “blonde” as a noun you will never get tenure.  (Tenured academics, however, can and regularly do say “blonde” without losing tenure.)

Everyone is terrified of tripping over some incredibly obscure rule of political correctness that they have never heard of.   My favorite in this regard comes from the history of science.  Among the many recent rewrites of the history of science is that before 1972, Darwin’s big idea was natural selection, and the idea that families of species were related by blood, were actual families, with a common ancestor, was attributed to Lamarck and other predecessors of Darwin.  After 1972, history was abruptly rewritten – though the original books by Lamark are still around and continue to say what they so plainly said.  Yet whenever I raise this story as an example of PC, no one dares notice that old books say what they said, and that Lamarck says what he said.

O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and four fingers extended. “How many fingers am I holding up, Winston”

“Four”

“And if the party says it is not four but five—then how many?”

I point people to what Lamarck said:H Elliot’s translation of Lamarck’s book , pages 19 to 38, Lamarck discusses of species, the fact that forms naturally occur in group. Pages 38 to 39, he explains them by common descent, by shared blood or sap from an individual common ancestor, Page 179, he gives a family tree of the animals, And I point them to what old books say he said, and yet, upon being notified that since 1972 the politically correct position is that Lamarck did not say what he said

Page 641 “Biology Today”, 1972:

Lamarck’s theory is not a hypothesis of common descent, which ascribes the common characteristics of a particular species to their common descent from a single species. He claims that mammals are produced by the gradual complexification of reptiles and that this elevation is going on constantly. Although all mammals are descended from reptiles, they are not descended from the same reptiles.

They will dutifully say that O’Brien is holding up five fingers, dutifully say that the position stated in Page 641 “Biology Today”, 1972, is true, even though they never heard of it until I raised as an example of political correctness gone crazy. What appears in a 1972 textbook supposedly must be true, even if it flatly contradicts what appears in a 1965 textbook, and flatly contradicts the source materials it describes. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

Check the origins of the theory of common descent, that similar species are similar because related by blood or sap, and try it on someone.   Anyone who is in the slightest bit politically correct will chicken out.  All the books that address the topic before 1972 say that Lamarck proposed common descent in the sense that families of species are families by blood, all the respectable books after 1972 that address the topic say he did not.  And therefore, every respectable person will say he did not, no matter that what the textbooks said before 1972, no matter what Lamarck himself said.

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11 Responses to “Censorship”

  1. sconzey says:

    I’m sorry if I’m being stupefyingly dense, but what’s the significance of ascribing the theory of Common Descent to Darwin rather than Lamarck?

    • jim says:

      The significance is obscure and complicated, which makes the reluctance of anyone respectable to deviate after 1972 all the more remarkable.

      The full title of “The Origin” is “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life”

      By races, Darwin means both human and non human subspecies. Selection occurs on the level of species, races, and individuals. Races, Darwin tells us, originate by differential selection pressures on populations, and races tend to differentiate into species, eventually becoming so different that crosses have reduced or nonexistent fertility. Races are the origin of species.

      Darwin cheerfully and optimistically tells us:

      At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

      In short, natural selection is raaaaciiiiiiist! That animals are evolving implies that humans are evolving. That humans are evolving implies that human races are unlikely to be equal. (Darwin also concluded that sexual selection means that the differences between the human sexes are likely to be substantial and politically incorrect. In fact, he originated every major way in which biology leads to politically incorrect conclusions. Every politically incorrect fact from evolutionary psychology, you will find in foreshadowed in Darwin)

      So what is a good academic to do? To avoid trouble, the academic piously de-emphasizes natural selection, blandifies it, and skips over the more disturbing aspects of the process. But then how is he to explain why the biology department has busts of this dreadful nineteenth century racist carved into the stone walls of the ivy league biology department?

      To avoid chiseling the busts off the wall, our pious academic needs to give Darwin something else to be famous for. And that something else is common descent. You will find that a source emphasizes the supposed fact that Lamarck supposedly denied common descent, in proportion as it de-emphasizes or denigrates natural selection.

      Thus “Biology Today”, 1972 edition (the first occurrence of this nonsense that I am aware of) tells us on page 638

      The central claim of that book [The Origin of Species] can be fairly simply stated. According to the Darwinian theory, any natural group of similar species-all the mammal species, for instance-owe their common mammalian characteristics to a common descent from a single ancestral mammalian species

      Which is of course total bunkum. The central claim of that book is natural selection.

      And since common descent, rather than natural selection was now supposedly Darwin’s claim to fame, they had to lie about Lamarck: Page 641

      Lamarck’s theory is not a hypothesis of common descent, which ascribes the common characteristics of a particular species to their common descent from a single species. He claims that mammals are produced by the gradual complexification of reptiles and that this elevation is going on constantly. Although all mammals are descended from reptiles, they are not descended from the same reptiles

      Somehow they neglect to mention that everyone before 1972 thought that Lamarck’s theory was a theory of common descent, or explain what caused this change of mind.

      Before 1972, everyone who wrote on the issue said that Lamarck proposed common descent, but had an erroneous mechanism for the origin of species, and later Darwin proposed common descent with a sound mechanism for the origin of species: survival of the fittest. After 1972, everyone, or everyone except for a few stray evil crackpots who could not possibly get a job anywhere in academia or government employment anywhere in the world, declared that Lamarck did not propose common descent, in the sense of explaining likenesses between kinds as the result of shared blood. You can check this from Google books. (Google books, advanced search, with date, common descent and Lamarck. A lot of the books are in snippet view, so you have to switch between google books and the internet archive.)

      A single view is imposed simultaneously on everyone, and everyone falls into line.

      Google books search for Lamarck and common descent before 1972

      Google books search for Lamarck and common descent after 1972

      For example “Outline and general principles of the history of life” By William Diller Matthew, Ayer Publishing 128, page 52 tells us:

      Thus animals and plants are arranged according to the degree of resemblance in their form and structure and habits and so on. But what does this resemblance mean? What does it signify, or is it just an accident. It can hardly be mere chance or coincidence; there must be reasons back of it. There is a reason back of everything. There is a perfectly good reason why a pebble resembles an egg, if we had time to discuss it. But it is a reason that can hardly apply in this case. Common sense makes that obvious

      As for the species, we know well enough what the reason is in that case. Individuals of the same species resemble each other in form and structure almost to the point of identity because they are related. They are father and son, brother and sister, related in various degrees of consanguinity, in the very literal sense chips off the old block, but each chip has grown into a new block just like its parent. They can, and do, interbreed freely, but they either cannot, or do not customarily, interbreed with other speces, and that is why the species are and remain distinct.

      But what about the general and families and so on? Is their resemblance also a matter of relationship, or what is the reason? Linnaeus did not think it was. He believed, as did most scientists of his time, that each species was separately created and had remained distinct and separate, just like it is, since it first appeared on the earth. The great paleontologist Cuvier took the same view. On the other hand, Lamarck and many others of his time believed that the different species of a genus resembled each other because they were of common descent, and each species had gradually changed in form and become distinct and ceased to interbreed; and in his studies on the fossil mollusks in the Tertiary strata of the Paris basin he believed that he saw the actual record of those changes preserved in the fossils from the successive strata.

      So the interpretation of Lamarck changed abruptly, mysteriously, and uniformly in 1972. But what did Lamarck himself say?

      According to “Biology Today”, page 641, Lamarck denies that common characteristics are the result of blood descent, but in Elliot’s translation, pages 20 to 39, Lamarck discusses common characteristics at great length, and then asks on page 38 “what are the causes which have given rise to this undoubted state of affairs”, and then, on page 39 depicts one seed of the same plant going one way, and fathering one species, and another seed of that same plant going another way and fathering a different species.

      • The full quote is somewhat more easily understood, in my opinion:

        “The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, convinced by general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks incessantly occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridæ [JSW: Tarsiers and Lemurs]—between the elephant and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus [JSW: platypus] or Echidna, and other mammals. But all these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

        He still considers Australians to be closer to gorillas than caucasians, but modern scholars blame that on his ignorance of nurture vs nature; they are of the opinion that all modern human beings are capable of civilized behavior, but “nurture” is handicapping progress in many “populations,” as it were.

        • jim says:

          When the Australian government provides housing for full blooded aboriginals, the housing owes more to zoo enclosures than to European style housing, implicitly admitting what is explicitly denied.

          Full blooded aboriginals are housed in isolated places where normal people cannot get at them, and they cannot get at normal people, and are housed in buildings built more as if to contain animals than people – as if they were closer to gorillas than caucasians, not withstanding the vast amount of politically correct piety with which this policy is covered.

        • Right, but PC scholars will say that is only because they have not been raised in a proper society, not because they are inherently genetically different in ways that are materially important.

  2. spandrell says:

    This is the most disturbing shit i´ve read in some time.

    I never thought it went that far. Then again I´m not in natural science.
    This goes too far to be understood with Sailer´s theory of PC’s origin.

    • jim says:

      If I understand Sailer’s theory, it is that the Joos did it. As Mencius observes,this gravely under estimates the seriousness of the problem.

      I congratulate Steve Sailer on his important and insightful analysis of what was done, but his theory of who did it and why fails to explain several facts.

      Political correctness and affirmative action set in around 1890 or so, and has been getting steadily more severe and censorious ever since, but Jews did not get a strong hand in academia until 1950 or so. So it cannot be the Jews doing it.

      Secondly, the period where Jews were politically correct was only about a generation or so. The demonic hateful stupid nasty evil oppressor class used to be white male anglo saxon protestants. Today, however, the demonic hateful stupid nasty evil oppressor class is white males. Male Jews are now part of the evil capitalistic phallocentric oppressor class. Today, a Jew has to be somewhat antisemitic, or else he is suspected of being a neocon or orthodox Jew, suspected of failing to convert to progressivism with sufficient sincerity. Political correctness started before Jews were politically correct, and today they have ceased to be politically correct. The politically correct see people as Orthodox Jews who obviously are not – which suspicion is apt to adversely affect a good pious politically correct progressive Jew’s career.

      For the Joo theory to fit, political correctness and affirmative action has to come in after World War II, but we see plenty of political correctness and affirmative action well before that. After 1900 or so, American schoolchildren were taught the story of Daniel Boone with all the facts that made the story dramatic and important (the savage behavior of the child torturing savages, and the christian and forgiving conduct of Daniel Boone) removed from it. The lost tribes of Israel got written out of the history of the Great Zimbabwe starting 1906 or so.

      The great Zimbabwe was built by black people who look noticeably less black than their neighbors, and who claim to be the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. The older parts of the great Zimbabwe have markedly better workmanship, while the newer parts resemble the recent workmanship of those that claim to be the builders – whose stone and metal workmanship was still far superior to their more black looking neighbors, though far inferior to that of the original builders of the great Zimbabwe.

      This looks like a classic lesson in the evil of race mixing – and academics have been walking on eggshells about the great Zimbabwe all the way back since the place was discovered. Even in the oldest books, no one wants to speak plainly.

      Eventually gene testing showed that the blacks claiming to be Hebrews were in fact substantially Hebrew – whereupon the great Zimbabwe was immediately re-dated to make it all the same date and all quite recently built, no longer with older and newer parts, so that even if built by Hebrews, not a lesson in the evils of race mixing.

      Political correctness set in with the version of history that did not cover the crimes of the savages against the children of Daniel Boone nor mention that Lieutenant Stephen Decatur was fighting to free white people enslaved by Muslims. Hate America First history set in the schools not long after 1900

      It covered thanksgiving as the pilgrims thanking the Indians for saving them, rather than thanking God for the prosperity that ensued when they returned to the capitalism commanded by God – therefore it was hate America first.

      Schools were directly controlled by the state, so succumbed first. Television and radio indirectly controlled by the state, being broadcast over government owned frequencies, so succumbed second. Hollywood, being controlled by Jews, was not controlled by Brahmins, so succumbed last, directly contradicting the theories of the Joo spotters. John Wayne was never politically correct, but school was. If the Joos did it, would have been the other way around.

      • What is “The Great Zimbabwe?”

        • jim says:

          A big stone ruin in what used to be called Rhodesia. It shows the most advanced workmanship in black Africa, and is built on top of worked out goldmines. The obvious explanation is that foreigners came to dig up the gold, and there is ample archaelogical evidence and biological evidence for this – notably that the descendents of the peoples that built it show half Jewish in gene tests, but official politically correct history is that it was built by black people

      • Cavalier says:

        “It covered thanksgiving as the pilgrims thanking the Indians for saving them, rather than thanking God for the prosperity that ensued when they returned to the capitalism commanded by God – therefore it was hate America first.”

        Wow.

        I spent my entire life hearing about Thanksgiving as being about maize given to the settlers by the Indians, and somehow Sacagawea having something to do with it, though I’ve pretty sure she wasn’t for another 200 years yet.

  3. […] Jim: "we have now reached Stalinist levels of censorship." It’s not really censorship though. It’s more like thought control. […]

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