DEI Detribalization

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

The great objective of DEI was to tribalize our institutions, recruiting government and corporate employees into affinity groups based on their race, sex, sexuality and other factors, and then defining institutional goals around the ‘right’ tribal mix through selective hiring and promotions.The complete inversion of civil rights, from race-neutral to race-conscious, also transformed the intended purpose of government and all lesser institutions, from tribal neutrality to tribal partisanship, and it was impossible to achieve this without tribalizing government.

Government and other institutions stopped being merit-based or democratic, and came to reflect the tribal coalition politics that had come to define the Democratic Party’s urban machines. Tammany Hall’s old corrupt apportionment of government offices based on political favors was smoothly supplemented with racial and ethnic coalition quotas in major cities.

The old corrupt system that traded votes for jobs, bloc votes for political influence, was layered over with the language of civil rights and academic verbiage to make handing out jobs based on quotas seem progressive rather than the worst kind of machine politics progressives once decried. Graft became diversity. Networks of community groups swapping votes for money and jobs stopped being criminal and was celebrated as a step forward for those same machines.

Tribalized blocs were embedded not only in elected government but within the bureaucracies whose employees became activists, promoting and rewarding ‘their own kind’ to broker votes. The shakedown politics of Jesse Jackson’s PUSH movement and imitators like Al Sharpton began the process of embedding the same system within major corporations. Corporate lobbying from Comcast’s NBC deal to Philip Morris’ tobacco business to Enron’s shady finances came to depend on recruiting some of those same minority organizations to defend them.

Corporate DEI finished the job by modeling government and university systems with top DEI officers and affinity groups that employees were strongly encouraged to join for the sake of their careers. Soon corporate life had become equally tribalized with blocs of employees that saw it as their mission to defend and promote members of the same group above their stated jobs.

That is why it’s not enough to kill DEI, to tear it out of governments and universities, and to closely scrutinize corporate misuse of DEI, but we must ‘detribalize’ the system.

As we have already seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is no easy job. It’s a good deal easier to tribalize a society, to make people see themselves foremost in terms of clan and tribe, and to advance those interests above those of the larger society, than to convince them to pull together.

In a few generations, Democrats largely reversed the premises of the American Experiment and reasserted the tribal norm in most of the rest of the world. They bolstered this destruction of Americanism with ideological indoctrination through the media, the entertainment industry and academia, through government regulations, workplace training and an entire workplace culture.

Outlawing DEI and treating its presence in as many workplaces as possible as a civil rights violation is vital, but it is vital to push back against the tribal culture that it has created.

The civil rights movement was correct in arguing that it was difficult to police discrimination. Getting rid of official DEI will not change the reality that an entire corporate culture now exists whose leaders have been indoctrinated with DEI, that finding an HR office untainted by DEI in any major institution is all but impossible and that a generation of workers was taught that sticking to their own kind and showing hostility to white people in the workplace was a virtue.

Even while lecturing us about “systemic racism”, wokeness created an actual systemic racism.

DEI bans are being met with institutional resistance as government offices, universities and corporations change those three letters to some others while changing absolutely nothing else. After the Supreme Court banned racial discrimination in college admissions, universities quickly turned to ‘legal’ ways to discriminate by finding ways to get the same admissions numbers using other factors that would not technically put them in violation of lawsuits and court orders.

Expect universities as well as corporations to turn to some of these methods to lock in DEI.

The Justice Department as well as state enforcement will have to be alert to evidence of stealth DEI and stealth metrics being adopted to intentionally discriminate against ‘unfavored’ groups.

And Americans will need to be ‘detribalized’. While most Americans are not bigoted, a sizable minority, especially among college graduates, have been taught that discrimination is praiseworthy, and once a vice comes to be seen as a virtue, and a moral goal that ought to be pursued regardless of rules and regulations, many will continue to covertly discriminate.

In the larger sense we will need to undo the original sin of the civil rights movement which was corrupted by later leaders into believing that the government needed to tribalize to fight racism.

Tribalism over merit, no matter whether it’s dressed up in progressive colors, as affirmative action did, or reparations for past wrongs, is racist and makes it impossible to end racism. Tribalism can only advance the interests of a certain group and while there are settings where tribalism is natural and healthy, tribalism when applied to larger institutions is corrosive.

The world is filled with nations that apportion jobs, housing and government positions based on tribe and clan in the name of social harmony. And those places are always one bad day away from riots, civil wars and genocide. That is not what we want the United States to be.

Tribal neutrality would return us to the original liberal bargain. Under tribal neutrality, government would cease to be partial to any group, it would instead maintain public spaces as a neutral space in which no one would be prioritized and therefore no one would be discriminated against. Much as France’s Laïcité secularism separated religion and state, America needs an identity ‘secularism’ that would prevent any mixing of personal identity and position.

Americans have already seen that the alternative to government tribal neutrality is tribal warfare.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

The American Left’s Tribal Collectivism Has No Future

Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog 

The great paradox of the American Left is that it aspires to collectivism, but can only get it through tribalism. Every Democrat presidential primary is a frantic effort by collectivist candidates to amass enough tribal support from different identity politics groups to secure the collectivist nomination.

Senator Bernie Sanders, the great socialist hope of collectivism, tried to rope in Latinos and black Democrats, succeeded with the former, failed with the latter, and lost South Carolina. And everything.

When lefties switched from class warfare to identity politics, they became hopelessly mired in tribalism. Their old animating principle of an egalitarian society has long since given way to a tribal society in which certain groups will have more power than others because equality can only come about through massive doses of inequality. But even that is considered hopelessly old-fashioned liberalism. The new wave of identity politics doesn’t even justify its demands for special treatment by promising that one day we’ll all be equal. The tribal premise of inherent inequality is the essence of intersectionality.

Collectivists and constitutionalists believe in equality. Tribals believe in inherent inequality.

Collectivism promised to put an end to inequality by remedying the unfairness of a society in which unequal opportunities led to unequal outcomes. In the United States, collectivism attacked the country’s founding principle of constitutionalism, a legal framework which protected individual aspiration, by claiming that social inequality made aspiration impossible without government social controls.

The political strategies of the American Left made collectivism into a bad bargain with tribalism. Even before the modern multiracial coalitions, the Democrats drew power from 19th century urban coalitions of immigrant groups, feeding their rivalries and suspicions to hold on to power in New York and Boston. The Draft Riots of the Civil War were the country’s earliest massive race riots, perpetrated by the Democrat Party’s urban political machines which wanted to bring down President Lincoln by mobilizing immigrant groups to riot against social inequality, while, among other things, burning black orphanages.

Leftist groups pushing for more radical collectivist solutions sought out immigrants, then racial and finally sexual minorities to build their coalitions around. The general class of social solutions gave way to the particularist demands of coalition members leading to a Democrat Party defined by tribal groups that have adopted each other’s most extreme positions even if they are unappetizing to the country.

The Democrats struggle with a message that is both collectivist and tribal, promising equality to all and special treatment to some, collectivist socialist solutions to health care and employment, and tribal allotments for political appointments and benefit programs, as equality and inequality go to war.

But the cultural tensions of combining collectivism and tribalism run deeper than the policy tensions.

Tribalism is defined by the superiority of the tribe to rival tribes. Its honor and shame code demands that other tribes be regularly humiliated to assert its superiority and gain ‘mana’ for its members.

Identity politics is a set of political rituals that acts out these tribal imperatives on college campuses, in urban governments, and in the marketplace of ideas. The civil rights movement long ago degraded into tribal posturing of this sort. Its successor movements play out the assertions of persecution and superiority, humiliating tribal enemies, beginning with white men, and ending with anyone who isn’t a member of the group, and portraying these tawdry tribal rituals as civil rights empowerment.

Tribalism is amoral and actively hostile to principles. Its virtues are tribal and its heroes are those whose posturing humiliates the enemy. Its essential identity dehumanizes outsiders. It cannot think in terms of abstract ideas, it rejects any moral code that supersedes tribalism, and its intellectual life consists of rationalizing the contradictions between tribal behavior, and external moral codes and principles.

Politics is inherently tribal. Collectivists insist that life be based around political activism and their morality inevitably becomes warped around tribalism even in the absence of actual tribes. When collectivist politics, as in America, revolves around tribal coalitions, then tribalism rules everything.

The arguments for collectivism are based around abstractions, ideas, and ideals. These are the very things that tribalism cannot tolerate. As collectivists become tribal, they abandon objectivity and embrace subjectivity. The truth becomes ‘my truth’. Lived experience supersedes expert planning. Every objective idea, from mathematics to the structure of reality, comes under attack by tribalists.

Tribal subjectivism evaluates every idea based on the tribe it came from. A tribal argument is that Newton’s Third Law of Motion is the work of a dead white man. Diversity is just a tribal contention that personal perspectives define ideas and that therefore perspectives matter more than ideas. There is no reality, just a series of subjective impressions filtered through race, gender, and sexual orientation.

The tribal reality is personal and subjective. The science that demands a vast universe governed by unbreakable laws appears cold and alien to a tribal. Tribals don’t believe in science, but in magic. They just call their science, magic, and their magicians, scientists and experts, but their science is not based on reason, but on will, ideology is the incantation that its magicians recite to bring it forth.

Collectivism begins with science, but ends with magic. That is why it always fails. Its experts become false prophets who, like Lysenko, tell the rulers that reality comports with their ideology. Tribalism dispenses with an objective reality, transforming science into the magical reality of the subjective. The end result is even worse than Lysenkoism, but is colorful, apocalyptic, and invariably diverse.

Lysenkoism’s calculated irrationality had nothing on the apocalyptic panoply of global warming.

Collectivism wants a world full of identical factories. Tribalism wants to get back to nature. Collectivist science wants to actually accomplish things. Tribal science seeks the undoing of industrial civilization. The destruction of civilization is the goal that the great movement of global warming is openly aimed at.

The great collectivist vision of governments getting bigger and of a massive infrastructure running everyone’s lives is doomed by the tribal impulse to dominate and destroy those institutions.

Collectivists embrace tribalism to advance their goals, but tribalism destroys collectivism. It does this on the micro scale, as many white liberals who ran afoul of identity politics in urban areas found out, but also on the macro scale, as every dysfunctional institution from major cities to the EU and the UN show.

The European Union is falling to mass tribal migrations and nationalist backlashes. The United Nations stopped functioning as anything except a corrupt clearinghouse once it fell to third world tribalism.

The Democrats who embraced tribalism for the sake of collectivism might profit from these examples.

Constitutionalism was a compromise between the extremes of tribalism and collectivism that neither denied the need for individual and group identities, nor the importance of institutions and ideas defined by reason and the rule of law. Collectivism sought to usurp constitutionalism only to fall into tribalism. Every ideological attack on constitutionalism ends in a descent into the swamps of tawdry tribalism.

The Left’s attack on the Constitution has been destroying the great bargain that made America possible.

Identity politics and big government don’t mix. The unstable compound only holds together as long as there is a common enemy who can serve as a threat to the greed that unites its corrupt factions. When that enemy, Republicans, the primordial white male, ceases to be a factor, then it all falls apart.

The American Left’s old collectivist dream is dead. Its current platform of industrial decimation and identity politics lead not to a world government, but to a fractured landscape of warring tribes.

Collectivism has fallen into tribalism every time it’s been tried. This time will be no different.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

We Need to Abandon Tribalism in America!

By Rich Kozlovich

On March 29, 2024 John Horvat II posted this article Fantasy Rules in Tribal Land Disputes, at American Thinker saying:

The news story reads like a classic land dispute between government and business interests against the claims of Indian tribes. Two massive projects are about to be started near a vast reservation in Arizona. The first is a power line that runs through an ancestral valley, and the second is a copper mine that sits atop a sacred mountain.

He went on to show the lunacy of this "sacred lands" and devotion to "old ways", and how the left rants unendingly about the need to abandon any or all projects that offend these "primitive" passions of systems that failed.   He also goes on to state:

....the same liberals who would do anything to keep Christianity out of the public square and policy do everything to defend Native American spirits "inhabiting" public lands..... it does not take much to stake a claim. A few artifacts or pottery chards suffice. Based on these shallow claims, multi-billion dollar projects can grind to a halt........some left-allied tribal members claim Indian spirits occupy the mountain......

Even when these "tribes" have no territorial claim of these properties in question whatsoever, it seems all they have to do is say their ancestor's spirits " inhabit" some place or other, or they find some broken shards of pottery, and that makes it theirs.  

Now, how could anyone find fault with that kind of irrefutable logic?  Get real!

Not all tribe members agree with this claptrap, as they're now Christians and live modern lives, but this is just another destructive leftist battle of narratives, and their narrative must be soundly rejected.

The reality is these tribes were defeated nation long ago, and they need to accept it, get over it, and take advantage of the greatest system of governance that world has ever known, and the resulting economic powerhouse it created.  If they refuse, well, this is America, and people are entitled to embrace whatever folly they choose, but that's their problem to resolve, not mine or anyone else's. 

The nation needs to abandon the idea of reservations as semi-autonomous authorities, right along with all this "sacred spirit inhabited lands" claptrap.  Either they're Americans or they're not, either private property is Constitutionally protected or it's not.   This is just another destructive leftist effort at Balkanization and it needs to be abandoned.

Unfortunately this narrative isn't just about native Americans.  There are entirely too many in America who claim minority, or some other kind of protected status, and they have demands.  

Well, hey man, I get it, after all, I'm Serbian and there are only 190,000 Serbians in America, now that's a major minority.   But you know, Serbians think they're Americans, and like it.  

Imagine that!   

Our ancestors thought being Americans, who just happened to be Serbian, was far more important than being Serbians who just happen to live in America.  And guess what?  They passed that mentality off to their descendants, including in my family, who fought in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.   One was a career Navy Seal, and another was a graduate of Annapolis.   

I guess Serbians just don't get it.   Or, ....hey wait....., I just had a thought.  Perhaps.....and this is just a shot in the dark of course....., perhaps it's the rest of the world that doesn't "get it"? 

Just a thought.

The Thin Line Between Tribalism and Human Flourishing

Barry Brownstein February 20, 2023 @ American Institute for Economic Research

 

Walter Grinder, a grand champion of liberty, passed last December. While not well-published, Walter was a scholar of the literature of liberty and a leader at the Institute for Humane Studies. He was dedicated to removing barriers to human flourishing by imparting the ideals of liberty. John Hagel III, Walter’s long-time friend and collaborator, explained, “Walter was consumed by the desire to share his reading and thoughts with his network of libertarian associates and protégés in more personal ways, so that they could see more clearly how it connected with their specific work and interests.” Walter shared insights from his scholarship in the form of emails addressed to single individuals and blind copied to his network.  

In one of his emails, sent towards the end of his life, Walter wrote he had been “binging” the work of the Turkish-British author Elif Shafak. Walter marveled at “how well she sees into the human condition.” 

Walter understood insights into the human condition are crucial to understanding the mindsets that foster or hinder human flourishing. On his recommendation, I read Shafak’s well-researched novel of the Cyprus Civil War, The Island of the Missing Trees. Using the device of a Greek-Turkish couple split apart by the war, Shafak imparts poetic wisdom about the dangers of tribalism.

Shafak’s novel relates the lush island’s descent into tribal hatred as the people made more and more primitive choices. Greek and Turkish tribal fanatics worked without mercy to instill tribal identities, even turning warmhearted neighbors against each other. 

Tribalists would rather be a slave to their tribal identity than a member of a flourishing society. In his book Open: The Story of Human Progress, Johan Norberg quoted Peruvian novelist and essayist Mario Vargas Llosa:

The ‘call of the tribe’ – of that form of existence in which individuals enslave themselves […] is heard time after time by nations and peoples and, even within open societies, by individuals and collectivities that struggle tirelessly to negate the culture of freedom.” Authoritarian mindsets don’t end with tribal matters. 

Norberg added, 

My firm conviction is that it is precisely because we are so tribalist that we need an open, cosmopolitan world. If we did not regularly meet and communicate and exchange with individuals from other groups, they would forever remain the mysterious, dangerous outgroup, the barbarians at the gates.

In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek pointed out “the primitive man… was bound by an elaborate ritual in almost every one of his daily activities… was limited by innumerable taboos and… could scarcely conceive of doing things different from his fellows.” The growth of civilization, and thus human flourishing, depends on transcending such primitive limits.  

Before tribal conflict erupted into civil war, Shafak described Cyprus as a society with a web of communication and exchange: “[T]hey used to say, Greeks and Turks are flesh and fingernail. You can’t separate your fingernail from your flesh. Seems they were wrong. It could be done. War is a terrible thing. All kinds of wars. But civil wars are the worst perhaps, when old neighbors become new enemies.”

As open conflict began in the 1950s, Shafak related, British “experts believed … there was no need to fear mayhem and bloodshed because how could there be a civil war on such a pretty, picturesque island of blooming flowers and rolling hills?” Those pundits wondered, how could “cultivated” and “civilized people…  do anything violent?” The answers to such questions, as always, point to the inculcation of mistaken ideas.

Before the conflict, Shafak explained, Greek Cypriot Christians and Turkish Cypriot Muslims had actively worked together. That changed. “Political and spiritual leaders who reached out to the other side were silenced, shunned and intimidated – and some were targeted and killed by extremists on their own side.”

Greeks and Turks murdered thousands of ordinary individuals. “Death to traitors” signs appeared. Tribalism, Shafak wrote, triumphed: “The streets were not safe. Turks had to stick with Turks, Greeks with Greeks.” Commerce ground to a halt as people stayed home.

Shafak explored how tribalists erected barriers to peaceful cooperation: “Friends selling out friends. Now that’s a different kind of evil, one that we still haven’t come to grips with as humanity. It’s a difficult subject across the world – the acts of barbarity that happen off the battlefield.” Collectivization around tribal identities fosters barbarism. Tribalists readily sacrifice themselves in pursuit of warped ideas.

When we exclude the “other,” we forgo the fruits of human cooperation. We are sure “they” are at fault, when our fanaticism is the cause of our suffering. When we free others from our hatred, we free ourselves.

Shafak wrote, “I think of fanaticism – of any type – as a viral disease. Creeping in menacingly, ticking like a pendulum clock that never winds down, it takes hold of you faster when you are part of an enclosed, homogenous unit.”  

In 1964, the island was partitioned. Eventually, in 1974, the Turks invaded Cyprus, and the partition, including the capital Nicosia, became permanent. Shafak reported,  

By the end of that interminable [1974] summer, 4,400 people were dead, thousands missing. Around 160,000 Greeks living in the north moved south, and around 50,000 Turks moved north. People became refugees in their own country. Families lost their loved ones, abandoned their homes, villages and towns; old neighbors and good friends went their separate ways, sometimes betrayed one another. 

A buffer zone as much as four miles wide ran along the permanent partition. Buildings and shops within the zone went to ruin. Shafak described the distressing situation: “Roads were blocked by coils of barbed wire, piles of sandbags, barrels full of concrete, anti-tank ditches and watchtowers. Streets ended abruptly, like unfinished thoughts, unresolved feelings.” Commerce was destroyed, Shafak explained, as a “worldwide resort… became a ghost town.” She continues:

The beaches of Varosha were cordoned off with barbed wire, cement barriers and signs ordering visitors to stay away. Slowly, the hotels disintegrated into webs of steel cables and concrete pylons; the pubs turned dank and deserted, the discotheques crumbled; the houses with flowerpots on their windowsills dissolved into oblivion. 

Tribal hatred ran through Turks and Greeks, but Shafak observed, “each side will tell only their own version of things. Narratives that run counter, without ever touching, like parallel lines that never intersect.” Insightfully, she reflected, tribalists see only their own pain: “People on both sides of the island suffered – and people on both sides would hate it if you said that aloud. Why? Because the past is a dark, distorted mirror… There is no room in there for someone else’s pain.”

When tribal hatreds take hold, there is no room to forgive, nor shed victim identities. Shafak told, “When elderly Cypriot women wish ill upon someone, they don’t ask for anything blatantly bad to befall them. They don’t pray for lightning bolts, unforeseen accidents or sudden reversals of fortune. They simply say, May you never be able to forget. May you go to your grave still remembering.”

In short, Shafak surmised, “Tribal hatreds don’t die … They just add new layers to hardened shells.” 

Shafak reflected on how poor choices lead to unimagined ruin: “If someone had told us the island would be partitioned along ethnic lines, and some day we would have to look for unmarked graves, we wouldn’t have believed them.” Tribal hatred reset expectations for Cyprus: “Now we don’t believe it can ever be united again.” Yet, because the unimaginable ruin did happen, Shafak offered hope an open society could happen when people make better choices: “What we think is impossible changes with every generation.”

Walter Grinder would have agreed that the impossible is possible because of the power of choice. The light created by human cooperation is more powerful than the darkness cast by tribal hatred.

Partitioned Cyprus might seem light years away from the United States. Yet, Norberg warns: Human beings “are wired for both tribalism and tolerance, and the intellectual atmosphere reinforces different parts of this complex personality. A culture that says the collective is everything and the individual nothing will get the individuals it asks for.” As destructive as tribal Cypriot leaders then, current politicians, educators, and others encourage Americans to adopt tribal identities. It ended badly in Cyprus. The outcome of tribalist mindsets dividing Americans may differ only in degree. 

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 Barry Brownstein is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore. He is the author of The Inner-Work of Leadership, and his essays have appeared in publications such as the Foundation for Economic Education and Intellectual Takeout. To receive Barry’s essays in your inbox, visit mindsetshifts.com

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America Isn't the World, and The Left Hates America!

By Rich Kozlovich 

One of the things I never cease to be fascinated with is why so many smart people who write about international affairs miss the most important component in understanding international affairs.   And that is:  

Most of the world has no concept of capitalism or democracy as we know it, understand it and practice it.  It is not part of their foundational social and cultural paradigm.  And when we make economic or political decisions based on our concept of how the world should work – it usually fails to produce the desired results

In Muslim controlled countries democratic institutions are impossible because Islam requires all to obey those at the top, and we have to remember, the real violence is mostly going on in these countries because of two factors.  Tribalism and Muslim sectarianism - both tribal issues.  When you scratch the surface of those who took sides in Libya and Syria you find they were tribes fighting the dominant tribe, just as they have always done.  These are medieval societies with modern transportation, weapons, and communication trappings imposing tyranny on those from a different tribe. Capitalism, rule of law, and democracy cannot exist in that kind of political drama.

In most African countries it is all about tribes.  It isn’t about capitalism versus socialism - it’s about tribal culture - even in South Africa.  White South Africa was at one time was one of the world’s most stable economies.  It’s now a third world nation due to the black South African leaders thinking that had been molded by the socialists of the ANC, and their foundational tribal social paradigm.  And now they are a corrupt third world country needing financial aid, and is a crime filled disaster.

Tribalism is a form of socialism just as Islam is a socialist concept in its practical application, or perhaps we should be calling it “central planning collectivist tyranny” as a more instructive term.  Those at the top make all the rules and everyone else obeys, or else!   Until all that changes, it doesn’t matter what outsiders do.  They will always be a mess, preventing solid investments from anyone, inside or outside of Africa, or the Middle East.

As for those on the outside, they will merely take advantage of whatever opportunities arise and then walk away when those opportunities end, leaving Africa with less than they started with, and its fault of tribal cultural mentalities.

And let’s try and get this once and for all.  Giving untold billions and crying a river of tears won’t change that!  In fact, it exacerbates the problem since those billions go into the pockets of corrupt petty dictators and their corrupt myrmidons, allowing them to stay in power and abuse those not in power. 

Remember, whether it’s in the nations of Africa or the Middle East, if you’re not part of the ruling tribe, you’re not a real citizen.  They treat those of other tribes as a conquering army would treat those conquered, and it's interesting how outraged the world was at the apartheid governments of Rhodesia and South Africa yet remain totally silent at the atrocities perpetrated by these now totally corrupt murderous black governments, and it started early in their rule.

In this 2012 article by Alex Newman, Genocide looms for white farmers , he notes:

South Africa's black president sings killing songs as thousands massacred - The eyes of the world were on South Africa two decades ago as the apartheid era came to an end and Western governments helped bring the communist-backed African National Congress to power. Last month, however, when Genocide Watch chief Gregory Stanton declare that white South African farmers were facing a genocidal onslaught and that communist forces were taking over the nation, virtually nobody noticed. Few outside of South Africa paid attention either when, earlier this year, the president of South Africa began publicly singing songs advocating the murder of whites.............Disemboweled, drowned in boiling water - Many more victims have been savagely tortured, raped, disemboweled, drowned in boiling water or worse. The horrifying evidence is available for the world to see on countless sites throughout the Internet: pictures of brutalized dead women and children – even babies. 

End Apartheid Now! Wasn't that the sign that Bill Cosby demanded the show’s producers put up on the set of The Cosby Show, insisting on the importance to black Americans, and that every black home would have one, or something of that nature.   And the media blasted anyone who disagreed! Who knows, he might have been right, but in all my years as an exterminator I serviced a lot of apartments and homes occupied by black folks in those days, and I don’t remember seeing one. There may have been some, but the numbers would have been so small as to not make it a noticeable situation.

The problem with Americans is that we only see their world through binoculars in reverse and in irrational ways. We think that because we live the way we do that's the way everyone should live, and everyone should have the same privileges we have, and as a result we foolishly think there will be “little Americas” all over the world.  After all, we explained it to them so, we will all think alike, act alike, and then we'll all see the world in the same ways. 

Horsepucky!

And this goes to both sides of the philosophical spectrum. Bush’s drive to bring democracy to the Muslim world worked so well the minute they had the right to vote they promptly voted in a radical Islamist groups who promptly worked to take away their right to vote.  Voting and individual rights is antithetical to the Muslim faith. What does the word Islam mean?  In Arabic usage Islam implies “absolute submission, surrender and obedience that is obeying the injunctions of the ruler without objection.”  No matter what anyone says to the contrary, we need to be true observers of reality, and that's what really goes on in the real world.

As for South Africa; they have the same problem that all of Africa has; corruption of leadership on a massive scale that is foundational to the African experience. In days before the European colonization of Africa, they were ruled by tyrannical kings, many of whom enslaved blacks from other tribes, and those who opposed them, then sold them to Muslim and European slave traders.  That kind of corrupt tyranny is their social foundation. They have merely returned to that which is foundational to their societies, and slavery is still going on in Africa.

America is unique in the world today, and for that matter, in all of world history. Until recently we really believed we shouldn't be told what to do, what to eat, what to wear, what we are taught or what we will believe. Why? Because for the first time in human history we were a society created from the bottom up. Demanding that black Africa be just like black America was irrational, because South Africa, much like the rest of the world, is a very complex society, without any national standard as to language, religion or societal structural philosophy.

In 1948, “National Party leaders argued that South Africa did not comprise a single nation, but was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, coloured, and Indian. These groups were split further into thirteen nations or racial federations. White people encompassed the English and Afrikaans language groups; the black populace was divided into ten such groups.”

If there was ever a good reason to abandon this insanity called ‘multiculturalism’, South Africa is a perfect example.

The French Revolution was such a failure for the very reason that the American Revolution as such a success. Minimal government with every man making his own decisions about life versus the French concept of central planning run by an elite, which promptly started murdering untold numbers that had done nothing to deserve having their heads cut off. There is a reason the current French government is the Fifth Republic and may be on its way to a Sixth, versus America with its original republic intact. But the American republic is now under serious attack by the left and especially the Biden administration, in their quest to impose central control on all things!

As for Africa, as bad as some things were under the colonial powers, it can be argued that it couldn’t have been as bad as it is now. No one in America, at least among normal people, likes the idea of anyone being declared officially inferior. It is antithetical to our very concept of existence. However, that is what goes on in much of the rest of the world all the time, especially in Africa.

They do not view members of other tribes as equals. They view them as inferiors to be exploited. In the Muslim world the public is finally becoming aware that these leaders and their governments are nothing more than tribal societies with one tribe in charge, made up of one of the sects of Islam, and consider the other sects, who may be members of other tribes, as infidels and heretics, and therefore can subsequently exploited and even killed.

Where are the media and Hollywood now? Where are the protestors now? Where is the Federal government now? Where are the embargoes now? Most importantly, where was Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu? They, like Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State while in South Africa had no time to notice the atrocities against whites in South Africa.

Remembering that this was a country that abolished slavery in 1833. I would like to ask; did the white government of South Africa perform the atrocities that the black South African government is either perpetrating, promoting, or allowing to happen now? If so, I don’t remember it on the news of them main stream media at the time; so, I think we can assume it wasn’t normal or ongoing. Remember, the current black population of South Africa was not indigenous to South Africa, they migrated there.

Multiculturalism is antithetical to Americanism. We really need to start seeing the world as it is and the consequences of adopting insane policies. Multiculturalism is based on the mistaken idea that all cultures are equal, only the Church of Wokeness crowd wants us to think that all cultures are equal except the American culture.

I have a question. If the American culture is so bad why are so many trying to get here...even illegally...and with the support of those who decry our culture! And if the American culture is so bad, why is it Americans aren't flocking to get passports to live in every other country in the world? One thing should be clear.  

The left is doing all it can to turn America into an unstable tribal society with their diversity, inclusion and equity schemes of "multiculturalism", and while all that may sound great on the surface, but foundationally, it's still tribalism, and that kind of societal Balkanization destroys national stability, and that's their goal. 

Tribalism: The World on Parade

By Rich Kozlovich

One of the things I never cease to be fascinated with is why so many smart people who write about international affairs miss what I consider the most important component in understanding international affairs, and that is, most of the world has no concept of capitalism or democracy as we know it.  It's just not part of their historical and cultural paradigm.  As a result, when we make economic or political decisions on our concept of how the world should work, and then when those decisions fail to produce the desired results, which is often, then we're shocked they just don't seem to get it.  Imagine that.

After all, we explained it to them didn't we?  Why don't they get it?  Because their cultural and societal structures are antithetical to the very concept of American democracy and American capitalism. 

In Muslim controlled countries democratic institutions are impossible because Islam requires all to obey those at the top, and we have to remember, the real violence is mostly going on in these countries because of two factors, tribalism and Muslim sectarianism.  Right now Christians are being murdered in Islamic nations to the point of genocide, and no one seems to care. 

Millions of Christians in the region have been uprooted from their homes, and many have been killed, kidnapped, imprisoned and discriminated against, the report finds. It also highlights discrimination across south-east Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and in east Asia – often driven by state authoritarianism.

Let’s take as an example of what happened in Libya and Syria.  When you scratch the surface of those who took sides in Libya and Syria what we find are competing tribes fighting the dominant tribe, just as they’ve always done.  These are medieval societies with modern trappings imposing tyranny on those from a different tribe, or different religion, and even different Muslim sects. Capitalism, democracy and the rule of law cannot exist in that kind of political drama.

Aside from its religious veneer, Islam can easily be defined and understood by one wholly a religious word: tribalism — the bane of any democratic or pluralistic society.  The fact is, the entire appeal of Muhammad's call to the Arabs of his time lay in its compatibility with their tribal mores, three in particular: loyalty to one's tribe, enmity for other tribes, and raids on the latter to enrich and empower the former.............the tribe was what humanity is to modern people: to be part of it was to be treated humanely; to be outside it was to be treated inhumanely.  This is no exaggeration.................Muslims were to become "friends one to the other to the exclusion of outsiders."

Hence, the umma — an Arabic word etymologically connected to the word "mother" and which signifies the Islamic "Super-Tribe" that transcends racial, national, and linguistic barriers — was born, and its natural enemy remained everyone outside it..........the Islamic umma in one tent and the dehumanized tribes of the world in another — Muslims were exhorted to attack and subjugate all these "infidels" in order to make their Super-Tribe supreme............

The goal of Islam was to create "one tribe" predicated on religion, and it failed, except for creating the violence and destructiveness of jihad that prevails throughout Islam.   They view them as inferiors to be exploited. In the Muslim world these leaders and their governments are nothing more than tribal societies with one tribe in charge. Many times made up of one of the sects of Islam, and consider the other sects, who may be members of other tribes, as infidels, and can subsequently exploited, even murdered without consequence. 

In most African countries it really is all about tribes.  It isn’t about capitalism versus socialism, it’s about tribal culture and tribal dominance, including South Africa.  White South Africa was at one time was one of the world’s most stable economies.  It’s now a third world nation due to the black South African leaders thinking that had been molded by the socialists of the ANC, and now they are a third world country needing financial aid. 

First we need to understand that "tribalism" is foundational to the human condition.  We have an internal emotional, psychological and intellectual need to belong.  Take the passion we display in sports.  It's a them against us mentality, and often times, around the world it breaks into violence.  A war actually broke out in South America over a soccer game.  The game was the trigger, but the explosion was actually caused by underlying issues involving national interests.  National interests are a form of tribalism.   The need to belong, it's the us against them gene in action.

Tribalism as I've defined it can take the form of politics or religion.  Socialism is a form of tribalism. Islam is a socialist concept in its practical application.  Those at the top make all the rules and everyone else obeys.....or else!   Until all that changes, it doesn’t matter what outsiders do.  They will always be a mess, and that prevents solid long term investments that are beneficial to these societies from anyone - inside or outside of Africa, or the Middle East. 

As for those on the outside:  They will merely take advantage of whatever opportunities arise and then walk away when those opportunities end, leaving Africa will less than what they started out with, and it’s the fault of tribal culture mentalities. 

Let’s try and get this once and for all.  Giving these “nations” untold billions and crying a river of tears over their plight won’t change that.....ever!  In fact, it exacerbates the problem since those billions go into the pockets of corrupt petty dictators and their corrupt myrmidons, allowing them to stay in power and abuse those not in power.  Remember, whether it’s in the nations of Africa or the Middle East – if you’re not part of the ruling tribe, you’re not a real citizen.  The dominant tribe treat those of other tribes as a conquering army would treat those conquered.

For some years it’s been obvious the white population of South Africa was going to face genocide. Going back to 2012 in an article by Alex Newman entitled Genocide looms for white farmers  he notes: 

South Africa's black president sings killing songs as thousands massacred...........The eyes of the world were on South Africa two decades ago as the apartheid era came to an end and Western governments helped bring the communist-backed African National Congress to power. However, when Genocide Watch chief Gregory Stanton declare that white South African farmers were facing a genocidal onslaught and that communist forces were taking over the nation, virtually nobody noticed. Few outside of South Africa paid attention either when, earlier this year, the president of South Africa began publicly singing songs advocating the murder of whites.  

What was the response from America’s leftist government under Obama?

“The silence is so deafening that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t even publicly mention the problems when she was there last week. Instead, she was busy dancing, pledging billions of dollars and praising the ruling government.”

Here’s how the author describes this outrage:

“Tens of thousands of whites have been murdered throughout South Africa, too, according to estimates……Disemboweled, drowned in boiling water - Many more victims have been savagely tortured, raped, disemboweled, drowned in boiling water or worse. The horrifying evidence is available for the world to see on countless sites throughout the Internet: pictures of brutalized dead women and children – even babies.”

Remember the outrage of the left in America over South Africa’s apartheid policy with what was an unending theme at the time - End Apartheid Now! But where’s the outrage over what can’t be called anything less than white genocide from those on the left who were so concern over “civil rights” in South Africa?

End Apartheid Now! Wasn't that the sign that Bill Cosby demanded the show’s producers put up on the set of The Cosby Show, insisting on it's importance to black Americans, and that every black home would have one, or something of that nature, and the media blasted anyone who disagreed!

Who knows, he might have been right, maybe every black home had one, but I serviced a lot of apartments occupied by black folks in those days and I don’t remember seeing one. There may have been some, but the numbers would have been so small as to not make it a noticeable situation. 

Moving up to 2018 Rick Moran points out the consequences: 

There has never been such a radical government that has taken power in South Africa.  What was promised in the constitution about property rights is in the process of being trashed.  If the murders continue and the government refuses to do anything about them, South Africa will become another economic basket case in Africa.  And the government will have only itself to blame.

That was the prediction and that's what happened.  So much for all the feel good demonstrations and virtue signaling by left wing activists and Hollywood misfits.   Where is the media and Hollywood now! Where are the protestors now? Where is the Federal government now? Where are the embargoes now? Most importantly…..Where are the Nelson Mandela’s and Bishop Desmond Tutu’s demanding justice? Perhaps dancing with Hillary Clinton, who while in South Africa found time to dance but had no time to notice the atrocities against whites in South Africa.

Remembering that South Africa was a country that abolished slavery in 1833 I would like to ask; did the white government of South Africa perform the atrocities that the black South African government is either perpetrating, promoting or allowing to happen now? If so, I don’t remember it on the news of them doing so in main stream media, or from historians.  So I think we can assume those kind of atrocities weren’t normal or ongoing.

We can argue unendingly the correctness of this, but the issue we are dealing with is this. Were the founding Fathers believers and did they subscribe to the idea that the only way this Republic could work was if America continued to be a nation of believers based on the Judaic/Christian principles that with extraordinary rights went with an understood requirement for accepting extraordinary responsibilities. Multiculturalism is antithetical to Americanism. We really need to start seeing the world as it is and the consequences of adopting insane policies. Multiculturalism is based on the mistaken idea that all cultures are equal.  Only the PC crowd wants us to think that all cultures are equal except the American culture.

I have a question. If the American culture is so bad why are so many trying to get here...even illegally...and with the support of those who decry our culture! And if the American culture is so bad why is it Americans aren't flocking to get passports to live in every other country in the world?

The problem with Americans is that we only see their world through binoculars in reverse and in irrational ways. We think because we live the way we do that's the way everyone should live, and everyone should have the same privileges we have, and the result would be the world would be filled with "little Americas" because we will then all think alike and see the world in the same ways, and no one would worry and everyone would be happy.   And this goes to both sides of the philosophical spectrum.

Does anyone really believe Bush’s drive to bring democracy to the Muslim world worked so well? Well, the reality is the minute they had the right to vote they promptly voted in a radical Islamist groups who promptly worked to take away their right to vote. Voting and individual rights are antithetical to the Muslim faith, and what's going on in Afghanistan right now is proof positive of that, and that's the tip of the iceberg. 

What does the word Islam mean?  In Arabic usage, Islam implies “absolute submission, surrender and obedience, that is obeying the injunctions of the ruler without objection.”  No matter what anyone says to the contrary --we need to observe reality-- and that is what goes on in reality.

As for South Africa; they have the same problem that all of Africa has:  Corruption of leadership on a massive scale that is foundational to the African experience. In days before the European colonization of Africa, they were ruled by tyrannical kings. That is their social, intellectual and cultural foundation. They have merely returned to that which is foundational to their societies.

America is unique in the world today and for that matter in all of world history. We really believe we won’t be told what to do, what to eat, what to wear, what we are taught or what we will believe. Why? Because for the first time in human history we were a society created from the bottom up.

Demanding that Africa or the Middle East and other Muslim dominated nations be just like America is irrational, because the rest of the world, filled with very complex societies, often times are without any national standard as to language, religion or societal structure and philosophy.

In 1948, “National Party leaders argued that South Africa did not comprise a single nation, but was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, coloured, and Indian. These groups were split further into thirteen nations or racial federations. White people encompassed the English and Afrikaans language groups; the black populace was divided into ten such groups.”

If there was ever a good reason to abandon this insanity called ‘multiculturalism’ South Africa is a perfect example, but certainly not the only one.  In Ethiopia, Ethnic Violence Endures Despite the Government’s ‘Humanitarian Truce’.  This map appeared in a Stratfor subscription article showing how disconnected these societies are.

 

The French Revolution was such a failure for the very reason that the American Revolution as such a success. Minimal government with every man making his own decisions about life versus the French concept of central planning run by an elite, which promptly started murdering untold numbers that had done nothing to deserve having their heads cut off. There is a reason the current French government is the Fifth Republic and may be on the way to a Sixth. Central planning and all power at the top. 

As for Africa:  As bad as some things were under the colonial powers, it can be argued that it couldn’t have been as bad as it is now. No one in America…at least among normal people…. likes the idea of anyone being declared officially inferior. It's now antithetical to our very concept of existence. However, that's what goes on in much of the rest of the world....... all the time........ especially in Africa and the Middle East and Muslim dominated lands.

They do not view non-members of their "tribe" as equals.

 

The Taliban’s Goal in Governing Afghanistan May Surprise You

IQ al-Rassooli | Sep 4, 2021 | Feature 3, Politics, World  T

While all eyes are on the Taliban, most Western leaders do not realize that the Taliban is not a monolithic movement because Afghanistan is another made-up Islamic entity from different ethnic and tribal groups who hate each other as much and sometimes more than they hate the infidels.

Are there any politicians or military leaders who remember that when Ayatollah Khomeini became the absolute theocratic dictator of Iran in 1979, that the first country that he first attempted to try to turn into an Islamic theocracy subservient to Iran was actually Afghanistan, followed by Iraq?

He trained and armed thousands of Shia Afghan militia to fight the Sunni Taliban. Similar such forces are still in Afghanistan that will obey the Ayatollahs if and when the time is ripe. It is a long-term military investment to destabilize the Taliban when necessary.

Is there anyone in Biden’s dysfunctional administration who knows that in 1989, Iran nearly went to war with the Taliban who executed 8 Iranian diplomats and a reporter in Mazra al-Sharif, creating such anger in Iran that they deployed 70,000 troops to the border, but the UN was able to broker a cessation of hostilities?

How is it conceivable that not a single military or political person in the USA does not know the following crystal clear fact? There is no love between the different sects of Islam, but all of them, are monolithically united in their hatred of all non-Muslims/ kuffar/ infidels.

According to reports from Arabic newspapers who are much more intimately involved with Afghanistan than Western ones because they are Muslims, that Afghanistan’s new spiritual leader Sheikh Hibatu Allah Akhwanzadeh, whom they are predicting to be “Amir al Mu’mineen” (“commander of the faithful/ actually the Caliph) of Afghanistan.

His title is similar to that of Iran’s Khomeini.

According to these reports, this leader does not intend to spread terror to the neighboring countries or even outside but to concentrate to rule Afghanistan as a Fundamentalist Sharia-compliant, Islamic Emirate.

If true, this is the opposite of Iran’s Shia Islamic state that intends to spread its influence, religion, and power all over the world.

The Sunni Pashtuns of the Taliban hate the Shia Hazara, Uzbek, and Tajik – whom they call infidels/ kuffar, like Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, and Jews – and vice versa. Each side, when they had the upper hand, slaughtered and raped the men and women of the other.

Contrary to all the hogwash perpetrated by apologists for Islam or Islam ignoramus people, this is actually normative Islam, since each of these deeds can be found totally justified and sanctioned by Allah’s Sharia in Muhammad’s Quran...........To Read More.....

I saw tribalism rip a country apart — and now it’s happening in America

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali May 11, 2021 

About a decade ago, when I worked for the American Enterprise Institute, I had to force myself to go to lunch with a friend. I dreaded the meeting because I knew that she was going to try to convince me to leave my job. AEI is a pro-business, conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, DC. My friend was an enthusiastic liberal.  After I had run out of excuses, the day arrived and, predictably, after a few minutes of the usual small talk, my friend launched into a tirade about the Iraq War, which several of my colleagues strongly supported.

“You don’t belong there, Ayaan,” she said.

I remember trying to steer the conversation on to actual policies. I had voted for supporting the American coalition in Iraq when I was a Member of Parliament in the Netherlands — and I started to explain why.

But she wasn’t interested in a rational discussion. She interrupted me mid-sentence, launching into a monologue about John Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations and a fellow at AEI (and subsequently national security adviser to President Donald Trump). Bolton, my friend insisted, was a loathsome, hateful, racist, neo-conservative warmonger. The list went on and on until eventually she said that he looked like a walrus with a mustache. You could tell by his physiognomy, she explained, that he was a psychopath.

“But what about the policies?” I responded, trying to redirect the conversation away from personalities. The more she spoke, the more I recognized her broad disposition as something I had experienced earlier in my life. Her attitude was almost entirely tribal. Two things in particular stood out: an almost blind hatred of a particular group (Republicans), and secondly, the use of deeply personal attacks on individual researchers to justify that hatred............To Read More....

 

Suffering, Compassion, Tribalism, and the Left

Why I vote "against my economic self-interest." 

Fri Mar 26, 2021 Danusha Goska

"What's the Matter with Kansas?" a 2004 bestseller asked. Thomas Frank's book addressed why low-income whites vote Republican, "against their economic self-interest." Leftist analysts argue that poor whites are "white supremacists" accustomed to "white privilege;" we suffer from "white fragility;" because of the "browning of America" we experience "white panic;" and we vote Republican.

What's the matter with my vote? In the most recent gubernatorial and the past four presidential elections, I voted all five times, but only for one Democrat. Like Frank's allegedly confused Kansans, I have voted against my own immediate economic self-interest. I do not do so because I have floated through life on a palanquin of white privilege. Since Democrats promise poor folk like me both money and compassion, why did I not vote for Democrats all five times?

The left advertises itself, not only as the party of economic handouts, but also as the party of compassion. A Google search of "Joe Biden" and "Kindness" turns up millions of pages. Below are the first three:........

 Mere skin color is not enough to explain patterns of leftist embrace, rejection, and vilification. Asians have recently learned that they can be uplifted in the subject of a leftist sentence and decapitated in that sentence's predicate...........The left's meticulous manipulation of who receives compassion and who is cast into the outer darkness appears chaotic, but in fact it is consistent with an underlying mythos...........There's more at work here than "selective outrage" or simple hypocrisy..............To Read More....

 

 

How Islam deified tribalism

December 25, 2020 By Raymond Ibrahim

Aside from its religious veneer, Islam can easily be defined and understood by one wholly areligious word: tribalism — the bane of any democratic or pluralistic society.

The fact is, the entire appeal of Muhammad's call to the Arabs of his time lay in its compatibility with their tribal mores, three in particular: loyalty to one's tribe, enmity for other tribes, and raids on the latter to enrich and empower the former.

For seventh-century Arabs — and later tribal peoples, chiefly Turks and Tatars, who also found natural appeal in and converted to Islam — the tribe was what humanity is to modern people: to be part of it was to be treated humanely; to be outside it was to be treated inhumanely.  This is no exaggeration: Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) described the Arabs of his time (let alone those from Muhammad's more primitive era eight centuries earlier) as "the most savage human beings that exist.  Compared with sedentary people they are on a level with wild, untamable animals and dumb beasts of prey.  Such people are the Arabs."

Muhammad upheld the dichotomy of tribalism, but by prioritizing fellow Muslims over blood relatives.  Thus, in his "Constitution of Medina," he asserted that "a believer shall not slay a believer for the sake of an unbeliever, nor shall he aid an unbeliever against a believer."  Moreover, all Muslims were to become "friends one to the other to the exclusion of outsiders."

Hence, the umma — an Arabic word etymologically connected to the word "mother" and which signifies the Islamic "Super-Tribe" that transcends racial, national, and linguistic barriers — was born, and its natural enemy remained everyone outside it.

The Islamic doctrine of al-wala' wa'l-bara' ("loyalty and enmity"), which Muhammad preached and the Koran commands, captures all this. The latter goes so far as to command all Muslims to "renounce" and "disown" their non-Muslim relatives — "even if they be their fathers, their sons, their brothers, or their nearest kindred" — and to feel only "enmity and hate" for them until they "believe in Allah alone" (Koran 58:22 and 60:4; see also 4:89, 4:144, 5:51, 5:54, 9:23, and 60:1).  These verses are in reference to a number of Muhammad's close companions, who renounced and eventually slaughtered their own non-Muslim relatives as a show of their loyalty to Allah and the believers.  One slew his father, another his brother.  A third — Abu Bakr, the first caliph — tried to slay his son, and Omar, the second caliph, slaughtered several relatives.  (For more, see the nearly sixty-page treatise "Loyalty and Enmity" in The Al Qaeda Reader.)

Hence, the jihad was born.  As only two tribes existed — the Islamic umma in one tent and the dehumanized tribes of the world in another — Muslims were exhorted to attack and subjugate all these "infidels" in order to make their Super-Tribe supreme..............To Read More.....