I like the comment by the guy who said it was off topic, but also
knew this was his audience. He just copied and pasted an entire article
titled “Neanderthal genes may make COVID worse in some patients, study
finds” and posted it.
If you zoom out you see the ‘far left’ is off the chart. (iirc cops
had trouble infiltrating anarchist groups because there was so much
required reading and background knowledge).
E: and ontopic, yes, this is a really weird thing to think about.
‘which political group knows more words’
> cops had trouble infiltrating anarchist groups because there was so much required reading and background knowledge
If a normal, non-university educated person, can not join an anarchist group with ease, I think that group may have an issue.
I'm speaking of a general trend, and perhaps an explanation of why the community was difficult to break into in this specific case. I've organized and have been part of many organizations in the NYC area for years, and I see this often.
I'm from a working class background. The point is that sometimes these things can be quite isolating (to me included) and it isn't helpful when organizing. That's far removed from what I'm saying.
Then what’s the point here? Are you on the side of the movement you’re talking about or not? Do you have or have you studied for a college degree and whether or not what’s the motivation for (apparently) saying that people from a background similar to yours feeling disaffected in the context we’re talking about?
The point is that it is bad for organization to rely on archaic and esoteric texts rather than finding new ways of engaging people and/or giving people the tools to understand/engage with these older texts. In my primarily working-class community this was a barrier to entry for many, including myself, for a long time.
Clearly, considering I've said I have organized in left-wing spaces, I am a part of the movement I am discussing. I would be lying if I didn't say that my experiences have left me somewhat dissaffected/apathetic though, as they have to many of my peers.
I am currently attending university.
Are we done with twenty questions, lol?
do you really? my first reaction was to consider the OP story made up. barely anyone gatekeeps based on who you read from my experience. they will obviously bug you about reading the texts, but won't care. priorities are in organizing/protests, rather than who read the literature or not, as it should obviously
As a person from a working class background, yes they do. I would argue that there is a clear distinction between saying people in my community aren’t interested in theory and that they’re simply stupid though.
All security has tradeoffs, make your local politcal movement impossible to infiltrate by making it at as ineffectual as possible ;).
And yes anarchists have problems, and tbh this might not even be the biggest one. (People thinking anarchism means burning everything down is prob the bigger one (some anarchists also thinking this themselves is another one)). But note this is historical, and stuff changes, youtube has a lot of accessible anarchist content creators for example.
An anti hierarchical political movement that gatekeeps via required reading is chuckleworthy however. Same with cops going 'argfhh words help'.
Thing is if I recall correctly the problem they had wasn’t about “required reading”, it was that they literally just couldn’t get into the lingo: something anybody genuinely enthusiastic about a movement can do with ease
Cops in other places have done it before, there was a huge scandal a few years ago over infiltration of environmentalist movements by Special Branch in the UK, up to and including having a child with an activist
Aha I was misremembering then.
In .nl cops apparently just use informants. I once heard a story that about 25 years ago some people managed to get the secret informant list from the cops and they had informants on all kinds of hacker groups.
Don’t let me undersell it: definitely there was an internal complaint within the police (if we’re thinking of the same incident) that they had to do a bunch of reading to get in on it, my point was more that they complained it was too much work to get in on the ideology - something a committed activist is gonna be fairly happy with
Interestingly enough our local socialists party (Dutch) does pretty well in going to the people, you see them fighting for the otherwise forgotten people a lot here. Sadly, this doesnt give them any political votes. It is really weird.
This is almost certainly a proxy for education. Educated people are
typically further left than people without an education (with some
notable caveats).
I actually have only one degree of degree of separation from Ritchie
(during my graduate degree I used to hang out with a friend of his after
seminars) and imo this doesn’t really fit: his stuff on intelligence is
relatively moderate and credible, although I feel he gets unduly
indignant about lack of respect for intelligence researchers
Not everybody who works in intelligence research is a closet racist,
which is one reason there are so many good rebuttals to genuine racists
such as Charles Murray
Done properly, the reason to draw such conclusions is to keep track
of how people score on the tests - as Ritchie points out with respect to
his control - rather than to nail down sweeping conclusions about those
people
Uh this isn’t Ritchie’s website, it’s a IQ and genes fetishizing weirdo. idk why the book image is present, maybe ~~affiliated~~ Edit: affiliate link for Amazon money
I like the comment by the guy who said it was off topic, but also knew this was his audience. He just copied and pasted an entire article titled “Neanderthal genes may make COVID worse in some patients, study finds” and posted it.
The runner up is the “Actually National Socialism is a left-wing phenomenon” comment which has been argued so much that Wikipedia has a FAQ on it.
If you zoom out you see the ‘far left’ is off the chart. (iirc cops had trouble infiltrating anarchist groups because there was so much required reading and background knowledge).
E: and ontopic, yes, this is a really weird thing to think about. ‘which political group knows more words’
This is almost certainly a proxy for education. Educated people are typically further left than people without an education (with some notable caveats).
But its right about moderates.
[deleted]
I actually have only one degree of degree of separation from Ritchie (during my graduate degree I used to hang out with a friend of his after seminars) and imo this doesn’t really fit: his stuff on intelligence is relatively moderate and credible, although I feel he gets unduly indignant about lack of respect for intelligence researchers
Not everybody who works in intelligence research is a closet racist, which is one reason there are so many good rebuttals to genuine racists such as Charles Murray
Done properly, the reason to draw such conclusions is to keep track of how people score on the tests - as Ritchie points out with respect to his control - rather than to nail down sweeping conclusions about those people