Monday, August 06, 2012

From 2005. Debates at Savage Minds and Crooked Timber and DeLong about Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Three posts by Henry Farrell.
"Nobbled Savages"
"Cultivating Ignorance"
"Bourdieu among the Anthropologists"

Farrell in comments in the last, debating Ozma
Is there any interpretation of what you said here which doesn’t imply that (a) your concept of ‘no nothing anti-racism’ is a variety of racism (one that is distinct in some way from ‘genetic racism’), and (b) that everyone who liked the book is guilty of racism? By your own admission, “Guilty as charged.”
You really get the sense in this that HF thinks, or thought then, that only people who admit to being racist are racist. The liberal focus on intentions.  And this was when he was still linking to Cowen. They were even more stupid than I remember.

The Post that begins the fracas, by DeLong
"A BETTER CLASS OF CRITICS OF JARED DIAMOND, PLEASE..."
C. Northcote Parkinson was the first to identify the phenomenon of "injelitance"--the jealousy that the less-than-competent feel for the capable.

Here we have a classic case from the anthropologists at Savage Mind, who are both positively green with envy at Jared Diamond's ability to make interesting arguments in a striking and comprehensible way, and also remarkably incompetent at critique.
Mocking people for lazy accusations of racism and making your point with links to VDARE

Amazing.

Jan 2012 update and discussion of the history at Savage Minds

2009 at CT

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comment moderation is enabled.