Who are the science deniers?

One of the most frustrating issues with the current political climate is the endless Leftist claims about science, about X* deniers, about the Democrats (!!!!!!) being the party of science, etc. These are good examples of the Left claiming the opposite of the truth. (Cf. e.g. some heuristics to understand the Left.)

*Where X is any of a growing number of terms, including e.g. “climate”, “COVID”, or even “science” outright.

Let us look more closely at this nonsense:

Firstly, the modern Left has a very anti-scientific and anti-intellectual streak, beginning with Post-Modernism and its attempts to truly deny the legitimacy of science and scientific endeavours, its attempts to blur the difference between mere opinion and well-founded scientific results,* etc. As if this decades-long issue was not enough, we now have to contend with absurd claims that scientific endeavours, giving correct answers on a test, “showing the work” when solving a math problem, and even math it self would be “White Supremacy”. Long before even Post-Modernism, we had issues like Lysenkoism and other pseudo-scientific fields pushed by Leftist regimes. (This despite Lysenkoism having a massively negative impact on the local agriculture and the sustenance of the locals.) Indeed, Marxism, it self, is a pseudo-science (at least by today’s standards), while many of the important Leftist “intellectuals” of the 20th century depended on psychoanalytic theories (also pseudo-scientific by today’s standards).

*I am tempted to write “established scientific facts”, but that far Post-Modernism gets it right—perfect knowledge is impossible and science is a process of revising the established. Of course, the scientists had this insight much earlier and Post-Modernism goes off the reservation immediately after this insight.

These problems extend deep into the Left-dominated social sciences or, increasingly, “sciences”, which by now have more-or-less abandoned scientific ideals and the scientific search for truth in favor of Leftist agenda pushing and ideological distortions not dissimilar to Lysenkoism. This up-to and including absurdities like Gender Studies and CRT, where the entire fields seem geared at “proving” and pushing certain pre-conceived opinions, with no regard for the evidence at hand—which is usually strongly contrary to these pre-conceived opinions.

Secondly, if we look at various areas of denialism, the Left does not fare well. Consider some prominent areas:

1. There are mountains of evidence from various fields, including physiology, psychometrics, and genetics, of in-born differences between various groupings, including between men and women, between sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans, and (to a lesser degree) between Swedes and Russians.

   These do not fit the Leftist agenda and “blank slate” ideology—and are alternately ignored and condemned as e.g. “racist”, with no regard for the actual evidence.

   This applies in particular to the area of IQ*: IQ has a proven track-record as a predictor** of e.g. success in life, is hard to change within the parameters of modern society, and would, if properly considered, reveal many Leftist programs and ideas, especially relating to education, as wishful thinking. But, no: instead we get to hear that IQ is “racist”, or see IQ “debunked” by some ever recurring and highly contrafactual claims, e.g. that “IQ only shows how well you do on IQ tests”***.

   *More accurately, the underlying g. As the latter concept is poorly known among the broad masses, I will ignore the difference. I note, however, that there appears to be some training effect to IQ, which is not reflected in g, and that the “Flynn effect” might be restricted to IQ.

   **Strongly so on the group level and for differences in e.g. distributions of outcomes. Less strongly so, but still on a valuable level, for the individual.

   ***On the contrary, there is a very wide range of correlations and likely causalities to various other measures, e.g. of scholastic success.

   Then we have issues of “gender” and sexual preferences, where the Left jumps between denying any biological involvement (“X is a social construct”) and declaring something in-born and inherent depending on how it fits the ideology and agenda, with no care for consistency of thought or that pesky evidence.

2. Partially overlapping, we have the area of Evolution:

   It is true that U.S. Democrats almost invariably claim to believe in Evolution, while their Republican counterparts are much more likely to be sceptical or even outright Creationist. But:

   Firstly, this is a U.S. issue and does not reflect the global situation. In e.g. my native Sweden and adopted Germany, Evolution is usually taken for granted outside the Left. At the same time, the aforementioned Lysenkoism was a severe mistreatment of Evolution pushed by the Left.*

   *At a minimum, the Soviet Left. I have not looked into details, but chances are that parts of the Left elsewhere had similar ideas, notably the parties/countries under strong Soviet influence.

   Secondly, this is not a matter of Democrats vs. Republicans, per se, nor Left vs. Right, but of religious opinions. In the U.S., and many other countries, the Left has a very strongly atheistic or even anti-religious angle, which has almost necessarily forced the strongly religious to take shelter in non-Leftist groupings, including the Republican party. In the older days, when Christianity was more widely popular this was different. For instance, the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial was based on the Butler Act, passed by a Democrat legislature (cf. [1]) and the vociferous and strongly religious prosecutor was none other than William Jennings Bryan, one of the leading Democrats of his era and one of the most influential on Democrat thought in any era.

   Thirdly, the Leftist claims are typically nothing but lip service: Ever and ever again, the Leftists show that they simply do not understand how Evolution works. If they do not understand how Evolution works, a profession of being an Evolutionist carries no more value than the claim of being Christian from someone who has no clue about Christianity. Worse, by this lack of understanding, they quite often combine a de facto denial (!) of Evolution with their de jure acceptance, e.g. by denying that humans have evolved over the last few thousand years, that Evolution applies to humans too (not just animals), or that differences in life style, societal roles, whatnot could* have an Evolutionary effect.

   *Here and elsewhere, legitimate questions may be raised as to how large a certain effect might be, how long a time is necessary, how large the differences must be, etc. However, the Left does not, or only very rarely, raise such questions—instead, there is typically a blanket denial of even the possibility.

3. COVID is an area of many, many examples. That there were great doubts about what was true to begin with is understandable; however, even then the Left* tended to discount established ideas and there seemed to be a knee-jerk reaction that “Trump said that X; ergo, X is wrong”—without any actual investigation of plausibility and proof.**

   *In particular. Unfortunately, the problem occurred to some degree outside the Left too. Witness e.g. Merkel in Germany and, to a lesser degree, the early acts of Trump in the U.S.

   **Consider e.g. the possibility of a lab leak, which was mentioned by Trump, immediately considered discredited for a long time, and then suddenly considered legitimate again when a journalist raised the suggestion. Similarly, Trump suggested that Ivermectin might be a viable early treatment and Ivermectin was immediately considered discredited. (I am not up-to-date, but the last I heard, the jury in the non-ideological community was still out on Ivermectin. Note that the research has been scarce and that some trials have misapplied it, notably by missing the “_early_ treatment” aspect. Indeed, some have raised the accusation that some trials were deliberately designed to fail. However, the question is not whether Ivermectin works, the question is the anti-scientific approach to the matter. Ditto, the question is not where COVID originated, but the anti-scientific approach to the investigation of the origin.)

   Since then, we have seen a long line of scientific investigations and practical experiences indicate e.g. that lockdowns and masking bring at most a minor help (and do more harm than good through side-effects), that those not in a risk group are not at risk, that the effectiveness of the vaccines is dubious and that the vaccines come with side-effects, that various predictions and models were wide off the mark, etc. Still, the current, highly anti-science, stance of the Left is that we need more lockdowns and masking, that absolutely and categorically everyone, children included, must be vaccinated for their own safety, that the vaccines work well and have no side-effects whatsoever, and that renewed predictions “prove” that renewed countermeasures are direly needed. Oh, and did anyone notice how slowly and reluctantly natural immunity was accepted? This despite the natural expectation being that natural immunity would come and be at least as good as vaccine-induced immunity.

4. Accusations of climate denialism is a Leftist staple.* (And a horribly illogical expression—who would deny that there is a climate?!?)

   *Unlike most other points, this is an area where I do not necessarily reject the Leftist position, as I have done too little leg-work. However, I do reject the Leftist methods, distortions, anti-scientific approach, … (Note that the use of such methods by the Left do not automatically imply that they are used by the climate scientists—this is a discussion of Left vs. non-Left, not of the work of the actual climate scientists.)

   Nevertheless, the Left seems to be the greatest source of poor science, unscientific thinking, and misleading or outright faulty claims. This includes uncritical acceptance of poorly tested and poorly performing models, exaggerated reporting, blanket ascription of this-or-that (e.g. forest fires) to global warming, misrepresentation of past data, and a failure to discuss the many past predictions that have failed—society should have been destroyed several times over by now, had they been correct.* Then there are those constant claims of the “Hottest July of All Times!!!” (or whatever the latest hottest was). Really? Four-and-half billion years and this July was the hottest? Oh, you meant the hottest July since the beginning of measurements. Well, then say so you f-ing moron!!!

   *Of course, for someone who does have a scientific mind, repeated failures are cause to be very cautious and critical. (But not necessarily to reject in a blanket manner—the boy who cried wolf was actually taken by a wolf in the end.) Ditto, poor reasoning, exaggerations, etc.

   Moreover, the accusation of climate denialism often arises merely through questioning some portion of the narrative, pointing to errors or exaggerations, or asking for actual proof—implying that the accusation is raised in an anti-scientific manner against someone (often) scientific. A good example is the debate around “Unsettled”, as I discuss in an earlier text: a real scientist who appears broadly supportive (!) of the claims around climate change is hanged to dry for questioning individual flaws with good arguments.

5. Related, we have many misrepresentations of an unscientific nature in various other environmental areas, e.g. in that the dangers and disadvantages of nuclear power have been horrifyingly exaggerated, that the disadvantages of favored technologies are swept under the carpet, that only “run-time” greenhouse-gas emissions are considered when making comparisons and not the life-cycle costs/emissions/whatnot, etc.
6. Then there is the topic of Economics, where members of the Left seem to be either ignorant or to cling to outdated (e.g. Keynesian) thought or wishful thinking (e.g. MMT). Established and proven principles are ignored, e.g. that (all other factors equal) an increase in the money supply leads to inflation—witness Joe Biden. Or consider the known negative effects of high taxes and the danger of big government or regulatory capture—no, the Left wants higher taxes, bigger government, and more power to regulators. Or consider the benefits of market forces*—no, the Left does whatever it can to remove their effects or to supplant them with government controls. The effect of incentives and principles from game theory are equally ignored. Etc.

   *Arguably, the single most important thing to understand about economics.

   (Additionally, I have a fear that the field of Economics, it self and as a consequence of Leftist influence, is drifting from an attempt to explain and understand to an attempt to push specific political goals, e.g. “exterminate poverty” and “reduce GINI”. Effectively, it is moving from a science or proto-science to an unscientific field of activism.)

7. As a bit of a meta-item, consider fact checking. The way that fact checking, usually run by Leftists, works is that claims are not judged on their merits but on (a) whether they fit the Leftist ideology and agenda and (b) who made them. This well illustrates the analogous Leftist approach to science—what supports the Cause is “true”; what does not is “false”. This in a blanket manner, without any scientific investigation, and with a thoroughly anti-scientific mindset.

   (The reader familiar with my early texts will note how many of them deal with Feminists, Feminist censorship of dissent, statistics, and factual arguments, and Feminist misinterpretation, distortion, or outright invention of statistics.)

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Nazis XV: Deep attitudes of the Left

A natural approach in a comparisons of Nazis with (other) Leftists is to find a definition for “Left” and see how the shoe fits. Unfortunately, this is virtually impossible, as directly or indirectly mentioned in other entries of this series. However, we can look at some criteria that are common or very common fits for the Left, less common elsewhere,* and play in well with at least some notable divisions, including the divisions between current Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., the old U.S. vs. the Soviet Union, Libertarians and classical Liberals vs. Socialists and “social” Liberals, and the Swedish Moderaterna** vs. the Swedish Social-Democrats.

*But note that I do not claim that they would be the sole realm of the Left.

**At least in the incarnation that I knew well three decades ago. I am not up-to-date in detail, but do note that they have since begun to support Gender-Feminist reality distortion, which is a very bad sign.

Consider:

1. Collectivism over individualism:

   Virtually without exception, Leftism demands that the individual and his rights be ignored in favor of the (real, alleged, or misperceived) good of the collective. The main variations seems to be in whether the push for the collective is honest or merely used as an excuse in a manner similar to “Animal Farm” and in how the preference is phrased (e.g. “for the good of the people”, “for the good of the proletariat”, “for the good of Germany”, “for the common good”, “for the public good”*).

   *In some of these cases, it might be argued that we do not see a juxtaposition of individual vs. collective but of individual and some “higher cause” or other not-necessarily-collectivist concept. However: (a) The implicit intent in Leftist propaganda is typically of a collectivist nature, even if more indirectly. (Contrast this with a more medieval “for King and Country” or a more religious “for the glory of God”.) (b) To the degree that the collective misses the point in any specific Leftist case, the larger and more abstract issue of violating the rights of the individual in favor of something else remains.

   This, of course, even if the individual is a member of the favored collective—if he is not, e.g. because he belongs to the wrong class, he might lose all rights already on this count. Which leads us to:

2. Extreme “us vs. them” and “oppressor vs. oppressed” thinking:

   Attempts at this are so ubiquitous in Leftist thinking and propaganda that, I suspect, it is less a matter of an honest conflict and more of a deliberate search for a “them” in order to successfully convince the weak-minded that their support in an important fight is needed. Find a Leftist group and there will be a “them”—only who “they” are is to be clarified. (The capitalists, the bourgeoisie, the educated, the Jews, the Whites, the “cisgendered”, …)

3. Equality of outcome over equality of opportunity:

   Less common than the other items, but still quite common and of particular importance with an eye at the current U.S. and its highly destructive politics, Feminism in most of the Western world for several decades, and the far Left at more or less any time and any place.*

   *The matter is complicated by at least two issues, both of which I will ignore below: Firstly, the Left is divided between two main camps—those that openly demand equality of outcome and those who merely claim that equality of outcome is proof of inequality of opportunity. The latter need further subdivision into those who are honest-but-wrong and those who are dishonestly trying to hide their true opinions. Secondly, some groups, especially on the Old Left, seem more intent on equality of outcome on the individual level, while others, especially on the New Left, seem more focused on equality of outcome on the group level.

   This is made the worse by the often very one-sided takes on equality of outcome, where privileges, rights, duties, whatnot are often selectively counted only to favor the in-group. For instance, Feminism is notorious for demanding any right that a man might have for any woman, while not taking up duties in a corresponding manner and not offering female rights to men in exchange. A particularly perfidious case, a horrifying intellectual fraud, is the Global Gender Gap Report/Index, which is systematically made to only count “in one direction”,* leaving the nominally ideal score of 1** virtually unreachable (giving a convenient excuse to claim that “there is still much work to be done until we finally have equality”), and making even a far lower score a strong sign that equality, had it been measured fairly!, has already been reached. (Sweden, e.g., is rated at a mere 0.822 for 2022, despite, by any reasonable standard, being a country which favors women over men. With Afghanistan at 0.435, a first approximation of a corrected index might give equality at (0.435 + 0.822) / 2 = 0.6285 instead of 1. Substituting a less extreme low ranker than Afghanistan might increase that by another tenth.)

   *In at least one case, life expectancy, women must have an outright advantage (!) of 6 percent for “equality” to hold.

   **As I read the page, the highest reachable score would actually be an absurd 0.9949, but this construction would be so absurd that I cannot rule out a misstatement. Either way, the other absurdities involved ensure that no country is even close to either of 0.9949 and 1.

4. A “the end justifies the means” attitude:

   As I have noted on countless occasions, this attitude (with various variations, including “holier than thou” high-horsing) is extremely common on the Left—and because “we” are the good guys, we are allowed to lie, cheat, steal, defame, … in order to win. The other party? Does not even have the right to speak and should crawl back under its rock in shame!

   (As I have also noted on countless occasions, methods matter more than opinions and “evil is as evil does”—but the typical Leftist is too stupid to understand such a basic principle.)

(Note that this list does not include a great number of connotations of other types, e.g. a Leftist preference for propaganda over argumentation.)

This leaves us with three slam-dunk matches for the Nazis, with uncertainty only on the “equality of X” debate. Here I would need to do more legwork, but I note a current impression that (a) the Nazis allowed for more personal success, but (b) this success was contingent on being a good tool for the cause—any individual success was not there for the individual, but for the cause.

Excursion on Menschenverachtung:
With some hesitation, as this might partially be a matter not only of my connotations of the Left but also of this concept, I would add sheer Menschenverachtung, which seems to be a very often recurring issue with the Left, including the old Communist dictatorships, and which many Germans would immediately and primarily associate with the Nazis.

The literal meaning is roughly “contempt for humans” or “contempt for humanity”, but what lies behind it, at least in my associations, goes far beyond that.* This includes a common disregard for the rights of humans (sometimes even a denial that humans have rights that a Libertarian or classical Liberal, as well as many Conservatives, would see as given), a view of humans as nothing but tools (including, in a political context, as voters and tax payers, whose sole reasons to live is to keep a certain party or politician in power and to fill the governments wallet for the benefit of this party/politician), a view of humans as sheep to be guided, the assumption that the broad masses are too stupid to be allowed to make decisions for themselves** or even to form their own opinions***.

*I make no secret of a low opinion of humanity and most humans of my own, but I differ very strongly in what comes after, what conclusions I draw, what limits I suggest, etc.

**Without a doubt, the broad masses are deeply stupid—but not so stupid that they should be treated as children with regard to their own lives. This to be contrasted with my own repeated claims that the broad masses are too stupid to be allowed to force their will upon others. There simply is an enormous difference between making (potentially bad) decisions for oneself and making them for others. I note further that most politicians are highly unimpressive, themselves, when it comes to intelligence and understanding of topics like good governance. For many or most, their presumption to lead amounts to the blind leading the blind—or, worse, leading the seeing.

***Very similar: I might consider most humans stupid, but I respect their right to form their own opinions—possibly, the most central single right there is.

Nazis XIVb: Nationalism, racism, xenophobia, …

To belatedly continue the discussion from Nazis XIVa, I will look at some cases of various behaviors on the Left that might well have been considered “Nazi” by the Left, had they occurred on the Right, with the purpose of “understanding that a considerable amount of racism/xenophobia/nationalism/whatnot can be found even on the official Left” (to quote the introduction in Nazis XIVa).

In my draft before the split into Nazis XIVa and Nazis XIVb, I wrote:

Now, let us look at some cases of probable racism, nationalism, whatnot, with a few restrictions based on the above: (a) We only consider cases with a non-trivial negative effect. (b) We discount what lies too far back in time, because such ideas were too common for a comparison if we go back far enough. (c) We ignore the Nazis, themselves, because the overriding issue is whether the Nazis are Left or Right. (Notably, whether they are the one or the other will have a massive effect on which “side” is considered how racist/nationalist/whatnot.) (d) We ignore cases which are called some variation of “Right” because of e.g. racism, else this would result in circular reasoning in favor of the Left.* Keep in mind that the Leftist take of “Racist; ergo, Right-wing” (etc.) requires racism to be a wholly or almost wholly Right-wing phenomenon, while my take of “Racism, by it self, tells us nothing about Right vs. Left” merely requires a considerable presence of racism on both sides.**

*Which might well be why they do it. I am never certain what is explained by a Leftist ignorance of logic and what by malicious distortions.

**However, I will not try to prove its existence on the Right, because (a) the Left is already fully convinced of this, (b) an absence on the Right would not hurt my case (it would, in fact, strengthen it).

This applies broadly to the “racism” portion, which was already satisfactorily long pre-split. For the empty-until-today “nationalist” portion, I have added a briefer discussion, as I lack the time and motivation to write something longer.

Nationalism:

A discussion of nationalism is tricky without a proper definition, and it would be hard to find a definition which is (a) widely accepted and (b) does not beg the question in some manner. However, there have been a few mentions at other places in this text series, including Nazis XIb ([1]) (notably, invasions), that (depending on definitions) might be relevant. Some other aspects are indirectly covered by the discussion of racism. Yet other aspects include:

1. Sports, with at least some Communist dictatorships pushing success at sports as proof of national superiority. This, maybe, most notably so in the GDR; other examples include the Soviet Union and Cuba.

   (As a confounding factor, this type of superiority pushing might be more aimed at the political system/ideology than at e.g. a racial component, while a racial component was more notable for the Nazis. Here we see that the motivations for nationalism might differ in detail, even when the same methods and more general attitudes appear. Similar remarks might apply to other items.)

2. The Soviets had a very clear position of the Soviet Union being in charge of the “Second World” (and were willing to defend the position by force), most notably through the “Brezhnev Doctrine”. It is clear that the Soviets wanted to increase this sphere of influence considerably in the long term; and that its interventions included areas more likely to be considered “Third World”, e.g. in Africa, often by proxy (notably, Cuba).
3. The Communist dictatorships often pushed nationalism and/or patriotism*, in a manner exceeding that of most Western countries post-WWII. China might or might not be the prime example.

   *Normally, I do not differentiate between the two; however, formulations with “patriot-” are somewhat common, maybe because this push often went hand-in-hand with “ask what you can do for your country (and, thereby, the Party, the Cause, the Whatnot)” manipulation. Note, e.g., the “Great Patriotic War” (WWII from a Soviet perspective). Of course, it might be an artefact of translation e.g. from Russian to English.

4. As I just discovered,* there are great many Leftist-according-to-Wikipedia** organizations with names containing some variation of “patriot”, including, from a variety of countries and contexts, Patriots of Russia, Patriotic Renewal Party, Morazanist Patriotic Front, Patriotic Labour Youth, and Union of Polish Patriots.

   *After the previous footnote, I searched-in-vain for a youth organization with a name like “Little Patriots” (maybe something that I confused with the “Little Octobrists”), and found example after example of this. I have not attempted the same experiment with e.g. “nationalist”.

   **Which, if anything, distorts in favor of the Left. However, I have not attempted to verify the correctness of the claims.

   In addition, there are articles on e.g. Social patriotism, Socialist patriotism, and Soviet patriotism.

   With some reservations for the exact implication of “patriot” vs. “nationalist”, this alone goes a long way to prove that nationalism is not the exclusive domain of the “Right”.

5. A more general or generic national pride seems somewhat common in Left-leaning countries, at least until somewhat recently. For instance, the strongly Leftist French are/were known for this; for instance, cf. [1], my own school years contained several instances of “be proud to be Swedish” pushing, and this attitude was also broadly reflected in general society. Also see excursion.

Racism:

1. Racism in the modern U.S.:

   Racial discrimination, which might or might not have a racist background, is driven by the Left, in the favor of Blacks and, to some degree, Hispanics, and to the disadvantage of Whites, Asians, and, maybe, Jews. (Note e.g. college-admittance issues and preferential hiring issues.)

   Racist claims by various politicians, influencers, athletes, whatnot, seem to come predominantly from the Left and/or be pro-Black and/or be anti-White. In the case of education, this is definitely and massively so, e.g. through the pseudo-scientific, anti-intellectual, and grossly racist CRT.

   To judge the situation among the “broad masses” is trickier, but the opinions that I have seen expressed directly and the indirect claims of opinions that I have encountered point strongly to (mostly Democrat-voting) Blacks being the main source of racism in the U.S.—directed at virtually any other group. Hispanics (mostly Democrat-voting) seem to be better, but do reciprocate the Black anti-Hispanic racism. Whites,* if anything, tend to err on the other side, with claims like “races do not exist”, “IQ is racist”, “differences in outcome are racist”, etc. (Chinese and/or Asian racism is often rumored, but I remain agnostic for the time being.)

   *Whites typically go somewhat Republican, but those erring-on-the-other-side above are skewed, likely strongly so, towards the Democrats. In as far as Republican Whites have “racist” attitudes, it tends to move on the level of “one standard deviation” or “crime statistics show”, while, again, the Black racist attitude is often “X is evil” or “I hate X”.

   How, in the U.S. and elsewhere, is the current anti-Russian wave to be seen? It could be racist or xenophobe, or maybe something else, but it does appear to be directed at Russians, not just Russia and not just Putin and his followers. What would make a generic, random Russian immigrant to the West any worse than a generic, random Ukrainian one?

2. Racism in the past U.S.:

   Here a Left–Right comparison is tricky, both because party positions change over time and because the U.S. Democrats have, before the last few decades, been roughly “center” by a European standard. However, I do note that Lincoln et al. were Republicans, that the KKK was mostly Democrat, that “Jim Crow” laws were pushed by the Democrats, and that a Democrat interest in pro-Black attitudes might have begun around 1960 (?), quite possibly as an attempt at vote-fishing.* Of course, parts of the more extreme Left, e.g. “Nation of Islam” and the “Black Panthers” held some quite unsavoury opinions.

   *Even today, there are reasons to doubt to what degree the Democrats are genuinely concerned with the well-fare of Blacks (but incompetent) and to what degree they are simply vote fishing. Notably, Democrat policies usually fall well short of the mark and are often even harmful to Blacks. For instance, de-funding the police has lead to a considerable increase in murdered Blacks, because the police is not there to stop Black-on-Black violence. For instance, monetary assistance to teenage single mothers seem to have created a great many Black teenage single mothers.

3. Racism by* the Soviet Union:

   *As a Communist nation and as opposed to “in the Soviet Union”, where it would be quite hard to identify which individuals held what combination of political and racial opinions.

   Here it can be tricky to tell what actions were based in true racism (e.g. “we Russians are the master race”), and what in pragmatical concerns (e.g. “the chance that a Russian will be loyal to the USSR is larger than for a Kazakh”). However, the sheer amount of actions makes explanations based (wholly or partially) on racism almost impossible to avoid.

   Consider e.g. the early genocide of the Cossacks, the treatment of the Ukrainians (most notably, the Holodomor), acts of barbaric aggressions against (even non-Nazi, non-combatant) Germans at the end of WWII, treatment of e.g. Poles, the secondary stature within the USSR of more Asiatic groups, e.g. Kazakhs, etc.

4. Racism/xenophobia/whatnot by* the Communist China:

   *As above.

   To begin with, there are the Uyghurs. Other groups with sometime issues include Tibetans, Hmong, Mongols. (Although, I might need to research deeper to see where the border between “in” and “by” lies in the case of China. I have heard tales of strong negative sentiments against Black exchange students in the population, e.g., while the very same students were encouraged by the regime.)

5. Anti-Semitism:

   Modern anti-Semitism might fall into three broad categories:

   Islamic and Arab animosity, which is likely unrelated to Right/Left issues. (But where I note that many Islamic and/or Arab countries/groupings/whatnot are strongly Left-leaning, in as far as they can be made to fit on a Left–Right spectrum.)

   Alleged far-Right groups, where (in my personal and superficial acquaintance) it is hard to tell what might actually be Rightist anti-Semitism and what is “is considered Right, because of anti-Semitism”. From what I have seen on UNZ, where there are many anti-Semitic commenters, there might be also be more of an issue of “Jewish conspiracy threatens us” or “Jews rubs each others backs” and less of “all individual Jews are evil”.

   Leftist anti-Semitism: Unfortunately, this is not limited to mere anti-Israel or even anti-Zionist feelings, which might be the Leftist self-portrayal. Too often, they have negative feelings about Jews per se—just like Feminists all too often do not stop at negative feelings about their imaginary “rape culture” or “anti-racists” about their imaginary “White supremacy” but extend them to men resp. Whites. (Israel, in all fairness, is actually real.)

   As to the reasons, I note that Israel is often used as the oppressor in oppressor–oppressed relationship in Leftist propaganda, and that a formulation of Jews–Palestinians or Israelis–Palestinians makes for a better image than e.g. Israel–Hamas. Moreover, that the existence of Jews risks the whole narrative of “IQ is racist”, “the SAT is racist”, “Blacks only do worse than Whites due to past and present mistreatment”, etc. Either the Jews are considered White (i.e. evil), or as another “oppressor of Blacks” (i.e. evil) group, or the narrative fails. (Similarly, for the Old Left, there was often a connection between Jews and money/capitalism/banking/whatnot, not dissimilar to, but less explicit than, the one the Nazis* proposed.)

   *Although the Nazi take also had a strong connection between Jews and Marxism. I would suspect, however, that this connection was less factual than e.g. the Jews-and-banking connection, beginning with the question whether Karl Marx, himself, should be considered a Jew. As an aside, the manner in which some Marxists deny a connection between Marx and Jews, even of a non-religious nature, makes a suspicion of anti-Semitism hard to avoid—as if a Jewish Marx would somehow be tainted. (For a reasonable person, “tainted” is a gross understatement when it comes to Marx, regardless of his ethnicity, religion, and whatnot, but these are not reasonable persons.)

   Interestingly, this move of the Jews to an oppressor group is not that dissimilar to the attitudes expressed by the anti-Semites on UNZ either. The difference is who the allegedly oppressed are—Whites or “minorities”. (And, obviously, that Jews are considered a main issue by the one and a mere sub-issue of the main issue, Whites, by the other, at least outside the context of Israel where the Left puts Jews in a position similar to the one they put Whites in in the U.S.)

6. 20th-century Sweden:

   Until the last few decades of the century, Sweden had a comparatively small non-Swedish (in the ethnic sense) population, most of the non-Swedes were clearly White, often Finnish or otherwise “Nordic”, and there were lesser opportunities for anything racist, “racist”, or similar from the government.* During those last few decades (and on into the 21 century), on the other hand, extreme political correctness came to dominate, and they would hardly have dared to take such an opportunity.

   *Racism, especially in older times, is quite possible between persons of the same actual color. Indeed, even groups like Finns, even in Sweden, have occasionally been mistreated or looked down upon. However, a Finn in Sweden is less obvious than e.g. a Somalian, the cultural and whatnot differences are smaller, and most of the issues, I suspect, predated the 20th century. Then there is the complication of “parallel societies”, which might apply to Somalians, definitely applies to e.g. many Roma and Sami groupings, but (at least today) does not apply to Finns.

   But clearly Sweden, that paragon of enlightenment, tolerance, Social-Democracy, and the “Third Way” would never do anything bad, even given the opportunity and even before the PC-era?

   Not so: A notable non-Swedish group were various Roma/Gypsy/whatnot sub-populations, which had a hard time under Social-Democrat rule. This included many forced sterilisations, low access to schools, and various other problems. This was complemented by negative sentiments in the Swedish Left-dominated population. I cannot guarantee how these sentiments were distributed, but I recall hearing my officially Social-Democrat grand-mother speak derogatorily of “tattare” (a Swedish misnomer, likely based on a cognate to the English “Tartar”), and have not truly seen any signs that Social-Democrats would be more tolerant in real life than any other group.

   (The Sami? They too were often mistreated, but this might have been simply because they, in some sense, were an inconvenience, rather than through a feeling that they were “sub-Swedish”, just like a government might be annoyed over an endangered species preventing that grand new project. I am also uncertain how far in time this mistreatment has objectively reached. I would need more research to write more on the matter. I might make the observation, however, that the Swedish school was quite weak on topics relating to them in at least my days—quite possibly in a manner that would be considered “racist” or “marginalising” by many modern U.S. Leftist educators.)

Excursion on a general need for pride or superiority:
I strongly suspect that humans tend to have a strong drive to be proud or to feel superior about something—even when they, objectively speaking, have little to be proud of. (Maybe, in particular when they have little to be proud of.) At an extreme, one of Fredrick Douglass’s autobiographies speaks of slaves from different plantations getting into fights over who belonged to the better plantation and/or had the better master (my memory is a little vague). Nationalism and other versions of “us vs. them” are very natural candidates to fulfill this need, which makes it highly plausible that nationalism exist in parallel to and independent of e.g. a Left–Right division. An absence of nationalism is, I suspect, more often caused by another set of “us vs. them” groupings filling the same role as those of nationalism would, e.g. “my soccer team vs. the losers from across town”, “we educated vs. the rubes without a bachelor”, or various “identity politics” groupings.