[devalier]

For example, in one comment he rambles on about colonialism being not-so-impeachable because those Africans were brutes prior to and after colonization. The problems with a statement like this really are quite obvious

It seems to me you could divide African history into several phases:

1. Pre-Colonialism 2. Era of conquest, enslavement, and plunder (1500s-1900) 3. High Colonialism (c1920-1960) 4. Rule by Cathedral (ie, nominal rule by Africans, but with massive meddling by NGOs, academic experts, leftist activists, and the US State Department)

I took classes on this in college, followed this debate over time, and read many Moldbug cited materials. It seems to me quite clear that era 3 was better for Africans than era 1 and era 4. What Moldbug de-emphasizes in those debates is that era 2 was probably the worst of all. And I think it is ok to criticize him for his lack of emphasis to that point.

However, I think he is right to be upset over the denial that era 3 was better than era 4. Or if it is admitted, the blame always goes the colonialists for not preparing the people for independence, or the blame goes to the CIA, or the blame goes to companies that still maintained a presence in Africa. Never is it admitted that Cathedral meddling has had a massively bad influence.

It seems obvious to me that in the countries of the Congo, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the Ivory Coast, that replacing the prior system (which was either colonial rule, limited suffrage) with an attempt at universal suffrage democracy, resulted in massive destabilization and those countries much more violent, and made them materially worse off (I list these because I have actually looked into their history, the same is probably true of the other countries, but I am less sure). Yet it is completely forbidden to make this argument in academia or any establishment media. On this point, Moldbug is very much in the right, and the official point of view is wrong.

[nmrm2]

Holy shit, massive political instability followed a century of plunder and political domination?! And powerful institutions exploited that?!

Well damn. Better go back to colonization.

But seriously, what the fuck is supposed to be the take-away from this non-argument? Progressivism is bad?

[devalier]

Take away? I have no takeaway. I have no idea how to fix things. But the first step to any solution is recognizing what actually happened.

[nmrm2]

Which starts with not obfuscating the history of colonialism in order to push a single-minded obsession with discrediting something called Cathedral that is, vaguely, all the badness of progressivism.

This is kind of my point wrt MM. He says a lot of True Things that, in the end, amount to nothing. And then pretends he's substantiated some grand thesis about the evils of the Cathedral. But it's often all just inane bullshit when you stop to figure out how the pile of highly specific factoids actually substantiates the overall claim. This isn't always true; there are always diamonds in the rough, and MM wrote prolifically. But the style of argument and accompanying rhetoric lends itself to these sorts of logical leaps from cherry-picked particular to validation of over-arching thesis.

Edit: Also, pre-colonialism is a shitload of time. Asserting Africans were categorically better off during High Colonialism than during the millions of years of human history that is lumped together as "pre-colonialism" is a pretty bold assertion.

[devalier]

With reference to Africa, you can define the Cathedral as the permanent staff of the U.S. State Department, the universities and think tanks that operate with a revolving door with the State Department, and the NGOs funded by State (or funded by the UN which is in turn funded by USG according to State Department policy). There was a conventional wisdom among this network of institutions. They had great power, they pushed policies across Africa. They insisted that the colonial rulers give up power and hold universal suffrage elections, and used the hard and soft power of the world hegemon to make it so. They got their wish, and that change resulted in disaster across the continent.