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by tptacek
4031 days ago
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Whatever else I think about the idea that Carlyle "made better predictions than the abolitionists", I think I can object that the problem doesn't stop at the approving references to Carlyle. For instance, Yarvin's "favorite primary source on slavery" is Nehemiah Adams, which he quotes in the most cryptic way possible, leaving out the fact that the book --- particularly in the context he cites it in --- is essentially an attempt to paint slavery as a benevolent condition. Look at their clothes! Look at their happy faces! They don't seem downtrodden at all! Maybe "approver of slavery" is a less apt description than "whatever slavery's equivalent of a holocaust denier is". Your response to this could be informed by the knowledge that the Adams reference is one of many others I could have chosen to highlight. Again, I could just be misreading all of this. Yarvin surely made that easy to do. Ultimately, my argument throughout much of this thread is straightforward, so I'd like to restate it as we delve further into the weeds: Yarvin's writing isn't a case where people have worked hard to mine unsavory associations from ambiguously worded old blog posts. Yarvin is best known for his writing, and much of that writing appears frankly and straightforwardly odious. |
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Keep in mind that Moldbug's blog is trying to provide a corrective to our default view, and so Adam's account is his favorite, shock therapy, corrective book in a world where we are already marinated in the view that southern slavery was an unmitigated horror. In world where slave-holder ideology ran supreme, perhaps his favorite book might be something else.
The key question is: do we have a more accurate view of slavery if we include Nehemiah Adams and Genovese and the Roving Editor in addition to the standard progressive accounts? Or do we have a more accurate view if we only read the standard progressive accounts? Is Nehemiah so credulous, so inaccurate, that we get negative information value from reading him? Do we trust his account at all? Or was he duped like Beatrice Webb visiting the Soviet Union?
My own sense is that reading Adams in addition to progressive sources gives us a more accurate view of slavery in its totality. I don't get the sense that he his Beatrice Webb, he wasn't being given a tour by official handlers. But I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. I honestly do want to have an accurate picture of history, whatever that may be.