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Comment by 9dev | Hacker News Reader

That’s a cute setup there, but misses the point. The west—aka white people—don’t have any ”innate“ traits that make them superior to other humans. The entire foundation of our lives is built on the exploitation of others over hundreds of years. Suggesting that is the natural order of things is twisted bullshit, and we’ve heard it a hundred years before. It was wrong then, it is wrong now. Even alluring to that school of thought is wrong.

And no amount of „admit you like being privileged“ changes that.

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> The west—aka white people

This is the problem. Western culture isn't just white. Hell, the term 'white' is really a New World race. In the Old World, Europeans were enslaving each other and being enslaved by e.g. the Mamluks and Ottomans.

No, but that’s what Karp implies when he talks of „the west“. Americans may not realise how close that is to NSDAP propaganda, but it is.

Do you have sources to backup your claim that Karp is only envisioning white people as part of the west? Is he a known white supremicist? I could not find such a claim.

I found he wrote this on his letter to shareholders…

> “As Samuel Huntington has written, the rise of the West was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion ... but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.’

“He continued: ‘Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.’”

Yikes..

https://bsky.app/profile/leahmcelrath.bsky.social/post/3lheu...

What is the yikes? Martial superiority isn't exactly a groundbreaking metric by which to measure societies.

It's also an essential one--sovereignty depends on it. That will be true as long as international relations are anarchic.

Might makes right is descriptive of the history of civilization, however I do not accept it is the - only- descriptor.

Karps' father at least is literally Jewish according to Wikipedia, sure he must be a big fan of NSDAP, makes perfect sense.

That you have created a new category of people: 'white', that were historically not considered belonging to the same group does not subsume the history of western thinking; which arguably started in the middle east, was further developed by europeans, and is now fully multi-cultural.

The west, as a culture, absorbs what is useful and discards the not useful.

Notice that you are just admitting the superiority of the west here, no weak culture with subpar technology or weak people can exploit or conquer others. And pretty much everyone has tried to exploit others as much as they possibly could, that's unfortunately just how humans are. Everyone has at least one objectively bad ancestor, no matter the race or culture.

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