Read on Twitter
Throughout history, the intelligentsia has often played a large role in inciting racial/inter-group hatred which has sometimes lead to civil war, authoritarian government, and even genocide. It is pretty easy to see how that occurred. We are witnessing it in our own times (cont).
The playbook is always the same. Disparities in economic outcomes between group A and B are used as evidence A is oppressing B for A’s benefit. B is told not to emulate and learn from A, but that A is profiting at B’s expense, and everything bad that happens to B is A’s fault.
This leads to resentment and anger by B towards A, and to greater group consciousness. This creates a belief that implementing policies that dispossess or disadvantage A to the benefit of B are justified and needed, and also creates resentments that can bubble over into violence.
This creates corresponding resentments amongst group A; greater group consciousness amongst A; efforts to protect A’s interests by A; and sometimes reactionary/retaliatory violence by A against B. Escalating group-based polarization, hatred, and tit-for-tat violence can ensue.
Politics starts to divide along racial/group lines, and the political stakes also become much higher. Instead of implementing policies for the benefit of the unified nation, the game becomes about B acquiring political power to benefit B and dispossess A, and vice versa.
The growing sense of grievance, resentment, and desire for retaliatory policies and dispossession of the other side escalates, with increasingly punitive measures, sometimes going as far as confiscation of assets, imprisonment and execution of opponents by the group in power.
As anger and resentments rise, violence bubbles over more often, and tit-for-tat retaliations ensue. When the political stakes are high enough (e.g. asset confiscations of A when B is in power), all out civil war can occur as losing side feels they have nothing to lose/no choice.
Atrocities can occur during civil wars, driving the sense of grievance & desire for revenge to new levels. The threat of mortal retaliation from the other side is ever present, should they ever regain power. Sometimes it is resolved genocide is the only way to eliminate that risk
That's how it happens. The dynamics are always the same, because human beings are fundamentally the same. If group identity and a sense of grievance is inflamed enough, it will always eventually lead to civil war and violence. We are charting a very dangerous course at present.
The same dynamics have been a fundamental contributor to anti-Semitism over the centuries. An industrious and entrepreneurial group that has often prospered, they have been the target of disparity-based resentments - the idea they were getting rich at everyone else's expense.
Core to this whole chain of causality is zero-sum thinking. In order for one group to do well economically, someone else has to lose. Society is viewed as little more than a zero-sum struggle for power, with those that do well doing so by oppressing others for their own benefit.
Quite aside from the price paid in blood by these ideologies, is the oft catastrophic economic damage caused. By believing wealth is a zero sum game, the benefits to society of successful enterprises are overlooked - only the personal wealth owners accrue is considered relevant.
This can lead to confiscatory policies in the name of redressing unjust disparities that lead to economic collapse. In Zimbabwe, white farmers and business owners were dispossessed by Mugabe, who came to power with a mandate to redress inequalities rooted in colonialism.
What was overlooked is that white farmers were also producing all the food. They fled the country or were killed. Food production & industry collapsed. Zimbabwe lacked the foreign exchange to import food, so they printed money to buy Fx, and it lead to hyperinflation.
This wiped out the savings of the middle class, black and white alike, and destroyed what was left of the economy. The same movie has played out over and over again throughout history. It is the cause of tremendous degrees of completely unnecessary suffering.
