Thank you, many new facts for me, specifically about Arab identification.
One point about this passage: "Of course, if one wants—as clearly many left-progressives do, as they say so—mass immigration to be a lever to corrode Western civic cultures; to corrode Western institutional norms and rules; then that is all fine. It is also stupidly toxic and a profound treason against one’s society. It becomes yet another example of left-progressives being the enemies of human flourishing." Yes, it is all true, and what left progressives do not see is that they replace themselves with the unified immigrant kin groups. Thus, such kin groups not only colonize say Minneapolis, they displace the left politicians, because they artfully take on the woke progressive verbiage ( you tell the kaffir outsiders handing out the money whatever they need to hear, and then distribute the goodies across your clan and patronage networks) - while destroying the societal trust.
See who runs London or New York, and also, the new anti-Islamophobia administrator in UK, who is a muslim herself - yes, the fox inserted herself to guard the chicken coop ready for plucking.
A corollary to this is: the more minorities or muslims, particularly on the left, are in legislature, the more policies (or their unenforcement) will be for open borders, wishes of the majority of voters be damned. A self-reinforcing trend.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed his true colors on the weekend when he responded to the attempted ISIS-inspired bombing of an anti-Muslim protest by first condemning “white supremacy” before getting around to saying “violence at a protest is never acceptable”.
This is such interesting, well-researched stuff. Thank you for working on it so tirelessly, and collaborating to get it out to a bigger audience. I lack the deep historical knowledge to provide a genuine critique of what is being presented here, but a lot of it tracks for me from life experience
Clipped from the link above: 3.4.2 Critiques of the Campaign to End FGM/C
"Postcolonial feminist scholars have criticized the anti-FGM/C campaign for imposing Eurocentric values onto African societies and thus perpetuating colonialism under the guise of international development. They have argued that a single story of FGM/C has come to dominate, that this discourse is ethnocentric, racist, and colonial, homogenizes a wide variety of practices, and erases the diverse experiences of African women"
You read my mind even before I read yours. While reading your middle sentence, I was thinking, "sure would be nice to have a reference to support this assertion" :-) I am not sure how that ends up in an economics journal, and it was way too long for me to bother absorbing beyond the abstract and a few paragraphs.
But in thinking about the concept of female veiling, that would seem to have an element of ambivalence from the male perspective. The man wants to protect the purity and stability of his wife and daughters, and the family reputation associated with that. But as a "bachelor" he we would want to be able to see as much of a woman as he could. I suppose the practice of arranged marriages account for much of this?
I can see that once veiling is established, women might wish to enhance it for their own protection and ends. However, which sex would be the initiator of this norm?
Why would this practice be (currently) mostly seen in Muslim societies? Did Chinese or Hindu societies also "hide their women away"? I only learned in the last two decades that the Greeks apparently did that, at least for the upper class women. But the Romans were mush less restrictive??
No where else do I get to explore ideas like these! :-)
Muslims used headgear for their women. Sikhs and Jews use headgear for their men. The latter is a minority group signalling that the men stand between their women and children and danger. The former use it to signal that these women are not fair game.
Polygynous systems where the men control the assets tend towards sequestering of women. Both because who the father is becomes crucial and because the women are competing for prospects for their children, so their reputation has to be spotless. Chinese concubines, for example, were often barred from leaving their husband’s compound.
And yes, arranged marriages are a mechanism to get around females being sequestered.
Who initiates a tactic can be hard to work out. With the Muslim women veiling from the 1970s onwards, it is fairly clearly a female-initiated tactic. And yes, men are ambivalent about it.
An interesting idea occurred to me recently: what if patriarchy/matriarchy is not a mutually exclusive dichotomy, but instead are actually "siloed" structures that exist in simultaneity in the male and female subcultures respectively.
Patriarchy takes place within the male hierarchy, as does matriarchy within the female authority structure - the two meet at cultural interfaces such as marriage rituals, the handover of boys from the female subculture to the male one through initiation rituals etc.
This would make the mythical eradication of patriarchy by feminism a nonsensical objective, and would neatly fit into the extreme persistence of gendered behavioural norms that continue irrespective of their official extirpation attempts.
I can only echo the praise in Ron's and Pekka's initial comments.
Amazing collection of historical, social, and psychological observations.
I found this to be an interesting comment: "Research suggests that the rule of the clan does not increase confidence in fellow clan members as much as it reduces trust for non-clan members. The net effect is to create lower-trust societies which in turn encourage more use of the dense connections of lineage for risk-management and social cooperation." This might imply an evolutionary advantage for people with a highly trusting psychology, leading to even higher trust among outgroups than we see today. But I suppose the kin/linage driven evolutionary traits still dominate in most social and ecological situations. So evolution wobbles down a deviating path that incorporates both sides into the total species collective. And the collection of "in groups" and "out groups" to which we are forced to belong or elect to join.
I do have to admit I did not quite understand how this worked: "The unified moral order of monotheism breaks down the ritual boundaries between kin-groups that reverence for ancestors generated. [??] [Particularly this part:] This ritual boundary is used in non-monotheist cultures to prevent marriage within kin-groups. The adoption of monotheism—by eliminating this ritual boundary—thus enabled marriage within the kin-group." What have I missed? :-)
What is often called “ancestor worship” means that people within that ritual space are not allowed to marry each other. It also allows rituals specific to the kin-group to help bind the kin-group. The ritual and moral unity of monotheism then dissolves that boundary. Monotheist priests and clerics are particularly done on such “ancestor worship”.
Some Balkan clans resurrected a form of common ritual space by adopting different patron saints.
It seems like the problem in a nutshell is if a society based on a universal moral code tries to integrate those who believe in separate moral codes for in-group and out-group members, there will be trouble because the universal moral code ceases to be universal at that point. The society with the universal code will either have to quash the aberrant moral code or suffer a civil war to do so, or die trying.
We saw this in the USA leading up to the American Civil War. The trigger was the fact that the free and slave states could no longer live "separate lives", nor were they willing to (or at least the free states weren't willing to or simply couldn't any longer due to technological advancements like railroads and telegraphs). The fact that the geographic expansion of the country was so dependent on maintaining the balance of power between free and slave states showed the fragility--and ultimate futility--of that arrangement.
This actually resolved itself pretty quickly in the grand scheme of history, in just over half a century, if even that long.
Whether it's the abolition of polygamy in Utah, or the creation of modern Native American autonomous "states within a state", or the Amish, there has always been the insistence that the junior state accept the moral code of the senior state.
People from Islamic countries should not expect anything different, or expect to flout the moral code with impunity or invoke "racism" as a "get out of jail free" card.
That is a nonsense comment. If the UK has received more immigrants in decades that it did in the previous millennium, as it has, that is mass immigration by anyone’s standards. Everyone knows what you mean by it.
Pretending that teams don't exist is not a winning strategy when you notice your own team is starting to lose.
It is actually an excellent strategy to suppress self-preservation instincts by those who want to engineer your defeat. Teams do exist, and people are allowed to play to win - especially when you see the opposing side clearly doing so.
Thank you, many new facts for me, specifically about Arab identification.
One point about this passage: "Of course, if one wants—as clearly many left-progressives do, as they say so—mass immigration to be a lever to corrode Western civic cultures; to corrode Western institutional norms and rules; then that is all fine. It is also stupidly toxic and a profound treason against one’s society. It becomes yet another example of left-progressives being the enemies of human flourishing." Yes, it is all true, and what left progressives do not see is that they replace themselves with the unified immigrant kin groups. Thus, such kin groups not only colonize say Minneapolis, they displace the left politicians, because they artfully take on the woke progressive verbiage ( you tell the kaffir outsiders handing out the money whatever they need to hear, and then distribute the goodies across your clan and patronage networks) - while destroying the societal trust.
See who runs London or New York, and also, the new anti-Islamophobia administrator in UK, who is a muslim herself - yes, the fox inserted herself to guard the chicken coop ready for plucking.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/islamophobia-government-social-cohesion-antisemitism-b2933758.html - and this is a "part of its social cohesion strategy" - meaning completely browbeating the aboriginal Brits into compliance. Somehow no aboriginal rights here.
A corollary to this is: the more minorities or muslims, particularly on the left, are in legislature, the more policies (or their unenforcement) will be for open borders, wishes of the majority of voters be damned. A self-reinforcing trend.
As an update on New York Mamdani:
Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed his true colors on the weekend when he responded to the attempted ISIS-inspired bombing of an anti-Muslim protest by first condemning “white supremacy” before getting around to saying “violence at a protest is never acceptable”.
https://nypost.com/2026/03/08/opinion/miranda-devine-mayor-mamdani-showed-his-true-colors-as-isis-sympathizers-attacked-nyc-with-bombs/
Isn't it always the play, enabled by wokery? Same goes on in London.
And Minneapolis: last November, Minneapolis was a hair away from electing Omar Fateh for Mayor https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/11/07/heres-a-breakdown-of-how-minneapolis-residents-voted-in-mayors-race
The run was between woke Jacob Frey and Somali "democratic socialist" Omar Fateh https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/minneapolis-dfl-endorses-omar-fateh-for-city-mayor-over-jacob-frey , endorsed by Minnesota progressives (because what could be a costlier signal than turning Minneapolis into New Mogadishu?)
Regarding the point above "Enabled by Wokery" - enjoy the irony:
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/2031012541019664835?s=20
This is such interesting, well-researched stuff. Thank you for working on it so tirelessly, and collaborating to get it out to a bigger audience. I lack the deep historical knowledge to provide a genuine critique of what is being presented here, but a lot of it tracks for me from life experience
Cultural Anthropologists find the 99% rate of FGM in Somalia delicate when it is enforced by women.
https://www.humanium.org/en/female-genital-mutilation-fgm-in-somalia-a-harsh-daily-reality-for-many-girls/
-
https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aman.70051
Clipped from the link above: 3.4.2 Critiques of the Campaign to End FGM/C
"Postcolonial feminist scholars have criticized the anti-FGM/C campaign for imposing Eurocentric values onto African societies and thus perpetuating colonialism under the guise of international development. They have argued that a single story of FGM/C has come to dominate, that this discourse is ethnocentric, racist, and colonial, homogenizes a wide variety of practices, and erases the diverse experiences of African women"
In an intensely patriarchal society, raising the price of sex is a female strategy. Also, signalling “purity” becomes central.
The shift to veiling across the Muslim world and Muslim diasporas has also been a female strategy.
Jean-Paul Carvalho, ‘Veiling,’ The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 128, Issue 1, February 2013, 337–370. https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/CarvalhoConferencePaper.pdf
You read my mind even before I read yours. While reading your middle sentence, I was thinking, "sure would be nice to have a reference to support this assertion" :-) I am not sure how that ends up in an economics journal, and it was way too long for me to bother absorbing beyond the abstract and a few paragraphs.
But in thinking about the concept of female veiling, that would seem to have an element of ambivalence from the male perspective. The man wants to protect the purity and stability of his wife and daughters, and the family reputation associated with that. But as a "bachelor" he we would want to be able to see as much of a woman as he could. I suppose the practice of arranged marriages account for much of this?
I can see that once veiling is established, women might wish to enhance it for their own protection and ends. However, which sex would be the initiator of this norm?
Why would this practice be (currently) mostly seen in Muslim societies? Did Chinese or Hindu societies also "hide their women away"? I only learned in the last two decades that the Greeks apparently did that, at least for the upper class women. But the Romans were mush less restrictive??
No where else do I get to explore ideas like these! :-)
Muslims used headgear for their women. Sikhs and Jews use headgear for their men. The latter is a minority group signalling that the men stand between their women and children and danger. The former use it to signal that these women are not fair game.
Polygynous systems where the men control the assets tend towards sequestering of women. Both because who the father is becomes crucial and because the women are competing for prospects for their children, so their reputation has to be spotless. Chinese concubines, for example, were often barred from leaving their husband’s compound.
And yes, arranged marriages are a mechanism to get around females being sequestered.
Who initiates a tactic can be hard to work out. With the Muslim women veiling from the 1970s onwards, it is fairly clearly a female-initiated tactic. And yes, men are ambivalent about it.
An interesting idea occurred to me recently: what if patriarchy/matriarchy is not a mutually exclusive dichotomy, but instead are actually "siloed" structures that exist in simultaneity in the male and female subcultures respectively.
Patriarchy takes place within the male hierarchy, as does matriarchy within the female authority structure - the two meet at cultural interfaces such as marriage rituals, the handover of boys from the female subculture to the male one through initiation rituals etc.
This would make the mythical eradication of patriarchy by feminism a nonsensical objective, and would neatly fit into the extreme persistence of gendered behavioural norms that continue irrespective of their official extirpation attempts.
I can only echo the praise in Ron's and Pekka's initial comments.
Amazing collection of historical, social, and psychological observations.
I found this to be an interesting comment: "Research suggests that the rule of the clan does not increase confidence in fellow clan members as much as it reduces trust for non-clan members. The net effect is to create lower-trust societies which in turn encourage more use of the dense connections of lineage for risk-management and social cooperation." This might imply an evolutionary advantage for people with a highly trusting psychology, leading to even higher trust among outgroups than we see today. But I suppose the kin/linage driven evolutionary traits still dominate in most social and ecological situations. So evolution wobbles down a deviating path that incorporates both sides into the total species collective. And the collection of "in groups" and "out groups" to which we are forced to belong or elect to join.
I do have to admit I did not quite understand how this worked: "The unified moral order of monotheism breaks down the ritual boundaries between kin-groups that reverence for ancestors generated. [??] [Particularly this part:] This ritual boundary is used in non-monotheist cultures to prevent marriage within kin-groups. The adoption of monotheism—by eliminating this ritual boundary—thus enabled marriage within the kin-group." What have I missed? :-)
What is often called “ancestor worship” means that people within that ritual space are not allowed to marry each other. It also allows rituals specific to the kin-group to help bind the kin-group. The ritual and moral unity of monotheism then dissolves that boundary. Monotheist priests and clerics are particularly done on such “ancestor worship”.
Some Balkan clans resurrected a form of common ritual space by adopting different patron saints.
It seems like the problem in a nutshell is if a society based on a universal moral code tries to integrate those who believe in separate moral codes for in-group and out-group members, there will be trouble because the universal moral code ceases to be universal at that point. The society with the universal code will either have to quash the aberrant moral code or suffer a civil war to do so, or die trying.
We saw this in the USA leading up to the American Civil War. The trigger was the fact that the free and slave states could no longer live "separate lives", nor were they willing to (or at least the free states weren't willing to or simply couldn't any longer due to technological advancements like railroads and telegraphs). The fact that the geographic expansion of the country was so dependent on maintaining the balance of power between free and slave states showed the fragility--and ultimate futility--of that arrangement.
This actually resolved itself pretty quickly in the grand scheme of history, in just over half a century, if even that long.
Whether it's the abolition of polygamy in Utah, or the creation of modern Native American autonomous "states within a state", or the Amish, there has always been the insistence that the junior state accept the moral code of the senior state.
People from Islamic countries should not expect anything different, or expect to flout the moral code with impunity or invoke "racism" as a "get out of jail free" card.
"Mass immigration" has become a shibboleth. If you truly want to be "not on your team", then avoiding team-based language is a start.
That is a nonsense comment. If the UK has received more immigrants in decades that it did in the previous millennium, as it has, that is mass immigration by anyone’s standards. Everyone knows what you mean by it.
Pretending that teams don't exist is not a winning strategy when you notice your own team is starting to lose.
It is actually an excellent strategy to suppress self-preservation instincts by those who want to engineer your defeat. Teams do exist, and people are allowed to play to win - especially when you see the opposing side clearly doing so.