i’m less interested in his career trajectory than in what he destroys along its path. he’s already destroyed my alma mater (New College of Florida). i’m not sure how much of the destruction of US higher ed can be attributed directly to him. 1/

DiAngelo was a kind of excess and grift and he is that too. but DiAngelo wasn’t an effective agent of destruction and perhaps fascist reconstruction in the way Rufo has been. this take strikes me as a bit too sanguine. /fin

Of course you have to pay attention to the affiliative and ascriptive identities of the people you govern. Managing such identities is the hardest part of state construction and maintenance. 1/

The question is *how* you must pay attention, whether it is wise tgat certain understandings of what those identities are be somehow reified as real and granted rights claims by outside parties that then must constrain the state in how it conceives of and shapes its public. /fin

Yes, we’ve discussed this before. It’s a great description of a desirable *end state*. Successful states need the identity groups that they comprise to have a stake in, be represented and enfranchised, in the national project. 1/

But group-rights claims hinder the *means* to that end. 2/

What affiliative or ascriptive groups exist in a state, however strongly identified they are, how segregated and distinct they are, are not predetermined but things that must be continually shaped by the project of state building and maintenance. 3/

Singapore simultaneously insists on maintaining the identities of three major subgroups (chinese, malay, indian) while it refuses them certain associational rights but controlling the racial distribution of housing. 1/

It both strengthens and weakens subgroup affiliations, strengthening particular identities that it has made legible to itself and recognized, enfranchised, in the manner Wimmer suggests, implicitly perhaps weakening other or more specialized identities that might emerge under other policy. 2/

Its housing policy and language policy (it encourages “native tongues” but insists on English as the lingua franca in commerce and law) shapes the degree and character of identity, the balance of local identity with identity with the broader state. 3/

All of this is legitimate, even laudable, in my view, even though some might dislike the state’s restriction of association in the formation of communities of coresidence. 4/

(Early Singapore had terrible racial conflict. Modern Singapore’s founding moment is an instance of ethnic cleansing, Malaysia choosing to shed a Chinese ethnic enclave.) /fin

as i’ve asserted and you resist in normative grounds (fine) but you cannot resist on practical grounds, the ability in practice to have rights derives from states. states enforce rights, or else only might makes right. 1/

the existence of and desirability of states, however, does not depend on any particular bundle of rights that states choose to enforce. 2/

liberal states protecting a broad range of expressive and associational rights are desirable in my view, but the case for states is not only for so advanced and delicate a flower. 3/

a right to “free association” may or may not be protected, and the meaning of such a right may or may not extend to choosing where and with whom to live (can ethnic enclaves emerge?), choosing in what language our children are educated, etc. 4/

again, imposing a priori as “universal rights” particular answers to these questions constrains the sphere of action for state integration and maintenance in ways that render extermination or expulsion more likely than if states had greater internal scope to work towards peaceful integration. /fin

but this is just a false analogy. insisting on education in a common language and other assimilative, group-identity weakening policy that gets labeled genocide is nothing like a precursor to or a signal of intent to exterminate. 1/

on the contrary, it may well prevent the kind of persistent ethnonational fragmentation and chauvinism and insularity that brings conflict to the level of extermination. /fin

it doesn’t follow that no prior norms should be enforced as a matter of abstract logic. 1/

as a matter of historical experience, however, i claim that strong norms of “national self-determination” established and celebrated post-WWII, that still receive widespread deference even today, should not be respected or enforced, should in fact be understood as dangerous, harmful, vicious. /fin

i am very happy to support a prohibition of extermination as a moral rule that outsiders might even coercively impose (though in practice they rarely will). 1/

i am not remotely happy to support the same prohibition of “genocide” unless genocide is carefully defined to mean extermination, in which case why do we need the separate crime? 2/

it is sometimes legitimate, sometimes necessary, for states to insist on schooling in a commom language, disfavor signage in minority languages, encourage assimilation to common norms and customs. 3/

all of these practices are sometimes described as “genocide”, sometimes not unreasonably in the sense their intent and predictable effect will be to reduce the numbers of and weaken the identities of some component groups. 4/

strongly, sometimes coercively, assimilative tactics are not my preference. i prefer pluralistic liberalism. 5/

but insisting on pluralistic liberalism under all circumstances at all times amounts to imposing constraints under which many state building and even state maintaining projects will violently fail. 6/

yes, extermination should be taken off the table as a strong moral norm (even though it’s a norm nearly all incumbent states will have violated at some point in its history.) 7/

but taking the broad range of practices that might undermine subgroup identity and numbers off the table is too costly a restriction. /fin

(i’m sorry before writing my long thread i somehow did not see all of yours. i like the Wimmer conclusion and think it broadly right about desirable end states. a successful state project will involve some combination of assimilation that reduces subgroup difference…

and recognition that gives subgroups a stake in the project where difference remains! the dispute is whether a moral rule can insist that the contours of the eventually desirable settlement can be imposed as a constraint…

prior to the negotiations, struggles, accommodations inherent to the state building project. my claim is that’s a terrible idea that in practice has done a very great deal of harm.)

integrating a state is a difficult, always ongoing project. human beings have and generate wide ranges of identities that don’t color between territorial lines. often the putative rulers of the putative states are shit. under the best of circumstances it’s a project that often fails. 1/

it’s a project that demands diplomacy and creativity. these are (proto)states we are talking about coercion and violence are in the toolkit as well. 2/

there is no cookbook right or wrong way to manage the project. should an affiliative group be granted some formal autonomy and recognition, or will that sew division? should we celebrate, even tolerate, linguistic diversity or insist on a unifying official language? 3/

all of these choices have tradeoffs. is it right or wrong to insist minority communities be schooled in the majority’s language and in majority norms and customs? it depends. it can be a legitimate choice. 4/

insisting that some affiliative communities (who decides? who judges?) have rights against the state to prejudge these choices is a well intentioned form of sabotage, ultimately in no one’s interest. 5/

no moral code written in Geneva can foresee the circumstances, adjudicate the trade offs, understand the particularities of local, overlapping identities, the potentials for conflict and for accommodation. 6/

granting “rights” is actually imposing constraints, and though perhaps well intentioned often (in fact i would claim usually) undermines a state construction project in ways that harm all residents of the territory to be governed, often especially the minorities ostensibly protected. 7/

(empirically outside advocacy of minority rights often both emboldens the minority while rendering other groups less tolerant and willing to accommodate the minority identity as it becomes perceived as a foreign threat or site of influence against the domestic sovereign.) 8/

it’s well meaning, sounds moral and good, but is a hubristic, mischievous, deadly project in practice. 9/

are there instances if vicious treatment of “unprotected” minorities, of genocide without any external meddling, of integration projects that violently fail with no intercession by liberal-internationalist arrogations? 10/

absolutely. formation of a state legitimate to substantially a territory’s entire population is a very hard problem nearly always, and very few ultimately “successful” projects did not involve some measure of coercion, exclusion, even extermination. 11/

but those projects are less, not more, likely to resort more to ugly tactics when they do not have the full range of potential accommodations or insistences from which to choose. 12/

when they lack the confidence to be indulgent because they perceive accommodation as forced surrender to an unintegrated subgroup, especially if managers of the putative state perceive accommodation as imposed by foreign powers, violent suppression becomes very likely. 13/

a state is sovereign. rights claims are claims against the sovereign. 14/

a liberal state that maintains sovereignty despite granting and then respecting strong rights claims against it is the most desirable form of state, but also rare and difficult to sustain and emerges from confident sovereignty rather than before it. 15/

pretending outsiders can insist on such a state by fiat, and correctly identify the form of rights claims and for whom that should be respected, prior to a process of integration and negotiation is just absurd. 16/

it sabotages worthy projects and encourages ugly conflicts that might otherwise have been avoided. 17/

(i’m sorry to have gone on so long and somewhat repetitively!) /fin