Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
arctotherium Profile picture
@arctotherium42
Dec 20, 2025 • 6 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
The British are often blamed for millions of Indian famine deaths. This is exactly backwards; like all Malthusian agrarian civilizations famines were a primordial feature of Indian life, ended in peacetime by Raj-built railroads that allowed shipping food to affected areas. Image
Part of the reason the Raj is attacked for this is that, unlike prior government in India, they wrote reports about the famines under them to try and figure out how to prevent future ones, and eventually succeeded (peacetime famines in India ended before they did in Russia). Image
The awful book Late Victorian Holocausts is one source of this myth. Not coincidentally it is written by an actual Communist (Trotskyist) who does not believe in market dynamics and does not understand the universality of poverty in the premodern world. hlogserver.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-refu…
Source: lse.ac.uk/economics/Asse…
This myth leads to, among other things, unhinged beliefs like British-caused-famines making Indians less muscular due to natural selection today. This would be funny, except you don't want people who see you as an ancestral racial enemy holding power over you.
The slight decline in Indian incomes under the Raj is because of rapid population growth in a land-limited agrarian society, a consequence of successful famine/disease control and above all peace. You see the same in most peaceful Malthusian societies.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with arctotherium

arctotherium Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @arctotherium42

arctotherium Profile picture
Feb 11
Thread on affirmative action in Brazil. In 2012, Brazil began mandating that 50% of seats in all programs offered by federal universities should be distributed via affirmative action to the following three groups: public school grads, the poor, and blacks/Indians. Image
Affirmative action also applies to government jobs in Brazil. 20% were reserved for blacks until 2025 when this was increased to 30%. This applies to all government organizations as well as public companies and mixed-capital state-run companies. Image
One effect of this has been to make race much more salient in Brazil. For most of the 20th century, Brazil had a reputation for being a post-racial state with little racial conflict. Affirmative action changed this, as there are now concrete racial privileges to be won. Image
Read 6 tweets
arctotherium Profile picture
Jan 17
Thread with excerpts from the 1976 essay "On Meritocracy and Equality." I want to clear up some misconceptions around the idea of "meritocracy." The word was initially coined as a *pejorative* in 1958 to describe presently-existing Anglo-American society. Image
What characterized WWII and postwar Anglo-American society that made the word "meritocracy" appropriate? That talent (as measured by heavily genetic IQ) and technical skill, rather than hereditary privilege or some other mechanism, led to status and wealth. Image
But by 1976, this had already been successfully attacked and overthrown by the New Left/Civil Rights state, which replaced talent with hereditary privilege (race, sex) as the ideal arbiter of status. Image
Read 15 tweets
arctotherium Profile picture
Jan 16
Thread on California NGOs. Who works for and leads California NGOs? Mostly women, who are very starkly overrepresented in nonprofit employment and leadership. Image
Direct government funding is 30% of nonprofit revenue; the rest is tax-advantaged. Image
NGOs are effectively para-statal; a huge fraction of government services (eg 32% of Medi-Cal) are administered by them and a large chunk of their revenue is tax revenue. They then lobby the govt for ever more $$$ for their causes. Image
Read 7 tweets
arctotherium Profile picture
Jan 16
The California Racial Justice Act of 2020 allows defendants (in practice, blacks and Hispanics) to claim racial discrimination and overturn convictions explicitly in the absence of intentional discrimination, off of disparate impact alone. Image
Supposed discrimination can be used to reverse a judgment even if said "racial bias" is harmless and did not actually impact the decision. Image
Successes of the racial justice act: getting murderous gang members lower sentences because they are black and blacks are more likely to be charged as gang members [because they are more likely to be gang members]. Image
Read 4 tweets
arctotherium Profile picture
Jan 14
In 2022, 45% of high schoolers polled say they were taught that "America is built on stolen land" in class at school, and another 22% heard it from an adult there. Image
Students taught all of the "critical social justice" (CSJ) concepts were in fact more likely to agree with them; among those taught "America is built on stolen land" 73% agreed. Image
Among those students taught 5 CSJ concepts, 75% believed whites are responsible for the inferior social position of black people and 44% support preferential hiring and promotion of blacks. Image
Read 6 tweets
arctotherium Profile picture
Jan 4
Thread with excerpts from Boris Sax's "Stealing Fire", a book of the author reckoning with his discovery (after his father's death) that his father, Saville Sax, had been a major Soviet atomic spy, stealing important info on the A-bomb and likely the H-bomb and going unpunished. Image
The author was initially devastated, but eventually relieved at this discovery as partly explaining his father's awful lifetime behavior (living in black slums, beating his wife and kids, torturing dogs, never getting a stable job, dropping out of Harvard twice). Image
Image
Saville's mother (author's paternal grandmother) was a Jewish immigrant from Russia. According to the author, she, like many Jews, became a Communist as a way to partly recreate an idealized version of her Russian village without the Ukrainian pogromists in America.Image
Image
Read 23 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(