Small Twitter Account Upstages Nikole Hannah-Jones After Her Bizarre Ukraine Hot Take
“What if I told you Europe is not a continent by definition, but a geopolitical fiction to separate it from Asia and so the alarm about a European, or civilized, or First World nation being invaded is a dog whistle to tell us we should care because they are like us.”
Though 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones is frequently praised in “woke” circles like newsrooms, academia, and Hollywood where inconvenient facts about our nation’s history don’t matter, thankfully there are sane people out there who are not afraid to call her out when she pushes even further left.
Such was the case over the weekend. Hannah-Jones decided to weigh in with racially-charged, predictable hot takes on the Ukraine/Russia conflict. In several tweets, she alleged that the media was saturating the airwaves with coverage of Ukraine primarily because most of the people there were white and allegedly were not impoverished:
Every journalist covering Ukraine should really, really look internally. This is why I say we should stop pretending we have objectivity and in instead acknowledge our biases so that we can report against them. Many of us see the racialized analysis and language. https://t.co/Q0bmQzqja4
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) February 27, 2022
And honestly, these admissions of shock that this is happening in a European country are ahistorical and also serve to justify the lack of sympathy for other invasions, other occupations and other refugee crisis involving peoples not considered white.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) February 27, 2022
Later, she declared that not only was Europe not really a continent but instead “a geopolitical fiction to separate it from Asia and so the alarm about a European, or civilized, or First World nation being invaded is a dog whistle to tell us we should care because they are like us”:
What if I told you Europe is not a continent by defintion, but a geopolitical fiction to separate it from Asia and so the alarm about a European, or civilized, or First World nation being invaded is a dog whistle to tell us we should care because they are like us.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) February 27, 2022
She tacked on a “to be clear” tweet a couple of minutes later in an attempt to clarify she didn’t mean that we shouldn’t care about Ukraine:
To be clear: We should care about Ukraine. But not because it is European, or the people appear white, or they are “civilized” and not “impoverished.” All people deserve to be free and to be welcomed when their countries are at war.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) February 27, 2022
The unintentionally hilarious thing about Hannah-Jones’s rant was the fact that when she started it, an account with 20 followers took her on – and won the argument:
She's fighting about what a continent is with someone who has 20 followers. And she's losing. pic.twitter.com/Czn3FLf02n
— Jarvis (@jarvis_best) February 28, 2022
hahahahahahahahahaha Parker going full on Ramen Constitution and she’s stopped responding pic.twitter.com/GBjtYJKnWw
— Jarvis (@jarvis_best) February 28, 2022
Judging by some of Parker’s other tweets, he’s actually a pretty devoted leftist. Nevertheless, he started off the day with 20 followers and now has nearly 1,700 because of his back and forth with the woman who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her fraudulent rewriting of American history.
As for Hannah-Jones’s claim that the media and via extension their audiences only care about the war in Ukraine because those being attacked are white, it completely ignores other acts of war the media have devoted a considerable amount of time covering, like in Afghanistan which – last I checked – was not a country comprised mostly of white folks. Back in August and September, we got wall-to-wall coverage of President Biden’s botched handling of the withdrawal there, which saw Taliban terrorists retake the country by brutal force and American Marines and scores of native Afghans murdered.
Despite being debunked, Hannah-Jones will, unfortunately, carry on doing Hannah-Jones things, which means spot-on observations like the one below will continue to be made:
— Cox (@HOLYSMKES) February 28, 2022
The man has a point.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
Did NHJ “weigh in” like only she could,
https://images.ctfassets.net/3s5io6mnxfqz/51l09xNX7PbxhgMlkZkdY1/6162f8580e548a25050aaa4c6f152de8/nikole-hannah-jones.JPG?fm=jpg&w=900&fl=progressive
Or was it more like Stacey Abrams,
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fyHLmT1mGZ7wqFNPIaYgytLfWno=/0x0:5320×3540/1200×800/filters:focal(3035×444:3885×1294)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63700268/1142005332.jpg.0.jpg
Does Sideshow Bob know that his image is being besmirched?
In college I worked for a contractor one summer who was building carports for a mobile home park in Gresham Oregon. Oh the things I experienced and witnessed both with the crew and the residents.
I feel like articles about the unserious people forcing themselves onto us and proving they are unserious people are much like the woman chasing her boyfriend (from bed in a bed sheet) into the street with a butcher knife. Entertaining in the small, but in any quantity it’s more soul sucking and depressing than informative.
It’s gathering evidence that can be useful to make sure they don’t rebuild a power base. They mean to make serious and damaging social change if given the chance. So it’s a matter of building the record, something they are meticulous about themselves.
Everything is about race and white people are evil. It’s racist to argue with this obvious (and not at all relative) truth.
That’s what so incredibly odd and horribly sad about this moment in time. For the last 50-years, we – as a society – have made a Herculean effort to get people to NOT make any decisions based on race. But over the last three or four years, we’ve flipped that on its head. Now, there is an obligation being enforced on everyone to even include our youngest school-aged children, to make EVERY SINGLE DECISION in their life based SOLELY on the color of their own skin and the skin color of others.
It’s amazing in the worst possible way.
True. That’s the essential argument these hustlers employ.
On the other hand, she has a point about how the average person receives info and how the western media frame events and rank or prioritize coverage of conflicts. There is a good deal of truth to the trope of cute white girl = media coverage.
Not NHJ, but the logic of both is similar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1fzsBBViSU
“we should stop pretending we have objectivity and in instead acknowledge our biases so that we can report against them.”
This woman, and many others like her, that accept her garbage as truth, and her fellow race hustlers, have little or no capacity for self-awareness.
Here’s the hard part to dealing with these people…
She’s right. And yet… no.
It is absolutely correct that we should examine ourselves for our own biases. They color our view of the world and can wrongly shape our responses to it. But she goes wrong by asserting what our biases are based on her very own biases. She goes wrong with her own bias being that everything is centered on race and nothing but race.
It’s like all the other arguments she makes:
Continents – we can see right here there is a legitimate argument over it, but that it’s based on a racial bias alone is stupid.
Expectations – again, I’ll argue she’s right, but in the wrong way, about how we view “third world” and “first world” nations.
Founded on slavery – yes, and no, plenty of things that slavery corrupted including our Constitution, but it was founded on the idea of freedom which did sometimes mean different things to different of our Founders.
Etc.
Her racial take on the story is nonsense, of course, as is pretty much any racial take on any story that isn’t directly about race. But she’s right that Europe is not really a continent, by any definition in current use, and is counted as one only because the Greeks who invented the concept thought it was one. And in Eastern Europe, including Russia and the Ukraine, they don’t consider Europe and Asia to be separate continents.
None of which has anything to do with race.
You’ll have to take that up with centuries of historical scholars, they seem to disagree.
Centuries of historical scholars thought dinosaurs were cold-blooded reptiles, that peptic ulcers were caused by stress, and that disease was caused by an imbalance of the humours best caused by bleeding the patient.
Europe is considered a separate continent solely due to historical tradition, not because of any definition of “continent” that relies on actual physical characteristics. Much like Pluto being a planet only by tradition and not by any workable definition of planet.
What have historical scholars got to do with it? Look at a damn map, and give me one reason why Europe and Asia are separate continents, other than that the Greeks thought so. What possible definition of “continent” could yield that result? If you had not been told since childhood that they were separate continents, would you ever have thought so from looking at a map?
And it is a fact that in Russia, the Ukraine, and the rest of eastern Europe, people are not taught that they are separate continents, so it never occurs to them to think they are.
The idea that there are seven continents is very far from universal; it’s a cultural convention that is mostly confined to the English-speaking world, and is recent even there. Even here in the USA, when my mother went to school she was taught there were only six continents. Asia and Europe were separate, but America was one continent. She was surprised when I came home from school talking about North and South America being separate continents.
Here are two incontinent remarks. It’s a question of whose definition is being gored, isnt it?
Geologically, there are only four continents. Politically, who knows.
And yet … if it serves as a useful and generally correct demarcation of the migrations of peoples and cultures, it is appropriate for exactly the context that’s relevant here. Are “European people” or “white people” a thing?
Even if it’s not how you’d cut things if you were asked to look at a globe and see what looked like continents.
Just a subversive idea:
Did you know that, long before the Mongols came out of the same area to terrorize Europe, another nomadic people migrated out of the steppes of eastern Asia into what is now Ukraine? They were called the Cuman/Kipchak* and they were blond-haired and blue-eyed. That should scramble your ethnic assumptions. 🙂
(* There’s scholarly disagreement whether those were two people or one, I think. They might have been closely related or the same folks.)
No, it does not serve “as a useful and generally correct demarcation of the migrations of peoples and cultures”. There has been as much migration within “Europe” and within “Asia” as there has been between the two.
Are “European people” or “white people” a thing?
No, they are not; there’s no real difference between Eastern Europeans and Western Asians. Which is so partly because of all those migrations you mentioned. The Celts originally came from Turkey, if I recall correctly. The Magyars came from the Ural mountains. And long long ago so the Aryans came from the Ukraine, unless that theory has been changed.
This is funny… because it precisely parallels the “Jews are/aren’t a ‘race'” discussions we had last week.
Antarctica is the most recently “discovered” continent – with “Australia” the next before that – for certain definitions of discovered.
But the number 7 does have historical priority in a lot of ancient “top 7” lists. The Greeks (and later Romans) considered Europe and Asia and Africa to be separate regions – and they all are accessible from each other on foot and/or horseback. Thats all the “known” (to them) world at that time. The word/concept of continent I suspect doesn’t even exist in ancient Greek or Latin. But geographically/ecologically/biologically they are distinct even if there’s a land passage between them. Give the climate and geology (mostly mountain or sea with desolation inbetween) separating Eurasia in two it’s not illogical to still regard the. Separately to this day.
The number of “continents”, the number of “seas”, the number of “Wonders of the World”, the number of “planets”, there’s a LOT of lists that are arbitrary in their inclusions and/or exclusions. For further examples you could spend years arguing over wether Melba toast is a cracker or if a hot dog in a bun is a sandwich – and people do.
But on the subject of continents you wanted one reason why it’s arguable that Europe and Asia are two continents instead of just one a reasonable standard and I would proposed easy “accessibility”.
Between the long long N-S Ural Mountains to the north, water barriers to the south is a (relatively) small and desolate area bridging Europe and Asia. It’s as much a barrier as any ocean – as shown by the fact that European and Asian ecosystems are different.
If a passable land connection negates separate continent status America. Antarctica, Australia, and Eurasica are “it”. So 4 continents if land connection is the golden rule – THREE if we have another Ice Age.
if a hot dog in a bun is a sand..
Criminy, don’t mention that. We’ll have Jonah and the Bulwark boys commenting here soon after.
Burritos are not sandwiches. The US Justice system has so ruled.
Hebrew National, we’re comin’ for ya.
Nonsense. By that standard the Rockies and/or the Mississippi split North America into two continents! Or the Alps divide Europe!
The passable routes between Europe and Asia are many and wide. Africa, on the other hand, is joined to Eurasia only via a tiny peninsula (that is now cut by a canal). Likewise North and South America.
OK, first off you’re moving the goalposts if you start using rivers to divide land masses into continents. Ot that I e never seen you hesitate to shift things like that – but I proposed ease of accessibility as a logical divider and pointed out different ecosystems are a logical indication marker for that. Rivers – not so much. Major (and lonnnng) mountain chains buttressed by seas on the other end with ecological desolation in the middle? At least arguable.
Again – lists like this are All arbitrary but historically and ecologically America north and south differ and Eurasica west and east and south differ. Meh, and the number “7” is the old “top X” before 10 came into very the – so why change it now? If the quoted anti-historian wanted to redefine the 7 seas or wonders to play race-hate games I’d kinda oppose that as well.
Tell the truth I don’t understand why Madagascar doesn’t qualify other than it’s size is not quite there – it’s the Pluto of the continents as far as I’m concerned. .
But the number 7 has never been associated with continents, and still isn’t in most of the world. Seas yes, classical planets yes, all kinds of things yes, but the ancients thought there were only three continents. It’s an accident that the current convention in most of the English speaking world is 7 continents.
My point is that the division you propose between Europe and Asia is no more significant than the ones I proposed, and yet nobody thinks those demarcate continents. The answer is that nobody thinks so because nobody has thought so in the past; and the only reason so many people think of Eurasia as two continents is because people did think so in the past. It’s not a geographic distinction, it’s purely historical. And not everyone subscribes to it; significant parts of the world, including the one we’re discussing now, don’t believe in it.
You’re the guy everyone loves to see LEAVE the party…
Why don’t you leave? What have you EVER contributed here, or anywhere? What is the point of your life? You hate truth, don’t want to be corrected when you’re mistaken, so why do you bother living?
Hahahahahhahahaaa….Justice Milhouse IS our version of Nikole Hannah-Jones hahahahahhahahahahahahahaa… the kinda a guy that makes your shoulders go all humpty slumty when you see the fucker turning up to a party ahahhahahahahaha
You can go to Hell too. You’ve never contributed anything worth reading here either.
We bat around ideas here. Mil is a grand master level commentator / troll. If you can’t handle it, get back to the shallow end.
Milhouse, you commit the same error as this sad big-haired troll of a woman.
When there is an argument and disagreement between learned parties, you don’t declare yourself right and the winner. That’s what twidiots do on the internet in their hot takes. I think you can be better than that.
What learned parties? The people insisting that there is a geographic reason to divide Eurasia into two are not learned. They’re stupid.
Milhouse, I’ve repeatedly mentioned the actual geographical divide – that historically IS the device – one you can see in any world map that shows mountain ranges. Starting from the north the urals followed by a large area of desolate followed by seas going all the way to the Bosphorus straits.
You saying that divide “is stupid” is not an argument, it’s insult. And, you, sir, need to brush up on your Monty Python to better realize when you’re descending into the latter thinly disguised as the former.
“What if I told you Europe is not a continent by definition, but a geopolitical fiction to separate it from Asia”
Well, you’re the mistress of fable and fantasy. You can tell me anything your fevered little brain leaks out.
She may be a mistress of fable and fantasy, but if you think she’s wrong on this one then it is you who are disconnected from reality. She is 100% correct in this assertion, but as usual wrong in the conclusions she draws from it. Separating Europe from Asia is a geopolitical fiction, but it has nothing to do with race.
Please see above…
No, Milhouse, she is not “100% correct”. She has one side of an argument. There are others who disagree, and your absolute belief that they are ignorant of geology and history doesn’t make them wrong.
There’s an argument to be had. But assertions and appeal to self-authority are not the way to have it.
No, there is no argument, and nobody of any significance who disagrees; anyone who claims there is a clear geographic reason to divide Eurasia into two continents is an ignoramus and an idiot. There is simply no argument to be made against this woman’s geographic assertion. It is universally agreed, among anyone who knows anything, that she is right about the geography. What she’s wrong about is attributing it to racism. Because she’s got racism on the brain, and attributes everything to that. But it’s a universally agreed fact that the reasons most people do distinguish Europe and Asia are entirely historical, not geographic.
There was once a henhouse that was invaded by a chicken eating animal. Some called it a fox, others said it was a wild wolf. They argued and argued but never could come to an agreement, but the point is something was eating the f***ing chickens.
And your point is? Nice story, but how is it relevant here?
Oh, hi Milhouse. We’ve known each other for many years so you know my post was not meant to be critical but to point out humor in the situation.
Nicole Hannah Smith made an offensive racially charged tweet. She alleged that the media was saturating the airwaves with coverage of Ukraine primarily because most of the people there were white and allegedly were not impoverished.
The fact that she stated Europe was not a continent was not what made her tweet offensive. A person with a sense of humor would argue that your argument is not relevant and that’s what makes my story relevant. And that’s my point.
By the way, most of the time when you get a thumbs up—that was me. So don’t push it. Ha ha ha.
Sorry guys but I have to step in and say that Milhouse brings it on the regular with some insightful shit. He likes to pick apart a post, but so what? I like seeing him. Challenge his ideas.
The idea of what are continents is a construct of convenience that’s been passed down, just like so much stupid shit we get inundated with every day.
What if I told you that Stacey Abrams is not a continent?
I’d question you on the basis of history, but only marginally on the basis of geography.
Stacey is geography all the way. Her lover needs a topographical map.
So does my lover.
Damn. I forgot. I don’t have a lover.
Well, I looked it up and the dictionary said islands don’t come that big.
I cannot wait for Justice Milhouse to call you an idiot and then go in to detail as to why you are so wrong.
I’d cancel you. Then report you to the UN.
But if you got the International Astronomical Union to declare her a planet, I’d forgive you.
This loon’s mother, of course is white. A Czech. I think she is mentally ill. Surely a halfwit, but the liberals are susceptible to such nonsense from anyone who claims not to be “white”.
Uh oh. Eastern Russia and North America are on the same continental Teutonic plate.
German?!
Oops, Tectonic plates. Though Teutonic works in this context. Hehe.
Does NATO float on paper plates?
The de jure would have existed if PutPut had invaded Poland, Germany.? No will, no tanks, no hoop cheese.
Feint Russia, bomb Xi?
Best of bad alternatives,
Soggy plates, but we got to feed.
It was a Faultian Slip.
Since Eastern Russia and North America are on the same continental tectonic plate, and Russia originally possessed Alaska, and ancient Siberians crossed the Bering Strait to settle the Americas— does Russia have the right to the reclaim the territory of Alaska… etcetera?
To be fair, we do expect a higher standard of behaviour from the civilised world than from some other parts of the world. And to take it to another level of fairness, there doesn’t seem to be the level of hatred between the Russians and the Ukranians as we see in other parts of the world.
I think Putin probably sent in the Chechens to stir up the hatred he needs to get a win.
Russia is civilized?! And what do you mean, we don’t see that level of hatred? Have you never heard of the Holodmor? Or the Green Army’s depredations in the Russian Civil War? There was hatred enough there, though it was directed at Jews and Reds, not against Russians per se.
Yes, Russia is considered “civilized” compared to, say, Afghanistan, Somalia (and most of Africa), some Asian countries, many Pacific islands, etc. It’s got modernity and all the trappings of civilization. Doesn’t mean it’s a good one, or that it meets everyone’s definitions. Obviously if you define ‘civilization’ as a constitutional republic, or even ‘rule of law’, it lacks a bit. *cough*
Yes, this was the one where I was going to partially agree with her. We do seem to be shocked that somehow “civilized” nations would go to war with each other, entirely forgetting human nature, acting as if somehow the West has overcome that primal issue. It’s part of the patronizing hubris of Progressivism – we have overcome sin and iniquity and we must bring that perfection to other peoples so we can all enter utopia together. Feh.
Communism doesn’t work without this belief. This is very important to remember. You have to believe that man’s nature can be cleansed of his inbred drive for autonomy and individual possessions. And Communism always fails, because he can’t.
“To be fair, we do expect a higher standard of behaviour from the civilised world than from some other parts of the world.”
That’s like saying we expect a higher standard of behavior from white kids in the classroom.
“And to take it to another level of fairness, there doesn’t seem to be the level of hatred between the Russians and the Ukranians as we see in other parts of the world.”
Thank heavens. The whole bombing and killing thing had me worried.
Allow me to introduce you to China and their definition of “civilized” with their neighbors.
She came awfully close to saying all lives matter. Oh my.
She had her fingers crossed.
When are we going to get to the 1969 invasion of the moon by white people! It sure didn’t take long to clear that continent non-white people! How soon we forget.
Gil Scot-Heron knows…ask his sister Nell.
Whenever I read about someone like this I wonder, Did Forrest Gump know he was mentally challenged ? Why are we bothering with this ?
Doesn’t surprise me that she believes she can arbitrarily redefine the continents, the Left does this on a regular basis. And since they own the media, they think everyone will accept it and go along.
In this one case she’s not “arbitrarily redefining” anything, on the contrary, she’s following the science of geography, while those who separate Europe and Asia are following an arbitrary decision made 2500 years ago. Note that neither the Russians nor the Ukranians accept that arbitrary decision; on this one question they both agree with her.
You got a real bug up your heinie about this continent thing. In a rather absolutist way.
Would you give any credence to Europe being a sub-continent?
Anyone who has read her revisionist history of Colonial Virginia, should take anything she says with a great deal of skepticism.
I wouldn’t trust her to tell me whether it’s raining outside. But in this case all one needs to do is look at a map to see that she’s correct on the facts, and is only wrong in her obsessively linking those facts to race.
One scholar who agrees with you about the Eurasian continent is Prof. Stephen Kotkin. I don’t recall in which of his lectures he discussed it, but it was in a completely scholarly setting, all took his comments seriously, and nobody called anybody names.
The Q&A there was almost as civil as we’ve exposed ourselves to be in this and other LI threads.
I’m not sure that China and the so-called Near East don’t favor the Eurasian continent designation.
I’m still waiting for Nikole Hannah-Jones to write about the other end of the slave trade .. including the Kingdom of Dahomey.
The Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904.
The kingdom was constantly organised for warfare; it captured children, women, and men during wars and raids against weaker societies, and sold them into the Atlantic slave trade in exchange for European goods such as rifles, gunpowder, fabrics, cowrie shells, tobacco, pipes, and alcohol.
Other remaining captives became slaves in Dahomey, where they worked on royal plantations that supplied food for the army and the royal court, and were often mass executed in large-scale human sacrifices during the festival celebrations known as the Annual Customs of Dahomey.
FACTOID: Dahomey Plantation, Highway 1, Bolivar County MS, for sale. 10,000 acres/$20,000,000
How seriously can you take a person that’s so racist she claims America needs to be razed to the ground because to white and forget to mention in her rage the first official American slave holder was black.
She is not a historian and she cares nothing about history. Her goal is black superiority and her method is to cherry pick or alter history to fit her narrative.
In the Outer Hebrides there’s an island called Lewis and Harris.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_and_Harris
By all objective standards it’s one island, and even the people living on it acknowledge it to be true, but:
Allegedly there is a nickname that could apply, “The Long Island, but:
So, a single island has two names, but “The Long Island,” singular, applies to the entire group of several islands.
Language is crazy.
As is geography and geology, sometimes.
she is a complete fraud–cannot imagine why an institution engaged in any serious, meaningful enterprise would want her ilk anywhere near them–let alone pay her for her bs
I agree with NHJ in this case about not automatically going to the Ukrainian side. Not because white people aren’t a thing, but because I think Russia is generally right in this war.
Even if she’s right for the wrong reason, I agree with her conclusion. It’ll be good if she can cause trouble for the Soros lackeys who want to go in to support Ukraine, including of course the Azov Battalion and Right Sektor which seem to be what Zelensky is depending on to snipe at the Russians and force-conscript the rest of the Ukrainian men into the military.
In general NHJ is ridiculous, and it’s good that she was called out on that too because she’ll soon be back to her race baiting.
what Zelensky is depending on to … force-conscript the rest of the Ukrainian men into the military
Huh? The country has been invaded. That’s kinda when any country does conscription. It’s sorta your duty to defend home, hearth, and kin when the invader comes.
Also, why do you think Russia is right? Is it that Ukraine has always been Russian? Or some other aspect of his justifications?
Those damn Ukranians wanting “white freedom” are launching their fireworks into the ghetto again!
HNJ and Stacey the Hutt … now there is a NPR-worthy discussion for their new program, “Word Salad for my Entree, Please!”
NHJ==exercising her fake red hair Pain In The Posterior Privilege. Let’s say that if she were a “person of pallor” someone would have kicked this silly twit to the curb long ago.