This was a real whitepill. https://pharos.vassarspaces.net/2 | Imperium Press

This was a real whitepill.

https://pharos.vassarspaces.net/2021/12/17/the-fourth-year-of-pharos-emotional-toll-research-white-supremacy/

I wanted to hate Dozier's article but the fact is that there isn't much to hate here—it's just an anti-white activist being very publicly demoralized. Throughout he just states what right-wingers believe about antiquity and leaves the reader to conclude that this is wrong or bad without presenting any reasons why—his weary moral tone is supposed to be enough.

The problem he has is twofold: a) classics isn't really taught anymore so normal people's opinions on it have not been tainted by wokeness, and b) these normal people are, when not buried under an avalanche of propaganda, pretty much in agreement with the radical right on most things, as were the most brilliant minds of the ancient world. Ours is the null hypothesis. This is what's taking an emotional toll on him. I know you're tired, comrade.

Dozier may be hysterical (he calls Trump "a white nationalist president"), but he's a cut above most woke liberals in terms of self-awareness. He summarizes Greg Johnson's essay Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country where Greg says that white nationalists just want to live around other white people. What unnerves Dozier is that he sees such people all around him—neighbours, friends, churchgoers:

That realization — that Johnson might be right, and that his movement, which so many people continue to describe as “far right” or “extremist,” might actually have widespread support — takes a toll.

What's worse—he's starting to realize he's no different. He quotes Joseph Sobran saying that "in their mating and migratory habits, liberals are indistinguishable from members of the Ku Klux Klan", and he has enough self-awareness to see this in himself:

Where to live. Where to go to school. Which park to play at. Where to eat. Where to go to church. How different, really, is the life I’ve made than that which people like Johnson expect me to make?

How is he supposed to change people's minds about "white supremacy" when he can't even change his own mind about it?

No, working on Pharos affects me because it is painful to see myself reflected in Greg Johnson’s confidence that most white people like me — especially white liberals like me — lack the courage and conviction [...] to create a more just world.

Dozier is tired and demoralized because he sees himself in Johnson's assessment of normal white people. But there's a deeper reason, one that occasionally peeks through amid his hand-wringing.

If reading Cicero is enough to redpill you on race, sex, and hierarchy—and he was basically the Mitt Romney of his day—imagine what reading Draco, Cato Maior, and Herodotus is. The fact is that Dozier immerses himself in clannish ethnocentrism all day, whether he writes about Johnson or not. Every time he cracks open an ancient tome, whether an epic poem or an obscure medical treatise, he's up to his ears in it. Dozier is tired for the same reason Donna Zuckerberg (who had to fold her glorified blog Eidolon because it was like totally stressing her) is tired—they've both devoted their lives to studying not things they love, but things they hate and want to change.

Maybe he should take a sabbatical from policing right-wing thought—we'll take over for him in educating people about antiquity. This is close to the heart of what Imperium Press is all about, and later this year we'll teach what so many classical departments no longer do, with our Latin course. The history of ideas belongs to us, because we believe what was considered wisdom and common sense for all of history up until the day before yesterday.

Don't worry Curt, we got this one.