Students For Liberty
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Students For Liberty@sflibertyIn 1964, a young University of Michigan anthropologist went to live with a tribe untouched by modernity. What he found destroyed the noble savage myth. Then his own discipline spent the next four...
SummaryAnthropologist Napoleon Chagnon's 1960s research with the Yanomamö in Venezuela challenged the "noble savage" myth by documenting that violence, hierarchy, and inequality were prevalent in societies untouched by civilization—contradicting the dominant postwar anthropological belief that these were products of modernity. After his findings were published, the academic establishment attacked Chagnon's character rather than his data, with later investigations clearing him of all serious allegations, though the damage to his career had already been done.Sep 28, 202612 tweets♥ 6.9KStudents For Liberty@sflibertyIn October 1937, at the height of the Great Terror, Stalin's secret police was shooting roughly 1,500 Soviet citizens every day. That same month, the founders of the London School of Economics publi...
SummaryBritish intellectuals Sidney and Beatrice Webb, founders of the London School of Economics, published a two-volume defense of Stalin's Soviet Union in 1935, then released a second edition in October 1937 during the Great Terror when Stalin's secret police were executing roughly 1,500 people daily—their only change was removing the question mark from the title. Despite Beatrice's private diary acknowledging the lack of free expression in the USSR, they proceeded with their endorsement based largely on Soviet-supplied documents and carefully arranged tours, earning historian A.J.P. Taylor's description of it as 'the most preposterous book ever written about Soviet Russia.'Aug 27, 202610 tweets♥ 4.2KStudents For Liberty@sflibertyIn 1825, a rich Welsh industrialist bought an entire American town to prove that socialism could work. He had the money, the buildings, the theory, and hundreds of eager followers waiting to move in....
SummaryIn 1825, wealthy industrialist Robert Owen purchased an entire Indiana town to create a socialist utopia where private property was eliminated and everyone earned equally. Despite ideal conditions and educated settlers, New Harmony collapsed within two years because workers lacked incentive to produce when rewards were equal regardless of effort, buildings decayed without individual ownership, and the community fractured under demands for conformity.Jul 1, 202610 tweets♥ 21.1KStudents For Liberty@sflibertyIn July 1985, over a billion people watched Live Aid. Months earlier, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had written "We Are the World." All of it was a response to a famine in Ethiopia. Almost nob...
SummaryThe 1984-1985 Ethiopian famine that sparked Live Aid and "We Are the World" was framed as a natural disaster, but was actually engineered by the Marxist-Leninist Derg regime through forced collectivization, grain seizures, and deliberate starvation of rebel regions—with aid money partly diverted to a deadly resettlement program that killed 50,000-100,000 people.Jun 19, 202612 tweets♥ 12.6KStudents For Liberty@sflibertyNoam Chomsky defended the Khmer Rouge while they were killing 25% of Cambodia's population. He kept his position at MIT. His reputation kept growing. His books kept selling. Thomas Sowell predicted...
SummaryThe thread argues that intellectuals like Noam Chomsky faced no professional consequences for defending the Khmer Rouge during Cambodia's genocide, while figures like Ayn Rand who never inspired atrocities remain academically marginalized. Thomas Sowell's observation that intellectuals lack accountability mechanisms—unlike doctors or engineers—explains why ideologies responsible for mass deaths (Marxism) retain academic respectability while capitalism's defenders are dismissed.Mar 4, 202610 tweets♥ 8.7KStudents For Liberty@sflibertyIn 1968, historian Robert Conquest published research showing Stalin killed millions. Western intellectuals called him a propagandist. A Cold War hack. A CIA plant. Then the USSR collapsed. The arch...
SummaryHistorian Robert Conquest documented Stalin's atrocities in the 1960s-80s with millions of deaths, but Western academics dismissed him as a Cold War propagandist until Soviet archives opened after 1991 and proved his estimates were accurate or even conservative. The episode reveals how institutional consensus can systematically reject evidence that contradicts dominant ideological narratives.Dec 12, 202514 tweets♥ 6.3KStudents For Liberty@sfliberty