As part of my meta-curation, I read articles recommended by The Browser. This week, The Browser recommended “The Peoples of America” by Rudyard William Lynch, best known for WhatifAltHist.

I initially found the article an interesting exploration of the influence of geography, ancestry, and ethnicity on American culture. However, I noticed something felt off. Lynch nods toward the fall of civilization due to degeneracy:

The Edenic California of the 20th century no longer exists, and has been replaced by a cross between Blade Runner and the degeneracy of ancient atheists’ multicultural Babylon or Rome. California is the story of a society that has everything—wealth, genius, perfect geography, strong political institutions, and military protection—brought down by the one thing it does not have: a functioning culture … . One of my good friends is a native Washingtonian and another an old stock Californian, and both feel that the places they grew up have now been irrevocably destroyed. They belonged to the old cowboy Western culture, while its new inhabitants are trying to build a post-Christian, post-Western, possibly transhumanist society, which we see manifest most clearly with Silicon Valley’s various strange ideologies.

He also nods toward population replacement:

In recent history, large corporations have furthered the demographic replacement of the South-West with migrants from Latin America. … Perhaps they will integrate into American society, perhaps they will not. Maybe we will see mass deportations, or the replacement of the local populations. It is likely that the countryside will continue to outreproduce the cities, which will become “behavioral sinks”—a term coined by ethologist John B. Calhoun to describe the collapse of social behavior that occurs when a population is subjected to extreme overcrowding, rapidly giving way to full population collapse—a significantly more common trend than people think.

A quick search confirmed Lynch and the article's magazine Palladium as far right sources. However, the article reads respectably, which worries me. I worry sources that read respectably can smuggle in harmful ideas, opening readers up to radicalization to harmful ideologies¹ otherwise objectionable in crackpot form. For now, I can only suggest to practice basic media literacy - learn about your sources through other sources.