GunsGermsAndSteel

I'm seeing a surprising amount of criticism of this, these days, from the left.

Whereas when it was written it was an explicitly anti-racist argument that suggested that European dominance was due to contingent facts about geography etc. now anti-colonial theorists are pushing back on it as excusing European malice.

In a sense this is the IdentityPolitics dichotomy between same and equal vs different but better. Diamond is defending same-and-equal while his critics are now pushing different-but-better.

The problem with this is that it's easy to recognise the racism in an argument that white people dominated brown people because they were essentially smarter. But an argument that goes white people dominated brown people because they were essentially more ruthless, has a very similar form. Both are appeals to essentialism.

Which is what a Diamond-style same-and-equal argument avoids.