In a thread on Kiwifarms titled, The Indian Menance, and running to over 1,300 pages long, a forum member published a comment regarding the Indian concept of Izzat, a comment which has raced around the internet like wildfire on a LA hillside in late summer. The first thing to understand is that Izzat has no direct translation in English or any other European languages, which is why our countries function and in the past produced things of beauty, and goes a very long way explaining why India is, was, and always will be a gigantic shithole, the biggest shithole on the face of the planet. Here is a quote from the comment on Kiwifarms:
Izzat conflicts are not about who is right and who is wrong. It’s about who wins and who loses. This means it’s a zero-sum game where just about any action is justified (including murder) to restore the lost Izzat. Izzat is a limited social currency and the easiest way to get it is to take it from someone else. Winning is righteous in Izzat. Losing is unrighteous. This means that if someone plays the game of izzat well enough, they can get away with just about anything (murder, rape, scamming, cheating, stealing). The only morality in Izzat is the protection of your group’s collective ego. The only appropriate response when your Izzat is attacked is the complete destruction of whoever insulted it.
Two people get into an argument. They might escalate, but chances are it won’t be that bad. i.e. ‘Sorry I broke your garden gnome.’ With two Indians in an argument, the stakes are always deadly thanks to Izzat. Neither of them can back down, nor can they admit fault. Admitting fault is seen as deliberately humiliating yourself. Not only that, but because Izzat is shared, you are shaming everyone who shares your Izzat. So, admitting fault or taking responsibility for a problem is a form of social suicide. This means even if the dispute was over something completely fucking stupid or trivial (like a broken garden gnome), it could spiral into a decades long honour feud.
What sort of effect does this have on importing Indians en masse to Western countries?
Izzat is also the reason why Indian managers are so infamous for hiring more Indians. It’s because from the manager’s perspective, he’s using his position to gain an invisible social currency. Merit and actual qualifications come second to that idea. If he hired a westerner, he would not gain or even lose Izzat by doing so. He has a very strong cultural incentive not to be impartial. Meanwhile, if he can strong-arm dozens of Indians into a company, he is gaining huge quantities of Izzat and conspirators who owe an absolute debt to him.
It’s not uncommon to see Indians gloat about their success in the west. And yes, izzat is very much a system that enables short term success. But the fundamental reality is the prosperity that these Indians find so attractive in the first place wouldn’t exist if the west practiced something similar to Izzat. Our systems can only exist on the assumption of good faith, and not a majority of people exploiting them for destructive short term gain. On top of that, if an Indian causes the systems and companies he comes into contact with to collapse, then he can just go back to India with his plunder. He has no stakes in the long-term prosperity, functionality or stability of these systems. The stakes are completely asymmetrical in the Indian’s favour.
In 2014 the Indian government began aggressively exporting its citizens around the world to as many countries as possible, particularly Western nations. But before this time, many Indians who emigrated from India were considered to be Anglophiles. That is, Indians who were enamored with Western cultural principles and sought to ape them. The Indian dressed in a smart tailored suit, smoking a pipe and speaking with an Eton accent is a fine example. I knew an Indian like this in Australia back in the 1990s.
What is important to understand is that these Anglophile Indians were not just embracing Western values, they were actively seeking to escape Izzat and the corresponding caste system. The only method of escape available from Izzat that an Indian living in India has open to them is to convert to Christianity. It’s worthwhile noting that Christians living in India suffer a high level of active persecution. But the onrush of Indians into our nations has propelled the expansion of the Izzat system as well.
There was a greentext from 4chan (I don’t have it so bear with me). Anon knew an Indian. This Indian would make outlandish claims (he could benchpress 500kg, he was a billionaire, he did arms deals with the US government). Anon said he didn’t believe the Indian. The Indian reacted with righteous indignation. The situation escalated to the point where the Indian was emailing Anon death threats. Anon responded by forwarding the emails to the police. The Indian killed himself. Anon was left baffled at the whole situation and had no idea what the fuck just happened.
So, without Izzat, this looks like an utterly insane and pointless sequence of events. But with Izzat? The Indian’s actions suddenly make sense. He was boasting to increase his Izzat, and when Anon simply stated his disbelief, it was seen as a vicious attack on his Izzat. The Indian escalated the situation to restore the lost Izzat. When the police got involved, the dispute had become public, so the Indian’s shame had increased to unbearable levels. He committed suicide in order to save his remaining Izzat. Anon had no idea what Izzat was, or if he did, he didn’t mention it, yet the Indian’s actions perfectly align with this framework. This is what makes me believe the green text was genuine.
Shining a public light on Izzat is an effective counter tactic, as seen in the above example. Of course, the very best method to counter Izzat is to send all of these Izzat slaves back to where they came from. But here in Australia we are not just ramping up our mass importation of Izzat Indians, the Australian government this year actually passed a law that recognises Indian degrees in Australia. What could possibly go wrong?
The western idea of merit is competence in a role. Merit in Izzat is determined by what lengths you will go to to achieve a goal, with competence merely being one path. It often becomes a secondary path, as printing a degree that says you’re qualified to be a jet pilot is just as good as being able to actually fly a jet in the eyes of Izzat. In other words, Izzat selects for appearance over authentic merit or morality.
Izzat is all well and good until the plane that you’re sitting in falls out of the sky or the bridge that you’re driving over collapses under its own weight.
The one saving grace is Izzat performs awfully in the long term. Once Indians displace you, they will go back to playing this insane game among themselves. It’s what happened to companies that got hit by Izzat. This is also why there aren’t any homegrown Indian companies that have the same influence as Microsoft or Google. Whenever they start getting ahead, their companies implode from infighting, nobody doing their jobs, everybody trying to cheat each other and nobody addressing critical issues. Systems that delegate authority and work on good faith eventually win out over zero-sum honour feuding. Izzat cannot maintain complex systems because its players are only concerned with short term gain.
With the west, the issue is that it often fails to live up to its own ideals. It’s not a perfect system, but we can course correct and address problems pragmatically. With Izzat, Indians live up to those ideals very, very often. When you see the dysfunctionality of India, remember that it’s a feature of Izzat, not a bug.
There is no magic dirt in the soil of our nations that will somehow confer our cultural attributes and attitudes onto these new arrivals by default. I have lived and worked for over thirty years all around the world in many different countries and cultures, and from what I have experienced the term Izzat does not surprise me at all. But the people in our political and bureaucratic classes who are responsible for the mass importation of these undesirables either have no idea at all the total disaster that they are responsible for, or they themselves are Indians and their Izzat will be increased by the chaos that they enable.
India is chaos, anyone who has any experience of the country or its people knows that. The plummet in reputation of Indians over the past 10 years in various Western nations has been incredible to witness. Izzat goes a very long way to explaining the inherent dysfunction in Indian society, and it helps explain many aspects of my interactions with Indians in the past, the majority of which were negative. All of the cheating, the scamming, the nepotism, the fraud, the lying, the cronyism and sucking up, the awful behavior when they’re put in a position of authority, the dysfunction, the thieving, the abject lack of any morals when they cheat a dementia suffering grandmother out of her few remaining savings, all of these awful and civilization killing behaviors increase the individual’s Izzat and thus also the Izzat of his family, his associates, and his caste.
There is no future with a culture that practices Izzat, there is only chaos. India will never change, and it will never be a super power. It’s a miracle that it has a competitive cricket team. We must send them all back.
You can find Adam Piggott at Substack.
