"Noble Savage" Fallacy

Sometimes a perverted generalisation of known cases of Savage nobility, the ‘Noble Savage Fallacy’ is a name for the event where someone has referred to perceived Savages as more noble than the Civilized, without proper reasoning. E.g. "Native Americans were peaceful warriors" will be the claim, when evidence shows members of that group committed genocide versus other Amerindians. In perhaps the worst case this fallacy seems to posit that a people were noble as it were simply for being Savages—lacking even in rationalisations or reasoning for the case, but less absurd cases will at least try at rationalisation.

The Myth of the Noble Savage turns out to be, on analysis, merely a savage myth for the self-ennoblement of those whose resentment of limits prompts them to rebel against the expensively achieved attunement to the structure of reality called civilization. «Melville’s Typee (1846) and the Case for Civilization» [Thomas F. Bertonneau, 18]

The common trope on the left is that everyone but Whites were naturally peaceful and *communal* (or: communist) and so "the evil Whites" suborned them with violence and capitalism. These people never seem to think what other races did at the same time as "Whites." Like, other civilizations and cultural groups did the same exact things—Whites just got the most lucky. Condemning Whites for being successful at the same thing that their ancestors were doing: war and conquest (the territorial imperative).

Variety

The ‘Noble Savage Fallacy’ is erroneously named ‘The Myth of the Noble Savage’, as if it were only a myth that noble savages have existed.

This fallacy is very related to The Myth of the Noble Victim, and they overlap very much.

There are documented cases of self-identified Liberals in America projecting a sense of savagehood (less aptitude, etc) onto Blacks in general.

The midwit's answer to this would be "b-but blacks aren't savages" — but that wouldn't even be what it's saying. It referred to Leftists projecting this trope of Noble Victimhood onto Blacks almost entirely as a class, even some instances apparently counting every individual, and that's what a powerful reiteration or likeness of the Myth of the Noble Savage does. It's an idea of a presumed-Noble presumed-Victim projected onto millions and millions of people based on their perceived race. Of course rationally, when faced with real world cases, this falls apart. It's also saying these people can't have agency, which is what projecting the Savage on them means. This sort of thought patterns is increasingly being documented scientifically.

Branching

• See: Nobility; Savagery; Aristocracy; Fallacies; Myths
• Related: Myth of the Noble Victim