US Politics November 2017

writer in the nyt
normalizing nazis

Are those Paul Simon lyrics?

Tombot, it would probably be more like the equivalent of the 'Is the Guardian worse than it used to be' thread?

Idk over 'ere NYT is still revered and looked at/up to by all the "srs press". Not saying that changed all of a sudden, but boy was this a terrible normalising piece.

people get really worked up about one article huh

that was my other thing, this one about the Hovaters is kind of a drop in the bucket given how fucking horrid that birdcage liner has been since feels like forever, as this quartz piece cheekily suggests in the opening paragraph: https://qz.com/1138080/the-problem-with-the-new-york-times-normalizing-profile-of-nazi-sympathizer-tony-hovater/

when you're getting pwned on the regular by vox and atlantic media staff bloggers, maybe it's time to wonder if maybe jumping on the "color photography" bandwagon in 1997 was the right move!

well they did link to the online store page where you could buy the guy's swastika armband.

but there's also the thrush (RIP for sex pesting) & haberman stenography, this week's new freidman column about how saudi arabia is good, the fact they got rid of the public editor, this thing which doesn't mention that the subject of the article is a known fraud who works with cambridge analytica, etc. also iraq. when the stakes are high it's mostly an extremely bad newspaper.

this is really the quiddity of the NYT:

The NYT's constant stream of lowkey sympathetic portraits of racists and sexists is what happens when you believe, institutionally, that your real audience already possesses all the correct beliefs

— Erin Kissane (@kissane) November 26, 2017

Eh. The editorial page is a cloaca like most newspapers. Dunno what you expect! I still read the news with pleasure every day, always with caution.

I don't think they believe their beliefs are correct. I think they think liberalism is wrong, and the ludicrous puffery about the ruling class that we have a thread dedicated to is of a piece with the fawning profiles of angry scum from flyover exurbs. The entire editorial posture is self-flagellation and kowtowing to the truly right and powerful, mostly scions of resource-extraction economies and those they patronize.

i was not impressed with that Hovater profile, but he still came across as a hateful moron, no?

There might have been too much emphasis on how “normal” and “polite” he seemed, I guess, but they say that about serial killers too.

I don’t think anyone became a racist after reading that.

people get really worked up about one article huh

This is not the first time they've done this.

Or became softer on racism. Who knows, but the idea of “normalization” might need unpacking. Trump was never normalized — the Times treated him as a freak the whole election — and he still won.

i mean the fact is that the NYT produces the world's best reporting and also a bunch of shitty stuff. it sucks but boycotting the paper is probably not the best strategy

People are boycotting it over this????

the Times treated him as a freak the whole election 

And yet they treated many of his most outrageous lies and obfuscations as worthy of serious consideration

I am not boycotting the Times over this fyi, i gave up on them after judith miller

There have been scores of reasons to give up on them over the last few years tbh, anyone here who is surprised hasn't been paying attention

otoh their Magazine a week ago ran an outstanding expose of how our goddamn Military Death Machine in Iraq lies about killing civilians, maybe read that for balance.

yes that was good

The anecdote I bring up a lot is Errol Morris' "Mr. Death." The first cut of the film had no editorializing, no experts to refute his Holocaust denial. Morris figured, hey, give 'em enough rope. But infamously. when Morris screened the film at Harvard there were enough people at least giving credence to his crazy beliefs that he reconsidered and recut with experts making clear that his subject's beliefs were not just offensive but wrong.

same thing when he showed The Unknown Known; he said people kept telling him he was humanizing Rumsfeld when it was clear to me he straight up loathed the motherfucker but he seems to have given up pleasing the crowd

Something a friend of mine posted (publicly) on Facebook:

Donald Trump’s election to the presidency was the culmination of a six-year period during which he launched himself in politics by promoting a baseless, openly racist conspiracy theory challenging Barack Obama’s citizenship. Since Trump won the election, and even before it, pundits and reporters have struggled to find ways to insist that, because so many people could select him as their president, he must be more complicated than he appears. He isn’t. He is, as Steve Bannon has said admiringly, Archie Bunker. He’s a man who could, without shame or hesitation, promote a racist conspiracy theory, and who has never apologized for it, though towards the end of his campaign, he did claim that it was actually Hillary Clinton who had started it and that he had “finished it” by bullying Obama into finding and releasing his birth certificate, which Trump has also said is a fake. He may be other (bad) things, but he’s never any better than the man who did that.

No outlet had worked harder than the New York Times to publish articles explaining that there are a great many good, decent people who voted for Trump. This is a lie, but you can see why they do it. Trump’s whole existence testifies to the fact that telling lies is fun. And there are deeper reasons for it: nobody wants to seem close-minded or judgmental towards those who are culturally different from you or with whom you have political differences.

One constant of the pieces analyzing Trump’s appeal that appeared immediately after the election is that there are reasons besides racism for voting for Donald Trump. And while it’s true that all the people who voted for Trump aren’t personally repulsed by racism—a group that, so far as I know, consists entirely of racists—there ARE reasons besides racism for voting for Donald Trump. There’s xenophobia. There’s misogyny. There’s homophobia. There’s a belief that a TV character is smarter than all the politicians put together. There’s a belief that consumer protections and environmental regulations are breaking the backs of the little guy. There’s the conviction that basic civility and any degree of intelligence are stifling our society and we need a bigoted, stupid daddy figure to yell abuse at women and nonwhite people all the time. There’s the inexplicable belief that there’s some truth to as much as two percent of the things said on Fox News by people not named Shepard Smith.

There’s the assumption that Donald Trump, an heir to wealth, a marketable name, and valuable contacts who has made such a mess of his business affairs that he had to peddle his ass to Russian oligarchs because American banks would no longer have anything to do with him is some kind of tactical genius. Theres the thought that democracy has gotten out of hand and we need to be more like Russia under someone like Putin, a tough guy who seems to keep his country pretty white and keeps his bitches and queers in their place. There’s the belief that Trump is an acceptable candidate compared to Hillary Clinton on the theory that Hillary Clinton is Satan, or a concern for the protection of fetuses so all-consuming that you are willing to forfeit any protections for the lives and rights of those who have already been born. There are a great many reasons to vote for Donald Trump; there just isn’t a single defensible reason for voting for Donald Trump, one that doesn’t mark the voter as an objectivity terrible person and unpatriotic American. And these aren’t judgements about people’s politics but Morality 101. Donald Trump has the distinction of being probably the only person ever elected president of the United States solely based on the support of garbage people.

The New York Times’s profile of a Trump supporter and self-defined Nazi has gotten a lot of criticism for “normalizing” Nazism, because the reporter respectfully details the trivial details of the subject’s life and dishes it all together with things like his belief that Jews control the media and his wife’s sympathy for George Zimmerman. But all the pieces that have appeared profiling Trump supporters do this. Even though every single person who voted for Donald Trump is a piece of dirt, reporters have insisted on their decency and urged readers to consider their “legitimate concerns”—Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization, or Obama was trying to create a landscape of desolation and poverty because he was homesick for Kenya, stuff like that.

If the Heartland Nazi piece existed in a vacuum, it would be fine, but in the context that the Times and other papers have created, it makes sense that readers would assume the point of it was to make them relate to the Nazi. Are we really supposed to pretend that there are any people who voted for Trump who are on even a slightly higher moral plane than his Nazi supporters? Whatever they think is in their hearts, they all knowingly voted for white supremacy as an electoral choice and a map for America’s future. I’ve been listening to those malignant fuckheads for some time now, and I know how they sound: they don’t want to discriminate against anybody, they don’t hate anyone, they don’t want to hurt anyone, they just want things to feel NORMAL again, the way they did when nobody thought a black man or a woman could get anywhere near the presidential podium.

(And I can tell you that while they might not hate anyone, they can get pretty testy with a white guy who disagrees with them, and that when pushed to the limit they will say things like “What about all the time you’ve said ‘nigger’?” or “Oh, like you’ve never tried to do something with a woman when she was too drunk to know where she was.” One thing I’ve learned pretty recently, now that Trump has made garbage people feel sufficiently empowered to let their freak flags fly, is that garbage people literally believe there are no good people or even any people trying to be good, just garbage people happily wallowing in their own shit like them, and hypocrites who don’t want to own up to what they are. And woe to the white Southerner who can think of any reason to be proud of his “heritage” that doesn’t require the veneration of pro-slavery traitorous pieces of shit who murdered actual loyal Americans, my fellow countrymen, in a “civil” war. But I digress.)

I sometimes see things written by white Southerners who aren’t racist themselves, lord knows, but maybe they had some family who were at the riot that accompanied the integration of Ole Miss or on the jury that turned Byron de la Beckwith loose, and who seem to be demanding absolution for the people they feel connected to who somehow hadn’t received word, a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that racism is evil and stupid. And I grew up in Mississippi and went to a segregated school that my sometime-Klansman daddy found me to go to and I know from my own experience that we all know that racism is evil and stupid, it’s pretty goddamn obvious, you’d need to have a heart of coal and a head like a compost pit to not figure that out, and some people decide to run with it anyway, because they choose to be garbage. The Times’s profiles of Trump supporters seem to be written from a viewpoint that it’s possible to not know—not if you’re a coastal elitist, of course, but white working class Southerners like me are born stupid and just get dumber as they go along, so you can’t judge them, mustn’t shame them or shun them if they vote the nation into crisis, because the poor rubes can’t possibly know better, and are only to be pitied.

Between the original heartland-Nazi profile and the piece linked to here, the Times ran an acknowledgment of sorts that the profile is unsatisfying, because the reporter failed to get the “Rosebud” moment that would explain why a man would turn Nazi. Has to be one, right? I could never get a job profiling a Nazi, or big-fucking-difference a Trump supporter, or even my father or any of the other racists I’ve known who had some charm and were also fundamentally worthless, because after thinking long and hard about a whole bunch of individual cases that have come my way, I really do think that people come to embrace garbage thinking not because of legitimate concerns or some lightning bolt of the mind but just because they’ve made a conscious decision to be garbage people.

The link mentioned was of course to the Times' editorial response to its pissed-off readers.

explaining that there are a great many good, decent people who voted for Trump. This is a lie

lol

a fan!

In my view, the attacks on this story are positively nuts. Soft on Nazis? It is a superbly reported, superbly rendered story of a homegrown Nazi — the Nazi next door — absolutely chilling in its impact. You don’t always get convenient horns and tails! https://t.co/WxOrYAhJaY

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) November 27, 2017

8% of black voters and 29% of hispanic voters went for Trump. I don’t think these people were all morallt equivalent to Nazis, whatever else you might say about them.

Xp the part of unperson’s post that crut quoted

Trump is a horrifying excuse for a human being whose canpaign was indeed explicitly racists but his voters represent this huge bloc of people who had all kinds of different reasons for voting as they did.

Sorry for the typos

garbage typing

Personally I found the Friedman column and the Shapiro profile more offensive, not that this article was worth publishing.

I remain convinced that the only excuse for voting Trump is stupidity or assholism.

8% of black voters and 29% of hispanic voters went for Trump. I don’t think these people were all morallt equivalent to Nazis, whatever else you might say about them.

Why? Because they're not white? It is possible to be both a nonwhite person and a garbage person, you know.

And if you are advancing Nazis' political agenda, whether or not you are yourself a Nazi is immaterial. You are helping Nazis. And voting for Trump helped Nazis.

Sure, but I don’t think they were voting for Trump because they were drawn to his racism, or even because they excused his racism. Most likely they didn’t find him racist against their groups. So that means there were Trump voters whose votes did not express tacit approval for racism. They expressed something else.

Sure, but I don’t think they were voting for Trump because they were drawn to his racism, or even because they excused his racism. Most likely they didn’t find him racist against their groups. So that means there were Trump voters whose votes did not express tacit approval for racism. They expressed something else.

The first and second sentences contradict themselves, and thus cancel out the third and fourth sentences. Many black people hold racist views about Latinos, and vice versa.

Which means you can’t infer someone’s motives or character based on their vote. They might be a “good, decent person” who did a bad thing. It’s destructive to write off so many people as morally reprehensible “garbage” people.

Self xp

psssst racism was not the only reason people voted for trump (a big'un though)

That’s what I’m sayin

Treeship, are you a New York Times reporter? If not, why are you so desperate to justify the hateful, nihilistic voting booth rage-spasms of, yes, garbage people?

glad to know i wasn’t the only one pissed about that nazi article. finally canceled my NYT subscription.

You need to come to grips with the idea that this country has a lot of very bad, stupid people in it. Irredeemable people, in fact. Sure, they’ll smile at you and shake your hand. But their political beliefs are poisonous, and unshakable. So fuck ‘em; they’re no good to you.

Racism/assholism or stupidity. Though I must admit a certain sympathy for Trump folks profiled in the New Yorker a few weeks back who were anti universal health care even though they would benefit and will be harmed by its absence, simply because they have some hard-held almost anachronistic ethical standard that no one should get something for nothing, especially when others are working hard and getting less for their effort. It's a similar strain of thought that runs through some of what passes for Trump-fans half-assed xenophobia. It's less that people hate foreigners and more resentment that someone might sneak into the country or arrive as a refugee and immediately be given benefits or resources that others have struggled to achieve for years. Not unlike, come to think of it, similar anti-union sentiment. "We fought for our benefits, why should someone who just got a job here get the same benefits we struggled for for decades?!" I don't know if these people are necessarily racist, but their sure views enable racists and their goals often intersect with racists, so not unlike Trump supports who claim not to be racists, if you're supporting a racist in service of goals shared by racists even though you yourself do not think of yourself as racist, or even other races or ethnicities as bad people or inferior to you, well, surprise ...

I talked about it with a friend after the election. His wife is Chinese, his daughter and son half Chinese. His dad was a Trump voter. The choice I think he gave his dad was, if you're not a racist, then fight back against all the racism of Trump and his racist followers. As we see, not many Trump supporters have been willing to do that. But then, Trump barely managed a victory (with mitigating factors), and as depressing as it is to consider, some immutable percentage of Americans are, yeah, garbage people, and he won with the swing support of perhaps slightly less-garbage people who perhaps inadvertently or maybe even unknowingly sided with garbage people. In fact, the only Trump supporter I personally know, who is old and a little dumb but not necessarily a bad person, as far as I have ever been able to tell, has full on buyer's remorse, even switching from Fox to MSNBC (!), but my feeling, as a different sort of garbage person, remains: fuck her.

The Nazi sympathiser piece is no masterpiece of journalism but I think it makes it pretty obvious that the guy is morally objectionable in every way. It's entitled Voice of Hate, and within the first few sentences it says he's a bigot and that most Americans would be disgusted by his views. It quotes him as saying Hitler was a warm and caring guy, I mean does that really need commentary? No, the reporter doesn't challenge the guy, but it's not that kind of piece. It's more of a 'this is what today's Nazi looks like' piece. And it also counterpoints that supposedly "normal" exterior with the bile that the guy posts online.

'this is what today's Nazi looks like'

Counterpoint: who gives a fuck?

Well sure, there's that!

On the other hand, if Nazis these days are looking more culturally mainstream than they used to be, maybe it's worth pointing out. Or maybe not. I wasn't saying the piece was genius, only that I didn't find it pandering

I agree. I don't know, I don't find it 'normalizing' per se.

I thought the atlantic piece on the Daily Stormer thing was more interesting though as far as 'peering into the heart of darkness' stories go.