the alt-right

xxp Wow, really? My feed is packed with it, like every post.

A writer that I like has been sorting through what the actual goal is with this incident/battle. And what are people achieving when they defend or minimize it. We don't want this kid, kids like this on the Supreme Court, in Congress, in power. But generally, we can't win any battle when people are still telling us we don't know what racial intimidation that white supremacy created looks like. It gives me pause because saying it's 'just a smirk' is in sharp contrast to intuition that tells people not to accept that drink, not to follow them himstairs, not to get into that car...

But whatever, we only have 2 more days of it until it's a 2025 jeopardy question.

I take a look at the_donald from time to time, they have been almost silent for the shutdown so far, just trump tweets and generic maga memes, but in the last couple of days they have been loving this story. You can draw your own conclusions from that.

I'm sure they are jerking off to it. Who cares.

i think the "unconscious bias" / institutionalized white supremacy conversations are losers tbh. when you can point to violence and hate ppl can't ignore it. when it's hidden and you demand ppl mea culpa and recognize their own privileges benefiting from the invisible oppression system etc - ppl won't listen. mcwhorter was writing about this recently - how a lot fo these battles are just unwinnable. he argued that we should work on positive programs to improve parity (in income disparity, in education, in home ownership, etc) and stop with the privilege / unconscious bias / microaggression arguments.

ppl can't ignore it

yes obv some ppl can. but for overt acts enough cannot.

I was thinking about that while reading, of all things, a francise genre fiction book the other day. The political approach was not to point out bad things and ascribe them to a particular party, but to say "this isn't us, is it?" in solidarity. As soon as you say "this is right-wing hate" you lose the ability to say "this is hate in our society, we're not allowing that, right?"

but the problem is that we're projecting this shit on to a situation that probably made even less sense to the people there, and we have those damn hats that clearly align with the leader of a political party that stands with him

I'm fine with people fighting whatever battles they want with their own souls and for the souls of others over social media, but in the meantime policy has to be used as a tool to make material improvements in people's lives.

I am just very against people telling more marginalized groups of people how they should feel or what they should focus on. Like when people say culture wars, or identity politics or supporting feminism I don't even think of it in those terms, I think of it as "stop being trash people".

I'm probably asking something that is going to result in more complexity, but regarding the incident at hand:
- the kentucky catholic kids were in DC for the pro-life march
- the indigenous people were there for their march
- do we know what the black israelite group was there for?

I will plead total ignorance about the latter group and read up on their history/stances a little but I still haven't figured that one out

black israelites just randomly show up at stuff in major cities all the time. Presumably they were just there to promote their weird ideology and troll people.

here is the mcwhorter article fwiw. i don't think he's someone ilxors generally like / agree with however he's imo a v bright guy (esp in his field which is linguistics not politics, he has a great slate podcast on the former that is imho worth checking out): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/why-third-wave-anti-racism-dead-end/578764/

xp thanks, I kind of figured but wasn't going to make any suppositions

Black Israelites show up in lots of urban centers to harangue and troll people. it's what they do and they've been doing it for decades.

yeah there are always 3-4 black israelites randomly in NYC. You ignore, sidestep, walk faster.

re black israelites i guess i shouldn't be surprised ppl don't know who they are but if you're a overt jew who lives in a big city you've probably been harassed by them before. i have on 3 separate occasions (they yelled things like "fake jew" and "white devil" at me).

ftr my own take here (or some other thread?? idk) was along the lines of not bothering with these minor symbolic battles. at present this minor symbolic battle has taken up a lot more social media oxygen than the latest SCOTUS decision on transgender troops has, for example.

i do think elevating these kids to villain status gives them a bit more added clout on the right, vs the positive changes that could be made by focusing on what is needed to get done. my suggestion here isn't the same as "this isn't a big problem" it's more like "fix the problem with solutions and pushing forward with positive energy." i think so much time is wasted on hating the right wing*, sure fuck em but don't spend time fucking with them. they do not give a single shit and the scales will not fall from their eyes.

*if you're a member of a group actively fucked with by the right wing, i think a lot of the movements have been extremely positive. i think the social media battles are often just counterproductive.

yerac, "stop being trash people" is def not a persuasion you learnt in rhetoric class

- do we know what the black israelite group was there for?

they don't believe native americans are native to america. they think they are on the lost tribes of israel, the tribe of gad

"one of"

the left has important agendas (climate, economic) that it could easily win broad popular support for but instead it engages in these trivial worthless battles that can accomplish nothing but galvanize the opposition.

― Mordy

like "the left" is some monolithic entity and our responses are determined by a central committee somewhere

for me coalition politics is that people have different priorities and different things that are important to them and i support the priorities of other people when i can. or at least refrain from openly browbeating people who aren't listening to me anyway about how they're doing things all wrong and the BAD GUYS are going to WIN

I don't believe in persuasion anymore; bullying bigots until they shut up has a track record of success

bullied this bigot right into the national spotlight, a major television appearance and a visit to the white house. maybe the strategy is that if we give him all the platforms he'll eventually get bored?

Not this one but you play the odds with these things

for me coalition politics is that people have different priorities and different things that are important to them and i support the priorities of other people when i can. or at least refrain from openly browbeating people who aren't listening to me anyway about how they're doing things all wrong and the BAD GUYS are going to WIN

look i know it's unpopular to tell marginalized ppl that you disagree with their strategy - even if they aren't all marginalized people but some and even if other marginalized people agree with you. however, there are positive programs that would have huge impact on marginalized communities that don't include picking fights with alt-righters or waging cultural wars. they do include things like prison reform, or measures to increase household wealth in their communities, or raising the minimum wage, or legislation that could reduce police violence (like mandatory cams). there are lots of policy options for every member of our coalition that are positive worthwhile steps. i'm not saying their pain and suffering is unimportant. i'm saying that this particular way of addressing it is unproductive esp compared to the alternatives.

I think that perceiving this overblown clickbait crap as "the left" isn't useful when there are so many people who are working with solid stances on particular issues and out there trying to get things done

the two things I concentrate on are how to elevate particular issues I care about and the ways we can convince politicians at a local, regional, and national level to advance those positions without diluting them in the name of compromise or outright ignoring them due to other issues

the rest is mostly noise

Por qué no los dos

you're right mordy i'm sorry i booked this asshole on the today show, i'll cancel his booking right now

man the hell with playing the odds, if someone behaves badly i'm not going to politely ignore it on the off chance that bringing it up might embolden them, god knows i've spent enough of my life doing that shit and i am done with it.

do it irl. don't join the online mob. you didn't shame this kid. you just temporarily made yourself feel better. you know when you'll know bullying a bigot made a difference? bc it was hard and scary to do and you forced yourself to do it because it was right.

some of y'alls closest encounters with "the left" seem to in fact be encounters with a norms superego that only exists in cherry picked tweets and whatever tut tutting cultural marxist is in your head

xxp yeah kind of glued the two together: it's 1. finding issues to care about and advance 2. making sure those issues are brought up, undiluted

Thank u for dn hoos

xpost Yeah, I am confused about this. I assume that social media/ilx life is very different than what people may do in real life? Opining about maga teens is still part of the larger picture but it's an easy online amuse bouche topic.

look i know it's unpopular to tell marginalized ppl that you disagree with their strategy - even if they aren't all marginalized people but some and even if other marginalized people agree with you. however, there are positive programs that would have huge impact on marginalized communities that don't include picking fights with alt-righters or waging cultural wars. they do include things like prison reform, or measures to increase household wealth in their communities, or raising the minimum wage, or legislation that could reduce police violence (like mandatory cams). there are lots of policy options for every member of our coalition that are positive worthwhile steps. i'm not saying their pain and suffering is unimportant. i'm saying that this particular way of addressing it is unproductive esp compared to the alternatives.

― Mordy

so you wish human beings behaved more like wonks and less like human beings?

"it's human nature" is normally a reactionary argument

I'd like to know who on ilx is actually "the online mob" because as far as I can tell we're trying to break down this particular thing in our somewhat insular community and no one is cheering on anyone calling for overt action *on the internet* against people we have no personal association with

Yerac otm, nobody is retweeting this thread and saying "go get them"

culture produces politics xp

Glad I read that McWhorter piece.

do it irl. don't join the online mob. you didn't shame this kid. you just temporarily made yourself feel better. you know when you'll know bullying a bigot made a difference? bc it was hard and scary to do and you forced yourself to do it because it was right.

― Mordy

i try not to join online mobs, this was a nice little pleasant thread for low-key schadenfreude until the morality police suddenly broke in and got on their high horse about how schadenfreude is wrong and how dare we etc etc

when people say 'the left' as a stand-in for whatever they're mad about today i call it a chait & switch

culture produces politics xp

maybe. or maybe the opposite. often the political structure generates the culture, esp when NOP breaks down.

I am not on twitter at all so I need to know specifically where these mobs are located. If they are virtual, regional, irish...

"it's human nature" is normally a reactionary argument

― Mordy

oh god, is steve porcaro alt-right too?!?

i can think of lots of cases where the political circumstances forced the range of cultural possibilities that were available.

when people say 'the left' as a stand-in for whatever they're mad about today i call it a chait & switch

i'm pretty sure i did clarify who i meant and not the left as a whole so don't worry i wasn't talking about a h00s

i try not to join online mobs, this was a nice little pleasant thread for low-key schadenfreude until the morality police suddenly broke in and got on their high horse about how schadenfreude is wrong and how dare we etc etc

― The Elvis of Nationalism and Amoral Patriotism (rushomancy), Tuesday, January 22, 2019 4:45 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

respectfully, this is fucking dumb. the only reason this story was interesting to talk about was because it completely captivated the attention of the entire nation and led to the kid receiving death threats etc. national publications ran thinkpieces that posited the kid was a symbol of toxic privilge, "we've seen this face before," etc., it wasn't low leven schadenfreude

and obviously the kid is a disrespectful shit but it's still a weird norm, as a nation, to turn things like this into national stories.

Like I said upthread, he should’ve avoided being photographed at the news

the morality police! do u remember when ppl would talk about being policed in their speech and like silby would bust in kool-aid man style and be like derisively "the police eh? did they cuff you and force you to jail poor thing?"

(sorry i don't remember if it was exactly you silby or just someone who sounded an awful lot like you)