'A People's History of the World' does a pretty good job of explaining why Hitler was able to so successfully promote a conspiracy theory about the Jews. It's not just that they were bankers, there were a ton of socioeconomic factors at the time (some of which are eerily similar to today). I think it has a lot of the answers you couldn't get from Steigmann-Gall.
Very well done diagnosis, but am I the only one tired of hearing diagnoses? What is the treatment? Is the condition terminal?
As somebody whose personality is pretty much mostly incompatible with conservatism/MAGA, I look to what I can do to make the progressive side, that I more closely relate to, less of a cult, but I don’t see many pathways to this end, if I’m being honest.
I was watching a podcast clip of two very progressive video game commentators discussing the game Bioshock Infinite. A game about a dystopian splinter society of rabidly jingoistic, Christian nationalists, racist xenophobes. The game’s reputation is different in different circles. When it first came out the core progressive and kinda snobby games media lauded it for its mature themes. It was in the beginning of the era of video games “growing up.” Retrospectively, many now view the game much more negatively. They view its tackling of racism and also multiverses as very amateur and dumb.
All of this background to setup the white progressive video game podcaster making a comment about how Bioshock Infinite, when it came out, “appealed to a very particular kind of young white guy” who smugly patted himself on the back for enjoying a game that critiqued racists, even if it was done very unskillfully and stupidly by today’s standards, or even by more intelligent progressive standards of the time.
This comment, while I find it to be somewhat defensible, because the game genuinely has very little interesting to say about racists and racist societies, emotionally speaking, I can’t shake the feeling of vitriol towards white people emanating from this kind of comment. This combination of self hatred, and/or distinguishing yourself as “one of the good ones” among white progressives. Even an obviously progressive game like Bioshock infinite, must now be attacked by white progressives. And you must be an amateur, young, white, male anti-racist to think the game was ever profound or smart. You simply are not woke enough, unironically, to have ever enjoyed it.
How does one ever go about changing this kind of progressive discourse? This kind of anti-white/male disposition is like an instinct or reflex to progressives. It’s unquestionably accepted on every layer. Everywhere you go culturally where progressives exist, you are going to put down white males. There is nothing white males can do to be just human. At best, you can just momentarily display how intelligently keyed in you are to how shitty white men are. They’re either shitty stupid racists, or shitty stupid anti-racists.
Writing about this just now has made me think about how little emotional vulnerability there is allowed in these kinds of discussions. You’re only allowed to intellectualize, be smug, or be condescendingly angry towards people beneath you on the progressive stack. And as white males the only people lower than you on the progressive stack, are right wing white people as the lowest, or dumber progressive white people. The dumb right wing people are often too easy of targets, so most of the virtual and disdain is directed at lesser progressive white men.
Honestly, the hierarchy makes more sense the more I think about it. If you are the kind of white male progressive who focuses entirely their hatred on right wing Christian white males, you are only one step above them. But if you instead direct most of your ire on white male progressives who are shittier than you at being progressive and smart, you are an extra layer separated from the bottom.
I’m increasingly blackpilled on the ability for improvement here.
the "White" identity is defined by not only history of racism but its definitionally exclusionary; whiteness is malleable (as seen when irish & italians weren't seen as whites when they immigrated but were accepted as white once a new big bad enemy in the blacks and asians came).
The more you sew white identitarianism to your emotional aorta the more hateful you become. You can't be pro humanity and be pro-white identitarianism, since white identitarianism is an affect of the type of racism that is more corrosive than it is funny, basic human empathy will inevitably collapse once enough dirty non whites rub elbows with you and take young women from your family out on dates, or make any mistakes.
Consensus is that whiteness is a social construct, not a biological reality. There is no "white" gene. Instead, "whiteness" is a social and political category that was created to justify and maintain a power structure. Its primary meaning comes from what it is not. Historically, it was defined in opposition to "Black" (in the context of slavery) and "savage" (in the context of Indigenous peoples), whiteness was the justification to exterminate and a much more tenuous mechanism remains, though white-fueled extermination instead is much more subtle and subtextual today.
Max here referred to "nice, normal people" as white and he has touched on something interesting that he, as always, refused to engage in favor of posturing (or diagnose, as you called it). Max knows in his bones that white is the default and that white is what's nice & normal, even when the 'nice & normal' stomps on human rights and democracy.
It is an identity that, unlike organic cultural identities (like being Italian, which is tied to a specific language, cuisine, and homeland), is primarily defined by the power to exclude and to be considered the "norm" against which other groups are judged.
I recommend identifying with literally anything else (or better yet, nothing), but considering the totality of your response and many others, I suspect you have already sewn white identitarianism to your aorta. You'd rather die than stop fueling an engine built to tacitly dehumanize others (even if you have never fragrantly done it) .. specially since whiteness gives you not only meaning but a myriad of other internal processes that function like a coping mechanism.
How can you be retarded or wrong if you're white? It's not possible.
You literally, with the sweat of your brow built the wheel and you literally created vaccines with your white intellect while africans never even thought of creating the wheel, is what white identitarians feel like. Even though you may not engage in dehumanizing thinking, you are part of the millions of people pushing the white identitarian train; whiteness is a baseball bat wrapped in barbwire and you are seemingly lamenting that one political group is coming in and trimming an inch of your baseball bat.
You are expressing bad feelings of being unfairly attacked and here I am, perpetuating that... if you are nothing but white. But you are not your whiteness unless you really want to be the baseball bat. Then it is you, and you should feel """""""""unfairly"""""""" attacked. What could you have possibly done —as an individual— that justifies this discriminatory attack and what could possibly justify any other attack on white people, right? Your argument about being villified for being white isn't happening in a vacuum; it's using a well-known script and that's script it's adjacent to hate (you relating your white fragility to the bioschock infinite, decade old discourse immediately evoques gamergate-adjacent line of thinking).
Whiteness (remember, its an identity. It's neither a gene or a 'true' ethnicity) has been a cancer on american society for a couple centuries. Your discomfort becomes a tool to silence the criticism, white fragility is both sword and shield, and you are a ticking time bomb. Your feelings are (seemingly) your attachment to the baseball bat.
Holy seething neurotic ramble. I'm pretty sure I agree with you? Yet I can't imagine posting what you did expecting anyone to waste their time reading it. Maybe edit a more concise second draft before posting next time? Maybe also take a few deep breaths? Before a blood vessel ruptures in your brain? I mean, Jesus.
This screed is incredibly funny because I am not white. Or at least have never identified as white. I’m an American of Mexican descent. I am the product of European colonialism. Roughly half Spanish and half Indigenous Mexican.
I just recognize that there is a toxic amount of anti white racism in the progressive movement that fuels reactionary movements like MAGA, and that is destroying America, which is my home.
Sounds like you’re the only one who needs to let go of your weapon of choice. I don’t advocate for white identity. I think white people should just be considered human. But when a white progressive video game commenter makes the discourse around a video game about “smug white guys” feeling good about themselves for liking a game with themes about racism, then that person is the one pushing white identity. Not me.
Your humorously off base assumptions and argument against me is perpetuating white identity. Because you ascribe a white identity to me which I have never felt in my life. Didn’t mention once in my comment that I felt personally attacked by the video game commenter. But still, you accuse me of white fragility and white identitarianism.
"I think **white people** should just be considered human."
Contradictory statements.
"This screed is incredibly funny because I am not white. [...] . I’m an American of Mexican descent"
Mexico has rather efficient segregation between 'white' and brown. Fifí. Whitexican, Etc are all words that evidentiate white identarianism in mexico. Those whites are not 'pure' whites just like there are many 'white' people that are mixed just like you. When you say "I am of mexican descent" (Therefore i can't be white) you are pretending to be ignorant or you actually are completely alienated from your own 'descent'. Some Tarahumara, Yaqui, and Seri peoples are 'white' looking.
I think you are dishonest; you are bringing up irrelevant facts that might suggest you're not white if you were talking to an American but I know that nothing of what you said discounts the possibility that you are 'white'. The subtext of your post is dripping with white fragility. The Bioshock Infinite discourse reference is just the cherry on top of the cake.
You are right that I am wholly confused as to why you embodied such a thing. You can present more dishonest half-facts that will disorient my sense of where your fragility is coming from but that won't change the fact that your response is dripping with white fragility.
I suspect that you're white passing, like a shitload of mexicans (yes, even with a half indigenous family tree).
What I said stands, you identify with white plight, and you are pushing white identitarianism. The only thing your response made me realize is that it's just out of ignorance instead of malice.
To put it blunty, even in the event that you are in fact brown skinned (like actually), that would just make you one of the tens of thousands of groveling, ingratiating, perpetually-on-their-knees american-latinos that are infatuated with whiteness.
Those statements are not at all contradictory. I am recognizing the fact that white people is a real concept that exists, but disagree that people should heavily identify with it or any racial identity. So I say white people should be considered to just be human. My usage of “white people” does not mean I think it’s a thing that should exist. It’s just an acknowledgement of a cultural reality that exists.
“Mexico has rather efficient segregation between 'white' and brown. Fifí. Whitexican, Etc are all words that evidentiate white identarianism in mexico.”
I have little to no idea about any of that. I’m an American and I speak zero Spanish. Very irrelevant to my life, but I don’t doubt it. Mexican is not a race, and is a multiracial society, not much different from America.
“ When you say "I am of mexican descent" (Therefore i can't be white) you are pretending to be ignorant or you actually are completely alienated from your own 'descent'.”
You again show very little insight into what is actually being said by me. I do not say that because I’m of Mexican descent that I can’t be white. I simply said that I am mot white. I do not and have never identified as white. In my family, of light skinned and darker skinned people both, we did not identify as white. “White people” were considered to be the “other.” We pretty much just identified as Hispanic.
I am very alienated from my descent. I never claimed otherwise. I am American. I am not an immigrant. My parents aren’t immigrants and neither are my grandparents. My paternal great grandfather fought in WWII, and I think he came to this country as an infant.
I already told you that I am the product of European colonialism. I am half of the old world and the new. So I am of mixed ancestry. It is not uncommon for people of mixed ancestry to either not identify as white or be accepted as white in America. Like the rapper J Cole for example is 50/50 white/black, but is pretty much just considered black.
“but I know that nothing of what you said discounts the possibility that you are 'white'.”
I thought you said white was a made up identity? I do not identify with the made up identity and never have. It would be dishonest of me to identify as white. Even if I was “white passing” which is entirely subjective and made up as well. Depends on who you ask.
“The subtext of your post is dripping with white fragility. The Bioshock Infinite discourse reference is just the cherry on top of the cake.”
Nope. Not even close, really. I do not feel an ounce of racial connection with whiteness. I think racial identity is stupid because I did not ever grow up with one. So I think people who overly identify with it are dumb, and I think people who attack others for it are dumb. The bioshock infinite comment was an example of a white guy attacking other white people for being what he identifies as white. I think this is cancer in our society and in progressivism.
The only one who has pushed white idenititarianism in this comment thread is you. You bizarrely keep pushing white identity on me. White passing, white fragility, etc. I do not identify with it.
“that would just make you one of the tens of thousands of groveling, ingratiating, perpetually-on-their-knees american-latinos that are infatuated with whiteness.”
Jesus, I think you’re just a racist, dude. This is like when some KKK person calls a white person a n-word lover for sticking up for or simply not hating black people. You’re basically just calling me a race traitor because I see an issue with anti-white racism in progressive politics and culture. Your beliefs and worldviews are the cancer I want excised from the left.
Again, you are pushing white identarianism not out of malice but of ignorance. The subtext of your original post, specially considering that it is apropos of nothing related to the essay, is white fragility. You are lamenting whiteness being under attack. You'd rather bring up your grandfather's life than entertain what you said.
I don't believe you when you say you do not identify as white. You are also very slimy, you give half baked facts as a counter argument and I'm left to guess. Once again you have given me half facts but this time, about your personal life rather than your ethnicity. This time, I cannot verify what you are telling me but you did try to pull a fast one on me with the mixed race comment.
You quack like a duck. Being white is not either/or as my 'screed' implied, whiteness is fluid. You are not mexican, you admit that after giving these fake half facts. Good. You are not indigenous. Good.
Let me be clear: I am not calling you a race traitor. I'm calling you a knuckle-dragging, nuance-impervious, "NO U" troglodyte (I even gave you the grace of not addressing your asinine 'feedback' to mrgirl. Can you imagine Zizek dissecting something about society and a retard commenting 'im sick of diagnosis, do SOMETHING Zizek, please!') that *might* be infatuated with whiteness.
Your comment deserves nothing but contempt. Every sentence is pretty awful.
On a vacuum, you are an objective reasonable person concerned about their fellow white man being villified for literally no reason. In reality, you are crying that the evil leftoids want to take away the bat.
Your beliefs and worldviews are the cancer educated people want excised from social norms. Little do they know, people like you can't be reasoned with, they can only respond to rubbing their face on the spot they pissed on.
"Your beliefs and worldviews are the cancer educated people want excised from social norms. Little do they know, people like you can't be reasoned with"
The subtext of my original post is apropos of noting related to the essay? Did we read the same substack? The essay that is about skepticism of the idea that a historical white supremacist ideology and genocide was not done arbitrarily, and questioning how progressives (“what are the progressives wearing”) contribute to the modern day fascistic movements, like MAGA, with it’s white identitarian elements? That essay? My post describing an experience I had listening to a white progressive being reflexively anti-white male has nothing to do with this essay? Please tell me you’re pulling my leg.
“You are lamenting whiteness being under attack.”
I am lamenting that progressives have a disdain for white people. I don’t care about whiteness or white identity. The reason I don’t like what progressives are doing is because they are contributing to keeping racial identity and seterotyping alive, when I think nobody should strongly identify with dubious racial identities, and doing so only leads to trouble.
“I don't believe you when you say you do not identify as white.”
Well, that’s because you are likely a raging racist and a bit of a clown. I don’t want to be white and don’t care to identify with it. Nothing I’ve said has implied any kind of personal relationship with white identity. I just think racism is stupid, and that progressives contribute to the problem and fuel reactionary right wing retards.
“You are also very slimy, you give half baked facts as a counter argument and I'm left to guess.”
This is the funniest part of your frothingly angry and unhinged rants against me. You legit don’t read what I say. I literally said in my first reply to you that:
1. I am not white, or at least do not identify with it.
2. That I am American, and not Mexican. Just Mexican descent.
3. That I am the product of European colonialism. Half Spanish and half indigenous Mexican.
None of these facts are half baked. Only the brain trying to interpret them but struggling mightily because it is so filled with racist rage. You literally say that I “admit” that I’m not Mexican after half baked facts when that was the very first thing I ever said to you lol.
And I’m half indigenous descent. Like most people with Mexican ancestry. It’s a mestizo country. So I don’t know why you’re saying I’m not indigenous, unless you’re using a different definition than me. Just because I’m American? Which is funny because I inhabit that part of America that was Mexico, like most Americans of Mexican descent.
Listen, I can’t get through your increasingly hostile screeds to have a normal conversation with you, clearly. I am genuinely baffled at how gross it has become. I don’t know any white identitarians who would deny being white. Very confusing accusation. I don’t exalt whiteness. I am not a race realist. I do not believe white people are the most oppressed minority. I simply aimed to provide an anecdote that I felt was relevant to an essay about analyzing right wing white identity movements and how progressives contribute to them. I don’t know what to tell you if you don’t think that’s relevant. And I certainly don’t have much more interest in being racially berated by some weirdo on the internet when I don’t give a fuck about my race that much in the first place.
The solution is actually very simple: it will resolve itself over time. It always has. Humans have always been fighting over ideas, beliefs, and how they think society should be structured. You will never live in a world where that is not the case - a world where people all arrive at a common conclusion through enlightened discussion and debate. At least not when you have millions of them living together - small groups of people can sometimes come to common ground that way, but not large populations.
Of course as technology continues to improve and the stakes continue to get higher, the risk that it all goes to hell in the process also increases. The whole thing could come tumbling down. We could blow ourselves up. But Stalin put it well: no man, no problem.
Personally I think a serious conundrum with our species is that we're never satisfied. We always want more. We want heaven and everlasting life if we can have it, and we'll burn everything to the ground in pursuit of it if we have to. And we couldn't stop being that way if we tried.
I agree with your analysis and I like Bioshock Infinite.
By making my diagnosis out loud, I'm also taking action and hoping to inspire others as well. That is the treatment: to be emotionally vulnerable and intellectually honest despite there being no room for it. We can't just hope someone else will pave the way for us. We have to actively renounce our cults.
I re-read your leave the democrat cult post after I made the comment. I just feel like it’s not enough. I feel like *you* must know it will not be enough. You must know the incentives that exist will not allow for enough people to renounce their cults for the betterment of our society.
It’s like you asking people to leave the destiny cult, and by this I mean the orbiters, when it was in none of their financial/emotional interest. How can you tell people to leave the cult that financially and emotionally lavishes you? Nobody who has any cultural influence in their respective cult, has any large enough competing incentive to denounce it.
And as the Trump cult counteractively grows, people can counteractively justify participating in cults like the Destiny one. Because as bad as Destiny is, he wears the aesthetic of somebody who will stand against the Trump cult. So people like NSE or Counterpoints will say it’s worth wrapping yourself in his tendrils if you can contribute to beating the giant tentacle monster.
Not to be overly harsh, but what allies do you have? Who do we have as examples? You were able to leave the Destiny cult, despite its financial and emotional lavishes, not before reaping from it for quite a while, and self-admittedly contributing to its abuses. Who else is leaving their cult? Who is being emotionally vulnerable when it’s not incentivized to do so?
Honestly, I think you should have a conversation with Counterpoints. I believe you said on Twitter that you no longer wanted to have anything to do with him because of his general demeanor and comments during the fallout of Destiny being exposed for spreading sex tapes. But I would be interested if you could at all plant any seeds of doubt in somebody who is clearly in the same position as you were. Somebody who is emotionally and financially attached to the destiny cult. I’d like to see if this approach has any legs. I fear cults are inevitable.
I've talked to him and seen JSTLK and Kuihman talk to him. He is not going to listen to me.
As I've said, Shaelin tried to warn me about Destiny the day that I met him, and I yelled at her to stop being a naysayer, and I'd only been in the cult for like two hours at that point.
Remember that America's first legend is George Washington refusing to be king. It does happen.
Yes, I don't have many allies, but these are culty times. However, I wasn't kidding about the black hole thing--cults really do always collapse. It's just depressing (and scary) when you realize it's a cult and there are still people trapped inside.
So both the left and right cults will fall apart, the only question is how many people will have their lives ruined, or cut short, in the process. We already know the answer is not zero, but we can try to mitigate the destruction.
I'm still thinking about starting some kind of political discussion group for my podcast with locals of different stripes here in Eugene, I just have to figure out how to do it without getting shot.
Sounds defeatist. I’m not a viewer of JSTlK or Kuihman, but I would say your persuasiveness skill is pretty high. Are they similarly skilled? Either way, I will respect your read on it.
I agree they will collapse, nothing lasts forever, but cults on the national, governmental, political level seem to lead to wars and lots of harm. I’m not sure what can be done at this stage.
I support the political IRL idea you have thrown around before. And also not getting shot. I think I’ve told you before, maybe on Reddit that I think this cult dynamics stuff is the most fascinating part of your work. In child sexual abuse, in streaming, in politics, and even in physics academia. I enjoy the analysis. Good luck, mrgirl.
Martyrdom is a politically correct way to celebrate bloodlust. It usually starts with religion, but it's pretty universal no matter the nature of the cult. They turn inward because they have to disregard the importance of even their own lives in order to justify the fight for an imaginary future. The greatest gift a cult member can give the collective is that of pretext.
It's like when you have a disagreement with your spouse - everything that they did wrong seems so clear, so obvious, and everything that you did wrong is a blind spot that you both don't see and don't really want to see. But magnified at scale with higher stakes.
A lot of the internal dialogue of these groups, so far as I've seen, is a constant recital of the long list of wrong doings of the other side, and a general aversion to applying that lens inward.
'A People's History of the World' does a pretty good job of explaining why Hitler was able to so successfully promote a conspiracy theory about the Jews. It's not just that they were bankers, there were a ton of socioeconomic factors at the time (some of which are eerily similar to today). I think it has a lot of the answers you couldn't get from Steigmann-Gall.
Very well done diagnosis, but am I the only one tired of hearing diagnoses? What is the treatment? Is the condition terminal?
As somebody whose personality is pretty much mostly incompatible with conservatism/MAGA, I look to what I can do to make the progressive side, that I more closely relate to, less of a cult, but I don’t see many pathways to this end, if I’m being honest.
I was watching a podcast clip of two very progressive video game commentators discussing the game Bioshock Infinite. A game about a dystopian splinter society of rabidly jingoistic, Christian nationalists, racist xenophobes. The game’s reputation is different in different circles. When it first came out the core progressive and kinda snobby games media lauded it for its mature themes. It was in the beginning of the era of video games “growing up.” Retrospectively, many now view the game much more negatively. They view its tackling of racism and also multiverses as very amateur and dumb.
All of this background to setup the white progressive video game podcaster making a comment about how Bioshock Infinite, when it came out, “appealed to a very particular kind of young white guy” who smugly patted himself on the back for enjoying a game that critiqued racists, even if it was done very unskillfully and stupidly by today’s standards, or even by more intelligent progressive standards of the time.
This comment, while I find it to be somewhat defensible, because the game genuinely has very little interesting to say about racists and racist societies, emotionally speaking, I can’t shake the feeling of vitriol towards white people emanating from this kind of comment. This combination of self hatred, and/or distinguishing yourself as “one of the good ones” among white progressives. Even an obviously progressive game like Bioshock infinite, must now be attacked by white progressives. And you must be an amateur, young, white, male anti-racist to think the game was ever profound or smart. You simply are not woke enough, unironically, to have ever enjoyed it.
How does one ever go about changing this kind of progressive discourse? This kind of anti-white/male disposition is like an instinct or reflex to progressives. It’s unquestionably accepted on every layer. Everywhere you go culturally where progressives exist, you are going to put down white males. There is nothing white males can do to be just human. At best, you can just momentarily display how intelligently keyed in you are to how shitty white men are. They’re either shitty stupid racists, or shitty stupid anti-racists.
Writing about this just now has made me think about how little emotional vulnerability there is allowed in these kinds of discussions. You’re only allowed to intellectualize, be smug, or be condescendingly angry towards people beneath you on the progressive stack. And as white males the only people lower than you on the progressive stack, are right wing white people as the lowest, or dumber progressive white people. The dumb right wing people are often too easy of targets, so most of the virtual and disdain is directed at lesser progressive white men.
Honestly, the hierarchy makes more sense the more I think about it. If you are the kind of white male progressive who focuses entirely their hatred on right wing Christian white males, you are only one step above them. But if you instead direct most of your ire on white male progressives who are shittier than you at being progressive and smart, you are an extra layer separated from the bottom.
I’m increasingly blackpilled on the ability for improvement here.
the "White" identity is defined by not only history of racism but its definitionally exclusionary; whiteness is malleable (as seen when irish & italians weren't seen as whites when they immigrated but were accepted as white once a new big bad enemy in the blacks and asians came).
The more you sew white identitarianism to your emotional aorta the more hateful you become. You can't be pro humanity and be pro-white identitarianism, since white identitarianism is an affect of the type of racism that is more corrosive than it is funny, basic human empathy will inevitably collapse once enough dirty non whites rub elbows with you and take young women from your family out on dates, or make any mistakes.
Consensus is that whiteness is a social construct, not a biological reality. There is no "white" gene. Instead, "whiteness" is a social and political category that was created to justify and maintain a power structure. Its primary meaning comes from what it is not. Historically, it was defined in opposition to "Black" (in the context of slavery) and "savage" (in the context of Indigenous peoples), whiteness was the justification to exterminate and a much more tenuous mechanism remains, though white-fueled extermination instead is much more subtle and subtextual today.
Max here referred to "nice, normal people" as white and he has touched on something interesting that he, as always, refused to engage in favor of posturing (or diagnose, as you called it). Max knows in his bones that white is the default and that white is what's nice & normal, even when the 'nice & normal' stomps on human rights and democracy.
It is an identity that, unlike organic cultural identities (like being Italian, which is tied to a specific language, cuisine, and homeland), is primarily defined by the power to exclude and to be considered the "norm" against which other groups are judged.
I recommend identifying with literally anything else (or better yet, nothing), but considering the totality of your response and many others, I suspect you have already sewn white identitarianism to your aorta. You'd rather die than stop fueling an engine built to tacitly dehumanize others (even if you have never fragrantly done it) .. specially since whiteness gives you not only meaning but a myriad of other internal processes that function like a coping mechanism.
How can you be retarded or wrong if you're white? It's not possible.
You literally, with the sweat of your brow built the wheel and you literally created vaccines with your white intellect while africans never even thought of creating the wheel, is what white identitarians feel like. Even though you may not engage in dehumanizing thinking, you are part of the millions of people pushing the white identitarian train; whiteness is a baseball bat wrapped in barbwire and you are seemingly lamenting that one political group is coming in and trimming an inch of your baseball bat.
You are expressing bad feelings of being unfairly attacked and here I am, perpetuating that... if you are nothing but white. But you are not your whiteness unless you really want to be the baseball bat. Then it is you, and you should feel """""""""unfairly"""""""" attacked. What could you have possibly done —as an individual— that justifies this discriminatory attack and what could possibly justify any other attack on white people, right? Your argument about being villified for being white isn't happening in a vacuum; it's using a well-known script and that's script it's adjacent to hate (you relating your white fragility to the bioschock infinite, decade old discourse immediately evoques gamergate-adjacent line of thinking).
Whiteness (remember, its an identity. It's neither a gene or a 'true' ethnicity) has been a cancer on american society for a couple centuries. Your discomfort becomes a tool to silence the criticism, white fragility is both sword and shield, and you are a ticking time bomb. Your feelings are (seemingly) your attachment to the baseball bat.
We can't improve because of you.
Let go of the fucking bat, man.
Holy seething neurotic ramble. I'm pretty sure I agree with you? Yet I can't imagine posting what you did expecting anyone to waste their time reading it. Maybe edit a more concise second draft before posting next time? Maybe also take a few deep breaths? Before a blood vessel ruptures in your brain? I mean, Jesus.
This screed is incredibly funny because I am not white. Or at least have never identified as white. I’m an American of Mexican descent. I am the product of European colonialism. Roughly half Spanish and half Indigenous Mexican.
I just recognize that there is a toxic amount of anti white racism in the progressive movement that fuels reactionary movements like MAGA, and that is destroying America, which is my home.
Sounds like you’re the only one who needs to let go of your weapon of choice. I don’t advocate for white identity. I think white people should just be considered human. But when a white progressive video game commenter makes the discourse around a video game about “smug white guys” feeling good about themselves for liking a game with themes about racism, then that person is the one pushing white identity. Not me.
Your humorously off base assumptions and argument against me is perpetuating white identity. Because you ascribe a white identity to me which I have never felt in my life. Didn’t mention once in my comment that I felt personally attacked by the video game commenter. But still, you accuse me of white fragility and white identitarianism.
"I don’t advocate for white identity."
"I think **white people** should just be considered human."
Contradictory statements.
"This screed is incredibly funny because I am not white. [...] . I’m an American of Mexican descent"
Mexico has rather efficient segregation between 'white' and brown. Fifí. Whitexican, Etc are all words that evidentiate white identarianism in mexico. Those whites are not 'pure' whites just like there are many 'white' people that are mixed just like you. When you say "I am of mexican descent" (Therefore i can't be white) you are pretending to be ignorant or you actually are completely alienated from your own 'descent'. Some Tarahumara, Yaqui, and Seri peoples are 'white' looking.
I think you are dishonest; you are bringing up irrelevant facts that might suggest you're not white if you were talking to an American but I know that nothing of what you said discounts the possibility that you are 'white'. The subtext of your post is dripping with white fragility. The Bioshock Infinite discourse reference is just the cherry on top of the cake.
You are right that I am wholly confused as to why you embodied such a thing. You can present more dishonest half-facts that will disorient my sense of where your fragility is coming from but that won't change the fact that your response is dripping with white fragility.
I suspect that you're white passing, like a shitload of mexicans (yes, even with a half indigenous family tree).
What I said stands, you identify with white plight, and you are pushing white identitarianism. The only thing your response made me realize is that it's just out of ignorance instead of malice.
To put it blunty, even in the event that you are in fact brown skinned (like actually), that would just make you one of the tens of thousands of groveling, ingratiating, perpetually-on-their-knees american-latinos that are infatuated with whiteness.
Those statements are not at all contradictory. I am recognizing the fact that white people is a real concept that exists, but disagree that people should heavily identify with it or any racial identity. So I say white people should be considered to just be human. My usage of “white people” does not mean I think it’s a thing that should exist. It’s just an acknowledgement of a cultural reality that exists.
“Mexico has rather efficient segregation between 'white' and brown. Fifí. Whitexican, Etc are all words that evidentiate white identarianism in mexico.”
I have little to no idea about any of that. I’m an American and I speak zero Spanish. Very irrelevant to my life, but I don’t doubt it. Mexican is not a race, and is a multiracial society, not much different from America.
“ When you say "I am of mexican descent" (Therefore i can't be white) you are pretending to be ignorant or you actually are completely alienated from your own 'descent'.”
You again show very little insight into what is actually being said by me. I do not say that because I’m of Mexican descent that I can’t be white. I simply said that I am mot white. I do not and have never identified as white. In my family, of light skinned and darker skinned people both, we did not identify as white. “White people” were considered to be the “other.” We pretty much just identified as Hispanic.
I am very alienated from my descent. I never claimed otherwise. I am American. I am not an immigrant. My parents aren’t immigrants and neither are my grandparents. My paternal great grandfather fought in WWII, and I think he came to this country as an infant.
I already told you that I am the product of European colonialism. I am half of the old world and the new. So I am of mixed ancestry. It is not uncommon for people of mixed ancestry to either not identify as white or be accepted as white in America. Like the rapper J Cole for example is 50/50 white/black, but is pretty much just considered black.
“but I know that nothing of what you said discounts the possibility that you are 'white'.”
I thought you said white was a made up identity? I do not identify with the made up identity and never have. It would be dishonest of me to identify as white. Even if I was “white passing” which is entirely subjective and made up as well. Depends on who you ask.
“The subtext of your post is dripping with white fragility. The Bioshock Infinite discourse reference is just the cherry on top of the cake.”
Nope. Not even close, really. I do not feel an ounce of racial connection with whiteness. I think racial identity is stupid because I did not ever grow up with one. So I think people who overly identify with it are dumb, and I think people who attack others for it are dumb. The bioshock infinite comment was an example of a white guy attacking other white people for being what he identifies as white. I think this is cancer in our society and in progressivism.
The only one who has pushed white idenititarianism in this comment thread is you. You bizarrely keep pushing white identity on me. White passing, white fragility, etc. I do not identify with it.
“that would just make you one of the tens of thousands of groveling, ingratiating, perpetually-on-their-knees american-latinos that are infatuated with whiteness.”
Jesus, I think you’re just a racist, dude. This is like when some KKK person calls a white person a n-word lover for sticking up for or simply not hating black people. You’re basically just calling me a race traitor because I see an issue with anti-white racism in progressive politics and culture. Your beliefs and worldviews are the cancer I want excised from the left.
Again, you are pushing white identarianism not out of malice but of ignorance. The subtext of your original post, specially considering that it is apropos of nothing related to the essay, is white fragility. You are lamenting whiteness being under attack. You'd rather bring up your grandfather's life than entertain what you said.
I don't believe you when you say you do not identify as white. You are also very slimy, you give half baked facts as a counter argument and I'm left to guess. Once again you have given me half facts but this time, about your personal life rather than your ethnicity. This time, I cannot verify what you are telling me but you did try to pull a fast one on me with the mixed race comment.
You quack like a duck. Being white is not either/or as my 'screed' implied, whiteness is fluid. You are not mexican, you admit that after giving these fake half facts. Good. You are not indigenous. Good.
Let me be clear: I am not calling you a race traitor. I'm calling you a knuckle-dragging, nuance-impervious, "NO U" troglodyte (I even gave you the grace of not addressing your asinine 'feedback' to mrgirl. Can you imagine Zizek dissecting something about society and a retard commenting 'im sick of diagnosis, do SOMETHING Zizek, please!') that *might* be infatuated with whiteness.
Your comment deserves nothing but contempt. Every sentence is pretty awful.
On a vacuum, you are an objective reasonable person concerned about their fellow white man being villified for literally no reason. In reality, you are crying that the evil leftoids want to take away the bat.
Your beliefs and worldviews are the cancer educated people want excised from social norms. Little do they know, people like you can't be reasoned with, they can only respond to rubbing their face on the spot they pissed on.
"Your beliefs and worldviews are the cancer educated people want excised from social norms. Little do they know, people like you can't be reasoned with"
Skill issue.
The subtext of my original post is apropos of noting related to the essay? Did we read the same substack? The essay that is about skepticism of the idea that a historical white supremacist ideology and genocide was not done arbitrarily, and questioning how progressives (“what are the progressives wearing”) contribute to the modern day fascistic movements, like MAGA, with it’s white identitarian elements? That essay? My post describing an experience I had listening to a white progressive being reflexively anti-white male has nothing to do with this essay? Please tell me you’re pulling my leg.
“You are lamenting whiteness being under attack.”
I am lamenting that progressives have a disdain for white people. I don’t care about whiteness or white identity. The reason I don’t like what progressives are doing is because they are contributing to keeping racial identity and seterotyping alive, when I think nobody should strongly identify with dubious racial identities, and doing so only leads to trouble.
“I don't believe you when you say you do not identify as white.”
Well, that’s because you are likely a raging racist and a bit of a clown. I don’t want to be white and don’t care to identify with it. Nothing I’ve said has implied any kind of personal relationship with white identity. I just think racism is stupid, and that progressives contribute to the problem and fuel reactionary right wing retards.
“You are also very slimy, you give half baked facts as a counter argument and I'm left to guess.”
This is the funniest part of your frothingly angry and unhinged rants against me. You legit don’t read what I say. I literally said in my first reply to you that:
1. I am not white, or at least do not identify with it.
2. That I am American, and not Mexican. Just Mexican descent.
3. That I am the product of European colonialism. Half Spanish and half indigenous Mexican.
None of these facts are half baked. Only the brain trying to interpret them but struggling mightily because it is so filled with racist rage. You literally say that I “admit” that I’m not Mexican after half baked facts when that was the very first thing I ever said to you lol.
And I’m half indigenous descent. Like most people with Mexican ancestry. It’s a mestizo country. So I don’t know why you’re saying I’m not indigenous, unless you’re using a different definition than me. Just because I’m American? Which is funny because I inhabit that part of America that was Mexico, like most Americans of Mexican descent.
Listen, I can’t get through your increasingly hostile screeds to have a normal conversation with you, clearly. I am genuinely baffled at how gross it has become. I don’t know any white identitarians who would deny being white. Very confusing accusation. I don’t exalt whiteness. I am not a race realist. I do not believe white people are the most oppressed minority. I simply aimed to provide an anecdote that I felt was relevant to an essay about analyzing right wing white identity movements and how progressives contribute to them. I don’t know what to tell you if you don’t think that’s relevant. And I certainly don’t have much more interest in being racially berated by some weirdo on the internet when I don’t give a fuck about my race that much in the first place.
The solution is actually very simple: it will resolve itself over time. It always has. Humans have always been fighting over ideas, beliefs, and how they think society should be structured. You will never live in a world where that is not the case - a world where people all arrive at a common conclusion through enlightened discussion and debate. At least not when you have millions of them living together - small groups of people can sometimes come to common ground that way, but not large populations.
Of course as technology continues to improve and the stakes continue to get higher, the risk that it all goes to hell in the process also increases. The whole thing could come tumbling down. We could blow ourselves up. But Stalin put it well: no man, no problem.
Personally I think a serious conundrum with our species is that we're never satisfied. We always want more. We want heaven and everlasting life if we can have it, and we'll burn everything to the ground in pursuit of it if we have to. And we couldn't stop being that way if we tried.
I agree with your analysis and I like Bioshock Infinite.
By making my diagnosis out loud, I'm also taking action and hoping to inspire others as well. That is the treatment: to be emotionally vulnerable and intellectually honest despite there being no room for it. We can't just hope someone else will pave the way for us. We have to actively renounce our cults.
I re-read your leave the democrat cult post after I made the comment. I just feel like it’s not enough. I feel like *you* must know it will not be enough. You must know the incentives that exist will not allow for enough people to renounce their cults for the betterment of our society.
It’s like you asking people to leave the destiny cult, and by this I mean the orbiters, when it was in none of their financial/emotional interest. How can you tell people to leave the cult that financially and emotionally lavishes you? Nobody who has any cultural influence in their respective cult, has any large enough competing incentive to denounce it.
And as the Trump cult counteractively grows, people can counteractively justify participating in cults like the Destiny one. Because as bad as Destiny is, he wears the aesthetic of somebody who will stand against the Trump cult. So people like NSE or Counterpoints will say it’s worth wrapping yourself in his tendrils if you can contribute to beating the giant tentacle monster.
Not to be overly harsh, but what allies do you have? Who do we have as examples? You were able to leave the Destiny cult, despite its financial and emotional lavishes, not before reaping from it for quite a while, and self-admittedly contributing to its abuses. Who else is leaving their cult? Who is being emotionally vulnerable when it’s not incentivized to do so?
Honestly, I think you should have a conversation with Counterpoints. I believe you said on Twitter that you no longer wanted to have anything to do with him because of his general demeanor and comments during the fallout of Destiny being exposed for spreading sex tapes. But I would be interested if you could at all plant any seeds of doubt in somebody who is clearly in the same position as you were. Somebody who is emotionally and financially attached to the destiny cult. I’d like to see if this approach has any legs. I fear cults are inevitable.
I've talked to him and seen JSTLK and Kuihman talk to him. He is not going to listen to me.
As I've said, Shaelin tried to warn me about Destiny the day that I met him, and I yelled at her to stop being a naysayer, and I'd only been in the cult for like two hours at that point.
Remember that America's first legend is George Washington refusing to be king. It does happen.
Yes, I don't have many allies, but these are culty times. However, I wasn't kidding about the black hole thing--cults really do always collapse. It's just depressing (and scary) when you realize it's a cult and there are still people trapped inside.
So both the left and right cults will fall apart, the only question is how many people will have their lives ruined, or cut short, in the process. We already know the answer is not zero, but we can try to mitigate the destruction.
I'm still thinking about starting some kind of political discussion group for my podcast with locals of different stripes here in Eugene, I just have to figure out how to do it without getting shot.
Sounds defeatist. I’m not a viewer of JSTlK or Kuihman, but I would say your persuasiveness skill is pretty high. Are they similarly skilled? Either way, I will respect your read on it.
I agree they will collapse, nothing lasts forever, but cults on the national, governmental, political level seem to lead to wars and lots of harm. I’m not sure what can be done at this stage.
I support the political IRL idea you have thrown around before. And also not getting shot. I think I’ve told you before, maybe on Reddit that I think this cult dynamics stuff is the most fascinating part of your work. In child sexual abuse, in streaming, in politics, and even in physics academia. I enjoy the analysis. Good luck, mrgirl.
Okay. I hear your feedback. You've had enough of the dissections and you want to see if I can actually move anyone. I will think about that.
Martyrdom is a politically correct way to celebrate bloodlust. It usually starts with religion, but it's pretty universal no matter the nature of the cult. They turn inward because they have to disregard the importance of even their own lives in order to justify the fight for an imaginary future. The greatest gift a cult member can give the collective is that of pretext.
It's like when you have a disagreement with your spouse - everything that they did wrong seems so clear, so obvious, and everything that you did wrong is a blind spot that you both don't see and don't really want to see. But magnified at scale with higher stakes.
A lot of the internal dialogue of these groups, so far as I've seen, is a constant recital of the long list of wrong doings of the other side, and a general aversion to applying that lens inward.
I'm clicking around, and this isn't a merch drop?
Turning Point USA is selling them.
Grim.