Stolen from a comment on YouTube:
"So I take it that the next time a black man who is wearing a uniform or flashing a badge follows me not just around the store, but OUT of the store and down the block, I should tell him 'You can't do this, because you have no institutional power over me.'"
This in response to the notion that racism is "racial prejudice" plus institutional power, therefore minorities can't be racist; that is, because a minority bigot doesn't have the collective social power to oppress anyone else, there's really nothing wrong with their attitude or the shitty way they might treat people on a personal level.
Except Kanye. He crossed a line by agreeing with a different subset of white people, so the narrative would insist you believe, and now he enjoys not just the perquisites but all the collective guilt of white civilization. So the narrative would insist you believe.
Of course, it also neatly obscures a double standard: whites are personally guilty of racism because of demographics and collective, historical racist stuff whether or not they personally wield or enjoy any advantage of a biased system, just like how minorities are not guilty of racism because they don't have the advantages of a large, widespread system invisibly codified to help only them, no matter how hostile they are in person to people of a different demographic or how coordinated they and others in the same demographic are in their efforts to make their encounters with a majority out-group difficult or dangerous.
And this is deliberate.
The point I'm going to make is worth its own post but I riff on it a lot these days.
Trump wants to regulate immigration, to stop people from illegally sneaking into the country and working for less than minimum wage and not paying taxes, and voting just because they live here most of the year, just like we've been talking about for decades. These are all legitimate concerns: voting is a right and duty of citizens but not of foreign nationals who are only here for their jobs and not interested in becoming US citizens (and obviously this doesn't include the ones who do, but I shouldn't have to point that out), and other countries recognize that when Americans go abroad for work; people who work and get paid under the table make it harder for people on the IRS's radar like US citizens to get jobs, and that really sets a double standard for minimum wage arguments, and "lettuce will become expensive" is really not a compelling counterargument. But what does everyone say about Trump? That he just hates immigrants, and it's just because he's racist, and he's wrong because it's ironic since he's of European extraction.
This is not an argument. This is an obfuscation.
It's also why they say Trump is "literally Hitler" even though Hitler died before he was born and Bush was Hitler before him just because he was moderately conservative by the standards of the day. It's why they try so hard to show how there's no difference between the National Socialist German Workers' Party and moderns who either consistently vote conservative or actually are racists who just don't happen to be patronizing about it (depends on whom you ask), to the point where if Hitler were alive they'd be telling you he's secretly on the lecture circuit in Mississippi and Indiana--and the only reason alleged modern Nazis of today (not official neo-Nazis, but the ones who just get called Nazi online) get away with their attempts to distance themselves from the German political movement of the mid-20th century is Nuremberg made sure there wasn't anybody left to say today "Yeah, he's one of us." It's why they have someone volunteer to show up at an NRA function wearing a rifle with a plastic stock and black backpack with the Stars and Bars draped over it to give the impression that the KKK was a branch of the NRA, rather than the NRA being formed partly in opposition to the KKK--you can tell it's someone doing a false flag operation because in his attempt to make a recognizable caricature of conservatives, he's the only one openly armed and is obviously trying too hard to fit in.
When they say "literally Nazis," they aren't just exaggerating. They want you to believe that's actually true, and maybe they believe it themselves.
Even this post is going to end up used as an example of being insufficiently opposed to Nazi practices (i.e. that not being zealously opposed enough makes me one of them, like in the dying throes of every totalitarian regime of the 20th century would have it--which should tell you something about the nature and danger of their political motivations), by focusing on the argument that Trump and his voters are not all wrong, and skipping over the part where I argue that they're not literally Nazis. They'll show a picture of Hitler saluting next to a picture of some Republican waving to a crowd and think they've made an airtight argument, and then either use that as evidence for "literally a Nazi" or use "I've proven you're literally a Nazi by ignoring all facts and logic to the contrary" as evidence that the aforementioned juxtaposition is, in whatever sense they put stock in such a thing, the truth.
"So I take it that the next time a black man who is wearing a uniform or flashing a badge follows me not just around the store, but OUT of the store and down the block, I should tell him 'You can't do this, because you have no institutional power over me.'"
This in response to the notion that racism is "racial prejudice" plus institutional power, therefore minorities can't be racist; that is, because a minority bigot doesn't have the collective social power to oppress anyone else, there's really nothing wrong with their attitude or the shitty way they might treat people on a personal level.
Except Kanye. He crossed a line by agreeing with a different subset of white people, so the narrative would insist you believe, and now he enjoys not just the perquisites but all the collective guilt of white civilization. So the narrative would insist you believe.
Of course, it also neatly obscures a double standard: whites are personally guilty of racism because of demographics and collective, historical racist stuff whether or not they personally wield or enjoy any advantage of a biased system, just like how minorities are not guilty of racism because they don't have the advantages of a large, widespread system invisibly codified to help only them, no matter how hostile they are in person to people of a different demographic or how coordinated they and others in the same demographic are in their efforts to make their encounters with a majority out-group difficult or dangerous.
And this is deliberate.
The point I'm going to make is worth its own post but I riff on it a lot these days.
Trump wants to regulate immigration, to stop people from illegally sneaking into the country and working for less than minimum wage and not paying taxes, and voting just because they live here most of the year, just like we've been talking about for decades. These are all legitimate concerns: voting is a right and duty of citizens but not of foreign nationals who are only here for their jobs and not interested in becoming US citizens (and obviously this doesn't include the ones who do, but I shouldn't have to point that out), and other countries recognize that when Americans go abroad for work; people who work and get paid under the table make it harder for people on the IRS's radar like US citizens to get jobs, and that really sets a double standard for minimum wage arguments, and "lettuce will become expensive" is really not a compelling counterargument. But what does everyone say about Trump? That he just hates immigrants, and it's just because he's racist, and he's wrong because it's ironic since he's of European extraction.
This is not an argument. This is an obfuscation.
It's also why they say Trump is "literally Hitler" even though Hitler died before he was born and Bush was Hitler before him just because he was moderately conservative by the standards of the day. It's why they try so hard to show how there's no difference between the National Socialist German Workers' Party and moderns who either consistently vote conservative or actually are racists who just don't happen to be patronizing about it (depends on whom you ask), to the point where if Hitler were alive they'd be telling you he's secretly on the lecture circuit in Mississippi and Indiana--and the only reason alleged modern Nazis of today (not official neo-Nazis, but the ones who just get called Nazi online) get away with their attempts to distance themselves from the German political movement of the mid-20th century is Nuremberg made sure there wasn't anybody left to say today "Yeah, he's one of us." It's why they have someone volunteer to show up at an NRA function wearing a rifle with a plastic stock and black backpack with the Stars and Bars draped over it to give the impression that the KKK was a branch of the NRA, rather than the NRA being formed partly in opposition to the KKK--you can tell it's someone doing a false flag operation because in his attempt to make a recognizable caricature of conservatives, he's the only one openly armed and is obviously trying too hard to fit in.
When they say "literally Nazis," they aren't just exaggerating. They want you to believe that's actually true, and maybe they believe it themselves.
Even this post is going to end up used as an example of being insufficiently opposed to Nazi practices (i.e. that not being zealously opposed enough makes me one of them, like in the dying throes of every totalitarian regime of the 20th century would have it--which should tell you something about the nature and danger of their political motivations), by focusing on the argument that Trump and his voters are not all wrong, and skipping over the part where I argue that they're not literally Nazis. They'll show a picture of Hitler saluting next to a picture of some Republican waving to a crowd and think they've made an airtight argument, and then either use that as evidence for "literally a Nazi" or use "I've proven you're literally a Nazi by ignoring all facts and logic to the contrary" as evidence that the aforementioned juxtaposition is, in whatever sense they put stock in such a thing, the truth.
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