Okay, it is important to acknowledge that miseducation and disinformation contributes to the specific rhetoric applied in current white supremacist movements, but to suggest that this is an intelligence issue is reductive and ableist. Fascists infamously adopt anti-intelligence and absurdity into their rhetoric exactly because it wastes time and redirects resistance into arguments that work to platform them further. To them, having to justify the way you think is a concession of power. They use idiocy to assert their power as a privileged group who does not need to make sense in order for their will to be realized in society.
They’re right in that, the white supremacist worldview is validated at every level of how our society functions. Canada is an extractivist, racist, settler-colonial enterprise fundamentally. Whether it appropriates ideas of anti-bigotry into its language does not change that this is a country that depends on genocide and racialized privilege to exist. While many Canadians will be discomforted by this notion, that most of them are white and disproportionately more materially secure than racialized groups is undeniable. Indigenous people suffer physical violence, disposession, incarceration, shelter and food insecurity, and sexual violence with impunity at significantly higher rates than white Canadians. White men are the most likely to commit that violence and are the least likely to face repercussions for any violence they inflict. Much of that violence is facilitated through industrial extraction – which again disproportionately harms indigenous communities – that is not recognized as a crime at all by the Canadian state for obvious reasons. White men own the most property, have written most of the laws, occupy most seats of power, and they know that even if they do not know why.
I’m not trying to shut you down or suggest that these people are pretending to be stupid. I only want to caution against viewing stupidity as an explanation for their values. You are correct, they do not know what they’re talking about beyond the fact that they are articulating a desire to reaffirm white supremacy. These men are correctly pointing out that they can behave this way because this system is built for them, and they don’t have to know why in order to benefit from it.
I really appreciate your reply. You hit the nail on the head that I am being reductive and ableist. Per the latter point, I realize that calling them morons or unintelligent is problematic, so I shift to dumbasses, which is semantics and not a real solution.
I also agree that right-wing groups/people seem to get off on not having to make sense or explain themselves.
I find them so perplexing and problematic.
I guess it is less about ability and more about belief and identity. Like toxic masculinity, I might call it toxic citizenry or toxic humanity.
But they are being fooled though, for example to hate immigrants rather than billionaires.
LBJ [US president] understood how Southern politicians tricked poor Whites. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pockets. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”(p264) The poor White man was simply “a pawn in their [Southern politicians’] game,” as Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan sang in 1963.
There’s so much truth to unpack LBJ’s words there. I think the psychology of it fascinates me most of all. People adopt a simplification of reality that gives them a false sense of power, and living in that reality requires not questioning it. Something like: people will sell their brain to stroke their ego.
I don’t know if it’s helpful to frame this as them being fooled either though, they are getting exactly what they want. Racialization emerged from settler-colonialism specifically for its ability to naturalize the subordination of groups within a hierarchy organized around capitalist imperatives of profit and infinite growth. White supremacy is a whole-hearted subscription to that hierarchy and its maintenance. Our system is racist already and has been the entire time. Even though white people are not all billionaires, they understand that being white guarantees them privilege over other groups in society and that typically translates to a lifetime of material security and even luxury. Opposition toward an owning class fundamentally depends on condemnation of stratification and hierarchy as those are the underlying mechanisms that make wealth accumulation possible. When white supremacists – this includes white people who do not describe themselves as Nazis but nonetheless subscribe to our system as it is – align with the interests of capital, they are communicating that they will defend the hierarchy they benefit from before they will challenge it. Even if it appears as though they are duped because of the disparate material reality they experience compared to billionaires, or any owning class, that they can entertain the fantasy of rising in the hierarchy is itself only made possible through a construction of the world where some people are just born with the right to enjoy life. They know that whiteness gives them that and they are rewarded with the luxurious precarity of middle-class life. I don’t think you can understand why people make these sorts of decisions with an individualist analytical framework like psychology, it is systemic.
Okay, it is important to acknowledge that miseducation and disinformation contributes to the specific rhetoric applied in current white supremacist movements, but to suggest that this is an intelligence issue is reductive and ableist. Fascists infamously adopt anti-intelligence and absurdity into their rhetoric exactly because it wastes time and redirects resistance into arguments that work to platform them further. To them, having to justify the way you think is a concession of power. They use idiocy to assert their power as a privileged group who does not need to make sense in order for their will to be realized in society.
They’re right in that, the white supremacist worldview is validated at every level of how our society functions. Canada is an extractivist, racist, settler-colonial enterprise fundamentally. Whether it appropriates ideas of anti-bigotry into its language does not change that this is a country that depends on genocide and racialized privilege to exist. While many Canadians will be discomforted by this notion, that most of them are white and disproportionately more materially secure than racialized groups is undeniable. Indigenous people suffer physical violence, disposession, incarceration, shelter and food insecurity, and sexual violence with impunity at significantly higher rates than white Canadians. White men are the most likely to commit that violence and are the least likely to face repercussions for any violence they inflict. Much of that violence is facilitated through industrial extraction – which again disproportionately harms indigenous communities – that is not recognized as a crime at all by the Canadian state for obvious reasons. White men own the most property, have written most of the laws, occupy most seats of power, and they know that even if they do not know why.
I’m not trying to shut you down or suggest that these people are pretending to be stupid. I only want to caution against viewing stupidity as an explanation for their values. You are correct, they do not know what they’re talking about beyond the fact that they are articulating a desire to reaffirm white supremacy. These men are correctly pointing out that they can behave this way because this system is built for them, and they don’t have to know why in order to benefit from it.
I really appreciate your reply. You hit the nail on the head that I am being reductive and ableist. Per the latter point, I realize that calling them morons or unintelligent is problematic, so I shift to dumbasses, which is semantics and not a real solution.
I also agree that right-wing groups/people seem to get off on not having to make sense or explain themselves.
I find them so perplexing and problematic.
I guess it is less about ability and more about belief and identity. Like toxic masculinity, I might call it toxic citizenry or toxic humanity.
But they are being fooled though, for example to hate immigrants rather than billionaires.
Source
There’s so much truth to unpack LBJ’s words there. I think the psychology of it fascinates me most of all. People adopt a simplification of reality that gives them a false sense of power, and living in that reality requires not questioning it. Something like: people will sell their brain to stroke their ego.
I don’t know if it’s helpful to frame this as them being fooled either though, they are getting exactly what they want. Racialization emerged from settler-colonialism specifically for its ability to naturalize the subordination of groups within a hierarchy organized around capitalist imperatives of profit and infinite growth. White supremacy is a whole-hearted subscription to that hierarchy and its maintenance. Our system is racist already and has been the entire time. Even though white people are not all billionaires, they understand that being white guarantees them privilege over other groups in society and that typically translates to a lifetime of material security and even luxury. Opposition toward an owning class fundamentally depends on condemnation of stratification and hierarchy as those are the underlying mechanisms that make wealth accumulation possible. When white supremacists – this includes white people who do not describe themselves as Nazis but nonetheless subscribe to our system as it is – align with the interests of capital, they are communicating that they will defend the hierarchy they benefit from before they will challenge it. Even if it appears as though they are duped because of the disparate material reality they experience compared to billionaires, or any owning class, that they can entertain the fantasy of rising in the hierarchy is itself only made possible through a construction of the world where some people are just born with the right to enjoy life. They know that whiteness gives them that and they are rewarded with the luxurious precarity of middle-class life. I don’t think you can understand why people make these sorts of decisions with an individualist analytical framework like psychology, it is systemic.