A Young White Man's Rant on Race and the Alt-Right
Hello c99!
I sailed in with you guys on your way from TOP, but I was just a lurker. I don't usually express my opinions or feelings on political matters, because observing others shows me how little worth that usually is, and how sometimes rationality or reason has little to do with those beliefs.
I'm posting today because the political climate is, as I'm sure many of you understand, maddening and I would like to get this off my chest. I intend to vent a bit about the 'alt-right', men's rights activism, feminism and the fact I live with one of my oldest friends who happens to have been thoroughly indoctrinated into that ideology a few years ago (plz help me).
Here we go.. I've lived in the state of GA my entire life. I can even see stone mountain from here, where the second founding of the ku klux klan took place. I hardly even need to say it, but the laws, culture and attitudes here in the Bible Belt are backward as hell. I feel like I'm surrounded by hatred and bigotry sometimes.
This friend of mine is very dogmatic about his atheism and new-found identity in the alt-right and men's activist movements. He either knowingly lied to me about Milo Yiana-whatever and his minions attacking Leslie Jones over twitter, or he actually was completely unaware that this attack on this woman was indeed supported by Milo (you'd apologize in front of the world if you were a real man Milo!). Looking back, I think he either just didn't want to lose the argument (that he dragged me in to) or simply didn't want to believe anything other than what he'd already been told/lied to by some incredibly biased clickbaiter on youtube. I had to look into it myself to find the truth.
This friend of mine also thinks the BLM movement is completely illegitimate, that feminism is cancer and that socialism is evil. I happen to feel the opposite and everything I've experienced in my life, and read the past decade or so since I got into politics seems to validate my beliefs. (ie he thinks the New Deal was bad, I think it was good)
I just don't understand HOW these young men's rights activists can say something so incredibly awful like, "No Hymen, No Diamond!" and be taken seriously by anyone! How could someone as intelligent as my friend self-identify with such an incredibly toxic and juvenile ideology? Are there deeper resentments fueling these views?
HOW can you say the BLM movement is illegitimate when..
A: We have the world's largest prison population
B: We have the developed world's most violent and militarized law enforcement
C: A very large fraction of the people in these prisons are minorities with non-violent drug charges, even though whites use drugs at the same rate and make up roughly 2/3 of this country.
D: When a white person is convicted of the same crime as a black one, the latter typically receives a harsher sentence.
E: It's more important in this country to protect (rich and white) corporate interests at the Dakota Pipeline than to help the families and lives devastated by lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, or when black children have no schools to go to in Chicago.
HOW can you claim these feminists try to get men our age to commit suicide (which is something he thought he could say to rope me into to his way of thinking, since I know about that sort of thing all too well) when that is what Milo Ron Hubbard and his brainwashed cultists tried to do to Leslie Jones? They would not have stopped until they found a way into everything she had online and destroyed her socially, spiritually and professionally. Again these are people my age who could be doing some good if they wanted to, or at least they could try.
HOW can you claim that government is the ultimate evil but somehow manage to defend Monsanto and label any criticism of corporate power as propaganda?
HOW can you still believe any of these people while the human race may not even survive our lifetime?
WHY would you even consider starting to call people cucks and mocking anyone even your own family for expressing any view that isn't your own. It's not even the fact that it's sometimes hate speech that bothers me, it's just that it's downright rotten! I mean damn either you don't know how you're affecting others or you just don't care.
HOW could you have let them turn you into such a contrary, critical and insensitive human being?
WHY is it the only people you ever listen to are people that are the most similar to you (other young white men and professional internet trolls).
HOW can you complain about this damned "social justice warrior" strawman, when you spend hours being a valiant keyboard warrior arguing obsessively with people on facebook and who knows where else while I watch you lose friends in the process?
HOW can you be so fanatical about being in the alt-right while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the neonazis in their ranks?
How can you be an atheist who believes in climate change, and wholeheartedly support Drumpf? Do you really stand for something and want the world to be a better place, or do you just want to strengthen your ego and put others down?
My opinion is that most of the men in the alt-right movement today are probably similar to my friend. They're basically ultra-edgy internet trolls who are generally not successful with women (neither am I but I take responsibility for it) who feel emboldened by professional bullshit artists like Milo when he implies that it is indeed white men who are the victims (makes me sick just to type that).
It's hard for me to trust my own perception when I don't believe my friend can trust his, but what I think I see is Denial.
Anyway, thanks to whoever reads this and please feel free to comment below.
Comments
There's an amazing amount of propaganda, fake news,
and just plain bullshit on both the "right" and "left" websites, blogs, etc. My brother frequents those type of sites and occasionally I'll go check out what they're saying. Places like Infowars, Breitbart, Silver Bear, etc., peddle some amazingly ignorant stuff. Of course it's combined with the truth and we can find common ground among in alot of that truth. It's the same thing on the left only different. The information, news, stories, etc., will get people talking about certain things, continually distracting them from actually talking about things that matter. Like the election, electors, hacking, Clinton, anything but how to take down the power.
A lot of hatred, tribalism, misconceptions, but also ideologies.
Liberal patronizing
Does this friend also identify as a libertarian or AnCap?
Anywho....the whole alt-right thing is just knee jerk reaction on steroids. Of course it doesn't help to have people like Milo Yiannopolous, Sargon of Akkad and Thunderfoot (Among so many others) stirring the hornet's nest for the sake of their own bank accounts.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
You'll get a lot of sympathy here, but probably not a lot of
answers. We are bamfoozled by these folks too.
One thing we have known for a long time, a lie repeated often enough will come to sound like the truth. See if you can get your friend away from Limpaugh and Faux and right-wing websites for a while. Get him to read/watch/listen to something - anything - else for a different perspective. Tell him he's getting brainwashed and needs some different perspectives. Try to break him out of his bubble. Tell him that as long as he shows you that he has listened to and processed the other side, you'll leave him alone with his opinions even if they don't change. You just want him to be familiar with both sides. Show him where these guys don't like atheists and deny climate change. Gee, maybe if they're wrong about his favorite issues, they're wrong about other things too?
You could discuss some things you are unsure about, like you mentioned having to look up the Milo-Leslie thing. When you tell him you didn't know so looked it up, and here's what you found, then you can cut through some resistance because you aren't taking a firm position, just relating what you read. Then he can show you what he read, etc., and you have a discussion.
Also, you can try asking lots of questions. "Why do you think that?" "Where did you hear that?" Let him show you his references as long as he'll give you a chance to let you show him yours. "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." It sometimes works.
See if you can get him involved with other groups. There's a powerful pull when you're accepted by a group if you've otherwise felt lonely.
As for feminists and any other group, there are of course a range of people under any label, no group is a monolith, even Trump supporters. I became a feminist because I saw its potential for doing away with stereotypes of both men and women, and so helping us both. Why shouldn't a woman be a pro athlete if that's what she is good at and enjoys? Why shouldn't a man be a homemaker if that is what he is good at and enjoys (and finds a woman willing to be the breadwinner)? Why shouldn't I make as much as you so that, if we're together and both working fulltime, we have two full adult incomes to share rather than an income and 3/4?
Of course getting men to commit suicide is not a feminist thing. Which is not to say that no woman has ever been that sociopathic. But I'm sure it's no more common than men doing the same.
Good luck with him! Unfortunately, you may have to give up on him. But I would ask a lot of questions, that's my go-to strategy, looking for points of agreement.
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Sturgeon's Law.
The short version is "Ninety percent of everything is crud".
Although these days, I think it is inexorably edging up closer to 95%...
@ The Aspie Corner: Yes he
@ The Aspie Corner: Yes he happens to be a libertarian, which is cool as I was as well back in 2008.
@gjohnsit: I actually agree with most of what they've said in that video, although I don't watch television and haven't watched MTV since 1997. Sure, it can make people uncomfortable to hear the truth, but the only people that video is offending are white men, and frankly I know from experience we have it relatively good. If videos like this were all that women or minorities had to worry about in the US, then I might feel offended.
@elenacarlena: Hey those are great ideas! Him and I actually get along pretty well 95% of the time and he knows I don't like to argue or criticize so probably wouldn't feel threatened by trying to have a deeper understanding and perhaps showing him the sides of people like Milo I've seen that maybe the people he's trusted with his political information haven't seen fit to show their audience. It's nice to hear your definition of feminism. Hopefully one day he'll see that there is a much more common type of feminism that is egalitarian and progressive in ways he could appreciate, as he is generally socially liberal (doesn't hate LGBT).
@skod: Yeah, as I get older everything just seems crazier. I never imagined when I was growing up that the world would get any worse lol!
Thanks for your replies and for reading my rant