Maybe if we stop inventing terms for literally everything a white man could ever say or do and then turning it into yet another reason to manufacture outrage, then we’ll stop pushing vast swathes of every generation of young adults into echo chambers where they get radicalized into these hateful extremist camps.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate maga, fascists, white supremacy, and evangelical nationalism. If you read this as a defense of those camps then you’re missing my point entirely.
I’m just saying that I might easily be labeled as an “angry white man” if I’m ever forced into a situation where I have to choose between standing up for myself or rolling over and taking it in the ass. And then once you get that label, suddenly no progressive people will be your friend, so it’s not surprising that so many impressionable and dejected young people wind up in toxic right-wing spaces.
I’ll admit, it gets fucking frustrating. There’s always a word for whatever it is, whether it’s “performative,” or “white saviorism,” or “virtue signaling” whenever you’re trying to do something good; “mansplaining” whenever you’re passionate about something, “fragility” whenever you get upset and let it show, etc.
Like, I get it, other demographics have it bad and in many cases worse. But nobody else has to put up with this particular type of shit. I’m pretty progressive and I despise machismo culture, so I try to let that stuff roll off my back, and I’ll never personally wind up in right-wing spaces. But man it gets fucking lonely when literally no one will respect you or even permit you to insist on having basic self-respect, except in the only places where you’re accepted (at least until you make it known that you’re a socialist), where you refuse to hang out anyway because they’re primarily full of toxic right-wing white men who only think you’re “a good ole boy” because you look like them.
Fuck maga. Fuck fascism. Fuck white supremacy, and fuck evangelical nationalism.
But also, fuck broad generalizations that lump everyone of a certain demographic into one category based on immutable characteristics.
Yeah, I agree with you and I’ve been involved with enough conversations to know precisely what you mean. I was talking about the specific AWM phenomenon that even had Chomsky commenting on it. He said something to the effect of: “yeah, they have a right to be angry, and should be angry, but they are angry at the wrong things” (steered there by the MSM).
But back to what often almost seems like a concerted effort to peel off white men and make them Republicans…yeah, it’s immensely frustrating. I suspect at least some of it is a psyops being done by conservatives and enemies of this country, TBH.
However, there does seem to be a certain kind of person that actually seems to believe that they can lecture and cow and browbeat and name-call others into “doing the work”, etc. To be perfectly frank, there are a lot of people that don’t have the time to run through this fabricated gauntlet of perfect liberal checklists. People are run ragged, worried about losing their job if they even have one, or working multiple “gigs” to try to pay the bills.
And even if they did have some level of comfort and leisure, that’s not how you build rapport with others. Giving people a big stack of homework you expect them to do and tell them to run along and come back once they are then properly enlightened at Purity Pony University is going to work on probably single digits numbers of people…
Believe me, I’ve seen absurd levels of this. As a more recent example: I was told I really could not talk about fiction in any meaningful way - specifically, sci-fi/fantasy, unless I had already read a specific checklist of queer/trans authors. I mean…what even the fuck? Other than just scoring points among possibly dozens of people, what is this going to achieve? It’s certainly not a way to build a coalition.
The truly sad thing is that when some people experience this, may think all liberals are actually like this (including the politicians, which absolutely are not like this), figure that liberals have zero interest in their support, tell them all to fuck off, and just flounce off to either not vote, or worse, vote for Trump.
Chomsky wasn’t wrong in that quote (even though he’s a deceptive, hypocritical snake; and I say that as someone who used to look up to him). Arguably most, or at least many “Angry White Men” are angry at the wrong things (because they’ve been manipulated to be). But that’s no reason to lump every white man who happens to be angry into that category. It’s a thought-stopper.
Some of us are angry at the right things. But it’s impossible to have class solidarity when everyone just trivializes you as a “fragile, angry white man” and assumes you’re only upset because you’re a racist piece of shit and not because you have a righteous indignation against an unjust system while you’re also being unfairly blamed for that unjust system solely due to the race and sex that you were born.
I totally agree about the psyop, although there are enough people it’s worked so thoroughly on that they seem to be carrying the baton all on their own at this point.
But yeah, most of us don’t have the time or energy to jump through those hoops anymore. Millions of us tried back in 2020, but it seems we were only punished for it by the same people we were trying to show solidarity with, uplift, and make space for. Like, I’m not going to be used as a punching bag just because I make myself an easy target by being vulnerable, expressing empathy, and demonstrating goodwill. The world is collapsing too rapidly for that shit. I need to fend for myself like everyone else now.
They finally got their wish though. The middle class is losing its “privilege” at an alarming rate. I’m not sure how that helps anyone in poverty. Although I’ve been calling that out for years anyway. The focus should be on uplifting the disenfranchised and extending privilege to the marginalized; not tearing down the (relatively) privileged out of envy or spite. That only helps the oligarchs, and it’s clearly working as intended.
Believe me, I’ve seen absurd levels of this.
Yeah, just scroll down in this thread to witness the absurdity.
And don’t even get me started on literary analysis! That’s a field I would find interesting if it wasn’t so saturated with worn-out clichés, self-fellating manufactured outrage, mixed messaging, double-standards, hypocritical exceptionalism, virtue signaling, and thought-stopping pandering by people in desperate need to justify a master’s thesis. My god, it gets my blood pressure elevated
At some point I tried to care, but eventually it got exhausting and I stopped caring. Aside from the fact that I’ll never be able to publish a novel because it would get torn apart for no reason other than the fact that I’m a white man (seriously, no possible depiction of anyone but other white men will slide through the “purity filter”: they’re either too perfect or too flawed, too idealized or too realistic, etc.; but if I only depict white men to avoid the issue then clearly it’s just racist and sexist fodder, so I guess I just wrote write anything then!); aside from that, I’ll just read books quietly and not talk about them so I don’t have to listen to an insufferable lecture on fantasy tropes and how they’re ostensibly embedded with fascist values (I’m sorry, but fuck Mordor, they’re fucking evil, and Aragorn was not a jingo-nationalist, he had a duty to save the civilized world from the imperial warmachine next door).
It’s certainly not a way to build a coalition.
Yeah, I keep telling people this. They always hit me with “why would I want to build a coalition with them” implying I’m trying to defend actual racists, sexists, and fascists, rather than arguing that misapplying those labels just to flame people for quick internet points is precisely what forces those people eventually into extremist camps. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy; it’s not some fringe theory.
They compare that to an abuser saying “look what you made me do,” but it’s more like an outsider observer saying “you badgered this person into hysterics, and now you’re accusing them of needless aggression because they finally reached their breaking point.”
And honestly it’s more about the large-scale trend of corralling people into echo chambers to be poached and radicalized by extremist groups. I’ve done counter-insurgency/stability ops in the past, and a major part of that is reducing the recruitment pool by learning the unmet needs of the population and building goodwill to prevent them from being radicalized in the first place.
The truly sad thing is that when some people experience this, may think all liberals are actually like this (…) figure that liberals have zero interest in their support, tell them all to fuck off, and just flounce off to either not vote, or worse, vote for Trump.
Yeah, exactly. Sympathy burnout is a thing. And also, it really doesn’t help to dispel the right-wing caricature of “Angry radical communist socialist liberal leftist extremists.” Obviously that’s a self-contradictory, oxymoronic, and hyperbolized statement conflating multiple groups and lacking any context or nuance. But behaving like the caricature they depict does not help to prove them wrong.
White America has never truly come to terms with its legacy of slavery and genocide, which left a deep and lasting scar on the psyche of the nation. Those on the “left” at least recognize that those crimes were perpetrated, and that they benefit from them today to the continued detriment of the victims. But broadly speaking, most are unwilling or unable to actually do the work of integrating that trauma and overcoming it.
So instead they react with purity tests, identity politics, and performative displays of White Guilt.
I honestly don’t know how our society can move past this, but until we actually engage with our legacy with serious intention of healing the wound, well-intentioned people will continue to act like total idiots who think they are gatekeepers of the Truth.
Obviously some people can see through this, but since most of them are socialists, their voices get ignored in favor of the propaganda that the slavers and genociders of the world have been pumping out for centuries.
But broadly speaking, most are unwilling or unable to actually do the work of integrating that trauma and overcoming it.
This is such a vague thing to say though. What does “do the work” actually mean? Because back in 2020 during BLM and all that I tried reading up on all the stuff that I was supposed to know, tried to do everything that they said I was supposed to do to pass their “not-racist” test. And guess what? They still called me racist! Even sometimes for saying or doing the exact things that they said anti-racists are supposed to do.
Why? Because I’m white. That’s literally the reason they would give every time, and if I tried to dispute it they would just double down and say that if I wasn’t racist then I wouldn’t have to say I’m not racist. So apparently the only way to avoid being called racist was to avoid interacting with black people at all (which is what I thought would be actually racist, but I’m just a white guy so what do I know?).
So if my whiteness is this inescapable thing where any time I encounter a non-white person they’re going to assume I’m racist unless I somehow do enough performative gestures to convince them that I’m not racist, then 1). I’d basically be trying to be accepted as “one of the good ones”, 2) I’d be living the rest of my life that way because there are always new strangers that I’d have to prove myself to, 3). No one deserves to live with that level of self-degradation just for the way they were born, and 4). That would all be performative anyway, so in the end it would still be called racist!
So it’s really not surprising that people stopped fucking caring. What the fuck else did you expect them to do? Even the well-intentioned people who wanted to do the right thing weren’t given any legitimate options for how to fulfill this apparent obligation we supposedly have. It was a wild goose chase, and apparently people caught on and stopped playing.
So instead they react with purity tests, identity politics, and performative displays of White Guilt.
What other option was there? Literally, it was basically being demanded that we do exactly those things and nothing else. But even when we did our best to do those things, we could never outrun this idea that “you white, that means you racist.” (A literal quote that has been directed at me).
And even mentioning the issues or frustrations we were facing was met with indignation. There was no room for nuanced or well-reasoned discussions. No opportunity to raise legitimate concerns. We weren’t even allowed to have basic self-respect, or to expect basic consideration from others. Why? Because we were white. And how is that not racism?
Like, I get it, racial divides need to be mended and disparities need to be addressed. But using every well-intentioned white person as a punching bag just because they let you walk on them so they don’t seem fragile is not the way to do it.
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m still WAY more committed to seeing myself as ‘good’ than to spending more than ten seconds examining how whiteness shapes my thinking.”
Get over yourself and do something. You get credit for actions, not what you say or who you think you are.
What other people think of you is none of your business. If you are a genuine ally and aren’t just thinking about whether you’ve earned whatever place at the table you think you deserve, then it shouldn’t matter.
You get over yourself. You’re making assumptions about what I have and haven’t done. I haven’t enumerated those things for you because it’s performative and unnecessary, and I’m not going to dance for you like a monkey.
Respect and solidarity are a two-way street and since you’re clearly offering me none, then you’ll get none back from me either.
I’m not asking for credit or points. I’m pointing out a trend, an issue that I’ve experienced personally and have noticed is more prevalent than just myself. I’ve even pointed out how it can damage progress, in case you’re wondering why you should care.
I don’t need your approval to have a basic sense of self-respect, and if you think I do then I don’t want a place at your table. And if you think that makes me the racist, then quite frankly you can get the fuck over yourself because I’m not bending over backwards to please people anymore.
No seriously, this is clearly going right over your head and you’ve proved my point three times in as many comments.
You’re expecting me to do performative bullshit for you to beg for your approval in order to be labeled as “non-racist.” You think I haven’t been through that song and dance before?
The fact is, no matter what I do, it will never be enough for you. Because you’re demanding performative bullshit, so no matter what I do you’ll dismiss as performative.
And guess what? Even if I somehow magically convince you to deem me non-racist, the next time I encounter someone else they’ll make the same demands and it all starts over again.
That is not a fate that any self-respecting individual would consign themselves to. No one is or should be required to continuously debase themselves just to gain the approval of others.
I’m not obliged to do anything for you, and yet you keep coming back with this attitude like you’re entitled to push me around, as if I owe you something, and you’re premising it all based on nothing other than my race alone. You’re racist, dude.
Maybe if we stop inventing terms for literally everything a white man could ever say or do and then turning it into yet another reason to manufacture outrage, then we’ll stop pushing vast swathes of every generation of young adults into echo chambers where they get radicalized into these hateful extremist camps.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate maga, fascists, white supremacy, and evangelical nationalism. If you read this as a defense of those camps then you’re missing my point entirely.
I’m just saying that I might easily be labeled as an “angry white man” if I’m ever forced into a situation where I have to choose between standing up for myself or rolling over and taking it in the ass. And then once you get that label, suddenly no progressive people will be your friend, so it’s not surprising that so many impressionable and dejected young people wind up in toxic right-wing spaces.
I’ll admit, it gets fucking frustrating. There’s always a word for whatever it is, whether it’s “performative,” or “white saviorism,” or “virtue signaling” whenever you’re trying to do something good; “mansplaining” whenever you’re passionate about something, “fragility” whenever you get upset and let it show, etc.
Like, I get it, other demographics have it bad and in many cases worse. But nobody else has to put up with this particular type of shit. I’m pretty progressive and I despise machismo culture, so I try to let that stuff roll off my back, and I’ll never personally wind up in right-wing spaces. But man it gets fucking lonely when literally no one will respect you or even permit you to insist on having basic self-respect, except in the only places where you’re accepted (at least until you make it known that you’re a socialist), where you refuse to hang out anyway because they’re primarily full of toxic right-wing white men who only think you’re “a good ole boy” because you look like them.
Fuck maga. Fuck fascism. Fuck white supremacy, and fuck evangelical nationalism.
But also, fuck broad generalizations that lump everyone of a certain demographic into one category based on immutable characteristics.
Yeah, I agree with you and I’ve been involved with enough conversations to know precisely what you mean. I was talking about the specific AWM phenomenon that even had Chomsky commenting on it. He said something to the effect of: “yeah, they have a right to be angry, and should be angry, but they are angry at the wrong things” (steered there by the MSM).
But back to what often almost seems like a concerted effort to peel off white men and make them Republicans…yeah, it’s immensely frustrating. I suspect at least some of it is a psyops being done by conservatives and enemies of this country, TBH.
However, there does seem to be a certain kind of person that actually seems to believe that they can lecture and cow and browbeat and name-call others into “doing the work”, etc. To be perfectly frank, there are a lot of people that don’t have the time to run through this fabricated gauntlet of perfect liberal checklists. People are run ragged, worried about losing their job if they even have one, or working multiple “gigs” to try to pay the bills.
And even if they did have some level of comfort and leisure, that’s not how you build rapport with others. Giving people a big stack of homework you expect them to do and tell them to run along and come back once they are then properly enlightened at Purity Pony University is going to work on probably single digits numbers of people…
Believe me, I’ve seen absurd levels of this. As a more recent example: I was told I really could not talk about fiction in any meaningful way - specifically, sci-fi/fantasy, unless I had already read a specific checklist of queer/trans authors. I mean…what even the fuck? Other than just scoring points among possibly dozens of people, what is this going to achieve? It’s certainly not a way to build a coalition.
The truly sad thing is that when some people experience this, may think all liberals are actually like this (including the politicians, which absolutely are not like this), figure that liberals have zero interest in their support, tell them all to fuck off, and just flounce off to either not vote, or worse, vote for Trump.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Chomsky wasn’t wrong in that quote (even though he’s a deceptive, hypocritical snake; and I say that as someone who used to look up to him). Arguably most, or at least many “Angry White Men” are angry at the wrong things (because they’ve been manipulated to be). But that’s no reason to lump every white man who happens to be angry into that category. It’s a thought-stopper.
Some of us are angry at the right things. But it’s impossible to have class solidarity when everyone just trivializes you as a “fragile, angry white man” and assumes you’re only upset because you’re a racist piece of shit and not because you have a righteous indignation against an unjust system while you’re also being unfairly blamed for that unjust system solely due to the race and sex that you were born.
I totally agree about the psyop, although there are enough people it’s worked so thoroughly on that they seem to be carrying the baton all on their own at this point.
But yeah, most of us don’t have the time or energy to jump through those hoops anymore. Millions of us tried back in 2020, but it seems we were only punished for it by the same people we were trying to show solidarity with, uplift, and make space for. Like, I’m not going to be used as a punching bag just because I make myself an easy target by being vulnerable, expressing empathy, and demonstrating goodwill. The world is collapsing too rapidly for that shit. I need to fend for myself like everyone else now.
They finally got their wish though. The middle class is losing its “privilege” at an alarming rate. I’m not sure how that helps anyone in poverty. Although I’ve been calling that out for years anyway. The focus should be on uplifting the disenfranchised and extending privilege to the marginalized; not tearing down the (relatively) privileged out of envy or spite. That only helps the oligarchs, and it’s clearly working as intended.
Yeah, just scroll down in this thread to witness the absurdity.
And don’t even get me started on literary analysis! That’s a field I would find interesting if it wasn’t so saturated with worn-out clichés, self-fellating manufactured outrage, mixed messaging, double-standards, hypocritical exceptionalism, virtue signaling, and thought-stopping pandering by people in desperate need to justify a master’s thesis. My god, it gets my blood pressure elevated
At some point I tried to care, but eventually it got exhausting and I stopped caring. Aside from the fact that I’ll never be able to publish a novel because it would get torn apart for no reason other than the fact that I’m a white man (seriously, no possible depiction of anyone but other white men will slide through the “purity filter”: they’re either too perfect or too flawed, too idealized or too realistic, etc.; but if I only depict white men to avoid the issue then clearly it’s just racist and sexist fodder, so I guess I just wrote write anything then!); aside from that, I’ll just read books quietly and not talk about them so I don’t have to listen to an insufferable lecture on fantasy tropes and how they’re ostensibly embedded with fascist values (I’m sorry, but fuck Mordor, they’re fucking evil, and Aragorn was not a jingo-nationalist, he had a duty to save the civilized world from the imperial warmachine next door).
Yeah, I keep telling people this. They always hit me with “why would I want to build a coalition with them” implying I’m trying to defend actual racists, sexists, and fascists, rather than arguing that misapplying those labels just to flame people for quick internet points is precisely what forces those people eventually into extremist camps. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy; it’s not some fringe theory.
They compare that to an abuser saying “look what you made me do,” but it’s more like an outsider observer saying “you badgered this person into hysterics, and now you’re accusing them of needless aggression because they finally reached their breaking point.”
And honestly it’s more about the large-scale trend of corralling people into echo chambers to be poached and radicalized by extremist groups. I’ve done counter-insurgency/stability ops in the past, and a major part of that is reducing the recruitment pool by learning the unmet needs of the population and building goodwill to prevent them from being radicalized in the first place.
Yeah, exactly. Sympathy burnout is a thing. And also, it really doesn’t help to dispel the right-wing caricature of “Angry radical communist socialist liberal leftist extremists.” Obviously that’s a self-contradictory, oxymoronic, and hyperbolized statement conflating multiple groups and lacking any context or nuance. But behaving like the caricature they depict does not help to prove them wrong.
White America has never truly come to terms with its legacy of slavery and genocide, which left a deep and lasting scar on the psyche of the nation. Those on the “left” at least recognize that those crimes were perpetrated, and that they benefit from them today to the continued detriment of the victims. But broadly speaking, most are unwilling or unable to actually do the work of integrating that trauma and overcoming it.
So instead they react with purity tests, identity politics, and performative displays of White Guilt.
I honestly don’t know how our society can move past this, but until we actually engage with our legacy with serious intention of healing the wound, well-intentioned people will continue to act like total idiots who think they are gatekeepers of the Truth.
Obviously some people can see through this, but since most of them are socialists, their voices get ignored in favor of the propaganda that the slavers and genociders of the world have been pumping out for centuries.
This is such a vague thing to say though. What does “do the work” actually mean? Because back in 2020 during BLM and all that I tried reading up on all the stuff that I was supposed to know, tried to do everything that they said I was supposed to do to pass their “not-racist” test. And guess what? They still called me racist! Even sometimes for saying or doing the exact things that they said anti-racists are supposed to do.
Why? Because I’m white. That’s literally the reason they would give every time, and if I tried to dispute it they would just double down and say that if I wasn’t racist then I wouldn’t have to say I’m not racist. So apparently the only way to avoid being called racist was to avoid interacting with black people at all (which is what I thought would be actually racist, but I’m just a white guy so what do I know?).
So if my whiteness is this inescapable thing where any time I encounter a non-white person they’re going to assume I’m racist unless I somehow do enough performative gestures to convince them that I’m not racist, then 1). I’d basically be trying to be accepted as “one of the good ones”, 2) I’d be living the rest of my life that way because there are always new strangers that I’d have to prove myself to, 3). No one deserves to live with that level of self-degradation just for the way they were born, and 4). That would all be performative anyway, so in the end it would still be called racist!
So it’s really not surprising that people stopped fucking caring. What the fuck else did you expect them to do? Even the well-intentioned people who wanted to do the right thing weren’t given any legitimate options for how to fulfill this apparent obligation we supposedly have. It was a wild goose chase, and apparently people caught on and stopped playing.
What other option was there? Literally, it was basically being demanded that we do exactly those things and nothing else. But even when we did our best to do those things, we could never outrun this idea that “you white, that means you racist.” (A literal quote that has been directed at me).
And even mentioning the issues or frustrations we were facing was met with indignation. There was no room for nuanced or well-reasoned discussions. No opportunity to raise legitimate concerns. We weren’t even allowed to have basic self-respect, or to expect basic consideration from others. Why? Because we were white. And how is that not racism?
Like, I get it, racial divides need to be mended and disparities need to be addressed. But using every well-intentioned white person as a punching bag just because they let you walk on them so they don’t seem fragile is not the way to do it.
🙄
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m still WAY more committed to seeing myself as ‘good’ than to spending more than ten seconds examining how whiteness shapes my thinking.”
Exhibit A, thanks for demonstrating my point.
Get over yourself and do something. You get credit for actions, not what you say or who you think you are.
What other people think of you is none of your business. If you are a genuine ally and aren’t just thinking about whether you’ve earned whatever place at the table you think you deserve, then it shouldn’t matter.
You get over yourself. You’re making assumptions about what I have and haven’t done. I haven’t enumerated those things for you because it’s performative and unnecessary, and I’m not going to dance for you like a monkey.
Respect and solidarity are a two-way street and since you’re clearly offering me none, then you’ll get none back from me either.
I’m not asking for credit or points. I’m pointing out a trend, an issue that I’ve experienced personally and have noticed is more prevalent than just myself. I’ve even pointed out how it can damage progress, in case you’re wondering why you should care.
I don’t need your approval to have a basic sense of self-respect, and if you think I do then I don’t want a place at your table. And if you think that makes me the racist, then quite frankly you can get the fuck over yourself because I’m not bending over backwards to please people anymore.
Ladies and gentlemen, your non-racist white liberal ally.
Don’t stop. This is educational.
No seriously, this is clearly going right over your head and you’ve proved my point three times in as many comments.
You’re expecting me to do performative bullshit for you to beg for your approval in order to be labeled as “non-racist.” You think I haven’t been through that song and dance before?
The fact is, no matter what I do, it will never be enough for you. Because you’re demanding performative bullshit, so no matter what I do you’ll dismiss as performative.
And guess what? Even if I somehow magically convince you to deem me non-racist, the next time I encounter someone else they’ll make the same demands and it all starts over again.
That is not a fate that any self-respecting individual would consign themselves to. No one is or should be required to continuously debase themselves just to gain the approval of others.
I’m not obliged to do anything for you, and yet you keep coming back with this attitude like you’re entitled to push me around, as if I owe you something, and you’re premising it all based on nothing other than my race alone. You’re racist, dude.