I was feeling grouchy after not quite keeping my cool during a chat today.
Essentially, a Canadian with whom I've discussed far right movements *for years* asked me: "You seem interested in the topic of white nationalism: can you tell me what that is and how it differs from Black nationalism?"
It's just frustrating to be asked questions that aren't trolling, but which still come from comfortable ignorance and have to be unpacked on multiple levels.
Brings back "fun" memories of life in KW. 🙃
The problem in that tricity was its two tiers of comfortable ignorance: your garden variety white folk, most working lower class jobs or maybe even unhoused, who found comfort in hard circumstances by holding that they were at least better than non-white persons, and believed themselves the greater social victims.
Then there was the academic equivalent: folks of means who loved nothing more than tacitly defending hateful white conduct via "intellectual" hypotheticals about marginalized people.
@MLClark It's important to note that hateful white nationalism was/is intentionally stimulated & promoted by the upper classes, as part of their divide-and-conquer strategy to prevent the different racial groups making up the proletariat from uniting against their real common enemy - the bourgeoisie.
Right-wing racial hatred is a tool of bourgeois exploitation... and it has been for a very long time, perhaps since the very beginning.
That was a major part of my answer and my frustration with the question. I have outlined many times with him the groups that benefit from stoking up this sentiment for economic gain and power, and the processes by which they operate.
But it's very difficult for this person to see outside their info silo, so the conversation perennially comes back to a superficial racialized dimension, filled with presumptions about me as a feminized leftist who must simply think "white men bad".
@MLClark Ah, I can definitely see why that'd be frustrating.
For what it's worth, I've seen many people exhibit similar inabilities to break out of their closed way of thinking... what you're describing seems to be a fairly common issue.
I bridge the gap between right and left enough to fairly reliably get around that... one of my usual strategies is to agree with (or appear to *) the "what", while covertly undermining the "why" in terms that make me sound like one of them (a rightwinger).
@MLClark Starting out by validating some of their beliefs is a great way to get them to drop their mental guard a bit, so you can follow up with a different rationale for *why* the things they believe are true (in terms that make it sound like something they already believe, even if it's not).
Then you can keep alternating between validation (or apparent *) & alternate rationales. Get it just right, & they'll walk away with completely different beliefs without even realizing anything's changed.
This was a video call, and I handled the question just fine. After we got through yet another round of discourse on US lobbies & private actors like Peter Thiel, I even introduced him to the flawed colonialist shape of Garvey's Liberia dream, as an illustration of the way Western ideology can complicate efforts to escape itself, and Fanon of course came into play.
But I'm allowed to be competent in discourse and still vent elsewhere about the need to have these chats at all. :)
@MLClark Sounds like your conversation went more historically/intellectually in-depth than mine usually do :)
I tend to (not unlike the right-wingers themselves) make heavier use of semi-intuitive arguments and appeals to emotion - which I suppose makes a lot of sense given my working-class populist bent.
Simply put, if I got too academic about it, the sorts of people I usually have those kinds of conversations with would probably start snoring (or at very least their eyes would glaze over).
Across the spectrum, really.
Earlier in the chat I'd raised the anecdote of men recently stirred to take back the border, only to arrive and see a situation very different from the one they'd been fed. I talked with deep empathy for the confusion they felt, and the way that this info silo works against their best interests, too, by driving them into expenditures of anger that lead to their own wasted time and resources.
So one does have to cover a range of anecdotes sometimes.
I know you're offering tips from a well-intentioned place, Torin, and I appreciate that by venting a little about yesterday's chat I opened myself to the presumption of topical ignorance about a wide range of sociopolitical histories and how to dialogue well with people across the spectrum of belief.
This is what I mentioned yesterday, too, when I noted we're all trying to do the best we can--so I appreciate the good intentions behind your comments. Thanks for your passion, too!
@MLClark Oh, it's not presumption of ignorance - sorry if I made it seem that way!
I communicate that way by default - I don't know what the other person knows, and I can have a bit of a hard time differentiating between people (long story) so I just kind of info-dump everything all the time 🙃
Easiest analogy I can give is... well, imagine you only saw people as an instantaneous snapshot of themselves, and interacted based solely on that - with very little past contextual information.
I also recognize that you were responding to my articulated frustration with an attempt to fix it with solutions for next time, which is a very kind and very human response to seeing someone upset!
We have a weird juggling act in our culture, between trying to accommodate for neurodivergence and also push back on 'splainers. I don't sweat folks "infodumping" on topics they care about anymore. Life's a lot easier when one assumes most people are trying to help the best they can.
(Except the Peter Thiels, of course. 😉)
@MLClark I somehow doubt Peter Thiel is even capable of genuinely trying to help without some ulterior (and most likely nefarious) motive.
Right?! Now there's a guy who'd only save you from drowning to have you arrested for loitering in the river, and use the example to pass legislation to make it illegal for police not to arrest everyone in similar situations in the future. (Then sell the city surveillance equipment to help with river security on a monopoly contract!)
@MLClark Yep - sometimes I wish there *was* a hell, with an eternal lake of fire just for people like him.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on perspective) I don't think there is any justice in the end.
Actually, that touches on something... I suspect religion has a negative impact on politics in that it leads a lot of people to believe there'll be some supernatural justice after death - so they don't worry about it so much in this world.
I think that's a huge mistake.
@MLClark If politicians and judges, as a condition of the job, had to personally experience at least a taste of the consequences of any harmful decisions they make (might be easier to implement in the future - imagine a brain stimulation technique capable of mirroring experiences, emotion, and pain fron one person's mind into another)... I think they'd make a lot fewer harmful decisions.
If with power/responsibility came physical pain and suffering, I think fewer selfish assholes would take it.
@MLClark Well thanks! Trying to problem-solve is actually my main response when someone's upset... because I still haven't figured out how to properly communicate sympathy without being so utterly trite/bland I doubt it'd accomplish anything.
Yeah, I've definitely experienced that first-hand... being both on the spectrum and having serious episodic memory deficits means I've had to deal with people getting uppity about such things many, many times. I appreciate you not doing so! :)
Oh gosh no. This was a great chat to start the day. Thanks, Torin! Hope your own week is going well, and that you've got good things on the go today.
@MLClark Aw, thanks - and you're welcome!
It is going pretty well, all things considered - I hope yours is going splendidly!
Not a whole lot on the go today... just the way I like it, haha
@MLClark Haha, fair enough!
I find it much more difficult to do electronically - it's comparatively a cakewalk in person, just because the total communication bandwidth is so much wider; it's easy to adapt based on their reactions if you can monitor them in real-time, haha.
Aaaaaand I have much less luck if it's not one-on-one or (if I'm on my A-game) one-on-two. Trying to thread the needle between 2+ people's reactions is really bloody hard.
Might be easier if you video called him/her?