Not quite. In recent years, we have seen the mainstreaming of white supremacist views and talking point, as well as white-supremacist enablers on the more popular far right who wish to actively downplay the influence of white supremacist thinking. As much as people try to deny it, the Unite the Right Rally was a white supremacist rally.
Of course it was, but there really weren't that many white supremacists there. It was a handful of white supremacists who were vastly outnumbered by thousands of counter-protesters. Wouldn't this be confirmation that they have minimal influence over society?
At one time, white supremacism
did have a prominent influence in America. It was certainly mainstream many decades ago. No one is denying that, but America has changed, and such views are considered unacceptable. You seem to be suggesting that public opinion is changing on that, moving back in the other direction.
That's not fair. The point I'm making is that the imagined "white men as scum" arguments are nowhere near the prevalence or significance that people build them up to be, and are often exaggerated or distorted by white supremacists (or white-supremacist-adjacent useful idiots like Alex Jones, SargonofAkkad or Stephen Crowder). The fact that you can type something into Google and find examples of it doesn't mean that it is prevalent.
How prevalent do they have to be? All I was saying is that these are the kinds of things that show up in the alt-right propaganda I've seen. We were talking about the strategies and tactics they use to recruit followers, and this is one of the things they point to. Regardless of how prevalent you think it is (or isn't), there are certainly enough examples to add fuel to their fire.
Moreover, you still seem to be missing the key point that none of it was ever necessary to begin with, regardless of its prevalence or context. Did you read the article I posted back in post #41? That's what launched us into this side discussion, but it started with my indicating my agreement with the final paragraph of that article (
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aaronfreedman/false-victimhood-kills), which was this:
But ultimately, the only way to beat false victimhood will be a politics that gets beyond the us–them dichotomies of identity. The renewal in the West of a vision for social and economic rights for all, built around class struggle, is encouraging. The best way to beat counterrevolution, after all, is with the real thing.
It's the "us vs. them" mentality that appears to be escalating, and this is a matter of concern.
It was just a nonsensical opinion piece.
Maybe. The examples they used were from greeting cards.
Then please present the mainstream voices of the "white men are scum" mantra.
How many examples do you need? What exactly are you getting at here? Are you just trying to be contrary, or what? I really don't understand your take here.
That's not what I said. I said I never heard people genuinely claiming them in social justice circles, and doubt their prevalence.
We're not talking about "prevalence." We're talking about their "existence."
And as I said, if you search enough, you can find tons of examples. I'm not going to do it for you, as I'm sure that you're perfectly capable of doing it on your own (if you're genuinely interested in the topic). It is a thing. It does exist. Many others across the spectrum have made the same observations as me, so it's not as if I'm coming completely out of left field here.
I don't know what "social justice circles" you're talking about.
To be sure, I'm not saying the position is completely unjustified or comparing it any way to racism or white supremacism. All I'm saying that it just gives them a lot of fodder to work with, and as you mentioned earlier about nuance and context, when presented to a young and impressionable audience, they might not understand the nuance and context.
Reflexive reactions against what is seen as encroachments against the entitlements of white males via broader calls and acknowledgements of social ills and privilege, and right-wing voices preying on these reactions in order to foster resentment towards the concept of social justice and equality as being "anti-male" or "anti-white".
Well, the right-wing voices have been around all along. There have been periods in our history where they might have been louder than at other times, such as during the McCarthy era, the various Red Scares we've had, along with right-wingers associating the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements with Communism. But after Nixon's downfall, the right-wing started to change their pitch somewhat. Wallace and his crowd were pretty much all washed up.
Reagan's focus was on capitalism, anti-communism, and a somewhat conservative rehabilitation of America's self-image in the post-Vietnam, post-Civil Rights era. Patriotism and jingoism became popular again. I'm not saying that Reagan was "far right" (although opinions may vary), but it seemed that they took a different direction.
In earlier times, such as when my grandparents were growing up, there wasn't much media out there to choose from. They had newspapers, and eventually radio and movies. TV much later, but they grew up in a society where their views were shaped and fixed by the influences around them. In my own time, I grew up mostly in the 1970s, when we were exposed to a lot more of a cacophony of conflicting influences, from TV, movies, as well as in school and the issues we discussed in class.
But we didn't have the internet and the vast array of choices and influences that's out there now. We were certainly exposed to different ideas, just as younger people are today, but it seems that they're gravitating towards the alt-right more these days? Even with all the millions of websites and choices out there, this is what they're choosing to do?
Mainstreaming of white nationalism and a wealth of voices on the issue being distorted by a social media empire which doesn't care about the accuracy of nuance of a statement as much as they care about the reflexive outrage they can generate by taking a single sentence somebody said as a broader "war on men" (that article you posted earlier being a prime example).
Again, this is propaganda ostensibly directed at children and young adults. Just like most young people, they might be trying to make sense of the world they live in (some of us never stop), and they're probably trying to find some personal meaning in their lives and place in the world. That's perfectly normal. Assuming that their parents didn't raise them to be white supremacists and that they didn't grow up in a racist family, what would cause them to gravitate towards the alt-right? Is their propaganda really
that alluring? Even with a million other distractions out there?
Sure, I can guess that some of the older white men might still be pining for the days of George Wallace, but what about these younger kids? They've grown up in a completely different world, and this is what I would look at.
