Right-wing domestic terrorist Dylann Roof killed nine African-Americans in a Charleston church because he felt that “his country” was being “stolen” from him by African-Americans and other people of color. Republican Presidential candidate and reality TV show star Donald Trump believes that “illegal” immigrants from Mexico are predators who are stealing jobs and resources from America while they rape and murder white women. Dylann Roof is an overt and unapologetic white supremacist terrorist. Donald Trump is a “belligerent, loudmouthed racist.” He is also a leading 2016 Republican presidential candidate.
The overt white supremacist websites that taught Dylann Roof his racist beliefs, and the more “polite” and “respectable” right-wing media outlets such as Fox News, are part of the same political communication ecosystem. Both Dylann Roof and Donald Trump are channeling the racist political values and talking points that are generated on a daily basis by Fox News and the right-wing propaganda machine. There, ideas circulate back and forth between the “mainstream” media and its peers within the white supremacist political community. Talking points are refined and developed; the issue or controversy of the day is circulated; trolls (often hired by right-leaning public relations firms) are deployed to online comment sections in an effort to create the illusion of consensus on the part of the “silent majority” and “real Americans” on any given issue — all while silencing dissent and harassing those people they do not agree with.
Experts in political communication and media have described the denseness of ties, shared links, and the alternate reality created in the right-wing media (both traditional and digital) as exhibiting a condition of “epistemic closure.” What that means is this: Because contemporary conservatism has created a bizarre and twisted reality for those who consume its news media and other information sources, a state of extreme political polarization has been created. If citizens cannot come to agreement about basic facts, they are crippled in their ability to solve common problems of shared public concern. This crisis is made even more acute by how recent research has demonstrated that those people who listen to Fox News and other right-wing media outlets are more likely to hold erroneous beliefs about the nature of political and social reality. In essence, Fox News is not “news”—it functions as an organized disinformation campaign that propagandizes its followers into accepting right-wing lies and distortions as empirical fact.
The “conspiranoid” fantasies of your crazy uncle or well-intentioned but profoundly ignorant grandmother — who repeatedly forward you emails claiming that Obama was born in another country; or that the United States’ first black president hates white people; or about how the Democrats will create death panels to kill the elderly; that “White America” is a victim of “racism” by black and brown people; or that the United States military is planning to invade Texas — are not born of the ether. They are a product of an echo chamber, a product that is designed to derail, distract, and delegitimate the government.
In “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” historian Richard Hofstader famously wrote about the dangers posed by such an impenetrable bubble. Hofstadter’s essay was published during the 1950s, at the conclusion of McCarthy’s witch hunt, at the dawn of an ideological revolution that would manifest, in the short term, in movements such as the John Birch Society, and culminate decades later in the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Now, in the age of Obama, this paranoid style has been mainstreamed and amplified by the 24/7 cable news cycle, the power of instantaneous communication offered by digital media, and a weak fourth estate that treats all ideas—however absurd, without empirical merit, or unmoored from reality—as “facts” to be debated and discussed.
Thus, movement conservatism and racism are unified in the post-civil rights era United States.
White racial resentment, white victimology, white identity politics, and white grievance-mongering are common to overt white supremacists such as the Ku Klux Klan, Neo Nazis, and white nationalists, more broadly. The same values are mobilized by the Republican Party and Fox News media through symbolic racism, the use of coded racial appeals, and the now-infamous “Southern Strategy.” Overt white supremacists largely traffic in “old fashioned” racism; the contemporary Republican Party uses “colorblind” racism and claims about “bad culture” or “cultural pathologies” among blacks to legitimate and protect a system of white privilege and supremacy.
However, the divide between the old-fashioned racism of White Nationalists and the “modern” racism of the contemporary Republican Party is not fixed. White racial animus towards blacks and Latinos (and often other people of color) grows from the same soil: a belief that the United States is naturally a “white” country and that White America has a Herrenvolk birthright to its resources and opportunities before all other groups of people. Whether explicitly invoked or done through coded appeals, these shared beliefs help to make the cross-pollination of ideas within the right-wing echo chamber so efficient.
There are many examples of a convergence between the narratives generated by overt white supremacists and those of the “mainstream” right-wing “news” media. Moreover, many of the talking points that come to dominate the Fox News and its related media were first authored in white supremacist/white nationalist online spaces:
To wit:
- The Fox News moral panic about roving groups of feral black young people attacking innocent white people in “knockout games” was a fantasy ginned up by overt white supremacists and mainstreamed by Fox News and its allies.
- White supremacists in the United States and Europe have long been worried about changing demographics and “white racial extinction.” The right-wing media machine have repeatedly sounded a public alarm that white people should “make more babies” and that “traditional America” will be bred out of existence by non-whites.
- The uprising by black youth in Baltimore and Ferguson against police thuggery was distorted by the right-wing media and overt white supremacists into “anti-white” riots, “black gang activity” and “black nationalists” targeting police and white citizens for reprisals.
- White supremacists have developed the phrase “anti-racist is code for anti-white.” Fox News and the other elements of the right-wing echo chamber have used the same logic as personalities such as Bill O’Reilly have repeatedly stated that anti-racism initiatives and discussions of white privilege are somehow hateful acts of “racism” against white Americans.
In the same vein, Donald Trump’s newfound concerns about the tragic case of Kathryn Steinle, a white woman who was killed by Francisco Sanchez, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, is an act of obvious political opportunism. The combustible mix of race, immigration and white victimology was too tempting for Trump, and the white nativist impulses of movement conservatism, to resist.
This world of imperiled white people is a fantasy that is shared by both overt white supremacists and the mainstream right-wing media. It is a fantasy that ignores the following facts: Crime in the United States is at record lows. Most violent crime is intra-racial. Because of that reality, a given person is much more likely to be killed by a member of their own “racial” group than by someone outside of it. Moreover, most people are killed or otherwise assaulted by a person they know or who they are related to. Trump’s particular concerns about crime by undocumented immigrants are also specious—for a variety of reasons, undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than other groups.
Although a veritable cottage industry has been created by the media with its obsession regarding missing and at-risk middle-class and rich white women (media analysts have described this as “missing white woman syndrome”), white women are in fact among the safest and most protected groups of people in the United States. First Nations, African-American, and Hispanic women are more likely to be victims of violent crime than are white women. Young black and First Nations women are also much more likely to be kidnapped or otherwise go “missing.” And in this present era of white-on-black police thuggery and violence, unarmed black women are much more likely to be killed by America’s police than are white women.
(In all, American white women (and women more generally) are much more likely to be killed, assaulted, or otherwise victimized by their husband or boyfriend than they are by Donald Trump’s nightmare dream of “illegal” Mexican immigrants.)
There is a larger meta-level assumption driving the right-wing hate media andDonald Trump’s false concerns about white people who are victims of crime by non-whites: the White Right believes that crime against white people is underreported by the mainstream news media. As with other matters, the facts are none too kind to the worldview held by American conservatives—in reality, crimes against white people are over reported relative to their actual percentages by the TV news, while crimes against black and brown people are grossly under reported.
The white right and its sealed alternate reality media bubble where white people are victims, and white women preyed upon by dangerous black and brown “outsiders,” is part of an old and very ugly type of white racial paranoia. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, white women were supposedly being lured into interracial sex and white slavery by the Chinese with their opium dens, Eastern and Southern Europeans who grabbed them off the street and sold them into prostitution, or “Mexicans” who waylaid and dragooned them. We can also not forget the particularly American habit of the lynching tree where obsessions with the “black beast rapist” and other false rumors and lies about black men having sex with white women (the vast majority of it willing, wanted, and mutually consensual) resulted in thousands of black men being tortured, vivisected, shot full of holes, and/or burned alive.
In the 19th and 20th century Donald Trump and the right-wing hate media’s obsession with imperiled white women such as Kathryn Steinle, or a crime wave by “illegal” immigrants from Latin and South America, would be generously described as “yellow journalism.” Fox News, the broader Right-wing echo chamber, and overt white supremacist media, are generating racial panics and white victimology screeds via Google, where they put in searches for words such as “white,” “black,” “victim.” and “crime.” From this piss-poor thinking and methodology they can then concoct a fantastical narrative of white people who are victimized en masse by black and brown criminals.
Dylann Roof and other white, right-wing domestic terrorists have been galvanized by Fox News and the broader right-wing media. Donald Trump, and the Right-wing media that are aiding and abetting his nativist lies, are encouraging vigilante violence in defense of white women (and white men who are now emasculated because they are unable to defend “their” mothers, daughters, sisters, kin, and community). And just as the right-wing media has done in the past when their exhortations to violence have born fruit, they will deny having ever encouraged such an outcome.
33 comments:
If it's true that latinos will be the majority in the US in a generation then how can you argue that white people aren't losing their country? Whether that's good or bad is another discussion but the fact remains the white man's hold on power is slipping rapidly.
This is not "their" country. There were people of color living here long before the white people showed up. "White " is simply a mutation in the skin. Nature will return all the humans back to the black and brown people it was before this mutation occured.
This morning I caught a glimpse of GMA on TV as I was getting ready for work, and heard host George Stephanopuolous "reporting" on Trump in laudatory, positive tones. Trump is achieving his goal of mainstreaming hatred and racism in the public sphere.
Say what they will, but as the front runner, Trump speaks, in all his crude hatred and idiocy, for the GOP and movement conservatism. He's giving voice to the nexus between white supremacy and conservatism. Trump IS the republican party.
A couple of things:
1. What Louis Massey said.
2. Even to the extent that "race" is a valid concept (which it isn't; it is a social construct used to artificially separate people and set groups of them against each other), then "Latino" and "Hispanic" are not races or ethnicities. They are also socially constructed categories, very broadly defined and containing multitudes of different colors, races, ethnicities, national ancestries, etc. Many Hispanic people are "brown" or "black" and pretty much every other color and race, including white.
3. Similarly, "white" is not a race either. It is also socially constructed and defined and the definition is changed and adapted over time to include and assimilate new groups in order to maintain a "white" majority. Chauncey has written here in this blog several times about this and I would encourage you to search them out (I might edit this later to provide links but I don't have time right now). Irish and Italian immigrants of the 19th and early 20th century are two of the best known examples; most East-European nationalities would be another.
One of the ironies of this situation will be if the current "white" majority becomes too panicky and paranoid about the "invasion" of "non-white" people to be adaptable in this way. They may be rigid and unyielding in adapting a new definition of "white" that becoming a minority will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I would go farther and say he bespeaks that ersatz astro-turfized set of antinomies that the media tries to pass of as public opinion.
We must get past thinking in terms of "them" v "us." Inclusion is the only solution to the various cultural divisions that we characterize as race and ethnicity.
Skin pigment is adaptive depending on how close to the equator a people lives.
Thanks for the clarification. Re: your last paragraph: along with the "unyielding qualifications" historically white identity purists have appreciated the need to allow entry into "whiteness" on pecuniary grounds in order to increase their numbers, Clarence Thomas being exhibit A' .
Inclusion is the solution however the concept of race has caused the white tribe to think in zero sum ways, counter to inclusion. Thus, a non-white (and probably non-male president, as we may soon find out) means they've lost their country. So does becoming a minority. Anything that's done to help any other group is an attack on them, as well as simply asking them to consider history factually and in realistic terms. This rigid, zero sum view is a tell on the acknowledgment of the benefits and power whiteness has given them and a desire not to give it up through desegregation, inclusion, equality, diversity or however it's put.
I suspect that as the white population dwindles further into minority status, this country will go through a phase like South Africa leading up to the end of apartheid. I say this to say minority status for the white population likely won't signal, in any way, even the beginning of the end of white supremacy. It'll probably be, as Churchill said, the end of the beginning.
The essay connects the dots between "respectable fascism" and its Nazi base, with Trump and Roof as representative of the two interdependent interpenetrating camps.
Fox broadcasts the classical fascist ideology in the interests of creating a fake silent majority that purports to represent public opinion.
This rightist alternate reality has not eclipsed Reality, but its making inroads into it, as evidenced by the mass apathy that allows elections to decided by a small minority of voters.
By not voting the majority of eligible voters give assent to the political primacy of "respectable" fascists while winking and nodding at the Nazi base.
I sat through about 20 minutes or so of GMA once years ago and the whole thing really just about made me throw up. All of it. Stef was just a simpering moron on that show. Believe it or not, back in the day when he was a Clinton staffer, the Villagers used to drool over what a genius he was, and even supposedly thought he was future Presidential timber. If he is lauding Trump then he has really jumped the shark.
The focus on inclusion is an interim solution until such time as the public is mature enough to address the cause and not just these ever deepening symptoms i.e. until we can talk about converting from capitalism to socialism.
"Da bitch wanted it." The response of every rapist.
Trump is entertaining and ratings. He is a reality TV show. Basic fact. They--meaning the MSM--are all in on the con.
By definition white people will never be the minority in the U.S..
Never forget that fact; if you are then you are missing a huge piece of the puzzle.
No on Thomas. He and his ilk have always been with us, the Colonial administrator or middle man who gets paid to do the dirt.
The new "whites" will be some S. Asians and Persians, Half-white "Asians", and Hispanics.
There is new research showing the growth of how the children of those groups already think of themselves as white.
Yes, now that you mention it the inclusion of Asians, Persians, Hispanics are rapidly displacing "white" Blacks.
I watched Little Big Man again and Chief Dan George said "Yes I've seen the White Black man, very strange."
Only by virtue of them redefining "white" to bring in new "blood" for the purpose of maintaining that majority, sure I can see that. But, I may be wrong but I believe even within that bastardization of whiteness you're going to have a hierarchy with the so called Aryans at the top of the heap.
Thanks to technology and the globalization it drives, I believe we've already reached "peak capital," at least from a labor standpoint. There simply will not be enough jobs to sustain the workforce. Its said more people will have no choice but Wal-Mart and McDonalds type jobs, but tech automation will begin to make many of them disappear as well. As the population increases, then what? Capitalism can't sustain labor, and given that's the vast majority of the population, we'll need something else.
My hope is the public "matures" sooner rather than later as we need to be amenable to socialism or some other form, before it's too late.
If it is true that the arc of history bends towards justice, they'll put the bust of Thomas in Ripley's Believe It or Not.
Where do the dark skinned eskimos live? How about hte dark skinned Native americans in the upper north east? What about the aboriginies in australia or the blacks at the ver soutern tip of africa?
I'm fourth generation from Mexican immigrants, "we're white" I was reassured by my family growing up. Pretty sure my grandfather considered himself white, and as long as we're making outward appeals to Whiteness, we're token.
Great essay, particularly on the racial aspect of epistemic closure. My first book (in draft) argues that this is far more vast and serves a strategic purpose.
One, this is the expression of Fourth Generation Warfare. The central objective in 4GW is to contest and undermine the legitimacy of the central government, in this case, the national federal government; the secular, pluralistic order; the secular U.S. Constitution; the Democratic Party; liberalism as a philosophy; and the Enlightenment.
Thus, in addition to the racial aspect you wrote so well about (and which I will borrow), there is the drive for Christian dominion over all institutions in society; there is the corporate and Christian war against science (evolution, climate change); there is the war to "take back America" and re-create it as a Christian nation; there is the privatization and destruction of federal social welfare programs; and, the lowest taxes on billionaires, no regulations, and a God-like free market.
In addition to the ideational bridge of white supremacy, either in its overt or color-blind mode with all the racial propaganda campaigns that spans the entire right-wing, the other ideational bridge is religion--the religion of an inerrant, literally true, Calvinist God that punishes and rewards America according to what the white God wants. And, that religious bridge is accompanied by the most common narrative that comes in secular and religious versions, with variants for anti-Semitism and racism--their fight against the New World Order.
Epistemic closure, or what I call in my first chapter the epistemological break with reality has as its purpose the creation of a revolutionary consciousness in which all manifestations of what we hold dear is deemed illegitimate and needing to be destroyed.
We are facing an existential threat that goes well beyond the police killing Black, brown, and white people. I am not suggesting that Black Lives Matter does not matter. Not in the least.
What I am suggesting is that the right-wing religious-political power structure that opposes Black Lives Matter, also opposes the First Nations; civil and human rights; housing rights; voting rights; environmental protections; science; liberalism; secularism and pluralism; and, other religions and belief systems that conflict with their own Bible-based system.
The pigmentation variations occurred during the 30 million years of homonid speciation which preceded the human continental migrations which only go back 50,000 years.
The mainstreaming of hatred and racism in the so called "mainstream media" has been going on a long time. The Today Show features Ann Coulter as a guest. Brian Williams said he listened to Rush Limbaugh because he wanted to hear real Americans in the heartland argle bargle oh and of course it's gospel in MSM that Rush is a "brilliant entertainer". As others have noted however, Trump is not using the accepted so called dog whistly code words all the others use but he's really no worst than any of the others who are running in my opinion.
MSM pandering to race baiters is just as bad in its way as the right wing echo chambers are.
Yes, socialism as a way station to something much better.
You are right about MSM mainstreaming hate being nothing new. What does appear to be new is Trump has abandoned the usual dog whistle requirement for saying this swill on air and still be treated with a veneer of respectability, as "PC" and is letting fly with the kinds of stuff these people say among themselves. Although they have gotten pretty creative with the dog whistling.
Just heard Trump gave out Lindsey Graham's phone number at a rally, and urged his rabid followers to "call him.". That's the kind of thing people like that think is acceptable, which is why Trump is leading the pack.
Keep informing us as to what "they" are up to lest they get away with it. They'll have to use the sledge hammer approach to get folks to buy the Alternate Reality.
Yes! I think the MSM is torn between getting all tingly in the legs because they love them some GOP straight talkin' Bad Boys and panicking because Trump perfectly personifies the GOP and they're not sure how far their corporate masters want them to go. My brother just posted a video on an R&B classic "It's A Thin Line Between Love and Hate" by the Persuaders. I think the MSM is straddling that line and it makes them uncomfortable.
Clarence Thomas may be the exception that proves the rule that Blacks are excluded from "Whiteness." You are entirely right. I recall you've addressed this subject.
You trying to say humans walked with the dinosaurs? I understand your argument and agree, but the religious who believe that the earth is only 6000 years old won't.
No, folks didn't ride to church on dinosaurs with assault rifles. I'm saying that differences in skin pigmentation occurred over a protracted period of time within the populations that stretched from Africa to the Baltic regions and this "rainbow of humanity" subsequently migrated throughout the 7 continents, different peoples occupying different regions at different times; Australia being a special case of a separated grouping.
In the classic Millsian sense there is a revolving door between big government and the power elite. The moderate wing of the power elite has controlled government according to a soft fascistic model which has allowed a modicum of liberalism, science, and civil society.
However elements of the conservative wing of the power elite wishes to establish hard fascism.
Corporatocracy, as controlled by moderate patricians, have historically suppressed the hard right fearing a classic Nazi coup de etat; in other words they spare no expense at keeping the TP out of the higher circles of decision. The fact that the Republican Party is not able to nominate a hard right candidate for president probably has a lot to do with this suppression.
However, looming crises have forced the patricians to mobilize the hard right as a counterweight to predicted mass unrest.
Post a Comment