I’m also somewhat reminded of the time the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council held an online poll to name their newest research ship. Fourth place was to name the ship for a famed television presenter and naturalist. Third place for an Army officer who died while trying to cross the Antarctic. Second place was in honor of a toddler who was dying from cancer. The winner, with twice the votes of those three put together, was “Boaty McBoatface”.
Some people want to throw out the old rules and be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. Strangely, these alleged rebels find their strength in numbers.
ISTM Americans as late as e.g. 2010 would be very hard pressed to believe what happened in 2015-2020 if someone from the future brought them the tale of trump’s predations and so many American’s embrace of that shit-circus. Americans from 1995 would be far more skeptical yet.
And yet here we are. It did happen here.
That British author (Nate White) was writing IIRC very early in trump’s rise. At a time it was evident many Americans had lost their minds, but the same had not been seen in Britain. Yet.
As posters just above have said, subsequent events in Britain from Brexit to Boris prove that Brits can go nuts just as readily as can Americans.
White was as ignorant of his own country’s true nature and future trajectory in ~2016 as Americans were in 2010. No great dishonor in that.
Whatever disease it is, and whichever combination of foreign interference, commercialized propaganda, and free-blooming nihilism makes it go, it’s evident many countries can succumb in fairly short order.
Not a lie if he did not consider the people he harmed sub-human or if he thought Trump legitimately won the election, both of which are views he sincerely seems to hold
I struggle to understand why a person with Hispanic? ethnicity would be involved with white supremacists. Don’t they know that as soon as they, “win” they’ll be: kicked out, imprisoned, killed, what ever seems appropriate for all the brown “people”?
Think about it. You’re harassed and oppressed your whole life by racists and made to feel subhuman, then when you start espousing the same hate as them, they suddenly like you. It might be really attractive to a person who desperately wants to be accepted.
Or, alternatively, they identify as white. Being white and being Hispanic are not mutually exclusive.
Perhaps your first point? I’m not sure about the second one. It seems way too intellectual for magas. I mean, yeah he may, identify as “white” himself, but magas are, in the long run, going to take note of his name and the fact that his skin is not “white”. They were willing to use him to forward their cause, but I think if they’d gotten their way he would have been disposed of like a dirty, used, tissue.
Just to clarify: I have no sympathy for him he’s a violent, hateful, traitor. I wish he’d gotten the full 33 years. I guess he’s not, “Standing by sir” anymore now is he?
Modern racists have figured out that you can’t be too overtly racist, or everyone figures it out too quickly. So they’re happy to make nice with a few of them as cover. At least, make nice long enough that they can stop being nice because they’ve seized power.
" A federal judge in New York on Wednesday granted writer E. Jean Carroll’s motion for partial summary judgment in her 2019 defamation case against former President Donald Trump.
"Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, sued Trump in 2019 over allegedly defamatory statements he made while he was president in which he said she was “not my type” while denying that he raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
This past May, Carroll won a related second case accusing Trump of battery and defamation based on a 2022 statement Trump made in which he accused her of lying. Jury members found that Trump did not rape Carroll but sexually abused her, and awarded her a total of $5 million."
I wanted to talk to this analysis a bit, so quoted in full. IMHO this is not entirely correct, but not wrong either. I just don’t think it’s this complicated though. These people hate, but, and this is key, they support those who share the same hate. If someone who doesn’t quite fit their mold agrees and supports those same hates, well then, they’re one of “us” not one of “them.”
It only works if the differences can and are minimized, so a ‘White Hispanic’ who identifies as such (emphasis on the White) could pass, in a way that a non-Christian (nominal) person of color who ALSO hated government likely couldn’t.
Do I think that if in the medium-to-long term these groups and ideologies were successful that there wouldn’t be a later purge? Oh hell yes, but very few are -talking- about that stage (@Horatius being completely correct about that).
I think they’ve embraced the philosophy of “the enemy of my enemy is my ally of convenience”.
It’s long been know that even virulently racist people can be friends with at least some of the people they despise. It’s the old cliche about “being one of the good ones”. Even Himmler remarked on this phenomenon. It’s a classic bit of double-think, in that they can (apparently) genuinely have friends who are part of the group they want to exterminate, while at the same time keeping close their real feelings, and knowing that, in the end, their “friend” will be put on the trains with all the rest.
