Sneering progressives are driving young white men into the arms of the GOP

Politics & Elections
1

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-millennials/exclusive-democrats-lose-ground-with-millennials-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1I10YH

Pundits are saying it’s the tax cuts or it’s this or it’s that, but I am convinced it is something I have been worrying about for some time: the unrelentingly negative way in which white men, especially straight cisgender white men, are talked about online and in podcasts, two modes of conversation that are disproportionately likely to be noticed by young people.

If you follow progressive people on Twitter, or listen to podcasts (even non-political ones about pop culture), there are constant negative references to white men as though they are all the enemy of all that is good in the world. Any time I try to protest to these people to the tune of “well, hey, I didn’t choose to be born a straight white male, but I did choose to be a Democrat—and I don’t think it’s fair to paint us all with the same broad brush” I get sharply dismissive pushback of “cry me a river and take your #notallwhitemen somewhere else”. I’ve even been told “this podcast is not for you” and then invited to unsubscribe.

I personally not going to become a Republican because of this. But I can easily imagine someone younger and less stubbornly attached to the Democratic Party wondering why they should stick around to be the whipping boy when there is a party that will accept and even celebrate them.

And here’s the thing. All ethics aside, this is a terrible strategic move. White men do not vote in the mirror image of black women, overwhelmingly for Republicans. About a third of them in recent elections voted Democratic. Even in 2016, only 62% of white men voted for Trump, while 94% of black women voted for Hillary. And since there are actually more non-Hispanic white male voters in this country than there are black male, black female, Hispanic male, and Hispanic female voters combined, it would be an utter disaster for Democrats to let significant numbers of this group slip away, or rather to continue to actively push them away.

I want to emphasize that this is different from the call you sometimes hear to try to reach out to the prototypical white male Trump voter. I don’t believe we should bend over backwards to accommodate people who love guns, have backwards attitudes about race or gender, etc. Just be open to straight white guys being progressive, welcome them into the tent, without expecting them to apologize for their white maleness that they were born with.

And stop mocking them as a demographic group. Ridicule fratboys, rednecks, Trump voters, Bible thumpers, whatever. But stay away from dissing people for inborn traits that do not inherently prevent them from being thoughtful, caring, cosmopolitan, progressive allies.

2

“Sneering progressives look down on us!” say sneering conservatives, looking down on progressives.

3

Nuh uh. My votes in the past five presidential elections: Hillary, Obama, Obama, Kerry, Gore. And you are entirely missing the central point, which is that the sneering is directed indiscriminately at all white men—even though a large percentage of us are consistent Democratic voters.

4

Well I happen to disagree that “sneering at all white men” is a significant phenomenon in the progressive community and thus consider the argument that follows from that premise to be moot. There certainly are some progressives who “sneer” at white men; there are others who point out actual differences between the positions of white men in society and those of women and minorities (see the whole “white privilege” debate) and again others who are working to improve the lot of people who aren’t white men but who still get accused of hating white men for daring to suggest that people who aren’t white men should be treated equally (see the whole “All Lives Matter” thing).

And there are those who aren’t progressives who, as I noted, are determined to lump all of the above into the category of “sneering progressives” for their own personal and/or political reasons. And as this last group include certain well-coordinated media sources, that message tends to prevail.

As such, I’d argue that even it were true that white men were being “driven into the arms of the GOP” it has more to do with the way the left are portrayed by the right than it does things the left are actually doing.

5

You clearly don’t listen to pop culture podcasts. It’s endemic.

But shaming people for white male privilege qualifies too. Even if it has major sociological validity, it’s strategically terrible.

6

I can honestly say that I spend zero time listening to podcasts. How much time do most Americans spend in that activity? What percentage of podcasts are lambasting white males? Is this a problem that impacts a large portion of the electorate? I’m thinking that perhaps it is not.

Does this mean that we should let it pass with nary a word? No. It may get covered under the more generic banner of “equality for all” rather than “stop stepping on whitey”, however.

7

Sounds like the “fuck your feelings” crowd has had its feelings hurt?

8

For those of us who aren’t going to listen to podcasts (why would I do that? I don’t watch TV news because I can read news much faster than watch it, so pivoting to audio is right out), could the OP give some for-instances of other places online where this dissing of white men is going on?

9

Like our esteemed Counselor, I just won a $1000 bet with myself.

I read OP, nodded to myself and said “This post will seem, in hindsight, to be excellent precognition when the big disappointment comes in November.”

And I bet $1000 that OP would be soundly condemned by liberal Dopers, none willing to grasp this truth. By not being sufficiently anti-white, OP, presumably a white Democrat, is implicitly almost accused of racism!

Bah! We have seen the enemy and he is us.

10

None of which refutes my point that the issue isn’t that vast swathes of progressives are “sneering at white men”, the issue is that the GOP are spreading the few that this is something that is in fact endemic to progressives, liberals, Democrats and pretty much anyone to the left of Genghis Khan and therefore all white men should come to the welcoming arms of the GOP…who will then continue to actually screw them over while blaming evil liberals.

The Democrats are, admittedly, terrible at getting their own message heard above the noise but then the GOP have decades of experience in ratfucking to fall back on (and some very good friends to the East willing to help with the propaganda campaign).

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And by “shaming people” do you mean “mentioning the mere existence of white privilege”? Because that seems to point at which “shaming” is generally assumed by quite a lot of those white men we are discussing.

12

Oh, are you posting about politics again, SlackerInc? That’s adorable. :rolleyes:

I think we need to point out that misandry is very, very real; anyone who doesn’t believe me can spend a few days on Tumblr; and misandrists might vote Democrat; but I hope the Democratic Party is not misandrist as such.

The party is, however, violently allergic to winning, probably due to its takeover by parasites who want it to be a moneyed party like the GOP but sane. That doesn’t work well once they win and all the peasants want things the donors don’t. So the Democrats are (usually) a deliberate minority party. I suppose they might flirt with misandry for that reason. Alienating middle-income straight white men makes total sense when you’re trying to only almost win.

Whatever the reason, the Democrats are going to self-destruct over the next few years, and I imagine many Democrats, including some on this board, will blame “young men,” including the “young men” that have been calling for more progressive economics. I can say this because I’ve already seen Cenk Uygur’s own organization turn on him.

13

If you’re not going to give examples as what constitutes this ‘shaming’, it’s hard to believe this is anything but your own tender feelings that have been offended. And even then you haven’t explained which things offend you.

When the left want to talk issues, they are just snowflakes who need safe spaces. Who’s being dismissive again?

If you have concrete examples then let’s hear them, otherwise this seems like the imaginary war on Christmas, (which now begins after Halloween and is, by every measure a much bigger deal than it was when any of us were kids.)

I find it hard to believe anyone is changing political affiliation because of what’s being said in podcasts.

If it’s an attack, then let’s hear some of those actual those fighting words, that have set you off.

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No, they aren’t. The idea that white people are being attacked is white nationalist and alt-right rhetoric. I’ve seen it claimed many times online, but, without fail, when I look into the actual situation at hand, it turns out the person was sneered at for something they said, not just their race.

Inasmuch as white men are going to the GOP, it is because they are being taught this falsehood. It is the commonly talked about white persecution complex, where you think that treating other people equally to white people is oppression of white people. It’s like Christians who think that accepting other religions is oppression against Christianity.

If you can get past the consequences, it’s actually kinda funny. Just a few years ago, “anti-racist means anti-white” was laughed at by all races as the KKK being desperate. Now it’s become a talking point on the right.

To put this in the common right wing vernacular: This is just people playing the race card.

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There’s nothing implicit or almost about it. He’s been called a paternalistic racist on these very boards. Normally I wouldn’t bring it up, but he used this description for himself.

This is relevant, because the only example of this phenomenon he’s given us is via his own experience. There’s no link, there’s no specific event he wants us to look at, except for his own account of getting fussed at by some podcasters. Sure, it’s possible it went down the way he described. Or it’s possible that his paternalistic racism came through in his comments to them, and they pushed back against him for that.

That said, I have occasionally encountered attitudes similar to what he’s described (more often directed against white women than white men–I don’t know what the male equivalent of “A Becky” would be). And it makes me roll my eyes and move on when I encounter it: it’s a poor political analysis that relies on stereotypes.

But I am profoundly skeptical that the leftists whom I’ve heard using such terms have any significant audience, much less a significant audience among white males, much less a significant audience among progressive white males whose identity is so fragile that they’ll take their balls and go home rather than ignore silly stereotypes and keep working to make the world a better place.

Rather, I suspect that Slacker just got lost an argument with a podcaster and is coming over here to win that argument in absentia.

16

“You made me vote for Trump” never gets any sympathy from me.

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Bury your heads in the sand. I have not catalogued the timestamps of the countless times when this happens, although now I wish I had. And it’s not searchable as far as I know. But I will remember from now on to put examples in this thread.

But what so many people really need to do is learn how to debate with people who have issues with PC progressivism but are still left of center. All you know how to do is reach for the tried and true jibes you use against the FOX News crowd, like “snowflakes” and “the war on Christmas”. That takes zero thought, and has no relevance for people like me or one of my best friends, another straight white guy who has also gotten fed up but is still not voting Republican, I don’t think.

18

Yeah. If anyone is sneering it is GOP politicians. Progressive webbers can be dismissive of white men but for some reason the actual word “sneer” doesn’t seem appropriate, and Democratic politicians are smart enough to steer clear of it (as opposed to either dog whistling or outright regular whistling from the other side). You can’t tone police the entire Interweb lest you receive the blame for what 1% of the population is doing: 1% of 300 million is a heck of a lot of near-sneerers.

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Nor from me. Longtime posters here can aver that this is the first time I have posted in Elections in almost 18 months, because I was so despondent about the last election that I couldn’t even bear to hear about politics for many months afterwards.

It’s easy to dismiss posts like this as concern trolling, but my concern is genuine, and deep.

20

Hey, Slackerinc, it’s your Twitter account doing the top-100 film countdown? (Just want to make sure I follow the right person.)