# This is what I see as the alt-right's fundamental mistake **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 12, 2017, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483 "2017-08-12T23:01:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/21 "2017-08-13T16:24:12Z")
> [@Common\_Tater](#): > > In an age where real racism is nonexistant Which age would that be? ---
**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/22 "2017-08-13T16:35:54Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Which age would that be? Is it your contention an “irredeemably deplorable” White America elected a black guy to President for two terms? LOL!! That’s what turned me off to the lefty rhetoric years ago. There’s some serious mental gymnastics to hold all these competing BS ideas. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/23 "2017-08-13T16:45:14Z")
> [@brujaja](#): > > Science has confirmed unequivocally that Jesus Christ was (of course) a black man. Sorry for the hijack, but this discussion is not promoted by silliness. History cannot even “prove” that Jesus of Nazareth existed, (although the odds may be good). How can science “confirm unequivocally” the facts of a matter that it cannot even investigate? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/24 "2017-08-13T16:51:24Z")
> [@Common\_Tater](#): > > Somehow as a society we’ve morphed from Equality for all, being judged by the content of our character, to Whiteness must be Exterminated. Very Orwellion, to hear the rhetoric thrown around. Sounds more alt-right paranoid to me than Orwellian. The reality is more this: Whiteness’ power will be diluted eventually to the point where those they try to oppress will be able to limit the damage they can do. Unfortunately, that’s a decades-long process, and the children will do everything they can in the interim to take a hacksaw to American values. ---
**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/25 "2017-08-13T17:06:12Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Sounds more alt-right paranoid to me than Orwellian. > > The reality is more this: Whiteness’ power will be diluted eventually to the point where those they try to oppress will be able to limit the damage they can do. Unfortunately, that’s a decades-long process, and the children will do everything they can in the interim to take a hacksaw to American values. You claim it’s “paranoia” in the first sentence, and then explain “Whiteness’ power will be diluted”? There’s a tautology here, and a big ole’ strawman argument. At any rate these aren’t the musings of my fevered imagination - they are for one single example, part and parcel of the course syllabi at publicly funded universities across the country, as well as various politicians and media talking heads. You can’t possibly deny there is a serious “Hate Whitey” component to the rhetoric on the left that has accelerated at least publicly in recent years. If so, you guys are more inside a bubble than I thought, and that’s saying something. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/26 "2017-08-13T17:14:37Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Well, theoretically they could reset the laws and court rulings such that things are as they were in the 1950s. There is no flaw in that logic; there is a flaw in the practicality of it actually happening. I think the OP is taking that phrase too literally. There is no law of nature that says that liberal societies can only move in one direction. You know which other country was able to set the clock of liberty back a century or so? The problem is that a lot of conservatives don’t want to go back to the actual fifties. They want to go back to the imaginary fifties that exists in their minds. They don’t want to live in the real world of 1955. They want to live in Mayberry. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/27 "2017-08-13T17:19:54Z")
The number of threads and posts on SD immediately after this attack compared to the number of threads and posts on SD after the Steve Scalise attack is quite telling. Im not sure what it tells us but its sure telling of something. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/28 "2017-08-13T17:22:19Z")
> [@Common\_Tater](#): > > You can’t possibly deny there is a serious “Hate Whitey” component to the rhetoric on the left that has accelerated at least publicly in recent years. If so, you guys are more inside a bubble than I thought, and that’s saying something. I hereby deny it. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/29 "2017-08-13T17:22:29Z")
> [@Common\_Tater](#): > > It’s important not to throw labels around. I don’t know what an alt-right is, and I thought David Duke was dead. He doesn’t speak for me or anybody else afaik. > > The problem with movements and the modern political discourse is they need an enemy. In an age where real racism is nonexistant, we’re reduced to “unconscious bias” and “white privilege” and other imaginary bogeymen. \* You’re racist because of your skin color\*; and that’s all there is to it. > > Somehow as a society we’ve morphed from Equality for all, being judged by the content of our character, to Whiteness must be Exterminated. Very Orwellion, to hear the rhetoric thrown around. While there are people who say “whiteness should be exterminated”, none of them have the ear of prominent Democratic Party politicians. trump on the other hand can’t bring himself to condemn people using Nazi and confederate symbolism. Also “white” is a nonsense ethnicity anyway, so if people start identifying as Polish, Irish, etc. rather than 'white" I’d much prefer that. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/30 "2017-08-13T17:24:58Z")
> [@](#): > > This is what I see as the alt-right’s fundamental mistake I kind of thought it was just the whole “being Nazi assholes” thing. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/31 "2017-08-13T17:25:24Z")
> [@Common\_Tater](#): > > It’s important not to throw labels around. I don’t know what an alt-right is, and I thought David Duke was dead. He doesn’t speak for me or anybody else afaik. > > The problem with movements and the modern political discourse is they need an enemy. In an age where real racism is nonexistant, we’re reduced to “unconscious bias” and “white privilege” and other imaginary bogeymen. \* You’re racist because of your skin color\*; and that’s all there is to it. > > Somehow as a society we’ve morphed from Equality for all, being judged by the content of our character, to Whiteness must be Exterminated. Very Orwellion, to hear the rhetoric thrown around. Nonsense. People don’t get accused of being racist just because they’re white. I’m white and I don’t have anyone accusing me of being racist. People get accused of being racist because they’re racist. Racists need to wake up and realize you don’t have to belong to the KKK to be a racist. Comparing yourself to David Duke and telling yourself you’re not a racist by his standards is ridiculous. Anyone who thinks that “real racism is nonexistant” is intentionally shutting their eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/32 "2017-08-13T17:28:14Z")
> [@Common\_Tater](#): > > You claim it’s “paranoia” in the first sentence, and then explain “Whiteness’ power will be diluted”? There’s a tautology here, and a big ole’ strawman argument. Gotta love projection. But hardly. I took the terminology you used and morphed it to what _your_ strawman should have said to bring it in line with reality. (Although I should have added _barring some kind of successful alt-right revolution_.) > [@](#): > > At any rate these aren’t the musings of my fevered imagination - they are for one single example, part and parcel of the course syllabi at publicly funded universities across the country, as well as various politicians and media talking heads. I never said they were your beliefs, I was speaking of the beliefs themselves. But it is significant that you present them. In whose interest was that done? > [@](#): > > You can’t possibly deny there is a serious “Hate Whitey” component to the rhetoric on the left that has accelerated at least publicly in recent years. If so, you guys are more inside a bubble than I thought, and that’s saying something. So what? There are extremists in nearly any political group. Reverse racism as a reaction has been around for nearly as long as racism. But it’s nowhere near as widespread as you appear to want to believe. Nor does “See? They do it too!!!” impress me. Spare me the ‘bubble’ crap. And stop identifying me with ‘you guys.’ My opinions are my own, and no one else’s. Whether they happen to agree with others posting is incidental. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/33 "2017-08-13T17:39:21Z")
> [@brujaja](#): > > I don’t know where they get the idea that it is **their country and their country alone.** This is the same problem I had with those “my neighborhood, my rules” billboards. And I’ll say it again – your socks are **yours.** Your house is **yours.** They belong to you. But larger, more intangible things, like your profession, your school, and _your country_, are yours only in the sense of affiliation. They don’t **belong to you** – **you belong _in_ them.** > > It is not “their country” and nobody else’s. It has **never been** their country and nobody else’s. If that is their assumption, they are mistaken. I grew up in a very rural part of the country. There were no black people where I lived. There were no Spanish or Asian people either. The only non-white people you saw were on TV or in the movies. A person who grew up in my community would have no problem seeing America as a white country because that’s the America they lived in. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/34 "2017-08-13T20:19:05Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Iran? Exactly!! > [@brujaja](#): > > **John Mace:** Well yes; they can do their best to return the climate legally to an earlier time. But they can’t undo everything from MLK to Rosa Parks to Colin Kaepernick, and the cat is out of the bag, and that ship has sailed, and Bob Marley and everything. Uhm, OK. Especially the Bob Marley part. > [@](#): > > Science has confirmed unequivocally that Jesus Christ was (of course) a black man. Funny, he actually _does_ look Jewish! > [@](#): > > We have black generals and Nobel Laureates and authors and Miss Americas. We have people of every race and national background and sexual orientation achieving prominence and heroism and stardom and eminence, and that cat just isn’t going back into that bag. No matter what kind of repressive laws they lie & cheat & use dirty tricks and the “old boy” network to put in place, they will never, ever, be able to make whole classes of proud and beautiful human beings hang their heads or shrink back into subservience and disenfranchisement anymore. Never is a long time. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/35 "2017-08-13T23:02:54Z")
> [@Common\_Tater](#): > > You can’t possibly deny there is a serious “Hate Whitey” component to the rhetoric on the left that has accelerated at least publicly in recent years. If so, you guys are more inside a bubble than I thought, and that’s saying something. The bubble to which you refer is the bubble of ignorance in which the majority of Fox News adherents live. There is a tiny element of “Hate Whitey” in this country that vies with other haters of persons of color or persons of different religions to get their message out to the public. The opinions expressed on Fox News multiplies only the “Hate Whitey” element while downplaying or ignoring the “hate anyone who is not white” element so that if one pays too much attention to Fox, one comes away with a truly warped view of society. It is rather like the problem that a majority of the Fox audience believes that Saddam Hussein played a role in the WTC/Pentagon attacks when even President GWBush said that that was not true or the way in which most of the Fox audience believes that crime in the U.S. continues to rise, even though actual reporting by police show that it has been on the decline since the early 1990s. It is a sad bubble in which to live. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/36 "2017-08-13T23:07:46Z")
> [@brujaja](#): > > A recent article I read quotes David Duke as saying: Since when was that nasty evil little racist part of the alt-right? Apart from that, I agree with you entirely. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/37 "2017-08-13T23:23:41Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > While there are people who say “whiteness should be exterminated”, none of them have the ear of prominent Democratic Party politicians. trump on the other hand can’t bring himself to condemn people using Nazi and confederate symbolism. Also “white” is a nonsense ethnicity anyway, so if people start identifying as Polish, Irish, etc. rather than 'white" I’d much prefer that. Um, Poles and Irish can’t be white; they’re Catholic. d&r ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/38 "2017-08-13T23:23:59Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Yes, but Trump monitors certain media and uses the responses he gets at rallies to collect a repertoire of things to say which will push the right buttons for a certain core that support him no matter what. That’s how he just barely survives, politically, because the craven, opportunistic, sycophantic yes-men have to use that core too. Actually, many Republicans were already doing that, just to a less sensational degree. Cruz has always wanted to be able to do what Trump is doing–he just didn’t have the TV base. Trump performs–presents an image that mentally lazy people believe. Basically, that’s how he survived in “business,” too. After his bankruptcies, all he had was an empty image, but that was enough. Trump has always been a bombastic race baiter. That’s not why he won. His support and rise can be directly traced to his build the wall mantra. He was the best candidate that came out strongly against illegal immigration. Thats why he won and the opposition to illegal immigration is far more nuanced than simple racism. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/39 "2017-08-13T23:28:09Z")
Serious answer: Too many (most) “whites” are, nationalitywise, mutts to have a specicfic ethnic identity. I can call myself German, Irish, Norwegian, or Bohemian, and I do as the occasion suggests. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2017, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483/40 "2017-08-14T00:53:26Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Funny, he actually _does_ look Jewish! I’m pretty sure we don’t know what Jesus Christ looked like. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-what-i-see-as-the-alt-rights-fundamental-mistake/793483.md?page=3)