Well, I was wrong. I thought that Heartiste would be the first Manospherian to come to the defense of fallen Fox News hero Cliven Bundy. Nope. Turns out it was W. F. Price of The Spearhead, who blamed Bundy’s fall from grace not on his crude racism but on the fact that the white rancher with the guns and unpaid bills … talks too much like a black person.
No, really.
Here’s Price’s argument, such as it is:
What I find highly ironic about the recent condemnation of Cliven Bundy is that he is being pilloried for speaking more like black Americans than urban whites. Even his name would sound black if you made a slight change from “Cliven” to “Clayvon.”
Well, no. Bundy talks a lot more like, well, a cowboy-hat-wearing white rancher at war with the government than he does a “black American” – as if all “black Americans” talk alike.
And are you really arguing that his name “would sound black” if it were a different name?
Mr. Bundy’s American English is so archaic that he still uses “Negro” (also used more by blacks than whites) and says “they was able to” and “didn’t get no more.”
And this is supposed to be how “American blacks” all talk? Phrases like these are common in various Southern/rural dialects spoken by more “American whites” than “American blacks.”
Hell, they’re common amongst a lot of urban whites. I lived in Chicago during the years in which our mayor was a fellow named Richard M. Daley, a man with what you might best describe as a casual sense of grammar. I’m pretty sure he’s never figured out the difference between “was” and “were.”
Also, if you read the complete transcript of Bundy’s remarks, you’ll see that he also referred to blacks as “colored people.” That particular usage isn’t very popular with anyone but white racists.
The content of Bundy’s message, which wouldn’t have been all that controversial if spoken by a black preacher, was deemed hateful partly because he didn’t say it in the proper, coastal elite way.
Well, no, it was “deemed hateful” because he suggested, among other things, that he was some kind of expert on “the Negro” because he once drove past a housing project. He also posited that these Negroes “abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never, they never learned how to pick cotton.” And that they might have been “better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things.”
And then, in a move reminiscent of his magical transformation of “Cliven” to “Clayvon,” Price provides “translations” of Bundy’s remarks into what he thinks would have been more acceptable “newspeak.”
He thus proves conclusively that if Clayvon Bundy had said something different than what he actually said, without the word “Negro” and all those obnoxious references to “picking cotton,” it wouldn’t have been quite as obviously offensive as what he actually said.
Though it still would have been pretty fucking racist.
Here, for example, is one of Bundy’s remarks, untranslated:
Are they happier now under this government subsidy system than they were when they were slaves, and they was able to have their family structure together, and the chickens and garden, and the people had something to do?
Here’s Price’s “translation.”
How can one say that the federal government serves African Americans any better than plantation owners under slavery, when at least they had families and the opportunity to work the land under that system.
Really? Regardless of how it’s worded, that’s an odious and ignorant argument. Slavery made stable family life impossible for slaves. For many years, slaves were forbidden to marry, and even after they were allowed to marry, couples were often separated from one another, living and working on different plantations; children could be sold to plantations apart from their parents. Slaveowners raped slave women and girls and enslaved the children born from these rapes.
It’s really kind of hard to have a decent family life when SOMEONE ELSE OWNS YOU AND YOUR SPOUSE AND YOUR CHILDREN. Or, even worse, several different someone elses.
Oh, but these days single black women sometimes raise children on their own. And living in big cities they don’t have the wonderful opportunities to garden that their enslaved ancestors had.
Price later seems to suggest that Bundy may be less racist than white New Yorkers in part because he doesn’t have to deal with black people as much:
In fact, Bundy, who probably has little if any negative interaction with black folks may be more positively inclined toward them than the New Yorker.
Apparently, in Price’s world, white racism is caused by interacting with black people. The more contact white people have with blacks, the more they hate blacks! Who knew? Maybe this whole “desegregation” thing was a horrible mistake!
In the comments, DruidV wins himself some upvotes by declaring that:
Bundy has the guts to say what a lot of critical thinking Americans have been thinking for over 150 years now. Namely: which form of slavery made American blacks happier.
After all, you didn’t see them running around gunning each other down (along with lots of police and innocents) while hopped up on crack or “lean” or whatever illicit drugs, pre Union war of aggression.
Laguna Beach Fogey, meanwhile, declares that “there’s something admirable about Bundy.”
And minor Manosphere celebrity The Fifth Horeseman, with some sadness, writes that
Cliven Bundy is a metaphor for the self-reliant, small government America being displaced by the big government, feminist, obese America.
The end of an era both inspiring and natural, into a sordid, misandric, obese one.
I’m not quite sure how obesity fits into all this, but evidently Mr. Fifth Horseman here hasn’t noticed that Bundy is himself, well, obese. Hell, his belly is even bigger than mine. He’s not being displaced by obese America. He is obese America. Just like me.
Anyway, all this is yet another reminder that, in the Manosphere, as elsewhere, bigotries (and bigots) flock together.
P.S. After I wrote this post, I discovered that Davis M.J. Aurini, the self-described “author … strategist … neoreactionary monarchist, and … entrepreneur” who blogs at Stares at the World has offered up a dramatic reading of Price’s “translations” of Bundy’s remarks, along with an impassioned defense of Bundy, whom he declares to be a misunderstood hero and “the best friend that the blacks have right now.”
The convincingness of his argument is undercut slightly by the fact that Mr. Aurini’s “look” is basically “young Anton LaVey,” and that he also seems to be a graduate of the William Shatner School of Overemoting.
Also, it’s interesting to note that the commenters on YouTube who seem to like his video the most are actually pretty straightforward black-people-haters; one of them is the creator of a racist video “warning” about the supposed “health risks” to white women of interracial dating; another praises Birth of a Nation and agrees with the film’s stance that “the klan was justified in trying to stop all of those murderous blacks.”
Anyway, enjoy.
On the obesity thing, maybe he thinks that hating women and/or POC burns a lot of calories?
They acknowledge that African Americans today have fewer opportunities than white folks, and their solution is to bring black slavery.
I’m not sure how much traction they’ll get with that, outside portions of the Tea Party.
Racism does burn a lot of calories, actually. The brain uses 60% of the calories that our body eats on a normal basis, but if you spend your days doing bizarre mental gymnastics and holding mutually incompatible theories in your head, that number can go up to almost 100%, leaving no energy for actual activism or even basic functions like logical thinking, hygiene and empathy.
I think Anton LaVey would have been offended by the comparison.
If slavery is so great, why don’t these guys sign up for it?
(Heck, then at least they’d be empowered to do so rather than forced to.)
Are these the same sort of people who like to complain that Big Feminist Government™ is trying to enslave all the men, or whatever? See, it’s not so bad! Unlike those of us sitting in the house eating bonbons all day, at least you’ll have something to do!
Nothing racist here. Just a bunch of white people talking about how best to “care for” black people, without regard for black people’s opinions or the notion that maybe black people don’t need white people to care for them like livestock or wayward children. Damn liberals think everything is racist nowadays!
You know, speaking of Cliven Bundy, what is going on there? No matter how much I read up on this thing, I just don’t get it at all. What is going on?
What freaks me out about the Cliven Bundy thing is that you have all this NRA/pro-gun rhetoric about how we need our guns to defend ourselves against a tyrannical government, and that’s exactly how a man like Bundy sees himself. He’s not a lone asshole playing cowboy on someone else’s land; he’s a lone American hero, full of Manifest Destiny and Pioneer Spirit, defending himself against governent encroachment.
According to Wikipedia, the government stopped rounding up Bundy’s cattle because armed protesters made them fear for their safety. People are actually rallying around this guy, intimidating government officials and literally threatening violence.
And everyone who pooh-poohed and complained about that report on the danger of right-wing militia groups a few years back? Conspicuously silent.
“Clayvon.” That beats all. Reminds me of that line in Raising Arizona: “And if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass a-hoppin’!”
By “critical thinking Americans,” Price means “white people,” because he does not believe black people have the capacity to think critically.
Price does not consider black victims of violent crime to be innocent.
Price is absolute and total garbage.
When (group of people) didn’t have guns, they didn’t “run around gunning each other down”. Thank you for this brilliant observation, internet racist dumbass.
Wasn’t W.F. Price suppose to be the more “reasonable” voice of the MRM? (lol)
Mr. Aurini also once did a video on “the Jewish problem” so his being a bigot on other topics isn’t all that surprising.
What he did was the opposite of eminent domain: he turned public land into private land for grazing his cattle. He’s a government freeloader.
Also, I can’t stand the term “Union War of Aggression”. The South seceded before Lincoln’s inauguration, then fired the first shot, then turned down Lincoln’s generous offer to send representatives to Congress so they could work things out like adults. Making the North out to be the instigator is typical of MRAs, who love junk history and erasing the distinction between attacker and victim.
From what I understand about the Bundy situation:
– Dude has been grazing his cattle on federal land for decades without paying the grazing fees (which are already ridiculously subsidized by taxpayers, due to an even older government policy of attracting people to go live out west).
– He’s built up a debt to the gov’t for this of over $1M.
– The BLM seized his cattle to pay his fees.
– The kind of people who love their guns and freedom and hate the government that subsides them rallied around him over this “government overreach” and were willing to kill, die, and use their children as a human shield while they cowered behind barricades to prevent the seizing of the cattle.
– The gov’t employees declined to slaughter children over this and will deal with all of this in court, or something.
– The tea-party, an-cap libertarian-leaning pundits rallied around him because he’s such an awesome example of their philosophy.
– He used his newfound fame to expound more on his world view, which is repugnant.
– His media supporters backed off quickly.
– Tangentially, there’s apparently some kind of scandal going on about how the governor’s son made a deal with a Chinese company to build a solar power farm on the land that justifies all the tea-part actions (according to my conspiracy-theory-minded roomie, but I wasn’t really listening).
The part I found really funny was that Bundy did an interview talking about ancestral water rights, and that his family had been on that land for so long that he owns the water rights, and therefore the grazing rights, and the government doesn’t have a leg to stand on. But an intrepid reporter discovered his family bought the land in the 1940’s, and he’s completely full of crap about that, too.
This is just….
I wanted to post up a gif to express my reaction to such racism and shittiness, but it has some violence so it probably wouldn’t be allowed here.
To be honest, “Big Government, Feminist Obese America™” would STILL be a better place than the kind of world these asshats seem to want.
So once again, pointing out racism makes people the “real racists”. I weep for humanity that it is even possible for some of us to be this hideously racist and stupid.
I’m so glad that I’m spending the day with wonderful people. I need a little faith in humanity restored.
“the opportunity to work the land” as if the work itself is good, rather than the income you get from it, which is precisely what you don’t get if you’re a slave.
Emilygoddess; Yes! You are. Thanx for saying this as this is what I find so galling about the discussion. You basically have a bunch of White men sitting around on their fat asses deciding how best to deal with Black People, as if we all need to be carefully managed. And I guess in their minds we do. Hey wait a minute! Isn’t that what slavery actually was? Except without the careful part. .
And why? Because they care so damn much about our welfare.
If there is a single person on here who is at all confused (unlikely) about what Black People want, I’m going to do something that I ,a WoC, don’t normally do and speak for ALL Black people when I say:
SLAVERY AIN’T IT!
“In fact, Bundy, who probably has little if any negative interaction with black folks may be more positively inclined toward them than the New Yorker.”
So he thinks that hatred of black people is the rational thing, but he’s defending bundy by saying he’s wrong/not hateful towards black people? just??????
Why did Price stop with the name and manner of speech? I mean, Bundy even *looks* black, or would if his skin was a different color, anyway. Close enough, right?
Also, Unimaginative’s summary of the situation is pretty good. I do also just want to point out that, as someone who works in agriculture and lives in a big cattle ranching area, I’ve only run across like 2 actual ranchers who support him. Most ranchers I know are fine with paying grazing fees and think he’s a freeloading jackass who is giving all of them a bad name.
Viscaria “Price does not consider black victims of violent crime to be innocent.”
He said gunning each other down, which I guess means he imagines that every black person is a would-be murderer.
lkeke35,
It sounds exactly like how these guys believe that women need to be kept under a man’s thumb for their own good.
Poor racist misogynist dudes, nobody will let them own other people, even if these dudes keep telling us that it’s beneficial to the people they want to own. /s
Interesting to see that they’ve come up with something even more deranged than “But Cliven Bundy can’t be a racist because he likes Mexicans!”
How did Price manage to type this utter bullshit with his head so far up his ass? Any way Bundy might say this shit is awful, Price’s “translations” aren’t helping.