In this late-night edition of Today in Breitbart Comments, let’s plunge into an ongoing debate between different factions of Breitbart’s alt-right fanbase.
In the comments to a post titled “Milo on CNBC: A World Run by the Alt-Right Would Be So Much Fun,” we find two distinct types of alt-rightist fighting it out.
On the one side, those who agree with Mr. Yiannopoulos that the alt-right is basically a bunch of lovable scamps, free-speech enthusiasts who don’t really mean it when they say “gas the kikes race war now.”
On the other side, well, those alt-rightists who do in fact mean it when they say “gas the kikes race war now.”
You can see representatives of each of these factions offering succinct summaries of their basic position in this lovely exchange:
Those in the second group tend not to be big fans of Mr. Y, who, as a gay man with a Jewish mother, does not exactly fit perfectly into the traditional Nazi demographic.
Still, there are many points of agreement between the two factions. For example, many of those who put themselves in the “lovable scamp” camp turn out to be gigantic freaking racists too. Oh, sure, the scamp campers insist that they’re not really hateful racists. They just have a rather, let’s say, broad definition of what isn’t hateful racism.
Yeah, you don’t think people of color have contributed anything to western civilization, you want to ban them from immigrating to the United States based on the color of their skin, and you wouldn’t let your daughter marry one. How could anyone even think you have anything in common with the Nazis?
NOTE TO EXTREMELY LITERAL-MINDED READERS: That last sentence was sarcastic.
REMINDER: This is the audience that Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s campaign CEO, cultivated for many years as the head cheese of Breitbart — and that Trump was presumably hoping to appeal to by hiring Bannon to run his campaign. These are the people that Trump is empowering and emboldening.
Pol is a regular, I was sorta surprised by the aggression on both sides. Hearts for both of you. I read Pol’s closing comment sincerely, myself, though of course your mileage may vary. From what I have seen, he’s a good egg! Just a bit more aggression and defensiveness between the two of them than required. That is my read, anyways! Your mileage may vary.
It seems fascists and I have much different ideas of what “fun” is.
Alright, then I apologize for what I said about the whole “going straw-SJW” thing and my general reaction.
I should probably get off the internet when I get paranoid like this…
Sowwi, cheers !
@JoeB
When parody and caricature still show more self-awareness than the real deal. Still, Mitchell and Webb are the best nazis.
And the best aristocrats too.
I would interpret “gender and race are not real” to mean “gender and race are not biologically/genetically real, but merely socially constructed” – which means, yes these are real things people experience, but there is a widely held belief that they are immutable forces of biology (i.e. women are weak and emotional) which is NOT true, making his point relevant in that way.
Honestly i think you guys failed to give him the benefit of the doubt and overeacted without even asking him to clarify his position (which he later failed to do too, anyways, in all fairness). Hopefully i wont be labeled a troll as well 😐
I “love” how this guy thinks his movement is all about the cooperative coexistence of two explicitly contradictory agendas.
Hey, alt-right troll, the people who try to justify Islamophobia under the guise of “protecting modern values” such as secularism, women’s rights, gay rights, etc., from religious-fundamentalist extremism are in direct opposition to the people who are trying to “undo the left’s culture war victories” such as, you guessed it, secularism, women’s rights, gay rights, etc.
The silver lining is that as the alt-right movement tries to claim legitimacy and respect as a viable political position, the “South Park conservatives/libertarians” and the hardline traditionalist conservatives will realize that their attempted marriage of convenience was dead at the altar. They have nothing in common except their hatred of liberals, which is not a political platform.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/649/078/dbb.jpg
Just wanted to take this beautiful moment of philosophy to ask this important and related question again.
@Scildfreja
Fair enough. I shouldn’t have been so aggressive. Not helping
@Sally
You’re right, that’s a failure on my part. I’ll try to do that more
I apologize. I didn’t mean to make you feel unwelcome. Nothing you’ve said here has ever been trollish, and you’re a valuable member of this community
It’s okay <3 Especially on this blog, where we read about horrible things almost every day, it's really easy to let that anger spill out. It happens!
What political ideology does Matthew McConaughey despise?
Alt right. Alt right. Alt right.
I’ll see myself out…
@Scildfreja
Like I said, you’re my light <3
@Atlas
Wooow! Fantastic
http://iambrony.steeph.tp-radio.de/mlp/gif/217582__safe_fluttershy_princess-celestia_animated_blushing_spoiler-s03e10_50fdace47f123b947f000105_50fdace47f123b947f000106.gif.gif
Axe and I tend to fire on a hair trigger at the first perceived sign of trollishness. WELL, mostly Axe. *smirk*
Joke aside,
Don’t worry 🙂 I mean yeah sometimes there’s misunderstandings (one of my very first posts for example was so poorly worded that everyone thought I was a concern troll D: ) but they’re solved quickly and easily. Some people (y’all know who) around here even show a lot of charity to genuine trolls, an attitude which I actually admire, even though I can’t find it in me to even try to emulate it. WHTM has the healthiest comments section I’ve ever seen, which is a huge feat considering that the subject matter by itself is bound to attract trolls.
Threadfail ! It happens.
I’ma go back to focusing on EJ’s amazing post on the first page now.
ETA : I don’t get Atlas Sulked’s joke ._.
The two types are the racists who don’t care about violence as long as they can live in their all-white areas and never see anyone of an alternate ethnicity, and the racists who want violence and think racial cleansing would be the fun part of being a nazi.
@John
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X4bg4Q63kJQ
But worry not – it wasn’t that funny 🙂
@EJ
I only ever delurk to post silliness, rarely, as by the time I get to the end of the comments you’ve already said exactly what I would have said with far greater erudition and poetic thrust. TL;DR – you’re my light and that post on the first page cements that fact 🙂
@poe, ax, John: I think the above is an example of what happens when people spend so much time arguing with internet trolls that they can no longer ‘assume good faith’. Which, for the record, I think may be one of the more significant ways Internet trolling has harmed our culture. Constructive discussions really are not possible without some assumption of good faith.
For what it’s worth, I read Poes post in the same way that Sally did, as ‘race has no origin in biology and so we really shouldn’t discriminate’. However, I can see why ax and John would read it as supporting what I think of as ‘whitewash racism’, as typified by the ‘all lives matter’ group. This can be summed up as ‘if there is no biological origin of race, then why should we bother to distinguish between various races at all?’ As Ax pointed out, this view fails to take into account the very real social and economic constructs related to the notion of race, which in turn demand different responses to people depending on where they come from.
Is that more or less correct? I’m hoping this is more spreading oil over troubled waters than throwing oil on a fire…
@AtlasSulked
No it is funny, especially now that I get it :p
I don’t get all of the american references, so I tend to miss a lot of the punz.
Maybe he’s trying to insinuate a false dichotomy along the lines of, if you aren’t a rabid islamophobe then you must want Eurabia and you probably wish the Carolingians hadn’t reverted the Arab invasion of Europe in the 8th century.
Joke’s on you! I die a little bit on the inside everyday!
Okay, well, let me see if I can explain this correctly.
Race is a social construct but it has nothing to do with “the lizard brain” as that’s where instincts are stored. There is no such thing as race, if we’re technically, HOWEVER saying there’s no such thing as race can deny that racism still exists, just like saying gender doesn’t exist can deny that sexism and transphobia or even homophobia still exists.
You see, when I say gender doesn’t exist, I mean the gender binary–that you can be a man OR a woman because penis and vagina–doesn’t exist, that being a man makes you better at one thing while being a woman makes you good at others. It’s false. This has been proven in history and multiple cultures all around the world–women and men fought alongside each other in wars (such as new evidenced [haha] in Viking cultures show), some were kept home and others on the battlefield (like in Athens); women and men had pretty much the same rights and were equals (like in some dynasties in ancient Egypt), while some people were treated lesser depending on their gender (like upper class English women during the medieval era); and there are cultures that have more than two genders (like hijra in Indian culture or two-spirited people in many Native American tribes) and that people of any gender could marry any gender they wanted (there’s a variety throughout cultures and history although some of them were more in upper classes than lower classes and stuff).
This pretty much proves that the idea of Western gender binary is dumb, stupid and false. In fact, recent studies have shown that there is no such thing as “male” brains and “female” brains, like some assholes have been pettling. That’s false. The whole “male” and “female” brain thing came from just a few papers out of dozens of others that said otherwise.
Although, they did find some small, SMALL difference in people that identified as men and people that identifies as women–that is, cis men and trans men have identical brain structures, just as trans women and cis women have identical brain structures. (Of course, that’s when they’re just searching for difference in men and women and probably didn’t take into account non-binary people but, like, whatever.)
So, like, the gender binary is fake as fuck and people need to deal with that shit asap.
HOWEVER race is a totally different matter–while it’s been shown time and time again that gender binary is false, you can’t just be a black person and say you’re white. That’s not how race or racism works.
Take, for instance, in Japan, Korean people and people of Korean descent are technically not citizens of Japan, at least the last time I checked. I don’t know if they’ve changed it but pretty much if you have any ancestors that weren’t Japanese, you’re not Japanese. That’s how it goes, and that’s racist as hell.
There are places all around the world that have similar thoughts thanks to the modern idea of race (that is the concept of now what we consider race is new, not that race is a modern concept btw). Unless you completely falsify your own family tree, there’s no way you could be considered a certain race, and still technically you aren’t that race by societal standards. It’s really stupid, yeah, but it still exists.
And, you see, the reason why people can’t transcend race is because they aren’t treated the same because of their race, you feel me? Rachel Dolezal didn’t grow up with the experience a black person faces and she trying to be “black” when she has no experience or concept of what black is is just, like, laughable. How can you be black in a society when you weren’t ever treated as black?
It’s like cultural appropriation–you have, like white people thinking certain black things are cool or beautiful, like dreads or cornrows or big lips, so they get them, right? They’re hip and cool, right? Kylie Jenner gets her own brand of lipstick or whatever. But when a black person has dreads or big lips, suddenly they’re dirty or look ugly, and when a white person doesn’t have to deal with that because they’re white. There’s a bias in society due to racism that pretty much anything on lighter skin is better.
And, of course, that ties into colorism, which is where, say, black people with lighter skin are deemed more attractive compared to black people with darker skin. And this is a trend that’s all around the world, and many places like Japan and India have products designed to lighten skin because it’s considered more beautiful due to the fact people think light skin is better.
And that colorism is tied to “white passing” privileges, where black, Arabic, Latinx, South Asian, whatever people with light skin aren’t treated as bad as other people with darker skin because their skin is lighter or people don’t know they’re not white, which is tied back up with that whole “you aren’t such and such because you have this and that in your family tree so I’m going to be racist to you now” thing.
AND THEN of course, is the whole “systematically repressed because we think white people are better than any other” deal going on. You got cops that will shoot an unarmed black person before shooting a white dude that has a gun, you got racist realtors that won’t sell a house to a Latinx family in a white neighborhood, you got people in the school district systems giving less funding and necessities to school in communities with less white people than school with more white people, you got people thinking people with darker skin are less intelligent and eloquent just because of their skin color–and you can’t just ignore things like that.
So while race is a social construct, you can’t “transcend” race, you can’t darken or lighten your skin one day because think you’re a different race because you don’t have the experience of that race, ya feel? It’s not like gender because there’s proof time and time again that the Western idea of gender is false and that breaking the binary and gender roles benefits people while trying to “transcend” race doesn’t stop racism. (The whole “you’re on of the GOOD ones” mentally plays into that part.)
I hope I’m explaining this correctly and in a way that makes sense because I am not as versed in racism as things related to gender, and I’m not even that well versed in things related to gender.
Jack, there you go provin’ EJ right ‘n stuff!
I am eternally irritable about the way Victorian prudery has absolutely poisoned western culture. nnngh.
@Jack
Was gonna mention the ‘gender brains’ thing, but it wouldn’t have come out as well as you did. Besides, during an apology post likely ain’t the time to be droppin knoledge. Thx
Quick thing: can we talk about how you start saying ‘ya feel me?’ (twice) as soon as you start talking about race? Not during the gender bit, only the race part. While explaining racism a black person. Can we talk about that? Cos:
Yeeeah… People might think some stuff about ya. Unless that was all some sorta clever, narrative device, in which case I’ll shut up
@Jack: do you mind if I ask you a couple questions about transgenderism in general? The question I have in mind could come across as transphobic, and I’m struggling with figuring out how to phrase it.
There actually are not many transgender people I know (at least, not who admit it), so I’m asking as a cis person trying to understand something outside of my personal experience, aside from a few lectures in medical school.
Also, it’s not your job to educate me. If you don’t feel up to it, I won’t ask. You don’t even have to tell me that you’re not up to it.
That was actually a complete accident because it’s a verbal/written tic of mine. I say “ya dig”, “ya feel”, “ya know” (and others stuff too) a lot when I’m not sure if I expressed something right. (Or as a way to cover up when I’m about to stutter verbally, along with using “like” every other word.) Those habits transfer into my writing because I like to write how I talk. I probably should have thought it through a bit more when talking about that.
I’m sorry. I’ll be more mindful in the future about that.
@Jack
S’cool, buddy! I was mostly just confused 🙂
Nother thing in relation to your long comment. I wanted to mark a difference between gender and race that hasn’t been said. That is, as far as I know, nobody will ever be able to tell what the gender of my corpse is. They’d assume I’m a guy based on the genitals and hair distribution and everyone who knows me thinks I’m a guy and so on. And that’d be a correct assumption, but it’s still just an assumption. You mentioned that any brain differences between masculine and feminine are tiny and exclude everyone inbetween. Were I closeted nonbinary, how would anyone know?
Meanwhile, I could degrade for 100 years, and clever folks could be confident in saying I was black. If I had any DNA on me, they could probably tell I was American (continent, maybe even country) by the haplogroups and admixtures and other stuff I don’t understand
Now, none of this is to say that race is more real than gender or more important. Just that there’s a biological difference in addition to the social ones you elucidated. And I don’t know what that means vis a vis the ‘transrace’ nonsense (tho it’s pretty obvious I think it means something. Can’t quite figure it out). Just had to put the thought out there
(It’s taken me a good hour to write this comment, believe it or not)
Milo is pure troll. He doesn’t really have any desire to see the Alt-right gain power – he just wants to piss people off. And he’s achieved the rare distinction of doing so in two completely different directions. By espousing the Nazi cause, he’s pissing off right-thinking people who find their ideology abhorrent. He’s simultaneously pissing off the Nazis themselves, who know he should be terrified of them and are very frustrated he’s not. The only thing he has to do to get all this attention and negative energy is…valorise one of the most evil political movements of the 20th Century. No big deal when there’s lulz on the line!
He is contemptible.
True. There’s way more solid biological backing to race than gender, I just kinda worried about bringing up too much biology, you know? Because I know jack shit about biology as a whole, probably less than gender and race. I can understand the more social aspects of racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. because I have faces and seen such things, but I can’t say I understand the biological aspects as much because I’m not face with dealing with biology everyday. And, like, the only reason it’s even biologically important is because it’s socially important.
I mean, I can go on a whole tirade about how human ingenuity and the difference between races are pretty much just cosmetic now, not that they did much in the first place, because we’ve come to a place that we can use technology to basically live and thrive almost everywhere on the planet. We live in deserts and places that have no sun five months out of the year reguardless of how “fit” we are for the environment. And, like, people can still have babies reguardless of their gender or sexuality, so, like, why do people even care anymore? Social conditioning.
But just because something is and has always been irrelevant doesn’t mean it hasn’t impacted and affected people negatively or positively. We’ve barred people who could have had made great contributions based on gender, race, religion, class, social standing, etc. and it’s sickening, stupid and sickening.
(Of course, I’m not just talking about people who could have made, like, contributions in science and art, it’s more, like, the contributions of humanity as a whole? Like, even if you think you haven’t done anything with your life, you still impacted someone’s in some way and that’s a contribution. Living is a contribution.)
But some days I just don’t understand how humans can have so much ingenuity yet still be so detrimental to themselves at the same time. It’s a pretty much the reason why I’m a feminist.
But, I ranted enough. You’re right, there’s also a more biological standing to race than gender could ever have.