So “Hamilton” has gotten pretty much unanimous praise from critics and those lucky (or rich) enough to score themselves tickets to it. Even Mike Pence, despite that thing that happened when he attended the show Friday night, declared on Fox News Sunday that “Hamilton’ is just an incredible production, incredibly talented people. It was a real joy to be there.”
The Trump-loving, Muslim-hating racist behind the blog Diversity Macht Frei begs to differ. As he sees it, Hamilton is basically an act of “white genocide” set to music. In Hamilton, you see, all the Founding Fathers are played by people of color, a deliberate choice by the show’s creator designed to make the cast “look … like America looks now.”
Well, Mr. Macht Frei is having none of it.
This entire spectacle is simply white genocide turned into entertainment. It retells American history with the roles historically played by European Americans instead performed by brown-skinned people of varied ancestry, the whole thing set to music of a style typically associated with those of African race. This is racial appropriation. One race is written out of history, replaced by another. Europeans are being asked to celebrate their own demise, their own effacament from America’s story.
I’m going to let Nathan Fillion take this one:
The blogger continues:
Imagine if someone made a musical about Zulus and all the Zulus were played by Europeans, played to Mozart-like music. You can imagine the outrage that would provoke. But, somehow, when it happens to Europeans, this racial usurpation is OK? No, it’s not OK. In the age of Trump, maybe white people need to establish a new political correctness of their own.
Yeah, it’s not as if white actors have ever played the parts of non-white characters in movies and TV and Broadway spectacles. (Oh, wait.) It’s not as if Jesus, a middle-eastern Hebrew, is ever depicted like some blue-eyed, dirty-blond-haired, white-skinned surfer dude. (Oh, wait.) It’s not as if Fox News anchors have ever worked themselves into a frenzy insisting that Santa Claus — who I am told is not even a real person — is white. (Oh wait.)
It’s not as if a horde of white Harry Potter fans threw a fit when a black actress was chosen to play Hermione in a London theatrical production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — even after JK Rowling declared that the complainers were racist “idiots” and that “Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm.” Oh, wait.
It’s not as if the casting of Hamilton is a conscious response to this long tradition of whitewashing people of color out of history and culture.
Oh wait.
Anyhoo, Mr. Macht Frei goes on to demand the inevitable phony boycott of this allegedly white-hating play.
We need people to picket, protest and boycott this so-called musical. There can be no place in modern America for racially inflammatory spectacles masquerading as entertainment. And don’t give me the argument that this is free speech. This isn’t free speech. It’s hate speech. And hate speech doesn’t cease to be hate speech just because it’s set to music. Especially when that style of music is rap*.
Now, Mr. Macht Frei follows up this post with a wry little “disclaimer” suggesting that maybe he’s just trolling, ha ha — which would presumably make his post a sort of parody of the things those evil SJWs say when they object to white people playing people of color.
But the point of his post, if we assume it’s meant seriously, is pretty much identical with the stated aim of his blog — “chronicling the Genocide of the European peoples, the greatest crime in all of history.” If that’s not meant as a joke — and there’s no indication that it is — then it’s pretty much impossible for me to believe that his Hamilton post was meant as a joke.
Tellingly, when The Daily Stormer’s Andrew Anglin reposted Diversity Macht Frei’s post on his site, he left off the disclaimer. And his commenters don’t seem to be in on any joke.
“All of the Founding Fathers are played by n***ers while the “bad guy”, King George III, of course remains white,”one Daily Stormer commenter complains. (Asterisks mine.)
“The tide is turning , all can see the black nightmare that is all around us,’ writes another, using the logo of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) as his avatar.
Destroying one city after another. We are going to win but it will cost many lives because of cowards.
Yeah, kind of hard to see the joke here.
The white people! Won’t somebody think of the white people!
Oh, and I may have a college education, but I am from a working class background. I’ve been fucking broke. Let’s stop acting like white people just can’t help but be bigots if they are worried about money. Racism is a choice. It’s also something I have seen more of from middle and upper class people than poor.
@CaptainBathrobe
Love your nym and your comment.
@WWTH
Very true. Let’s not forget that the people who make less than the median income voted in higher percentages for Clinton. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html
Also, did everyone see this?
https://thenib.com/the-electoral-college-isn-t-working-here-s-how-it-might-die
@WWTH:
Too effin’ right.
Add to that religious fundamentalism, which guards against “gettin’ too edjumacated and modern and newfangled”, and you have yourself a perfect recipe for why the rural Drumpfites voted the way they did. Their worldview is mired in the 1850s, when all this fundamentalism coalesced and gelled, and they’re suspicious of anything which smacks of the foreign, the new, the unheard-of. And as long as they insist on clinging to it, they’ll be sitting ducks for shitty right-wing politicians. No amount of “bridge-building” is gonna reach them. They have to find out for themselves, the hard way, that ‘winger politicians are all chronic pathological liars, con-men, and bullshit artists.
Is that why one of my old high school buddies keeps posting on Facebook about panning for gold?
To expand on the criticism of white/european purity, the genetic evidence points towards the ancient ancestry of Europeans being a mixture: migrants from around Central Asia on the paternal side from about 5000 BC onwards, bringing agriculture with them, mingling with women from Neolithic ‘leftover’ European tribes. A Nordic race with a history of tens of thousands of years is a fantasy; pale complexion is a relatively recent adaptation to climate and diet, since plant-based diets lack Vitamin D.
Ha ha…for real? If that’s true…OMG.
Well, the whole gold-bug thing does date back to then, sure ’nuff. The fact that it’s got just the barest gloss of modern technology (shitcoin, anyone?) doesn’t disguise the fact that this whole worldview IS archaic. The “sovereign citizen” movement comes to mind…they all claim that they are owed vast sums of money, paid in gold, by a government that’s holding “the people” hostage. And they refuse to believe that the federal reserve isn’t holding out on them, which makes them superior to the rest of the sheeple who don’t know the pseudo-legal incantations that are supposed to make judges give up and cough up. Of course, they are overwhelmingly white, male, and from the places where hurricanes are most likely to wash their trailers out to sea, so there you go.
@kupo Is he in Alaska or Yukon? It’s still a thing up here in north land. 🙂
@Bina
Yes, it’s for real. Every summer he asks people to join and/or help fund his long camping trips into the mountains to go panning. He’s been posting a bunch of conspiracy stuff lately, including aliens, so while I haven’t seen any “sovereign citizen” stuff from him I won’t be surprised.
@Fishy Goat
Nope, he’s in Washington state. I want to say a couple of years ago he went down to Cali and more recently stayed around here.
That’s the next, er, logical step, I would imagine…
(That, and a rampage on bath salts.)
I live in a former mining town that sometimes has panning events for fun and historical education, but that’s pretty much the opposite of goldbuggery, since goldbugs aren’t capable of having fun or being educated.
@mrex
The reason I have no sympathy for the economic woes of the ‘white working class’ is that people who identify as such tend to join with the white middle class in voting to fuck the working class in general, with particular focus on making sure that ‘those people’ stay below them, however far they fall. So, frankly, any member of the ‘white working class’ who isn’t on board with BLM, #NoDAPL, more, better and stronger unions, and functional infrastructure for everybody can, as far as I’m concerned, go directly to hell, without passing Go or receiving $200. The best thing they can possibly do, for themselves as well as everyone else, is shut their ignorant holes and crawl back under their rocks while the rest of us try to build a functional society and economy out of the ruins they’ve left us.
@mrex
By the “entitlement and spoiled” part….I really should’ve picked better words….I meant “Those who are so set in their ways that they want everything to be as it was in 1955 or whatever and who can’t cope with the fact the world’s changed.” along with “White privilege”.
“Entitlement and spoiled” were the wrong words to use. Sorry about that.
I’m terrible at communicating, sometimes.
*************************************************
One thing that I want to say is that if EVERYBODY voted in this country, it would likely be bluer.
Hillary won the Popular vote. Most of America wanted her. Unfortunately, our country chooses the Prez via Electoral College….which means that it takes a lot more votes than one would think necessary to get a certain candidate elected.
A good chunk of the country never votes, many of them are non-Wingnuts. Far-Right types ALWAYS VOTE.
There’s the Electoral College and then there’s a lot of gerrymandering. You need a LOT MORE blue voters to get any success these days.
There needs to be a way to make voting “cool”.
On the more hopeful side, I see this Trump thing as merely a setback. The demographics are changing for the better and the old reactionary types will eventually die out.
There’s also an ongoing movement to reform our voting system so the Electoral College doesn’t have such a stranglehold. It’s the “National Popular Vote” and it’s actually been passed in several states.
One more thing; I think a lot of non-wingnut folks just stayed home because they were so sure of a Clinton win. Everything was “The polls favor Clinton, big time”, “Clinton will win by a landslide.”, “Trump is a bumbling loser.”, etc.
That’s the problem, also….polls and predictions that are WAY TOO positive. That can mess with folk’s heads.
That said; The demographics that voted for Trump are slowly shrinking. The old bigoted ways will eventually die out. This recent upswing in world-wide wingnuttery is less a case of “humanity’s getting worse” and more a case of “uncovering the awfulness that was already there”….and the awful folks are just louder, more obnoxious and more emboldened.
Sometimes ugliness must be uncovered before it can be dealt with. It’s better that it’s out in the open rather than in the shadows.
And it’s recorded that Hamilton was an immigrant from the Caribbean…
@SpukiKitty
Automatic voter registration sounds good to me. It makes voting easier but not necessarily more cool. I would hope that rock stars would lend their help to the coolness effort — and I would hope they’d do it for free.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/05/automatic-voter-registration-gaining-steam
I do have issues with the script of the show, (not the casting or format though – freedom of expression guys ‘n’ gals) much of which appears to show the inaccurate ‘excessive taxation’ narrative and presents King George III as a cartoonish (though amusing) tyrant. Examples of quite the opposite are two separate assassination attempts on him by mentally disordered persons. The King went out of his way to ensure they were treated humanely. Hardly tyrannical conduct…
How in the sam-scratch do you post images/gifs/videos, here?
What formats?
Do I just surround it with “Link”?
I’m trying to answer Kat, here with a cute pic of Fluttershy going “Yay”.
I think just paste the url in a new line. If it’s the full youtube link or if it ends in .jpg .gif or .png it will automatically embed.
Thanks.
Okay! Here goes…..
To Kat….
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f226/SpukiKitty/All%20Reactions%20-%20Ponies/fluttershy__s_yay_badge_by_zutheskunk-d3e8usb_zpstulbpne5.png
….It worked! *Woohoo*
(Credit to a D.A. member called ZuTheSkunk, who made this)
Yes wow this is massively late. What can I say? Holidays happen. Hopefully people have email alerts on.
@Spuckikitty
““Entitlement and spoiled” were the wrong words to use. Sorry about that.”
Got you.
A lot of people do make this exact argument though. That basically because of racial privilege, white people don’t experience true economic distress and are just whining. Which is dogshit, and what every “fuck your economic anxiety” argument sounds like.
Sorry, but this is why we have Nazi Cheeto for president. If Trump is good for anything, it’s cultivating a persona. He ran what should have been one of the most incompetent campaigns ever; split his party, pissed everyone off, and still won. And Democrats want to pretend that we bear no responsibility for this?
Please. We are the same country that voted Obama in for two terms.* Obama won promising hope and change for the middle/working class, and in a twisted way, so did Trump. Hillary? I wouldn’t have known her economic platform if I didn’t look it up. Most of her airspace was being sucked up with discussions about Trump’s personality. I know I’m not alone here.
Progressives lost, and will continue to lose as long as we remain mostly focused on Trump’s personality instead of economic (and other) issues. The more we attack Trump’s personality, the more the wagons will circle around him. Ad hominems are logically weak. Always, but especially so or politicians, who are seen as sleazy by default.
‘I meant “Those who are so set in their ways that they want everything to be as it was in 1955 or whatever and who can’t cope with the fact the world’s changed.” ‘
America is a overheating pressure cooker right now. About three-fifths of Americans do not have a college degree, while virtually all of the jobs being added to our economy require at least some college. I would say that this is a recipe for an impending meltdown.
There are no quick, easy fixes for this. But smart people regularly fall for empty promises of easy fixes, and Trump is full of them.
@Kat
“Automatic voter registration sounds good to me. It makes voting easier but not necessarily more cool. I would hope that rock stars would lend their help to the coolness effort — and I would hope they’d do it for free.”
Doing what rock stars tell you to do is “cool”? ;p
Best way to get people to vote is to make it easy to do so. Automatic voter registration is a good start, but that may sound too much like “actual democracy” for America to buy. ;p
@Dali
“The reason I have no sympathy for the economic woes of the ‘white working class’ is that people who identify as such tend to join with the white middle class”
http://giphy.com/gifs/cookies-economy-cJckpEqAC8r60
Also, “working class” generally includes “middle class”. Much ado was made about Trump’s voters making slightly more than Clinton’s voters. $70,000 a year may sound like a lot, but it’s not, not when you have kids, and not when you live on either coast. Not when you’re priced out of most social welfare programs, and not when you have high medical bills. Point being, you can’t look at what someone makes on paper and decide from that alone how financially secure they are. (And one definition of poverty is “financial insecurity”).
Progressive legend Elizabeth Warren cut her writing teeth explaining how the middle class was being bankrupted by “core expenses” that are necessary and can’t be reduced. I highly recommend her books or lectures on the subject.
Or read THIS article from The Atlantic.
Or play around with THIS Family Budget calculator.
As for sympathy, I think compassion is always good to strive for. God knows I’m not perfect, and it’s easy to be mad at the middle class and the rural poor for voting conservative. Remember that most of these groups expect to be left out of any social programs that would provide relief. And that Americans in general prefer “making their own way” anyway. Economic dependency on politically fragile social programs sucks. It’s certainly a tough pill to swallow for many working-class Americans that these programs are our best hope right now.
@WWTH
“Oh, and I may have a college education, but I am from a working class background. I’ve been fucking broke.”
It’s not an insult to be (relatively) economically privileged. And I never said you haven’t been “broke”. Most college students are also “broke”, but also pretty economically privileged in comparison to many families that are a few rungs up on the ladder.
See, the resources I gave Dali.
“Let’s stop acting like white people just can’t help but be bigots if they are worried about money. Racism is a choice.”
I believe these studies tested for implicit racism, ie. unconscious beliefs, so I can 100% assure you that they are not a choice. By definition.
Also, let me be clear; I am in no way condoning racism. It is wrong and a cancer on society. I am only responding to beliefs that there are no economic worries among Trump supporters; only racism. The waters are somewhat muddied between racism and economic insecurity; the reason why we see more (implicit) racism among Trump supporters may be partially because Trump supporters feel more economically insecure. (Even if they look better on paper). These are not separate issues!
“It’s also something I have seen more of from middle and upper class people than poor.”
Or, let’s rely on self-selecting antidotes.** For what it’s worth girl, I’ve seen the exact opposite. At least when it comes to anti-Hispanic attitudes.
*I believe voter suppression and manipulation had much to do with this. Regardless, Trump wasn’t supposed to win, and he carried a surprising amount of support from groups that were supposed to completely shun him, such as Hispanics and women. If this fact alone doesn’t make democrats realize that issues other than racism were in play, then nothing will.
**Sure, you could level the same criticism at me with Trump supporters. But, AFAIK I’m not ignoring research to do so. (I’ve already explained the problems with relying on income alone as a proxy for financial insecurity above).
@Mrex
I love how you cut the significant part of the sentence you quoted from me. The part about how white America persists in cutting their own economic throats to stick it to PoCs. (and other oppressed groups, especially women). That’s why I have no sympathy for these fuckers. If they didn’t vote based on bigotry every fucking time, they wouldn’t have a tenth the economic problems they do, and neither would I. But no, they voted, yet again, to volunteer to be kicked in the teeth, as long as people like me get kicked to death, and no, they will not get one single fucking iota of sympathy from me, ever.
I think the “fuck your economic anxiety” sentiments weren’t actually about “white people don’t experience true economic anxiety, so fuck them”, so much as many people were pissed that “economic anxiety” was the main excuse dropped by people trying to ‘splain away the racism and bigotry of Trump’s voter base or pretend it doesn’t exist.
Instead of saying “yeah, he’s a bigot supported by other bigots and that’s where a lot of his support came from”, people are trying to spin it into something more understandable and not as fucking awful.
A lot of people are rightfully angry that a man who was so openly bigoted against so many people somehow won this election, and the “moderates” who are playing a “wait and see” attitude and who want to ‘splain away the open fucking bigotry are partially to blame for the mentality of “fuck your economic anxiety”.
So…what’s the point behind blaming Democrats for anything at this point? What do you gain out of this? What do you hope to achieve?
I’ve seen so many people try to say that Democrats are also to blame for Trump’s victory, and you’re partially right there and I’ll be the first to admit it, but what’s the point of saying that shit now instead of focusing on what we should be doing?
Why do y’all feel the need to be like “DEMOCRATS NEED TO FEEL AWFUL ABOUT THIS TOO. DEMOCRATS AREN’T SORRY ENOUGH YET”? We already feel like shit. A lot of us are trying to make plans in case the worst happens.
What can Democrats do that would make you stop pointing fingers?
Most likely because she had to spend so much fucking time defending herself about goddamned emails from every single direction that she didn’t have time to talk about her fucking economic platform.
If she spent half as much time as she did talking about emails on her other platforms, we all would have been far better informed.
But that’s not “Democrats” so much as media and Republicans making mountains out of molehills in my estimation.
Holy shit, what an assumption.
Thanks so much for assuming that we’re only ‘focusing on Trump’s personality’ instead of, you know, making plans for what we’re going to do so we can continue to live.
Excuse us for worrying about how he wants to treat those of us who aren’t cishet Christian white dudes. We’re sorry for considering our safety and the safety of our loved ones.
Please, pray tell, what the fuck do you suggest we do since you seem to know exactly what we’re doing and how it’s wrong?
You know, actually share a solution instead of just going off about what we’re apparently doing or not doing.
Also, since when is “focusing on personality” equal to “here’s why this dude is a huge fucking bigot”?
Okay, but you can choose to change those unconscious beliefs when called out for them.
We live on a planet surrounded by billions of other people who are more than aware when we fuck up, and many of those people will be willing to call us out for it.
I’m white. I was raised in a white household, around family who still think it’s okay for them to use the N-word. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been raised to be racist and hold racist beliefs.
You know what the difference is? I chose to learn how not to be as racist. I learned from people who called me out, I went and did my own research, and I learned how to check those behaviors.
You may not have a choice in having racist beliefs, because those are ingrained in our society and thus us, but you do have a fucking choice of what you do about it.
And that’s what’s important here.
Who the fuck said that Trump supporters don’t worry about economic problems too? No one here said that.
What was said was that yes, they have economic problems, but they’re also supporting a massive fucking racist.
You don’t get to say “Well, I voted for Trump because of economic reasons, but I’m not a bigot!”
You are at the very least, A Person Who Is Okay With Bigotry.
John Scalzi wrote a good metaphor explaining this.
How do you connect “I’m economically insecure” to “I hate mexicans/Muslims/Black people”? Please, do share.
Because plenty of people manage to be economically insecure and not be a raging asshole.
Let’s not do that.
NO ONE IS SAYING THAT ONLY RACISM IS THE FUCKING REASON TRUMP GOT ELECTED.
We’re saying it’s a HUGE reason Trump got elected, not the ONLY reason.
Just because we’re talking about ONE BIG REASON RIGHT NOW, it doesn’t mean we believe that there aren’t OTHER REASONS. We are capable of understanding this, and the idea that we don’t and we need your ass to come here and ‘splain this to us is silly as fuck. You’re being ridiculous.
Goddamn.
Oh, and good job pretending that internalized misogyny and internalized racism aren’t things as well.
@ Dali
“I love how you cut the significant part of the sentence you quoted from me. The part about how white America persists in cutting their own economic throats to stick it to PoCs. (and other oppressed groups, especially women). That’s why I have no sympathy for these buckers.”
Well I didn’t really get that the first read through. My bad.
I see your point, but I disagree with your scale. All of the white working class do not deserve your criticism.
“If they didn’t vote based on bigotry every fucking time, they would’t have a tenth the economic problems they do, and neither would I.”
Yeah me too, so I feel you there.
You don’t have to give them sympathy. I explained why I do. BUT, at the same time, you can’t be surprised when these white working class voters tune you out. Which yes, they may do anyway, but “racist” pretty much shuts the conversation down immediately.
@PI
” I think the “fuck your economic anxiety” sentiments weren’t actually about “white people don’t experience true economic anxiety, so fuck them”, so much as many people were pissed that “economic anxiety” was the main excuse dropped by people trying to ‘splain away the racism and bigotry of Trump’s voter base or pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Ok. Well said.
I can understand what you’re saying. HOWEVER, I think whether or not people intend it, “fuck your economic anxiety” does come across as “white people don’t experience economic problems, so fuck them”. There is perhaps a less confusing way to put “don’t ‘splain away the role of white bigotry in this election”. Perhaps by saying; “don’t ‘splain away the role of white bigotry in this election”.
For what it’s worth, I don’t want to splain away bigotry. I believe some, perhaps most, other “splainers” don’t want to either. I’m terrified of this administration, for myself, but mores for my friends. I just don’t want to flatten the discussion to “all Trump supporters are racist” either.
“You don’t get to say “Well, I voted for Trump because of economic reasons, but I’m not a bigot!”
You are at the very least, A Person Who Is Okay With Bigotry.”
This is a HUGE assumption on your part. Again, I’m not disagreeing that bigotry played a large role here, but I disagree with your scale of “All”.
“Okay, but you can choose to change those unconscious beliefs when called out for them.”
Kinda, not really? You can certainly work on your conscious beliefs, or compensate for your subconscious ones, but your subconscious itself is largely out of your conscious control.
“How do you connect “I’m economically insecure” to “I hate mexicans/Muslims/Black people”? Please, do share.
Because plenty of people manage to be economically insecure and not be a raging asshole.”
I posted a study before that showed economic anxiety increases implicit racism. It’s not the only one showing they’re linked.
And I hardly think that I would call someone with implicit racism a “raging asshole” since most white liberals/progressives have a good amount of it themselves.
“Let’s not do that.”
No problem, I won’t.
Not to argue, but I honestly didn’t realize that using “girl” as a term of camaraderie between women was offensive, and I’m honestly curious as to why?
Either way, I will stop.
“So…what’s the point behind blaming Democrats for anything at this point? What do you gain out of this? What do you hope to achieve?”
The point is that if Democrats don’t accept responsibility realize a failed strategy for what it is, we won’t change course.
“Why do y’all feel the need to be like “DEMOCRATS NEED TO FEEL AWFUL ABOUT THIS TOO. DEMOCRATS AREN’T SORRY ENOUGH YET”? We already feel like shit. A lot of us are trying to make plans in case the worst happens.”
Hey, I’m a Democrat? I’m not saying Democrats should feel awful, but just realize that a desperate change of strategy is needed.
“Most likely because she had to spend so much fucking time defending herself about goddamned emails from every single direction that she didn’t have time to talk about her fucking economic platform.”
That could explain her debate performance, but not her campaign ads that focused exclusively on “the shitty things Trump has said”.** This would have been the wrong strategy for a man running against Trump, it is doubly so for a woman seeking office. Women have to explain why their power seeking is for the common good.* Which may not be the “right” thing to do from a feminist perspective, but it is the practical thing to do from the standpoint of how far along we are in our society. (More like how far along we are not in our society).
“Please, pray tell, what the fuck do you suggest we do since you seem to know exactly what we’re doing and how it’s wrong?”
Listen to the people saying that we need to chill with the name-calling, and the focusing on character, and focus mostly on nit and grit issues?
This is the same strategy that has defeated populist assholes like Trump world-wide. People like Trump with an amazing ability to generate a cult of persona tend to thrive in a topsy-turvy culture filled with personal attacks, because they can control it, as Trump has done. But they don’t fair so well once people start picking apart their policies in earnest.
*yay sexism
**could just be my area
@mrex being insufferable again? OK…
My favorite bits of info from exit polls:
1)Trump voters make more than Clinton voters on average
2)Clinton voters listed the economy as their #1 issue. Trump voters had it at #3
Fuck your economic anxiety. That is all