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Apparently, the reason so many black people are getting murdered by police officers is that black people believe police officers are murdering black people.
At least that’s what Twitter activist, “Gorilla mindset” guru and all-around Internet embarrassment Mike Cernovich seems to suggest in a recent blog post.
A couple of months ago, you may recall, Cernovich suggested that he and his Twitter followers had “manifested” Hillary Clinton’s illness with their minds. Call it the power of negative thinking: by imagining Hillary having coughing fits, they literally gave her pneumonia.
Now Cerno is offering a similar explanation for the police shootings of black men that have roiled the nation over the last several years. As Cerno sees it, black men are “summoning the demon” and bringing murder on themselves by believing the media accounts of black men getting killed by police officers.
You may object that the media only writes about black men getting killed by police officers because, you know, black men are getting killed by police officers. But Cerno apparently lives in a world beyond mere facts.
“I look at issues from a branding and marketing perspective,” Cernovich explains.
Brand value is subjective. Statistics about race and crime matter far less than the subjective feelings people have towards one another.
So forget the actual facts of police officers killing black people. In Cerno’s reality, the key problem is that
[t]he brand of police (and whites) has suffered a lot of damage due to fake news media propaganda.
As a result, he argues, “millions of blacks believe police are out to kill them,” which makes
every interaction [between blacks and police] more toxic for both parties.
In mindset we call this Summoning the Demon. Your subjective beliefs create the very monster your fear.
Hey Rocky, watch me pull a racist police officer with an itchy trigger finger out of my hat!
“Consider this,” Cerno continues,
A black man is pulled over. He believes (rightly or wrongly, as your opinion doesn’t matter for this example) that the police officer poses a threat to his life. The black man is going to be tense. Sensing the driver’s tension, the police officer is going to view the black man as a threat. They will feed off of one another’s energy until something bad happens.
Nothin’ up my sleeve! PRESTO!
The belief manifested the reality.
Really, dude?
Again, I do not live in the world of “absolute truth.” It doesn’t matter if racism in policing is real or not if millions of people believe it’s real.
What about gravity? If millions of people convinced themselves that gravity was fake, would they and all their belongings just float away into the sky?
My personal belief is that police are not actively discriminating against blacks. If millions of other people feel differently, then we have a branding problem.
Mike, maybe gravity is just a “branding problem.” Why not test this proposition by convincing yourself that gravity is an illusion, then walking off the nearest skyscraper?
I’ll just be waiting here for you to report back to me on the results of this experiment.
Somehow I doubt Cerno will try this little trick. Because in his mind some facts — like gravity — actually matter, while other facts — like black people getting shot by cops — are just a “branding problem.”
Cerno’s solution to this little “branding problem?” He thinks the incoming President Trump should “hire Kanye West as sort of a ‘brand ambassador'” who could, I guess, convince black people that police are the friendliest, least racist people on planet earth. Through the magical power of his rapping, I guess.
That’s his actual “solution.”
I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
@Troubelle
I don’t know much about Sweden, sorry ._.
Well, I know that they and some of their immediate neighbors have been leading the way for the rest of Europe for a while now, and I understand that France would be a much shittier place if not for that, but that’s about as much as I can tell you. Oh yeah and I know it’s cold. You might be better off asking some of the resident Swedes here.
Hey, (granted, this is me speaking, knowing only what you’ve told me, and I bet you have a whole bunch of other reasons to believe so) maybe she’s not “too far gone”, given those redeeming qualities. They could make a difference. Seems these days everyone is in a hurry to pick a side, and with the amount of disinformation going on, well… it sort of explains this whole mess. The “liberal media” thing never really gets old, it’s a common example of even the most sensible people suddenly making no sense anymore. But I’ve had a lot of success with a few people spouting that kind of bullshit by showing them what the “other side” is. The reasoning goes that if they’re gonna assume that both sides are equally valid and it’s a matter of “preference”, a quick glance at Breitbart is gonna make them rethink that stance. It’s supposed to work on anyone who’s not a fascistoid, unless they’re in serious denial of just how bad things are getting. Now, I understand that it’s not exactly an easy thing for you to do since apparently she’s not even gonna listen. But it might be worth a try, if ever you think there’s a way to pull it off. If not, then please disregard this whole paragraph.
Addendum : it’s 5am already and my engrish is getting more tedious by the minute. Wondering if I’m gonna turn into a troll over the next 18 hours.
@Brony,
I do have a list, seeing as you asked so nicely 🙂 . Where do we start?
@John,
My (half)sister is a painter, so yep, lots of sharp and pointy things. Approach in a sort of sideways crouch if a painter is angry – or don’t approach at all.
Your writing: are you blocked on the plot, or something smaller, or just lacking motivation overall?
Apropos of nothing at all, I am happily entertained right now – my boy has been learning card tricks and I am his practice audience. They are very cool.
@Mish
I hope it was obvious that the profanity was only directed at Cernovitch in humor (Cenobite = horror movie demons).
I’ll be in here tomorrow if you had a question. It’s bedtime.
@ Brony, Social Justice Cenobite
Demons to some, angels to others.
@Mish
I was thinking of putting my niece between her and me. She wouldn’t raise a finger then, and even if she did I’m pretty sure the kid’s indestructible anyway. Problem is she’s too small to provide adequate cover for me, yet just a bit too heavy to hold her up for any extended period of time. Joke aside, yeah, I steer clear of the workshop for now. She’s much more approachable around tea time, although we still end up talking about the very topics that make us cranky.
As for the writing, ehh…
It’s a bit of the last two, I guess. I’ve been working on this iteration for four years and a half now, so I’ve got three books worth of plot. But I’m still stuck halfway through the first and it’s more because of “me” than because of “my work”. I mean, it’s like a personal block that has nothing to do with what’s already written and what will come next. Normally I grow dissatisfied with what’s done and it makes me want to ditch everything and start over – usually that’s exactly what I do. But not this time. I can still feel the connection, it’s still there, I just can’t seem to find the energy.
Also I’m pretty sure one of the main characters wants to murder me in my sleep.
Card tricks though ! My best friend started looking into that a few months ago and the results are pretty amazing. I usually take some misplaced pride in spotting the tricks, but I haven’t been able to do that with him – then again I’ve known for a long time that he’s a hell of a pickpocket, a genius guitarist and the sort of person you call when you locked yourself outside of your own house, so that might explain a lot. Be scared if your son starts getting very good at those card tricks.
@Sinkable John
I’ll see what I can do in regards to my mother. Not this weekend, though. This weekend we’re going grocery shopping, and a grocery store may not be the best place to make a fuss. (It is, however, a good place to get good food for a good and tasty meal, which is something I haven’t been able to do myself much in college. Of course, it’s also a good place to get quicker and cheaper food, which will be needed due to a lack of it currently in the house and the fact that Mom’s no moneybags. I’m chill with ramen and eggs, though.)
@Troubelle
You’re 16. Grow up, and go hunt a mammoth.
Hey whatever you do, don’t make the whole thing harder on you than it already is. I mean, how long does that break last anyway ? If you wanna talk to her, you could wait till it’s almost over, that way you limit the fallout in case it goes wrong. And then when you’re back to college, it gives her space and time to reflect about the points you made. Of course that also means that you’re gonna spend the rest of your break in an unimproved atmosphere… so I dunno.
As usual, just throwing ideas out there. They’re not good, but with any luck they might not be too bad either.
Makes me realize how lucky I am that I don’t have to see my father even on holidays or breaks, or even at family gatherings. Granted, he’s a whole other bag of spiders.
As always, all the hugs and support. In any case and whatever happens, you can fall back here to rant if you feel the need to.
@Sinkable John
The break lasts until MLK Day. I’m going to be either here or at Dad’s for over a month unless weirdness happens.
For now, I’m going to step down political engagement unless it becomes immensely pressing. It may be best to wait.
If black people really wanted to not get killed when the police shoot them, they’d pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become Luke Cage. Is that really asking so much?
So…what came first, black people’s reactions (fear, anger, hatred, etc.) to police or police shooting black people?
Cernovitch has posed a real Chicken and Egg question here.
He literally is saying that police only shoot black people because black people are afraid of being shot by police, but why would black people be afraid of being shot by police before the police shot them?
I mean, we all know the answer (Cernovitch is a racist moron who can’t logic properly), but it is certainly a conundrum.
Of course, most people would say that obviously the negative reaction came AFTER police did the bad thing (“Once bitten, twice shy”), but that’s because those of us who would say that obviously don’t have Cerno’s awesome mind powers.
Must be all that juice.
Cops carry guns. This fact makes me nervous. Also, men make me nervous.
A few years ago, I found myself alone on a residential street well after dark. I saw no one else around. Few cars passed me. Then a cop car quietly rolled up behind me, and the cop inside shined his spotlight on me.
Before that moment, I hadn’t even known those cars had spotlights.
I guess my nervousness was really evident, because the cop told me to relax.
That’s right — he didn’t shoot me. Instead, he told me to relax.
A bank had been robbed, and he wanted to know if I had seen the robbers in their getaway car(!). (No.)
So did the fact that I’m a white woman play a role in the cop’s reaction?
What would Mike Cernovich say? (WWMCS?)
The poor guy would be torn. On the one hand, blacks are manifesting their own shootings at the hands of cops. That much is clear!
On the other hand, female privilege. That much is clear!
Perhaps female privilege is so powerful that it destroys a cop’s tendency to have an itchy trigger finger around nervous people.
But wait: Why then were Sandra Bland, Natasha McKenna, and Yvette Smith (among other black women) killed by cops?
Mike, I’m all confused. Get back to us on this!
@troubelle
I just wanted to send some support your way. I grew up in a family which (on my dad’s side) is far right. I have family in the EDL and who all vote for UKIP. It can be horrible to be stuck in that as a teenager. But when I read your comments, if you didn’t state your age I would have thought you were way older. I’d have probably guessed you were similar in age to me (I’ll be 30 in 9 days) so in no way are you immature. Your mum is just using your age as a way to discredit you as she has no decent argument to what you are saying.
If you’re this awesome at 16, you are going to be formidable when you’re an adult.
On an unrelated note, I’m incredibly hungover after spending last night drinking too much gin with my mum. I’m pretty sure my dog knows the extent of my hangover as I’m laying on the sofa and he keeps bringing his toys and piling them up on me and licking my face. I literally have a pile of dog toys on me and he looks so concerned. Dogs are great
So what Cernovich is saying is that he and his froggy troll buddies are actually *causing* “white genocide” by constantly fretting about it. Glad we cleared THAT up! 😉
3 hours of sleeps, kid wakes me up with cold hand tickles.
Way to lose all your cute and turn into a monster, kid.
@Kat
I wanna echo that. I’m a white guy (Jim Crow says otherwise but well, at the very least I pass) and I get extremely nervous whenever cops are around because they often have very real… “justifications” to arrest me (I’m not gonna call ’em legit…). And the abuse so far has been very real as well – but the worst I’ve ever had happen to me was to be threatened with the gun, not shot at with.
I know why I’m still breathing, and I know it’s got nothing to do with my behavior, attitude, or degree of nervousness during those stops and arrests.
@NicolaLuna
I prefer cats when hungover. My cat works anti-hangover magic, I’m pretty sure of it.
I’m glad you still somehow managed to grow up to become a sensible human being even with a far-right family. I don’t know that I would’ve been able to in the same situation, and I know that even if I had, I’d be in a very bad place today given that I have to rely on my family for pretty much everything these days.
Goes to show just how bad a hangover can be, if it’s strong enough to defeat you 😮
ETA : @Matt
On one hand, I’m kinda worried that you actually stopped and took the time to measure the implications of Tcherno’s nonsense. On the other hand… that’s brilliant. Well played.
This whole demon thing has some characteristics that are quite revealing. You have Cernovitch who appeals to them non-literally so they can ignore the reasons that others have for the way they feel about things. You have people like the one Ed Brayton writes about here who use demons to explain why other people don’t do what they want them to do. And I can’t ignore the way things like my Tourette’s Syndrome becomes demon possession and involves social processes. That last one is the only kind of reference I have sympathy for as I can imagine what someone might appeal to in explaining the feelings they have.
Interesting stuff. The instinct to dehumanize and avoid has to have vulnerabilities.
Also “demons whispering in crowds”. I think there is something to swaying groups with implicit, indirect communication that avoids dog-whistles and trigger-words.
Oh that’s easy. “Fake news”
In right-wing circles now, “fake news” is a new buzzword that means “any news that is factually accurate but doesn’t paint the picture that white supremacists want painted.”
E.g. black people are getting shot by police => fake news, because those uppity urbans had it coming, because reasons.
@Mish
Eeeee ! The kid is dancing ballet on this right now !
Life is wonderful.
@sinkable John
My cats are generally better when I have a headache. When they purr it makes me feel so much better.
I was lucky that my mum is more left wing and a lot of my friends were really interested in politics so I was exposed to different views. And that as a pansexual girl I knew that their homophobia and sexism were wrong so their racism must be wrong too. I had to unlearn a lot of problematic stuff though.
Re: growing up in conservative households.
My parents were pretty typical Daily Mail types when I was growing up, plus fairly strictly religious, and I did pick up some of their junk. I cringe when I think about some of the stuff I used to believe. That changed when we got the internet and I became exposed to contrasting viewpoints which made a lot more sense to me, especially since I have always always had the personal mantra of do unto others what you’d want done to you, despite the conservative “quirks” of my upbringing. It also helped that I had two very close friends at school who were each from a marginalised group: one a Muslim, one a lesbian. It helped me see others in their group as people, and again this struck with my “love thy neighbour” rule. Internet also helped opened my eyes to the wider world and things like online debating plus an education that focused on critical thinking developed my reasoning skills which have helped me learn to see bullshit as bullshit. I like to think I have now fully broken away from my parents’ right wing (ish) influence. I’m definitely very liberal these days.
That said, I did manage to liberalise them a little when I was in my late teens. I simply shared what I had learned with them and some of it seemed to stick. I even got them to stop reading the Mail! Buuuuut…recently they’ve started to slide back again. Some of the stuff that comes out of my mum’s mouth in particular…ugh. Dad is the more reasonable one out of the two but still. Thing is they don’t take critique on their views as well as they used to. Dad will simply repeat the same problematic view a few days later as if I had never spoken up, and Mum will just argue then get upset if I don’t back down. She’s also a fan of the “I’m older therefore wiser” card and will play it when she wants to insist she’s right without any further confrontation. I’m 12 years older than you Troubelle, yet I’m in the same boat.
Honestly I’ve started to lose respect for my parents and my brother feels the same way. It’s worse that Mum wants me to “talk more” and “connect with us more” but there’s a list of things I just can’t bring up with her including personal topics as well. C’est la vie. It’s a shame but people do change as they get older. Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents to bits. I just don’t like them all that much. And I feel kinda bad for saying that.
Gosh, all that sounds familiar…
<3 sunnysombrera
There’s no reason to feel bad about that. You tried, you honestly and seriously did try to reason with them, in fact it even actually worked to some extent ! That’s the best thing one can do for another, and especially a child for their parents.
It’s their own fault if they slid back, and just as they weren’t entitled to the effort you made in making them think about it for a moment then, they still aren’t now. The fact that you still try is entirely to your credit, and it’s much more than should be expected from you.
It’s normal to be disappointed in them. It doesn’t change much to the fact that you love them, but you have every right to not like what they’re getting to, especially after you’ve spent all that time trying to help.
As always, thanks everyone for sharing the difficult personal bits. It lets the rest of us know that we’re not alone, but also that the difficulties we each face vary wildly. It’s two very healthy reminders and it’s super important these days.
We are all born as “magical thinkers”. We have to be, as babies don’t have much of a mental framework to make sense of the world with.
Most people start to grow out of it by about age 6. But some never finish growing out of it, and a few never grow at all. These people rarely have a well-developed sense of logic or morality. (They might still learn to be highly moral, but the reasoning behind their moral behavior is still highly grounded in magical thinking.) And to my personal observation, the noisier magical thinkers are exemplars of Dunning-Kruger.
@Snowberry
“Magical thinking” is fair, but the underlying instinct has good and bad expressions. Symbolic thought just is. I’m not trying to criticize as much as I am trying to expand on.
One of my favorite ways of looking at it is through ideas about cognitive development. The pre-operational stage in Piaget’s theories on cognitive contains a stage called the symbolic function substage. This stage between the ages of two to four is when a new logical ability comes online in the mind, the ability to form a connection between two things. What things get connected is shaped by culture and inherited predispositions.
It’s more accurate to say that as we age the symbolic function is accompanied by other mental abilities that come online. Children between two and four do what they do and they can’t be considered to to have blame when they connect any two things for fun, or for fear, or have things connected for them. But the symbolic function is still there and we still have a great many ways to connect two things as individuals and society. In fact I would say that culture has a great impact on what cognitive abilities are emphasized and how they are used.
A perusal through the rest of the stages of cognitive development reveals lots of mental phenomena that are clearly tied to things like bigotry. Egocentrism (the ability to distinguish between your perspective and another person’s) is strong in the symbolic function substage.
Between ages 4-7 centration (focus on one aspect and neglect other aspects), conservation (altering shape does not alter properties), irreversibility (can’t mentally reverse a process or order of events), class inclusion (can’t understand that a category has subcategories yet), and transitive inference (using previous knowledge in mental logical operations like determining a missing piece (they can’t do this at 4-7) are relevant ways that the mind does things. These are mental actions as real as what we do with our hands.
These people have the hardware and the capacity to create the software that could allow them to understand the world as it is. Or grow empathy for people not like them. But their culture manipulates how they think and altering it requires outside insertions of information and experience in order to change how they think about other people, how they experience other people and how they remember other people.
@Vucodlak
When people try to say racism is over, I disagree and roll my eyes so far back in my head I can see brain matter….these people are a great reason why I think angry white men are the terrorists we need to be wary of in the USA.