So today one regular commenter on the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit posted what he must have thought would be an uncontroversial opinion — at least amongst his fellow MGTOWs.
“Feminism is propaganda tool to extract resources from men,” he declared, adding.
Everytime there is strong propaganda against any ‘privilleged’ group – it’s only to steal from them.
He provided three examples of this alleged law in action, one of them involving the alt-right of 20th century Europe:
“In Nazi Germany there was propaganda against the ‘privilled’ [sic] Jews,” he wrote. “Jews were looted.”
A bit of a simplification, sure, but, yes, Hitler presented himself as the savior of decent German workers crushed “under the yoke of Jewish world finance.” And yes, the Nazis confiscated a great deal of Jewish wealth, right down to the gold fillings from murdered Jews’ teeth.
But hold on a minute, demanded another Reddit MGTOW. What if the Jews basically deserved to have their life savings stolen by the Nazis?
“Jews were actively subverting Germany in WWI and afterwards,” declared YourAverageBloke2. “You should read Mein Kampf for the truth.”
Woah. I did Nazi that coming!
YourAverageBloke2 also had some thoughts on feminism he felt compelled to share.
And feminism is more than resource extraction. That’s just a side effect. The main goal of feminism is to create a divide between white men and white women. Thus, lowering white birth rates. Thus, the Satanic Jewish elite (normies call them the Illuminati) eliminates its biggest enemy by a stealth genocide.
Huh. Because birth rates have fallen dramatically not only in mostly white developed countries but also in developed countries where, you know, the people aren’t generally white — like Japan and South Korea. Are the “Satanic Jewish elite” stealth-genociding Asians, too? If so, they’re doing a terrible job:, because outside of Japan and South Korea and other developed Asian countries, babies are still being born in large numbers; the population of Asia as a whole is expected to be up another billion by midcentury.
“White genocide” is very confusing.
It’s ultimate goal is to rule over a species of low-IQ brown people who are too dumb to question the Jewish aristocracy. It’s obvious to anyone who can see trends.
Another idiot who thinks of himself as part of the elite.
Another woman of whiteness here. Paradoxy is right, we need to own our white woman privilege, frustrating as it might be.
I try to regularly remind myself that I’m a recovering racist. Not because I *want* to be a racist, but because I was born into, raised in, and am currently living in a racist culture. As much as I would like to change this, until we actually do, I will be a (recovering) racist. I will probably be a racist until I leave this earth, though, unfortunately.
Re: cookery – We have two Hawaiian eateries here in town and I got myself some saimin soup* last week as comfort food for my cold. Yesterday, I made my own impromptu saimin with dashi** powder, ramen noodles, shredded carrot, leftover kimchi (from the Hawaiian restaurant) and some surimi. Yum! Once I find an international market that carries dried, shaved bonito flakes, I’ll make my own dashi, too.
*Hawaiian style ramen soup.
**Japanese fish stock
We’re all racists. That’s how humans work. We’re all just in different stages of fighting off the impulse, that’s all. We’re also all in different positions of being able to harm others with our racism. That bit is the important bit, I think.
But, mmmm, dashi. I would love some good bonito flakes. Edmontonians, I deeply recommend Izakaya Tomo if you want a casual izakaya/japanese pub atmosphere with the-most-delicious food ever. I can’t even tell you how delicious those tako balls are. Oh my gosh you guyse. Go there, for realsies.
My own personal issue with the ‘white women voted for Trump’ thing is that white or not, 76% of American Jewish voters did not vote for the Cheeto. Especially if the tendency of women to run more liberal than men holds true, that’s damn few Jewish women putting down for Trump.
We don’t vote like white people. We have never voted like white people.
Note that this doesn’t mean that I won’t be seen as part of a Trump-voting demographic by others, just that I’m aware that the demographic I actually identify with steered clear of the POS.
@Podkayne
Quite so, and I apologize. White women may have voted Trump as a whole, but queer, white women and Jewish, white women didn’t. Both groups (and others probably) are on the fascist shitlist with the rest of us, and tried to stop it. I shoulda done a better job making that clear 🙂
Should be noted that, Jews, trans gals, lesbians, etc are the reason the percentage is as low as 53%. Without em, that number jumps up quite a bit I reckon
I don’t see why white *women* get the blame, when that demographic split about evenly with a slight majority towards Trump, rather than white *men* (my demographic) who voted in a very large majority towards Trump.
Even then, I’m suspicious of breaking things down on racial and gender lines. The urban/rural divide seems to have far more predictive power. I thought I understood that even urban precincts that are lily-white generally voted against Trump.
I didn’t mean to imply that it was solely white women’s fault (in fact, I did say that yeah, we should be blaming other factors as well), but I wanted to imply that white women do need to assist other white women in terms of talking to them about privilege and how that shit breaks down. We need to own up to what our group as a whole as done, and we need to have a long serious talk about bigotry and how we throw other groups under the bus to maintain our social status right below white men (in terms of race. Obviously that breaks down the further you go).
It’s true that urban precincts tend to be a bit more liberal, but you’re forgetting about the Burnie Bros who would rather vote for Trump (or even Stein or gods forbid a dead gorilla) instead of Hillary for whatever reason they could concoct.
There were also the voters who, much like some of the “leave” voters from Brexit, voted for Trump and expected it to not come to fruition because they relied on others to make sure that Trump didn’t get into office. “We’ll never elect that guy, he’s obviously unfit!”, etc. Many people literally believed that POTUS Trump could never happen because he’s just too damn outlandish, and they got complacent.
This election was a weird one to say the least. There aren’t many ways we can explain what factors occurred outside of the obvious gerrymandering of the districts thanks to the GOP.
@numerobis
Not the blame…
Again, depends on your philosophical stance on 3rd party voting/spoiling. Personally, I’ve no sympathy for it. Either Trump won 53-43 among white women or he won 56-43. Stein and Johnson voters don’t get to count on the correct side here imo
Again, sorta. I live in GA. Clinton won in Atlanta and the other ‘major’ cities (ATL is really the only major city in the state). Trump won the rural areas. Pretty standard, right? But GA has a pretty large rural, black population as a holdover from Reconstruction (the Black Belt, as it’s called runs from VA to TX), and they voted Clinton. Rural Murica is dominantly white, but, where it’s not, the urban/rural divide isn’t as clear cut
Sorta. Portland? Blue. Jacksonville? Red
PI: I see, in your eyes more of “we” have a problem to grapple with, where for you “we” is white women. I think my personal reaction is based on my not identifying as the Anglo White Man — my tormentor growing up, though I can pass quite well today. Must cogitate…
Axecalibur: My philosophical stance is based on who voted for Trump, versus voted for Anyone But Trump. The ABT vote I aggregate because those are people who got out to vote, and chose somebody who didn’t advocate ethnic cleansing, violence against women, and other such positions.
PI: minor nit, but gerrymandering has almost* zero effect on the presidential — it only affects the US house and the state houses. You can argue that state boundaries end up having gerrymandering-like effects, but state boundaries aren’t getting modified on a regular basis.
* almost zero, because Nebraska and Maine have some of their electoral college votes based on the US house seats.
@numerobis
Understood, but severely disagree. I aggregate the ABC vote. They made the choice either to support fascism or to allow it. If you were for those positions you mention, then you’re deplorable. If you were against those positions but didn’t vote in such a way as makes the realization of same as unlikely as possible, you’re a slightly lesser form of deplorable. No sympathy
Axe, by your count, Trump got about three quarters of the vote. All his voters, plus all the voters for third-party candidates, plus all the voters who didn’t actually vote.
That’s a historic landslide. That’s fifteen points better than runner-up Johnson v Goldwater.
That, or we join the real world, where Trump actually lost the popular vote and barely commands any legitimacy.
@numerous
OK, I like you, so I’m not gonna get too miffed at your seeming hostility here. Imma mention it, but then imma let it go…
It’s been pretty clear that this entire convo, both before and since you joined in, excluded people who didn’t vote. Children, certain felons, abstainers, what have you. I might try to incorporate abstainers, but voter suppression makes that untenable. Regardless, I get the value of absurdist exaggeration. Don’t think it works in this case tho
True. I never said or implied it wasn’t true. What I did say was that anyone who voted for anyone but Clinton is complicit in Trump’s EC win, and his subsequent administration. Something something triumph of evil, yadda yadda Neville Chamberlain
@numerobis
Autocorrect hates me 🙂
What’s absurdist?
I don’t see a major distinction between third-party voters and registered voters who stayed home. Either way, their vote made no difference to the electoral college. Not everyone who stayed home was oppressed, and many who voted were, but voted anyway.
And so I argue that to fairly evaluate your count we should include all those who voted third party or abstained through inaction (rather than suppression). That adds up to a large majority support. Maybe as much as half the abstained vote was due to vote suppression measures. That’s still adding up to a vote in the high 50s for Trump.
Even if you ignore abstainers and take only all the third party supporters and bin them into Trump, so that the election was a referendum on Clinton, Trump gets a majority.
Either way, you’re arguing, unwittingly, that Trump has a democratic mandate.
Don’t want to butt into this, but I do want to point out one little detail that I think is the sticking point for you two!
Objectively, third party or Anyone-But voters might as well be votes for Trump. If the goal is to prevent Fascism from getting democratically elected, any action which isn’t a vote for the one party with a chance to beat Trump might as well be a Trump vote.
Subjectively third party or Anyone-But voters have valid concerns which are good to express. If I live in Michigan and have been told that Clinton has my state locked up by the media, it’s not irrational for me to both want to oppose fascism and send a message to Washington that I am displeased, and a third-party vote or a no-vote / spoiled vote accomplishes this.
A lot of that calculation went on in this election. I’ll agree that Hillary struggled through some of the harshest electoral hurdles I’ve ever seen with aplomb and gusto, with requirements of perfection while Trump just had to remain conscious and avoid swearing for the large part. But the media and pollsters cast this as an easy win while the polls themselves didn’t actually reflect that fact. A lot of the blame lies in the media generating a false sense of security (and there was a not-insignificant amount of DNC fuckery going on as far as I could tell.)
If the media had reported that the polls were essentially tied when broken down by district instead of running to Nate Silver’s apron at his stupid 75% Democratic percentage, this wouldn’t have happened. Those third-party voters would have realized that they didn’t have the luxury of voting to send a message to Washington – they had to send a candidate.
That’s my take on it, anyways. Funny how CNN’s found its courage now, huh? After it actually matters, now that the fascist is in charge and is gunning for them directly, they suddenly realize that maybe they should be critical? Grumble grumble.
Take it as you will!
@numerobis
I know. But, for my purposes, there is one. You said:
This only makes sense if we’re only counting actual voters. Otherwise, either every demo voted Trump or no demo voted Trump. The only way for this to be in any way a meaningful discussion is if we all exclude abstainers. You did, I am, let’s stick with that
But I can’t know that. Also, voter suppression isn’t just voter ID laws and whatnot. It’s also economic. If you can’t take off work on Tuesday for example. And that disproportionately affects women of color. Shit gets fuzzy. Therefore, I’m leaving abstainers out. And so did you:
Again, the entire convo has implicitly and explicitly excluded abstainers. Changing that now makes everything you, me, and @Paradoxy said before meaningless. Fine, if you wanna go there, but there’s no need to
I think I see the issue here. You think I’m saying that an ABC vote is a literal Trump vote. I’m not, cos it’s not. The literal vote count is as it is. However, if you voted 3rd party, I, personally, hold you in contempt only to a slightly lesser degree than a literal Trump voter. I’m making a moral(?) stance not a practical one
I’m not, and he doesn’t. Again, there’s a practical difference between ABC and T. I’m arguing that 3rd party voters could have stopped Trump’s EC win, and, by not doing so, I don’t think too highly of them
It’s true that they could have – in no way do I think that you shouldn’t hold the ABC vote to the fire! They decided that it was more important for their vote to say “I don’t like Hillary OR Trump!” instead of saying “People of colour are human fucking beings you asshole.” It’s shitty to prioritize a political statement over a humanitarian one, and they deserve disdain.
Totally agreeing with Axe on the ABC
idiotsvoters. I don’t understand how a feminist could look at them and their desperate flailing excuses and see anything but a bunch of terrified misogynists who’d vote for an exploded humpback whale before a woman with an actual chance (Jill Stein, while also a woman, had no chance and therefore was “Safe” to vote for).In fact, I think the ABCs might even be worse than the Trumpshirts – at least the Trumpshirts admit that they’re sexist, racist wastes of oxygen. The ABCs still think that they’re good people.
@Scildfreja
As a lover of snazzy summaries of clunky debates, I now have STARZ IN MY EYEZ. This one is perfect perfect perfect, and goes straight on a pillow.
You know, I’ll never understand people who joke vote or whatever it’s called.
I hope they lay awake at night, thinking of how they contributed to this mess.
Thank you! I try to squeeze every thought into as small a package as possible. It’s a good way to find flaws in the argument.
I don’t see how ABC voters are anything but misogynists.
I”m with Axe on the ABC people, too. This was not the election for statement making with your vote.
To be fair, we do treat voting like some kind of grand personal statement here in the US. “Who you vote for represents you as a person”. You’re supposed to vote for the candidate that best represents your PERSONAL values.
The problem with this is that a lot of people put their personal statement over the future of the country as a whole in this election. Many people decided that they weren’t going to give Hillary the time of day for whatever reason because she didn’t mesh with their personal values/beliefs, and that’s fair and valid.
However, when putting her up against Trump, and when so many people were out there going “Yeah, I don’t like Hillary, but I would rather have her than a Tantrum Mango in office”, the ABC voters said “But, my personal beliefs!”, because that was more important to them.
And one could suppose that’s definitely a problem with the US’s society as a whole. We value individuals over a group a lot sometimes, and it’s proven to be to our detriment more than once.
However, if this were any other election, then yeah, I would tell those peeps to go and do their thing. But Pagan’s right. This wasn’t the election for “statement” voting.
I would also maybe point out that a lot of these ABC voters were people who either won’t be too badly affected by Trumplethinskin and his gross negligence for human life, or they think they won’t be, but are going to be SoL when Trump’s brownshirts decide it’s their turn on the line.
@Paradoxy
I’m going further. Every election is not the election for statements. In a system where 1 party is aight and the other is determined to cause the most harm to the most people as a matter of ideology, your principles mean nothing. Vote for whomever you like. If the correct choice wins, water under the bridge. If the wrong choice wins, may you suffer along with those you threw under the bus for self validation. And a while we’re at it, I wouldn’t hate the ‘principled’ voters nearly so much if their principles were any good. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are fuckin terrible. Even if I don’t judge their voters as abetters to Trump, I still judge them as Stein or Johnson voters. Not a fan
Note: I voted Stein in 2012, the above applies to me as well