By David Futrelle
Is the BBC broadcasting white nationalist propaganda?
That’s the question on a lot of people’s minds after the network ran a profile of a self-described “tradwife” by the name of Alena Kate Pettitt who believes in staying at home and “submitting” to her man like it’s 1959. When she’s not doing chores or cooking up a meal for her hubby she’s promoting a somewhat performative version of her lifestyle on her YouTube channel “The Darling Academy.”
It’s all meant to look and sound very wholesome and innocent; Pettitt presents the #tradlife as something that brings her and other women “a sense of belonging, and home, and quaintness.” as she tells the BBC.
But the “underground movement” of militant stay-at-home-wives and mothers she’s a part of turns out to be lousy with alt-Nazis and other white nationalists — as a number of critics were quick to point out on Twitter, among them historian Mike Stuchbery and social media researcher Becca Lewis.
Even a cursory investigation of the hashtags #tradwife and #tradlife — which Pettitt and others use to promote the movement on Twitter — reveals not only photos of delicious-looking (and sometimes not-so-delicious-looking) home-cooked meals and fresh-picked vegetables and fruits from the garden, but also a great deal of very explicit white nationalism. Here’s a small sampling:
In a recent tweet highlighted in the BBC report, Pettitt purports to be shocked — shocked! — to discover Nazis lurking about in a movement she says is all about a “wholesome, vintage dynamic” rather than racism.
But I don’t buy the innocent act; the hashtags #tradlife and #tradwife are positively crawling with Nazis and assorted other white nationalists; she can’t have possibly missed it. And even if at one point she was ignorant of all this, she can’t claim to be now. She could choose to promote the stay-at-home-wife lifestyle without the alt-right hashtags. But she hasn’t.
That’s her right, but she shouldn’t be surprised if people see her as a white nationalist, or at the very least an enabler of white nationalism. As they say, if there are three Nazis sitting at a table and you sit down with them, there are now four Nazis.
The real question is why the BBC has decided to sit down with these people. Sure, the report notes that the movement she’s a part of is steeped in hate, but they take her denial of racism at face value, and don’t bother to challenge any of her other assertions about the alleged superiority of her lifestyle.
The BBC profile presents her life as freeing and even sort of glamorous, in a homey, retro kind of way — and it certainly doesn’t hurt that she’s young, conventionally attractive, and articulate-sounding, with a smooth delivery that belies the nonsensical nature of much of what she’s actually saying. The BBC producers mostly just let her talk, ignoring any of the possible downsides of her life, ans not even bothering to bring up the rather basic fact that the majority of women, like the majority of men, “choose” to work largely because they have to.
The piece ends with her celebrating the “selflessness” of the #tradwife lifestyle — and putting down the “selfishness” of those women who she thinks don’t “invest” as much in their husbands and families because they work. The BBC offers no challenge to this wrongheaded comparison; they let this white-supremacist-enabler have the literal last word.
That’s really not good enough.
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It’s not your fault. In this era we are all Cassandras. Women (and very often women of color) keep warning about what is happening and we keep getting ignored or called crazy.
@Mogwitch
Last I heard, most alt right families seem to have women working and being the main source of income with the men being busy dressing up as Nazis and making propaganda and podcasts. So I’m a bit curious how they can afford this as well.
@Naglfar
If they came to realize this, they’ll probably say “we’re more feminist than you” when I bet they will try and crush any sign of gender non-conformity they see for their benefit. They may either try and crush this or twist it with “women do the work, men create change”.
@Jarnsaxa
Yeah, they really haven’t adapted properly to the new social media landscape and it shows with every two-steps-behind take they have.
@Dalillama
Yup, and as you said, pretty much true of all the major western media apparatuses. They’re interested in status quo, not change, and they have a really hard time wrapping their collective brains around the concept of why change might be popular. I witnessed this first-hand during the #IdleNoMore protests of 2012. Hard to believe it was eight years ago, but the bullshit columns from every single media organization, from the CBC out, was universal in its opposition to the indigenous peoples of Canada. They wanted Theresa Spence to shut up and go back to James Bay.
But I think if there’s a lesson in all this, it’s that the right wing works the refs (read: the media) because it works. Having watched the media landscape in elections in Canada, the US and the UK, I’ve seen just how absurdly masochistic the mainstream press in those three countries really are. Trump or BoJo or heck, even Bernie will call them liars and haters and bullshit artists to their face and they will came crawling back for more the next day. So I say work the refs as hard as the fascists do. Bully them until they bend the knee. Frankly, it’s their natural position.
Sigh. This is why I have no faith whatsoever in the system: conservatives and liberals have long worked failsafes into it, which fascists can safely exploit, whilst disenfranchising and keeping power away from anyone to the left of liberalism.
How absurd is it that we are now facing the collective extinction of our species, with precious little time left, yet we are still trying to solve systemic injustice with votes and “polite conversation”.
Meanwhile children have been thrown into concentration camps, where they have been physically and sexually abused, subjected to forms of torture and denied adequate care and medication, resulting in their deaths. But they are Latinos, so they don’t actually matter.
The words and reactions on the posts of the jailed children (by conservatives) are beyond enough for me to consider these people to be irredeemably evil.
@Naglfar
I’ve heard and read that too. Women are working to provide for them, but since they consider women to be their property, I guess they are perfectly okay to leech off of them.
Personally, I suspect that there are only a very small handful of Nazis that are wealthy enough, either through grifting or inherited wealth, who can afford the lifestyle. The reason they loudly trumpet their lifestyle as much as possible (and conceal the means that they have that allows them to accomplish it) is so that the aspirational, poorer Nazis see it and assume that’s the natural state of the world and the only reason that THEY can’t afford it is because of the Jews/Blacks/Enemy, conspiring to destroy the white family!
Basically it works as a tool to stir up discontent against the target of the day.
@Diego Duarte
There’s a similar attitude in some ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. The men devote all day to studying the Torah and the women work but still are treated terribly and are often forced into arranged marriages. Because of this arrangement towns like Kiryas Yoel in New York are among the poorest in the country. Which still leaves the question of how Nazis who don’t work can afford to have their wives stay at home. Are they raking in money in some sort of Nazi Crowd Fund?
@Catalpa
That would make sense. There probably is a minority of wealthy people that can keep this up.
Or maybe the poorer Nazis are simply making it look like they have #tradwives to project an appearance of wealth.
@Naglfar and Catalpa
Oh no, I think you underestimate just how many Nazis and reactionaries are among the upper class.
I went to a private school and grew up around incredibly privileged people, so I’ve been in such circles before. And granted, this might be my country, but I’ve heard anecdotes from Americans which perfectly seem to mirror my experiences.
Education really makes no impact on whether a person is a Nazi or not. The worst sort of Nazism I’ve seen, and the most reactionary bullshit I’ve ever heard has been from such circles. Plenty of these people have unashamedly shared, spouted and supported straight up fascist ideas (such as forced stelirization for WoC and massacring protesters) right in front of me.
These sort of ideas make sense to them. And I highly suspect that these people are all for #TradWives because they can afford not only to have the misses at home, but also a couple of maids to take care of the cooking and cleaning (almost always WoC who are subject to discrimination and occassionally inhumane treatment).
These people were Nazi-adjacent looooong before the Alt Right stepped into the scene.
@Lainy
I know how you feel. I have 5 grandchildren, 3 of which are my genetic offspring. All three of those are racially mixed. The other two are black. And my great grandson is black. My sons took my line out of the “white race” and I am content with that.
I have nothing against white people. Some of my best friends are white. I am very white myself.
But I despise a racist. I have been loud spoken about that since I was a young teen in the early 60s. I was hoping that by now this evil nonsense would be mostly a regrettable memory of the past. It’s not. So now I have to be a loud spoken old lady.
I can do that.
————————-
As for staying at home and taking care of the kids, I did that until my youngest was in preschool, so I got my education and a profession a bit later in life. I could afford to. Most kids these days can’t. Most kids these days don’t want to. People should arrange such things as they are able and as it pleases them. If someone insists there is only one right way, well that is the call of the asshole. Ignore them.
@Diego Duarte
There definitely are wealthy fascists. However, it seems, at least in America, that the majority of Trump supporters and white supremacists (i.e. the ones who go to rallies) are not as affluent. Having a stay at home wife is really only an option for the very wealthy.
@Dalillama:
Re: ‘Drug War scares’ No kidding. Not only does the whole War on (Some) Drugs allow for a whole lot of differential policing which allows racist police departments to shake down poor black kids when the rich white kids are the more likely ones to actually be carrying anything illegal… but always remember that cannabis was explicitly called ‘marijuana’ in the U.S. because making it sound foreign and Mexican made it easier to stir up fear of rampaging mobs of Mexican drug lords crashing across the border.
And, of course, criminalizing the stuff made that a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy, though most of the imported cannabis probably always came from Canada rather than Mexico.
No, I fully believe that the majority of upper class people hold fascist and reactionary views.
But the nature of capitalism is such that the upper class makes up a minority of the population. Even if all upper class people were Nazis, they would still make up the minority of the Nazi base.
@Catalpa
Very true. And this is why most Nazis would be unable to afford it. Well, it’s another thing for them to blame on the Jews.
@Diego Duarte
This is why I’ve grown sympathetic to anarchism. I believe at this point that governments have their priorities in companies (since they can make money and hence get stuff done more easily because of it) and companies would lobby to make more of their dirty actions legal to make making money easier (or find loopholes as you’ve mentioned).
At this point sometimes I do genuinely want the world to end soon – I don’t think people should live in a very oppressive system, with not only chokingly toxic air but choking laws and philosophies that mentally imprison humans.
@Katamount
Media companies dislike change because it hurts their profits – for instance, why do they all seem to report positively on any copyright law that is more restrictive than in the past? Restrictive copyright law, which helps culture be used only for profit, helps media companies make a profit for what they cover. I could be bullshitting here, but media companies are almost always for-profit entities.
Change or dissent to them means that governments will view them suspiciously and decline to allow them to keep operating legitimately for the most part. It’s probably why CNN reports on North Korea always positively when physically in their borders – to give them a good image and indirectly turn a profit (they may be paid to cover the country’s affairs, I’m not sure).
I have filed a complaint. I didn’t request a response but I don’t expect them to act effectively either.
@Catalpa and Naglfar
Granted, a great number of the Nazi base are not among the affluent, but I feel like I should remind you that the majority of poor Whites actually voted for Clinton (I’m on my phone so I don’t have the article at hand).
The impression I get from that is that the majority of the Nazis are concentrated in the middle class, as opposed to working class Whites.
And it’s not just the conservatives. I’ve mentioned this before but I am an attorney that deals mostly with labor, corporate and immigration law. I personally deal with immigration procedures all the time.
In the exercise of my profession I regularly meet people from all over the world (Americans and Europeans in particular, especially the French). And I am telling you I’ve had to adopt a “no-politics” approach when engaging in small talk with American clients. Reason being that, most if not all Whites, even the liberals, tend to defend Trump.
To date I’ve had all but two liberal clients admit that they hate Trump’s childishness and demeanor, but point out that the economy is doing great. I’ve even had one outright say that he agrees with the concentration camps (and yes, he used the words “concentration camps” himself) because they need to enforce border control somehow.
And these were White middle class liberals. Imagine the views of actual middle class conservatives in these matters.
Oh lovely, another mix of misogyny and racism.
Pretty much. She can’t pretend it’s just guilt by association when the links are this obvious.
On another note, it’s frustrating that social pressures still lead to men’s careers being valued over women’s.
It cast a shadow over a talk I had with my boyfriend – I was afraid he was saying that his job was more important than mine. Which he didn’t mean to do, or at least he wasn’t conscious of it. Thing is, if he gets an academic position (if if IF) he’d be likely to move and I’m theoretically more mobile as a writer and English tutor. But I also might like a more settled position in the next few years (e.g. as a CEGEP teacher in Montreal, but there are similar jobs in other places). My main goal is to be a fiction writer, but I need something else to support myself. And I like teaching. I’m good at teaching.
So yeah, even if he does get a position elsewhere and I do move with him eventually, I wouldn’t be happy being a “stay at home” anything. Children are another matter (children are difficult).
…I was going to joke, a bit morbidly, that my cousin plans to have kids so she’ll carry on the banner of the “white race” but she’s the wrong kind of white (Jewish) for the literal nazi wannabees. Alas for them (not).
…
Oh yeah. Dinner planned at my parents’ house on Sunday. First time they’ll meet the aforementioned boyfriend. The aforementioned cousin and her boyfriend will be there too, so less pressure, but I’m still nervous.
Ah, white slavery. That takes me back.
Except when I was a kid, that was an awkward name the adults used to reference human trafficking, because they didn’t know about the term “human trafficking” and slavery was intrinsically linked to black people and history in.their minds so they felt they needed a qualifier to make it clear they weren’t talking about the antebellum.south. Literally, we’d be warned to be careful if we went to Europe, because every day tourists are kidnapped and sold into “white slavery”. The context was always clear they were talking about human trafficking, even if the term was incredibly tone deaf. Once they had a better term, they learned to use it (I say “learned” because when you’re talking about someone over 50 who has used a certain term their whole lives, even the best will slip up.at times until they get used to the new term).
I never once heard it used in reference to…well, this shit. The adults who used that term around me as a kid would be thinking “wtf” to these assholes.
@Diego Duarte
I’m surprised, but I feel like I shouldn’t be. It’s frustrating when I see supposed liberals defending him, but far too many in the center try to play “reasonable centrist” and think that that means defending fascists sometimes. Pro tip for any liberals (or anyone, really): if you find yourself defending fascism, you’re doing something very wrong.
God I’m ashamed of Trump. I could never defend him in any context.
@Diego Duarte:
Well, yes, just watching the run-up and infighting for the Democratic nomination gives you the firm impression that there are a lot of people who identify as Democrats (and thus probably consider themselves ‘liberal’, not that this means much in the U.S. political system) who don’t seem to have any real problem with what Trump is doing aside from the fact that it’s not their team that’s doing it. The ‘centrists’ who are just as bought by the current system as the Republicans, and who figure they can get away with ignoring any actual left wing because who else are the disadvantaged folks going to vote for?
They’ve been able to saunter casually into Nazi-adjacent views while pretending to be the moderate ones because the Republican party took the Overton Window off the edge of the cliff with them when they jumped.
In this case, it was largely a matter of time. He was not given time for a deep dive and was asked to write about an upcoming event. He had no prior familiarity with the topic and already had a full slate of work.
Essentially it’s the result of a long period of mismanagement and bad leadership decisions that have resulted in a thin, overworked staff unable to meet their own standards.
It’s all over the industry right now–you can see it in any field of journalism that requires someone with some expertise on a topic–science and religion, for example, are both woefully badly reported-on.
@Naglfar:
I remember being in the southern U.S. in about 2017 on business, and getting asked by someone (who had already demonstrated that he was NOT a Trump fan) what people in Canada thought of Justin Trudeau.
My response was ‘About what a lot of people thought of Obama a year or two in… he talks a good game, but he’s not the game changer we thought we were voting for.’
Really, Obama and both Clintons were the kind of centrists being complained about here, and Biden is worse than Obama was.
It’s scary to think that the most left-leaning Democratic president in my lifetime was probably the evangelical Southern Baptist: Jimmy Carter. That should give people pause. (Okay, strictly speaking Lyndon B. Johnson was president when I was born, so he likely qualifies.)
@Jenora Feuer
For sure. Obama, for all his imperfections, did a few things right (and would have done more right if he hadn’t had a Republican congress against him). Obama also was able to rally voters in a way Biden can’t. I have yet to meet many people who are excited about Biden, mostly just people who think he’s an improvement over Trump but don’t like him much as a candidate. I’ll vote for Biden if he gets the nomination because he’s better than Trump, but he’s definitely not my top choice. Too much malarkey.
It’s troubling. These poisonous ideologies are slipping ever so quietly into the mainstream. The BBS is unquestioning while letting a white supremacist enabler babble about tradition. American media treats Alt-Right monsters (like Richard Spencer) as if they were normal people worthy of attention. Soon CBS will likely have an hilarious sitcom about a family of nazis just trying to make their way in a suburb. I hate this timeline.
@Naglfar:
Obama definitely talked a good game and inspired people, which in some ways made his actual record (especially during his first couple of years when he had a compliant Congress) even more disappointing.
And as for Biden, ‘an improvement over Trump’ is a bar so low that an earthworm could get over it, and several seem to have done so. I mean, you have Bloomberg as well. Because that’s exactly what American politics needs, another multi-billionaire with no intentions of making any positive changes to the system which let him skim off that much money.