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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@Jenora Feuer
That applies to Yang as well. Yang’s plan appears to be “here’s $1000 a month so you don’t notice that I don’t know what I’m doing.” It’s telling that the biggest fans of Yang seem to mostly be cryptocurrency people and libertarians.
Well, my baby sister is definitely not a tradwife BECAUSE SHE JUST PASSED HER BOARDS AND IS NOW A REAL VET!
This calls for another round of happy Snoopy dancing.
@Victorious Parasol
Congratulations to your sister!
Thank you, Naglfar!
@ Vicky P
Bit late to the party; but congratulations!!!!
You so deserve this; and I am so happy for you!
@Alan
Thank you! I’m proud of my sister. She truly loves taking care of animals.
@Vicky:
That’s so awesome!
The BBC keeps being lambasted as being “too liberal”, having a “right wing bias” etc so they will do half baked research like this as a piss poor way to defend against their critics.
I see nothing wrong with men/women who prefer a traditional split of gender roles, but it’s disappointing if they let shit on people who choose differently without challenge.
Also am I the only one who gets annoyed when people point out “most women and work because they have to”? This maybe true but there are some of us who work even if we didn’t have to because financial independence is important to us?
I like being able to provide for myself and (if I’d had one) my family and I don’t see anything wrong with that.
The woman profiled here may well be overly arrogant, but there are plenty of women using the Tradwife label who aren’t Nazis, and lots of vocal Stay-At-Home Moms who don’t use the tradwife label and are the target of constant misogyny by “feminist men.”
@Steph
This is really what pisses me off about the whole situation. As someone who is not white, the fact it’s linked to a neo-Nazi movement is especially concerning, as white people can easily see the appeal of a traditional life in the midst of a chaotic world (I’ve seen people who are jaded with modern times because of technology and relationships) and absorb its tenets, eventually coming after someone like me as a source of their problems.
@Steph
My opinion is that I have no problem with women staying at home (or people who aren’t women, for that matter) but I do take issue with when they want to impose it on others.
I agree that it’s frustrating because nobody says the same about men. It seems to be this trope of “pity the poor women, they really all want to be homemakers, they’re just forced to work” and that is sexist.
@Jenora Feuer and Naglfar
Pretty much. If history proves anything it is that liberals will always certainly side with fascists, before ever siding with progressives or socialists. This is why the “Vote Blue no matter who” crowd, are the same clowns who would rather have Trump again, rather than Warren or Sanders.
This is why MLK dedicated a whole ass letter to criticizing the “white moderate”, why Edmund Burke said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, and why Desmond Tutu said “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”.
As bad as Nazis and other fascists can be, it is always the liberals and their cowardly, complicit silence and consent that gives the former the ability to get away with everything. And when they do stand up against someone, it is the people trying to fight the Nazis or make a difference (think Pelosi and the entire Democrat party against AOC and the rest of “The Squad”).
@Steph:
Absolutely. I mean, most humans need to work to survive, but at least some of us are doing things we love because we want to.
I’m gonna filk this “saving Europe from Extinction” image.
The photography is good, though the cropping makes her body a bit weird. It’s quite a sexy picture. Probably not taken by a Nazi.
And the message: ok, extinction is bad. So, clearly, immigration from Africa is a good thing. And you can’t really beat a loving marriage for integrating people into local culture.
Finally: nice that the meme maker remembered to label which person represents which continent. Otherwise I’d guess the dude is from Paris, hooking up with a recent immigrant from Tripoli.
@Steph – Yes, agreed. Personally, I’d want outside employment even if I could afford not to. I don’t have the focus to write more than 5 hours a day (usually it’s more like 1-2) and I’d get very, very bored cleaning all the time.
If I had kids, of course, I’d have to spend lot of time taking care of them, but I don’t think it would even be good for them if I were around all the time. They’d need to socialize outside the family unit too.
@Victorious Parasol – Congratulations for her and best wishes for a good career!
@Diego Duarte
This is the part that’s hard to explain to centrists. They really don’t like hearing that they’re Nazi enablers. Of course, I understand why they don’t like it, but I’m not sure how else to tell them.
@numerobis
The thing about that picture is it doesn’t look like the woman is upset. No, it looks like she’s enjoying herself based on her facial expression. Clearly, immigration is good.
It’s a bit odd that the tweet has so many contradictory tags. Pro-choice, pro-life, antinatalist, pronatalist, etc. I’m guessing it’s SEO but it still looks strange.
@nathantyree
There actually was a 1990 British sitcom called Heil Honey I’m Home! about Hitler and Eva Braun living in a city next door to a Jewish family. Because it was obviously tasteless and horrible, it was cancelled after one episode. I really hope that was the last Nazi sitcom, but in the current situation it might not be.
Associating yourself with Nazis isn’t any better than actually being a Nazi. This point has already been addressed in David’s post.
What do you mean by ‘vocal?’ Because there’s a difference in just openly being a SAHM and going on about how it’s the only acceptable life style. And not that men who call themselves feminist aren’t ever misogynistic, but I’d still like to know what you mean here, or see some examples.
When I was a kid, my dad would pontificate to us that our stay-at-home mom was equal to him and in no way lesser because she had no job like daddy…then, the moment there was any real difference of opinion, my dad would bark “listen, b —h, I go to work and being home all this money while you sit on your ass at home like a lump, I’ll be the one who makes the decisions” and watch my normally fierce mother, who wasn’t afraid of God or the devil, crumple with shame. And I decided there was no way in Hell is let any man–or now that I’m older and realize I’m bi (or pan?), any lover of any gender–have that level of control over me.
Women work only cuz they have to, my ass.
@Jenora Feuer
Hell, President Lex Luthor was an improvement over Trump. He was genuinely smart, was actually a successful businessman, won the popular vote without a existing part apparatus behind him, turned around a bad economy, helped save the universe during the Imperiex Crisis, and he owned his baldness.
I mean, yeah, there was all that corruption and secret alliances with tyrant alien deities, selling his infant daughter to an artificial intelligence from the future, nearly dooming the planet when he framed the world’s greatest hero for murder when an Asteroid of Doom was headed Earth’s way, and ultimately shooting himself up with super-steroids, having a psychotic break, and going on a power-armored rampage.
But overall…
I’d still take him over Trump.
@Allandrel
I agree. Lex Luthor is undeniably a better bet than Trump, despite being a supervillain.
I’ve been saying in conversations lately that an electric toaster would be a better President than Trump, and I stand by that assessment as well. Toasters are useful to have around and help with food preparation. Sure, toasters can burn you, but they’re unlikely to start WWIII and have never engaged in genocide.
DANCE PARTY!!
https://imgur.com/VIVDgQM
I dunno, I see a lot of this in the BDSM scene in D/s dynamics.
I always kinda liked the idea of either being a househusband myself or having a stay-at-home partner, but I’m currently applying to law schools and the person I’m currently seeing is a psychiatric nurse, so it seems unlikely that would actually happen.
On the issue of centrist enablers:
When I’m being nuanced, how I like to put it is this: It usually feels like not choosing a side is essentially an abstention. After all, it’s possible that any particular time for taking a side may be one of those uncommon occasions where both sides are definitely wrong, or one of those rare situations where both sides are definitely right because it’s some ungodly clusterbleep not of their own making. If you don’t know and don’t have any particular responsibility or investment, then you should stay out of that, probably? And if it’s a more common situation where there is a definite right and a definite wrong, at least not getting involved probably won’t make anything worse? Better not stick your neck out unless you know exactly what you’re doing, and really, who has time to learn all the things which don’t concern you directly?
Well, not if the wrong involves oppression. Silence empowers the oppressor. Not as much as active participation, but it empowers them all the same. Silence does nothing at all for the oppressed, good or bad. Your choices are 1 vote for wrong, 1 vote for right, or ½ vote for wrong. There’s no vote of 0 for both. That means that if enough people try to “abstain”, wrong wins, and then there’s fewer available votes for you if they come for you next.
Of course there are people for whom taking sides is too dangerous, and ½ vote for wrong is the only reasonable choice on their part. I wouldn’t blame them, and nor should anyone else. That only gives more responsibility to all those who *could* vote for right, regardless of whether they ultimately choose to do so.