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How a white nationalist leader wants to go mainstream with his racist movement
How a white nationalist leader wants to go mainstream with his racist movement
With the election of Donald Trump, racist groups of all stripes are hoping their message will be more widely accepted. But will they actually go mainstream? The NewsHour's P.J. Tobia sits down with Richard Spencer, a leader of the so-called "alt-right" -- a mix of white nationalism, neo-Nazi beliefs and hard-edged populism -- who has energized a tiny group of passionate followers.
pbs.org




The more I hear people like Richard Spencer speak, the more it behooves good and decent people to stop tolerating intolerance.
The more I hear Richard Spencer speak the more I want to laugh. His arguments are so flimsy it's impossible to take seriously. He's not even a good orator. It's like a teenage boy playing Hitler to his skinhead buddies in his mom's basement. Sorry neo-nazis, gotta bring more game then that.
Unfortunately, people are less swayed by arguments than they are by memes. And Spencer has been very good at using memes to further his own ends. This is a man who realizes that if you say something often enough, people will believe it.
helps that he has entire networks under his control, thanks to /pol/, reddit, etc, who quickly rush to share and spread memes and use socks to appear as though they're concerned moms worried about muslims and black people around their kids.
one of those socks claimed to be a mom from texas. she even had a crowdfunding site setup, and was making over $1k a month just sitting on twitter and spouting racism and writings short blogs being racist. she had white nationalist symbols in her bio, and was explicit about being a white nationalist ("american nationalist") in her bio.
she was real good at pretending she was concerned with raising her son to be proud of his heritage and that being a nationalist just meant wanting a good world for her kids. kept it up for quite awhile until she slipped and called me a cuck, started using standard 8ch phrasing. when i pointed out that they sounded less like a mom from texas and more like a /pol/ resident, they immediately blocked me and scrubbed the entire convo.
sounds like a good scam tbh. if anyone deserves to be swindled it's nazis. it's just hilarious that they do it to each other.
I've always thought if I could kill my conscience, I'd be great at manipulating them for money. But always runs the risk of enabling them.
yeah, that's the danger. i don't think i'd have an issue with conscience when it came to people who wanted to kill me, but i can't imagine making their voices even slightly louder by mouthing their bullshit.
I think that's one of the things that disturbs me most. The idea of satirical arguments or false starters to make a point that they're ridiculous seems to have been forgotten, in some instances. And now people will use memes as this way to try and project some clever counterpoint, without resorting to the conventional responses and appropriate evidence.
It totally makes sense from a cultural standpoint; that quick, soundbite way of making a clever retort and feeling good about it. But it's so damaging to genuine intellectual conversations.
Honestly, PBS NewsHour is setting the golden standard here for how outlets need to talk about the mainstreaming of white nationalism. Their interviewer even calls him out to his face when he tries to smugly dismiss the hate speech put out by his supporters.
If anyone is, like me, having trouble viewing the embedded video, here's a link to the clip on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwhnPUzLZZg
Until liberals get their heads out of their asses and realize that nazism isn't just a "disagreement" and that "rational debate" or whatever isn't going to stop it we are fucked. We don't have a large, unified, strong left in this country. It's very small and it's usually focused on issues with small communities. It's up to liberals, with their broad political infrastructure, to do something about this. But they won't. So we're screwed.
You watch. They'll either raise their hands and say they can't do anything or they'll literally side with the fascists when someone does do something. It happens every single time there's a skirmish between fascists and communities resisting their bullshit. Liberals always whine and complain about "nonviolence," blaming the victim.
So go ahead and look at this dude and realize he's the future, because liberals won't lift a finger to stop him.
it doesn't help that every "liberal" who does stand up and propose things to do gets lumped in with center-left or other liberals who want to "wait and see", and meanwhile the majority of the people complaining about liberals that I see on Twitter pride themselves for saying they're democratic socialist but don't do anything but daily screen caps and dunks on whatever new thing amanda marcotte or lena dunham had to say.
might get somewhere if we stopped whining about each other and decided we agree on 99% of politics, instead of putting a constant megaphone up for whatever the 1% we disagree on is (and that 1%, 90% of the time, is someone intentionally or otherwise misinterpreting what someone said so they could get a hot take with some retweets and validation about "all these dumb liberals ha ha go me").
shit, some of the takes i see accusing a liberal of wanting to work with nazis, the liberal was talking about the LEFT coming together as one, not the left and nazis. meanwhile, the right gets over whatever disagreements they have with each other and work hard at flooding propaganda and rushing overnight bills through houses. we can't do that because we're too busy arguing about sanders or someone's hot take about sanders or if you're capitalist scum for supporting $12 min wage instead of $15 or if you're a neoconservative because you don't think it's a good idea to let Syria burn while mocking a UN ambassador for having the gall to say "don't kill kids" when she represents the US who has killed kids.
the left isn't going to come together until we stop throwing labels at each other, redefining those labels to fit whoever we want to hate for that day, and deciding to treat each other like shit over complete fucking non-issues or minor issues that could be resolved with adult conversation.
but i'll come back to social media and find i've been called a liberal, neoliberal, center-right dem, all by people where our only disagreement on anything politically is that I felt a no-fly zone was a better idea than letting Russia help Assad drop bombs on civilians.
just...it needs to stop. and we all have to take fucking responsibility instead of pushing our own shit-slinging off on everyone else like we're golden angels. I had the courage to apologize to people, admit my mistakes, and ask that we step together as a coalition to fight the right, and I've lost a couple friends over it because I had the gall to think campaigning more in wisconsin wouldn't have been enough for Hillary to win.
I'm not a demsoc. Demsocs are liberals. I disagree with most of what liberals believe.
Anyway, it's liberals who whine about action taken against fascists. That's the problem. When something is actually done, liberals do their absolute best to blame the leftists involved, even when the leftists were the ones attacked. Liberalism, as always, sides with fascism. It's not about setting aside our differences, it's about liberals finally cutting the shit and realizing fascism needs to be treated like it was in World War 2. This isn't a fucking game and it isn't a twitter debate.
We're really just fucked.
good luck fighting fascism. you'll need it, if you're going to call anyone who doesn't meet your purity tests a nazi-lover. that'll be a lot of people to kill.
Unfortunately, I can't accept him as a white leader. Can I send him back to the shop for a refund? He's certainly not as white as I am, and I don't think that's good enough. He's not white enough. This will require a splinter 'alt alt right' group, FYI. Also, all that business with the 'hail' this and that. Who on earth does that anymore? Unless you're praying a rosary, no, dude. Hail a taxi.
I'd like to know who this mysterious white civilization is. What is their language? What are their customs and religion?
Me too! History Channel doc, now!