So Here's What Gabe Was Talking About

I read Gabe's tweet, where he said something like, "all of a sudden so many suspicions of what's behind the anti-immigration push are suddenly confirmed."

Like many of you, I was annoyed at Gabe. I am frequently annoyed at Gabe. If I didn't like him so much, I'd hate Gabe.

But here's what Gabe was reacting to. I just got a facefull of this crap myself:

The word "#cuckservative" is being used as a banner-of-convenience by a conglomeration of several types of people, who range from what I'd call mere nativists to actual, hard-core, Nazi-flag-in-their-twitter profile white supremacists.

Now, some using this term "#cuckservative" assure me that not all of the people using the term are white supremacists. I believe them, on general heuristic principle: I mean, collecting under any flag will be a whole host of different people, with a wide range of motives, some of them unobjectionable, some of them erroneous but not what you'd call condemnable, and some simply odious.

The claims range from "we shouldn't give in to any claims of racism" to "racism is actually a positive and natural social good."

So I'm not going to say that everyone using the term "#cuckservative" is a white supremacist. In fact, when I first saw it yesterday, I assumed it was a reference to the McConnell/Boehner wing of corporate cuckolds.

In fact, many people might think it means just that -- and for them, it does. If that's what you think it means, that's what it means, for you.

However, it's an objective fact that many using the term, and stinging social media like race-warring hornets, are indeed out and proud white supremacists, or at least the sorts of person who casually uses the word "muds" (as in "I'm not going to stand by and see my country polluted by muds" -- that sort of thing) in the belief that this is a socially-acceptable shorthand for "anyone who isn't a Scots-Irish-or-Germanic white person."

So what Gabe was complaining about, so you know the context, is that these people have not only come out of the closets, but they have come out of the closets in force -- that is, they are really swarming Twitter.

I don't know how many there are -- someone told me he'd blocked a bunch -- but they are, as, ahem, racially-conscious folk tend to be, highly energetic about their views.

Now, again, I don't want to claim that this is all people using the term, nor do I want to claim that the fact that the immigration-restrictionist camp has some actual out-and-proud Nazi-flag-displaying white supremacists among them, discredits that political idea. (Though, gotta admit, I feel a lot dirtier about being an immigration-restrictionist now than I did an hour ago.)

The truth is, there are always racists in the movement, or, not even in the movement, actually, as they tend to be outside of the movement, but there are racists adjacent to the movement, always hoping and pushing the conservative movement to become what they think it really should be, a champion of the White Race and Protector of Peoples of European Descent, or whatever they're calling it this week.

This no more discredits immigration-restrictionism than it does conservatism or Republicanism as a whole; there are no liberals, for example, who would claim that the Democrat party or liberalism is discredited by the loathsome people adjacent to that party or that movement -- Maoists, unrepentant bombers, terrorists, Black Panther cop killers, communists, etc.

They would say "they are fringe; they're not us."

And I say: "Yes, that's what I say too, and yet you don't seem to credit me when I say it."

One part of politics -- the stupidest part of politics, that part most favored by our insipid, soap-commercial media "news" -- consists of forever attempting to discredit an idea or policy not by an actual intellectual, evidentiary case made against that idea or policy, but of simple smear-tactic guilty-by-association nonsense. "Dylann Roof maybe was sort of conservative, so Reagan was wrong!"

Of course we do this on the right, too. Bill Ayers does not prove that socialism is wrong. (It does prove that Obama is a hard radical, and that murder is considered chic among the high sectors of the moronic "intellectual" left.)

It's a stupid form of argumentation, it's base, and it's ineffably tribal, and I don't like when it's done to me, and while I do it to others, I do it far less frequently now, and... well, at least I feel bad about it.

One can never stop sinning, I don't think (at least my more religious correspondents tell me so). I think the most one can do is to limit one's transgressions, and make a sort of penance, whether of the traditionally spiritual sort of even a non-traditionally spiritual sort (I'm attempting a sort of penance-by-honesty-and-good-behavior, a secular notion but who knows, maybe there's something to it; we'll see. (I know that Saves me not at all.))

So I won't beat up on these guys too much, nor brand the less-racist ones of them with the sins of the more-racist ones.

And I hope, meanwhile, that no one will be too quick to brand me with the sins of the Dude With the Nazi Flag, or the Other Dude With The Mixed Nazi and Confederate Flags.

And I hope Gabe won't think I'm a racist.

And, while we're on that subject, I hope you'll take my word for it and give Gabe a break on that Tweet: I swear to you upon a stack of... what does an agnostic swear upon? ... a stack of Declaration of Independences that man, when you get a sudden barrage of improved-cylinder 10-guage white supremacist shot right in your face, you kind of notice it, and you kind of have to say something about it.

Like I'm doing now.

All I can say is:

1, Holy Shit,

2, I did not know there were so many white supremacists (though, I have to say, of course, there were only about six buzzing at my face, but it's more I've ever seen at the same time),

and 3, while I have of course known there were racists in, or adjacent to, the conservative movement forever, and have really not denied this (I tend to instead point out, for the sake of context, all those xenophobic bitter clingers in the Democrat Party that so bothered our Lord King Barack Obama in his Glorious Ascent), I am right now thinking that there are more white supremacists than I previously acknowledged, and am currently up in the air as to whether to dismiss this solely as a fringe-of-the-fringe phenomenon.

So that's what Gabe was reacting to. As I commented on Twitter: I think this is the ugliest development I've seen online.

It came out of nowhere and it came all at once, and when it came, there was no ignoring it, and certainly there was no denying it.

I was saying: It's as if, on the heels of last month's raacial shooting, someone gave the GO code: Now we show our hand.

What makes it really annoying is that the Social Race Warriors are using many tactics of the Social Justice Warriors -- swarming, attempting to pressure by dogpiling, argument-by-insult, etc.

It's like a Reeces Peanut Butter cup of awfulness. "You got your Social Justice Warrior mob tactics in my Racial Purity!"

It really is something. Expect to see some coverage of this by the liberal press in the coming days. They have made their presence known, for good or for ill.*

* I allow this may be "for good" because I've come to believe that debates, even ones involving ugly things, should not be covered up, but should actually be had out; so while some may fret that these people will discredit us, I look on the bright side: All things are made cleaner and healthier with sunlight.

A covert white supremacy movement is not, it seems to me, obviously better than an overt one.

Truth is better than falsehood, and a lie unconfronted is a lie encouraged to spread.

Corrected: I'm told that I'm simply wrong in my hunch about the Louisiana shooter being race-motivated so I've deleted a suggestion that he was so motivated.

posted by Ace at 05:26 PM

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