Don't Be Knee-Capped by the Red-Caps
Thursday, April 07, 2016
Robert Tracinski of The Federalist argues
that Donald Trump's core of support is white supremacist and I, who
have noted
Trump's similarity to George Wallace before, have to agree. In
particular, I found the following point about the self-proclaimed
"alt-right" incisive:
The alt-right originated by looking at the left's caricature of the right as racists and pro-white tribalists and saying, in effect: sure, we'll be that.I well understand the temptation to "just play the part" when confronted with bigotry, but this always risks playing into the hands of the bigot. As far as leftists attempting to bully everyone into submission by screaming, "Racist!" goes, the following course of action is ordinarily appropriate: (1) Offer a rational, well-motivated defense of one's position; (2) accept that certain disingenuous people will pretend it's racism no matter what one said; and (3) let it go. First, you will have reached any rational mind that heard you and second, you will not be helping your accuser pretend he said anything worth considering. Tracinski is right to counsel giving Trump and his supporters a wide moral and political berth.
For example, a recent apologia for the alt-right makes a big deal of quoting liberal social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's condescending description of Republican voters as authoritarians motivated by "in-group loyalty," who are therefore suspicious of the people in other groups. This is an old smear. Democrats desperately need Republicans to be small-minded racists, because that's how the party of slavery and segregation has managed to slough off its own disreputable history and push the stigma of it onto their political opponents.
The alt-right is enabling this fraud. They accept the left's intellectual framework and eagerly take on the role of the villain that the left assigned to us. Then they have the effrontery to present themselves as big rebels against the left. What a joke.
...
The alt-right isn't part of the intellectual traditions of the American right, nor is it an alternative to anything. It's just the same old white-sheet set, repackaged with red "Make America Great Again" golf caps. They're serving as ignorant tools of the left, and they should be exposed as such.
-- CAV
6 comments:
I don't know much about the alt right, but I get the impression that they want to apply the fact of biological differences between the sexes and races to politics.
Such an approach will no doubt attract some nuts, but the science is increasingly on the side of innate differences.
I think what animates Trump supporters is opposition to immigration. It's easy to see that it's resulting in dramatic cultural changes.
jB
SJ and JB,
Regarding race and IQ -- and setting aside the fact that even a genius with rotten philosophical premises is effectively reduced to stupidity in many respects -- I have already spoken about the allegation that racial differences explain cultural differences.
Regarding immigration allegedly changing our culture, Robert Tracinski pretty much eviscerates that notion, too, not that I haven't also spoken about it, for example here.
Gus
Yo, Gus, I think the Tracinski link should point here.
Thanks, Snedcat.
JB,
You can stop wasting your time writing further comments here. You've been here numerous times (and under other aliases) and merely repeated your racialists beliefs, regardless of my rebuttals.
SF,
I'm done with you, too. You say you know nothing about the alt right, and then give me a reading assignment from a racist blog featuring numerous posts about it, with said assignment on an issue I've already discussed. In any event, I'll take the opportunity to note that, even if the IQ of other races were generally lower, that would be irrelevant to this discussion.
I welcome actual debate here; but I will not permit commenters to use the comments section here as their own blogging platform.
Gus
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