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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36219 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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So...more people have dropped Kanye West in the wake of his "anti-semitic comments" (it took more digging than it should have to actually see what he said - a few articles just leave it incredibly vague which is...problematic). In this case Anna Wintour/Vogue and CAA, both of which are hugely influential, even though CAA only repped him for touring.

To tie it into another recent trend: the Floyd family is allegedly thinking of suing him for suggesting Floyd died of fentanyl though I don't know on what grounds? I guess people have been emboldened by the Alex Jones verdict?

A while ago a rapper called DaBaby went through a similar thing where he refused to apologize until the consequences got too serious - I personally was interested in how far someone could take it. But the outcome proved that "cancel culture" isn't really a paper tiger that only works when people play along because they're too spineless. Nope, it'll work regardless.

This is an interesting test case because Kanye is basically as close to "uncancellable" as a person in a hugely PR-focused industry like music (and fashion) gets. He has a bunch of rabid fans who will buy his music or gear and he's already so vastly rich and famous that he'll likely always make waves. And , according to him, he has an ironclad contract with Adidas

Presumably he knew all this when he - once again - decided to say something he almost certainly knew would bring controversy. But, unlike the "slavery was a choice" or all of the other shit he did, this one is actually leading to the most serious consequences we've seen yet. Ironically for saying Jews cancel people who don't play by the agenda.

Recall also that Nick Cannon eventually was forced to apologize not for racist, Scientology-esque pseudoscience about white people, but specifically for annoying Jews.

It's a shame we don't have a way to see what the median person thinks about this (it's all just elite shunning and op-eds right now) because my first impression when I saw that happen to Cannon is "this is bad for everyone. White people are seeing this - they're basically seeing that anti-white racism is fine and the only whites you don't get to be racist towards are Jews". I wonder how black people will feel if this is what kills Kanye and not...y'know, going against the strongest racial partisan preference in the country.

"slavery was a choice"

What he said was basically paraphrasing Bob Marley's Redemption Song (which was basically lifted from a speech by Marcus Garvey).

“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.”

-Marcus Garvey

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds.

-Bob Marley

Kanye was saying that 400 years of slavery is a choice, not that chattel slavery was. 400 years leads up to today. He's saying that people are mental slaves today, and you can choose to set your mind free.

Recall also that Nick Cannon eventually was forced to apologize not for racist, Scientology-esque pseudoscience about white people, but specifically for annoying Jews.

Nick and Kanye are basically parroting a lot of Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam, Black Hebrew Israelites, and similar black supremacists. Did Malcom X have some controversial statements about the Jews that were in a similar vein?

Anyways, I think the root of this is that black people moving up in society start 'noticing' how many Jews there are at the top. When half of Hollywood and the media are Jewish, half the white people in Ivy league institutions are Jewish, and Jews only make up ~2% of the population, then it seems logical to a black person to wonder if maybe it isn't the 'white man' keeping them down, since whites are under-represented in the media, in Hollywood, in academia, etc.

And with how connected we all are, now black people (and gentile whites) can peer much further than before. Even the poorest, most oppressed black person in the US can pull out their phone (lol) and quickly discover that half the famous white people he's ever heard of are Jewish.

It's only going to get worse. This is an extremely popular and pervasive topic in the black community. Throughout 2020/21 there were a few organizations that ran into turmoil as the black activists tried pushing out Jews. I think the Woman's March was one. I think the attempts to censor Kanye, assuming he doesn't back down, will lead to more support for him in the black community. This could end up like when Morgan Wallen (country singer) got cancelled for dropping an n-bomb, and then became even more popular. I guarantee most black people hearing Kanye talk about Jews will think every institutional action taken against him is proof he's right.

Kanye was saying that 400 years of slavery is a choice, not that chattel slavery was. 400 years leads up to today. He's saying that people are mental slaves today, and you can choose to set your mind free.

Your steelman captures half of his point I think:

“[T]o make myself clear. Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will. My point is for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side means that we were mentally enslaved.”

“[T]he reason why I brought up the 400 years point is because we can’t be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even the statement was an example of free thought. It was just an idea. [O]nce again I am being attacked for presenting new ideas.” [I've seen this mocked but I never knew someone actually said this lol]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/entertainment/kanye-west-slavery-choice-trnd

It seems to me that he actually is saying that black people hanging around as slaves was a result of "mental enslavement." And that this enslavement continues today.

Which seems like something that is either true in a banal sense (if you are facing a larger and more technologically advanced civilization that will brutalize you for trying to escape are you "mentally enslaved" in any way similar to what we face today? Or are you just enslaved*) or just outright stupid (said technologically superior foe literally publicly mangling you if you try to leave makes it not a choice)

It wouldn't surprise me if Kanye actually had the quotes you're thinking of in mind and then jumbled it together with a bunch of whatever's flying in his head and gave us...this. The man is talented but he's an ultracrepidarian narcissist who seems to want to be recognized as an iconoclast who goes around saying insightful things but doesn't want to put in the work, so he settles for saying provocative things and then sees the negative attention as weirdly validating.

Anyways, I think the root of this is that black people moving up in society start 'noticing' how many Jews there are at the top.

I mean, this isn't specific to black people. Everyone notices this.

I think the problem for black people is the radfem problem: Radfems were allowed to say all sorts of crazy shit about men by their side. Then transwomen came along. And they just...continued to say crazy shit about men (why would they change when their target hasn't?) but then had to learn very fast that not all men are equal.

Black people are given somewhat of a pass for saying crazy things about white people and have gotten accustomed to it (some of the things they say about whites are similarly deranged or weird). They look around and see a group of affluent whites and naturally start applying the same logic. This is, of course, a no-go. Not only is antisemitism a third rail but, if we're being cynical, there are benefits to claiming to be an oppressed minority (even when affluent) and so people are naturally defensive of someone trying to strip them of their cloak of victimhood in a country where it's currency.

Beyond that: can we just say that they picked it up from around them? Islam and Christianity both have had problems with Judaism, to say nothing of general antisemitism floating around and black people aren't an island.

* The gulf in tech between Rome and the leaders of the Servile Wars was infinitesimal in comparison yet no slave revolt succeeded and, in fact, Romans never suffered another one after Spartacus. A simple explanation is that it's just hard to pull off, especially without external help.

A simple explanation is that it's just hard to pull off, especially without external help.

A much simpler explanation, that applies to both the Romans and the Americas, is that slavery really isn't that bad. Like, don't get me wrong here, it's worse than anything most people experience in their entire lives, it's clearly a net negative and a moral wrong, but it's rarely constant brutality. It wasn't typically Auschwitz, and Primo Levi tells us that even in Auschwitz there were good days and there were bad days.

Selections from WPA Writer's Project collection of Slave Narratives from surviving former slaves

[All SIC, the writers at the time transcribed to the best of their ability the Negro dialect of the time, which was an interesting choice. I'm not sure if it were me I wouldn't write "Hongry" as "Hungry" even if "Hongry" is how she said it. I feel like the choice reflects some degree of condescension, but was looked on as preserving an American folkway. Swings and roundabouts.]

Yes sir, I was ‘bout fourteen years old when President Lincoln set us all free in 1863. The war was still goin’ on and I’m tellin’ you right when I say that my folks and friends round me did not regard freedom as a unmixed blessin’. We didn’t know where to go or what to do, and so we stayed right where we was, and there wasn’t much difference to our livin’, ‘cause we had always had a plenty to eat and wear. I ‘member my mammy tellin’ me that food was gittin’ scarce, and any black folks beginnin’ to scratch for themselves would suffer, if they take their foot in their hand and ramble ‘bout the land lak a wolf. -- Daniel Waring, emancipated in South Carolina

You ain’t gwine to believe dat de slaves on our plantation didn’t stop workin’ for old marster, even when they was told dat they was free. Us didn’t want no more freedom than us was gittin’ on our plantation already. Us knowed too well dat us was well took care of, wid a plenty of vittles to eat and tight log and board houses to live in. De slaves, where I lived, knowed after de war dat they had abundance of dat somethin’ called freedom, what they could not eat, wear, and sleep in. Yes, sir, they soon found out dat freedom ain’t nothin’, ‘less you is got somethin’ to live on and a place to call home. Dis livin’ on liberty is lak young folks livin’ on love after they gits married. It just don’t work. No, sir, it las’ so long and not a bit longer. Don’t tell me! It sho’ don’t hold good when you has to work, or when you gits hongry. You knows dat poor white folks and niggers has got to work to live, regardless of liberty, love, and all them things. --- Ezra Adams, emancipated in South Carolina

I ‘lieve they ought to have gived us somethin’ when we was freed, but they turned us out to graze or starve. Most of the white people turned the Negroes slam loose. We stayed a year with missis and then she married and her husband had his own workers and told us to git out. We worked for twenty and thirty cents a day then, and I fin’ly got a place with Dr. L. J. Conroe. But after the war the Negro had a hard struggle, ‘cause he was turned loose jus’ like he came into the world and no education or ‘sperience. -- Tom Holland, 97, emancipated in Texas

Or consider one of my personal American heroes: Frederick Douglass. From his autobiography Keeping in mind that Douglass was an extraordinary man, look at the slack he was able to find in the slave system:

Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.

The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return. I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge...

I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men. “You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?” These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free.

Now compare Marx in Kapital, describing industrial conditions in England (the wealthiest nation in the world contemporary to Douglass' narrative):

“A clause,” says Mr. Otley, manager of a wall-paper factory in the Borough, “which allowed work between, say 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. would suit us (!) very well, but the factory hours, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., are not suitable. Our machine is always stopped for dinner. (What generosity!) ...

The report of the Commission opines with naïveté that the fear of some “leading firms” of losing time, i.e., the time for appropriating the labour of others, and thence losing profit is not a sufficient reason for allowing children under 13, and young persons under 18, working 12 to 16 hours per day, to lose their dinner, nor for giving it to them as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine, soap to wool, oil to the wheel – as merely auxiliary material to the instruments of labour, during the process of production itself.

Douglass tells us clearly that there existed white children who were jealous of his material condition (bread available!). Certainly the slack available in his workday would have been enviable to thousands of children in Birmingham or London factories, tied to machines 12 hours a day. What hope did the average slave have upon escape? Odds are they wouldn't even be able to achieve the station of those laborers who worked 16 hour days in a factory!

Douglass tells us further:

A slave who would work during the holidays was considered by our masters as scarcely deserving them. He was regarded as one who rejected the favor of his master. It was deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he was regarded as lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the necessary means, during the year, to get whisky enough to last him through Christmas. From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves. These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for these, the slave would be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide the slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of those conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go forth in their midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling earthquake. The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon the down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it.

Slavery was not a perpetual torture, it was a mode of life, sometimes good and sometimes bad, with sufficient slack in it that a person could "get ahead" to a certain extent. There were happy slaves and sad slaves, lucky slaves and unlucky slaves, hard working slaves and improvident slaves. They had goals, piddling goals but goals nonetheless, they had families and connections, they had food and shelter and clothing.

But there was a ceiling over it all. Mental slavery was the use of goals like "obtain master's favor for lighter work and more bread" and "get enough money put by here and there to get drunk at Christmas" to substitute for goals like "obtain freedom and independence of means" (many slaves did put by enough to purchase their own freedom) and "protect my family."

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