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Yawn. It’s really tiresome to see that even purportedly “anti-woke” people have allowed their minds to be colonized by the nakedly anti-white framing that pins the blame solely on “privileged white” progressives for spreading and enforcing the things about modern society that they don’t like.
Well, as someone who has spent the entirety of my adult life in thoroughly progressive social spheres - everything from explicit socialist activist spaces in college, to the world of musical theatre and “queer performance art” - I can tell you from direct personal experience that the people who have been the most vindictive, the most ready to pounce at the slightest hint of wrongthink, the ones who have done the most to sully my personal reputation and those of others far less off-the-progressive-reservation than I am, have been uniformly non-white.
The three most egregious examples - the people who will be first against the wall if I’m ever magically granted dictatorial power - were, respectively, half-Filipino-half-black, fully black, and half-Puerto-Rican-half-white. These three individuals (and they’re far from alone) have significantly damaged the lives of a number of people whom I personally know, and they’ve successfully terrified a great many more people into staying in-line with the approved opinions. That’s the reality: most white progressives whose careers or social standing are wrapped up with their ability to stay ideologically up-to-date are terrified of stepping out of line, in a way that this simply far less true of most non-white individuals in the same milieu. Whites are far more cancellable than non-whites. Able to draw on a far smaller pool of mercy and benefit of the doubt, because they lack any sort of shield of “marginalized identity” on which they can fall back when questioned. Why do you think so many of them are socially “transitioning” to “non-binary” and other sorts of low-investment boutique identities? I’ve seen this process play out a number of times among people who, again, I personally know. If you’re a white guy in these spaces, you are literally vulnerable at all times and have to watch what you say at all moments, because you’re inherently suspect. So, you grow your hair out, maybe wear sort of ambiguous clothing, and declare yourself non-binary to give yourself some modicum of breathing room. Yes, many non-white progressives are doing the same, and I do not want to overstate the level of relative immunity from cancellation they enjoy, but the bar is undeniably set higher for them than it is for similarly situated whites. “White progressives” are not the ones primarily driving the dynamics you’re pointing at, and I think it’s a distraction tactic, or maybe part of a personal vendetta you’re prosecuting, to act as if they are.
I’m assuming you’re not very familiar with my posting history and my views, if you believe that I’m currently an “ally” to progressives, or that I’m moved by your accusations that progressives “divide people by race”. It’s an easy misunderstanding based on my (true) statement that I’ve spent my entire adult life in heavily progressive social spaces; however, a quick perusal of my posting history in this forum should help you understand where I’m coming from. My worldview at this time is very, very far from progressive, and I’m far more guilty of “stoking racial division” than any of the progressives, white or otherwise, with whom you’ve incorrectly lumped me in.
It's not though. You just to think it is because "as someone who has spent the entirety of my adult life in thoroughly progressive social spheres - everything from explicit socialist activist spaces in college, to the world of musical theatre and “queer performance art” you don't seem to grasp just how far your worldview already is from the median American. If the distance between the worldviews of yourself and your compatriots in the world of musical theatre is measured in 100s of feet the distance between you and the median republican who chuckles at the Babylon Bee is measured in nautical miles.
From outside those thoroughly progressive social spheres spotting the differences between progressivism and whatever you call your particular offshoot is like one of those bar room games where you have to spot the mole on the pin-up girl. They might not be exactly the same picture, but they are the same picture.
Likewise things like...
...are why "Stormfront or SJW" is a meme. I'm half tempted to link your rant to just such a board, but I value this place too highly to risk crossing those streams.
I urge you to stop and reflect upon the ideological choices you've made that lead you to arrive at that thought.
I think your rants would be better served by naming specific ways that reactionaries are progressive, instead of saying 'REAL americans can just tell'.
Let's try comparing the stereotypical reactionary's views to the conservative and progressive, and see where the clusters are. I don't think race is the most representative issue here, as progressive 'we must uplift the poor and oppressed' shades into the ethnic identity of minorities, creating a similarity that's mostly superficial in the US, but much deeper in e.g. third world left-wing nationalism. Picking a random issue:
"Thoughts on abortion?"
Progressive: "A woman has a right to choose and shouldn't be burdened with children if she doesn't want them. Free individuals should experience the joy of sex with whoever they want to without risking pregnancy."
Conservative: "A child's right to life is paramount, and killing them is wrong. That is that. A woman raising a child with her is beautiful, and is God's plan if she becomes pregnant. Sex belongs in marriage and is for reproduction. Abortion is the culmination of progressive disregard for morality itself."
Reactionaries are divided on abortion. The most common perspective is (slightly caricatured) :
"Abortion is satanic, it is the duty of women to raise children for her family and for her society. The fact a woman would even consider killing her child shows how progressives despise nature and God. Women should marry and have children, not have a series of sterile dalliances with random men."
Another, significantly less common, perspective is (less caricatured than you'd think):
"Abortion is good if the child is low IQ/degenerate/black. It's a crime if the child is white / smart. Only white and healthy women should have children, they should many children, and they should be raised in a traditional family".
You're asking me to believe that, because the last perspective and the first one are both pro-abortion in some cases, progressives and reactionaries are the same. But they couldn't be more different! One supports sex for pleasure and human connection, disposing of fetuses if the woman wants to - the other wants to abort potential low-iq and black people. The latter three support traditional values, the family, patriarchy, a moral force for having children, and oppose casual sex. The first is the opposite.
This what my series of effort posts on "Inferential Distance" been all about but sure, lets break it down real quick. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are 5 examples that spring immediately to mind.
First off because it applies directly to the topic at hand there is the question, where does "Identity" reside? Progressives believe that it resides with the identified. Conservatives believe that it resides with the identifier. In progressive spaces "identifying as [X]" carries a certain sort of weight. @Hoffmeister25 identifies as "right wing" and this being a largely progressive space we are expected to respect that on some level, same deal with biological males identifying as "Women" and vice versa. Coming from a conservative space these sorts of appeals seem nonsensical as these are not things one "identifies as", they just are. Identities are little more than heuristics for use by the identifier. See the whole bit in Scott's The Categories were Made for Man about whether whales should in the fishery department's jurisdiction or the agricultural department's. This is why the "I identify as an attack helicopter" meme had such legs. It perfectly encapsulates just how absurd most of the progressive rhetoric surrounding identity (sexual, political, racial or otherwise) sounds to the average conservative.
Second, is the question of internal vs external loci of control or where does the responsibility for an act ultimately reside? Conservatives believe that it resides within the individual whereas progressives believe that it is something external. That the actions of the individual are simply reactions to the conditions presented. Hence progressive' preference for some flavor of determinism or other "structural x-ism" as explanations for [current thing]. "Society is to blame" that sort of thing.
Which brings us straight into the third point. The question of whether social structures are imposed upon the indivual from the top down, or do grow organically from the ground up. Progressives maintain that most, if not all, social structures are imposed upon the from the top down. Conservatives maintain that that most, if not all, social structures grew organically from the choices made by individuals at each level and were never "imposed" at all.
While we're on the topic, Number 4 is the question of what is mankind's "default state"? War or Peace? Tyranny or Freedom? Progressives maintain that it is latter while Conservatives maintain that it is former. The thing that ultimately makes most progressives "progressive" is that they sincerely believe in capital-P Progress. That all that is needed for progress/good to triumph is for the barriers that are currently standing in its' way to be torn down. Meanwhile the conservative view is exactly what Chesterton was trying to explain when he made his fence analogy. Progressives see anti-discrimination laws as barriers to progress (who's progress is immaterial). Meanwhile conservatives look at the last two centuries of US history and conclude that this fence was built for a damn food reason.
Finally there is the question of Mysticism vs Materialism, more specifically (and particularly relevant to discussions of abortion)is whether the moral value/weight of a human life is something metaphysical, or if it is something material? Conservatives almost inevitably come down on the Metaphysical side of the debate typically quoting either the Bible or the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. In contrast progressives tend to maintain that it is something material, or at the very least something that can be readily measured and/or quantified. The specific quality in question might be intelligence, it might be strength, it might be membership in a particular social, political, or ethnic group, it could even be expected QUALYs according to some hypothetical super intelligence. The point is that it's there and can measured. The reason these debates tend to drag on endlessly is that progressive's by their nature want to make the debate about object level cases, "what if the baby has some horrible congenital disease?" "what if the baby is black?" "what if the baby grows up to be Hitler?" That sort of thing. Meanwhile from the conservative's view these sorts of questions only serve to demonstrate just how thoroughly progressives have missed the point. Life is life and has a value in to and of itself. End of conversation.
These 5 questions might not seem all that meaningful or relevant at a glance, but I think whether a person comes down on one side or the other has substantial downstream effects on patterns of thought and behavior even when the question itself is not being consciously considered. Maybe it's just a product of having a foot in both world but when I compare how the people I interact with in explicitly conservative/right-wing spaces seem to talk and think to the people I interact with here the differences really are quite stark.
In conclusion, I developed my theory that the Alt-Right is best understood as an offshoot of the progressive left after a couple of run-ins with the Takismag crew during the 2012 election when I was still serving as a local GOP Rep. My reasoning was/is straight forward, pretty much every alt-righter I've ever interacted with has A) come from an extremely progressive/left-wing background, and B) taken the "progressive" side in at least 3 of the above 5 questions if they didn't go a full 5/5.
Ultimately it all comes back to the first question in my list, my thesis is that there is a category to which both intersectional progressives and the alt-right belong, and whether they appreciate being in the same category together has no bearing on whether that category is useful or "cleaves reality at the joints". I believe that it is, and that it does.
edit: spelling/formatting.
Yep, there deserves to be a top-level post (perhaps there have been several already) but the alt-right definitely steals from the worldview of the progressives.
Ie there's this big hegemonic cultural force that is imposing a progressive view of race and inhibiting the success of whites. Gee, that sounds an awful lot like structural racism a la critical theory.
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