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queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

Just call them racist. It’s a racist tantrum. That’s it.

Stop talking about them in their terms.

FunderPants ,

Yup this is a racist tantrum, “anti woke” is just the new coat of paint. It isn’t “anti woke” that’s getting more common, it’s racism, xenophobia, and hate in general.

JoBo ,

If you’d read the article, you’d know that it is not all it is.

If you have, in fact, read the article, read it again. To the end. Maybe take in some of its links too.

This is not ‘just’ a racist tantrum. It is a billionaire-funded fascist takeover. Lazily dismissing them won’t work. People need to start turning up to school board meetings to outnumber these fucking psychopaths. Even if no one is paying them to do it.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

I didn’t mean “that’s it” as if it’s merely a racist tantrum. In fact, calling it a tantrum like the article does infantilizes the problem - as if they’re harmless babies and we can ignore their crying. I didn’t mean to imply it’s “just” a racist tantrum. Rather, what I meant is that we need to call racism racism and be precise with language, not lazily dismiss them as “anti-woke” as if that means anything.

JoBo , (edited )

I take your point about language. It is important to say “racist” when you mean “racist”.

But they’re also targeting LGBTQ+ people and women, and any other group they can use to distract attention from the fact that billionaires are robbing us blind lest they lose one tiny drop of power.

So, in this case, “anti-woke” is a perfectly reasonable term to use. Not least because if we want to destroy these fuckers, it will take every single one of us making common cause, not fighting about who gets top billing.

This is about racism but it is about racism because it is about power. Power protecting itself by throwing everyone else under the bus. “Look! Over there! The poor people have all your money!”

We cannot defeat them by retreating into identity siloes. Obviously, we all have different specific battles to fight but they’re all the same war. Against fascism. We do need a language that acknowledges that.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

Fair. Connecting this specific spate of racism to the broader fascist trend of smearing everyone who isn’t an affluent straight white male christian (i.e. part of the in-group) is good politics, but there’s already a word for that: reactionary

I refuse to let them define themselves.

JoBo ,

Yes, that is a fair point and one I’d missed a bit from your original post. I appreciated the scare quotes in the article but you’re not wrong.

That said, I don’t know if you’re exactly right either. “Woke” was co-opted by the fash. I don’t think we should just let them have it. A good starting point is for every interlocutor to stop them and ask them to define the word every time they use it. The word is not the problem.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

They call themselves anti-woke; by calling them anti-woke you are letting them have it. Practically giving it to them, in fact.

JoBo ,

You’re only letting them have it if you also let them define it. They are anti-woke. Woke (aware of structural injustice) is not a bad thing to be. 90% of the population has every reason to be woke because 90% of the population is subject to structural injustice. But far too many have been distracted by the idea that some other fucked-over group has it better than them, or gains consolation from not being quite at the bottom of the pile.

It’s a neat trick but so easy to expose. And one of the simplest ways to expose it is to make them spell out what they think it means.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

You pulled that percentage out of your ass. 😏

White-passing Americans (white or white-mixed) make up 71% of the country. 35% are white men. Based on the most common numbers I’m seeing, 30% are straight and cis. 80% of America is Christian (fug it’s that high???), so that gives us roughly 22% straight white cis christian males.

That huge mass of people is predisposed to being anti-woke because they stand to lose the most from anti-racism and anti-sexism and queer acceptance and religious tolerance etc. Structural injustice isn’t just a historical accident, it was a deliberate creation by the ruling class through the usage of genocide and slavery and apartheid to ensure that a huge minority of the population would be too comfortable and to loyal to their rulers to ever revolt and would stand up for their privileges against the mobs of the havenots.

Call them anti-woke if you want. They’re also settlers, reactionaries, and Amerikkkan Nazis

JoBo , (edited )

90% of the population are either too poor not to be suffering structural injustice, or are relatively well off but still too Black, too queer, too female,. Class and race cannot be separated. If we ignore the people who are struggling just because they’re blaming the wrong people for their struggles, fascism will win.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

Do you think a working class Israeli faces the same injustices as a working class Palestinian? A working class Jew in 1935 Germany the same as a working class Christian?

You’re the one trying to separate class and race. Don’t think of America like a country, think of it like an occupation or a regime.

We gotta destroy whiteness. You can’t win by just making whitey woke.

JoBo ,

Do you think a working class Israeli faces the same injustices as a working class Palestinian? A working class Jew in 1935 Germany the same as a working class Christian?

No, of course I don’t. But a working class Israeli has a hell of a lot more in common with a working class Palestinian than they do with the Israeli ruling class. And they may not get much publicity (and a lot of jail time) but quite a lot of Israelis recognise that; I know because I have worked with some of them.

Oppression Olympics is a dismal fucking sport. Divide and fucking rule from the bottom up. Completely self-defeating. It is structural and if you refuse to expose the structures, you’ll never change a thing.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

This isn’t oppression olympics, it’s anti-imperialist struggle! Divide and conquer already happened when the ruling class elevated a portion of the working class to use as a bludgeon to oppress the rest of the working class. It’s too late to coddle the white mob and beg them to join us in the struggle for liberation - we have to take away their whiteness, render them as workers just like the rest of us.

The woke philosophers have only interpreted structural oppression in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.

JoBo ,

The concept of whiteness needs to go. But white people are no more a homogeneous blob of identity than Black people, or LGBT people, or Jewish people (some of whom are white). I’ll oppose those who turn to racism and bigotry as a solution to their problems. As I do Louis Farrakhan for his anti-semitism, homophobia, misogyny and general cunty conservatism. Being oppressed is not an excuse to do some oppressing of your own. But it’s really fucking easy to see how people fall into that trap. And really fucking racist to believe that Black people can’t be authoritarian fuckwits, or that Jewish people can’t oppose Israel, or that white people can’t be oppressed by poverty.

Steven Avery and Brendan Darcy were fucked over because they are poor, not protected because they are white. Black people are fucked over with impunity because the colour of their skin is a marker of powerlessness. Women and LGBT people are fucked over because that which is feminine is despised.

This is a really useful example of what I am talking about. The woman was mistreated because she was Black. She got (a form of) justice because her family is rich.

She later woke in a hospital bed with no memory of what had happened and minus her clothes. Now 26, the woman said she believed the officers had treated her in the way they did because she was black. According to the woman, when she came round in hospital she spoke to the police officer at her bedside, who said she was very well spoken and asked where she was born. When the woman replied: “Hampstead”, the officer radioed a colleague and was overheard saying: “I think we made a mistake…”

As soon as she opened her mouth … “I think we made a mistake.”

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

The concept of whiteness needs to go. But white people are no more a homogeneous blob of identity than Black people, or LGBT people, or Jewish people (some of whom are white).

I completely agree, and in fact, abhor whiteness because it seeks to turn all so-called “white” people who accept it into such a homogeneous blob of identity. That’s why it was invented!

What I’m trying to say is that the white identity, itself, has to be abolished. As long as whiteness exists it will be used by the US/NATO empire to enforce its own hegemonic rule over its imperial subjects in the Global South and on subjects in its internal colonies.

It’s important to note that whiteness is a lot more complicated than just skin color. Did you know white women that married Japanese men were sent to internment camps? Their fair skin did not protect them, because by race mixing they lost the privilege of being “white”.

… I have no idea where I’m going with this. I just think white people being woke isn’t enough. White people need reject whiteness, not just be made aware of it.

JoBo ,

We don’t disagree. This has been a great discussion, thank you.

queermunist ,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

Likewise!

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