Why is white supremacy prevalent?

[trenton]

As of 2018, there are about 600 white supremacist organizations in the United States.  Despite being a clearly foolish ideology it continued to be enforced after the civil war, especially in southern states.  White supremacist groups were responsible for lynchings with about 70% of the victims being black. 

A notable example of violence comes from the Wilmington insurrection of 1898.  White supremacist democrats killed as many as 400 blacks, forcing them to flee to swaps as the biracial Republican party was forced out of office by him point.  I am not clear as to when the democrats and republicans switched sides on systemic racism.  Systemic racism was originally used by democrats to maintain power.  Currently there is voter suppression by republicans in Texas to prevent black communities from accessing polling stations.

There are still statues standing which honor the men who participated in the violence I described.  Josephus Daniels was not taken down until 2020 after the murder of Floyd.  I'm not sure if there are some white nationalists who are inspired by how these men are depicted.

White supremacy is a persistent and sneaky ideology which can survive in many forms.  A common tactic is to appeal to impoverished whites in order to pass legislation that would economically benefit whites at the expense of blacks.  This is systemic racism and it can cause blacks to live in polluted environments, making them disproportionately affected by sicknesses caused by factories and air pollution.  It is a nicer face that more people find appealing, and not everyone realizes that it is racism because a narrow definition of racism only includes people who use the n-word.

What else do you think causes white supremacy to be common and persistent?  It seems that it can be caused by white poverty, so what would happen if the United States addressed its homelessness crisis?  Maybe a lack of understanding history allows white supremacy to continue into the 21st century as history is being white washed by those claiming to protect it for the benefit of white supremacy.  I think the main reason is that politicians depend on any means necessary to keep their power and white supremacy is effective at achieving this goal.  This results in an absence of political will to correct out history books that tell us "the relationship between a slave and his master was like that of a father and son."

[Preety_India]

It's increasing in the US.

Only one answer - ignorance.

 

[Leo Gura]

41 minutes ago, trenton said:

Despite being a clearly foolish ideology

It's not as clear as you assume.

[Preety_India]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It's not as clear as you assume.

It's the most brutal, violent, cruel and pathetic ignorant thing that ever existed in the history of humanity and continues to exist

 

[aurum]

50 minutes ago, trenton said:

What else do you think causes white supremacy to be common and persistent? 

I think the answer is relatively obvious. If you're white, white supremacy is great! You get political power, slave labor, economic gain, etc. At least for awhile. Until consciousness rises, the truth wins out and all that backfires.

[DocWatts]

A large portion of the Root Causes behind this resurgence of White Nationalism can be traced to the demographic and economic anxiety of a dominant group whose privileged status has been steadily chipped away at over the last half century.

The implicit motivation behind contemporary Right Wing populism stems in large part from whites no longer being shielded from the types of economic deprivation and social exclusion that have been prevalent for communities of color throughout most of American History.

Combine a declining standard of living in the US with whites no longer monopolizing all of the economic opportunity within the country, and the result is an undercurrent of alienation and anger, as a subset of white Americans feel that thier country has somehow drifted (or was stolen) away from them.

  "This isn't supposed to be happening to me. I'm white!", is a decent summation of this mindset.

[Milos Uzelac]

2 hours ago, trenton said:

White supremacy is a persistent and sneaky ideology which can survive in many forms.  A common tactic is to appeal to impoverished whites in order to pass legislation that would economically benefit whites at the expense of blacks.

You got an example of one of its crucial aspects right here. This is merely one of the functions of ideology of any kind to provide a diluted lense or worldview of a group as to justify and explain why they are in the right and why their survival interests should come first and trump others. 

One of the forms of this particular kind of ideology that should be mentioned that addresses the question you posed. It's deeply connected in my view to the notion of colonialism, civilization and imperialism carried in recent history mostly by people of white European countries or descent on which for example in North America the settler colonial projects (which replaces almost completely the domestic native population with a settler one on a given territory) were justified upon and based upon. It is a force that still shapes most of the power relationships in the Western countries and North America regarding politics, economics and culture. 

As to the white supremacists that you provide the example for I think in this instance it has to do with a form of reactionary class politics by a still dominant and mostly privileged group in the majority of your society that uses racial differences and grounding their in the aforementioned historical fairy tales, notions of civilizatory supremacy and the myth of a single race being the main carriers and founders of the civilization you have in the U.S. while others were just beneficiaries of this progress made by this one group. It also has to do with a lot in-group and out-group biases studied in social psychology which is generally a very strong force in shaping and forming boundaries around relationships between different ethnicities which can cause if stoked by a certain event a serious fomenting of antagonism and stereotypes about the evils and injustices carried out by the other group towards your own while being blind to your own groups role and responsibilities in souring these relationships by their own selfish misdeeds. 

Also I think a broader question should be posed what all forms of white supremacy exist and manifest in context of histories and relationships between different groups in different countries and not just to focus on the U.S example between blacks and whites.

An example of white supremacy could be the relationship between mostly European Jews and Israelis and Palestinians. For example look the language they use to describe Palestinian resistance fighters of all sorts and to justify the indiscriminate killings and their own terrorism of the entire Palestinian population - terrorists - as to denote them as some kind of savages and barbarians (a derogatory term used by the colonists, civilization bastions and empires to describe native populations or foreigners from a different cultural and ethnic background in the past) - now repurposed broadly to target some people of Islamic background and more concretely any form of Palestinian resistance against Israeli settler colonialism on Palestinian land or occupation. 

Notice also the same term terrorism and terrorist was derogatorily and stereotypically used to broadly target people of Islamic descent or religious Muslims to justify the Islamophobia of mostly white Christian evangelicals in America, the New Atheist Movement and in other mostly white European countries such as France, GB, Hungary, Poland Italy etc. in order to reaffirm the Christian religion practiced mostly in those countries by people of white European descent as civilizatory superior to Islam and Muslims which are barbarous and inferior by comparision or by atheists, again mostly white, who see specifically Islam as the worst  and dangerous of all religions that should fought against the most. This is also a form of maintenance of cultural White supremacy in action. 

Take also the status of the Roma in Eurpoean countries who are mostly segregated by the rest of the white population in those countries by systemic poverty and almost no opportunity to better their conditions. 

Also notice how also sensory disgust (for example the smell) by mostly whites in those countries directed towards people of a minority or different ethnic descent plays a role in reinforcing the lines between wealth and poverty, civilization and savagery, cultural and natural, virtue and sin, strength and weakness, reason and instinct, good and evil, superior and inferior etc. over generalising them, stereotyping and imagining some in some instances and maintains the white supremacy mostly materially and illusiory in ones mind and a part of one's identity. 

"Look at how 'my group' of people whom I share some similar characteristics in terms of physical appearance, language etc. is doing better than this other group, so I truly must better than the people of this other group by virtue of thinking and feeling I belong in my group and therefore since my group is better than this other group that means I am also better than all of the people in that group as well".

White supremacy as you correctly pointed out is a very sneaky ideology, feeling and thought pattern turn into identity that manifests in variety of phenomenona in societies and forms from economic to cultural. 

For example Chris Hedges claims that white supremacy today is an undivorcable part and parcel of contemporary Western imperialism towards the rest of the globe in general and that its continued existence cannot be divorced from those underlying conditions existing in some regions struck by it. 

Also I would argue there is difference between liberal and conservative white supremacy in your own country that is very sneaky and also not acknowledged by a lot of people simply because the contradictions in which it manifests are very unpleasant to the stated beliefs, feelings and identity of the group which claims and feels to be fighting against the explicitness of first one. 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Milos Uzelac

[trenton]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

It's not as clear as you assume.

@Leo Gura Please expand on this.  I would like to understand why people find this appealing.

Maybe it is because the undoing of systemic racism feels like the oppression of whites.  If whites feel like they are being oppressed, then they might frame an anti-white bias as a white genocide.  For example, if somebody believes in the conspiracy theories of white genocide in Africa, then movements like BLM end up being viewed as black supremacists.  I still have no idea why white supremacists blame these things on Jews though.  Apparently, they think Jews are a different race of humans who are responsible for giving blacks civil rights.

Anyway, the reason white supremacy seems obviously toxic is because of the terrorist attacks it inspires based off of conspiracy theories.  It is worth noticing that entire nations like Nazi Germany fell for similar conspiracy theories.  I guess it wasn't obvious to them, but why?

[Leo Gura]

@trenton Maybe you should check my blog sometime.

[trenton]

@Leo Gura I checked your blog and I found the Nazi Bible.  I watched the video and it said that the book does not explain why these people hate the Jews.  It assumes that you are already in agreement.  It looks like Jews are just scapegoat who never actually did anything to them.  This might be similar to men getting angry when they can't get a relationship with women at which point they blame women for being sluts.  These prejudices are not really true but they make us angry when we treat them like they are.  This turns us into victims.

You also mentioned that the lack of a life purpose has the default position of a toxic life purpose in which people can derive joy from hurting others.  This reminds me a little bit of the religious argument against nihilism because the lack of any sense of purpose can become self destructive and depressing.   I did get some good insights from the life purpose course though.

I can't really guess why Jews are the scapegoat and not somebody else.  Supremacists hate Jews, Muslims, and any race other than white.  If they think of other religions as other races, then they pretty much hate all of humanity anyway.  It means they also hate atheists and anybody from a different nation.  Maybe a good answer for why they hate Jews is because they hate everybody and will turn anyone into a scapegoat to blame everything on.  In that case they really would derive joy from hurting others.

[Opo]

@trenton Watch Imperium if you already didn't. 

I think you'll like it. 

[snowyowl]

1 hour ago, trenton said:

I can't really guess why Jews are the scapegoat and not somebody else. 

A partial answer to this question is historical. An explanation I heard (but I forget the reference) was, in the middle ages Christians in some countries had a taboo against 'usury' somewhat similar to Muslims, so they couldn't lend money for interest. Jews didn't have this restriction, also were banned from many professions, university education and government jobs, so some became money lenders and later on progressed to banking. That made them unpopular among people owed them money. Also some religious hatred against Jews because the New Testament apparently blames them for Jesus's trial and crucifixion, but most likely this is the authors trying to curry favour with the Romans by shifting blame away from Pontius Pilate.

At least these are some reasons for Jewish scapegoating I've come across. 

[Terell Kirby]

The real question is how do we defeat this toxic ideology? It's so embedded in all of our important institutions (especially in the U.S.)..I guess implementing critical race theory in the education system is the first attempt to address it...But it's already receiving  enormous backlash from far-right, center-right groups.

[Milos Uzelac]

39 minutes ago, snowyowl said:

A partial answer to this question is historical. An explanation I heard (but I forget the reference) was, in the middle ages Christians in some countries had a taboo against 'usury' somewhat similar to Muslims, so they couldn't lend money for interest. Jews didn't have this restriction, also were banned from many professions, university education and government jobs, so some became money lenders and later on progressed to banking. That made them unpopular among people owed them money. Also some religious hatred against Jews because the New Testament apparently blames them for Jesus's trial and crucifixion, but most likely this is the authors trying to curry favour with the Romans by shifting blame away from Pontius Pilate.

At least these are some reasons for Jewish scapegoating I've come across. 

Don't also forget that some Christians in the Middle Ages created a conspiracy theory regarding the blood libel, the descration of hosts and poisoning of wells performed by Jews (a rehash of what Romans accused Christians for in late antiquity now repurposed by the Christian themselves to be used against the Jews) and how they allegadly in this blood libel conspiracy against the Christians they murdered Christian babies and children in order to perform blood libel on them by bleeding them dry and using their blood in some cultish religious rituals. 

Wikipedia:

"Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic canard which falsely accuses Jews of murdering Christian children (or other gentiles) in order to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals. Historically, echoing very old myths of secret cultic practices in many prehistoric societies, the claim as it is leveled against Jews was rarely attested to in antiquity but it was frequently attached to early communities of Christians in the Roman Empire, reemerging as a Christian accusation against Jews in the medieval period. This libel—alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration—became a major theme of the persecution of Jews in Europe from that period to the present day."

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, trenton said:

I can't really guess why Jews are the scapegoat and not somebody else. 

It's just a set of memes they picked up from the Social Matrix and suit their ego.

[Harlen Kelly]

@trenton Largely because of demographic change.

[SASAM]

@Leo Gura

On 22/07/2021 at 9:10 AM, Leo Gura said:

It's not as clear as you assume.

Make a video about it then. Or is that the one topic you refuse to touch? 

[trenton]

On 7/22/2021 at 6:48 PM, Terell Kirby said:

The real question is how do we defeat this toxic ideology? It's so embedded in all of our important institutions (especially in the U.S.)..I guess implementing critical race theory in the education system is the first attempt to address it...But it's already receiving  enormous backlash from far-right, center-right groups.

@Terell Kirby it is disappointing, but critical race theory is constantly being straw manned to the point that it is hard to have a coherent discussion with the right about this important theory.

It has nothing to do with an attack on your moral character.  It is not the fault of white children that the pollution of factories disproportionately affects blacks as a consequence of hidden biases in the legal system.  It is no longer made explicit in the law that the goal is to hurt blacks and this makes denial that much more persistent.  Without explicit racism, many assume there is no racism, but in fact our definition of racism is too narrow and it does not allow for the possibility of racism by outcome, regardless of your personal biases.

[Surfingthewave]

@trenton

On 22/07/2021 at 1:32 PM, trenton said:

What else do you think causes white supremacy to be common and persistent?  

Fear of difference and perpetual 'othering'.

Also many white people have continued to deny the impact of racism, colonialism and slavery within history so disillusioned young people aren't able to challenge and uproot white supremacy once and for all. 

There's also the massive part Religion plays which is inexplicably linked. 

[Opo]

6 hours ago, Surfingthewave said:

@trentonThere's also the massive part Religion plays which is inexplicably linked. 

How so?