> It’s called “accelerationism,” and it rests on the idea that Western governments are irreparably corrupt. As a result, the best thing white supremacists can do is accelerate their demise by sowing chaos and creating political tension. Accelerationist ideas have been cited in mass shooters’ manifestos — explicitly, in the case of the New Zealand killer — and are frequently referenced in white supremacist web forums and chat rooms.
I don't think it is. As a member of an ethnic and religious minority, I keep a close eye on white supremacist and neo-nazi groups (it's easy these days, they're all on Telegram) and they talk about accelerationism in exactly that context.
> Do you not think that there's a case to be made that white supremacy has found a voice in certain parts of the internet?
> If you do agree, how would someone go about discussing how to tackle it without being dismissed as woke?
I find it hard to address these questions, because I do not know what the person who uses the phrase "white supremacist" means. To me, it's hardly more than a slur, like the word fascist or, to some people, communist; so imagine my confusion if you asked me whether I thought fascists have found a voice in certain parts of the internet. Merriam-Webster's dictionary offers two definitions of white supremacy, of which the second — if the Internet Archive is to be trusted — was added only in 2020. The first, traditional, definition, which I share, says that it is "the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races". The second, recently added, definition says (and you can clearly hear the political background in which it was added), "the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races".
I have not, personally, seen or corresponded with a person who would profess to be a white supremacist in the first sense; so to me, they are as exotic as flat earthers. It is hard for me to believe that they need any more significant tackling than the Jihadis, or any other violent whackos (and only when they are violent, mind) — and you do not hear the media and the twittersphere constantly taking the names of those other groups of whackos in vain. So, to answer your question, if there arises a terrorist group of militant white supremacists, then yes, it would need tackling; but I am sure that in that case both the danger will be seen as clear and present, and the language will be not of shaming and moral outrage, but of concrete measures of law enforcement.
> group of fascist white supremacists who fantasize about violently exterminating their perceived enemies
Ummm, what? so people that support the President are all fascist white supremacists? Is that really where we're at in this country? What about the sizable number of blacks/latinos/and asians that support him, are they white supremacists too?
"white supremacist" and "racist", two terms that have been watered down so much that they've effectively lost all meaning.
> The "alt-right" is mostly a boogieman for talking heads.
No, it's not. The alt-right uses anonymous web boards like this one (but not HN to my knowledge) to coordinate and celebrate mass shootings that are directly admitted to be race-focused and white-supremacist-led. (Edit: The alt-right does use HN to spread hate and their "ideology", but I have not seen direct specific calls to violence here)
> Groups labeled "white-supremacist" rarely even contain a large number of white people.
I don't see how this is relevant at all. Being white has nothing to do with being a white supremacist. There are lots of non-white white-supremacists in the world. You're using logical fallacies like whataboutism and appeals to false authority instead of debating anything of substance.
The idea is to destabilize society by accelerating disruptive societal change.
At the far extremes, this looks like mass shootings or bombings with manifestos attached.
On the right, the theory is that a white ethnostate will surely emerge to bring order if the country is thrown into chaos along racial lines.
On the left, it looks very much the same, except what will surely emerge is an egalitarian utopia once those white fascists are out of the picture.
In practice, a lot of these ideas successfully filter into the mainstream because they're being pushed by propaganda networks that seek to damage western democracy.
Importantly, if the propaganda can convince otherwise well meaning people to subtly ingrain "white male == bad" into the language and attitudes, that benefits accelerationists.
White supremacists want you to say that white people are the problem. It legitimizes radical ideas like "replacement theory".
It's also why things like the Rittenhouse trial are so volatile. If he's acquitted, one side will further radicalize. If he's convicted, the other side will further radicalize.
Even if you honestly believe that white males are the source of all the world's problems, labeling it as a white male problem will produce further radicalized white males.
>This vague term actually encompasses a range of people on the extreme right who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of forms of conservatism that embrace implicit or explicit racism or white supremacy.
Unless you're of the opinion that "racism" and "white supremacy" are synonymous, the ADL does not define them as the same.
>So no, we are taking about the same poorly defined term.
To be clear, the "alt right" isn't white nationalist, it is, however, a white nationalist recruiting tool. Sort of like how you don't just start out as a random person and then the next day you become Jihadi Jane. You're slowly radicalized. The alt right to full-on white supremacist pipeline is the same way.
You start off interested in self help, so you read 12 rules for life; then get caught up in Peterson's weird ideas about western culture; then pretty soon you're seeing not just his youtube lectures, but other lectures about western culture; and then videos about the decline of white/western culture; and then you're watching Richard Spencer; then you shoot up a church.
Now absolutely, granted, not everyone follows the entire path, very few people end up radicalized, but while I'll absolutely agree with you that Peterson isn't a white supremacist, he's absolutely a useful idiot for them.
But again, let's stick to people who have been accused of being "White Supremacists" since you're the one using the term alt-right, not Facebook. Which innocent people are getting accidentally confused for "white supremacists" specifically?
There are communists who believe in accelerationism as much as there are white supremacists who believe in it. Basically "destabilize the current status quo to provoke an outright war, and then we win that war and take over".
> White supremacists -as in people who believe most of the same thing as actual literal nazis, are by no means rare these days
The conflation of white supremacism and naziism is pretty much entirely political maneuvering. They believe very different things about the state, forms of government, gay people, culture, land use and many other things. Not to mention that only a small number of people termed white supremacists actually are (it conflates believing in racial differences (which are often not just white>everything) with believing in racial segregation with believing that the "white" ethnic group will form a better society),
> some people got exposed as promoting white nationalism but then they were called white supremacists in all the reporting
Is the difference enough to warrant a distinction? Merriam Webster doesn’t bother to make one.
The definition of white supremacist is quite clear:
> “supporting the belief that white people constitute a superior race, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups.”
There’s nothing that necessitates actively claiming the belief. After all, Jim Crow laws were enforced under the guise of separate but equal, but nobody would say they weren’t white supremacist.
> It has hints of "reverse racism" and tends to dismiss that racism is an issue...and if it is an issue, racism against white people is the actual and bigger issue. That's closer to the camp of "white supremacist" or at the very least, a common defense used by white supremacist.
This is the problem with cultural Marxism / “wokeness”. It’s a sanctified, totalizing ideology that admits zero daylight between “100% agreement” and “you are a white supremacist/literal Nazi”.
In that way it functions exactly like a “state religion”: in public, you’re either a true believer, act like one or are mute and don’t give away your position. Soon they will make you mouth the words or face denunciation. Perhaps we are already there in the vanguard of coastal tech companies.
This whole thing is counter to the very spirit of liberalism.
> In my town there was a local scandal of sorts where some people got exposed as promoting white nationalism but then they were called white supremacists in all the reporting.
White nationalism is a particular expression of white supremacism.
> it's well-accepted that the term "white nationalist" stands on its own and means something different from "white and a nationalist."
Many right-wing people claim that in practice, there's not: they're accused of being "white nationalists" for being "white and a nationalist".
Edit:
If people downvoting me think I'm wrong, explain why people like Jordan Peterson, who merely espouse non-leftist positions and happen to be white, routinely get accused of supporting the alt-right and neo-Nazis.
For the people who doubt what I'm saying -- here's a video of Jordan Peterson. This is who the leftists routinely call "neo-Nazis" or "alt-right": moderates who refute their positions and calmly assert values like personal responsibility over collectivist victimhood culture.
> Marxism is not the right label to describe the post-1950s left wing politics in most countries.
In your original post you said “old left wing politics” not “post-1950s left-wing politics”, but even with the clarification, that probably depends on whether or not you include Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism within Marxism (I don't, but most of both the Right and people who agree with Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism do). If you do include those things, Marxism is, if not covering the left of an absolute majority of countries, at least the single most dominant left-wing movement of the post-1950s and pre-about-1990s period.
If you mean to restrict things to the developed West, then “Socialism" is fairly accurate if somewhat broad, but then Western Cold War era leftism was itself pretty broad.
> Left wing politics is, at most, the politics of Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn
Corbyn and Sanders are barely left-wing.
> And in its more common instantiation, it's more like the politics of Tony Blair.
Tony Blair, like Bill Clinton in the US, was part of an 80s/90s center-right reaction against left-wing politics that took over previously left-leaning (overtly Socialist, in the case of the UK Labour Party, more confused in the US Democratic Party case because of the ongoing overlapping post-New Deal and post-Civil Rights Act partisan realignments) parties.
Blair, like Clinton, was no kind of left-wing politician, and certainly not typical of the post-1950s left wing in his country.
Though if you are using “leftism” to mean actual leftism and “left-wing" to mean 1980s-1990s center-right neoliberal “Third Way” reaction, then, yeah, they are very different things.
Three Men Plead Guilty to Conspiring to Provide Material Support to a Plot to Attack Power Grids in the United States
Domestic Terrorism Plot was in Furtherance of White Supremacist Ideology
Sure, we don’t know about this particular attack, but we know that white supremacist groups have already been committing such crimes and have had longstanding, well-documented and widely-publicized plans to do so.
As far as I can tell the number of people who are part of the KKK hasn't gone up any appreciable amount.
In fact, calling perfectly normal and valuable things "white supremacy" and then deplaforming "white supremacists" is an excellent example of this social cooling.
Can you clarify? The article only uses that term once, here:
> including in neo-Nazi Discord servers and accelerationist Telegram channels
It seems like accelerationism is a concept used some of the most extreme white supremacist circles:
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/11/20882005/accele...:
> It’s called “accelerationism,” and it rests on the idea that Western governments are irreparably corrupt. As a result, the best thing white supremacists can do is accelerate their demise by sowing chaos and creating political tension. Accelerationist ideas have been cited in mass shooters’ manifestos — explicitly, in the case of the New Zealand killer — and are frequently referenced in white supremacist web forums and chat rooms.
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