Ban the New York Times
The news tells us that young men the world over are having their minds poisoned by tales of White Genocide and White Replacement, and committing mass murder because of it. What to do? Here’s what the Guardian thinks.
This isn’t the only or even the most important explanation for what’s happening (mental health, white privilege, Minecraft etc). But it’s beyond dispute that a number of mass murderers have beliefs of this type in common that were central to their motivations in committing their crimes — they said it themselves in their manifestos.
The Respectable Press line is that this is an evil, terroristic ideology, and the remedy (the “understanding” the guardian refers to) is to imprison people who express it, close any outlets that facilitate it’s dissemination, and generally make existing in the world impossible for anyone sympathetic to it. All of this goes not just for people who express these ideas in their craziest form but those adjacent to them, and adjacent to them, and adjacent to them and so on. The purpose of this article is to consider why that doesn’t make sense and isn’t going to work.
The first hurdle is that just because an idea is linked to violence doesn’t mean there’s no truth to it; and just because something has an element of truth doesn’t mean that it’s worth killing or dying for. The exact problem with the facts underlying the “White Genocide” or “White Replacement” theories (if not the theories themselves) is not how false they are, but how true. What’s more, the beliefs they start from are at least as essential to the Left-Wing understanding of what is happening world as they are to that of the Far Right.
Here is an attempt to spell out the factual beliefs that can inform murderous actions:
“Western Europe and America are experiencing large numbers of inward migration. This migration (as a result of overall numbers, differential birthrates, the fact that people are encouraged to maintain and celebrate their original culture in a way they had not been previously) results in significant cultural changes. Many people dislike this because they feel that some essential part of their culture will be permanently lost in the change. The change is promoted as desirable, necessary and inevitable by groups who feel it is in their cultural, political or economic interests to do so. These promoters are aided by some number of voters in those countries who believe this change is to be welcomed as punishment for historic wrongs and to cleanse the innate evil of “white” culture.”
This doesn’t include anything about Ping Pong Pizza or Shariah law, or contain a call or justification for violence, so to get to the exact ideas espoused by a shooter there are further mental leaps to be made. But all of what is written above is essential to the motivation in these events, while at the same time being a reasonable assessment of the facts. Whether you believe the above is actually true, it’s intelligible, and a sane, peaceful person can believe it.
You could just as easily rephrase these same ideas it in a purely “progressive” manner:
“The moribund cultures of the white patriarchy are being vanquished by a wave of multicultural diversity and in time a vibrant, hopeful new culture will arise. In the meantime, there are those who don’t yet know they are living in the husk the dead, old culture and who still cling to it, hatefully, lashing out as they sink beneath the waves. However, all truly good people will welcome this change — especially thoughtful white people who will realise there is a balance to be restored because how they historically prospered while others suffered.”
This second iteration is the Respectable Media perspective, but these are two sides of the same coin.
Doesn’t solving the “far right shooter” problem require squaring this circle — that they are motivated in part by facts everyone agrees are true, and events that are actually happening? What do you do plan to do about that?
The discovery of a factual observation in the underlying motivation of mass murderer feels like recovering a piece of chewing gum from a toilet bowl. Why speak for people like that at a time like this? Well, I’m not doing that, but for the sake of clarity let us consider whether we’re applying a rule we would not in any other case. For instance — it’s unremarkable to say that, notwithstanding any other crazy things they believe, Islamic terrorism is driven in part by unwarranted western interference in the Islamic world, and that by limiting that we could limit Islamic terrorism. Most Left Wing people would agrees with that, and plenty on the Right would too. We are capable of admitting that part of what inspires this terrorism are things that are really happening and worth being concerned about and that should be addressed, without deciding it’s ok to set off a bomb in a café or hack someone to death with a machete.
Another angle. Why is it certain questions which are posed as imminent life-or-death, all-or-nothing struggles *don’t* result in lot of terrorism? Given the stakes, and the pitch of the commentary, why are there no Climate Change motivated acts of terrorism in western countries? What’s worth killing over if not the fact that you’ve got 12 years left to live? Climate concerns are given space within the public square. It’s true that this space mostly used to signal rather than for substance but the fact remains you can vote for a mainstream climate-conscious candidate in the morning, attend a climate protest (and be praised as morally good for doing so) in the afternoon, then go home and read about the validity of your concerns online that evening in your chosen paper of record. No matter how frightening climate change is, there’s no reason that your fears would curdle into murderous insanity.
TLDR: we often admit the factual motivations behind the actions of violent, evil people without admitting their violence is ok, or that the worst of what they believe is true. By providing space in the public sphere for certain facts to be recognised as a legitimate source of concern, we can relieve the frustration of people who care about those issues, in doing so taking the most extreme potential for violence out of them.
So there are two answers for how to deal with to the awareness of real cultural change that underwrites Far Right ideas. The first is to allow space for individuals to civilly advocate culturally restrictionist ideas within the mainstream without the Respectable Media feeling the need to destroy them. The second is the “inconvenience, deplatform, and imprison” option mentioned at the top of this article.
In reality, where one has the power to quickly silence one’s enemies without consequence, it is human nature to exercise that power without regret and without reaching for alternative options. The second option may as well be the only one on the table, and it’s what is what is going to happen.
So you ban (for example) 8Chan — because 8Chan is a bubble, a sealed ward where the infected cough all over each other and make themselves sicker and crazier. (I’m not arguing.) But once you pop that Right-Wing bubble we are still inside the larger bubble of the Respectable Media. What is it that an 8chn refugee will hear there that will pacify them? Is it the case that they will emerge from the fetid air of the conspiracy-cellar and find rest, relaxation, reason and hope? If that’s what the atmosphere was like outside, they wouldn’t have gone into their bubble in the first place.
Places like the Chans are popular because they make the patterns you’ve noticed into horrible, nihilist, mean fun. But you don’t start there — you seek those places out because you heard about the patterns somewhere else. Anons don’t become radicalised on 8Chan. The beginning of radicalisation is the view of themselves and their future that hear and read about and see every day, reported to them with undisguised glee. It’s hard to tackle this because it’s impossible to make a culturally liberal person understand that they have overwhelming cultural power; that there are normal and acceptable human temperaments other than theirs; and that the Respectable Media (and Respectable Opinion) itself is a bubble calibrated to their temperament that the rest of have to live in.
The editorial staff of the New York Times (and that of Buzzfeed, and of the Huffington Post, and the output of the whole Blue Check ecosystem etc etc) have done more to radicalise a generation of young white men rightward on social issues than 8Chan, or AmRen, or Tucker Carlson ever could. Those on the Right simply don’t have the reach, or the indulgence of the authorities that culturally Left outlets have for their activism. In light of that fact, and the fact that the only solution to these issues we are willing to contemplate is a full-spectrum clampdown, perhaps we could start with clamping down on the publications, people and sites that are actually most responsible for radicalisation?
