Right. That’s the problem we’ve got here.
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I am saying that anyone who denies the humanity of large numbers of strangers, solely because of their attending a political speech, is very dangerous. I am not supporting or agreeing with Trump’s views.
I get that many here are convinced that they represent compassion and empathy. Probably some of the people at Trump’s events are truly deplorable and dangerous. But all of them?
In Asheville and other places, people leaving Trump speeches were spat upon by protesters. I imagine that the people doing all the spitting are not the best and brightest out there. But their actions were influenced by the sort of rhetoric used in this article.
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Trump seems to bring out the absolute worst in both sides. That’s perhaps even more of a frightening thing to consider.
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We are not talking about the candidate. We are talking about people attending a speech by a candidate from a major political party. We are debating whether every person attending such a speech lacks humanity.
And in other places people have been assaulting minorities, and their actions were very clearly influenced by the sort of rhetoric supported at these rallies. Look, nobody should be spitting on Trump supporters. But we also shouldn’t imagine that just because they have “large numbers” or whatever, the hatred they are supporting is any less deplorable.
Frankly, things like racism should be polarizing. It’s not wrong to say polarization can lead to problems, but it is to imagine that normalizing things like racism instead doesn’t lead to much more. Again, the people at these rallies are not the ones most at risk in America. Most of them are supporting someone trying to harm the ones at risk, and it is not right to leave them out of the equation.
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This is a tangent, but its keywords are Twitter and Donald Trump and I don’t know where else to post this:
I have a Twitter account. I have an Adblocker. I know how to use the Adblocker, or so I thought, as until 20 minutes ago I didn’t see any promoted ads.
Despite using an Adblocker, I saw a Promoted ad on Twitter for Donald J. Trump.
I do not follow presidential candidates. I follow some of Canada’s political party leaders and my own riding’s Member of Parliament. I follow a candidate running for Superintendent of Public Instruction (WA state) - nonpartisan position. I have never seen promoted Tweets from Canadian accounts. I have taken great care to not use Trump’s name in my tweets but refer to him only as ‘Hair Furor’, to keep the paid trolls and unhinged bullies away from me – cleverness is the wolfsbane.
I [eta:]thought I [/eta]fixed my Promoted Tweet issue by changing my Country in Account Settings to ‘Canada’, but I shouldn’t have to. I reason an adblocker shouldn’t drop filtering for Promoted Twitter accounts.
Is anyone else finding the otherwise trusty adblocker failing or betraying them on Twitter as of today?
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That’s brilliant.
Sorry, I can’t help with your issue, as I use neither Twitter nor ad-blockers, but it needed to be said.
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The essential disagreement, as I’ve been reading it, is as follows:
Max feels that the Trump supporters should be given every benefit of the doubt (presumably until and unless they actually declare for full-on Neo-Nazi membership). Furthermore, Max feels that the sympathy regarding any dehumanization via rhetoric should be first granted to Trump’s supporters due to the actions of people like the article writer and the Trump protestors. In doing so, he is using rhetoric that paints the Trump supporters as victims and potential occupants of mass graves.
Myself and @brainspore, in contrast, feel that the Trump supporters have yielded and conceded nearly any benefit of the doubt due to their support of Trump, and that those supporters who are impassioned enough to attend a Trump rally are essentially complicit in his ideology and stated fascist goals. Furthermore, we feel that any sympathy regarding dehumanization via rhetoric should be granted to those groups that Trump targets because, well, y’know, they’re being targeted by a white nativist fascist demagogue and his merry band of right wing authoritarians.
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I don’t know – I agree with the statement that
Each of them is a human being, equipped with the same faculties for intelligence and empathy, yet they are apparently so enamoured with this man that they are blind to the hatred and lies he speaks.
These are not demons or necessarily hate-filled people. My FIL is planning to vote for Trump. He’s a nice person. We’ve had refugees living in our home, and one of his best friends here is from Iran. Our landlord is part of a right wing political party that opposes refugees in Germany, among other things. His van is covered with advertising for this party. He’s also a nice person who was very happy for us to host people from many parts of the world in our home for long periods of time. The weird thing is that while there are extremists who are attracted by the hatred, there are also many people who are attracted by promises of security, control over their lives and their country, safer jobs and other things. They don’t necessarily hate anyone, but their friendly Turkish neighbour is totally different from all of these Muslims taking over the country. Or something like that – I often wonder about people who actually show signs of intelligence and empathy, who are good citizens and compassionate toward those around them, yet their political views ‘other’ groups containing people they care about, and the parties they support propose actions that will harm those they love.
In some ways I wish Trump supporters were filled with blind haters rather than also including brainwashed people who somehow don’t see the consequences of what they support.
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I was reading the conversation as ‘Set X is inclusive of Set Y. Therefore, while all members of X are members of Y, not all members of Y are members of X’. And it seems (to me) that everyone agrees with that.
@Max_Blancke, I do feel you Pinochet’d the discussion with the whole mass graves thing. However, I understand your central point to be that we need to refrain from dehumanizing any group and I agree. Judging by others’ reactions, it seems that the ‘mass graves’ overstatement obscured your message, though.
@bibliophile20 and @Brainspore seem to be arguing that the most impassioned faction of Trump’s supporting base are already dehumanizing those minority groups that would have a lot to lose under a Trump presidency and that Trump’s rhetoric is emboldening his supporters to intimidate these groups regardless of the election outcome.
If I’ve misunderstood anyone, please correct me.
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Close. I’m arguing that Trump’s central proposals are unabashedly racist, which is why he is attracting all the dyed-in-the-wool racists like the American Nazi Party and the KKK. You can’t be a Trump supporter without being complicit in that racism, just as you couldn’t support Strom Thurmond’s candidacy without being complicit with his pro-segregation platform.
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That’s not an excuse.
I do tend to focus a little on the issue of people getting rounded up and ending up in camps or mass graves, both because of family history, and academic study. It is probably an overstatement. We are a long way from that. But the dehumanizing attitude is where it always starts. When I see it, I call it out.
@bibliophile20, @Brainspore, and @Max_Blancke: thanks to each of you for clarifying.
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Does anyone know off hand how many actual white supremacists are in the US? I see a lot about the number of groups, but nothing on membership. It might help this conversation if we knew what percentage of the 70 million or so republican voters can reasonably be labeled as such.
That largely depends on how you define “white supremacist.”
For example, according to Gallup polls a majority of Americans have only supported interracial marriage since 1995, but most of the people who opposed race mixing probably wouldn’t self-identify as white supremacists. Hell, most people who opposed the Civil Rights movement weren’t card-carrying members of the KKK.
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Let’s just dig up those open rosters then. I’m sure everyone who aligns with white power movements is completely in the open about it. There’s like a sign in book for meetings or something, isn’t there? Maybe some organization that posts membership somewhere?
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I though that ADL would have an estimate, but I could not find it.
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Not that I know of, but the Southern Poverty Law Center does keep a close track of hate groups in the U.S. Here’s their report for 2016. It’s a long read, but worth it.
An addendum: though the majority of the groups they track are considered extreme right-wing, they also keep a close watch on anti-Semitic, anti-LBGT black separatist groups as well. Check out their interactive ‘hate map’, which shows the distribution of hate groups, by category, across the country.
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