Does it involve the Magic Negro?
I hate you. You sneaked in at night, plucked my brain and articulated my own ideas as I never could!
bfltr
interesting observations
When the Marxists realized that the economic conditions of their precious "working class" were improving and that the revolution [which Marx had never predicted and was only dreamed up by his followers] wasn't going to happen, they had to shift gears. Instead of the capitalists vs. the workers, they adopted a more generic powerless vs. the powerful story line.
In this context, any group which could be claimed to be less successful than another (blacks, women, minorities in general, children, Muslims, etc.) could be lionized as a victim.
You're right. It isn't Marxism. It's what some call "vulgar Marxism" or "folk Marxism." It's actually "desperation Marxism" and it's working all too well for my taste.
Because the less intelligent a populace is, the more easily they can be led.
Its an established fact that, on average, blacks have a lower IQ than whites just like whites have a lower IQ average than Asians.
Race differences in average IQ are largely genetic
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Liberals don't want people to think.... they just want them to follow.
BTW, the news media relies on sponsors, and sponsors do regulate what is broadcast.
I’m actually writing my mini thesis on a similar phenomenon. People tend to take anything they consider “certain enough”(or maybe just convinient) as some sort of a priori intuition, as valid and universal as math and logic. People then have an unshakeable beleif in this intuition that no amount of evidence can shake(if not look at you like there was something intellectually or morally wrong with you for not recognizing something so “obvious”). So if a liberal suddenly feels like blacks are eternal victims of oppression, no matter how much you tell them about crime rates, black on black murder rates, single mothers, academic performance, etc, it will always be false or racism because they just took that blacks are good as some sort of ontological necessity.
Unfortunately, since these intuitions do not have the validity math and logic have thanks to experience, we end up with people feverishly clinging to unproven beleifs. And ultimately, since this intuition is based on nothing prejudice, or emotions, or whatever reason, it will come and go as the person fancies or has a sensation of certainty. So while rednecks in the Jim Crow era could do no harm because it was just a necessary logical truth that they always fought for western civilization simply because democrats depended on them politically, now it is an ontological necessity that blacks cannot do any harm, that it is just obvious that anything negative said about any of them is fraud and fabrication, simply because the democrats need them politically.
This also handily explain the trope “A conservative is a liberal mugged by reality”. A liberal holds his a priori ethical and political beleifs until he is emotionally uninclined to beleive them out faith, because he got smacked in the face with what he’s experienced.
Close, but only half a cigar.
The relevant issue is not really skin color, though that is a reasonable surrogate. As can be seen by Zimmerman’s demonization.
The real issue is (to steal a meme developed by the also recently demonized John Derbyshire) the Designated Victim Group (DVG) versus the Designated Oppressor Group (DOG).
DVGs include blacks, hispanics, Native Americans, gays, women, immigrants and anybody else not seen as part of “the establishment.” DOGs are of course those who are seen as part of “the establishment,” or guilty of supporting it. Rich people, white people, straight white men, southern whites, conservatives, Republicans.
One can obviously switch from one category to another, and which one will be assigned to depends on circumstances. Thus Zimmerman would in other context be hispanic rather than white.
Also the whitest guy around can become an honorary DVG simply by turning on and denouncing other DVGs. To maintain this status he has to constantly get louder and louder in his denunciation, or he will slip back into being a DOG.
There is a poorly defined but implicitly understood ranking of DVGs. In any conflict between two DVGs, one will be demoted to a DOG. Thus, Sarah Palin, a woman, was a DOG when debating Joe Biden, a stereotypical straight white guy.
The root issue is one of being for or against Western civilization. DOGs are, or are supposed to be, against it. Those DVGs who support it are demoted to DOG status and are hated worse than those born into the DOG group. Clarence Thomas, Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin, Col. West, Thomas Sowell, etc.
The driving force is one of hating our civilization. Any person or group known or believed to be opposed to it is on “their side.” Thus the alliances with the Islamists.
Since support for traditional Marxism was never much more than an after the fact rationale for their pre-existing emotional disdain for western civ, when it fell apart they just dropped it and picked up another: environmentalism, gay rights, feminism, black liberation, etc. One rationale is just as good as another. Also, if they achieve their goals for one cause, they would just switch to another. They will never be satisfied till western civ crashes down.
What interests me is where this hated and disdain for the civilization that has objectively brought greater freedom and prosperity to far more people than any other comes from.
It has been pointed out many times that Marxism is a Christian heresy. Complete with (among other parallels) a primeval Garden, original sin, a suffering Redeemer and a future Paradise.
The Redeemer in Marxism is of course the proletariat. Since the proletariat rejected Marxism and anyway mostly doesn’t really exist anymore in the sense Marx used the term, the search has been on for a replacement Redeemer. Women, blacks, gays, transgenders (of all groups!), people on welfare, “indigenous peoples,” etc., etc.
Marx based his moral appeal on the fact (according to him) that the proletariat, the only truly economically productive group, supported all other groups by their labor, which was stolen from them. Not a completely irrational position.
The problem for the post-Marxists is that most of their replacement Messianic groups are a net economic drain on society. IOW, these groups are exploiting society economically, not the other way around.
I get an enormous kick out of those claiming blacks are being economically exploited, when there is an enormous net transfer of wealth from whites to blacks each year in this country. Not that this ever seems to bother the post-Marxists, logic and internal consistency not being their strong points.
bfl...
Very interesting. I am not too familiar with the Nation of Islam teachings, but if I not mistaken, “Minister” Farrakhan espouses that white people are only a sinister deviant form of black people, brought about by an evil scientist in the distant past.
In other words, according to him, yes, dark skin pigmentation is a sort of mystical, wonderful, uncontaminated state.