Ann O’Connell is sad. She voted for Trump, and now people are judging her.
I love Meryl Streep, but you know, she robbed me of that wonderful feeling when I go to the movies to be entertained,she said.I told my husband, I said, ‘Ed, we have to be a little more flexible, or we’re going to run out of movies!’
I know your pain, Mrs. O’Connell. I can no longer enjoy Rob Schneider movies, myself. But look on the bright side: we can still hate Susan Sarandon together!
We also have the tiresome Jonathan Haidt, professional apologist for conservatives, who is very concerned about how we “react” to the actions of right-wing craptastic nincompoops.
We are in a trust spiral,said Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University.My fear is that we have reached escape velocity where the actions of each side can produce such strong reactions on the other that things will continue to escalate.
The whole article has this tone, that gosh, it’s awful how people are horrified at what the current administration is doing, and we should all just stop being upset and be nice to the Mrs. O’Connell’s of America. Conservatives are wrecking the educational system, they plan to demolish the EPA, they’ve made a goddamn racist the Attorney General, but those rude liberals are making people uncomfortable at Meryl Streep movies. The New York Times, and lots of media outlets, love these stupid little stories that let them be all charitable towards cranky old racist people who elected a cranky old incompetent racist, while at the same time chastising those horrible liberals and practicing a little veiled extortion. You better tell Mrs. O’Connell how sweet she is, or else!
Protests and righteous indignation on social media and in Hollywood may seem to liberals to be about policy and persuasion. But moderate conservatives say they are having the opposite effect, chipping away at their middle ground and pushing them closer to Mr. Trump.
Oh, fuck that noise. If ‘moderate’ conservatives think they have to vote for a bumbling buffoon who is taking a wrecking ball to our country because a hippie called them a mean name, then they weren’t so moderate to begin with, and they are making bad decisions on invalid grounds. I will not have sympathy for that, and it doesn’t matter how sternly Jonathan Haidt wags his finger at me.
These pieces are annoyingly common: we need to understand these awful people. We need to empathize with them, or they’ll keep doing the same stupid things. Unfortunately for these myths, the strategy doesn’t work. The people in the NYT story are unrepentant, would do it again, and all they’ve got is so-called moderates threatening to do it some more if they don’t get their way! I don’t believe it. This is what the regressives always do: “give me a cookie and maybe I’ll stop doing this.” Then, a minute later, “Ha ha, suckers!”
As for understanding, here’s what these stories always miss: yes, we already understand these people. We understand them all too well. Why are you whining at us? We’re not interested in trying to understand them even more, but in getting them to stop wrecking everything. That’s all.
Here’s a case in point: a very long, very thorough explainer about 4chan, lulz, Pepe the frog, anonymous, gamergate, and the rise of Trump, etc., etc., etc. We know it all already. There’s this subculture of young adults who are resentful of their circumstances (I can even sympathize with some of that resentment — they can have valid reasons for their unhappiness with those circumstances). Some may be single and living in their parent’s basement, for instance, and I know it’s tough getting a job, getting a job with prospects for advancement, finding a partner, finding a partner who actually respects you as a person, and so forth — but that does not justify erupting into ranting anti-feminism, just as the unemployment rate does not explain lashing out and electing a billionaire (reputedly) who isn’t going to do a thing to help those circumstances…but might cause others to suffer, too. We’re told over and over again about how miserable these shitlords are, and I understand, but I’m done with understanding. I want to know what to do next.
So that extremely thorough article ends with this:
However, as we have seen, the right’s anti-feminist message is one that only provides a momentary sense of relief (“you are acting powerful by retreating into video games and the internet!”) but like scratching a mosquito bite, it ultimately causes more dissatisfaction. That is to say, they only solution they can offer is, “keep retreating!” Likewise, Trump and the mocking cruel anguish he represents is not a genuine solution to the electorate’s powerlessness, but rather, simply the one closest at hand.
An adult does not freeze in mute horror when a child throws a tantrum. Nor do we generally regard such emotional outbursts as meaningless. Likewise, the left should not be paralyzed with horror by the deplorables, but rather view them of as a symptom of a larger problem, one which only the left can truly solve.
Fine. They’re spoiled children. My wife and I are familiar with kids: we raised three. And yes, when they were very young, they would occasionally have tantrums, and we would patiently (or impatiently) reprove them, and remove them from the circumstances that triggered the problem, and we gave them time and opportunity to learn and grow up, and they got better, much better, and became responsible, thoughtful, intelligent adults. Parents are familiar with these behaviors, and responsible parents can deal, and lead children to more mature responses.
The 4channers are in their 20s and 30s. Mr Medford, the guy who complains about being ‘pushed’ to vote for Trump, is a 46-year-old business owner. Mrs McConnell is 72. Or look at PewDiePie, the 27-year-old who gets paid $15 million a year to shriek on YouTube for the gratification of alt-right wanna-bes. What are we supposed to do? Give them a time-out? Tell them no, they don’t get to buy that cheap plastic toy at the supermarket check-out stand? Be patient and wait for them to grow out of this phase?
The answer so far seems to be that we’re supposed to reassure them that the mean liberals will be clucked at if we call them out, they’ll get a fawning interview with Bill Maher, and the NYT will run a reassuring feature on their sad plight. Even after they put a blundering, bush-league, racist, sexist in the most powerful position in the country.
Yeah, there’s a larger problem. The responsible Left is not going to solve it by continuing to coddle and reward stupidity, even if it is perpetrated by privileged 72 year olds having a tantrum and demanding special treatment.
Meet the new accommodationists, same as the old accommodationists.
Wait, was there ever a time when you actually DID enjoy Rob Schneider movies? Because I can’t say I ever found him to be remotely funny. In fact, as early as Down Periscope, he was so unfunny that he killed any comedic potential his role might have had.
Also, like you, I am 100 percent over being told that I need to understand the people who voted for Trump. I do understand quite well. Now, however, we are past that, and we have a president, an administration, and a Congress that are all colluding to do active harm to the nation just because it’ll wipe out the gains that were made when Obama was in office.
We could have had a president who merely would have been moderate to right leaning, who would have retained the status quo for four more years, and that’s the worst case scenario. Best case scenario, she might have acted on some progressive demands and we might be better off.
But nah, now we get God knows how long of an insane, bigoted totalitarian. Remember when we used to laugh at North Korea’ Kim Jong Il? I mean, at least the North Koreans didn’t CHOOSE to have him in power.
I have never enjoyed Rob Schneider. That’s the point. She loses Streep, I lose Schneider. Seems fair.
“The libtards are calling me mean names! Can’t they cut out their PC bullshit and take people’s feelings into account?!?!”
Fuck that. If they find endorsements of Trump more palatable than criticisims of Trump, then they are already pro-Trump. The whiny babies just want us to stop criticising their preferred pick.
From that piece:
Nonsense.
Many, many people saw this as a potential result of capitalism long before Arendt.
What I take away from all these pieces is this:
Quite a lot of people who voted for Trump know deep down that they did something really, really bad. But they won’t own up to it. They will not admit this, come clean and say “I am sorry, what I did was wrong”. Instead they demand that people be nice to them or else. Which is a classical abuser tactic: If you don’t do exactly what I want, you will only have yourself to blame for what is coming.
If you’Re willing to support fascism unless minorities give you what you want you’re a fascist already.
And there’s of course the indignation, the indignation I tell you over women telling you they won’t fuck you because you fucked them enough by voting for Trump…
“An adult does not freeze in mute horror when a child throws a tantrum. Nor do we generally regard such emotional outbursts as meaningless. Likewise, the left should not be paralyzed with horror by the deplorables, but rather view them of as a symptom of a larger problem, one which only the left can truly solve.”
There is so much wrong with this.
Adults don’t freeze in horror when small children have tantrums, because for children, that is normal and age appropriate behavior. However, I would imagine that an adult engaging in the same behavior would, at best, be considered a mental health emergency and prompt someone to call 911.
But further, the ‘only the left can solve’ seems to imply that the ‘deplorables’ have no responsibility to even approach adult level behavior, but that we should all be solving their problems for them while they hate and resent us. Is ‘the left’ like what, the X-men?
Of course none of these people ever, ever said anything about Obama or those who voted for him. Never told us he was illegitimate and the end of America as we knew it.
I admitted I voted for him due to white guilt. /s Made it all better with my brother. Right.
I read that very long, very thorough explainer. The thing that struck me was the comment that the gamergaters voted for Trump specifically because they knew he was an incompetent clown. They have basically adopted the role of poo-throwing monkeys who take pride in sabotaging the system. It’s anarchy for the sake of anarchy. If any of the three stooges were available to run for president, they’d have voted for them too, for the same reason.
As far as cranky conservatives go, I think at least for the time being they have us outnumbered. I suspect the bakery, photographer and florist gay marriage cases probably did energize a lot of them to vote for Trump who might not have done so otherwise, so perhaps there is some wisdom in not overreaching when we have the chance. Culturally, the country may be ready for gay marriage but not for fining a small business 135k for not wanting to participate in it. We can complain about it, but it’s not going to change the fact that those court cases probably did help elect Trump. And I say that as someone who thinks those cases were probably rightly decided.
@8
well it is clear that the right does not know how to solve their problems or even understanding what their fucking problems are or how they got that way.
They only know how to shift the responsibility to the “OTHER” what ever that may be at the moment pointing fingers and throwing a fit. Heaven forbid that we engage in a through examination of the circumstances and the actual state of things instead they only blame someone else for the failure of their beliefs to become real.
uncle frogy
This is something I’ve been considering for some time, and I don’t think there’s one cause behind the rise of 4chan-style “anime Nazism.” Resentful MRA-types are certainly part of it, but there’s also a large contingent of people who don’t share those resentments. As far as I can tell, having once been involved in the *chan subcultures, the overarching philosophy seems to be similar to the driving force behind lamenting the “eternal September;” this idea that the Internet itself belongs to the geeks, and that everybody else is ruining the experience. So much of the Trumpism, white supremacism, and Nazism is, to the channers, an act. It’s an affectation to drive away the “normies,” in their parlance; anybody who doesn’t fit their conception of a “real geek” — which, remember, is loaded down with cultural baggage limiting that term to white, straight men.
Note that saying many anime Nazis don’t actually believe in what they’re doing in no way excuses it. Intention only really matters on a metaphysical level; what really matters is action. Theoretically, anime Nazis could probably be more accurately described as “useful idiots.” Many of them don’t consider the very ideologies they espouse to be serious; as mentioned above, they’re merely using them to make their communities toxic to drive away the “normies.” The fact that they’re doing real harm in helping promote these views is either brushed aside or construed as a positive; a strike back against all of the “cancer,” as the channers call anybody not in their circles, who they see as polluting the internet.
(Cross-posting from Political Madness all the Time.)
Populist correctness: the new PC culture of Trump’s America and Brexit Britain:
The linked article contains no mention of PewDiePie; additionally, I have seen the accusation against him multiple times with little to no merit.
Among the ranks of the Trump voters, there are a great many lost causes— the neo-Nazis and the multitudes of far-right bigots who would cut off their own arm if it meant a black person would lose both arms. There is no reaching them; all we can do is outnumber them (and we already do). Maybe some of them will see the light and try to redeem themselves, but we don’t owe them the chance and certainly shouldn’t bother trying.
And among the ranks of the Trump voters, there are a great many enlightenable people who could be easily persuaded to vote for a liberal candidate if they were offered a liberal candidate and a fairly straightforward set of liberal arguments. They won’t actively seek out liberal arguments and they won’t be persuaded by any argument that assumes the value of liberalism as a premise, but the minute they get a taste of what liberalism actually means, they’ll embrace it (or at least a hefty chunk of it).
And there are people like Haidt who demand that we coddle both— because they know that if we offered the latter group a real alternative to conservatism, they would be liberals. They don’t seriously care much about conservative feelings, but they seriously fear that if Ann O’Connell got a taste of an economy boosted by liberal policies, she might just like it— and she might even like it enough to think that if the liberals were right all along about that, they might just have been right all along about systemic racism or climate change (or at least willing to accept reform from them).
#14: Because I screwed up the link. Fixed now.
smrnda @8
Not to mention that, say, I have the ability to control my toddler nephews in ways that I can’t do to random children, let alone random adults. Seriously, when a kid is crying because he is overstimulated or hungry or just frustrated that he has very little control over his life, caretakers can both get him into a quiet and safe place, then try to fix the problem. I can’t send Trump voters to their room to calm down, or unilaterally bring back manufacturing jobs, or make it clear xenophobia is unacceptable*.
(I’d also add that as an adult on the autism spectrum, a public meltdown embarrasses the crap out of me, and that’s just a 30-something white woman bursting into uncontrollable tears and running for the nearest bathroom. I know many of my fellow autistic adults and their families are scared, because for men or for folks whose meltdowns look more angry, that can provoke a police response.)
* Which is another thing. If you send a child to the time-out chair for hitting because hitting is unacceptable and they are old enough to understand cause and effect, and they pitch a fit, you do not rescind the punishment.
The tantrums described here remind of the AM Joy episode from this morning. There was the typical rethug guest on the panel, with the discussion about immigration and deportation, who tried to talk over everybody and wouldn’t let the other guests finish a thought.
I thought AM Joy and MSNBC producers, should have cut his mike at the second interruption after being chided, and he should have been told in no uncertain terms, either he will take his turn in talking and not try to overtalk everybody else, or he will be cut off and his message missing in the televised comments from the program.
I don’t really understand why some of these people seek to alleviate their frustrations by taking them out on others. I have my fair share of frustrations too – this whole weekend I’ve been deep in depression and anxiety, turning over how utterly incapable and useless I am in the whole field of relationships, romance and sexuality. It’s been a constant source of anguish, pain and bafflement to me my entire adult life. I understand very well how frantic and upset it can make anyone feel.
But… when I am in the grip of this unhappiness – which is often – I take it out on myself and on the cold, unfeeling nature of fate and circumstance. Blaming other people just doesn’t work for me. It feels like shifting the blame from where it really belongs. It feels like victimising people who don’t deserve it, and it makes me feel craven and awful for trying to ignore my failings and pin them on others. In fact, on the few occasions people try to comfort me by blaming other people I find myself standing up for those other people however much I dislike them.
Why is it, then, that my response is self-flagellation, where these people’s is lashing out at others? What is it about my culture, upbringing and temperament that leads me to fall back on coping mechanisms that only hurt myself, and what is it about theirs that gives them the idea that attacking others is somehow acceptable, effective and mandated? And how can these be unlearned?
So let me see if I get this right. They voted for one of the most vile bigot in recent history to be President of the United States, and I’m not supposed to be so rude as to tell them that they done fucked up? Because it might hurt their feelings and push them to the dark side, which their votes in the last election tells me they are already on. The Hell with that: They cast their votes, they have to live them.
They voted for a twisted buffoon who promises and is working to making life worse for millions of American. An orange idiot who is working to make the world less safe for me and my family, not to mention millions of other families in the United States, and likely abroad. And I’m supposed to keep quite lest those who were stupid, or malicious, enough, to vote for him feel that they are being attacked? Not going to happen. They should feel like they’re being attacked. The onus is on them to understand why they are being attacked, not on me to coddle them lest the little snowflakes melt.
Their vote summoned forth and legitimized the nazis, who had been pretty much marginalized in most parts of the country, and we’ve seen what’s come of that so far. These trump votes have no right to bitch about being called out for their bigotry. They knew what they were doing, they just didn’t care, and now they want those of us who have to live with the results of their piss-poor decision-making skills, to just shut up and get along with the program they’ve inflicted on us. I really don’t know how many ways there are to tell these fools to go fuck themselves.
At the moment, I’ll merely recommend (none without caveats):
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (I’ll be talking about this shortly)
Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth
Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, For Your Own Good, The Untouched Key (see here)
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Portrait of the Anti-Semite”
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
I’m so sorry. You’re not alone. We’ll all get through this together.
I suspect that for many Trump voters the problem is similar to an effort justification fallacy: They did elect Trump; the more whatever Trump does harms them, the stronger will be their tendency to find something to justify electing him nevertheless.
I was going to say that it may be useful to understand these people (literally) but you already covered that. Just as it may be useful to understand Jihadists and Muslim terrorists. Funny though, that the same people who demand understanding, always show so little understanding for others.
@cartomancer
Eh, not unconnected to the fact that on all the available evidence you are good people.
(I know you aren’t looking to hear this, but I want to say it anyway – perceptive, intelligent, self-critical and kind is a hell of a combination. (in both senses of the word – as in, it’s great for the interlocutor, but also, as in the present instance, can-be-hell-on-you-yourself))
(just sending some tea over via USB, if you’ll excuse the presumption)
These articles remind me of all the articles from 2009 aimed at the Tea Party and birthers saying they should reach out and understand Obama and his “liberal” policies . . . .oh wait.
The whole accommodate the hateful bigots is just white male privilege repackaged.
PZ thanks for writing this article. I read that article and I wanted to scream. There was Right in this election and then there was Wrong, it was not “just a difference of opinion”. There was nothing “redeeming” about the Republican Party, its candidates and especially their platform. I know many people that I graduated HS with that voted for Trump and I am a loss on how to “understand” their rational for the vote. I cannot help but feel they were immersed in Fox News and that the other MSM felt like they had to “play” the fair and balanced game, even though their is no balance and nothing about what Limbitch and Fox News was fair. However, the memes they played were never called out by the MSM of NYT or CBS or NBC. They continued to give those ideas of Right consideration, even though they were abominable.
It has been hard to for a once industrial society to come to grips with the replacement of labor with automation or that some things need to change with how society goes forward with less labor. That discussion has not taken place and the fear of making future income for them and their children is easier to look to a past where the uneducated could do well to a future where there are less jobs for everyone, rising income inequality and a tax code that enriches those that capitalize on less labor or sell out the environment in the name of “jobs”.
I have tried to have these conversations but the base of the Republican Party is lazy it does not want to think about how society has to change and their world view might be wrong. I however will not meekly sit back and coddle their asses. I will continue to berate them about voting for Trump and the shallow ideas of the Republican Party Platform.
This is something I’ve been seeing more and more of lately: X made me Y! Sorry, you made you, well, you.
As the saying goes, you can’t decide what someone else does but you can decide how you react. Trump’s supporters praised him for “telling it like it is” and “speaking his mind”, and many of those things were all about the damage he would inflict on the non-white male population in this country. None of that mattered to the people who voted for him- or if it did they soothed their conscious with declarations that the man who “told it like it is” wouldn’t really do what he said he would do- because Trump was going to do all these wonderful things for them and that’s what mattered most.
Now they’re realizing they got scammed, and liberals pointing that out doesn’t feel great. I get it: having how you fucked up pointed out doesn’t feel great, but that’s something they’ll have to deal with for themselves. Because they did fuck up. Instead of whining about how others are making them feel, they need to sit down and have a bit of self-reflection. That, or Republican- and by extension conservative- voters can just admit all that personal responsibility they keep shouting about really only applies to other people.
It’s imperative that we don’t forget the broader context— Trump scammed them, but it’s not like they had any real alternative. The only options were to vote for Trump, the lying scammer who promised to drain the swamp but was actually planning to introduce malaria-infected mosquitos to it, or Clinton who was the swamp and never even claimed to have any intention of draining it.
That they believed Trump and he betrayed them stings like hell, and we on the left can make productive use of that sting by offering them real liberal policies that they can support— and a hefty chunk of them will. With the right amount of organizing, we can ride the Trump backlash straight to universal health care and more.
However, it’s counterproductive for a bunch of Clinton supporters to mock them for having been scammed. Basically, imagine how you would feel if, in late 2009, you were reeling from Obama’s betrayal and a bunch of Republicans said: “We saw that coming a mile away! Guess you should have voted for McCain!” Because that’s basically how they feel when Clinton supporters mock their vote for Trump. Their vote for Trump was a vote against Washington’s corruption. It backfired when their candidate revealed himself to be absurdly corrupt. And then a bunch of people who support (or at least tolerate) that corruption then say: “You should have voted for corruption rather than trying to vote against it!”
Obviously, that doesn’t apply to the lost causes who actually support Trump’s bigotry and terrorism, but the outpouring of Trumpgrets point to a non-negligible chunk of his voters who don’t— they are, essentially, liberals who don’t know they’re liberal and voted for Trump because they figured he was the lesser evil. The last thing we want to do is muddy their perception of who supports what by telling them that Clinton’s far-right agenda is what the left actually wants. Our support for Clinton is what drove them to Trump in the first place.
Here’s one thing we can do to help immediately: The Democratic Party is selecting a new chair this week, and it’s important that they select an actual progressive like Keith Ellison. I haven’t figured out a good way to get in touch with the Democratic Party to pester them, but putting a progressive in charge seems like an obvious first step if we ever want to run liberal candidates for office.
The party of personal responsibility strikes again.
They want to do things but they don’t want to be judged or criticized for them.
The world doesn’t work that way!!!
The GOP doesn’t have any principles except they want more power and money.
The Trumpists do have a very few legitimate issues i.e. growing economic inequality.
It’s worth paying attention to them.
They have a lot of issues that are simply worth opposing forever.
The main driver of the Trump vote was racism and sexism.
Utter crap, as is to be expected from you. Trump’s voters clearly didn’t give a shit about his corruption: it was abundantly clear long before he was elected, to anyone who paid the slightest heed to reality, that Trump is and always was absurdly corrupt. And if they weren’t paying the slightest heed to reality then, why would his voters start doing so now?
Voting for Trump was, overwhelmingly, a shriek of outraged privilege. He received more votes than Clinton among men, among whites, among those with a family income over $50,000, among those over 40. He received fewer votes than Clinton among all the contrasting groups. If Trump’s voters are disappointed, or feel they have been scammed, it’s because they thought they were among those to whose advantage his bigotry and spite would operate.
A good place to start is here: https://www.democrats.org/
Who can vote for party chair: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/8/84345/-
The democrats web site can lead you to those who have a vote in your state.
I’m going to have to strongly disagree with PZ Myers here. The problem we’re dealing with is Persistence of Discredited Beliefs and some form of Sunk Cost Fallacy, where previous misinformation continues to persist and attempts to strongly counter this are faced with retreating further into that illusion. At least a few studies have shown that when faced with serious mistakes that they have made, people who are then strongly chastised or condemned are more likely to defend and prop up the mistake, because the result seems more positive than facing your own failures (i.e. the brain seeks internal consistency more than it does external consistency). Specifically, this was found with people who, believing that the rapture was upon us, sold all their stuff and basically ended their professional lives. When critically faced with the fact that the rapture did not occur, most retreated into further fantasies about how the next iteration was going to happen any day now.
Empathy does not imply that you have to agree with their views (or that you aren’t internally horrified by them). Empathy is there to allow you to understand people’s internal state and to authentically coax people out of their narratives and into other narratives, by offering judgement-free positive alternatives. Positive stories, while attempting to create some form of human connection, work better than shaming. Despite granting you a feeling of catharsis, attempts to enforce shaming in this sphere are counter-productive (just like trying to get people to lose weight through shame is basically a non-strater).
Simple condemnation does not work to change people’s minds, and telling people to “figure it out for themselves” is a bit like asking people to “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps”. It’s not going to happen if they don’t have the mental tools and the alternative narratives to do so. It’s not going to happen if their brain is screaming at them to retreat into a state of comfortable ignorance. One of the realizations about our own inherent lack of rationality implies that we are all responsible for keeping society hewing as close to reality as possible. We can’t rely on people to just figure things out for themselves when presented with “obviously true” information.
In many cases, you’ll be arguing for a third party anyway (the Trump supporter may be lost, but the independent or moderate watching your conversation may not). Third-party-targeted argumentation is well-described here: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/19/1634327/-How-to-turn-trolls-into-your-best-friends
The point that many people missed with Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” speech was the point she was trying to make: half of Trump’s supporters were deplorable, but the other half weren’t. She went on to say, correctly, that if Democrats couldn’t figure out how to reach out to the non-deplorable half, SHE WOULD LOSE. Again, she was absolutely correct.
Regardless of the actual majority, there were enough Trump voters to elect him president. If we label every single one of them as racist bigots, then that’s what they’ll see when the look at the Democratic party, and they will continue to avoid us in droves. We will feel correct and justified and righteous and pure, and we will continue to lose and lose and lose.
I don’t care why they voted for him. I don’t care whether they deserve to be unfriended and reviled — heck, most of them probably do. I just know that, from a pragmatic point of view, if we can’t figure out how to get them back into our camp, we will continue to live in an ever-worsening hellhole, and drag the rest of the world in with us.
brucegee1962@32,
You are simply wrong. A huge number of potnetial voters didn’t vote at all. These are primarily the people to target.
SHIT FUCK DAMN.
Oh, all the cool kids are saying that Pewdiepie is one teensy step away from killing a Jewish passerby with his own bare hands. FFS, the man Vlogs so he must be Nazi scum. right? Just like JKSnarling and the esteemed Wall Street FuckYourFace insist to be so.
PZ, your critique of the man is both laughable and maddening, so please watch any one of Pewd’s COMEDY videos or LETSPLAY videos or TRAVELog videos. I am no gem of a human, but I’ll tell you that if you’re going to insist that funny-man Pewds deserves all the shade that he is getting then you are here behaving as a sometime-silly little troll, sniping from your safe haven. That’s your well-earned prerogative, but then… F’ you and the mainstream bandwagon you’re rolling with there, buddy. A ban-hammer may be my due or not. Don’t care, because you’ve just done the opposite of promoting peace. You’ve promoted the WSJ pieces-of-shit contributors who started this recent hate-cycle, whoring away, lying behind their paywall.
And you all here in these threads, who haven’t watched a single video of Pewdiepie’s yet somehow know that he’s the embodiment of the Neo-Modern Hitler Kinder, busily spawning Europe’s New Wave of Hate, sit the hell down and shut up with your self-righteous BS, or else you can please watch ONE VIDEO and THEN tell us how anti-semitic you think the man is. k’thx
xero2cx, that which is asserted, like your whole post, without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. And I dismiss it.
Care to link at all?
@35
YOUTUBE.COM ???
whattheactualhell is wrong with people
@35 Nevermind, please. I liked it much better when you were dismissing me.
zero2cx, you’re funny.
It’s pretty obvious “Pewdiepie” is a media construct, played by an actor.
Zero2cx, you showed what I expected. An inability to back up your argument with legitimate third party evidence. Just like The Drumpf.
I’m a scientist, either third party evidence, or have your number as a liar and bullshitter. Thanks for playing, but you failed as usual for a troll….
@34.
Zero, I scrolled through the comments and not a single person called PewDiePie anything remotely similar to a modern Hitler or anything of the sort. He made anti Semitic jokes, which is unacceptable, and he was punished appropriately for it.
I do find it amusing that you felt a need to come running in here shrieking at us and throwing wild accusations to defend the shrieking subject of your fanboyism.
@39
Umm, no. It is only other entities that are repeating the assertion that Pewdiepie is a shadowy, hidden/borderline racist who is well-beloved by neo-Nazi denizens of the shittiest corners of the internet.
Where have I asserted anything that lacks support? Your huffy demand for “links!!11!” is silly because I haven’t made any assertions, have I? Well, none but the following. There do exist haters who smear the man while never expending any time to personally assess the content that they claim to oppose. Now … Please explain to me this scientificating process, so that may provide for you the evidence (“links!!!11”) to your own personal refusal to watch a bit of the man’s video content.
Thank you for spelling my handle correctly.
@38
Thank you. And maybe? But that’s certainly never been made obvious to me, so I doubt that. By most accounts (not yours, tho), he is a guy who won the race to figuring out how to master the monetization of self-produced, one-man entertainment content on YouTube. One thing that is obvious is that he enjoys what he does or frequently makes that appear to be so. What follows is also surely obvious… his haters are going to find super-creative ways to hate on him, actor or no.
@40
Yet you called me a fanboi to, I assume, hurt my feelings or diminish me. So snipe away, yah yah. Buzzfeed is piling on and PZ is promoting the dogpile.
Note that you’re a poor judge of what some agenda-driven people have labelled as “anti-semitic” jokes. This is because you haven’t watched any of the “hate-filled” videos. That is readily apparent. His punishment was “appropriate?” How could you assess what happened? You have failed to inform yourself, yet here you are judging. Lazy.
TL;DR One of Pewdiepie’s responses to being called a Nazi was to respond with a parody video. People point to that parody and say that was anti-semitic and was not acceptable and certainly not funny. They’re either mistaken or they have an agenda.
Context matters. The dude, for a few seconds in one video, wore a military-uniform/Halloween costume and recorded himself watching Hitler make a speech from a century ago. That video was made with comedic intent and I personally see that as uproariously funny! He was soooo obviously trying to parody the silliness of unsupported accusations (up to that point) from the print media of him producing overt and cruel anti-semitic venom. Yet, no one has ever produced the videos that are hate-filled. Agenda, much?
@40
Why would you think that I was replying to past comments there, Judge Jenneane?
Yes, you laugh your face off, because up there in @34 I was preemptively calling out you, dear reader, for judging a video-creating person as anti-semitic (He must be problematic!!! right? someone said!). Of course, it was already apparent before you shat words at me that you’ve never watched the videos. Newsflash… your judgement is flawed because you’re in your zone comfortably labeling other people as lesser than you. Well, I am laughing at you because I called it right, predicting that you would begin your formulaic spew towards Pewdiepie, didn’t I? :D
Zero2cx, still no third party links. There is absolutely no reason to take your word as anything other bullshit…..
Welcome to skepticism, where your unsupported word is not accepted as anything other than bullshit.
Weird. Somebody has a serious obsession with PewDiePie. I have seen several of his videos, and was totally unimpressed. He got one sentence from me here, and that’s all.
Then almost no one commented on PewDiePie until you blew up. I don’t get it. He’s a guy who yells a lot while playing video games. You want to convince me he’s getting short shrift, your approach here is doing exactly the opposite.
Yep, okey then. So…
QUESTION) An obsessed person would A) wait days to post their reply to you? B) respond with a ramped-up and heated post right away?
ANSWER) Doesn’t really matter… PZ has labelled you! He’s already dismissed you as obsessed. That’s fair enough, after I labelled you as a snipey, small little troll on the issue of judging PewDiePie’s “shrift”. So, moving on.
Back on point, I came here to rant before and not to convince. Because no one here is going to be likely swayed from their PewDiePie pre-conceptions now, are ya? And just because I had a rude back-and-forth with the redhead-troll here earlier here doesn’t mean I think that anyone is going to be or even willing to be swayed. You all here are the very definition of a hive and you should enjoy your honey, as it is yours and it is yummy. It’s a bit sad for me to realize how often I’ve found there to be some large amount of measured analysis in PZ’s social-commentary blog posts and his follow-up comments in the threads. Oh, well. PZ, you are who you are and your time to deal with this shit is limited, as it must be. My earlier esteem of your monologues and dialogues here has been adjusted, as should maybe your own opinion towards myself. I’m the obsessive fanboi, can’t forget.
However and seriously, anti-Semitism does exist. It is real and causes harm to each its victims. It is detrimental to our societal harmony in general. We won’t best counter either overt or disguised racism by perpetuating a flawed identification of racism where it hasn’t been revealed within the real and actual behavior or commentary of a person. The fight against racism is neutered by casually over-identifying racism where it isn’t real. I hesitate to use the term SJW because that epithet is also widely over-applied but, damn it, the term fits many of those who today hate on PewDiePie for “his racist ways”.
In closing, when the Wall Street Journal compiled their list of his videos that purported to out PewDiePie as a racist anti-Semite, they had me going for an entire afternoon. However, with this nice and clarifying video response [8m15s] that was posted a day later, as well as my own attention to the discourse that immediately followed, today I remain convinced that this issue is all shit and the online world is all shit and fuck all those who boost themselves by perpetuating this shitting-upon-PewDiePie party. Note that I never asked anyone here to find the man’s comedy to be FUNNY. I asked you all to not find him RACIST if it is based only upon this fucked-up shit that Rupert Murdoch’s people started about him. Now it’s a goll-durned meme that he’s a stinky, Aryan racist, so of course BuzzFeed piles on. And now PZ, too. Dude, shit fuck damn. And fuck you, redhead.
Imagine caring that much about an antisemetic youtube funnyman.