More on the Hate-Filled Left

Jacques comments on yesterday's Shelby Steele entry:

Shelby Steele is clearly right about the Left's need for hate objects (as a source of power) but I think he is wrong to say this is "a death rattle".  Or at least I'm skeptical.  We've already been through so many phases of this same dynamic, and it hasn't yet killed the Left or even slowed it down.  On the contrary, it seems to me that as their stories of evil Republicans and evil white men (etc) become ever more absurd the fanaticism and power of Leftists grows.  For example, the Tawana Brawley story was utterly absurd even at the time.  Any reasonable person would have regarded the story as highly dubious, even before all the decisive evidence of lies was available.  And yet the absurdity of the story--even its demonstrable falsity--didn't do anything to convince Leftists that their campaign against "white supremacists" was mistaken.  As far as I can tell the absurdity of the story did nothing to harm Al Sharpton's career.  Similarly, it was obviously absurd to believe that Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism, or a white supremacist, or whatever.  There was, at the very least, enough evidence from the very beginning for any reasonable person to suspend judgment--to doubt that Trayvon was just an innocent little child victim, to doubt that George Zimmerman had any racial motivation, etc.  But that also did nothing to stop the Left, and seems on the contrary to have emboldened them in their endless campaign against "racism" and "racists". 

I agree. Trayvon Martin was no victim of white racism. He was no Emmett Till. The boy brought about his own death. If Martin had been taught, or rather had learned, to control himself he would most likely be alive today.  But he wasn't or didn't.  He blew his cool when questioned about his trespassing in a gated community on a rainy night.  He was no child on the way to the candy store. By all appearances he was up to no good. He punched a man in the face and broke his nose, then jumped on him, pinned him down, did the 'ground and pound' and told him that he was going to die that night.  So, naturally, the man defended himself against the deadly attack with deadly force.  What Zimmerman did was both morally and legally permissible.  If some strapping youth is pounding your head into the pavement, you are about to suffer "grave bodily harm" if not death.  What we have here is clearly a case of self-defense. The verdict of acquittal for Zimmerman was clearly correct.  Only a blind ideologue could fail to understand this. 

Does race enter into this?  In one way it does. But not in the way leftists think say. Blacks as a group have a rather more emotional nature than whites as a group.  (If you deny this, you have never lived in a black neighborhood or worked with blacks, as I have.)  Martin's lack of self-control got him killed.  He couldn't keep a lid on his mindless hatred of the "creepy-assed cracker." White-on-black racism did not enter into it at all. So, while self-control is important for all, the early inculcation of self-control is even more important for blacks. I suspect Shelby Steele would agree.

And I think this is true of almost all their hate objects.  Remember when Ronald Reagan was supposed to be a neo-Nazi, a right-wing dictator, a woman-hater...?  Wasn't it obvious in the '80s that these ideas were false, indeed preposterous?  Or the idea that Richard Nixon was some kind of uniquely vile criminal--as opposed to Ted Kennedy, for example, or JFK or Bill Clinton?  Or the idea that Mitt Romney--Mitt Romney, that pathetic liberal squish--was some kind of hard-right authoritarian bent on destroying women and minorities?  Or what about the utterly absurd idea of "white privilege" or "microaggression" or "transgenderism"?  These things are demonstrably false or simply incoherent, but it only took a few years for all of them to be nailed down as the central principles of a new moral code that no one in human history had ever even imagined.  

Of course you are right about all of this.

In all of these cases, and a zillion others, the Left's hatred was totally divorced from any kind of realistic adult assessment of reality.  And yet it has never made any difference.  It's never set them back significantly, and instead what generally happens is that their deranged absurd demonstrably false narrative ends up being entrenched as the only mainstream reasonable opinion within a few years at most. 

 So I'd propose an additional hypothesis to explain this phenomenon:

The absurdity of the story is part of its appeal.  Leftists derive self-esteem from their (supposed) ability to understand problems that regular people can't understand, and their (supposed) deep concern for victims.  It makes them feel intellectually and morally superior to regular people, and they are addicted to that high.  The more seemingly absurd the theory, the more brilliant and sensitive and complicated you must be in order to really 'get' it--and, of course, the more it will repel the dumb rednecks and normies, who don't get it and can't be in the club.  And this in turn strengthens them as a mass movement.  They control the institutions and media, so they're able to reach an ever-growing audience of new people who also want to feel good about themselves, superior to the hated white male conservative Other.  By contrast, a more rational and realistic assessment of the world offers little to these people--no special social status and opportunities for preening and validation, no sense of being exalted above the dumb masses.

What needs explaining is the uncontrolled, largely inarticulate, animal rage of the Left. (e.g., Robert de Niro: Fuck Trump!) Steele's hypothesis is that the Left is raging because it is losing its power and moral authority due to  the drying up of sources of legitimate moral indignation. The civil wrongs were righted. And so leftists have traded in righteous anger for mindless hatred. In order to hold on to its power the Left is inventing bogus sources of moral outrage.

Jacques speak of an "additional hypothesis," but is he trying to explain the same phenomenon, the Left's hyperbolic rage?  Or a different phenomenon, the need leftists have to feel superior to Hillary's "deplorables"?

It looks like the explananda are different and so are the explanantia.  The rage and the need to feel superior, on the one hand, and the the lust for power and the concoction of pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook, on the other.

Finally, if this line of thought is reasonable, it makes me wonder whether Steele is perhaps being a bit naive about the Left's track record.  Did the Left really "rescue America" from "the great menace of racism"?  Is the story since the 60s really one of "the greatest moral evolutions ever"?  I suspect that this whole hallowed narrative might be not so different, ultimately, from the Left's current stories about Trayvon and Michael Brown "the gentle giant", or this ridiculous thing about Judge Kavanaugh's high school sins.  Maybe they've been telling absurd lies all along--just as they lied about the USSR, for example.  Maybe "racism" in the past was a far more ambiguous phenomenon--not something that needed to be simply eradicated using essentially totalitarian methods, but something that needed to be moderated, understood in its context and judged more realistically.  Take lynching, for example, one of their favorite mythologies.  Who was being lynched, and why?  Lots of blacks, but lots of whites too.  Maybe the reason was mainly that blacks were committing a disproportionate number of murders and rapes.  Maybe the reality of lynching was about as complex and ambiguous as the reality of so-called "racial profiling".  And the same goes for their other narratives--about women, immigrants, sex and so on.  I would expect that in 50 years people will have been trained to believe in the "great menace" of "heterosexism" or "microaggressions" or "hate speech" on the internet.  Maybe they've always been crazy.

"Lots of blacks, but lots of whites too."  Here I need some references.  Lot of whites were lynched? By whom?

It is true that blacks are disproportionately more criminally prone than whites. (And since it is true, this statement cannot be dismissed as racist.  A statement whose subject matter is race is not eo ipso a racist statement.)  I hope Jacques is not suggesting that the extra-judicial lynching of blacks was justified by their disproportionate engaging in rape and murder.

I differ from Jacques in that I hold that the original Civil Rights movement was basically on the right track, and that Steele, while he exaggerates, is right to point this out. We should not conflate that movement with the insane leftism of the present day.

Comments

[Jacques]

Hi Bill,
It seems that a lot of whites (and Mexicans, and other kinds of people) were lynched, though the majority of victims were blacks. Wikipedia says there were 1297 lynchings of whites and 3446 lynchings of blacks between 1882 and 1968.

So among the things we should take into account in deciding what to make of lynching are the following:

It was by no means just a white-on-black phenomenon. (Apparently there's even one known case of black-on-white lynching.)

In many cases the victims were probably or provably guilty of a serious crime such as rape or murder.

In many cases it doesn't seem there was any particular racial motivation; rather there was a wish for immediate rough justice against someone believed to be a killer or rapist, who often was black. (In the piece I mention below, Horowitz claims that in the most famous case a white man was lynched while his black co-accused was not.)

More blacks are killed by other blacks in a single year than were ever lynched by whites in the entire period since the Civil War.

This is an interesting little article: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264592/anatomy-lynching-david-horowitz

No, I'm not defending lynching. I'm saying that the Leftist (mainstream) narrative seems false. The practice is not evidence of some long-standing hatred of whites for blacks, or of violence targeting blacks just because they are black, or of the supposedly unique suffering of blacks in America as compared with non-blacks, and so on. All of that seems likely to be just more Leftist lies and propaganda.

Finally, though I'm not defending the practice, it is worth considering what society might have been like without the fear of lynch mobs and segregation. When whites are forced to 'integrate' with blacks on a large scale, the result is always the same: whites are robbed, raped and murdered at rates approaching the black-on-black crime rate. That's why we have "white flight". What was the white majority in the South supposed to do for the many whites who had to live around a sizable population of people with a very strong tendency to horrific crimes? We can't know how many white people were spared rape, murder or assault. But the Left is lying when they pretend that white people favored segregation and lynching and so on just because they were "ignorant" or morally backwards or hated blacks just for "the color of their skin". They had very serious justifiable fears.

[BV]

That's a good response, Jacques.

But let me ask you this: Do you agree that the Civil Rights movement in the U. S. was on balance a good thing?

You know about James Meredith and "Ole Miss." Wikipedia:

>>James Howard Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an African-American Civil Rights Movement figure, writer, political adviser and Air Force veteran. In 1962, he became the first African-American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi,[1] after the intervention of the federal government, an event that was a flashpoint in the Civil Rights Movement.<<

Do you think it was a good thing that the Feds forced the desegregation of "Ole Miss"?

[Tully Borland]

Steele only diagnoses part of the hatred--a relatively small part I think. Sexual promiscuity and perversity are the main reasons along with abortion. On some estimates, 25% of women will have had an abortion by age 40. Then add in the other male and female enablers, and well over 1/4 of the entire population has been involved in abortions. Just imagine the extraordinary guilt that has to be buried in the psyches of millions of Americans just so they can make it through the day. Preventing the birth of or killing your own offspring! It's no wonder at all that the left wants to destroy Kavanaugh (a virgin through college!) and anyone else who brings their darkness to the light of day.

[Jacques]

Those are tough questions.

For all the obvious reasons, I can sympathize with the spirit of the 'civil rights' movement. Or some interpretation of its basic ideals, anyway.

But "on balance" was it a good thing? Well, from that perspective we have to look at how it played out. And it seems to me that the consequences were absolutely terrible (on balance). Almost immediately we got legal race discrimination against whites, great spikes in violent crime, lowering of standards in order to accommodate black dysfunction, ever intensifying demonization of whites and white society in order to maintain the pretense of 'equality'. And now we have open explicit race hatred against whites and celebration of black criminality in the schools and mass media. Whites can no longer stand up for their own civilization and people in any way without being personally ruined for being "white supremacists". We have an almost inconceivably powerful central government that can destroy almost any white person and any institution, as long as some absurd charge of "racism" can be cooked up. These are just a few of the terrible consequences.

Was there possibly some way for the initial civil rights movement to happen without leading to all of this? I don't know. If there was, then maybe I could endorse the original movement in some way or to some degree.

While I do think it would be wrong to deny a university education to someone because of his race, I really don't know whether it was not also wrong for the federal government to go totalitarian for the purpose of ending segregation. I don't know whether, all things considered, segregation really was a morally wrong policy or instead a reasonable fair policy that was often implemented in bad ways.

The civil rights movement was largely a communist plot to undermine the United States. Its saint, MLK, was a very bad man who was never honest about his real aims. He was a tool of communists. The whole story stinks of propaganda. Rosa Parks was a tool. She was not some hero, and really her cause was trivial at best given the realities. What is worse? That some good and decent black people are inconvenienced and made to feel inferior by segregation, or that many white people are brutally assaulted, raped and murdered by 'empowered' blacks? Because I suspect that is the _real_ choice. And the reason we accept this silly mythology about the noble MLK and the noble Rosa Parks is just that the full horror of black-on-white crime has always been covered up. Maybe the indignities and injustices of segregation were the only way for whites to prevent this kind of thing: https://www.amren.com/news/2007/05/the_knoxville_h/

I'm just not sure what to say. I wonder though whether most people would reconsider the mainstream mythology if _all_ the facts about black behavior and the consequences of forced integration were widely known. (How has this worked out in South Africa? That seems to be the future the egalitarians and lovers of humanity have in mind for us...)

[Malcolm Pollack]

One consequence of the civil-rights movement has been that it has made it possible for black people with the superior qualities necessary for success in the wider world to achieve the full flowering of their potential.

When they do, however, they do exactly what almost everyone else of exceptional ability does when they rise to the top: they join a new and elite stratum, marry someone with similar genetic endowments, and leave their old world behind.

This is a great blessing for such people, and it is the positive legacy of the civil-rights movement that they now have this freedom -- which, it is easy to argue and almost impossible to deny, is their natural right.

But it is clear enough that since the 1960s, urban black communities are far worse places than they were previously, by nearly every measure of social and physical well-being. Why?

A few years ago I wrote this:

...consider the difference between America in 1921 and America today. In 1921, no matter how richly blessed with the aforementioned genetic assets a black man or woman might be, and no matter how successful as a result, there was nowhere to go. Because of the wall of racism that excluded blacks from the upper (or even the lower) strata of white society, talented and successful black people remained, willy-nilly, in their black communities. And so did their genomes.

America in 2015 is a very different place, and has been since the victories of the civil-rights movement of the 1960’s. Nowadays any black person who “makes it” is immediately up and out. For a few years my daughter taught high-school science in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which is one of the toughest inner-city neighborhoods in America. I visited her there, and met some of her brightest students — and they were very bright indeed. Their aim, first and foremost, was to do well enough to get away. Who could blame them? I know a lot of exceptionally talented and successful black men and women, most of them musicians. I cannot think of one who still lives in these blighted ghettos.

What this means, then, is that since the 1960s a mechanism has been at work that continuously “boils off” all of the best genes from black communities, leaving behind an increasingly concentrated and dysfunctional underclass. Of course this is not all of the story — as noted above, for half a century it has been the government’s policy to subsidize dysfunction, and when the government subsidizes anything, it always creates more of it — but this is an important part of it, and one that is almost completely unmentioned in public discourse. It is further evidence that no great social transformation — no matter how just and well-intended — is without unintended consequences.

What, then, is to be done? I really can’t say. But I do know this: there can be no hope of treating any of these ills without an accurate diagnosis.

[Malcolm Pollack]

As for the Left's rage: there are few things as gratifying, for a certain type, as feeling one's thumos aroused and swollen with righteous anger. After the setback these people got in 2016, nobody should be surprised to see them fully inflamed.

As for whether this is a "death rattle": well, that's up to the rest of us.

[BV]

That's good Malcolm.

Question: why do so few blacks escape the ghetto compared to other groups?

And do you agree with Jacques when he writes that >>The civil rights movement was largely a communist plot to undermine the United States.<

[Jacques]

There's a certain logic to the process. If what they've been doing for decades really was "progress" all along, the more we "progress", the more horrible the past will seem. In 1980 "homophobia" was maybe a bit mean or impolite but not such a big deal, by 1990 it was morally wrong but "homophobes" just needed "education", and by 2010 it was a sign of a disgusting intrinsically evil person who probably needs a good punch in the face. Whereas initially right-wingers and white people and men might have been well-meaning but mistaken, eventually they become pure evil ("literally Hitler", that is). So the more they win the more they hate the other team for having any kind of public influence or just for still existing.

I guess another factor is that they end up believing their own myths and lies. Since they've deleted 80% of history and 100% of all the reasonable arguments against their ideas, it now seems obvious to them that any disagreement shows merely that the other party is a "hater". People oppose abortion because they hate women. People oppose mass immigration because they hate foreigners. When the other team is nothing more than a bunch of hate-filled sadists and morons, how can you not hate them? And when they still won't shut up and go away, your hate gets pretty intense.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Bill,

I'll leave your first question aside for now, I think (though I think it's safe to say that decades of government policies that subsidize dysfunction haven't helped).

I recall that a Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman that there was no poverty in Scandinavia -- to which Friedman replied "That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either".

Nature? Nurture? An "exercise for the reader".

Do I agree with Jacques about the civil-rights movement being largely a communist plot? Of course both communists and civil-rights activists were of the Left, so there was a lot of overlap, some of it well-documented. But beyond that I don't know enough to have a defensible opinion.

[BV]

Jacques writes, >> People oppose abortion because they hate women. People oppose mass immigration because they hate foreigners. When the other team is nothing more than a bunch of hate-filled sadists and morons, how can you not hate them? And when they still won't shut up and go away, your hate gets pretty intense.<<

I find it hard to believe that our enemies could be so stupid as not to see the force of the arguments against abortion and mass illegal immigration. Should we conclude that they are evil?

We talk and talk but what we need is a concrete agenda for action.

Any ideas beyond voting and not funding the Left?

[Malcolm Pollack]

Bill,

Any ideas beyond voting and not funding the Left?

Speak the truth, despite our fear. As more and more of us do, more and more of us will.

Remember that things often change, as the old saying goes, "gradually, then suddenly". Those who seek to destroy everything that is good and real and holy here in America, and throughout the West, only have the power that we give them.

Remember also that if it must come to a fight, as well it may, we will win.

[BV]

Thanks, Malcolm, but speaking the truth is something we've been doing for a long time, and mostly just among ourselves. What good does it do?

What I am looking for is a list of specific actions. Here are some examples, which I don't necessarily endorse, but I list them so that you see what I am looking for.

1. Agitate for secession. (I don't support this at all.)
2. Break all social contacts with leftists.
3. Buy guns and become expert in their use. (Not to start a shooting war, but to be in a position to finish one should one start, God forbid! You and I agree that real civil war would be hell.)
4. Shout down leftist speakers giving them a taste of their own medicine.
5. Prevent leftists from dining in restaurants in the way leftist scum attacked Cruz and his wife recently.
6. Build parallel conservative institutions, clubs, learned societies, colleges.

This is just for discussion, at the moment. I am not advocating any of this.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Bill,

Thanks, Malcolm, but speaking the truth is something we've been doing for a long time, and mostly just among ourselves. What good does it do?

Well, it did some good in 2016. And as the Left, backed at least temporarily into a corner, reveals more and more of the naked truth about themselves, I believe others on our side will hear what we have to say -- which they know in their own hearts to be true -- and be emboldened. Magna est veritas. Perhaps it will prevail.

About your points:

1) may come to pass. It will not be pretty if so.

I disagree about 2). I am busily red-pilling many of my leftist friends, with some results.

I'm with you on 3). 100%.

4) and 5) are not my style, or yours (are you really going to do this?).

6) is vitally important. (I'll take this opportunity to invite you to register for the Mencken Club meeting in November.)

I'll add:

Act locally. One of the precious truths that we are fighting to defend is that the great pillars of our civilization are the family, our duty to those around us, and our own virtue.

Live correctly. Respect yourself. Don't tell lies, to yourself or to others.

If you are young, marry. Have children. Teach them gratitude for what they have inherited, and make them understand what it took to create it, and why it is their duty to cherish and preserve it.

[Jacques]

Today I saw something on facebook as follows: "No one believes these women aren't telling the truth. Everyone knows they are. We need to stop talking about believing and start talking about caring. They just don't care that women are raped."

Or consider this arbitrarily chosen example of Leftist (black) trash journalism: https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/the-delicious-salt-of-brett-kavanaughs-white-tears-1829374238

These people have been far beyond any basic standards of reason or decency for a long time. I can't tell, though, if they're evil or inconceivably stupid. It seems like they're a mix. Some are evil, some are very stupid, some are a little stupid and a little evil, some are just crazy. I think some are crazy, evil and stupid.

Or maybe it's simpler to say that they are simply the party of evil. They're possessed.

[BV]

There is also lack of proper upbringing and education. "Everyone knows they are."

They haven't been taught the meanings of words and that one ought to be careful in one's use of language. For example, they don't understand that 'everyone' is a universal quantifier and that 'knows' and 'believes' are not intersubstitutable *salva significatione.*

So they are evil, stupid, uneducated, and generally screwed-up. And willfully self-enstupidated.

[BV]

Malcolm,

Good suggestions. That's what I was looking for.