Edit: to add, the reason people don't take this tactic anymore, is (in my opinion) because they are 1) intellectually lazy, 2) poor debaters and 3) not comfortable with confrontation.
What happens when its a whole bunch of "traditionalists" (read: white supremacists) espousing the following views:
1. Xenophobia
2. Hyper-nationalistic
3. militarism
4. Glorification of violence and readiness to use it
5. Fetishization of masculinity
6. Leader cult
7. Lost-golden-age syndrome
8. Hierarchical party structure and tendency to purge the disloyal
Sometimes, a direct and harsh response is needed to preserve our institutions.
"The concept of popular sovereignty holds simply that in a society organized for political action, the will of the people as a whole is the only right standard of political action"[1]
[1]:https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Massachusetts_Const...
And summoning up the specters of fascism isn't a scare tactic. It's what happened last year in Charlottesville. White supremacists of all types had a big march. Even killed a counter-protester. Maybe you saw it? We even had a neofascist group do a march here in my local city. And right now, there's flyers espousing the "goodness" of fascism.
You can argue all you want from people from 300 years ago. I know if these people get say-so in government, I and my friends will lose rights, become disenfranchised, and possibly murdered. They say precisely that. So yeah, I do have a rather strong claim to not want fascists to take hold.
I do not believe this to be true and representative democracy managed to survive the larger half of a century with opposition from fascism, socialism, communism, autocracy, modern dictatorship and Orwellian totalitarianism. I think this trend will continue but it seems that you do not.
Keep in mind that a full third of the English language comes from German. In the 20s & early 30s, one of the largest and most financially/socially successful groups of immigrants in the US & UK were German. Germany and Fascism were politically very popular here and openly supported until (and on the US side, part-way through) WWII. Even under those circumstances, it was politically untenable. This is even more true now.
There is certainly some overlap there, but the numbers of white supremacists are small and the numbers of people with an affinity for some of those listed is much larger and not exclusively white (or male).
And in the case of most of that list, not even exclusively right-wing.
There's been an effort (online) in the last year to shift the semantics of the term, so that "white supremacists" might refer exclusively to performative white supremacists. That's pretty Orwellian, and there's no evidence it's catching on. I don't see a reason to dignify the effort. The term means what it obviously means.
This far, you might be arguably correct in that prima facie refers, essentially, to a conclusion that is justified by a piece of evidence unless rebutted by some other counterevidence. But the manner you use it here suggests that your intent was to use the sense of ipso facto rather than merely prima facie, and that's clearly not correct: it is quite possible to think that the are on-average ability differences between races with whites being advantaged over blacks (or some other race, or even most advantaged of all races) in one or more dimensions without being a white supremacist.
> that's what the term means.
Even to the extent that your prima facie claim in the foregoing independent clause could be argued to be correct, this little tag is not. “White supremacist” does not mean “person who believes that African Americans are on average less intelligent than ‘white’ people.”
It means [0] ”a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races”.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremaci...
I recognize that there is a trope suggesting you're not a white supremacist unless you want there to be a biologically determined difference. But, no, that just makes you a reluctant white supremacist. Similarly: there are people who believe it can't possibly be white supremacy to simply recognize science that suggests those differences. Nope, that makes you a scientific white supremacist. What if the differences are very minor? Then you're a mild white supremacist. This bothers people, and I guess it's heartening that it does, but I think most of us are aware that the most pernicious and dangerous form of white supremacy isn't the tiki torch army, but rather the subtle biases and self-dealing that work to keep difference "races" locked into different socioeconomic status brackets. The term means what it means. People should stop looking for loopholes.
You either are wrong or are speaking a language in which the phrase “white supremacist” means something different than it does in normal English usage.
> I recognize that there is a trope suggesting you're not a white supremacist unless you want there to be a biologically determined difference.
There might be, but I've never encountered it. And I'm starting to think you are not merely posting from a place using alternate English, but from a complete alternate reality.
Aside from you, I've never encountered anyone who seemed to think that the core of white supremacy was a belief in on-average differences.
White supremacy has two defining features (this is an elaboration of the two-point dictionary definition posted upthread), both of which are required:
(1) The belief that members of the White race, as such, are inherently superior—and this is reslly specifically about moral/value superiority—to those of other races. Universal or on-average biological differences may be pointed to as evidence of this superiority of value, but they are not the central point.
(2) The belief that as well as (and usually because of) point 1, above, members of the White race, as such, should be in a dominant role, and those of others limited to a subordinate role, independent of individual traits aside from race, in society.
Believing that whites have an on-average advantage in one dimension like IQ and neither assigning greater moral value to Whites as a class because of that nor believing that Whites should be favored in society does not make you a white supremacist. It doesn't even make you a pro-White racist, which you can be without being a White supremacists (holding belief 1 without belief 2 would make you a racist, but not a White supremacist.)
> The term means what it means.
Yes, and what the term “white supremacist” means is not “person who believes that whites have a higher average IQ than blacks” or “White Americans have a higher average IQ than African Americans”.
It's true that each of those (quite different, though often conflated) beliefs probably has some correlation with white supremacy, and indeed I'd be surprised to find a white supremacist who disagreed with either. But neither belief, alone, makes you a white supremacists or even a racist.
Just like believing men are on average taller than women doesn't make you a patriarchist, or even a sexist.
It's not a matter of offense, it's just a matter of the (unstated, with parameters only inferrable from your examples) definition you are using being radically at odds with any common use or published definition of “white supremacy” (including, but not limited to, the one I specifically cited upthread, in part in hopes that if you disagreed with it you'd provide an equally specific alternative), and your claims about what other people propose as an alternative to your preferred definition also being similarly disconnected from anything I can find in use anywhere.
I might be offended if you embraced the ideals of (actual) White supremacy. Your embrace of a weird definition of white supremacy that makes it a belief regarding a pure fact question rather than a value system—along with the idea that there is a rogue group pushing an alternate definition which makes it about a different fact-not-value question—is baffling, but not in itself offensive.
I find the content of his statements consistently divorced from reality and he also operates sockpuppet.org as his personal website. I'm not calling him something that he doesn't already clearly embrace.
I won't disagree that my comment was hostile, but so is disagreeing with someone based on his distinct, personal interpretation of the meaning of words. So is saying that anyone who is even slightly a bigot is also a white supremacist. If you have to ban me for this, Dan, I'll just take it. If we can't have meta discussions about how we discuss topics here, then it's just a popularity contest and "harmony" is more important than ideas. What's the point?
If you adopt traditional tribal/nationalist mentalities out of fear of those who already follow them, then you've already lost, while if you make clear what you stand for and live it, you're at least fighting for what you believe in.
And I do tentatively agree with you. However, there's a whole loaded meaning of " If they take to violence".. How much violence? Speech can be violence, no? Screaming "nigger" at black people is in horrible taste, but is questionable if its a crime. Allegedly murdering people, like what was reported to happened the Charlottesville rally - is that violence enough? What happens when their websites state they would demonize, illegalize, and murder people if they got power?
How much violence needs happened before the "arbiters" of liberal democracies stand with their pitchforks?
> If you adopt traditional tribal/nationalist mentalities out of fear of those who already follow them, then you've already lost, while if you make clear what you stand for and live it, you're at least fighting for what you believe in.
I'm for open-ish borders, as long as people are fingerprinted/faceprinted and announce whom they are on coming in. I don't care if you were a criminal in your original country, as it could have been made up for countless reasons. Frankly, I enjoy diversity. I live in a diverse area for the region, and I would like it moreso, but this is what we have now.
My grievances are with people espousing views to harshly remove immigrants, treat them worse than animals, de-humanize them, and go to lengths to actually murder them. You can say I "already lost"... Lost is having that group that would do us innumerable harm in control.
No, I don't believe speech can be violence. Screaming "N____" at black people is a shitty thing to do, but not violence. Murdering people is violence. Stating that you will demonize, illegalize, and murder people if they get power is a good argument to make sure they don't get power, but it is not violence.
There is a fairly clear dividing line between "violence" and "not violence": "Did you directly cause physical harm to another person?" Punch someone? That's violence. Shoot someone? That's violence. Throw someone to the ground? That's violence. Run over someone with a truck? That's violence.
Call someone nasty names? That's a shitty thing to do, but it's not violence even if it hurts emotionally; you are completely in control of your emotions, and you can also choose to disregard anything anyone else says. Say that you will inflict violence on someone in the future? That is also not violence, though it is perhaps a reason to be extra vigilant and take measures to prevent that violence from occurring. Incite other people to violence? They are guilty of violence, but you are not (incitement to violence is its own crime, and one that is intentionally very narrowly defined).
If that is true, then why do people (children) commit suicide over school bullying? Usually no physical abuse is involved, only verbal or online harassment.
You're argument is that a non-zero number of Alex Jones supporters don't support free-speech therefore all private platforms should ban him?
As a moderate liberal, this type of extremism (i.e. seeing Nazis and hate-speech and shootings everywhere, without every checking the numbers) actually pushes me to the right. I know I'm not alone, it's Joe Rogan's whole shtick.
From my observation, it has been because the right well-understood their losses in the last political cycle and learned how to empathize with and embrace their disagreements. The "battle lines" of the traditional right/religious right/(multifaceted-)alt-right (as in there's 10x as much political diversity there) don't line up at all and in some cases seem to be mutually opposed (religious Zionists & Neo Nazis), but they all hear each other and give each other a platform. They also constantly debate their politics. They all manage to find some thing or another in common and work to that goal.
In contrast, us (and I strongly consider myself one) progressives show absolutely zero empathy for people that do not agree with our politics to a tee. We're all about "correct thought", focus sharply on how we are divided and shut down conversation with outsiders. Honestly at this point I'm completely disgusted with the movement and the direction it is going.
Here's a quote from The Coming of the Third Reich by the premier historian of the period, Richard Evans:
"Communist rhetoric had become a good deal more violent since the inauguration of the ‘third period’ by the Comintern leadership in Moscow in 1928. From this point onwards, the party directed its venom principally against the Social Democrats. Every German government in its eyes was ‘fascist’; fascism was the political expression of capitalism; and the Social Democrats were ‘social fascists’ because they were the main supporters of capitalism, taking workers away from revolutionary commitment and reconciling them to Weimar’s ‘fascist’ political system. Anyone in the leadership who tried to question this line was dismissed from his party post. Anything that would help overthrow the ‘fascist’ state and its Social Democratic supporters was welcome."
Let's take a random quote from an article on Jordan Peterson that appeared yesterday. This is a man whose claim to fame is tselling young alienated ripe for alt-right recruitment men that, yes, liberal society has a place for you, but only if you clean your room and buy my books:
"Jordan Peterson's recent speaking engagement in Hamilton prompted Coun. Matthew Green's observation that Peterson is inflammatory and popular with the alt-right. And yet Peterson is frequently lauded as today's most important public intellectual. In fact, Peterson is less an intellectual than he is a gifted motivational speaker for racists and misogynists."
Jordan Peterson is de-radicalizing young men back towards an open and free society and is bringing back the cachet of public intellectuals (which is sad as Noam Chomsky is still alive). For some reason, the inquisitional progressives view this de-radicalization as a bad thing. It's absolutely bonkers.
ahem, "wash your p!"
Liberal ideology, in the one that designed the Bill of Rights, and such ideas do espouse in the free trade of ideas and thoughts. And generally, this is a great thing to be able to discuss controversial ideas or criticise people in power.
However, other groups figured out that this idea of liberalism has one major flaw - it would fight for the rights of those whom would stifle the very speech they use. in fact, some of these groups would kill dissenters over even so much as minor insults to the head of that state.
It's effectively the single major 'hack' that our system has. And the destructive outcome means the reduction or elimination of the very vehicle they use to spread - our speech, our freedom to petition government for a redress of grievances, our freedom of the press, our freedom of religion.