[Hong Wu]

This is counter-intuitive but I believe I can explain it well.

In the past in western countries, over 98% of the population were white people. I am going to use the term "racial absolutist" here instead of racist because the term racist today doesn't mean exactly what it meant in the past. To be a white supremacist (which I will define as being a racial absolutist, one who believes that being white guarantees things about someone's character) when 98% of the population of your country was white was actually to say that you believed everyone in your country was inherently good. Insofar as this was clearly not true (some people of other races were also good, and the existence of white criminals and so-on clearly evidenced that some whites were bad) the extant bad members of the population had their malice attributed to the behaviors of uniquely corrupt groups, usually Jews in the most recent era in Europe.

Today in western countries, the population is very mixed. To believe that all races, genders and other kinds of identities are completely equal with each other is really to say that you believe that everyone in your country is inherently good. Insofar as this is clearly not true, the extant bad members of the population have their flaws attributed to the behaviors of uniquely corrupt groups, modernly those are the conservatives in the liberal mindset.

In both instances, people are choosing to believe (contrary to immediately observable evidence) that everyone in their society is inherently good and when evidence to the contrary is presented, they blame people who follow an allegedly corrupt philosophy. Previously it was Judaism, today it is anything associated with western conservatism. The truth is that individual people are just individuals and some of them are bad entirely on their own, not due to the actions of anyone else. This is an uncomfortable position for people to take because it could lead to confrontation; much easier to blame any problems upon vaguely alleged saboteurs.

I believe that one reason this mistake is so easy to make is because people increasingly equate things like technical intelligence with being a "good" person, even though someone's job and their skill at it may say nothing at all about the strength of their character. As such, a statement such as "Asians are better at math than blacks" is taken as a statement that blacks are bad people, which is not necessarily true.

[Red_Army]

I assume this is another justification for your shitty opinions about nazis so you're talking about America. When was America 98% white? I seem to remember there being a whole lot of non white people when the whites showed up, a lot more non whites were then added to the mix unwillingly, then some people who are now white, but weren't then came, as well as railroad and taco americans.

I'm not surprised you came to a dumb conclusion based on your ignorance of basic facts. Keep trying! Maybe you should stick to posting this shit on forums where the threads time out.

[The Immortal Goon]

"Good," doesn't really mean anything.

Further, it's very unlikely that a starving Irish peasant would say that his landlord was, "good," because he was white.

Or a French labourer would see it as "good," when his daughter was turned out to prostitution because the boss that reduced his wages was white.

Or that an English miner would choke up the last bit of his black lung and look upon the mine owner as, "good," because he was white.

Etc...

[Wellsy]

The abstract and idealize nature of liberalism doesn't require a belief of everyone being 'good', what ever this vague sign is meant to signify. Rather it's a kind of abstract equality in which the law is to act on the basis that their is a human dignity to every subject and should be treated justly/fairly which is often means equitable unless there is a justified basis for differential treatment (ie women have abortions, doesn't deprive men of a right but merely affords women a right that their biological capacity allows them to act on).
And this talk of individuals are bad purely on their own might lose sight of the social nature of individuals, because whilst an individual entity exists, they grow up in society and have an inherently social content to their subjectivity. And its quite often on the scale of individual to individual that one simply abstracts away society, which is why many posit thought experiments of people interacting in a way that in no way reflects real world relations and is a sign of deficiency in one's thought process if the thought experiment is taken too seriously.

Perhaps, wanting to zoom in the gap between an ideals or implications of a belief system and how it plays out. So for example people condemn the bible or quran as a text, language divorced from the active people and their real world relations. But at the same time to treat such meanings as insignificant cultural trends/artefacts in considering the development of things would just be just as one sided.
Need to dig deeper because sounds like trying to say that a person's ideology doesn't doesn't dictate the wrongness of their actions, a rejection of social determinism or something.
But ideology and stuff is often merely a reflection of the subjectivity that underpins one's actions (there can be a disjuncture in the form of hypocrisy, expressed beliefs contradicted by behaviour).
The ideology often reflect things found within the real relations between people as opposed to symbolic ones, such that male chauvinism versus feminism is more concretely reflected in real world struggles that are what give rise to the language that expressed that symbolic conflict.

All in all, it seems all rather narrow in the manner in which you abstract about the word. In that I don't think your thinking is properly mediated as to be a more concrete abstraction.
And it's also not apparent to me how the point I read out of the guts of the OP relates to a conflation of racism = anti-racism, doesn't seem to drill into this subject at all. The closest get to being explicit about race at all is the quote about Asians doing better at math than blacks and as mentioned a rather vague sense of western nations being 98% white.
Which should probably be qualified to get a sense of what you believe you're asserting.
I come from Australia which colonized the indigenous and at it's whitest after years of the series of policies and procedures that are dubbed 'White Australia Policy', was in the low to mid 90 percentile which entailed mass exportation of Torres Straight Islanders and stuff.
And don't do well to unpack the concept of whiteness which, is rather elaborate in it's association.
Constructing Whiteness

n this paper, I hope to show that whiteness consists of a body of knowledge, ideologies, norms, and particular practices that have been constructed over the history of the American colonies and the U.S. with roots in European history as well. The knowledge, ideologies, norms, and practices of whiteness affect how we think about race, what we see when we look at certain physical features, how we build our own racial identities, how we operate in the world, and what we "know" about our place in it. Whiteness is shaped and maintained by the full array of social institutions--legal, economic, political, educational, religious, and cultural. As individuals and in groups, affected by whiteness, we in turn influence and shape these institutions. Thus, whiteness is constantly evolving in response to social forces and the constellation of people who are seen as white may change over time.

And this is probably a difficult thing to follow, the process of how things end up more abstract, more connotative. That the resonance of something being white being in relation to how the real world relations are lived and experienced, though this dynamic of our symbolic relationship with one another with a other aspect in relation to the concrete relations is difficult stuff to conceptualize itself.

My arrogant assertion is you need to work on a self consciousness to the implications on how you think/abstract and the nature of what is really under consideration, what is taken into the mind and what is left out. How does the image/model one constructs capture elements of the truth/reality.

And when people are critical of people who seem to adhere to an ideology of Neo-Nazism, it need not be an ideology considered separate from the real people who aren't some abstract ideal but the personification of that ideology in reality. Quite often the criticism is leveled at real world acts and then put in relation to a corresponding belief system that is professed as well as identifiable by characteristics. Though if one wanted, they might get deeper into whether the appearance/form betrays the essence/substance. But in the case of quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it's a duck, one should learn to trust appearances for their relation to the truth. Otherwise end up a methodological idealist that thinks the truth isn't considered in what is sensuous/empirically real, but ends up someone concerned only with abstract models with a priori rationalism that doesn't bother to confirm itself to the real because it rejects the truth of it. And one ends up in nonsensical stuff where the ground from which ideality arises is ignored and one abstracts about abstractions and ends up muddled with the void in considering things too distant from the real world.

[Hong Wu]

I assume this is another justification for your shitty opinions about nazis so you're talking about America. When was America 98% white? I seem to remember there being a whole lot of non white people when the whites showed up, a lot more non whites were then added to the mix unwillingly, then some people who are now white, but weren't then came, as well as railroad and taco americans.

I'm not surprised you came to a dumb conclusion based on your ignorance of basic facts. Keep trying! Maybe you should stick to posting this shit on forums where the threads time out.

In the past, racism meant refusing to recognize someone's individual traits because of their race, today in some circles it means being willing to acknowledge someone's individual traits even though they are of a different race. Notice how it is almost the reverse meaning. Similarly, Nazism literally meant economically socialist and in some circles today it means being against economic socialism, again almost the opposite meaning.

There is no such thing as "shitty opinions" that people hold based upon some kind of basis that appears rational to them from their own perspective. A person believes something for a reason and merely saying "you believe this" without providing any context (e.g., calling someone a racist instead of asking what racism means) is ultimately a tribal statement devoid of any real context or thought. The only "shitty opinions" then are unjustified opinions about opinions, in lieu of having a reason for opinions and asking what that is.

Europe was 98% white and was the origin of the Nazism (almost 100-year old ideology) that you guys refer to so regularly even though it's arguably impossible to be a genuine adherent of the system today even in the extremely rare cases where someone wants to be. So for example, I couldn't be a Nazi today any more than I could be a monarchist without a monarch, I could at most have a vague understanding of what "Nazism" is and wish it existed in fact. Similar to rich western kids who wish they were communists while Venezuela gives out toilet paper to loyalists.

Anyway, the fact that words like Nazi and racist hold opposite meanings in many ways today suggests to me that the anti-racists and nazi-haters of today are the kinds of people who would have been racists and Nazis in the past, when these things were popular justifications for going after strangers, which is what liberalism seems to be about for some people today. Liberalism is stubbornly making itself enemies today just like racism and Nazism did in the past despite having a small number of ostensibly good qualities because people can tell when someone is just looking for a fight and they don't like it. Similarly, racism and Nazism were popular when the civilizations they came from (like 98% white Europe) suggested that they had good qualities to go along with their obvious bad qualities. What would you suggest the percentage of people with shitty opinions that need to be put in the goolag is, a generous 2% or more than that? Serious question. Sooner or later the facade gets recognized for what it is, the anti-fascists become tomorrow's fascists and people get mad at them.

Tl;dr MLK said he wanted people to be judged on the content of their character. People will try to dissemble and say that character doesn't exist but obviously he thought it did, does that make him a racist?

[Red_Army]

@Hong Wu I know that you have no point other than "people who oppose nazis are the real nazis", but lets do it. Your opinions can be and are shit because they are based on nonsense. If you want to have an argument based in reality you need to argue based in evidence. Your first post is purposely vague so that you can squirm out of any opposition by readjusting what you meant. What period is "the past" you refer to in your first post? Define what constitutes whiteness and then ponder on the fact that its a nebulous term that has changed a good deal throughout the history of its use.

"the fact that words like Nazi and racist hold opposite meanings"

They don't just because you feel like they should. You can't just conjure facts to suit your opinions. This kind of argument wouldn't pass the muster of a middle school debate team and you should feel less intelligent for having made it.

[MB.]

This thread was pretty terrible.

There is no such thing as "shitty opinions" that people hold based upon some kind of basis that appears rational to them from their own perspective.

This is just subjectivity. Ie, your shitty opinion is subjective since it's based on no real evidence or objective facts.

[Heisenberg]

Is anyone else sick of this "everything is nothing, black is white, 2+2=5" bullshit?

I swear that for basically the last year on this site, the alt-right darlings have been telling us all about how words mean whatever they fuck they feel like they mean, that people who are revolted by racist hooligans are the real Nazis, and other such rubbish. And then they have the nerve to invoke George Orwell.

[MB.]

The irony is that the alt right nazis are the real moral relativists.

[Hong Wu]

@Hong Wu I know that you have no point other than "people who oppose nazis are the real nazis", but lets do it. Your opinions can be and are shit because they are based on nonsense. If you want to have an argument based in reality you need to argue based in evidence. Your first post is purposely vague so that you can squirm out of any opposition by readjusting what you meant. What period is "the past" you refer to in your first post? Define what constitutes whiteness and then ponder on the fact that its a nebulous term that has changed a good deal throughout the history of its use.

"the fact that words like Nazi and racist hold opposite meanings"

They don't just because you feel like they should. You can't just conjure facts to suit your opinions. This kind of argument wouldn't pass the muster of a middle school debate team and you should feel less intelligent for having made it.

You're not a very good troll. I keep coming up with very specific arguments and you keep not responding. For example, the criticism of Jews almost a hundred years ago was that they were insular, allegedly rich and supposedly plotting against people of different ethnicity because of regressive beliefs. This is remarkably similar to modern criticisms of conservatives, isn't it?

The truth of course is that there surely existed Jews who were insular, rich and biased against non-Jews, just as there are conservatives who fit that bill but it's hyperbole to apply that to everyone who calls themselves a conservative.

[Red_Army]

I'm not trolling. Your arguments are at best incredibly vague and at worst completely based in false notions. If I told you it was a fact that you were a woman with menopause and then argued that your hot flashes inspired your posts here would you accept that you are a woman with menopause in your defense?

Until you begin to make coherent sense I will discard your arguments as incoherent. You just provided a further example of vague bullshit. Your comparison of criticism of jews vs. conservatives might as well be, "people didn't like them both". It is weak as shit. It's this sort of half assed and unresearched historical analysis that defines the whole twerpy alt right movement. Almost like it's an ideology created and fed by an anonymous image board for weeaboos.

[skinster]

Is anyone else sick of this "everything is nothing, black is white, 2+2=5" bullshit?

I swear that for basically the last year on this site, the alt-right darlings have been telling us all about how words mean whatever they fuck they feel like they mean, that people who are revolted by racist hooligans are the real Nazis, and other such rubbish. And then they have the nerve to invoke George Orwell.

[One Degree]

The alt left doesn't exist because the mainstream left is identical to it now. Everyday they go further into Lala land trying to support an unsupportable position, "Freedom through condemnation of everything they disagree with "

[Zagadka]

Can we please stop using the term "alt left"? It is a fabrication made by people who can't find a single group to target. "Alt right" was coined and defined by Richard Spencer to define his extremist groupings. Making up names for others is childish and hilights a lack of comprehension.

There are definitely people - most people - on both sides working for "Freedom through condemnation of everything they disagree with". That is the natural position of people.

[MadMonk]

The alt left doesn't exist because the mainstream left is identical to it now. Everyday they go further into Lala land trying to support an unsupportable position, "Freedom through condemnation of everything they disagree with "

While political and social freedoms should be promoted, we need a bedrock of values agreed upon by everyone in order to have a functioning society. Slavery and dehumanization are today not acceptable.

If I had any power I would hang Nazis and Islamists from the same tree, and anyone who stands beside them. Am I intolerant and anti-democratic for saying this? Perhaps, but for me human rights only exist for people who believe in them, something these two groups do not. It does not matter how good or tolerant some of the far-right demonstrators were that day, they stood next to evil and supported it.

[One Degree]

Can we please stop using the term "alt left"? It is a fabrication made by people who can't find a single group to target. "Alt right" was coined and defined by Richard Spencer to define his extremist groupings. Making up names for others is childish and hilights a lack of comprehension.

There are definitely people - most people - on both sides working for "Freedom through condemnation of everything they disagree with". That is the natural position of people.

Why should this be upsetting? You have a center, a right, a left, and an alt right. It makes no sense without an alt left. Extreme right and extreme left would be adequate for me. It does not matter who coined the term. The left uses it to diminish the right. Fair is fair. Personally, I would hate to think the extreme left position is the norm for all liberals.
One of the things instagrams new filter is designed to eliminate is any comment containing the word 'fat'. Is that extreme left or mainstream left?

[One Degree]

While political and social freedoms should be promoted, we need a bedrock of values agreed upon by everyone in order to have a functioning society. Slavery and dehumanization are today not acceptable.

If I had any power I would hang Nazis and Islamists from the same tree, and anyone who stands beside them. Am I intolerant and anti-democratic for saying this? Perhaps, but for me human rights only exist for people who believe in them, something these two groups do not. It does not matter how good or tolerant some of the far-right demonstrators were that day, they stood next to evil and supported it.

Ah, you see this is the problem. You believe human rights is the only way to view the world. You pretend there is no other view. This is a totalitarian view.

[Zagadka]

Since you are coining the term, please explain the difference for the alt left, because right now that means "everyone who I disagree with on issues with the alt right". "Alt right" Is an actual movement with policy.

[One Degree]

Since you are coining the term, please explain the difference for the alt left, because right now that means "everyone who I disagree with on issues with the alt right". "Alt right" Is an actual movement with policy.

Anyone who agrees with any silencing of alternative views. Alt left and alt right could be considered identical in this.
People who have forgotten our country not only allows alternative parties, but we are suppose to encourage it, not ban it.

[The Immortal Goon]

Anyone who agrees with any silencing of alternative views. Alt left and alt right could be considered identical in this.
People who have forgotten our country not only allows alternative parties, but we are suppose to encourage it, not ban it.

This is not what the Alt-Right means; and it's pretty silly to say that because you don't like what you imagine other people say it means, the people that say that are the same thing now with a title you get to approve of.

In an interview on Saturday, he said he was a member of the alt-right, which he calls “identity politics for white Americans and for Europeans around the world.”

How is that different from Nazism? Nazism is “a historical term” that “is not going to resonate today,” he said.

“German National Socialism is a historic movement of the past,” Mr. Spencer said. “It arose at a very particular time and had particular motives and ideas and policies and styles, and those aren’t mine.”

Spencer, who carries the term Alt-Right proudly, says that the Alt-Right is like modern day Nazism.