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Post by Oriana on Dec 4, 2017 3:31:25 GMT
From the discord:
Well, Nazis claim to love "White Culture" (Which, for the purposes of the discussion, is Anglo-Saxon American/British stuff predominantly done by white people for the past few hundred years, even though "white culture" is a stupid term with stupid things attached).
But if they really loved it, they would do things like hosting victorian-fashion weeks or classical music appreciation concerts, and they would love things like Hamilton where the values and ideas that shaped modern "white" societies are spreading into new medias and genres. They would rejoice whenever anyone who is not "white" adopts any facet of "white culture" (say, celebrating black neoclassical composers).
And yet they don't do that
They just kinda... perpetuate hatred and genocidal ideologies and call that "white culture".
And that's like... putting a stain on what "white culture" is?
If you want to celebrate America-Centric or Anglo-Centric achievements and media... you can do that? And people do that? And that's fine. The global society celebrates predominantly white-guy Superhero cinema. The whole PLANET is on the side of "celebrating white culture". But instead of donating to the local Steampunk society or whatever, they go around chanting anti-Jewish sentiment.
And... Iunno, I think that's weird.
Because I really like a lot of "white culture". I like Film Noir, a whole genre populated mostly by white American dudes. I really like superheroes. Same thing. I really like classical music, and the Enlightenment. And if there was a whole sub-section of society who just wanted to be nerds about those things... I don't think anyone would have a problem with that? Because we already have that, and it's called "the vast majority of the global entertainment industry"? And Antifa people aren't going to Hollywood to protest the latest season of Jessica Jones, or the overwhelmingly-white world of rom-coms?And Olly from Philosophy Tube has a video where he talks about "do racists love their country", and it talks about narcissistic love (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mR382NPaGM) and how it's fucked up, but at the same time... like, if you REALLY HAVE so much of this narcissistic love... why the genocide?
Like... why? Why not just... not be genocidal? And instead just... enjoy the not-genocidal parts of this Anglo-Saxon plus-or-minus German-Dutch-French thing you like to call "white culture"?
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Post by pfbourassa on Dec 4, 2017 15:00:07 GMT
"Why not just... not be genocidal?"
My biggest question right now.
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Post by mightyhegemol on Dec 4, 2017 17:55:15 GMT
I think one thing is that 'white culture' in their parlance doesn't actually refer to the same things as you do when you say 'white culture'.
I mean, yes, there is having mostly white cinema, and having mostly white philosophers, and that are things that get generally called 'white culture' in an academic sense. And those are problematic in their own right, and people should be right in demanding more diverse philosophers get recognized in the Canon.
But in most places in America, 'white culture' means 1950s suburbia. It means seeing nobody different from yourself and having to register them as a real person. It means being complicit in power structures, even if you only passively join in oppression. It means, even as you decide that you are 'beneath' certain jobs, that you are able to go after any of them that you want. It means a yard, 2 kids, a wife who cooks for you, and a dog.
And to that extent, they're right. That is getting destroyed, and not a moment too late either.
Actually, as I think about it, distrust of minorities and distrust of universities might be related. The same fear that the life that did exist is collapsing around them.
I am still trying to puzzle out why Jewish people get treated as 'white enough' to be let into 'positions of power', but not white enough to avoid being targeted by nazis (in 21st century America. Historically, it's a completely different question). Also, please don't take this as me belittling the struggles of jewish people. It's just weird how they form a backbone of the entertainment industry, definitionally gutting them on top of one of the great power structures in America, and then get targeted by this distrust.
(Except Harvey Weinstein, if the comments sections of those articles were to be trusted. He was okay in the nazis' eyes.)
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14flash
Script Writer/Editor 
Posts: 100
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Post by 14flash on Dec 5, 2017 4:48:58 GMT
I wonder if this is almost like "reverse cultural appropriation." Instead of taking things from a culture and melding it in with your own, this would be taking things from outside of a culture and melding it in with that culture. In that way, the original culture does become destroyed. Or, at the very least, adapted into a new, barely recognizable version of the culture.
I also agree with mightyhegemol that there is a lot of conflation of terms involved, too. In a way, that's a perfect strategy to be accepted by moderates.
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Post by Oriana on Dec 6, 2017 6:01:24 GMT
I think one thing is that 'white culture' in their parlance doesn't actually refer to the same things as you do when you say 'white culture'. I mean, yes, there is having mostly white cinema, and having mostly white philosophers, and that are things that get generally called 'white culture' in an academic sense. And those are problematic in their own right, and people should be right in demanding more diverse philosophers get recognized in the Canon. Yes. I'm trying to agree with the premise that "celebrating white culture" is a good thing to do for the purposes of this question, but it is true that hey... celebrating all of the things would be nice, and Egyptian, Islamic, and Native Peoples' philosophers really get ignored when they shouldn't. Hmmm... This an interesting angle. In this sense, "white culture" is not really any of the things they say are "good about" white people (see: insert some list of accomplishments from Europe that tends to include various influential books). Instead it's a position of power. "White culture" is not what they want (or want to celebrate), "white power" is. Which makes more sense because, well, grouping French, German, English, Norwegian and Greek accomplishments under one pile because "white" is really weird. So in a way, universities and minorities are the harbingers of doom because they represent the upheaval of a comfortable status quo that exacerbates power structures that benefit them? Instinctive answer to that: Money? Well, taking another culture's thing and incorporating it into your own is not reverse cultural appropriation, it's... just cultural appropriation. Reverse cultural appropriation would be like... colonialism. Taking your culture and shoving it into another. The interesting thing is that... once you have appropriated something of a culture (or once it has just... gotten there through general cultural interactions without the exploitative implications of appropriation), the culture in question will necessarily change. |
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14flash
Script Writer/Editor
Posts: 100
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Post by 14flash on Dec 7, 2017 2:42:49 GMT
Well, taking another culture's thing and incorporating it into your own is not reverse cultural appropriation, it's... just cultural appropriation. Reverse cultural appropriation would be like... colonialism. Taking your culture and shoving it into another. The interesting thing is that... once you have appropriated something of a culture (or once it has just... gotten there through general cultural interactions without the exploitative implications of appropriation), the culture in question will necessarily change. Isn't that what they're doing, though? They're taking things from their culture (e.g. racism) and adding it to white culture. It seems pretty clear to me that their culture is not traditional white culture, but they are changing or influencing it by association. In that way, they aren't trying to make white culture theirs by taking things from it, but by adding their views to it. |
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Post by macecurb on Dec 7, 2017 2:51:12 GMT
It's been mentioned before, but: I don't think "White Culture" is really a thing that exists outside of the minds of neo-nazis and white supremacists. It doesn't exist any more than "Black Culture" or "Asian Culture" exist, which is to say, not at all.
Following that line of thought... Given that neo-nazis functionally created "White Culture" as a concept (And, largely, as a justification for racism), is it possible for them to destroy it in any meaningful way? They can certainly drag down everyone of Caucasian descent by espousing their ideology and calling it a part of "White Culture", but I don't know that they can really destroy something intended to justify racism by dragging yet more racism into the equation.
I don't know, maybe I'm focusing too much on semantics.
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Post by mightyhegemol on Dec 7, 2017 10:52:16 GMT
I think you're onto something there mace.
When i hear the various bs floating around Europe now (brits with Poles, Germans and French with Syrians), the argument isn't 'oh no they don't fit with a culture of white people'; it's 'oh no their values are incompatible with being _insert nationality here_'. That seems telling.*
If modern conceptions of culture are tied up typically in nationalism, and not ethnicity, the establishment of a term that is explicitly racial in nature is obviously bogus and not a thing that exists.
In that case, yeah, I don't really think that racism is detrimental to 'white culture'. It IS 'white culture'.
*being racist on nationalist grounds is still shitty. It's just a different kind of shitty.
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Post by The TNT Tiger on Dec 9, 2017 12:08:40 GMT
Also, lemme bring up the fact that legally in America a 'white person' is someone of European, Middle Eastern or North African descent, which includes the majority of refugees and the biggest Islamic countries. I don't know how much this adds to the conversation, but it's an odd thought none the less.
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Post by Oriana on Dec 21, 2017 8:44:31 GMT
" They're taking things from their culture (e.g. racism) and adding it to white culture. "
Wait.
...If you create the idea of "white culture" in order to support a racist agenda... are you really adding the racism to "white culture"?
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