If you've spent any time on the Internet
- and increasingly off it - you may have
come across white supremacist memes. What
a phrase. What a world we live in. Every culture
has its myths, and racists are a culture all
their own. (I use the word culture in both
senses there.) Today we look at some of these myths
and talk about communication and truth. Oh,
the comments underneath this one are gonna be just great I can tell.
White supremacy as a general attitude has
of course been around for centuries, but white
supremacy as an explicit political program,
a plan for organising populations using
genocide, was distilled into its purest form
(to date) by the Nazis. But it did not suddenly
go away the day Hitler died, and now it's
on the rise again so it's important that we know
how to deal with it. It's usually said that
we shouldn't engage with white supremacists
in dialogue, because that's what they want:
they want white supremacy to be treated as
"just another political issue," rather
than the necessary first step towards genocide. That's why
the received wisdom is the way we should interact white supremacists is like this:
Why? Well, two reasons. The historical reason
is that treating white supremacy as "just
another political issue in the public sphere" is a mistake that we in Europe have made before. White
supremacists don't usually like bringing up the Holocaust as a point against them: they call
it the "argument ad Hitlerum." But as
ContraPoints has already pointed out in their excellent
video on white nationalism, if we're talking
about white supremacy and racial purity as ideas
that are supposed to be guiding government policy, the Nazis, being the main people who actually took a crack at that, are pretty bloody relevant.
The other reason though is a more philosophical one and that's what I wanna talk about today.
Rather than talk about the ethics of punching
white supremacists, I wanna talk about how
white supremacist speech works so that you can identify it and deal with it.
The first thing that we need to realise is that speaking, communicating, isn't just about
the content of what is said. Speaking is an
act, and sometimes the most important thing
is what that act does.
Take the phrase, "I love you." If I say
it sincerely, so assuming I'm not lying, then
every time I say it the content of the message is the same. I, the person speaking, have
some feelings of love towards you, the person to whom I am speaking.
But depending on the context and the way in which I say it the action I perform might be very
different. Any actor will tell you that there
are infinite ways to play this line. I might
say "I love you" as a reminder; as a promise; as a reassurance; as passive-aggression; as a thank you...
"I love you"
"I love you"
"I love you"
"I love you"
"I love you"
See what I mean? Same content; different actions.
The meaning stays the same but what I am doing
to the person hearing me changes.
Let's say we have a case where a stalker
is sending a message every ten minutes to
their victim. All the messages say, "I love
you." It would be pointless to defend the
stalker on the grounds that "they are entitled to be in love." Of course they are. But
that's not the issue. We're not talking about that. We're talking about what the specific act
of sending that message repeatedly does.
To take a real-world example, you might have seen a few issues recently about students
not wanting certain speakers to come and talk on campus? When that happens the students inevitably
get told "the speakers are entitled to their
opinions," which is of course true, but that isn't
the issue. Speaking at a university, or paying somebody to speak at a university
is a specific act and the concern is
over what that act will do. So let's take a  look
at some white supremacist myths and what they do.
Myth number 1: The Irish Slaves. The myth
is that the Irish people were in fact the
first slaves to be brought to the colonies, and it has been covered up that they were more
numerous and worse-treated than black slaves. All of which is false.
White criminals and other undesirables were
sent to the colonies, many of them were Irish
as well, but they were sent as indentured servants
- this is not just a semantic distinction;
it's a completely different legal and material category. Indentured servants were employed temporarily
with employment contracts, and when their contracts were up they might expect a parcel of land at the end of it; they could still own
property, their children weren't automatically
servants; when their contracts were up
they were free. Indentured servitude was horrendously unpleasant and undoubtedly people were pushed into
it. But where the servants felt that they had been kidnapped or tricked, or that they
were being abused, they had some legal
options to get their contracts nullified,
as some in fact did.
The situation for slaves was very different.
They were slaves for life, as were their children;
they themselves were owned, not just their labour; they were not legally persons and could be lawfully executed;
and they had no methods of resistance except...
And when the slaves were freed - those that lived to the end of slavery, which most didn't
- they obviously were not on equal footing
to everybody else. Indentured servitude is
not comparable to slavery. Sources in the
doobleydoo.
The Irish Slaves myth is so far removed from
reality and so easily shown to be false, yet
white supremacists keep bringing it up.
Which suggests that they aren't really putting across the idea that
it's true. Or at least, not just doing that
and not all the time. Like if I said, "It's
raining" all the time, even
when it's not raining, at totally inappropriate
moments, like you say, "Good morning, Olly!" and I say, "Oh, Good it's raining morning!" You might start
to wonder, "Wait, is he really talking about the weather?
Or is he talking about something elsethere ?" I'm sure some people are suckered into sincerely believing
it - maybe you're one of those people!
Maybe you just typed "Irish Slaves" into
YouTube to see whether or not it's true. In which case, hello! It isn't: please see the reading in the description.
So what does this myth do, rather than communicate?
Well, the historian Liam Hogan has found that
many of the people who share the Irish Slaves myth also share with it the idea that people of
colour today are lazy, are whining about nothing, that they don't deserve reparations; that campaigns and
protests for racial justice are completely misguided - and there we see what the myth does. It gives
people an excuse to talk about the political
views they already have: to talk about who
they think should have power. In particular,
it gives them an excuse to spread racist stereotypes
about black people being lazy or violent.
There's also a version where the myth says
that the Irish were the first slaves but weren't
suited to working in tropical conditions, and that's why black slaves were brought in. Not only is
that historically false, but that version is a subtle way of telling you that black people are biologically
suited to being slaves. Which is also false
because "slave" (or degenerate,
subhuman, untermensch, whatever
you want to call it) isn't a biological
category: it's a political one.
The second myth we need to identify is the
myth of white genocide: the myth is that
the immigration of people of colour and interracial marriages are equivalent
to the genocide of white people.
Lots to unpack here: the first thing is that interracial relationships and the immigration of people of colour is not the same as genocide. That's a
false equivalence. The second thing
is, America and Canada are both founded on
actual genocide committed by white people.
As are many other countries including mine:
the money that paid for Britain's Industrial
Revolution came in large part from the enslavement
and genocide of Indigenous Americans and of course slavery. Real slavery. The
descendants of the victims are by and large
yet to be compensated and in many cases are
still being brutalised. So when white supremacists use this myth to talk about "defending a white homeland"
all of the so-called "white homelands,"
even in Europe, were built in large part
using wealth stolen from people who weren't white. The white genocide myth is basically
the racist equivalent of "The War on Christmas," it's completely false and the name is totally overblown.
But again, what does this myth do rather than communicate? Well sometimes it's used to argue that interracial relatinships
shouldn't be allowed, which is obviously
a massive restriction of people of colour's
freedoms. Sometimes it's used to argue that non-white immigration shouldn't be allowed, specifically Muslim immigration. But
note: never in a way that actually
acknowledges the real causes of migration and displacement.
Unsurprisingly, white supremacists aren't interested in thinking about the reasons why
people leave their countries and migrate because they aren't interested in thinking of
people who don't meet their definition of
whiteness as people - with hopes and dreams and
feelings and who can make rational decisions.
And of course, the myth is also used to argue
for the establishment of all-white countries. Though
white supremacists are curiously silent
on how that is to be accomplished?
The record of the only time anyone in history's ever tried it might give us some clues. Some versions
of it are also used to argue that women shouldn't be allowed to have
abortions or careers, or that LGBT people
shouldn't be allowed to exist so that there
are enough Aryan babies being made. And of course if you follow it down the rabbit hole long enough
it's not long before people like the American Nazi Party start saying that the real reason
this fictional genocide is occurring is because
of Jewish people. So again, it gives racists
an excuse to advance their racist political
agendas.
What's also interesting is that these myths
aren't used to argue for the supremacy
of white people per se but for a particular view of "whiteness." Jewish people, LGBT people,
men who aren't racists, and often people with disabilities
they may be white but according to the white supremacists they are still undesirable. I'm not gonna break down
what whiteness is here, but Contrapoints goes into it very, very well.
These myths are arguably propaganda: it's
not just that they're false, it's that
it's not really about whether they're
true: it's about what they do. Propaganda
gathers and retains the people who are willing
to repeat it, the people who share the underlying
political view about who should have power
and who shouldn't.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt says that
the main function of propaganda is as a tool
of organisation. If you're the one who knows about the secret conspiracy, who
knows the truth, who's taken the red pill, then you're in the club! It doesn't matter if
it's strictly true: what matters is
that you say it, and your buddy says it, and
the group says it, and all of a sudden we're a political organisation. We are now, "the People Who Say this
Thing." Folding Ideas breaks down Nazi propaganda really, really well if you wanna learn more about that.
Traditionally in philosophy it's thought
to be good to interpret what someone is saying
as possibly true. But when it comes to propaganda,
that instinct won't serve you well. And
of course the tricky thing about propaganda
is that it doesn't come with a warning label.
In general, if you're hearing somebody speak, or if you're offering
someone a platform from which to speak, don't just think about the content of their opinions
in the abstract, which they are of course, entitled to. Think about what specific acts of speech are doing.
You can help me make more videos like this one at Patreon.com/Philosophy Tube.
I wanna thank Jon, TheLitCritGuy and ReplicaKill for helping me doctor the script. You can follow
them at these twitter handles. And don't
forget to subscribe.
