#people act like the south and every southerner as a whole is bad and bigoted and stupid ya know?

[whimsyprinx]

ever few months something happens that makes me want to remind southern ppl that we’re not like a joke or bad or stupid or whatever else ppl like to paint southern folks as being

[forsetti]

On The Power of Language: Normalizing White Supremacists

Language is the basis by which humans develop concepts and beliefs.  There is an entire field of study and industry built on this-marketing. Media outlets and political groups spend billions of dollars hoping to capture the right language to persuade people.  Yet, many people seem completely oblivious to the power of language.  Maybe this is why advertising is so effective.

One person who really understood the power of language was George Carlin. On his “Explicit Lyrics” album (yes, I'm old enough to remember and know what an album is,) Carlin talked about how changing how we describe things, changes how we view them: I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protest themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I'll give you an example of that. There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap. In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue. Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, were up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car. Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time.

Conservatives are really good at describing things in ways that hide reality: “Clean Air Act,” “Death Tax,”... they know if they label something a certain way and say it enough, they can alter how the issue is viewed.  They can alter beliefs.  They can turn “shell-shocked” into “post-traumatic distress order.”  FOX News' model is based entirely on this principle and it has helped create a large swath of Americans who believe complete bullshit.

Yet, knowing all this, many people, including progressives, seem unable, unwilling to see how white supremacists are being normalized by many media outlets.  Everyone from Milo to Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and the white supremacist next door have been described as something other than what they really are.  They are “provocateurs,” “clean-cut,” “well-dressed, “thought-provoking,”...  No, they aren't!  They are fucking white supremacists and dangerous. Every time these people are described in terms other than racist, bigoted, danger fucks it helps alter reality.

This alteration is done on purpose because for reasons that aren't too difficult to understand, white Americans have always had a hard time grasping and being willing to identify some of their fellow white Americans as deeply horrible people, as racists.  The racists know this and use it to their advantage.  The Lost Cause which allowed the South to completely rewrite their racist history and beliefs which led to their treasonous actions was effective because the rest of white America was more than willing to believe their white Christian brothers and sisters weren't really bad people, evidence to the contrary be damned.

When the Ku Klux Klan came to power in the South and rained terror, death, and destruction on blacks, they were portrayed as “good Christian men,” “pillars of the community,” “good, caring neighbors,”...  These descriptions allowed them to hide their real nature-brutal racists.  

Now we have people in seats of power and influence who believe the same underlying things that led to the Confederacy and the Klan and a lot of white America are falling back on their go-to position of not describing them for who and what they really are.  Every article written about “Joe Nazi” who lives down the street, has a job he's worried about, is married, loves his kids, is concerned for their future... is nothing more than reality Get Out Of Jail Free Card.

Calling someone a horrible person, a bigot, a racist, is never an easy thing to do.  It is more difficult if you are made to feel they are like you.  Just like it is difficult to call your racist grandpa or mom a racist because the relationship you have with them is personal, normalizing white supremacists makes calling them out harder.  If “Joe Nazi” is a lot like you, then you begin to relate, sympathize with him.  If Confederates are “good Christians,” like you, it is easier to relate and sympathize with them.  If the Klan are “outstanding members of the community,” it is easier to relate and sympathize with them.  This is exactly how language works. How we describe things has a direct impact on what we think about them.  Language forms beliefs.  

If an article about “Joe Nazi” spends the majority of the time “normalizing” him and adds a few words at the end about his toxic ideology, what do you think sticks?  There is a reason why drug commercials highlight all the positive aspects upfront and quickly gloss over all the negative side effects.  By addressing the positives first, it forms an initial impression that becomes “reality” that isn't likely to be undone by something negative later.  Every salesperson knows this.  Yet, white America seems unable/unwilling to recognize this is what is going on when it comes to white supremacy even after centuries of evidence to the contrary.

An article about “Joe Nazi” should start with his dangerous ideology, his likely domestic violence history, how he tortured animals in the neighborhood when he was younger, and maybe end with he reads “Goodnight Moon” to his daughter.  Any article or conversation about white supremacists should focus first and foremost on very abnormal beliefs, not their normal behaviors and traits.   These people are dangerous people who believe horrible things who also happen to be your next-door neighbor, school principal, pastor, etc.  They are not your next door neighbor school principal, pastor, etc. who happen to believe horrible things.  If you don't understand the difference between these two descriptions, you are part of the problem.

The first description starts from a premise of normalization and sympathizing.  The latter description starts from a premise of dangerous and disgust.  Under no circumstances should Nazis, white supremacists be viewed as anything but dangerous and with anything but disgust.  I don't care who they are, what job they do, what title they hold, how “loving” a parent/spouse they seem to be.  The toxic nature of white supremacy taints and poisons anything and everything else about someone.  Treating their supremacist beliefs as secondary is whitewashing (pun intended) who they really are.  

White supremacy isn't a peripheral believe or opinion.  It is a core belief that supports major chunks of the rest of a belief system.  It is also a belief that has serious consequences for other people.  In some ways, being a white supremacist is like being an anti-vaxxer. The beliefs you have and the decisions you make will have serious consequences for the whole of society.  Other people's well-being and lives are at risk because of it.  Of course, the big difference between the two beliefs is anti-vaxxers aren't responsible for a Civil War, lynchings, the Holocaust, etc.  

The greatest moral failure in American history was the breakdown of Reconstruction after the Civil War.  After the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans fighting for and against a moral cause where the moral side won, we allowed the losing side to reinvent themselves and continue their immoral behaviors under Jim Crow.  The main reason Reconstruction failed is because too many white Americans were unwilling to put the moral and political hammers down on their racist counterparts.  This failure was the cause behind Jim Crow, segregation, housing discrimination, etc.  It was the root cause behind Nixon's Southern Strategy.  It is the underlying cause behind school of choice and privatizing education.  It is the main force behind modern-day conservative ideology.

Even though there has been significant progress with regard to Civil Rights, the underlying beliefs of the Confederacy (white supremacy) are still alive and thriving in the minds of many white Americans. These alone need to, once and for all, be stamped out.  White supremacy all on its own is horrible and should be stamped out whenever it rears its ugly head.  Nazism is nothing more than white supremacy on evil steroids.  The Confederacy used white supremacy to own other people. Sure, they would beat them but they didn't want to kill them because that was losing an asset.  Nazis used white supremacy to commit mass murder of anyone on their “not like us” list-Jews, Gypsies, gays, the disabled...  

You don't normalize this under any circumstances.  At no point is it okay to say, “Sure Nilo wants to create a white-only state but he is an upstanding businessman who votes in every election and keeps his yard immaculate.”  No!!!  Nilo is a fucking Nazi whose beliefs are dangerous and not tolerated in a multi-cultural democracy.  His white supremacist views cancel out everything else about him that is “normal” in the same way a serial killer's views cancel out everything else they believe and do. “You know, Ted Bundy loved to kill young girls but boy could he put out a dynamite eight-course dinner.”  

If people talked this way about a serial killer, normal people's reaction would be, “What the fuck?!  Who cares about his culinary and hosting abilities?  He believes it is okay to murder people. Seriously, WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK?!!!”  Yet, the New York Times and other media outlets can publish puff pieces about Joe and his Nazi friends, the President of the United States can call torch-wielding Nazis “good people,” he can them in positions of power in his administration... and when those of us know how language is tied to beliefs point it out, many of our fellow white Americans look at us as if we are the problem.  Why?  Because white Americans are reluctant as hell to call other white Americans, “racist,” “bigot,” “Nazi,”...  It is easier to overlook reality and come up with reasons to not call them out for who they are than be honest.  It is easier to normalize them because the reality of who they truly might be too painful to admit.  It is easier to write articles normalizing the Nilos who live among us than it is to denounce them because not enough people want to be the ones who call out grandma's racists comments at the family gathering.  You know what?  Too bad.  Grandma's a fucking racist and we shouldn't want her spreading her toxic attitudes to the younger generations.

One argument I’ve heard from some progressives about why these articles about white supremacists are good is because it informs everyone these people live among us.  All anyone with two working neurons has to do is think about the conversations from Republicans during the last election and now and the fact they voted for a white supremacist to be president who put other white supremacists in positions of power around him.  If you need articles written to convince you people who believe and support horrible ideas live among you, you haven’t paid the slightest attention to the world around you for quite a long time and you probably need remedial classes in logic, civics, and psychology more than an article in the New York Times.

Language forms beliefs.  Nazis, white supremacists, racists, bigots... aren't “normal” people so we need to stop using language and writing articles that normalizes them in any way.  If the first words about these people are something like “horrible,” “dangerous,” “immoral,” “evil,”...then you’re doing it wrong.  To quote John McClane from “Die Hard.”-”If you aren’t part of the solution then you’re part of the problem.  Don’t be part of the fucking problem!”