White Supremacy sucks, but the collective strategy to cancel it or suppress it isn't working. It's THRIVING and unless we want to be on a collision course with it, we may need to listen...
When we cancel a person, what we essentially do is cut them off from all the voices of dissent that may serve to shift or shape their views in the future. Pre-internet, this ostracism would have been devastating. Imagine all your friends, family, and coworkers stopped talking to you? The shame you would feel? The isolation? Now, they just retreat to safe spaces where their beliefs are shared by hundreds or thousands of others. Without external voices to temper the echo chamber of hate, what may have started as small prejudices or misguided behavior become completely entrenched racist ideology. Thanks for writing this piece and for pointing out that opening up discourse with people with opposing worldviews is the only way to make any impact on those views. Otherwise we all are left yelling into the void and hearing our own voices echo back.
I've been a fan of the ba$ed fob since I was a teenager watching Fresh of the Boat (No, I will not call it Huang's World) on YT in my parent's living room. When my mom visited NYC, I sent her to Baohaus and she brought me back a signed copy of your first book and a jersey, to boot. I still have them and I think there's even a photo of you two together on her Instagram. So, I fuck with you, Eddie. And I'm going to keep fuckin with you, but I just don't think this is the illuminating take so many are making it out to be.
Let me just start out by saying I think you make some really great points in here: the liberal elite is largely bubbled, cancel culture doesn't do us any good, tribalism doesn't just exist within white communities, poverty doesn't see colour and having a respectful and non-judgemental dialogue with our political opponents is a hard, but probably necessary, conversation to have. My problem is not with these ideas, it's that they've been what everyone's been saying -- including liberals -- for the last five years or more. I feel like this hot take could've come straight out of the 2017 post-election media cycle for how novel it feels in 2024.
In the aftermath of Trump 1.0 there was a ceaseless barrage of think pieces, op-eds, profiles, articles, documentaries, memoirs, podcasts, et cetera all trying to decipher the puzzle of "who are Trump's base and what can we learn from them?" Everything under the sun has been written, filmed, and recorded about who the Trump voter is and why he/she/they feel and behave the way they do. We've BEEN talking to them. I think that, at least partially, explains the Democrat's (imperfect and poorly executed) attempts to appeal to aspects of the right wing over the past few years (immigration, a distancing from identity politics at least outwardly, etc.). And while I'll agree that some of it has been productive (Asted Herndon kills it at this), delving into why Jared Taylor, Richard Spencer, Steven Bannon, or any of the other hard-MAGA and avowed white supremacists, I think is tired and not actually going to glean anything more than it already has. I don't think we need more think pieces on what progressives can learn from QAnon Shaman or what the guy with 500 stickers of Trump as God Emperor on his truck can say to us about democratic prospects in 2028.
What is of interest to me as a progressive is a Democratic Party and Left that examines how a billionaire with a track record of deriding virtually every minority group under the sun, who cut taxes for the wealthy and imposed them on the middle class and who has never worked a flattop, shovel, or piece of machinery in his life, was able to peel off so many working-class people including Black,, Latino, Asian and other minority groups to win a popular vote (I also don't think it was a landslide as you put it, maybe for him, but he still won less of the popular vote than Clinton, Biden, Obama and Bush 2.0) which hasn't been done since 2004 in the wake of the Iraq war saber-rattling.
It's here that I think you're on to something. This election was won on pocketbook issues. People are hurting. The middle class is hollowed out. When people can't afford groceries, or gas, or rent, or a home, a used vehicle, or any other of the necessities supposedly promised to us in the social contract, they aren't focusing on addressing issues like DEI, democratic backsliding or the marginalization of others. But I don't think Trump won because he and his campaign spoke to those issues directly. His campaign actually didn't focus overly heavily on them, at all, beyond invoking the already present nostalgia for a time pre-pandemic when everything didn't feel so goddamned expensive and hard. And while that era was not the way it was explicitly because of Trump -- this economic hardship Americans are experiencing extends far beyond their shores and is present in most other countries post-COVID, too -- he is the leader people associate with that time as Biden is the leader they associate with the time after it. Incumbent governments are being excoriated globally right now and I think this was, in many ways, an expression of a desire to go back to a time, if not explicitly a person.
Yes, Democrats need to be less pretentious and smarmy. Yes, they need to reconnect with working and middle-class people. Yes, they need to explain their positions in a better way that actually reaches those for whom they might actually make a difference (like the part you mentioned about explaining why the Democrats had a better economic plan than Trump for working people), but I also think there's a real crisis of civic education; of education in general in North America. Most people are too busy struggling to follow politics beyond social media and most no longer receive a robust education in how government works (this will probably get worse if, as he has said, Trump eliminates the Dept. of Education). We need to heavily protect and invest in education so that meaningful conversations can be had across social strata about why one policy might sound good but another might actually be good for your bank account. Or why eliminating post-secondary debt is still good, even for people who didn't attend college or university. Understanding our opponents and education helps bridge divides. It makes people care about their neighbours and their communities. But I sense that's what you're saying, too.
I think there's a lot that can and will be said about why things went the way they did. Right now, it feels like everyone's trying to be first to decipher why we're in this predicament. "I knew we were fucked first" is very much the vibe I'm getting online right now. But it will probably be a confluence of things that make up the real reasons and, I guess, talking about our disagreements respectfully (as I hope I've done here) is a good place to start.
Anyways, I'ma keep reading your shit, just wanted to say my piece on this one, man. Well wishes to you and yours.
Trump spoke lies to create or reinforce grievances and gave whites/men an “other” to blame for those grievances. Democrats can’t fight fascism with fascism but you are asking the questions we have to answer. Figuring out how to connect is super hard when the audience is more willing to believe easy lies than hard truths. A corporate Dem party is never going to take the leap to the true economic populism that is needed to make those connections and they are not willing to outright lie to fake it like Trump does. AOC comes across as the closest we have to the type of Dem who could carry that kind of message.
Unfortunately, the strategy to cancel white supremacy hasn’t been collective. That’s the biggest issue right there. Just look at the Affirmative Action and college admissions debacle.
Also, you can’t write off trump’s misogyny and racism. It’s the underlying relatability factor that allows his followers to open up to his terribly laid plans for them.
When you find a way to make this effort to dismantle WS truly collective, please let me know.
If the thesis here is that a portion of the voting bloc reached a critical mass and Democrats either ignored them or didn’t know how to talk to them without alienating them, and that is a huge problem that must be rectified, then I totally agree. Being the morality police failed as a campaign directive, that much is painfully clear. I think where I have trouble with this is that I’m not sure whether the voting bloc you’re referring to is simply disgruntled white people who are buying into the great replacement theory being sold to them by Trumpism, or white supremacists as a whole, or both. There is an ocean of difference between the two groups, and that ocean is essentially that the latter group by definition views me and my family as subhuman, and that their core mandate is that diversity is a cancer that must be removed, often through violent means. I actually don’t buy for a second that true white supremacists would accept a great economy under any president - even if it personally enriched them - if it meant that they would then have to accept and allow the status ascent of people of color and immigrants in return. It is a zero sum game for them, and the drained-pool policies of the 60’s are alive and well. I don’t know that there’s any messaging or outreach the Democrats can do that would permeate through this world view because whatever common ground might be found through mutual economic or societal enrichment is inherently incompatible with white supremacy ideology BECAUSE of the “mutual” part - if we really are talking about white supremacists and not just disgruntled white voters. Drawing a line in the moral sand isn’t always about grandstanding or making ourselves as liberals feel good and conservatives feel like trash, sometimes it is simply a survival mechanism because they CHOOSE violence against us, and because they view our existence as an existential threat to themselves. Is there any point that we have a responsibility as a society to draw that line, even as it alienates a huge section of voters? I truly admire your ability to respect opinions that are at odds to your own, and yes, allowing every voice to have a platform should be a core American value, but even the right to free speech in the first amendment has its limits. Hate speech is allowed but violent threats are not, which seems to me to also be roughly the difference between your average anti-immigrant anti-DEI Trump voter and a real deal white supremacist.
And, for what it’s worth, the Biden infrastructure bill included money to transition coal workers into green jobs, a measure that was put forth and agreed upon by the mine worker’s union.
This is so well said - it’s a shame that our Dem leaders and liberal media didn’t want to consider any of these perspective. It seems like it was a business decision for them too, at least on the media side. Time to lean in and have these discussions.
Also what’s your beef with grilled chicken Caesar??? Lol
When we cancel a person, what we essentially do is cut them off from all the voices of dissent that may serve to shift or shape their views in the future. Pre-internet, this ostracism would have been devastating. Imagine all your friends, family, and coworkers stopped talking to you? The shame you would feel? The isolation? Now, they just retreat to safe spaces where their beliefs are shared by hundreds or thousands of others. Without external voices to temper the echo chamber of hate, what may have started as small prejudices or misguided behavior become completely entrenched racist ideology. Thanks for writing this piece and for pointing out that opening up discourse with people with opposing worldviews is the only way to make any impact on those views. Otherwise we all are left yelling into the void and hearing our own voices echo back.
I've been a fan of the ba$ed fob since I was a teenager watching Fresh of the Boat (No, I will not call it Huang's World) on YT in my parent's living room. When my mom visited NYC, I sent her to Baohaus and she brought me back a signed copy of your first book and a jersey, to boot. I still have them and I think there's even a photo of you two together on her Instagram. So, I fuck with you, Eddie. And I'm going to keep fuckin with you, but I just don't think this is the illuminating take so many are making it out to be.
Let me just start out by saying I think you make some really great points in here: the liberal elite is largely bubbled, cancel culture doesn't do us any good, tribalism doesn't just exist within white communities, poverty doesn't see colour and having a respectful and non-judgemental dialogue with our political opponents is a hard, but probably necessary, conversation to have. My problem is not with these ideas, it's that they've been what everyone's been saying -- including liberals -- for the last five years or more. I feel like this hot take could've come straight out of the 2017 post-election media cycle for how novel it feels in 2024.
In the aftermath of Trump 1.0 there was a ceaseless barrage of think pieces, op-eds, profiles, articles, documentaries, memoirs, podcasts, et cetera all trying to decipher the puzzle of "who are Trump's base and what can we learn from them?" Everything under the sun has been written, filmed, and recorded about who the Trump voter is and why he/she/they feel and behave the way they do. We've BEEN talking to them. I think that, at least partially, explains the Democrat's (imperfect and poorly executed) attempts to appeal to aspects of the right wing over the past few years (immigration, a distancing from identity politics at least outwardly, etc.). And while I'll agree that some of it has been productive (Asted Herndon kills it at this), delving into why Jared Taylor, Richard Spencer, Steven Bannon, or any of the other hard-MAGA and avowed white supremacists, I think is tired and not actually going to glean anything more than it already has. I don't think we need more think pieces on what progressives can learn from QAnon Shaman or what the guy with 500 stickers of Trump as God Emperor on his truck can say to us about democratic prospects in 2028.
What is of interest to me as a progressive is a Democratic Party and Left that examines how a billionaire with a track record of deriding virtually every minority group under the sun, who cut taxes for the wealthy and imposed them on the middle class and who has never worked a flattop, shovel, or piece of machinery in his life, was able to peel off so many working-class people including Black,, Latino, Asian and other minority groups to win a popular vote (I also don't think it was a landslide as you put it, maybe for him, but he still won less of the popular vote than Clinton, Biden, Obama and Bush 2.0) which hasn't been done since 2004 in the wake of the Iraq war saber-rattling.
It's here that I think you're on to something. This election was won on pocketbook issues. People are hurting. The middle class is hollowed out. When people can't afford groceries, or gas, or rent, or a home, a used vehicle, or any other of the necessities supposedly promised to us in the social contract, they aren't focusing on addressing issues like DEI, democratic backsliding or the marginalization of others. But I don't think Trump won because he and his campaign spoke to those issues directly. His campaign actually didn't focus overly heavily on them, at all, beyond invoking the already present nostalgia for a time pre-pandemic when everything didn't feel so goddamned expensive and hard. And while that era was not the way it was explicitly because of Trump -- this economic hardship Americans are experiencing extends far beyond their shores and is present in most other countries post-COVID, too -- he is the leader people associate with that time as Biden is the leader they associate with the time after it. Incumbent governments are being excoriated globally right now and I think this was, in many ways, an expression of a desire to go back to a time, if not explicitly a person.
Yes, Democrats need to be less pretentious and smarmy. Yes, they need to reconnect with working and middle-class people. Yes, they need to explain their positions in a better way that actually reaches those for whom they might actually make a difference (like the part you mentioned about explaining why the Democrats had a better economic plan than Trump for working people), but I also think there's a real crisis of civic education; of education in general in North America. Most people are too busy struggling to follow politics beyond social media and most no longer receive a robust education in how government works (this will probably get worse if, as he has said, Trump eliminates the Dept. of Education). We need to heavily protect and invest in education so that meaningful conversations can be had across social strata about why one policy might sound good but another might actually be good for your bank account. Or why eliminating post-secondary debt is still good, even for people who didn't attend college or university. Understanding our opponents and education helps bridge divides. It makes people care about their neighbours and their communities. But I sense that's what you're saying, too.
I think there's a lot that can and will be said about why things went the way they did. Right now, it feels like everyone's trying to be first to decipher why we're in this predicament. "I knew we were fucked first" is very much the vibe I'm getting online right now. But it will probably be a confluence of things that make up the real reasons and, I guess, talking about our disagreements respectfully (as I hope I've done here) is a good place to start.
Anyways, I'ma keep reading your shit, just wanted to say my piece on this one, man. Well wishes to you and yours.
Trump spoke lies to create or reinforce grievances and gave whites/men an “other” to blame for those grievances. Democrats can’t fight fascism with fascism but you are asking the questions we have to answer. Figuring out how to connect is super hard when the audience is more willing to believe easy lies than hard truths. A corporate Dem party is never going to take the leap to the true economic populism that is needed to make those connections and they are not willing to outright lie to fake it like Trump does. AOC comes across as the closest we have to the type of Dem who could carry that kind of message.
Unfortunately, the strategy to cancel white supremacy hasn’t been collective. That’s the biggest issue right there. Just look at the Affirmative Action and college admissions debacle.
Also, you can’t write off trump’s misogyny and racism. It’s the underlying relatability factor that allows his followers to open up to his terribly laid plans for them.
When you find a way to make this effort to dismantle WS truly collective, please let me know.
If the thesis here is that a portion of the voting bloc reached a critical mass and Democrats either ignored them or didn’t know how to talk to them without alienating them, and that is a huge problem that must be rectified, then I totally agree. Being the morality police failed as a campaign directive, that much is painfully clear. I think where I have trouble with this is that I’m not sure whether the voting bloc you’re referring to is simply disgruntled white people who are buying into the great replacement theory being sold to them by Trumpism, or white supremacists as a whole, or both. There is an ocean of difference between the two groups, and that ocean is essentially that the latter group by definition views me and my family as subhuman, and that their core mandate is that diversity is a cancer that must be removed, often through violent means. I actually don’t buy for a second that true white supremacists would accept a great economy under any president - even if it personally enriched them - if it meant that they would then have to accept and allow the status ascent of people of color and immigrants in return. It is a zero sum game for them, and the drained-pool policies of the 60’s are alive and well. I don’t know that there’s any messaging or outreach the Democrats can do that would permeate through this world view because whatever common ground might be found through mutual economic or societal enrichment is inherently incompatible with white supremacy ideology BECAUSE of the “mutual” part - if we really are talking about white supremacists and not just disgruntled white voters. Drawing a line in the moral sand isn’t always about grandstanding or making ourselves as liberals feel good and conservatives feel like trash, sometimes it is simply a survival mechanism because they CHOOSE violence against us, and because they view our existence as an existential threat to themselves. Is there any point that we have a responsibility as a society to draw that line, even as it alienates a huge section of voters? I truly admire your ability to respect opinions that are at odds to your own, and yes, allowing every voice to have a platform should be a core American value, but even the right to free speech in the first amendment has its limits. Hate speech is allowed but violent threats are not, which seems to me to also be roughly the difference between your average anti-immigrant anti-DEI Trump voter and a real deal white supremacist.
And, for what it’s worth, the Biden infrastructure bill included money to transition coal workers into green jobs, a measure that was put forth and agreed upon by the mine worker’s union.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/03/fact-sheet-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-investment-and-jobs-act-creates-good-paying-jobs-and-supports-workers/
This is so well said - it’s a shame that our Dem leaders and liberal media didn’t want to consider any of these perspective. It seems like it was a business decision for them too, at least on the media side. Time to lean in and have these discussions.
Also what’s your beef with grilled chicken Caesar??? Lol