Posted: Sep 13, 2017 10:57 pm
But that's a perennial problem with bigots and ideologues. The last thing they want, is for their offspring to develop any human feelings, towards people residing within demographic sectors defined as "inferior" or "enemies", by the bigotries and ideological prejudices said bigots and ideologues possess. They want their offspring to inherit those bigotries and ideological prejudices, and if anything, to act upon them with even more vigour, frequently because they know that said bigotries and ideological prejudices are accompanied by a significant personal cost when pursued vigorously, and they want someone else to bear that cost.
In addition, bigots and ideologues have a habit not merely of gravitating toward entitlement and fake victimhood apologetics, but of seizing upon said apologetics with frankly inhuman glee. They also have a habit of exhibiting a truly evil level of ingenuity, with respect to the peddling and fabrication thereof. Currently, the most egregious examples have a habit of emanating from the right of the political spectrum, which also tends to be the natural home of the nastiest and most pathological bigotries and ideological prejudices. Racism, sexism (usually of the psychotically misogynistic variety), and hatred of those not conforming to tightly prescriptive gender strictures, along with the lurid brands of anti-social sadism invariably accompanying these, tend to increase in visibility and vociferousness, the further right one moves.
But there's an even more insidious brand of the above, which the individuals in the video pretty much typify - the brand known as "I just want to be surrounded by nice people". Well, duh, don't we all? We all would like to lead our lives, not having to deal with criminals, and that larger demographic of ostensibly law-abiding individuals best referred to as "arseholes", exhibiting a mixture of selfishness, pomposity and conceit that in the current climate, makes them natural politician material, but many of us aren't given a choice. But of course, what the adherents of this insidious brand really mean by "I just want to be surrounded by nice people" is "I want to be surrounded by people like me, and keep everyone else as far away as possible". This posture is insidious, because it lends itself all too easily and naturally, to exploitation by propagandists for the much more manifestly repulsive brands of bigotry. The manner in which racism has been stoked by the frankly criminal campaign of peddling racial hatred by the Daily Mail, itself an organ with a lurid fascist past, in which the blue-rinse dears and middle-class Tory snowflakes have been drip-fed hate speech about "migrants" on a virtually continuous basis over the past three years or so, provides us with a disturbing object lesson on the subject. Indeed, pandering to the ignorance-driven fears of the complacently comfortable, was a key weapon deployed by Der Stürmer in the run-up to the Holocaust, a tactic which was very quickly accelerated into the realm of outright inculcation of homicidal revulsion.
Though, of course, hate has always been a useful weapon of manipulation, on the part of those in power seeking to divert from their own incompetence, venality and outright criminality. Blinding the populace with a manufactured visceral hatred of an ideologically defined "other", has always been an effective means of ensuring that attention is concentrated elsewhere, whilst the pedlars of said hatred engage in graft and corruption, indulging in personal enrichment and self-aggrandisement, safe in the knowledge that the newly energised bearers of hate can be lied to with ease, and fed propaganda to the effect that the woes thereof are yet another reason to increase the hatred of the "other". A nefarious positive feedback loop is thus put in place, whereby the fortunes of the manipulators increase, the fortunes of the populace decrease, and the hate targets are subject to ever more vicious measures, in order to ensure that the anger of the energised bearers of hatred is kept pointed away from those who lit the fuse.
Unfortunately, one little problem that those deploying this technique have to face, is this. When the campaign has resulted in the wholesale annihilation of the "other" that was deemed to be the "enemy" responsible for our ills, a replacement "other" has to be fabricated, and if all that is left are the loyal henchmen, that's when the shit hits the fan. Because those loyal henchmen singled out as the new "other", the new "enemy", faced with an existential threat of this sort, won't simply passively endure what was served up to the previous "other", especially if they were involved in the dirtiest tasks involved in exterminating the previous "other". The skills they will have acquired to perform those tasks, will now become instead an essential survival tool, one that will be deployed with special vigour and zeal. Quite simply, the manipulators have to be lucky every time: they have to push the right buttons and weave the right spells every time a new crisis arises. Those recognising the manipulators as the real enemy, on the other hand, only have to be lucky once.
In addition, bigots and ideologues have a habit not merely of gravitating toward entitlement and fake victimhood apologetics, but of seizing upon said apologetics with frankly inhuman glee. They also have a habit of exhibiting a truly evil level of ingenuity, with respect to the peddling and fabrication thereof. Currently, the most egregious examples have a habit of emanating from the right of the political spectrum, which also tends to be the natural home of the nastiest and most pathological bigotries and ideological prejudices. Racism, sexism (usually of the psychotically misogynistic variety), and hatred of those not conforming to tightly prescriptive gender strictures, along with the lurid brands of anti-social sadism invariably accompanying these, tend to increase in visibility and vociferousness, the further right one moves.
But there's an even more insidious brand of the above, which the individuals in the video pretty much typify - the brand known as "I just want to be surrounded by nice people". Well, duh, don't we all? We all would like to lead our lives, not having to deal with criminals, and that larger demographic of ostensibly law-abiding individuals best referred to as "arseholes", exhibiting a mixture of selfishness, pomposity and conceit that in the current climate, makes them natural politician material, but many of us aren't given a choice. But of course, what the adherents of this insidious brand really mean by "I just want to be surrounded by nice people" is "I want to be surrounded by people like me, and keep everyone else as far away as possible". This posture is insidious, because it lends itself all too easily and naturally, to exploitation by propagandists for the much more manifestly repulsive brands of bigotry. The manner in which racism has been stoked by the frankly criminal campaign of peddling racial hatred by the Daily Mail, itself an organ with a lurid fascist past, in which the blue-rinse dears and middle-class Tory snowflakes have been drip-fed hate speech about "migrants" on a virtually continuous basis over the past three years or so, provides us with a disturbing object lesson on the subject. Indeed, pandering to the ignorance-driven fears of the complacently comfortable, was a key weapon deployed by Der Stürmer in the run-up to the Holocaust, a tactic which was very quickly accelerated into the realm of outright inculcation of homicidal revulsion.
Though, of course, hate has always been a useful weapon of manipulation, on the part of those in power seeking to divert from their own incompetence, venality and outright criminality. Blinding the populace with a manufactured visceral hatred of an ideologically defined "other", has always been an effective means of ensuring that attention is concentrated elsewhere, whilst the pedlars of said hatred engage in graft and corruption, indulging in personal enrichment and self-aggrandisement, safe in the knowledge that the newly energised bearers of hate can be lied to with ease, and fed propaganda to the effect that the woes thereof are yet another reason to increase the hatred of the "other". A nefarious positive feedback loop is thus put in place, whereby the fortunes of the manipulators increase, the fortunes of the populace decrease, and the hate targets are subject to ever more vicious measures, in order to ensure that the anger of the energised bearers of hatred is kept pointed away from those who lit the fuse.
Unfortunately, one little problem that those deploying this technique have to face, is this. When the campaign has resulted in the wholesale annihilation of the "other" that was deemed to be the "enemy" responsible for our ills, a replacement "other" has to be fabricated, and if all that is left are the loyal henchmen, that's when the shit hits the fan. Because those loyal henchmen singled out as the new "other", the new "enemy", faced with an existential threat of this sort, won't simply passively endure what was served up to the previous "other", especially if they were involved in the dirtiest tasks involved in exterminating the previous "other". The skills they will have acquired to perform those tasks, will now become instead an essential survival tool, one that will be deployed with special vigour and zeal. Quite simply, the manipulators have to be lucky every time: they have to push the right buttons and weave the right spells every time a new crisis arises. Those recognising the manipulators as the real enemy, on the other hand, only have to be lucky once.