White Supremacy Is Terrorism, Not a Difference of Opinion

[Gigimo]

You mean you can’t point to one major attack by a “black supremacist” in the last 10 years?

Well I guess we know now who the real threat is.

Oh btw the El Paso shooter was more of a "Greenie" than anything else.

 

[GoldenBoy89]

Oh btw the El Paso shooter was more of a "Greenie" than anything else.

Ok. Let’s ignore the targets of his shooting and his hateful views towards immigrants. Scratch him off the list.

We have the synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and San Diego. We have Charlottesville. We have Dylan Roof. Timothy McVeigh.

How many can you find from the last 20 years?

 

[Gigimo]

Timothy McVeigh

That was suspected by the FBI never proven.

And because Fields was there and attacked by Antifa that automatically makes him a white supremacist?

Have a nice day I have siding work to do...

 

[Larniavc]

But if you can prevent more of them from becoming more racist by changing your actions, why wouldn't you?

Calling someone racist when they are being racist is not the cause of that person’s racism.

 

[GoldenBoy89]

And because Fields was there and attacked by Antifa that automatically makes him a white supremacist?

You mean to say the guy who drove from Ohio to Virginia to attend a known and promoted white supremacist rally wasn’t a white supremacist?

Have a nice day I have siding work to do...

You as well. Hopefully it’s not too hot where you’re at today.

 

[SummerMadness]

White supremacy is a problem in the United States that has resulted terrorism and deaths. Yet somehow the response is to say "Black supremacists" are the bigger threat, but where are all the terrorist attacks and mass shootings done by this group that is just as grave a threat? A comment was made to "look at big city police blotters," as if any crime committed by a black person is a terrorist attack, are you really trying to make that racist argument? It's racist because there are many crimes committed by white people that have nothing to do with race, their crimes are not an example of racial supremacy either.

Nonetheless, the topic of this thread is about white supremacy as terrorism, if you would like to start a thread about the extensive threat of black supremacy and its race-based harassment and terrorism of non-black people, please start that thread. Otherwise, stay on-topic.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Wonder if it has anything to do with white supremacists doing things like running people over with their cars for disagreeing with them at "community events"?

You mean the one time that happened?

Also, you're the only person I've seen describe Charlottesville as a "community event". It's funny though.

 

[Gigimo]

You mean to say the guy who drove from Ohio to Virginia to attend a known and promoted white supremacist rally wasn’t a white supremacist?

My point was the popular rhetoric tried to make it out that everybody that attended other than Antifa were white supremacists, which I have no doubt was a total load of horse hockey. Whether or not he was/wasn't a white supremacist is irrelevant he got what he deserved for running over the girl and injuring the others.

Go back and revisit Charlottesville and see what all silliness was considered to be journalism and the truth. Some stories say what he did was premeditated and others say he was trying to get away from Antifa attackers, one even said he was targeting Trump supporters and another said he was being chased by a guy with an AR

So believe what story you want to believe about Charlottesville they only real story was it was 2 groups of idgets beating the dog snot out of each other over some silly beliefs, they all need to go home and grow up.

 

[Gigimo]

Ok. Let’s ignore the targets of his shooting and his hateful views towards immigrants. Scratch him off the list.

We have the synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and San Diego. We have Charlottesville. We have Dylan Roof. Timothy McVeigh.

How many can you find from the last 20 years?

Don't you remember Dallas, the guy saying he just wanted to kill white people and shot up a bunch of police officers? Then you have the guy in Tennessee who shot the postman and a couple of others over the years

There is a reason why events like this don't happen more often and is the reason why I said go look at police blotters. You'll find all the evidence you need there that it does happen, just not with the big splash like the Dallas guy.

Really all of this stuff is just plain silliness people need to grow up and quit using skin color as a crutch for acting a fool, the world would be a much better place.

 

[KCfromNC]

You must not understand my argument, because you keep summarizing it inaccurately.

This would be a lot more convincing if you could explain how.

 

[KCfromNC]

You mean the one time that happened?

Also, you're the only person I've seen describe Charlottesville as a "community event". It's funny though.

I guess posts will try to find whatever excuses they can to avoid the obvious.

 

[KCfromNC]

Where did I belittle or flame him? I specifically said I was not poisoning the well and not calling him stupid. I've said repeatedly and candidly that I am not saying you should not call out the true extremists, yet somehow people on your side keep counter-arguing like that is what I'm saying.

If that's what you're getting from my posts, you might want to lighten up on claiming that the problem is other people misunderstanding you.

 

[mothcorrupteth]

This would be a lot more convincing if you could explain how.

If that's what you're getting from my posts, you might want to lighten up on claiming that the problem is other people misunderstanding you.

All right. Fine. I will explain one more time, with additional detail, omitting nothing.

There is a psychological principle called the Matching Law. The Matching Law models choice. It basically says, animal organisms tend to spend more time doing things that offer greater rewards. It's mathematical. If you have ducks on a lake and the east side of the lake offers double the number of humans throwing bread scraps, the ducks will spend double their time on the east side of the lake.

Apply that to economics, and that's how you get behavioral economics. Behavioral economics is how you get methadone drug treatment. When you raise the price of a given commodity, you decrease its relative reward factor. So people are liable to look for economic substitutes--commodities that provide not-quite-the-same reward but at a lower relative cost. This is why Prohibition failed. We increased the cost of non-violent alcohol production and supply, and, counter-intuitive as it is--violent alcohol production and supply increased in frequency. Why? Because mafia booze is an economic substitute for Jack Daniels.

The Matching Law has some other interesting applications when you get into what's called Game Theory. Game Theory basically models social choice. A classic setup in Game Theory is a scenario called "Prisoner's Dilemma." Imagine two prisoners arrested in suspicion of a crime. The cops can't prove it, so they offer each prisoner a deal in private: If both you and your friend stick to your story, you both get 1 year. If only one of you changes his story, that person gets no prison time while the other gets 3. If both of you change your story, each person gets 2 years. Now, the story is actually irrelevant. What is relevant is how the Matching Law applies to a situation where there are greater incentives to betray another person. Even though, as a group, the prisoners get fewer net years in prison if they cooperate (i.e., tell the same story), individually there are greater incentives to betray. So almost inevitably, if the game is only played one time, people tend to betray. It gets a little complicated if people are allowed to play the game multiple successive times against the same opponents, but that's more than I care to explain here. What's important for the sake of my argument is that, when people have an individual incentive to be hostile, they will.

Apply that to politics. We can think of the political spectrum as a bell curve. It's more complicated than that, because a bell curve assumes one axis, whereas there are actually several. But let's simplify and assume what appears to be the Left's model. There is an axis running from radically racist and white supremacist to moderately racist to slightly racist to purely egalitarian-meritocratic to light social justice to heavy social justice to all-out minority nationalism. Assuming the Left's apparent model, "racist" corresponds to "conservative," and "social justice" corresponds to "progressive." The bell curve predicts that there are lots of people in the middle and very, very few people in the radical categories. Why are they that way? The Matching Law might lead us to think that there are more social incentives to being moderate. You alienate fewer people in conversation, you're less likely to get in trouble with the law, you're more likely to hold down a job, etc. Prior to the last few years, the vast majority of conservatives have been purely egalitarian-meritocratic, and the vast majority of liberals have been slightly social justice.

Now, what the American Left is currently doing is creating strong disincentives to being purely egalitarian-meritocratic or even slightly social justice. There is no statistical evidence that I know of to directly prove this, but there is statistical evidence showing that more Democrats have shifted farther to the Left these last few years than there have been Republicans who have shifted farther to the Right. Even VICE Media (which--aside to my fellow conservatives--is owned partly by Disney; just think about where your dollars are going) has been starting to admit this. Anecdotally, let's take one very high-profile token of this shift. Because it seems that some of you are petty enough to get my posts pulled for merely quoting someone else's profanity instead of giving my own original compositions, let's just say President Trump called some third-world countries "poopy." At the very worst, this is undiplomatic civic nationalism--believing that your political government, irrespective of ethnicity, is better than the competition. This roughly aligns with the purely egalitarian-meritocratic values of most Republicans; America is not great because it is white, but because it is free and democratic, etc. No less than the UN joined the American Left's complaints that Trump's remarks were "racist." (I would post links to prove this, but we can't link to profanity, so you'll just have to take my word for it.)

Following the Matching Law, behavioral economics, and Game Theory, what effect can we predict from this political trend? Well, the absolute incentives to be radical on either side are the same that they've always been. But the relative incentives are increasing. This is exactly what happened in post-WWI Germany. People high on their own hysteria want to compare Trump to the rise of the Nazi Party. Well, how did that rise happen? The German Left went so far Left that they launched a communist revolution that the civic-nationalist conservatives had to put down violently. In the process, the ethno-nationalists gained a talking point about how dangerous the Far Left was. Ethno-nationalists became the majority, and the German conservatives threw their hats in with the Nazis--not because they shared their opinions, but because the relative rewards were better than not presenting a coalition front against the radical German Left. And then the Nazis murdered most of the conservatives in the Night of the Long Knives.

So what's the solution? (And I remind you, I think the size of the white supremacist threat is overblown.) Well, it's not playing the blame game. People respond positively to incentives, and casting blame creates disincentives. But it's also not "compromising with white supremacists." It's compromising with moderates and going back to recognizing moderates as moderates. And I'm speaking to both sides. In the past, conservatives have tended to caricature mere liberals as radical progressives or closet communists. That's why I take every opportunity to praise Gabbard; she most resembles the Democratic Party I know from 15 years ago. But the flip side is, progressives are currently caricaturing mere civic nationalists and meritocrats as racists. If they really want to halt the growth of racism and white supremacy, they need to stop it. All they're doing is repeating the mistakes of Prohibition, but with politics.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I guess posts will try to find whatever excuses they can to avoid the obvious.

What's "the obvious"?

 

[KCfromNC]

There is no statistical evidence that I know of to directly prove this

That's a whole lot of assertions to get to this point. But none of it really addresses the issues I raised in response to your guess on this matter.

Maybe we can make a clearer test of your guess - how much money would I have to pay to you turn into a radical racist? With all the assertions of incentives moving people to extremist views, let's see how it works in practice. What kind of incentive do you need to join a white supremacist organization? $100? $1000? $10000?

But again, to summarize my point, if people really can be motivated to become extreme racists simply by the existence of others who have differing opinions, I really don't see the blame belonging to those with the different opinions.

 

[KCfromNC]

What's "the obvious"?

The posts trying to make excuses for actual white supremacists murdering actual people at actual far-right wing rallies.

 

[Ana the Ist]

The posts trying to make excuses for actual white supremacists murdering actual people at actual far-right wing rallies.

Is there a particular post you're talking about?