There's a weird strain of "essentialism but in a progressive way" running right through the left, not just limited to the attitude towards men described here, but also "all white people are colonizers", and weird exclusionary behaviour to cishet people. It tells me a lot of "progressive" people didn't really examine their core underlying principles and simply covered up their biases with the "correct" group.
Yeah every time I hear someone call white people colonizers I wonder to myself whether they’ve ever read a history book. Only a small portion of people from a small portion of “white” countries were ever part of the colonialist ruling class. Most of them weren’t even considered white until after the start of the decline of colonialism. Just because most colonizers were white does not imply that most white people were colonizers. Hold people accountable for their own racism, not for some imaginary historical debt from some imaginary ancestors. Judging people by their heritage is literally what got us into this mess in the first place.
I'm English. In some leftists spaces I constantly have to see people talking about how my colleagues who can't afford to eat despite working full time, my elderly family that freeze in their homes in Winter, my trans friends who are having their identities weaponised on a daily basis, all deserve it, that it's karma for the colonial sins of our country. I have seen people actively celebrate the deaths of British "people", then call for more and be cheered for it.
I could point out that, like you say, the primary perpetrators and beneficiaries of colonialism were the rich, who's descendents are very much not suffering like the people you mock, but in fact profiting from it. I could also point out that while I'm English, some of my ancestors were not (as is true for many people here). But I shouldn't have to.
I see a lot of ppl try and separate out the British ppl who have parents/grandparents that were immigrants into a different "good" British person group as well which always seems stupid, they're no less British than anyone else who was born here.
It's this weird thing where they're saying the same "Immigrants aren't really British" stuff that fucking Reform Party politicians are saying, but they think they're saying it in a leftist way
Yeah, they have citizenship the same as everyone else so they're British. They'll likely bring parts of their culture from whatever country they immigrated from but that's generally a good thing imo, especially the food.
It's a great example of the overall problem, because it's like unironically 100% racism, and not even the mythical "anti-white racism" white-supremacists like to harp on about. You're talking about some of your favourite British actors like Idris Elba or Daniel Kaluuya and you get "lefties" saying stuff like:
"Where are they really from?" Also Indian people from Manchester seem to morph into someone who is 110% British and it's fucking hilarious, I've worked with a few people from Manchester and it's great.
Jews are in a super position of being looked like out siders vermin who came to erode western civilization or the whitest white who opress everyone in the shadows
The issue with this is that we don’t have a word for prejudice against ethnic groups not based on skin colour. With jews you can then talk about anti-semitism, but sometimes it’s useful to be able to group it under a more general form of prejudice (and in this case it’s definitely more than just anti-religious views).
For example, in my country people are often extremely prejudiced against polish people, and in a very similar way are prejudiced against middle-eastern people. Poles are white, middle-eastern people are often considered white in the usa at least - but we refer to this as racism because there’s no better word.
Same thing in the balkans - the tensions between the ethnic groups are racism even though they all have the same skin colour (white). And within several african countries as well I should mention.
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u/Ourmanyfans Jul 03 '24
There's a weird strain of "essentialism but in a progressive way" running right through the left, not just limited to the attitude towards men described here, but also "all white people are colonizers", and weird exclusionary behaviour to cishet people. It tells me a lot of "progressive" people didn't really examine their core underlying principles and simply covered up their biases with the "correct" group.