Latest news with #WhiteSupremacy
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Over 9.9 Million Are Floored By This Tweet From A MAGA Voter Who Says Her Son Won't Talk To Her Anymore
Particularly in his second term, it seems like Donald Trump supporters are experiencing more and more familial estrangement as their sisters, brothers, children, cousins, and parents separate themselves from MAGA and the group's beliefs. It's not particularly surprising, as Trump's policies and behavior are nearly synonymous with division. After all, the 79-year-old has repeatedly bragged about 'killing' Roe v. Wade, emboldened and uplifted white supremacist groups, spewed racism and misogyny, fostered an ever-growing connection to Project 2025, allegedly praised Adolf Hitler, referred to fallen American soldiers as 'losers,' and he has been found liable for sexual abuse. (And this was all BEFORE his second term began just a few short months ago — I didn't even mention Wikipedia creating an entire 2025 Stock Market Crash page amid Trump's tariff war.) Regardless of how obvious it may or may not seem that friends and family of MAGA supporters may want some distance, some are still surprised — and that includes this X poster: Yes, this woman, who describes herself as a "True Patriot" with "Pronouns F/U," wrote on X: "Today my oldest son turns 36. I sent him a gift, left him a voicemail and texted him. But I won't be hearing back from him - not even an acknowledgment that he received his present. Why? Because he hasn't spoken to my husband or I in seven months because we voted for Trump." "I miss him and hope that someday he will come around and realize the damage he is doing to our family by acting this way. My breaking heart is a continual reminder." "I know many of you have similar stories and I pray that your family members come around as well. I'm not asking him to change his politics, but you can't let it come between family." The post, which has been viewed over 10 million times, has over 15,000 comments and even more impressions. Some commenters shared similar experiences: "My husband and I were disowned by our 33 year old son on January 21st," this person wrote. "Haven't heard from him since then. My birthday and Mother's Day nothing. Our lives go on." "Politics should stop at the family front door," another added. Others struggled to find sympathy for the original poster or other outcasted parents. "MAGA mom is SHOCKED her child doesn't want to associate with hate-filled, racist, bigoted & authoritarian-like movements. She is SHOCKED," someone said. "'we are horrible people and now my kids won't talk to us,'" another mocked. And outside of the left versus right, a middle group formed with those who questioned why the original poster would send their child a gift despite them wanting to remain estranged, and then seemingly complain about the gift not being appreciated, regardless. "He is no contact. With someone who contacted him 3 ways. But she's the victim?" several posed. What are your thoughts on the now-viral post and conversation? Let us know in the comments.
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Over 9.9 Million Are Floored By This Tweet From A MAGA Voter Who Says Her Son Won't Talk To Her Anymore
Particularly in his second term, it seems like Donald Trump supporters are experiencing more and more familial estrangement as their sisters, brothers, children, cousins, and parents separate themselves from MAGA and the group's beliefs. It's not particularly surprising, as Trump's policies and behavior are nearly synonymous with division. After all, the 79-year-old has repeatedly bragged about 'killing' Roe v. Wade, emboldened and uplifted white supremacist groups, spewed racism and misogyny, fostered an ever-growing connection to Project 2025, allegedly praised Adolf Hitler, referred to fallen American soldiers as 'losers,' and he has been found liable for sexual abuse. (And this was all BEFORE his second term began just a few short months ago — I didn't even mention Wikipedia creating an entire 2025 Stock Market Crash page amid Trump's tariff war.) Regardless of how obvious it may or may not seem that friends and family of MAGA supporters may want some distance, some are still surprised — and that includes this X poster: Yes, this woman, who describes herself as a "True Patriot" with "Pronouns F/U," wrote on X: "Today my oldest son turns 36. I sent him a gift, left him a voicemail and texted him. But I won't be hearing back from him - not even an acknowledgment that he received his present. Why? Because he hasn't spoken to my husband or I in seven months because we voted for Trump." "I miss him and hope that someday he will come around and realize the damage he is doing to our family by acting this way. My breaking heart is a continual reminder." "I know many of you have similar stories and I pray that your family members come around as well. I'm not asking him to change his politics, but you can't let it come between family." The post, which has been viewed over 10 million times, has over 15,000 comments and even more impressions. Some commenters shared similar experiences: "My husband and I were disowned by our 33 year old son on January 21st," this person wrote. "Haven't heard from him since then. My birthday and Mother's Day nothing. Our lives go on." "Politics should stop at the family front door," another added. Others struggled to find sympathy for the original poster or other outcasted parents. "MAGA mom is SHOCKED her child doesn't want to associate with hate-filled, racist, bigoted & authoritarian-like movements. She is SHOCKED," someone said. "'we are horrible people and now my kids won't talk to us,'" another mocked. And outside of the left versus right, a middle group formed with those who questioned why the original poster would send their child a gift despite them wanting to remain estranged, and then seemingly complain about the gift not being appreciated, regardless. "He is no contact. With someone who contacted him 3 ways. But she's the victim?" several posed. What are your thoughts on the now-viral post and conversation? Let us know in the comments.
The Citizen
02-05-2025
- Politics
- The Citizen
A book that tackles white supremacy, racism and the radical right
Although the spread of radical ideologies is not new, it is now fuelled by social media. Racism, prejudice and discrimination is everywhere. Think of yourself in traffic, consider current local and global politics. In South Africa, themes like BBBEE and xenophobia, sport, gender discrimination impact every day of citizens' lives. It's a contentious hit parade of themes that could go on for days. This, when on the surface, society remains convinced that it has erased the scourge of prejudice. In his book White Supremacy, author Gavin Evans does not shy away from difficult conversations. He has them, and this book will likely become the foundation of critical discussions on racism for years to come. The author pulls no punches in tracing the toxic lineage of racist ideologies from their roots in whack-job scientific theory right through to the extremist underbelly, or not-so-underbelly, of the internet today. Racist ideologies rooted in whack-job science Racism, discrimination and the modern incarnation of the 'great replacement' theory have their roots in the alt-right online chatrooms 4chan, 8kun, Gab, and the darknet, where racist and misogynistic ideologies can breed and multiply quickly. Evans researched these rabbit holes. He said the level of misogyny went off the charts. 'And what's frightening is how easily it turns into racism. One minute it's about women, the next it's about immigrants and black people. These forums are shaping how a whole generation of young men see the world.' ALSO READ: Partner habits that drive you crazy He said many young men enter extremist online spaces because they feel excluded. 'In the US, for example, many men feel left behind. Women are doing better in school, getting better jobs. Some young men don't see a place for themselves anymore. So, they start looking for someone to blame.' They find them in people of colour. Extreme ideas permeate social media. Evans said these are then fuelled by algorithmic reinforcement on various platforms. 'Code and machines don't understand morality,' he said. 'They just feed people more of what grabs their attention. So, if a young guy is drawn to grievance-based and racism-based content, the algorithm serves him more of it – stronger, darker, faster.' Discrimination is diversifying 'Discrimination seems to be diversifying, too,' Evans added. 'We're splitting down every available fault line, including class, religion and culture. It's a fracturing of society that's being accelerated by the very technology we use to connect.' These 21st-century divisions and racism are also becoming increasingly visible in politics. 'In the last German election, young men voted for the AfD in significant numbers. Young women voted overwhelmingly for the left. The divide between young men and women is growing,' he said. The book, however, shows that the spread of radical ideologies is not new. Evans wrote about the major pillars of today's various far-right ideological mutations. He traced it back to the work of Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, who coined the term 'eugenics' and promoted the belief that intelligence and success were innate traits predominantly found in white populations. 'Galton believed intelligent white people needed to breed more, and inferior races needed to be eliminated,' Evans said. Race-based politics Evans suggested that these theories laid the foundation for early 20th-century race-based policies. White Supremacy connects the historical dots between scientific racism, mainstream discourse and acts of modern extremism. 'Many of the people cited in the manifestos of far-right (mass) shooters were the same figures I'd already written about in Skin Deep,' he said. 'They were being referenced as authorities. That's when I realised I had to write this book.' Skin Deep was an academic publication that deep-dived into the fundamentals of race-based science. It focuses on the victims, in this instance, and not the killers. It is an absolute social indictment of how far down the pathway to hatred people have ventured. And while Evans doesn't believe that reading White Supremacy may change anyone's mind, he feels it should be a roadmap for a fact-based argument to counter racism and discrimination. 'You can't tell people to stop thinking a certain way' 'You can't just tell people to stop thinking a certain way. It needs to come from people they know, teachers, friends, siblings. People of influence. And you need to offer alternatives. Role models, platforms that young people actually want to engage with. If you want to challenge someone's ideas, you need to understand where those ideas come from,' he said. NOW READ: Life after death? The question that's been tossed for ages
Daily Maverick
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Unpacking white supremacy: Gavin Evans explores the dangerous legacy of racial ideologies
Gavin Evans examines a modern plague that has deep roots in faux biology and some seriously fraudulent social science. If anyone, in this day and age, had decided to give their newest book a deliberately provocative title, choosing 'White Supremacy' could be a finalist for such a dubious honour. In fact, academic and journalist Gavin Evans has just done that, subtitling his volume: 'A Brief History of Hatred', just in case a potential reader was insufficiently unnerved by Evans' choice of a title or confused into believing it was some kind of perverse handbook. It is intriguing, however, that the late Stanford University historian, George M Fredrickson, some 50 years earlier, also used the same title for his own groundbreaking comparative study of the evolution of racialised government in South Africa and the US (along with a briefer shout-out to Brazil's experiences). When his book was published, Fredrickson explained that he had deliberately chosen the term 'supremacy' — as opposed to 'racism' — to indicate that, at least in its earliest days, 'race' in any kind of sophisticated (albeit false) biological sense had been just one of the factors that initially shaped both America's and South Africa's colonial societies, along with their economies and legal structures. However, over time, the result was the creation of increasingly institutionalised, formally structured slavery systems and the consequent formalised racial hierarchies that flowed from those decisions and choices. As a journalist and academic now teaching in Britain, Evans has taken a significantly different approach and focus from Fredrickson's — although the two books would usefully be read in tandem, but with Fredrickson's historical study first to set out an historical landscape. Deep examination Instead of employing a deep examination back through many centuries to trace the origins of racial thinking, Evans traces the evolution of the contemporary ideology of white racialism/racism back through the beginnings of 19th century 'scientific' racial theories. This leads Evans into the origins of thinking about eugenics and the strains of thought that underlaid the thinking about and misuse of IQ theories and measurements. And all of this was built upon a growing appreciation for the hereditary nature of various traits as explored by scientists, but then put to work for socio-political purposes in discriminating against groups of people — and then on to the pseudo-biology that underpinned the Nazi 'Final Solution.' In doing his immersion into 19th century thinking, Evans draws extensively upon race theorists in the US, Great Britain, and Germany who influenced each other or provided the raw material for later racial theories. This even includes stops along the way to incorporate ideas drawn from the early thinkers about genetics, including Charles Darwin. That naturalist, of course, had got it right about evolution and the African origins of humanity, but at the same time he was also tainted by 19th century ideas about a hierarchy of races in terms of their respective intellectual capacities. In the contemporary world, such ideas have become the foundation for the very real — and dangerous — phenomenon of angry yet lonely young men who do terrible things in the name of racial ideologies. And, yes, they almost always are young men — in America, in Britain, in Scandinavia, in New Zealand, throughout Western Europe, and in South Africa. (An exploration of how the South African charge of white genocide has now taken on a peculiarly political texture with the Trump Administration in the US comes in Molly Olmstead's recent article in Slate.) Inevitably, such individuals most often progressively become ensnared in dark web conversations and alt-right manifestos urging a fight back against the potent yet imaginary 'white replacement theory' and similar perspectives flogged by proponents of racial thinking. Sometimes, but not always, those manifestos and social media messaging also demonstrate more bog-standard conspiracy thinking. This includes themes like the charge that Jews (presumably wherever they live) are secretly in control of the world's financial structure — and through that global and national politics, as they simultaneously manipulate intellectually inferior, inevitably darker-skinned people, to Jews in taking over the world. Further… building on their respective childhoods, these individuals often demonstrate those 'lone wolf' tendencies that add a complex psychological dimension to their fears, angers, delusions, and then their actions. Such deep psychological roots make it that much harder to dispel such notions in the minds of such angry individuals. (The reader's mind may well drift to thoughts about psychological training and conditioning reminiscent of the plot of 'Clockwork Orange' or to Pavlov and BF Skinner's famous operant conditioning training with dogs and pigeons, as well as humans in the case of Skinner.) Lone wolf While the term 'lone wolf' has become increasingly common usage to describe such people, this reviewer has the feeling that such souls actually behave more like lost puppies than lone wolves. They are desperately trying to connect to someone, to something, or to some kind of belief system that may give them reassurance in a world that otherwise offers them few handholds (or restraining devices for their delusions), save via connecting through social media with other equally deluded young men and their would-be influencers. Of course one key element in actual killing sprees by such people comes from their use of weapons — most frequently relying upon the lethality of modern firearms. Almost always, too, in their writing and actions such lost souls also demonstrate a love of firearms and explosive devices. One thought, of course, is to make it that much harder for people with such alarming tendencies and ideas to have easy access to high-powered rifles. Absent access to such weapons, the killing sprees would become that much harder to carry out, perhaps, although some have chosen to use swords, pangas and bayonets — and a truly determined individual can often find their way to firearms. And, now, increasingly, a motor vehicle driven into a crowd at a sporting event, a holiday market, or just a busy downtown street is becoming a political act on behalf of some kind of ideology. This isn't quite nihilism. Rather, it is making use of the tools at hand to strike a blow for something. But the use of motor vehicles leads us to another question — and that is whether such killings are a unique feature of young, misled western men, or, whether there is a broader question here, especially since some of these mass vehicular killings have been carried out by young Muslim men who believe they are following their own dark webs of racial/religious/ethnic teachings and influencers. The question is not simply one of white supremacy, per se, but the idea of true believers of some doctrine or philosophy who are prepared to kill innocent people in the presumed furtherance of their beliefs, regardless of the personal cost. That should point us to the idea there is more to this phenomenon than simply white racialism and white supremacy. Is it not also the difficulties such young men have in connecting to more 'normal' social structures and why those darker more violent alternatives become so attractive to them. If Evans had also included the way some in Eastern Europe and Russia have absorbed a Slavic version of White supremacy as propounded by writers favoured by Vladimir Putin, or even the versions of such thinking in some of Asian societies, Evans' White Supremacy would have been an even stronger, more universally applicable work, although admittedly it would have been a much longer one. Populist critics Jennifer Szalai, reviewing Quinn Slobodian's own new book, Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right, in the New York Times notes Slobodian's final chapter 'traces how right-wing figures across the world have positioned themselves as populist critics of 'neoliberal policies' even while they pay frequent homage to Austrian economists like Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, who laid the foundations for the neoliberal tradition, with its gospel of free markets. 'This so-called New Right has adopted the furious nostalgia of a backlash to what (Argentinian President Javier) Milei has called a 'global hegemony' while embracing radical deregulation.' This may put energy into the normalisation of violence, the addition of a kind of libertarian ideology, and that perennial, a 'rage against the machine' as we once would have called it half a century earlier. Societies and governments that hope to combat these dangerous tendencies must find ways that can draw such alienated individuals back into the larger, broader texture of political, economic, and social thinking in societies, rather than driving them further and further into the rabbit holes they enter. This will not be an easy or simple task, especially when mainstream politicians insist on giving credence to their ideas or fears. Evans deserves credit for tackling this topic, even if the more universal picture is beyond this text. But he, too, is challenged about how to bring such lone wolves or lost puppies back into the fold before they wreak yet more damage. Nonetheless, by the time Evans reaches his postscript, he becomes modestly optimistic. As he writes, 'Racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia might seem like immovable forces, particularly for their victims. Every time a young white man opens fire with an assault rifle on black or brown or Muslim, Sikh, Asian or Jewish people, or a policeman shoots dead an unarmed black man, or a race science author insists that one population group is innately smarter than others or naturally more violent or inherently more acquisitive, and every time a television pundit tells his viewers of a conspiracy to replace 'legacy' Americans or Europeans with people of different races and religions, it must feel like nothing has changed. It must feel like racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia simply cascade through the generations, always on the hunt for new territory. 'And yet, it can and does change, often for the better. In Germany, Britain and the US between the wars, perceptions about the superiority of the white race and beliefs in race-based eugenics were part of conventional wisdom. But this changed through seeing the implications of eugenics in Nazi Germany, and it is continuing to shift…' We can only hope that, over the longer term, Evans is right, and that despite all the hate speech and racial, ethnic, and religious invective in the darker corners of the internet and talk radio — often infecting more presumably normal political discourse by leading politicians in many nations — wiser, more rational heads will, in the end, prevail. DM
