Say, for the sake of argument, you're a liberal journalist in the year of 2016 of the common era. Your beat is covering the Republican Primaries. A lot of people are vying for the presidential nomination, And so it falls to you to attend and write up their debates. Part of your job is deciphering "conservative euphemisms." When the subject of "illegal immigration" comes up, for instance, You'll have to explain to your audience that, the idea of "protecting American jobs from undocumented workers," is Republican Doubletalk for "hating mexicans." No one is tightening security at the US-Canada border, No one is pulling over white Europeans to check their visas. And undocumented workers contribute a massive amount to the economy, while tax-payers don't have to cover social security, unemployment, or Medicare for them. "protecting jobs" has always been used to paper over racism. So you're sitting there watching the debate, these factoids at the ready, when one of the candidates says he wants to tighten the borders, because... "Mexico is sending us rapists and thieves." I'm sorry. What? What just happened? That is not a thing Republicans are supposed to say out loud! It's... ...against the rules! You can't just cop to believing Mexicans are degenerates after decades of calling border security a "jobs issue". Also, immigrants, legal or otherwise, aren't soldiers. Since when are they sent by anyone? By the time you pull yourself out of that thought spiral the debate has shifted. Now they're talking about the war on terror. So you somewhat warily prepare to contextualise another set of euphemisms. This is a subject almost always used to mask Islamophobia. Whenever an act of domestic terror is committed by someone of Palestinian descent, politicians try to link it to ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Where if the bomber or shooter is a white Christian, the terrorist is referred to as a "lone wolf", not part of any pattern, despite there being significantly more white Christian "lone wolves" than Palestinian terrorists. This "war on terror" never seems to expand beyond regions with oil deposits. But then that same candidate pipes up and says, if elected, for the sake of security, he wants to create a Muslim registry, and what the hell is going on?! Politicians just don't talk like this! Conventional wisdom is that this kind of language will flare up the extremists in your party while alienating your base. And appealing to both at the same time is why we invented euphemisms. And sure enough, in the following months, you have far-right pundits talking about a Muslim ban on national television, waxing nostalgic about the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s like they weren't a national disgrace. You've got that same candidate casting aspersions on the judge investigating him for fraud because the judge is Mexican-American. You're sitting there with your pen ready to write an article about the alienation of the moderate Republican base, but that moment never seems to come. The guy seemingly tanking his candidacy by appealing to extremists is the one who finally secures the nomination. You realize with some shock that in each of these cases you are witnessing the death of a euphemism. The death of a euphemism is a rare celestial event. Politicians only let a euphemism die when they don't need it anymore. This does not imply good things for Mexicans or Muslims. The circumstances under which a euphemism may die are often spelled out in the circumstances under which it is born. So, if we want to discuss it, we'll have to start at the beginning. Let's talk about euphemistic racism in the Republican Party. In the year 1964 there was a man. We'll call him Barry... Uh... Silver... ...milk. Silvermilk was the Republican nominee for president and, for various reasons, he was almost certainly going to lose the election. The Democrats were the incumbent party -- they'd pretty much controlled Congress since the 40s -- and the country was still in mourning after the devastating assassination of a Democratic president. The United States wasn't looking to change parties. About the only thing Silvermilk had going for him was that the Democrats had just signed into law the Civil Rights Act, expanding the voting rights of black citizens and desegregating a lot of American life. And a lot of white voters were pissed about it. In those days, you couldn't really claim Republicans or Democrats were "good on race." And black people, when they were allowed to vote at all, were much more evenly split between parties than they are today. However, a Democrat pushing through the Civil Rights Act had, intentionally or otherwise, made race a partisan issue. The upshot, Silvermilk realized, was that disgruntled white people might be willing to abandon the Democratic Party if given the right incentive. In '64, Republicans didn't have much of a coalition -- not since Democratic tax policies had dragged America out of the Great Depression. (And incidentally created the greatest period of economic growth and prosperity in the history of the industrialized world, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.) If Silvermilk could siphon white voters out of the Democratic Party, he might bring a strength to Republicans that they hadn't seen in decades. But, to do that, he'd have to run his campaign on a pro-segregation platform. Now, white racists have a complicated relationship to their own racism. They seemingly want the impossible: they want segregation without appearing to be segregationists, racist policy without the social repercussions. Possibly, they don't even want to admit their racism to themselves. So Silvermilk would need a framing that allowed the blithely racist, the overtly racist, and the non racist to unite under a single banner. For this purpose, Silvermilk landed on the long enduring euphemism, "states' rights." Now, obviously, the "states' rights" argument didn't originate in 1964. It's very old, and in fact used to be more of a Democrat thing. We're talking about the specific invocation of states' rights as a defense of inequality. Silvermilk argued that desegregation, though certainly a nice idea, shouldn't be enacted at the federal level, because no matter how acute the plight of black Americans, the decision to desegregate should be left to the states. Of course, anyone embracing this rhetoric knew full well that many states would never in this lifetime desegregate unless forced to But you see: that's not the aim, merely the side effect In this framing, no one is officially pro-segregation. They're simply anti-desegregation This brokered a compromise between the reactionaries and the centrists in the United States It allowed moderate Republicans some deniability about what direction their party was headed, and it allowed the Silvermilk campaign to secure the votes of white racists without having to publicly embrace them. Now in spite of all of this Silvermilk, as predicted, lost the election in a landslide, but it would be wrong to take that as a rejection of what he tried This was the beginning of the modern Republican Party This is where the deep south, formerly a lock for the Democrats, first voted for the party of Lincoln. This is where white flight from the Democratic Party began and why today we see white people, particularly white men, are the only demographic that consistently votes Republican Silvermilk's rhetoric was foundational to bringing Republicans back to power in the 80s Finally breaking the Democrat's hold over the House of Representatives. Some will argue that Silvermilk did sincerely believe in states rights and that rebuilding the Republican Party by appealing to white racists was not his intent. And if you believe that perhaps I can interest you in a very promising real estate venture in Florida. But regardless of what you believe about his intentions, that is how states rights has been used: As a cudgel in service of bigotry States rights was invoked and is still invoked to defend anti-miscegenation laws, anti-abortion laws, same-sex marriage bans, trans bathroom bills, spousal rape, you name it! Every time there are gains for social minorities, the Republicans shore up the votes of bigots who find these gains offensive It's hard for the left to argue with the states rights argument because it's not designed to make sense Republicans will say we should leave an issue like same-sex marriage up to the states But only after a federal ban on same-sex marriage proves infeasible. Up until that moment, they are in favor of government overreach. So states rights has never been a consistent philosophy But then why should it be? It's a euphemism. Its sole purpose is bringing an extreme ideology into mainstream politics. About the only blessing of a political euphemism is that the belief that can't be spoken is a belief that is to some extent contained. The states rights argument makes bigotry more pervasive, but keeps it somewhat less draconian than the bigots might prefer If you have to smuggle your marriage ban into a states rights argument, you're painted into a corner should your state choose to legalize it. Then if you want to keep the homophobic vote secure, you've got to find and popularize a different euphemism. Managing an alliance between moderates and reactionaries, especially when you can't acknowledge that one half of that alliance even exists, is a hard needle to thread And depending on who's in charge of the party at a given time, the alliance can be tenuous The far right is often viewed by their own party as the mad woman in the Attic. We feed her, but we don't talk about her. Republican campaigners are somewhat known for going out and getting far-right folks registered to vote and then talking shit about them when they're out of earshot I suspect they enjoy standing next to extremists because it makes them look moderate by comparison Though we should be clear, if you need to stand next to someone whose bumper sticker says "If I had known this I would have picked my own cotton" to not look racist? Your house is not in order. And the far-right knows this. Say what you want about them, they're not all fools. Their party often doesn't respect them because it doesn't have to. Who the hell else are they gonna vote for? They are the necessary evil. But if what a person wants -- what they actually want -- IS segregation, IS a nationwide ban on same-sex marriage, IS the mass deportation of Mexicans, IS the closing of borders to all Muslim nations, This euphemistic "states rights", "job security", "war on terror" half-measure bullshit isn't going to cut it forever When you court the vote of bigots, sooner or later, it's put up or shut up. I don't say this to generate sympathy for them. None of these are desires worth having and no nation calling itself a democracy should ever represent them Not even as watered down euphemisms. But to bring us back to the recent past. I say this because in 2016, it had been a long time since these people felt that any party had truly represented them and this is why a candidate who doesn't say "protecting jobs" he says "Mexicans are rapists" who doesn't say "war on terror" he says "Muslim registry" appeals to them He says in so many words the Islamophobes, the racists, the sexists, the segregationists: They are my base. I will not appeal to moderates and treat them as the necessary evil I will speak to them directly without euphemism because honestly, I don't know how euphemisms work. These are my people And they are the ones the Republican party should embrace with open arms. This is supposed to be political suicide. And in the months that follow it looks like maybe it will be. All the other journalists are writing this up as a fluke and an embarrassment. Him securing the nomination has doomed the Republican Party. The moderates will never elect him. Not only will he fail, he will lay bare the ugly truth about his entire party. He lags in the polls. Republican lawmakers disavow him. The Republican National Committee revokes their endorsement. Statisticians say not only will he lose in the swing states, But some of the Republican strongholds might vote Democrat for the first time in 40 years. They suspect he could drag Republicans in the House and Senate down with him. Democratic control of all three branches of government. His loss will be as sweeping as Silvermilk's in '64 and the ensuing Republican realignment will be as dramatic But when the day comes That's not the headline you have to write. How do you make sense of this? You're a political writer, you're supposed to tell people what this means. How do you even begin? Well, it means party loyalty is one of the strongest things in politics today. Come election day, people who disavowed him were making phone calls on his behalf. It means the Republican Party has drifted to the right far enough that these so-called moderates are more closely aligned with white nationalists than they are to the moderate left. It means, in all likelihood, The bigots are the base now, and the moderates the hangers-on. Politicians can be as racist as they want because who the hell else are Republicans gonna vote for? That's not the realignment you were expecting. Now there's no saying how long this state of affairs will last -- One election doesn't mean the center-right and the far right know how to build a coalition. Maybe a year or two from now and this guy's passed a little legislation, the moderates will have buyer's remorse, The extremists will feel their guy was more blunt talk than he was action. Everything will be worse and no one will be happy. But that's not much comfort because it tells you almost nothing about how the next election will go. At this point, anything could happen. A euphemism dies when it no longer works to disguise things that can't be said, Or when culture at large decides things that can't be said are now sayable. In the last couple videos, we've talked about how the far-right mainstreams a, for instance, racist idea by convincing people it's not racist. What we're seeing here is the end game of that process. Once the public embraces them as people, elects their politicians, and implements their policies, They begin, bit-by-bit, to drop the pretense. Because if they want to close the borders once and for all, it's in their best interest to stop pretending border control is about "protecting jobs" A sad truth about humans is they will often accept almost any justification to keep doing whatever they're already doing. If someone has spent years favoring border security -- they've voted for it, their taxes have paid for it, Maybe they've even called ICE on someone, and one day you tell them "Keep doing what you're doing, But by the way, it's not about jobs anymore. Now, it's about keeping Mexicans out." A lot of them will roll with it. We like to think action follows belief And sometimes it does But at least as often it's the reverse And that's a dangerous thing when given the choice to do something different, or do the same thing only more. To the far right, a euphemism is like a calf Something to be brought into this world or inherited, removed from its original context, raised to adolescence, and then slaughtered when the time is right. Historically, the first sign that things are about to get a lot worse for minorities is when the racism stops being euphemistic. In a sense, the far-right and the liberal journalists share a purpose The journalists' goal is to expose the truth behind the euphemism in the hopes that people will abandon bigotry once it's been made explicit The far-right does the same Hoping they won't
Agree with the politics or not, y’all cannot argue that Trump “telling it like it is” and going on to win is evident that the current Republican base rejects euphemism in place of direct extremist views. The video itself is well made and interesting, and thus deserving of this sub. Conservative dudes are only downvoting it because their feelings are hurt.
So, the biggest flaw in this video, which is fairly well done if a bit one-sided, is totally ignoring the possibility that the left has made any political moves in the last half century.
He shows the voting trends by race, saying 'only white males consistently vote red' - and then implying that this is because of 'identitarian politics'. But that's clearly not what the data show - it looks like the whites are the only block still close to evenly split - everyone else as 'racial identities' vote blue.
Does this guy really think it was only the right using euphemisms to disguise the identity politics that pulled nearly all of the black vote to the left? It seems perfectly reasonable to look from the other direction and see that perhaps the left has also been drifting away from the center, using euphemism as a means to appease the identitarian and radical fringes while maintaining a hold on the moderates. If we take the video on its word that the near even split among white voters is due to identity politics, isn't the fact that the black and other minority blocks skew blue evidence of identity politics on the left?
I'd also like to point out that the mask of euphemism is falling off of the left identitarians and radicals as well. Heck, the democrats had a self described socialist go punch for punch in the primary. It's no longer euphemistically that people and their opinions are vetted not by their credentials or rhetoric, but their skin color, gender, and sexual orientation. I say again, the left bears some responsibility for the rise of identitarian politics and their welding onto our two party system.
I wonder if the creator is liberal? /s
lol looks like a brigade has come
I'm Irish and think Trump is a cunt, but when I see the dismissive and smug behaviour of American liberals I completely understand why he's in power.