Thu May 4, 2017 09:39 PM
Moved to WordsFromRob blog.
I think that the white supremacists, who call themselves the alt-right, have two things that are fanning the flames of their passion against minorities and women.
1. false sense of entitlement
2. jealousy of attention and comradery
The first one doesn’t need much of an explanation. To feel like you are superior or should be superior to others means you have to feel entitled to superiority. So I’ll focus on the second one.
Maybe you’ve witnessed “jealousy of attention” with small children. A disadvantaged or disabled child will need more attention from the teacher and will earn more praise from the teacher when they do well. Sometimes in the class there is also a jealous and insecure child who wants that kind of praise and attention. The jealous kid will get angry, thinking that it’s unfair that the disabled child gets so much attention and the teacher barely notices him. So the jealous child might pick on the disabled student when the teacher isn’t around, or might have a tantrum in class or do something to get attention.
How does this relate to the alt-right? They look at the encouragement and attention given to minorities and women, and they get jealous. They haven’t put themselves in the shoes of the people they are jealous of. All they see is unfair advantages and encouragement given to other people that “don’t deserve it.” Their jealousy as been simmering for a long time and it’s boiling over now.
The second part of the second point deserves an explanation too, “jealousy of comradery.” What I mean by that is the perception that minorities and women have something that unites them and they can be proud of all their accomplishments. They think blacks all think and behave alike and hang out in gangs, same for women too. They see groups of minorities and women in groups, and then they compare that with their own isolation or their own low status. They become even more jealous. They wonder why there’s a black history month and perks for women (ladies night specials, tax breaks for women-owned companies, etc.). They still don’t see the disadvantages that others have to endure. They wonder why can’t there be a celebration of “white people” and “white pride” and “men’s only” anything.
They really despise liberals or “Social Justice Warriors” that go on the attack against them. They are entrenched in their positions and feel like they have to defend their beliefs, because they don’t want to admit that they are wrong, admit that they really aren’t entitled to anything, and that they have no cause to feel like they are being treated unfairly. They feel like “SJWs” are what’s wrong with this country because it denies white men their special place in this country.
Why can’t they see it? They can’t see what others have to endure and the disadvantages stacked against them. They turn a blind eye to that stuff, and may even think that minorities and women deserve the bad things happening to them. Jealous people only see the things that they crave that others are getting, while ignoring all the hard work and disadvantages others have overcome. The alt-right is completely blind to white male privilege and thinks that it’s just something that SJWs made up to oppress white men. Since they haven’t had negative experiences that others have to deal with on a daily basis, then those things don’t exist and people shouldn’t complain about it. They don’t have to deal with continuous harassment by police, being watched in the store, having your financial life scrutinized, leering eyes, sexual predatory eyes, cat calls, sexual harassment, and loads of condescension.
Maybe people of the alt-right are low status financially. They think that others are getting special financial treatment. I don’t think they are in the upper class, because if they were, they wouldn’t be that jealous of others, because they just wouldn’t care. Maybe some of them are just really lonely white guys who can’t make friends with people, so they choose to unite in a clique against a common enemy. The internet is their home and they only get together for trolling events. If they were to meet or hang out with each other on a daily basis, I think their terrible social manners would tear them apart.
How do you deal with jealous children? I’m not an expert on the subject, and hopefully I won’t have to be. For these grown men though, I think they deserve mocking and condescension as if they were petulant, privileged children. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s so unfair that they’re getting all that attention and encouragement, and no one’s paying any attention to you. Boo hoo hoo. That’s so unfair! Why should they be treated better?” That might work, because it could wake them up to their childish ways. It would point out to them that other people know how insecure and jealous they are, and no one wants others to know that about them.
I think I can make a safe assumption that the majority of the people in the alt-right are in one or a combination of these circumstances:
1. came from a dysfunctional family that couldn’t teach proper social graces and prepare them for success
2. have abusive fathers that beat their wives and children; believing their fathers when their fathers said “she deserved it” and the mothers when they said she “deserved it” too
3. were picked on at school by bullies and never learned how to make friends with the good and successful kids
In school, they looked at the black kids who had elevated social positions because they played on the football or basketball team. It really got to them when they saw that because they were “supposed to be above black people in the social ladder. How could a black kid be above me?”
Imagine a country where there was only white people and women had no rights. The alt-right fantasizes about this, but what they don’t realize is that because of how they behave and interact with others, they would still be at the bottom of the social ladder! They would have to search for something or someone else to blame for their social position so that can say they were unfairly treated and they should be superior.
They don’t want to admit that they are social misfits. They don’t want to admit that the values that they were raised with in their dysfunctional families are wrong and are the cause of their problems. To admit that their parents raised them incorrectly is to admit that they have serious problems that they need to work out. They would have to admit that their family is a failure and that they are failures too. That would bruise their egos too much – their flimsy egos that they built up to protect them negative self-conscious thoughts about their own standing in the world.
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