Max Boot’s Retort:
National Review’s ugly attack on me reflects the Trumpification of conservatism
I retorted first:
@JohnHirschauer of National Review writes:
Max Boot Fans the Flames of Racial Hatred
Based on your skin color, says the white pundit, you’re either a victim or a villain.
One of Max Boot’s most recent columns in the Washington Post is titled “Get a grip, white people. We’re not the victims.” The headline says in nine words what the text says in 800, doing predictably little to elevate our national discourse at a moment of intense racial polarization
Let’s Start With ….
Perhaps, before you wrote this column John, you should have read….
Or…
back to your column…
Boot’s central contention is that whites in America are beset with a victimhood mentality, one that “can justify everything from a public temper tantrum to a shooting spree.” In the wake of the El Paso tragedy, Boot can make a plausible case that racial grievances (real and imagined) facilitate discord and violence, because, of course, they do.
So you are AGREEING with Max?
How the El Paso Killer Echoed the Incendiary Words of Conservative Media Stars
Instead, Boot denounces white-grievance politics (a politics well worth denouncing) while simultaneously granting other grievance groups a blank check to raid the expansive store of imputed guilt and collective punishment. As a matter of course, he favors any repatriation for injustices to which racial minorities and their ancestors may (or may not) have been subject — as long as it’s in an effort to “redress past wrongs,” as he puts it.
Not well-versed in US History, are you?
When you talk reparations, there are two reasons we need to discuss reparations
- Slavery – OVERT Repression
- Jim Crow – COVERT Repression
His ultimate prescription to the “white people” he instructs to “get a grip” is something like “Stop whining.” And that’s fine; we could certainly stand less whining in the United States. In effect, however, Boot sets up a Faustian choice for “white” readers: Side with the white supremacists and their detestable program, or sell your political soul to Max Boot and become one of the self-loathing whites so paralyzed by intersectional deference that they can hardly advance an argument without first reciting that neutered prelude: “As a straight, white, cisgender man with privilege, I . . .”
HUH? The above paragraph makes NO Sense.
There is no “Faustian choice” for “white” readers!
Are you not familiar with MLK’s Letter From Birmingham Jail? MLK did not make this argument. MLK and Max are making a simple, true argument. If you see a bigot, call him or her out for being a bigot. See something racist, call it out for being racist.
If Boot believes what he is saying — and I’m not sure he does — and assumes that “many” Trump supporters believe “that white supremacy is the natural order of things,” then he’d do well to provide them with a better set of options than white nationalism on the one hand and political impotence on the other. Surely there is a third way between a full-throated embrace of white identity and a supine adoption of the politics of self-hatred.
Did you READ Max’s Column?
Max typed the word “supremacy” once (and it was not about Trump supporters) and “supremacists” once (again, NOT about Trump supporters)
Like many of his followers, Trump must imagine that white supremacy is the natural order of things and that any attempt to deliver justice for minorities who have been discriminated against for centuries is an indicator of anti-white prejudice. The most extreme form of this outlook can be found among white supremacists such as the gunman who allegedly slaughtered 22 people in El Paso on Saturday. The suspect claimed to be acting in response “to the Hispanic invasion of Texas” — a state that was part of Mexico before being invaded by Anglos. Even many whites who aren’t driven to violence display a version of this victimhood mind-set. They view accusations of racism as a far bigger problem than racism itself, and blame “social justice warriors” rather than white racists for inflaming racial tensions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/06/get-grip-white-people-were-not-victims/
Pop Quiz – How many times in Max’s column did he type the word “Supporter”? ZERO (0)
A responsible journalist would propose a realistic alternative for conservative whites who don’t want to cede their basic political premises but who nevertheless reject white nationalism. But Boot instead goes on a meandering tirade with scant a coherent point. Sometimes he rails against white people as such; his claims range from the tautological (“White people can be pretty clueless”) to the plainly calumnious (“ . . . the sense of outrage that white people feel when they fear losing their privileged position to people of color”).
Are we even talking about the same column? When do you mention POVERTY or South Africa or Eric Garner or Central Park 5 (Max wrote about all of those things in HIS column)?
You DO understand Max’s outrage story took place in South Africa?
Yet, rather than being grateful for the forbearance of the black majority, many South African whites, especially those from the working class, smolder with resentment. Their bitterness erupted during and after an emotional confrontation in 2017 at the Johannesburg outpost of a casual restaurant chain called the Spur Steak Ranches. Videos show a white man arguing vociferously with a black woman over the behavior of her kids. As the New York Times notes, “The white man yanks the arm of a black boy, before threatening to hit the black woman and trying to overturn a table where her small children were sitting.” A few days later, the restaurant chain apologized to the woman and banned the man from entering its restaurants because of his “unacceptable actions.” Many whites were outraged at the treatment of the abusive customer and announced a boycott of the Spur restaurants. The boycott continues to the present day, hurting the restaurants’ sales in white areas.
At other times, he aims his fire more narrowly on the “many” Trump supporters who assume “that white supremacy is the natural order of things.”
Here is what Max wrote:
Like many of his followers, Trump must imagine that white supremacy is the natural order of things and that any attempt to deliver justice for minorities who have been discriminated against for centuries is an indicator of anti-white prejudice. The most extreme form of this outlook can be found among white supremacists such as the gunman who allegedly slaughtered 22 people in El Paso on Saturday. The suspect claimed to be acting in response “to the Hispanic invasion of Texas” — a state that was part of Mexico before being invaded by Anglos. Even many whites who aren’t driven to violence display a version of this victimhood mind-set. They view accusations of racism as a far bigger problem than racism itself, and blame “social justice warriors” rather than white racists for inflaming racial tensions.
I guess you have not research GAB or 8CHAN? How white supremacy went mainstream in the US: 8chan, Trump, voter suppression
White people can be pretty clueless. (I know, I’m one myself.) Get a grip, folks. We’re not the victims here. Thinking that we are is not just wrong. It’s dangerous. It’s a mind-set that can justify everything from a public temper tantrum to a shooting spree.
I grew up in Alabama in the 1960s. I heard “there goes the neighborhood and far worse” – my school was desegregated when I was in the 6th grade.
Like most white authors in this genre, Boot’s self-hatred is boutique and performative. His ire is directed more at White People in the abstract than with white people as such. Boot (who, it must be said, is whiter than almost anyone on the Washington Post masthead) must, for his piece’s title to make any sense, be in possession of the “grip” he’d like his fellow whites to “get.” I’m not quite sure he is.
Where do you get the self-hatred from? I have called out racists as racists my entire life. I have never hated myself for doing that. I have watched and read Max Boot for years and I don’t see one scintilla of self-hate.
The great shame of this piece is not that Boot had the audacity to instruct an entire racial group to “get a grip.” It is not even his almost libelous comparison of post-apartheid South Africa with the United States in 2019. It is the irresponsibility of speaking in such totalizing racial language in a time that, as he himself concedes, is “dangerous.”
https://www.massshootingtracker.org/
308 U.S. mass shootings in 2019
2673 mass shootings since 1/1/2013
1 day since last mass shooting
Why Are So Many Mass Shootings Committed by Young White Men?
Max Boot can claim all he wants that President Trump is stoking the flames of race hatred, but if he really believes that, he ought to stop fanning them himself.
Calling out Trump for stoking violence is NOT fanning violence, it IS pointing the person speaking of Muslim Bans, Mexican rapists, infestations, S*Hole countries and invasions.
http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/
I can’t speak for Max, but I can say that Donald Trump fans hatred:
Friday night Bill Maher asked “Why is everyone so angry” – I knew the answer:
Our nation is angry because of Citizens United v FEC and John Tanton:
