Good News: The Victimhood
Coalition May Devour Itself Before the Rest of Us, by Benny Huang, 12/24/16
The University of California’s “Students
of Color Conference” ended in disarray earlier this month with various racial,
ethnic, and religious groups vying for the “Biggest Victim” prize. Though it
was intended to foster thoughtful discussion about issues that affect
minorities, the conference devolved into a “safe space gone wrong” according to
The Daily Bruin’s Jacqueline Alvarez.
Rather than hating white people, the
various groups turned on each other. “The conference eventually turned into a kind
of ‘oppression Olympics,’ where students argued over which minority group was
oppressed the most rather than finding solidarity and understanding amongst
each other,” wrote Alvarez.
One point of contention was the
conference’s theme: “Fighting anti-Blackness.” The whole conference was geared
toward America’s
premiere victim group, blacks, which displeased some members of other groups.
When one student asked why other groups’ issues weren’t being discussed a black
student replied that blacks were the most oppressed which elicited a negative
response from a Muslim student who said that her people were being bombed in
the Middle East.
I don’t know about you but I find this
whole story very entertaining. It’s a nice change to see
the victimhood pathology eating away at the grand coalition of the oppressed
rather than at our nation as a whole.
Modern progressivism is an identity
politics stew consisting of divergent groups that don’t always agree. What
binds them together is a visceral hatred of Western civilization which they
associate with white people, Christianity, capitalism, individual rights, and
“the patriarchy” (men). They’ve shown great progress in vanquishing all of
these things.
The Left has an obsession with tearing
down the status quo, a task it has been engaged in for more than two hundred
years. Armed with rhetorical sledge hammers they go about smashing everything
they see. Smash monogamy! Smash the patriarchy! Smash capitalism! Smash this!
Smash that! Smashing is what they do best and for that the Left deserves to be
called a demolition crew.
Leftists won’t admit this of course. In
their own minds they are building a better, more egalitarian future. But in
order to usher in that future they must first demolish Western civilization and
sweep away the wretched rubble. This task has become their fixation. So focused
are they on undermining the current order that they’ve almost lost sight of
their supposed long term goal of building an earthly paradise in its place.
In all likelihood, they never will get
around to the construction phase of their strategy because the demolition phase
will never be complete. Consider for a moment their obsession with racism.
Leftists perceive it everywhere and concoct phony examples of it where it
doesn’t exist. Here’s a good example: Just before the election, a black church
in Mississippi was torched and spray-painted with the words “Vote Trump.”
Police have since arrested a man named Andrew McClinton for the
heinous act. Who is this scoundrel? A klansman, perhaps? Nope. McClinton is a
black member of the church. This man actually burnt down his own spiritual home just to make a
point about the imaginary racists who live in his head.
In order to sustain our hysteria about
racism the Left needs to provide teachable moments from time to time. The
Mississippi church burning was one such moment. The lessons they wanted us to
learn from it were that white supremacism still reigns supreme and that we must
continue smashing it with all due ferocity. Therefore, demolition is still
called for—and always will be. There’s never a good time to declare victory in
the war on racism.
Unfortunately for them, a movement so
tightly bound up with destruction runs the risk of devouring itself from
within. Until recently I was of the opinion that this Left-on-Left
cannibalization would likely happen after they had destroyed Western
civilization as we know it.
I imagined it going down something like
the French Revolution when Jacobins sent each other to the guillotine once they
had murdered the monarchy, raped the nuns, and desecrated the churches. But could
I be wrong? I have no doubt that this coalition of victims is going to
self-destruct; it’s only a question of whether it will occur before or after
their scorched earth campaign against the rest of us has concluded.
We conservatives should take every opportunity
to point out that the Left’s many strange bedfellows don’t have much in common.
Sometimes we do illuminate the absurdity of a movement that counts both Muslims
and homosexuals as members. Don’t “gays” know that most Muslims hate them? Many
don’t. But we haven’t done a good enough job explaining to Muslims that
homosexuals hate them too. We might want to mention that after the social
justice warriors complete their incremental criminalization of Christianity
they’ll have all the right precedents in place to do the same to Islam.
“No fair!” shout the Leftists. “That’s
the politics of divisiveness!” Yes, I suppose it is. But
they started it.
Conservatives want people in this
country to unite behind a common national identity—as Americans—whereas
liberals want to split the population into many different groups based on sex,
sexuality, class, race, and religion before bundling the majority of those
splinter groups into a coalition that will act as a battering ram against the
dreaded System. They really don’t like it when we try to dilute the glue that
binds their various constituency groups together.
Self-professed communist Van Jones complained of this tactic this
past February, criticizing the Trump campaign for daring to say that the
current administration puts illegal aliens above blacks—which they do, of
course. Said Jones: “Somebody raised the DREAMers, the young Latinos who
everyone loves, [Trump] puts them down. He says they’re not American…He pivots
directly to blacks. This guy is going to try to sow dissension not just in the
Republican ranks within America itself, he’s going to try to split the Obama
coalition.”
Yes, I do believe that Trump was trying
to split the Obama coalition but that’s okay because it richly deserves to be
split. Black people’s interests are not the same as Hispanics’ interests and on
the issue of illegal immigration blacks’ interests are in fact diametrically
opposed to what Hispanic advocacy groups demand. Our unsecured borders have
worked out great for dishonest employers but not for blacks who have found
themselves competing for entry-level jobs with people who will work for
less.
Trump was not, however, trying to drive
a wedge between blacks and Latinos but rather between blacks and illegal
aliens. There’s a difference. Perhaps it’s time for blacks to ask
themselves where their true interests lie. What exactly do they gain from
illegal immigration? Nothing, as far as I can see.
There are other reason why blacks should
not rejoice in the booming Hispanic population, many of whom came here
illegally. Look to Los Angeles for a good example, the city that hosted the
aforementioned Students of Color Conference. Certain neighborhoods in LA which
were once black enclaves have become predominantly Hispanic with serious
consequences for the black residents who remain there. The neighborhood of
Watts, which was the city’s black enclave for much of the 20th Century, was only one third black in
the 2010 census—and 65% Latino.
In an attempt to drive out blacks, gangs
of brown supremacists have targeted them with racist attacks. In 2013 a black man
was stopped by a gang of Hispanics who, according to the LA Times, “pulled
up and called him a ‘n***er,’ saying black people were barred from the
neighborhood.” They
then proceeded to pull a gun on him and beat him with pipes. But if you ask
blacks to get as upset about this as they do about police shootings that’s
“sowing dissension.” So be it.
Van Jones doesn’t like people messing
with the “Obama coalition” because his goal is to unite black and brown against
white. Am I guilty of wanting black and white to unite to against brown? No. I
want Americans of all colors to come together against illegal alien
invaders—not all of whom are Hispanic. This is our country. It belongs to a
multiracial group of people called Americans and we decide who may enter our
house.
The coalition of the oppressed is in
fact very fragile. Don’t hesitate to do everything in your power to aggravate
its inherent schisms. Their goal is to destroy Western civilization so don’t
feel bad about wanting to destroy their contrived sense of solidarity.
http://constitution.com/good-news-victimhood-coalition-may-devour-rest-us/
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