Thread by @Noahpinion

To white supremacists, getting new neighbors = "extinction".

They seem to see the world as a zero-sum, to-the-death competition between racial groups.

nytimes.com/2018/06/24/opi…

I know I'm not supposed to make this analogy (sorry, civility police!), but the idea of the world as a zero-sum, to-the-death competition between racial groups seems like...something we've seen before.

theatlantic.com/international/…

The problem with this kind of thinking should be obvious.

If you think diversity is "genocide", then you might start to see actual genocide - the real, killing-people kind - as some kind of proportionate response.

Of course, in addition to the (silly) notion that diversity is "genocide", there's the fear that the new neighbors will actually, physically kill you.

This kind of fear is not new:

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This relentless focus on apocalyptic, genocidal fantasies has utterly captured the Trump movement, the alt-right, etc.

When I talk about immigration issues, I get bombarded with it constantly. "Replacement" is the favorite word.

I respond: "The immigrants don't want to kill you. They want to marry you and have kids with you."

And the data, of course, strongly bear that out.
pewsocialtrends.org/2017/05/18/int…

But for someone who thinks that interracial marriage is tantamount to genocide, that is cold comfort. They see the white race - or their particular conception of the white race - as a unit, a collective. Cultural mixing and intermarriage threaten that unit.

I don't know how to soothe the fears of people who think that getting Laotian neighbors is genocide.

Maybe there is no way to soothe them, and we just have to ignore them and outvote them?

Is there a rhetorical antidote to the absurd "white genocide" worldview?

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