Thread by @scottsantens

You need to read this post about how @AndrewYang's campaign deradicalized someone that so many others just want to either write off or further radicalize. Not left, not right, forward, means bringing people back out of the depths of destructive hate.

reddit.com/r/YangForPresi…

I see a debate between Dems who believe white voters no longer matter and the focus should be on people of color, and the GOP who believe only white people matter. Meanwhile Yang is saying this goes deeper than color. There are Americans being driven into extremism by scarcity.

Instead of writing off those who voted for Trump as racist hate-mongering deplorable bigots, let's put a floor under them. Let's put resources into their hands. Let's end their daily survival stress so they can breathe freely, because existential anxiety is the enemy, not color.

Have you ever seen the documentary "Accidental Courtesy" about Daryl Davis, an African-American man who has made it his mission in life to change the hateful ideology of members of the KKK by engaging them in conversation? It shows what works to actually pull them out of hate.

That's what's probably bothered me most about the shit Yang has gotten for having some alt-right supporters. They like him not because he's like them. They like him because he is talking to them about their real problems instead of demonizing them, and that's how to deradicalize.

Deradicalization requires engagement. You can't hate people out of hating. It doesn't work that way. You have to find common ground and then you can start to bring them back. What doesn't work is drawing a line and saying "Your life doesn't matter to me. You're a racist monster."

Ten days before his assassination, MLK said, “I think it is absolutely necessary now to deal massively and militantly with the economic problem." In his final speech he spoke about going beyond civil rights to human rights. #HumanityFirst is a message of economic justice for all.

The way forward isn't further division where you're either a racist asshole or calling out racist assholes for being racist assholes. The way forward is to change the environment by ending poverty and THE FEAR OF IT. That's how to make fewer racists. End the fear that makes them.

Yang's campaign is already bringing people hope that things can actually be better. That hope is enough to shift people from a mode of scarcity to one of abundance. I've seen it myself over the years just talking about UBI. Its very potential to exist can change how people think.

As I've written about before and as a line from Dune states so well, "fear is the mind killer." Our entire society is suffering the consequences of an increasingly rare sense of any security in life. But we can change that with a universal floor for life.

medium.com/basic-income/w…

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