The Right has been rabidly pushing this lie that capitalism isn't racist, that America isn't prejudiced, and that anyone talking about history or politics otherwise is engaged in an attack.
What they're doing is desperately attempting to protect themselves and their power.
2/
It's no coincidence that this has been happening more and more lately. Incidents like Rick Santorum's disgusting remarks, saying that America was made from "nothing" and that natives had no culture or influence are intentional defenses of white supremacy and its mythologies.
3/
The truth is that the "America" found by explorers and colonists was already brimming with natives who had complex cultures and political systems.
They were divided into nations and had intricate societies largely based on communal care and support.
4/
Santorum's remarks are as ignorant as they come. Native societies were so advanced, in fact, that the Founders were inspired by their governments and relationships in crafting the Constitution.
Our system of government is HEAVILY influenced by them.
5/
But the mythology necessary to continue white supremacy demands that we view indigenous people and people of color as inferior, their societies and ways as barbaric.
It must be a "mission," from God and progress, that white people came along and attacked and exploited them.
6/
White supremacy was inextricably linked to the Christian faith, the mythology used to launder oppression, violence, and exploitation through a "benevolent" need to "civilize" people of color and bring them into the flock.
It was a lie. A bloody lie.
7/
The partnership between nations seeking riches/resources and the Christian Church meant whites took a "paternal" role wherein they could exploit the native people, take their riches and land, all while claiming what they were doing was charity and God's will.
8/
As whites took resources and land, enslaved people, forced their labor, and attempted to systematically indoctrinate them and destroy their cultures, the "reality" of the world shifted.
The accumulation of resources taking place was seen as progress and moral.
9/
The idea of white supremacy is based on these lies, these mythologies, and has given credence to abhorrent actions like slavery, genocide, and theft on a scale never seen before.
It was about repositioning abusive, violent white people as a moral force working for good.
10/
The idea that capitalism is somehow removed from this or cures this is not only absurd, it's dangerous.
It hides the fact that white supremacy used slavery, colonization, and violence as a means of starting the process of capitalism that has continued to roll on.
1/
Now, the Right wants you to believe the only racism imaginable is when people pick up a Confederate or Nazi flag. When people spew racial slurs.
This has been part of a larger project to hide racism and prejudice and continue its work in the shadows.
12/
This process was undertaken by Ronald Reagan and the forces of hypercapitalism, which adopted the idea of "colorblindness" to their prejudiced projects.
In this new, twisted reality, people could pretend to hate racism while continually trafficking in it and benefiting.
13/
One of the main perpetrators of this idea was Lee Atwater, a GOP strategist who even admitted that the Right had moved from using racial slurs to hiding their racism behind economic and cultural appeals.
It was an intentional burying of the filth while maintaining it.
14/
What happened over time was that racists like Donald Trump began claiming they weren't prejudiced at all, that white supremacist attitudes and ideas were a matter of being a "realist."
They were living in the alternate reality created to intentionally hide racism.
15/
We're currently living in that twisted funhouse, where the Right is angrily and violently rejecting ACTUAL HISTORY in favor of their created alternate reality that denies racism while continuing to profit and benefit from it.
This is MAGA in a nutshell.
16/
Meanwhile, the partnership between white supremacy, capitalism, and Christianity continues as this group worships wealth, power, and sees their exploitation, violence, and cruelty as being ordained by God and thus necessary.
17/
The Right and those benefiting from the exploitation, namely the wealthy and powerful, will continue to push this mythology of benevolent white supremacy and altered history, because it is their main weapon and defense.
They will defend it with violence. They always have.
18/18
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
We’re in the middle of a full blown crisis and being forced to have conversations about power and abuse and aging and trauma and the past and the future that we were never taught to have.
In fact, capitalism actively incentivizes not having those conversations.
This isn’t just a political crisis. It’s a mental health crisis. The issues we have with ourselves and our families are scaled to the society level, and capitalism and history in general has burdened us with so much trauma that it keeps us from recognizing what’s happening.
For things to get to the point they’re at it was necessary to live in abusive environments until we got to the point where communicating about what’s happening in our lives and society at large was nearly impossible.
Just a reminder that every single time the Center will warn about the dangers of the Right and the Left and then immediately form coalitions with the Right because their differences are aesthetic and rhetorical, not material. The shared, main principle is service of capital.
This is what keeps getting misunderstood in America.
The Center is fine with liberal democracy as long as it serves their purposes. But when things get dicey, they will soft-wash authoritarianism until they full embrace it.
That's what's happening now.
Everyone gets so confused when the leaders they support pass Right Wing legislation or criticize causes or ideas they support, but the truth is that the Center pays rhetorical lipservice to things until the rubber meets the road. Then, it rushes to the Right.
Alito’s extremism and Thomas’ corruption expose a larger threat: a long term plan by the wealthy to capture the Court and dismantle our rights and protections in order to cement control has come to fruition.
They aren’t outliers. They are perfect representations.
People shouldn’t trust the Court. Since its founding it’s worked as a protector and tool of the wealthy. What progress we have had has been the aberration.
The time to push back and demand reform that serves democracy is here and it is fleeting.
The wealthy have always attacked information and tried to control education and access to information about what they have done, but this new era gives them incredible tools to complete what they have always tried to do: control reality itself.
Right now, we are losing this war.
People are familiar with Steve Bannon's "flood the zone with shit" strategy, but the wealthy have been attacking information for forever.
In America we have been inundated with attacks on empirical reality for all of our lives. This has been a concentrated effort.
Trump’s conviction should be the end of his political career.
The Right rallying violently around him should be a moment for some to realize we’re in a severe crisis and leave behind the comforting lies they’ve been sold.
For years people have been making so much money and gaining influence assuring followers the system would solve the Trump problem. That he would be held accountable and the spell would break.
These are false prophecies. The date of the apocalypse came and went. We’re still here.
The truth is that Trump is a symptom of a larger disease. We’re facing a full-blown authoritarian tilt with complicated factors.
It’s cathartic to see these convictions, but focusing on the joy hides a deeper truth that we must face if we’re going to survive.
Persecution is essential to the Right’s worldview.
They can become wealthy and influential for no reason whatsoever, get treated seriously despite never earning a shred of it, and still it’s never enough to fill the emptiness that defines them.
The Right is defined by undiagnosed and repressed trauma, a self-hatred that has to be projected onto the rest of the world.
There’s not enough money or fame or power to fix it and any measure of it just feeds their self-hate, making them more and more miserable.
We should be grateful to Musk and Trump and all the people in their orbits. They tutor us everyday in the true nature of wealth and power and what fuels the need to hurt others.
It’s an ideology that follows self-hate masked by narcissistic persecution complexes.