Will Stancil Profile picture
Apr 29, 2022 16 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Fine, here’s what I think is going on:

White men have long been a minority in US society (currently 29%), but until very recently, they controlled all the ladders of ascent into cultural, political, media, or economic relevance.
That doesn’t mean that women and people of color weren’t visible in politics or culture. But it means the people who rose up the ladder into a position of influence generally had political beliefs that white men found tolerable, if not outright appealing.
You’re a woman or especially a minority, and you want to be a Times columnist, a judge, a congressional leader of note, a TV anchor?

If your ideas conform with the ideas of the white men who run these institutions, you can rise, rise, rise. If they don’t you likely won’t.
Now it’s important to switch perspectives and imagine what this system looked liked to white men themselves: consensus.

They could look out their window and see that almost everyone notable agreed with them on really divisive cultural issues!
Occasionally someone would break into the cozy unanimity with ideas that ran against the consensus, like a Jesse Jackson running for president. But even when this happened, all the major cultural and political power centers would reiterate that this was radical fringe politics.
Today… this system mostly remains in place, actually! Most political, cultural, and economic institutions are still controlled by white men! Many nonwhite, nonmale people who advance in these institutions do so by being agreeable to white male gatekeepers! (No names, sorry.)
But cracks are starting to emerge. There are people appearing in politics and culture who do not appear to have really been let in by white male gatekeepers - in fact, who express ideas that the vast, vast majority of white male gatekeepers find incorrect or even annoying.
What are these ideas? It varies but generally they are, naturally, ideas that challenge the power structure itself, point out the ways in which white people and men hold disproportionate power, and point out the way that power is exercised, often unfairly.
Why are cracks emerging now? Partly it’s a cultural evolution. Partly it’s technological (Twitter plays a big role here). But I think most of it is just demographic. America’s white majority is rapidly becoming a white plurality. Total societal control just isn’t sustainable.
And as this has happened, the world as experienced by white men (who, let’s remember, do still control the vast majority of political, cultural, and economic institutions) has also changed: where they once saw consensus, now there’s conflict.
For many white men, including many who hold vast power and influence, it feels like a bunch of malcontents - espousing ideas everyone previously agreed were radical, no less! - have forced their way past the gatekeepers, and are now making everything complicated and unpleasant.
The response of white men has varied. Some have argued that we need to restore the consensus of earlier years, unaware it was illusory and achieved partly by exclusion. Some have desperately kept trying to gatekeep.

And a whole lot of them have just gotten really, really angry.
And that’s where we are now: a small but growing number of people with perspectives that are not agreeable to white male gatekeepers pushing into the public eye, and white men seeing it as radicals smashing a consensus they were told was shared by everyone worth listening to.
And I think it's not a coincidence that the figures and groups that attract the most obsessive ire, who are blamed for causing all the trouble, are also the figures and groups that seem to have most dramatically circumvented the gatekeepers: AOC. Nikole Hannah-Jones. BLM.
One last thing I'll say: in my experience, white men are skeptical of the idea of white male gatekeeping (which makes sense, because it's not like we all got together and decided to do it).
But women and people of color are often acutely aware that their ability to exist in elite circles depends on not challenging certain ideas, and not rubbing powerful people the wrong way. Where do those ideas come from? What do most of those powerful people have in common?

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Will Stancil

Will Stancil Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @whstancil

Feb 20
The craziest thing that is actually true is that a relatively small group of very literal Nazis has completely seized control of the US government
They have accomplished by building a tight-knit community in the dark corners of the internet, then establishing a lot of influence over the inner circle of MAGA, especially Musk and Vance
Musk empowered them massively by taking over Twitter and then removing almost all restrictions on them, while promoting many of their most notable figures. Musk seems extremely taken with them personally and spends a lot of time trying to impress them
Read 12 tweets
Feb 18
"I wonder what this relatively small account that Elon Musk follows is?"

"Oh I see, it just posts porn and Nazism only." Image
Image
Image
Image
It's not subtle. This account tweets and retweets constantly about things like "not wanting to hear retarded blacks and their retarded opinions," the need to "make America blonde again," how America should be a "white nation," and celebrates Trump as the second coming of Hitler. Image
Image
Image
Image
This account is followed by the most powerful man in America, who is running the government, who spends all of his time on Twitter, who gave a Nazi salute at the inauguration and who has espoused anti-Jewish replacement theory, whose underlings keep getting outed as Nazis.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 9
People are delusional about what happens if Musk and Trump ignore the law, the Constitution, and court orders. Everyone is acting like this is a standoff over USAID and a few other programs, and then we'll go back to politics as normal.
But THERE CAN BE NO POLITICS AS NORMAL IF THERE IS NO LAW. Musk can cut anything. He can eliminate any part of the government. He can punish anyone. Who could stop him? Congress will be pointless theater. Why do laws matter if they can be ignored?
Your vote won't matter. You can elect someone to Congress, but he or she will be powerless. Trump can simply ignore what they say.

Your rights won't matter. The courts can say they've been violated, but the president can ignore them.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 8
You need to take a step back, take stock of what's happening.
Trump took office and abruptly gave the richest guy on earth free rein to unmake the US government without any White House oversight or coordination. That guy has been publicly radicalized into an increasingly open white supremacist and conspiracy theorist.
Trump's plan here was concealed during his campaign and is historically unprecedented. No president has ever handed the US government over to his richest supporter before. It is also extremely far removed from the constitutional system: there's no role for someone like Musk.
Read 16 tweets
Feb 7
DOGE is, in the truest sense, a rogue agency. The White House has admitted it doesn't really know what DOGE is doing, it's commandeering critical systems, it's resourced by an independent oligarch, it's tearing chunks out of the government. It's a rogue actor in US government
DOGE is serving an incoherent agenda all its own. That agenda is a mix of its owner's business interests, his far-right conspiratorial politics, his need to impress his horde of Twitter Nazis, and his arrogant billionaire cluelessness about how anything works.
DOGE is not really part of the Trump administration and even less part of the US government. It's an independent entity, a manifestation of Musk's own wealth and his subordination of the GOP elite, given a slim veneer of legitimacy by a checked-out and incompetent president.
Read 5 tweets
Feb 5
Please note: this description of DOGE is a description of an outside agent attacking the US. It more closely resembles how you’d describe a virus attacking an immune system, or an army attacking a country, than intra-governmental push and pull.

Musk is an invader.
Musk has leveraged his connection to Trump, Trump’s constitutional cluelessness and neglect, and his own endless wealth to prop up a group that is operating essentially independently of US law. That group is now conducting a blitzkrieg assault against the US government.
Musk is attempting to collapse huge chunks of the US government from this independent power center, for some combination of reasons including business interests, an arrogant belief he knows better than everyone else, and to entertain the chorus of Nazi trolls he cultivates.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(