Thread by @KrisAtLarge

there's something I'd like to point out about @NateSilver538's recent behavior. it's important when trying to understand these awful people just how they *disguise* themselves. the excuses they utter, and in _what order_, matters a lot in understanding them.

(1/x)

nothing @NateSilver538 *ever says* in public ought to be taken at face value. he's a bigot; he tells whatever lies are necessary to protect that. but there's a _pattern_ to the lies. there's a kind of boom-and-bust pattern to bigoted behavior. I'll try to explain.

(2/x)

the general behavior of a bigot is compelled to *oscillate* between two poles. it's a bit like being addicted to a drug, or to gambling, or some other similarly addictive activity—for wallowing in bigotry is, for people like @MattWalshBlog and @mtaibbi, *addictive*.

(3/x)

swapping racist memes and wacko conspiracy theories about Jews is how people like @NateSilver538 and @mtaibbi and @elonmusk *makes themselves feel powerful*. well, they also take drugs and fuck the youngest possible partners, but the racism is key to their well-being.

(4/x)

honestly I've probably exhibited my own *oscillations* in this regard—I was raised in 'whıte' America, never mind that I have a splash of Chilean in me. I learned the same behavioral patterns. thanks to Western acculturation, racism is meant to *feel good* to the racist.

(5/x)

racism is how @NateSilver538 &c. feel powerful. his Sinophobic #COVID19 nonsense is a way for him to *feel powerful*: little Nate Silver, privileged and dull-witted sabermetrician, can feel big and important because he burbles about the Yellow Peril, the True Menace™.

(6/x)

it's the easiest and cheapest way to feel powerful I can imagine: pick some distant phantasmal enemy to "win" against. George Orwell's "1984" show how that plays out in a domestic way: Jewish stereotype "Emmanuel Goldstein" ends up being the conveniently invisible enemy.

(7/x)

that's the big appeal of antisemitism and other forms of xenophobia: Jews can be made to feel like exotic, faraway aliens, through the miracle of antisemitic stereotyping and conspiracy theories (cf. @HogwartsLegacy and the entire #JKRowling / #HarryPotter fandom.)

(8/x)

once you accept *one* form of that convenient scapegoating into your thinking, others rapidly follow: all forms of bigotry tend to multiply and coalesce, encompassing multiple targets. antisemitism merges into transmisogyny, which merges into queerphobia, and so forth.

(9/x)

anyway, @NateSilver538 and @mtaibbi and other bigots spend a lot of time refreshing these ideas in their own heads. they've got their sekrit private fan clubs and forums and lodge handshakes for these things; it's like a game to them, or like an elaborate semi-religion.

(10/x)

but that's one *pole* of the oscillation: the place of maximal bigotry, where @mtaibbi &c. can splash about in an atmosphere of maximal sentimentality and conviviality and "fun" exchanges of crude jokes and stories. this is their "civilization"; this is their Heaven.

(11/x)

their Hell is presenting themselves to the rest of the world, which to @mtaibbi, @NateSilver538, @elonmusk, &c. must come to seem quite *weird* and confusing and a source of noise and pain. the racist milieu is placid, leisurely, lazy, _stagnant_, not like the real world.

(12/x)

@mtaibbi &c. feel themselves at all times quite *put upon*, dealing with real people, outside their racist bubble. patiently, repeatedly, trying different words, Taibbi and @NateSilver538 the rest attempt to explain themselves, but it never seems to work, does it?

(13/x)

somehow the explanations only make things *worse* and the result is that @NateSilver538 &c. feel very sorry for themselves and longing for their placid racist watering-holes, where everyone's nice to them and everyone knows their name and everyone laughs at their jokes.

(14/x)

hence Taibbi and Silver and the rest of them swing back and forth between copying civilized human behavior, and openly resentful that they even have to bother. @NateSilver538 cares about millions dead from #COVID19 one day; two days later he cares about his hurt feelings.

(15/x)

there's nothing to suggest that @NateSilver538 or @mtaibbi or @MattWalshBlog or any other bigot has any solid moral principles of any sort. they say whatever seems like a good excuse at the time. they talk as though they've *practiced* their excuses well ahead of time.

(16/x)

why would they have morality? bigotry must seem like so much more SOLID a thing, to @mtracey &c., than reality.

~Chara of Pnictogen