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Scott Alexander gives a great breakdown of Trump and how the portrayal of him as being "openly white supremacist" is probably (likely) wrong.
I stick to my thesis from October 2015. There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he's "the candidate of the KKK" and "the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement" is made up. It's a catastrophic distraction from the dozens of other undeniable problems with Trump that could have convinced voters to abandon him. That it came to dominate the election cycle should be considered a horrifying indictment of our political discourse, in the same way that it would be a horrifying indictment of our political discourse if the entire Republican campaign had been based around the theory that Hillary Clinton was a secret Satanist. Yes, calling Romney a racist was crying wolf. But you are still crying wolf.
I avoided pushing this point any more since last October because I didn't want to look like I was supporting Trump, or accidentally convince anyone else to support Trump. But since we're past the point where that matters any more, I want to present my case.
He further states: "I realize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy person and put me completely at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luckily, being a crazy person at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pretty good ticket to predictive accuracy lately, so whatever."
So do his claims hold up under scrutiny, is he manipulating the figures, or is he just a 'crazy person' ?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @05:49PM
> Islam is not a race. It is an ideology. Those are fair game to discriminate against if you find valid reason.
Islam is not an ideology, it is a culture. Or rather it is a broad group of cultures.
Being muslim means a million different things to a million different people.
Literally all it takes to be a muslim is to follow the five pillars - prayer, charity, fasting, pilgrimage and belief in god.
Everything beyond that is subject to interpretation and for plenty of people who consider themselves muslim you don't even have to do all five - tons of muslims will never take a pilgrimage. Tons do not pray on a daily basis, some are too stingy or to poor to afford charity. Plenty of muslims don't even consider other muslims to be muslim. Just ask any saudi salafist, they'll tell you the mullahs in iran are not muslim.
Kind of like how millions of evangelicals deny that catholics are christian. [born-again-christian.info]
So, if even muslims can't agree on who is really a muslim, its ignorant to say that islam is an ideology.
Furthermore, race is not genetic. Race is culture. That's why guys like Ben Franklin did not consider Italians, Germans or even Irish to be white. [gutenberg.org]
the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny; Asia chiefly tawny; America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians, and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who, with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.
So your reductive complaint that "islam is not a race" is at best meaningless pedantry, but really a confession that you think race is merely biology when the actual definition [oxforddictionaries.com] is far more broad than that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:09PM
Nope, we are just at the point where people are trying very hard to keep their prejudice palatable. Fear and prejudice is sneaky and such people aren't evil, just misguided. They feel like their reasoning is justified and don't consider that they are generalizing unfairly. I don't think TMB sees how close he is to it...
I've got a friend who went on and on about how Muslims are inherently violent etc, until I pointed out how Christians have bombed clinics and such. He had to think a bit on that one and pulled back a bit on his judgments. I doubt TMB is willing to adjust, he is too smart for his own good.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:28PM
Christianity, as practiced overall in the modern world, does not preach or even condone violence. Islam does. That is your difference. I am not afraid of Islam or those who follow it any more than I am afraid of lightning strikes. I simply recognize that there is no way to mesh mainstream Islam as it is practiced overall today with western values. Individual cases may vary but the generalization holds. Any attempt at integrating the two will lead to violence as is being witnessed all throughout Europe as we speak.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:51PM
It is already being done. You're so full of baseless presumptions.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:19PM
Fair argument. Incorrect but at least well thought out.
The only possible entry in your link to support your position is 1.2 and it is not in current, popular usage. Certainly not widely enough to be the root meaning of the extremely widely used "racism". Definition 1.1 is clearly the only definition of "race" as involved with the word "racism" [oxforddictionaries.com], unless you are looking to redefine that word.
No, it is simply a simplification of convenience. If you were to take every last interpretation of Islam, give it a name, and replace "Islam" with that name in my statement, it would still be correct. Religions and ideologies are not races as required for the term "racism".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @07:11PM
> The only possible entry in your link to support your position is 1.2 and it is not in current, popular usage.
I see you do not understand how dictionaries work. The definitions are ordered by the frequency of current usage. That's why the last definition in the list is the one labeled archaic. Thus the second on the list is the second most common usage.
Race as a synonym for culture is used all the time. For example, black music. [nmaam.org] Music isn't genetic. Maybe you'd like to argue that black is not a race?
And similarly islamic architecture [britannica.com]. Architecture can't have an ideology, but it is definitely cultural.
> Certainly not widely enough to be the root meaning of the extremely widely used "racism".
Now that we've established that culture is a commonly used meaning of race. Lets apply that to the definition of racism as you linked and see how well it fits:
Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own culture is superior
Well, surprise. That's exactly how Trump sees islam.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 19 2016, @07:40PM
I disagree but for argument's sake, let's go ahead with your definition and conclusion.
And in that he would be absolutely correct. By any objective standard you care to think up, western culture will come out superior to Islamic culture.
Or would you rather throw homosexuals to their deaths from rooftops, restrict women from going to school, driving, walking unescorted, or showing so much as an ankle in public, allow the raping of your wife, punish the women when they are raped, and call for the deaths of anyone not subscribing to western culture? Because that is precisely what Islamic culture would bring you.
It's a valid question. You need to answer it, to yourself at least, before you go promoting cultural equality.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @08:00PM
> I disagree but for argument's sake, let's go ahead with your definition and conclusion.
No lets not.
Switching to an argument about whether your racism is justified is just a capitulation because you can no longer defend your original statement.
That's all I cared about.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday November 19 2016, @08:13PM
Did you fail to notice who Trump appointed to lead the Justice department? Someone who argued in favor of locking up homosexuals.
Your point about people claiming to support Trump does not mean that Trump agrees with those people. However, that point becomes irrelevant when Trump appoints those same people to his cabinet. You can't say that the KKK supporting Trump is irrelevant when Trump appoints a white supremacist as his chief strategist.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @05:32AM
Look, I don't give a damn about your vaunted notions of culture! What I care about is individual people. By all means, hold individual persons accountable for their actions; you get no argument from me on that point. And I have little patience for someone who wants to be excused for their actions because "it's just a part of my culture". But to hold an individual accountable for the culture they were born into, as if they have complete control over everyone of their neighbours, is just plain stupid. I notice that this is not the first time you have been called out for being rather uncharitable (some might even say mean-spirited) in your views. The fact that you don't seem to learn from your past mistakes does not speak well of you. Frankly, I would expect better from the people who post comments here on SN. If you like, you may consider this my way of trying to positively influence those within my cultural sphere.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @08:00PM
Islam is not an ideology, it is a culture. Or rather it is a broad group of cultures.
Literally all it takes to be a muslim is to follow the five pillars - prayer, charity, fasting, pilgrimage and belief in god.
So Islam is not an idology but it entails following a set of doctrines and beliefs... You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
Being muslim means a million different things to a million different people.
Yes and they all agree they should follow the Quran. Which describes a set of practices that all good Muslims should follow.
So, if even muslims can't agree on who is really a muslim, its ignorant to say that islam is an ideology.
And all Nazis can't agree on who is really a Nazi, therefore it's ignorant to say Nazism is an ideology.
Everything beyond that is subject to interpretation and for plenty of people who consider themselves muslim you don't even have to do all five
Any doctrine with more than 10 followers has practitioners who half-ass it. That doesn't mean they stop being ideologies, it just means there are people who are bad at them.
Kind of like how millions of evangelicals deny that catholics are christian.
That would be a No True Scotsman which is a well-established logical error.
Furthermore, race is not genetic. Race is culture.
Right. Okay, who let the post-modernist loon in here?
That's why guys like Ben Franklin did not consider Italians, Germans or even Irish to be white.
Ben Franklin is not an anthropologist. His opinion on what consists of race is about as relevant as Ted Stevens's opinion on the nature of the Internet.
So your reductive complaint that "islam is not a race" is at best meaningless pedantry, but really a confession that you think race is merely biology when the actual definition is far more broad than that.
Ah, I see what the problem is. The actual definition depends on what all speakers of a given word agree upon. Most English speakers use only one definition for the word, which is the classification of people based on external traits as it defined in the old anthropological models of classifying humans. Furthermore, since people like you are trying to redefine race as cultural in order to abuse the power of branding people of racist, this creates the logical error where the vilification of racism is justified because people are unable to control their heritable genetic traits, but this would not apply to race(culture) since you can choose not to follow tenets of your own culture. Nice sophism through, I rate it 19/84.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @05:43AM
Most English speakers use only one definition for the word, which is the classification of people based on external traits as it defined in the old anthropological models of classifying humans.
That's some fancy ad populum fallacy. And your evidence for what "most english speakers" mean is what exactly?
Because essentially all geneticists say there is no biological basis for race. [scientificamerican.com]
For example, Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project: [nytimes.com] ''Race is a social concept, not a scientific one,''
Perhaps what you really mean is that most in the group of bigoted english speakers like yourself.
Do you really want to argue with the previously cited oxford english dictionary? [oxforddictionaries.com] Are you so confident that you think you know better than them what is common usage?
I guess there is no telling a bigot anything he doesn't want to hear.
Why not just own that r-word? Get it off your chest, out in the open.
You will feel so much freer to indulge your true self without the internal restraint of trying to conform to social norms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @07:47AM
That's some fancy ad populum fallacy.
No, this is literally how language is formed. It's not faulty logic because this is the actual mechanism of action of word formation. That would be like saying it's an ad populum to say that the person who got most votes won the election.
Incidentally, citing the dictionary is actually an argument from authority, because dictionaries are descriptive rather than prescriptive. A dictionary does not tell you how you should use words, it tells you how words are being used by people. Furthermore, ignoring the fact that the very same page also lists the definition of race you argue against is cherrypicking.
And your evidence for what "most english speakers" mean is what exactly?
None, this is just my opinion. If you really have to be a contrarian about it, we can agree to disagree.
Because essentially all geneticists say there is no biological basis for race.
I didn't say it is. It's not that unusual for people to use vague and inaccurate definitions, that doesn't mean the definition is wrong. A logically unsound concept can be accurately defined.
Perhaps what you really mean is that most in the group of bigoted english speakers like yourself.
No.
Do you really want to argue with the previously cited oxford english dictionary?
I'm not even sure how exactly one is supposed to argue with a definition. Suppose that OED defined "rock" as a "large blue mouse". How exactly would you argue against it?
Are you so confident that you think you know better than them what is common usage?
Being in the dictionary does not imply it's commonly used. Many words have rare, outdated or domain-specific interpretations. Take hacker for example, some tech nerds use a fairly benign meaning for it, but to most people outside the hacker subculture, it just means someone who illegally breaks into computer systems.
I guess there is no telling a bigot anything he doesn't want to hear.
That's a bit extreme to say about someone based on linguistic disagreements.
Why not just own that r-word? Get it off your chest, out in the open.
You will feel so much freer to indulge your true self without the internal restraint of trying to conform to social norms.
Raspberry!