I've been saying for a while now that #TZM should be an ally to groups like 3rd eave feminism, #BLM etc— Rich (@Rich_Penney) January 21, 2017
So for a while now I have been trying to pinpoint and understand what my issues with some of the current racial activism are. And more importantly how to apply what Fresco explained to me about why such activism is counter-productive in the long run because of the inevitable tendency to take it too far. To begin fighting for your "group" instead of the good of the whole human race.
Derek Jensen is an Anarcho-Primitivist and I remember listening to one of his talks where he pointed out that violence or aggressive behavior was "invisible" so long as it was going DOWN the perceived social scale. But that it was a huge upheaval when it goes UP the perceived social scale. Basically when the popular kids bully the unpopular kid nobody notices. Nothing is done. Even if they are watching it with their own eyes. And this same scenario plays out over and over and on a much grander scale. (Take United States Foreign Policy for example...)
One of the things that made me scratch my head over and over when trying to understand the stances of Black Lives Matter was the fact that they do not have any perception whatsoever of the source of the vast majority of the deaths of black people in the inner city. And it's not at the hands of cops. Not even close. But when "white" cops shoot "black" people it is an immediate uproar and they have to take to the streets to fight back. Sometimes using it as a reason to loot, riot, and attack random white people who had nothing to do with it. I remember a police officer speaking to protesters asking them why none of them were protesting the drug dealers who had recently shot a 7 year old girl during one of their turf wars. No marches for the little girl. Or for the other massive amounts of murder that goes on in those neighborhoods that statistically dwarfs the amount of people who are shot by police at all, never mind the even smaller number of people who get shot by police in unjustified shootings.
When you watch closely you find at the core there is a root of black supremacism in the center of a lot of the thinking that is being passed around. The more extreme types who openly call for genocide of all white people still make up a minority, but I notice every day that more and more activists start speaking about white people as an inferior race. The slow and steady radicalization reminds me of what we are told it was like when simple citizens of Germany were slowly manipulated to be ok with putting people on trains to be exterminated.
And I realized that for many of these people, the reason why it's "invisible" to them that black people are killing in black people at a horrific rate in their own communities is that these people now believe they are the superior race. It's acceptable to them that their race might be violent against other members of their race. It's only when WHITE people start shooting them that it becomes an issue.
In this video you see two black youths attacking a white man. The onlookers taking the video from inside a restaurant were silent and no doubt watching with interest as these two men slammed this older white man's head against the wall. It's only when the man pulls his gun that the screams of horror came. I have no doubt that if the young men had simply beaten the man unconscious there would of been silence or even cheers. Why do you think they were filming it in the first place? If the man had shot them I also have no doubt that some people would be looking to march and protest (and loot... and vandalize...) how two promising young men were gunned down by their oppressor.
It's a primitive instinct to be "tribal" and when we get involved in activism that tries to hold up one "tribe" this mentality takes over. It's not rational. And it's not just.
And to be clear, I am sure there was a time when if it was a bunch of white people observing the same thing happening to a black man we would of seen the same backwards reactions.
A ray of hope was in the comments of this video though. As several black people pointed out the hypocrisy of the onlookers. https://www.facebook.com/kcgrissett/posts/10156332992689422
