If you take aggressive right wingers at face value, they're all about autonomy, self-reliance and individual responsibility. Suggest measures to reduce inequality, or positive discrimination to level up the playing field for disadvantaged minorities and they're outraged.
"People should stand on their own two feet", they cry. Policies to mitigate inequality and discrimination are just handouts to scroungers, they encourage a "dependency culture." Recipients are "welfare queens" (in the USA) or lowly vassals of the corrupt "Nanny state"* (in the Mary Poppins-loving UK).
In short, you, and you alone, are responsible for how your life turns out. Quit making excuses about where you came from. It's where you're going that counts.
Which is superficially attractive. Nobody likes a moaner, everybody admires people who make it against the odds. But I'm beginning to think that some of the most vocal of the rugged individualists don't really believe in the uncompromising message of personal responsibility that they preach.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you a recent outburst from right-wing tough guy, Stefan Molyneux:
"People should stand on their own two feet", they cry. Policies to mitigate inequality and discrimination are just handouts to scroungers, they encourage a "dependency culture." Recipients are "welfare queens" (in the USA) or lowly vassals of the corrupt "Nanny state"* (in the Mary Poppins-loving UK).
In short, you, and you alone, are responsible for how your life turns out. Quit making excuses about where you came from. It's where you're going that counts.
Which is superficially attractive. Nobody likes a moaner, everybody admires people who make it against the odds. But I'm beginning to think that some of the most vocal of the rugged individualists don't really believe in the uncompromising message of personal responsibility that they preach.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you a recent outburst from right-wing tough guy, Stefan Molyneux:
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| "White privilege” was 50,000 shivering winters while others in endless summers danced and sang and had easy eats year-round. East Asians had it even worse. Siberia. Snow tigers. You fantasize about “privilege.” No. It was suffering. So pipe down. Our ancestors earned it." |
O-kaay.
On one hand we're supposed to ignore a well-documented history of racism, systematic oppression, slavery and discrimination going back solidly for at least four centuries, which still obviously affects the life chances of people living today. The US Civil Rights movement and "No dogs, no blacks, no Irish" signs in rented rooms are lived history for baby boomers on both sides of the Atlantic. Black Lives Matter and the Windrush scandal are current. All this deep-rooted disadvantage, according to people like Molyneux, would just go away if poor non-white folk just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. We live in a meritocracy where disadvantaged groups are personally responsible for the continuance of their own misfortune.
But also, according to Molyneux, pale-skinned folk deserve their breaks, not because of what they've done. Not because of what their parents did, or their parents, or even their great, great, great, great grandparents. No, If you're white, you're born with bragging rights because you're distantly related to somebody who lived somewhere cold in the stone age. Extra credit for that less than 5% of neanderthal DNA you might be carrying. Award yourself a medal, why don't you?
The mask really slipped there, didn't it, Stefan? It's not really about taking personal responsibility for what you, as an individual, do in the here and now at all. It's about spreading a message of inherited, ineradicable superiority carried down through bloodlines over tens of thousands of years. It's racism, pure and simple.
So pipe down about personal responsibility. That's not what you really believe in at all.
*I've said it before and I'll say it again - it really is weird how the most vocal opponents of the Nanny State are people who literally have nannies.
On one hand we're supposed to ignore a well-documented history of racism, systematic oppression, slavery and discrimination going back solidly for at least four centuries, which still obviously affects the life chances of people living today. The US Civil Rights movement and "No dogs, no blacks, no Irish" signs in rented rooms are lived history for baby boomers on both sides of the Atlantic. Black Lives Matter and the Windrush scandal are current. All this deep-rooted disadvantage, according to people like Molyneux, would just go away if poor non-white folk just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. We live in a meritocracy where disadvantaged groups are personally responsible for the continuance of their own misfortune.
But also, according to Molyneux, pale-skinned folk deserve their breaks, not because of what they've done. Not because of what their parents did, or their parents, or even their great, great, great, great grandparents. No, If you're white, you're born with bragging rights because you're distantly related to somebody who lived somewhere cold in the stone age. Extra credit for that less than 5% of neanderthal DNA you might be carrying. Award yourself a medal, why don't you?
The mask really slipped there, didn't it, Stefan? It's not really about taking personal responsibility for what you, as an individual, do in the here and now at all. It's about spreading a message of inherited, ineradicable superiority carried down through bloodlines over tens of thousands of years. It's racism, pure and simple.
So pipe down about personal responsibility. That's not what you really believe in at all.
*I've said it before and I'll say it again - it really is weird how the most vocal opponents of the Nanny State are people who literally have nannies.
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