We all know they are kinda racist. Deeply so in many cases.
But last time I was high, turned off the higher functioning parts of my brain I had a deep revelation about their views.
They think that minority XYZ suffers from worse outcomes because they are inferior.
Duh, you might say. They are bigoted, they are racist. But you aren't really thinking yet. They literally are unable to come to any other conclusion. It's not that they don't see the same world as we do, that they don't see the same data. Many of us try to convince them by explaining to them how certain biases lead to certain outcomes.
But the conservative brain is literally unable to do that. So go on a journey into the conservative mind with me. Turn off your higher thinking skills.
Imagine a world where your success truly boils down to how hard you apply yourself. Where the only thing that stands between you and success isn't luck, or the generational wealth of your parents. Just about the effort you put in. In this world the only difference between you, and the person next to you are the genes you inherited. You are able to get better grades in school? Must be your superior genes. You manage to have a better work ethic/be less prone to burnout? It must be your genes, because you believe everything else to be fair!
So if you notice group XYZ doing worse than the average, what is the only explaination left in a fair and equal world? It must be something genetic, because if it was sheef luck, it would average out. Everybody is treated fairly and is only judged by their merit. So if minority XYZ does worse it must be because there is something inherently wrong with them. And what encapsulates that better genetics?
Eugenics is not a bug in the liberal/conservative mind. It is a feature. It is an inevitable position if your assumptions are that the success of an individual person overwhelming rests on the qualities of that individual, of the work they put in.
I'm not making excuses for them, quite the opposite. I'm pointing out that they are not just believing terrible things, I'm pointing out that those terrible things are perfectly reasonable conclusion in their framework of understanding the world. Their base assumptions are so wrong that they are literally unable to come to reasonable conclusion.
Anyways. I needed to shut down my braincells with weed and booze to sink to that level and have that realisation. So roast me for it I guess.
The average conservative will deny accusations of racism precisely because they can't understand racism as structural. They view racism as entirely around certain performances, like wearing a Klan hood or saying slurs. Nothing else. That is if you can even convince them racism is a word that has a valid meaning.
They don't view it as anything beyond a personal animosity, but one that encompasses an entire person's existence. They have a black friend? Not racist. Unless they're a cartoon character screeching slurs all the time, how can it be racism?
Also, there are more cynical conservatives who know what the game is. The really rich ones I mean. They're racists insofar for their own practical class concerns. They know they've been born at a particular point in history that benefits from exploitation of most of the world, so they learn into it. They're probably high on their own supply too though, ideology is a fuck, but I really think they know what they're doing too. They've looked at their options, which are losing their class position in a more equal society, or maintaining their class position while also perpetrating genocide. They chose genocide.
I've pointed this same thing out many times. In the right context, it's an excellent rhetorical tool to tie up a conservative in knots. It won't work on a standard liberal because they don't think the world is fair, they just massively underestimate and misdiagnosis the source of unfairness.
I guess that insight isn't that profound after all. But it was like "Oh those people aren't stupid, evil, or incapable of seeing the world around them, they literally are unable to understand how the world works because their base assumptions about the world are so incredibly wrong." (Tho they still might be stupid, evil and incapable of seeing the world around them).
It was mostly about not being able to come to good conclusions given those assumptions, and in fact inevitably ending up at eugenics.
I don't think that holds up in real life interactions with any normal liberal. They are concerned about racism, poverty, sexism. Most of them are just normal people who understand the problems of society within the framework capitalist education and media gives them.
You don't need to read Marx to look at the world and say, "damn, this shit is fucked up".
fair and equal world
This is the key here. Some of them actually do believe it to be the case.
I'd put belief in hierarchies between that and eugenics personally, but same outcome.
I think hierarchies follow an ideology where some people are just superior to others. Obviously "superior" people should hold more powerful positions
Liberals are extremely ableist too. Anyone down on their luck, struggling with school, a little awkward at parties? Autistic. Doesn't matter what the circumstance is. They're on the spectrum/have some sort of undiagnosed "mental illness."
It's something I used to hear a lot in suburban circles. "That man seems a little off. I think he's on the spectrum. Tee hee"
I've heard multiple liberals admit that they "just don't like autistic people." Idk if they were trying to insult me personally or just being honest on account of I'm autistic.
I think you're touching on something, but you're not quite getting into how Scientism has also lead us here. The liberal/conservative ideology is highly concerned with Rationalism, and posits themselves as the only Science Based Politic. I know I know, Immortal Science etc, but its different definitions of Science. Think about how the scientific process is taught in schools:
It isn't a framework for analysis, its a tool for gleaning universal truths.
This is essential, because as Sociology and Statistics have become more accepted as sciences, it means simple statistical analysis becomes causation instead of just correlation. In the average liberal/conservative mind, for the most part, the scientist couldn't possible fail to operationalize a variable. Like, think about who shit talks the definition of Intellectual Quotients. It's all leftists. It's why the whole "despite making up 14% of the population" fascist copy pasta is such effect propaganda in the west. We accept Criminal as an Operational Variable for Bad Person, (even studies that don't say this often have it implicitly buried in there) and then observations such as "this race is more likely to in the criminal system" as a Universal Truth About That Race.
I mean really it has to do with the faith in systems in general. Like in the case above, it's also a given that the US prison system is just, or at least that their injustice is spread somewhat equally across demographics
racism provides the underclass that is necessary for the proper functioning of capitalism
it began with slaves, moved on to the industrial proletariat, now it's the entire third world.
in the modern day, aside from the moralist platitudes that you just outlined, racism also provides the basis for restriction on the movement of labor (they're taking our jobs!). this sustains regional labor arbitrage, which can then be exploited by the near limitless mobility of capital. two birds with one stone: creates material conditions under which labor can be better exploited, and gives the moral justification for the exploitation of said labor.
Yes that is why the ideas are propagated, but absolutely not how someone who holds racist/eugenicist ideas would conceptualize it
I think it was Matt who said liberalism is just trying to find the most seemingly scientific and objective way to decide who gets to be miserable.
I have this thought fairly often.
Liberals want to believe in the meritocracy, but reality shows that marginalized groups have shittier outcomes. Eventually, they must either confront the fact that their meritocratic ideals are a lie or they must become racist, sexist, classist, transphobic, etc. In my experience, they usually end up splitting the middle, harboring casual -ist views and deciding, "the system isn't perfect but it's fair on average". But there's always a risk of going down that reactionary path, the one where the system didn't fail, it can only be failed, and in these cases it's by the marginalized and it's their own fault and [fascist noises].
