Non-partisan Toxicity: The Poisoning of Progressive Groups and Ideas in Social Media
As backwards as it would seem to bring up 9/11 at the start of any appeal to reason, I feel it would be remiss of me not to think almost 15 years back to another time, not unlike today, when racial and social tensions were running incredibly high. The only extant platforms that loosely resembled social media were chat rooms and message boards, and I remember that even liberal websites were awash not only with racism, but calls for war and death. To be honest, I remember feeling the very same thing; and while I rarely vocalized any of that rhetoric, I would feel a sort of emotional high when I read a post that scored a sick burn against Islam or Muslims or basically anyone living in the Middle East, regardless of how vitriolic the language was (to be fair, I wasn’t even out of grade school). And while I certainly don’t feel that way today about anyone or anything, I remember how easy it was to get swept up in the frenzy about it. I remember the constant calls to level the entire region, similar to what Ted Cruz has repeatedly suggested over the course of this election cycle; I remember the rampant resentment and distrust that swept through the country, and ended up affecting anyone that vaguely resembled the now-classic American stereotype of a “terrorist,” whether by virtue of skin color, accent or garb; I remember the casual nature with which the term “sand nigger” (and other assorted profanities) gently eased its way into vast portions of the conversation about anything related to the attacks, or the resulting war.
And, frankly, the same thing is happening again right now. Only this time, there wasn’t any particular act of war or terrorism, as far as I can tell, to make that same feeling of mass resentment and hatred come back in full force. This may come as a surprise, but I’m not talking about prejudice against the same group of people as what existed post-9/11 (which I will confirm, lest I be judged prematurely, is very real, ongoing, and dangerous, and I’m sure there’s already 10 million articles on it). And to explain what I mean, we need to consider certain aspects of the social aftermath of the September 11th attacks and briefly discuss the history of coverage of social movements in the United States.
For the first couple of months after 9/11, and incrementally less over the next several years, there were tons of news segments about Muslims (American or not) or other people from the Middle East doing Good Things. Anger at anyone fitting the vague, general description of a “terrorist” was at such an all-time high that news networks often decided the vast majority of the U.S. population had to be treated like children: they had to herd everyone to the TV to watch a segment and say, “See? This man is brown, and he has a long beard, and he follows a different religion. But he’s just like you and me! Maybe it’s not what’s on the outside, but the inside, that really counts.” And it seems they were right on both counts: Not only, unsurprisingly, are all people who fall anywhere into any category/categories of the Venn diagram that constitutes the “stereotypical terrorist” not evil, or bad, or dangerous; in addition to that, the American people regularly — to this day — seem to need reminders that, yes, people that are different from you can still be good people, even if you disagree about some things, or have interests in different areas. Politically and historically speaking, most people would probably agree that those reminders were always designed with the most “conservative” or “republican” of us in mind, and that it was common sense to most of the center and left-leaning population that “different” is, demonstrably, not the same as “bad.”
But almost 15 years later, progressive circles aren’t feeling pressure against “common sense” ideas from the right: They’re feeling pressure from a directional axis that many people forget to account for; one that can intersect any political or social circle, no matter how far to the left or right. Whether you call it “puritanical,” or “authoritarian,” or “regressive,” or anything else, this overarching methodology is now present and so pervasive in left-leaning groups that it distorts their message, and the very definitions of some of the most important, long-standing progressive ideologies in the United States are being fought for as a result.
And, thanks to these very same people, white men are the newest bogeyman — in a group that prides themselves on not needing one to make their points or push their goals — amongst progressives in the United States.
(Let me be clear: this is NOT the point of this writing, and I am not suggesting that white men are in any real danger from anyone or anything, or that the severity of the situation is anywhere near what American Muslims had faced in the past or now. It is simply the vector I felt most effective to illustrate my main point.)
That isn’t to say that there haven’t been accusations — justified or not — hurled at white men or white people in the past; the important distinction is that there’s a growing group in progressive circles that thinks all white men (or white people, or all men, etc.) are the cause of virtually every problem in the United States. Does that sound like a familiar argument?
“I can’t get hired because of ______.”
“______ are killing/going to kill us/tear our country apart!”
“I don’t trust ______.”
“______ don’t respect my way of life.”
“It’s either the ______ or us!”
“______ are going to take over our neighborhoods!”
There’s several more examples than the ones listed above, but it seems likely that most people reading this will have heard some version of at least one of these, most likely directed at, say, Mexicans or Muslims. And just like after 9/11, these groups have had to explain that they’re not all rapists and murderers, they’re not taking anyone’s jobs, they’re not dangerous, they’re not out to hurt anyone, and they don’t want to take over society. And, if they were lucky, news networks backed them up, and made those little segments showing that yes, they’re actually human beings. And while there are always pockets of dissent or apprehension, the general national consensus when these types of issues are raised (~65–70% of Americans do not support banning all Muslims from entering the US, for example, based on the averages of several national polls, and ~5–10% are unsure; ~70–75% believe illegal Mexican immigrants should be given a path to citizenship) is that we don’t think it’s right to single an entire group of people out based on any number of perceived traits in reaction to incredibly rare occurrences. In other words, across the entire left-right political spectrum, most people agree, and realize, that there is much more nuance to the broad range of issues that affect millions of Americans.
But there is a rapidly growing number of people, that are virtually never quantified in a way that separates them from their partisan leanings, who don’t care for that nuance. Conservatives with authoritarian/puritanical leanings have long had outlets and outreach available for such feelings: Conservative radio/news, white supremacy groups, and sects of several religions — especially fundamentalist Christians — have generations of experience being both the meeting places, and mouthpieces, for those people. Whether by historical association between conservatism and puritanism, or by push-back from the political left to eschew the stances of the political right, it would seem there has never been a meeting place for puritanical liberals to build in number and influence, and project their voice.
Enter the convenient structure of social media.
The concepts of racism, sexism, wealth inequality, xenophobia, and war, have been around for hundreds (or thousands, depending on which/where) of years. They have all been discussed openly since the founding of the United States; and while some of them have been less popular, and some issues have been given less exposure than they deserve, none of them were secrets, and positions on all of these subjects evolved at their own pace. Much of this progress was not hidden away: Feminist, civil rights, and anti-war protests were widely covered by the news, and the literature for these movements was widely available (and, importantly, still is). Each respective issue would have a new breakthrough of its own every now and then, unrelated to other issues in almost every way other than their respective pushes towards equality. And while the leaders of those movements were sometimes outspoken, and sometimes angry, they were almost universally respectful towards every human, including the people that they disagreed with.
What an incredible coincidence it must be, then, that a large group has suddenly sprung up since the advent of social media — across several issues simultaneously! — to suggest that all white men are sexist, all white men are racist, all white men are the cause for all war that has ever existed, and that all white men are responsible for any numerical disparity that suggests any sort of financial or economic inequality! And what an incredible coincidence that the people and media that perpetuate these ideas are — just like their conservative counterparts — vitriolic, condescending, adamant in rejecting objective reasoning, and not at all interested in having any sort of dialogue with anyone who shows the slightest hint of dissent!
America has long been a nation of sound bites: It is undeniable that millions of people can paraphrase famous quotes from a multitude of figures, but know virtually nothing else about them or what they stood for. If television was the beginning of the end for American attention spans, YouTube ran with the visual end of that idea and shrunk our attention spans even more; it seems we can go no further in shortening them than Vine. Similarly, we’ve gone from telephones to chat rooms, which required a real ability to at least keep up with a conversation in real-time, to Facebook, which allows one to post and reply whenever they want, to Twitter, which prevents anyone from anything more than the most succinct thoughts with its 140 character limit. The same basic principle behind sound bites that started on radios and spread to newspaper headlines has been all but perfected in the form of social media. And as the amount of content shrunk and compressed over the years, and the method of distribution of said content changed, companies and corporations changed the way they report and share that content. Millions of Americans don’t read or watch or listen for facts or information; they do those things for instant emotional gratification. Why take the extra time to learn, after all, when it takes so much less to feel (and feeling feels better anyway)? Why take the time to learn to sing or get active in politics when you can watch The Voice or browse Buzzfeed?
“I can’t get hired because of ______.”
“______ are killing/going to kill us/tear our country apart!”
“I don’t trust ______.”
“______ don’t respect my way of life.”
“It’s either the ______ or us!”
“______ are going to take over our neighborhoods!”
Take these examples from earlier and plug “white men” into each of them. Hell, plug it in where appropriate in the first paragraph of this writing. Yes, some parts still seem a little bit silly, even if you suspect some of them are true to a certain extent (no single group, after all, is ever innocent of everything). But the fact that these extremes have any consistent presence in social media whatsoever points to the exact same problems that the response to 9/11 did: the coalescence of a deep resentment — or hatred — for an entire group of people based on a small amount of information, a minority of people from that group, or a particular incident. A resentment that actively rejects reason, or explanation, or pluralism, or individuality; a resentment that, like the Muslim immigrant forced to defend his or herself from accusations of being a rapist because somewhere else, another Muslim raped someone, assumes a poor white family in the rural U.S. is comprised entirely of complicit racists solely by virtue of their skin color. It’s a social force that demands its followers to say, “If you don’t completely agree with me, then you’re the thing I’m fighting against!”
And this puritan/authoritarian mentality is a perfect match for social media in a “sound bite” country: In order to explain a sound bite, you need context. In order to contest an accusation, you need to present information. In both of these cases, it is the burden of the subject (the person in the sound bite, or the accused person) to take up more of the observing party’s time. And that’s no good, because, again — Why take time to learn when you can feel? It’s that same demand for instant gratification that fuels the creation and proliferation of tl;dr’s, or cutting off even the tiniest delays in YouTube video through audio editing, or sharing someone’s edgy tumblr post versus taking the time to write your own thoughts.
Therein lies the most dangerous aspect of the encroachment of puritanical ideas into progressive social media circles: the indistinguishable overlap between those simply seeking instant gratification (i.e. most internet users), and those who base their social ideologies on the broad philosophical strokes of belief and adherence (versus, say, reason and observation). And on a platform where importance is measured in likes, views, shares and comments, all it takes is a video with 4 million views where the top comment is “I’m just here to watch all the white male tears” to start an absolute firestorm of stupidity, even if 90% of the people watching don’t actually feel that way (or if the person who made that joke only made it as a harmless joke). They are, in essence, acting as the agent provocateurs that succeed so often in deception and obfuscation in real world movements.
And that stupidity echoes. And echoes. And echoes.
(Fun pretend example: A Buzzfeed video posted to Facebook cites the oft-quoted wage percentage between men and women in an intentionally-condescending way; someone politely points out that the numbers are misleading because the study didn’t account for x and y, and that someone is immediately labeled a sexist by thousands of people; the video gets to the front page on reddit; the comment war there mirrors Facebook, and spreads to other subreddits, which disagree with the video; the comments from those subreddits get linked to other subreddits who support the original video; a Salon article gets written about the backlash on the critical subreddits, which cites the absolute meanest and inaccurate comments from the critical subreddits, and then suggests that those cherry-picked comments must represent everyone on that subreddit; a new Buzzfeed video cites the Salon article as evidence for its new point; when people criticize the new video, they link to the Salon article as “evidence” in support of the new video. And all the while as a result, Return of Kings and Breitbart are gaining massive amounts of followers from the frustrated people who gave up trying to find a middle ground. They put out articles insulting progressives — painting them all with a broad brush in the way that the most toxic “progressives” painted everyone else — and the cycle begins anew.)
We’ve already seen this exact same effect in politics; candidates end up going in circles — giving sound bites about their old sound bites! — in a way that allows them to skirt covering any actual issues they were supposed to address. So, too, does social media work in this way: Because it is easier to feel (which any self-respecting multi-billion dollar corporation knows, and knows how to profit from) than to learn, the majority of the for-profit content we see with regards to progressive issues is not about equality; it is about eliciting emotion — because emotion equals clicks and views, and those equals money — at the expense of a group that many now believe, through clever reinforcement of the worst parts of “progressiveness,” is incapable of being underprivileged in any way. And anyone who falls for this narrative is immediately rewarded with a bevy of new content on a regular schedule designed to further that divide, and they’re reassured emotionally every time there’s more comments belittling anyone outside of their newfound echo chamber.
And perhaps as a result, because there’s no highly-visible group of people who want to take the time to have a discussion about any of this (and even fewer companies willing to produce activism-based content that caters to the unfortunate thinkers of the world), some of these newly-vilified white men, who once considered themselves to be progressives, or liberals, see the constant rejection from these groups that have gently ushered their friends away from them and into the collective regressive fold; and they wander lost in frustration towards the open arms of a website or a forum or a group that quickly pull them in the opposite direction; to a group of people that offers the same toxic, hateful comfort and reassurance that everyone else is at fault.
Media companies exist to make money. They don’t exist to make friends. They don’t exist to create fair formats, equal representation, or civil discussion. They thrive and flourish on the lack of a middle ground, and they are terrified of having everyone come to a consensus that the content they are delivering is misleading (see: the bipartisan fallout CNN has received, for example, over its coverage of the 2016 presidential race thus far). Facts — and, just as importantly, the ability for people to accept them as such — are anathema to a conglomerate that profits on people never evolving past the sticks and stones of social tribalism. Sometimes information supports your stance, and sometimes it doesn’t. If someone disagrees with a part of something you stand for, that, in and of itself, is not an attack. Progressive platforms are, ideally, made with facts; if something a platform has claimed turns out not to be true, it is the responsibility of a well-meaning person to accept that new truth, and strengthen their beliefs in another way, or reconsider their platform (as opposed to the choice to literally defy all evidence to the contrary which, as I’ve pointed out, is the very same toxic nature of the most hateful people on the right).
And here’s some facts now: Women and black people have been historically disadvantaged in this country through many forms of discrimination that were (and are) often institutionalized. Our economic system is designed in a way that penalizes people for being poor, and rewards people for being excessively rich. Female characters in advertisements, film, and video games are often scantily clad and flawlessly beautiful. But pointing out that the most popular wage-gap statistic between men and women “does not take into account differences in experience, skill, occupation, education or hours worked, as long as it qualifies as full-time work,” or suggesting that the manner in which certain college protests were carried out was intentionally disrespectful, or choosing to “trust but verify” versus “listen and believe” because people (believe it or not!) lie sometimes, or pointing out that some rich white people have legitimately earned their wealth, or arguing that men are also held to impossibly high standards in ads, films, and videogames, and that a fully grown adult can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, or suggesting that Hillary Clinton isn’t actually that great for women, or that men are at a disadvantage in some areas, regardless of one’s personal stance, does not make someone a sexist, racist, or classist. And, obviously, the same can be said of one who wishes to point out the atrocities committed in the past (or present) by white people, so long as that speech is free of the implication of equally shared responsibility. I truly believe that most people know this, but the current state of media, and the regressive communities and pseudo-journalists that push the same narrative, are going to try as hard as possible to make it seem like that’s not the case. We can’t let intellectual dishonesty and disingenuity infect progressivism like it’s infected the political right (and I hope we can save them some day, too). We can’t keep letting toxic influence convince anyone that the push for equality is actually a push for power, or for double standards.
(Do you see the similarities? What happens when you try to tell a puritanical/authoritarian conservative that President Obama is, in fact, not a Muslim? When you remind them that the second amendment is, in fact, and amendment, and not an original part of the Constitution? When you tell them we already have socialist programs in the United States, and that socialism isn’t communism?)
We’ve seen, time and time again, how alluring the call to create and/or blame an outsider is. Our nation has a rich history of dealing with this same issue, and there seems to be a completely unintentional divide forming amongst progressives recently because of a rush of authoritarian/puritan liberals finally finding a place in the real world to assert their ideas. And if complacency is one of the biggest enemies of progress, then progressives have to keep doing more to make it known — as we always have in the past — that we will not tolerate, defend, or let slide, any dialogue that suggests an entire group of people should be vilified for the actions of a select few, and that we will not be offended or scared by the suggestion that one should always consider new (newly discovered, or newly introduced) information; to learn instead of feel. Most of us already know that gender, race, and income equality are actually about equality, and not destroying those we deem more fortunate. But we need to make sure that we’re doing our part to remind the most hateful “progressives” that this is the case, and elevate and amplify the voices of the people who speak that truth — NOT the ones who get the most clicks at the expense of destroying progress and equality.
Besides, nobody’s going to make a news segment explaining that white people aren’t scary. Not that they need one.