Steve Bannon - Seriously?

[Angra Mainyu]

Race is a social construct that sometimes is related to things like nationality, ethnicities, biological factors, culture. So, yes, Jewish is a race and so is Asian. So is Hispanic by the way and there are plenty of racists who don't like Hispanics. And Arabs and/or Muslims, that racists will sometimes call "sand niggers," yeah, they're also a race.

You have no good reason to believe that race is a social construct. I would recommend Bomb#20's posts on the matter in any of the threads started by ApostateAbe.
Also, Muslims are not a race. They are people who have some seriously mistaken beliefs about the world, God, etc. People aren't born Muslims. They become Muslims through indoctrination during childhood, or through indoctrination or conversion as adults.
Jews are not a race, either. They become Muslims through indoctrination during childhood, or through indoctrination or conversion as adults. Trump is not a Jew, and neither is Ivana Marie Trump. Their daughter was not a Jew, either. But then she became one, by conversion (assuming the conversion is sincere).

Hispanics aren't a race, either. There are Hispanics of different races. The same goes for Asians (though there is a racial sense, in which it seems to refer to the Mongoloid race - sort of. But that would include aboriginals from the Americas, so it's murky).

Regardless, this matter is best left for the debates in Apostate Abe's threads, where he always wins the debates about whether race is a social construct (though his opponents never realize that he wins), though he tends to make unwarranted assessments about racial intelligence.

 

[repoman]

Race is a social construct that sometimes is related to things like nationality, ethnicities, biological factors, culture. So, yes, Jewish is a race and so is Asian. So is Hispanic by the way and there are plenty of racists who don't like Hispanics. And Arabs and/or Muslims, that racists will sometimes call "sand niggers," yeah, they're also a race.

You have no good reason to believe that race is a social construct. I would recommend Bomb#20's posts on the matter in any of the threads started by ApostateAbe.
Also, Muslims are not a race. They are people who have some seriously mistaken beliefs about the world, God, etc. People aren't born Muslims. They become Muslims through indoctrination during childhood, or through indoctrination or conversion as adults.
Jews are not a race, either. They become Muslims through indoctrination during childhood, or through indoctrination or conversion as adults. Trump is not a Jew, and neither is Ivana Marie Trump. Their daughter was not a Jew, either. But then she became one, by conversion (assuming the conversion is sincere).

Hispanics aren't a race, either. There are Hispanics of different races. The same goes for Asians (though there is a racial sense, in which it seems to refer to the Mongoloid race - sort of. But that would include aboriginals from the Americas, so it's murky).

Regardless, this matter is best left for the debates in Apostate Abe's threads, where he always wins the debates about whether race is a social construct (though his opponents never realize that he wins), though he tends to make unwarranted assessments about racial intelligence.

Jews have done a fairly small amount of interbreeding all the way through Europe and most of those that did were no longer part of the Jewish collective. That is some intense selection pressure.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

If race is not a social construct, why have we had many laws defining what it is?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You have no good reason to believe that race is a social construct.

Yes I do. Races are things that are defined according to time and location, i.e., they vary with cultural definition. For example, Asian Indians used to be considered "colored" in the US by the government.

I would recommend Bomb#20's posts on the matter in any of the threads started by ApostateAbe.

I would not recommend any of your buddy's posts on the matter at all.

Also, Muslims are not a race. They are people who have some seriously mistaken beliefs about the world, God, etc. People aren't born Muslims. They become Muslims through indoctrination during childhood, or through indoctrination or conversion as adults.

Muslims are a race when they are treated as a group of "brown people" in context by either racists or people discussing racism.

Jews are not a race, either. They become Muslims through indoctrination during childhood, or through indoctrination or conversion as adults. Trump is not a Jew, and neither is Ivana Marie Trump. Their daughter was not a Jew, either. But then she became one, by conversion (assuming the conversion is sincere).

Of course Jews are a race. That's how they are treated as a race and therefore they are a social construct of race. Like most other races there is also a biological component (or description) to the race as well, such as Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews.

Hispanics aren't a race, either. There are Hispanics of different races. The same goes for Asians (though there is a racial sense, in which it seems to refer to the Mongoloid race - sort of. But that would include aboriginals from the Americas, so it's murky).

No, Hispanics are a race because the social construct of race allows such weird inconsistencies and overlap. For example, when police are racial profiling they will ask a 911 caller, "is he black, white, or hispanic?" They caller may respond "looks kinda hispanic."

 

[laughing dog]

Of course, that does not remotely establish that when Bannon made the statement about CEOs, he was pandering to racists. Even if he is an anti-Jewish racist (though Judaism is not a race, but whatever), that does not imply he is an anti-Asian racist (not that Asians are a race, either, but never mind).
If he was pandering to anti-Jewish racists in those other cases (which is at best not clear), it doesn't support the conclusion that he was pandering to anti-Asian racists when he made the comment I was talking about, or in any other comment.

Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. He basically admits he is pandering to the racists. His comments about Asian are non-sequiturs - he does not address how they are any sort of rational threat to the national culture of a nation of immigrants. There is no rational reason to address their race at all. And that abstracts from the issues of whether his statement is remotely factual and if he is distinguishing from Asian immigrants from US citizens of Asian descent.

Also, by the way, the quote on its own does not support your conclusion that Bannon is anti-Jew. Calling someone a "renegade Jew" might be an anti-Jew comment ...

To the epistemlogically rational, you have just admitted that the quote does support my conclusion. It may not provide evidence to convince someone like you, but that does not mean it does not support it.

or the comment of someone generally pro-Jewish who sees the target of his criticism as a traitor, or something else; more context is required. But no matter, let's the evidence of Bannon's anti-Judaism is conclusive. That still is no good reason to think he's an anti-Asian racist, let alone that his comment was racist.

Of course there are good reasons to think he is an anti-semite. One can always come up with rationales. You find your explanations sufficient and convincing, the epistemically rationale do not.

Of course, even if Bannon is anti-Jew, one should not conclude on the basis of that that so is Trump.

True.

For example, now I want to leave the thread - too much hostility...

Given you are the major and persistent source of "hostility' in this thread, thank you for leaving.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Sorry, but I haven't kept up in this thread. So, not sure if the following point has been made. IMO, the very best thing that can be said about Steve Bannon, and I mean the very best is that he is giving a voice to people (the Alt-right) who don't traditionally have a voice. Great. Cool. Pleased as punch. Tickled even. But here's the deal: white supremacists deserve no voice! Their ideology is hateful and wrong. Starving nomads in the Sahara Desert don't have a voice. Recovering Indian addicts don't have a voice. I'm sorry, but why the hell should white supremacists have a voice?

I don't know the heart of Bannon and Trump. But I do know that they want to give supremacists a voice. They are doing this to get votes. Fuck them........

 

[repoman]

Sorry, but I haven't kept up in this thread. So, not sure if the following point has been made. IMO, the very best thing that can be said about Steve Bannon, and I mean the very best is that he is giving a voice to people (the Alt-right) who don't traditionally have a voice. Great. Cool. Pleased as punch. Tickled even. But here's the deal: white supremacists deserve no voice! Their ideology is hateful and wrong. Starving nomads in the Sahara Desert don't have a voice. Recovering Indian addicts don't have a voice. I'm sorry, but why the hell should white supremacists have a voice?

I don't know the heart of Bannon and Trump. But I do know that they want to give supremacists a voice. They are doing this to get votes. Fuck them........

Northwest Front! Blue, White and Green.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Top Trump strategist Bannon once told a colleague that suppressing black voters ‘not a bad thing’

 

[Harry Bosch]

Sorry, but I haven't kept up in this thread. So, not sure if the following point has been made. IMO, the very best thing that can be said about Steve Bannon, and I mean the very best is that he is giving a voice to people (the Alt-right) who don't traditionally have a voice. Great. Cool. Pleased as punch. Tickled even. But here's the deal: white supremacists deserve no voice! Their ideology is hateful and wrong. Starving nomads in the Sahara Desert don't have a voice. Recovering Indian addicts don't have a voice. I'm sorry, but why the hell should white supremacists have a voice?

I don't know the heart of Bannon and Trump. But I do know that they want to give supremacists a voice. They are doing this to get votes. Fuck them........

Northwest Front! Blue, White and Green.

Sorry, but I don't get your response.

 

[repoman]

 

[blastula]

In case you want to know what was in Angra's link that Angra posted earlier:

This is just a tiny representative sample, but the rest is very similar. Trump has gone from campaign stop to campaign stop talking about how much he likes and respects minorities and wants to fight for them.

And if you believe he’s lying, fine. Yet I notice that people accusing Trump of racism use the word “openly” like a tic. He’s never just “racist” or “white supremacist”. He’s always “openly racist” and “openly white supremacist”. Trump is openly racist, openly racist, openly racist, openly racist, openly racist, openly racist, openly racist. Trump is running on pure white supremacy, has thrown off the last pretense that his campaign is not about bigotry, has the slogan Make American Openly White Supremacist Again, is an openly white supremacist nominee, etc, etc, etc. And I’ve seen a few dozen articles like this where people say that “the bright side of a Trump victory is that finally America admitted its racism out in the open so nobody can pretend it’s not there anymore.”

This, I think, is the first level of crying wolf. What if, one day, there is a candidate who hates black people so much that he doesn’t go on a campaign stop to a traditionally black church in Detroit, talk about all of the contributions black people have made to America, promise to fight for black people, and say that his campaign is about opposing racism in all its forms? What if there’s a candidate who does something more like, say, go to a KKK meeting and say that black people are inferior and only whites are real Americans?

We might want to use words like “openly racist” or “openly white supremacist” to describe him. And at that point, nobody will listen, because we wasted “openly white supremacist” on the guy who tweets pictures of himself eating a taco on Cinco de Mayo while saying “I love Hispanics!”

That's right, we can't take Trump's claims he wants to register Muslims or hold illegal Mexicans in detention centers seriously because he had someone take his photo with a taco salad in front of him while saying he loved Mexicans. If we use "scare tactics" against the masses about Trump they won't be smart enough to one day recognize an actual Hitler because of us. It'll be our fault because people can't think for themselves.

Never mind that when I go to my Republican brother-in-law's house today for Thanksgiving, if I tell him that we're NOT registering Muslims because the Trump campaign wants to be inclusive by doing such photo, he will be quite disappointed. And no he's not a member of the KKK or formally a white nationalist, but like a lot of Republicans, he'd be all for those polices and he's racist. Yes, he's "White," he's "nationalistic," and he's racist, but he's not a Nazi and there are way more people like him than someone in Buenos Aires might imagine.

Do you actually think that your description of the article, after your "that's right", actually is a reasonable interpretation of what the article says?

(for any potentially interested readers, here's a link: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ )

It's a good description of what he quoted. Did something else in the article counter what's in the quote?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Do you actually think that your description of the article, after your "that's right", actually is a reasonable interpretation of what the article says?

(for any potentially interested readers, here's a link: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ )

It's a good description of what he quoted. Did something else in the article counter what's in the quote?

I wasn't coming to the the thread anymore. I concede their irrational behavior tired me, and they had gotten the last word. But do you think what he quoted supports the conclusion that the article holds that "we can't take Trump's claims he wants to register Muslims or hold illegal Mexicans in detention centers seriously because he had someone take his photo with a taco salad in front of him while saying he loved Mexicans. "?
At any rate, I would suggest you read the article if you're interested.

 

[blastula]

I haven't read all of it, but I would say from what I know of Trump that his positions are based in part on his own racism. It can be seen in his response to the Central Park Five story. If that were just about "law and order," where are his full page ads for specific accused white criminals to be executed? I also see it in his speeches in his comments about undocumented immigrants where he vastly overstates their criminality and speaks of an epidemic wave of crime among immigrants. He has also overstated crime by blacks. I don't think in those cases that it's just about pandering or that it has a primarily non-racially based motivation. It's just who he is. Racists are not unicorns.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Angra Mainyu, he asked you first.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Angra Mainyu, he asked you first.

The answer is that there is no need to "counter" anything. Your assessment on the basis of the quotation is unwarranted and mistaken.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

... Racists are not unicorns.

I would just add the following:
1. racism and racists come in degrees. trying to pinpoint exactly where on the racism spectrum someone is and then rebut that threshold misses the forest for the trees;
2. the op actually didn't say Trump was a white nationalist but instead that he had a white nationalist agenda;
3. the op didn't say Trump's entire set of policies will be white nationalist either, but instead that his agenda will be which is different.

As far as claims of my "irrational behavior," I will just say that Angra gets hung up on literal issues and not understanding them as well as semantic quibbling so much that Angra misses that forest, those values, priorities of what to argue over, and being "right" and defensive.

- - - Updated - - -

Angra Mainyu, he asked you first.

The answer is that there is no need to "counter" anything. Your assessment on the basis of the quotation is unwarranted and mistaken.

You can't just pretend I wrote no valid points to an objective third party observer. Sorry, life doesn't work that way.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

You can't just pretend I wrote no valid points to an objective third party observer. Sorry, life doesn't work that way.

I don't need to pretend anything, and I don't. What I said was true. What you said was a gross misrepresentation of the article. People can take a look for themselves, if they're interested ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ ), and make their own assessments.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You can't just pretend I wrote no valid points to an objective third party observer. Sorry, life doesn't work that way.

I don't need to pretend anything, and I don't. What I said was true. What you said was a gross misrepresentation of the article. People can take a look for themselves, if they're interested ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ ), and make their own assessments.

Someone already looked, i.e. I did. You did not respond to the specific points. Later blastula looked at the quoted section under discussion, but you evaded his questions.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

From 2002, Stormfront:

3 MILLION ILLEGAL ALIENS TO FLOOD THE U.S. THIS YEAR

https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t153039/

From 2016, Donald Trump:

Says Hillary Clinton "wants to let people just pour in. You could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing about it. Think of it. That’s what could happen. You triple the size of our country in one week."
— Donald Trump on Sunday, October 30th, 2016 in a campaign rally in Albuquerque

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...says-clinton-would-bring-650-million-people-/

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I don't need to pretend anything, and I don't. What I said was true. What you said was a gross misrepresentation of the article. People can take a look for themselves, if they're interested ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ ), and make their own assessments.

Someone already looked, i.e. I did. You did not respond to the specific points. Later blastula looked at the quoted section under discussion, but you evaded his questions.

Why don't you go away? I was letting you get the last word.

Anyway, you use the plural "questions". I saw the question " Did something else in the article counter what's in the quote?" What other question are you talking about?
As for that one, I already said there is nothing to counter; blastula interpreted the quote as being properly described by you, and asked whether something else in the article counted it. But there is nothing to counter, which implies of course that nothing else in the article countered it. That does not change the fact that your attempt to use that quote out of context grossly misrepresents the article, and of course your main claims about it are not warranted on the basis of that quote.