It felt like it was uncool to have even a touch of racism when Obama got elected and through his presidency. But since the MAGA movement, I feel like subtle and out-right racism has increased. Like a gateway was opened.
Am I trippin?
When a black man was elected president the racism actually ramped up. But it was still quiet. Trump gave them the freedom to be loud about it.
💯
How old were you in 2008? Because I saw some really ugly racism directed at him both when he was running and during that first term. It went up, not down.
I was 10
Yeah, that’s probably why. I’m 38 and racism has always been prevalent here. If anything, I’d say it was worse when Obama was president because all the racists/White Supremacists didn’t want a black guy running the country since it has been white guys since the 1700s.
No … I was also around that age and remember all the monkey jokes about Obama. This guy just isn’t paying attention idk lol
The turboracism of the Tea Party Repubs is basically a knee-jerk reaction to seeing a black man in the Oval Office.
Okay buckle up, this is a bit of a crazy ride.
I’d say a big event that kicked up a load of the racism we’ve got today was 9/11.
Right wingers went on a big public islamophobic tirade against anyone who they thought looked slightly Muslim for nearly a decade. This is where they got used to being confidently racist. This actually happened all over the western world, but I’m gonna focus on the American events after this.
Then Obama got elected, and relatively quickly a vast number of them had expanded their confident racism to include him, because they could hide it behind the flimsy excuse of criticising the opposing politicians. Then you had people banging on about the Kenya thing, which was just more emboldening.
This is also when we saw a lot of these “free thinker” talking head fuckos show up, and they start filling gullible viewers heads with lies and a tiny bit of racism sprinkled in.
One of the guys behind huge amounts of that, Steve Bannon, expressly targeted “angry young men” as a specific demographic he saw as easy to manipulate. Believe it or not GamerGate was one of the sources of angry guys he specifically manipulated to great success. So all these podcasts start getting funding and certain kinds of guests, and before you know it we have the manosphere, MAGA and an openly racist, criminal president.
Then of course COVID comes along which gives another angle for them to be racist through sinophobia, and also a new hook to pull people in and then get their brain warped slowly by the other cryptofascist topics that get dripfed from people talking about it.
Basically, the original event showed some Machiavellian right-wingers that a big enough enemy can be used to brainwash people towards racism, once there, they’re incredibly easy to manipulate. They then used Obama becoming president to test the theory and got the results they wanted. Next was to get the presidency in the hands of this new right-wing, and finally the January 6th coup was supposed to be the final touch.
That failed so they’re back in recruitment mode, and now they’ve got it down to an almost industrial process whenever some celebrity/influencer espouses a right wing view, a podcast set appears around them and suddenly all the funding they need to make the pod full-time, just as long as they get some certain guests on or discuss some topics in particular.
Edit: worth noting I tried to trim this down a bit, so a fair few events have been left out.
Oh yeah 9/11 ruined all kinds of things. Seriously I want to be in the timeline that diverged when 9/11 never happened.
I wonder how different things would be now if Roger Stone (still politically involved Roger Stone who was a major player in the last Trump administration and who has a back tattoo of Nixon) hadn’t caused the Brooks Brothers Riot and fucked up the counting of votes in Florida allowing the supreme Court (whoch at the time had multiple clerks that Trump put on the court) to declare Bush the winner.
Yeah, it’s been all the same people, fucking stuff up, all along.
It wasn’t even 9/11 itself that did it. It was the government’s and right-wing public’s insistence on LETTING BIN LADEN WIN by overreacting to it that did it!
It was more the fact that Trump got elected while being not-so-secretly racist that emboldened them. They saw there would be fewer consequences due to it being more normalized, so they could be more open about it.
I think the other way around. When Obama was elected the racist’s heads exploded (including in Congress) and instead of being quiet they went absolutely nuts. This is what Maga is about, what the Tea Party was about. Can’t forget Fox, which also went absolutely nuts https://youtu.be/S9VeNB5ili8
what the Tea Party was about
The Tea Party was about reducing wealth inequality (with surprisingly similar goals to OWS, just coming at it from the other ideological direction) for a hot minute before the Koch bros etc. infiltrated and co-opted it.
Cough cough.
I have no idea what you’re trying to imply.
You say one thing (cough) while doing another.
WTF are you even talking about? I didn’t “do” anything, nor was my comment a claim about myself. Did you reply to the wrong comment or something, or is this a general criticism of me unrelated to this particular thread, or what?
I get that you’re trying to accuse me of some sort of hypocrisy, but it doesn’t make enough sense for me to even be properly mad about it.
Cough cough is an indicator that a person says one thing but wants to do/does another thing.
“Mom I’m going to the mall cough Stacy’s cough”
The tea party did not actually care about fiscal responsibility. It was anti Obama.
I agree that’s what it quickly turned into, but I’m not sure I agree that they didn’t have legitimate grievances and good intentions at the start. I even remember wishing that they would merge with OWS for a little while there.
I dunno, maybe I got hoodwinked – but I don’t think so.
Instead of being edgy, you could’ve communicated your thoughts immediately.
I did, most people understand that idiom. Frankly it’s amazing he didn’t.
I understand the “cough cough” idiom, but it doesn’t express what they wanted to say.
It expressed what I wanted to say, because it was my reply.
Notice I’m downvoted, so who’s the one being edgy? Could have said that for your original comment too. Ciao.
Obama’s election made them angry, Trump’s made them forget their shame
Nah it was a catalyst for racists to find out how many racists there were all around them which then caused the spineless pick me bitches to think racism was their ticket to having friends.
@BadmanDan@lemmy.world I think it is the opposite: lots of people hated to have a black president (remember the nozzles and the tea party?). My hypothesis is they even hated more that this was a classy, well educated guy and not thug-looking dude, which is what they expected.
I found out a lot more people that I knew were racist while Obama was in office through offhand remarks about black people that didn’t come up prior.
They were far more open and direct about it during Trump though.
Removed by mod
The book Everybody Lies looks at search data and based on that the racism was the same but outwardly admitting it has changed. It went from saying we’re not in polite company to being loud about it.
People have been hiding their racism? News to me
You’re not wrong. Obama was a really good president. The problem is that instead of being far left, he was a very left central president and tried very hard to work with Republicans.
Part of the problem is that Republicans didn’t want to associate with the opposing factor and started moving further right as Obama positioned himself in the center. The racists in the far right were ready to undo everything Obama helped shaped during his 8 years in office.
I see what you’re sayin. Maybe it’s because social media wasn’t as big under Obama, but the rise of terms like DEI, CRT, Woke, Great Replacement, etc. Are just so pushed out there.
Lol, no. I have family members that actively called him a n****r while he was in office.
