"They get to believe what they want to believe..." (Interesting thread)

[Nevilledog]

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David Roberts
@drvolts
All right, a thread about white epistemic hegemony (only less pretentious than that sounds).

As a specific illustration of the larger phenomenon I want to discuss, we begin with @zchace's superb recent podcast miniseries, The Improvement Association.

From Serial: The Improvement Association
A true story about election fraud.
nytimes.com
1:15 PM · May 21, 2021

Unrolled thread here
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1395835619985616898.html

All right, a thread about white epistemic hegemony (only less pretentious than that sounds).

As a specific illustration of the larger phenomenon I want to discuss, we begin with @zchace's superb recent podcast miniseries, The Improvement Association.

Introducing: The Improvement Association
A true story about election fraud.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/podcasts/election-fraud-improvement-association.html

It's really worth listening to the whole thing, but I'll give a quick Cliff Notes. In Bladen County, NC, there's a longstanding org called the Bladen County Improvement Project, which basically organizes the country's black vote into a single voice, to maximize its impact.

Though Blacks are a minority in the county, the BCIP (a PAC) has been extremely successful at uniting them so they consistently get at least some representation & exercise at least some power. It's led by a crusty old guy w/ a huge personality, Horace Munn.

The conservative white majority has always suspected BPIC of cheating. As several interviewees say: how else could it maintain such unity & discipline? How else could it do so well? (Unspoken: they're black! We know they can't win w/ smarts or hard work! So it must be cheating.)

White people have accused BCIP of cheating for years. County officials have dutifully investigated several times & never found anything.

This must be emphasized: there is not now, nor has there ever been, any *actual evidence* of BCIP cheating. None. There's no there there.

Nonetheless, the rumors have been ubiquitous for so long the county's whites "just know" BCIP cheats. Everyone they know says so! Where there's smoke there's fire! And my cousin's mechanic heard from his brother that he saw a thing ...

So: no actual cheating, but a white establishment that universally believes there is cheating. What follows from this? Two consequences.

First, whites worked up about black cheating convince themselves, heck, they have to cheat too! Just out of self defense, mind you.

And so Bladen County becomes the site, in 2018, of one of the only bona fide examples of US voting fraud in years. Not just questionable shenanigans -- outright, explicit, caught-red-handed voter fraud. BY REPUBLICANS.

There’s Finally a Persuasive Case of Election Fraud, and Republicans Don’t Care
A congressional race in North Carolina suggests that the likeliest threats to the integrity of elections aren’t the ones that GOP lawmakers are addressing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/bladen-county-election-fraud-and-north-carolina-voter-id/577393/

Because the fraud is so obvious, county authorities have no choice but to convict & punish the wrongdoers. But even some of the authorities in question say to Chace later that they think the fraudsters got a bad rap, because, what about BCIP?

Really can't emphasize this enough: whites in the county, even in positions of authority, basically take the position, to this day, that the fraud wasn't so bad because after all it was just a response to BCIP's (fictional!) fraud. Whataboutism absolutely dominates.

Second consequence: the ubiquitous public accusations of fraud put BCIP under immense stress & even some members of the org start feeling they have to distance themselves from it, because of *how it looks*, you know. The optics. So BCIP fractures.

Now. I'm less interested in the exact details of the podcast than in the basic shape of the narrative, which is: white people, by believing something it's in their tribal interests to believe, basically *force the world to behave as though it were true*.

There's no reason to think BCIP ever broke any laws, but the county's whites forced the same consequences that would have come if it *had* been true. They made the world warp & reshape around their delusion. They willed their shared delusion into existence.

Then, just a few weeks later, I'm listening to the latest season of Slow Burn, about the runup to the Iraq War, & lo, a similar narrative: a group of reactionary whites shares a delusion (Iraq attacked us) ...

Slow Burn
Eighteen months after 9/11, the United States invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attacks. Who’s to blame? And was there any way to stop it?
https://slate.com/podcasts/slow-burn/s5/road-to-the-iraq-war

...and through sheer will, force the delusion into reality. Cheney demands the "raw intelligence" from which he can stitch together a story that supports his delusion. The cowed journalistic establishment meekly submits to the delusion. The world behaves *as though it were true*.

All of which serves as background to this story, which is very much ongoing: reactionary whites have once again convinced one another of a delusion (the election was stolen from Trump) & are forcing it into reality.

‘A Perpetual Motion Machine’: How Disinformation Drives Voting Laws
After former President Donald J. Trump undermined public confidence in elections, Republican lawmakers are defending voting restrictions by citing a lack of public confidence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/us/politics/disinformation-voting-laws.html

They are passing voter suppression laws in response to the delusion. They are seeding loyalists in key state positions in response to the delusion. They are setting the stage for stealing the 2024 presidential election in response to the delusion. GOP lawmakers ...

... are even saying outright that it doesn't matter whether the election was fraudulent -- their voters *think it was*, and so the world must reshape itself around their feelings. Real voters must be suppressed & excluded in response to imaginary voter fraud.

If you wanted, you could go back through US history & pick out a thousand stories with this same basic structure: reactionary whites (wrongly) convince one another that their opponents are doing something unethical or illegal in order to justify their own violence & lawbreaking.

They convince one another of delusions & then force the world to behave as though the delusions are real. They convince one another of delusions in order to excuse themselves doing the very thing they're accusing others of.

This is what cultural hegemony means: your feelings about things matter more than reality. You have a right to believe whatever you want & the rest of the world must accommodate. Though I doubt they could or would articulate it this way, this is precisely what they are defending.

They'll cheat in elections, and when called to account, they'll say "what about Dem cheating," and it won't *matter* that in reality there was no Dem cheating. They'll engage in violence and then when called to account will say, "what about antifa," and it won't *matter* ...

... that antifa is about 95% imaginary.

They get to believe what they want to believe, whatever's in their interests to believe at the moment, and the world must rearrange itself around the delusion. That is the core white privilege.
• • •

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. Excellent thread from Mr. Roberts ... Dead, spot, and bang on! (nt)

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. I would go one step further

Abusers seek to get away with abuse they lie,they gaslight,try to deny what they did,traumatize then try to bend reality to fit what they want,to get away with it. Too often families go along with it fearing retribution by the abuser. I saw this dynamic in my own abusive family.

These are sociopaths and it is exactly how they too bend reality to get themselves off the hook for abusing.

This can apply to bad cops,bad corporations and bad people.

Ever notice how defensive and snowflakey abusers and republicans get when you call them bad people? And repeat publically what they do that is wrong,and go one step further and say out loud it is wrong or bad ?

[0rganism]

3. Dave Roberts/@drvolt's thread pretty much nails it

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." -- unnamed official in W's administration, possibly Karl Rove, 2004

More than just their SOP, this has since become the Republicans' Primary Operating Procedure, along with "accuse others of planning to do what you're already doing."

We have a problem.

[Yavin4]

4. This is also why they're so xenophobic.

It's easier to will your beliefs into existence when you're in the majority, but when you lose your majority status, you need actual evidence and proof, not just your delusions.

[Grolph_]

5. It runs both directions in their head

They believe that since they are willing to lie, cheat, and steal to acquire wealth or power; everyone else also lies, cheats, and steals as much as they do. They believe that anyone who follows the rules is a sucker.
They are truly sorry for their sins, they mumble those words to their savior.
Then they go out and lie, cheat and steal some more.