ISIS captures Santa

Merry Christmas, infidels!

white privilege

I posted that meme in a Facebook group for political debate with the following comment: "including the self-loathing, race baiters who indulge in ethnic treason."

As usual, one of the self-loathing white traitors took issue with it and a slinging match ensued.

However, the best comment was so good that I've got permission from its author to copy and post it here verbatim:

There are so many problems with privilege theory but the obvious ones are blatant hypocrisy, circularity and targeting the wrong causes. Ultimately privilege theory is basically intellectualized envy. Do black people aspire to the wealth they associate with white people? Of course they do. Do women aspire to the benefits that they associate with being male? Of course they do. Why demonize what you aspire too? There is nothing wrong with aspiration or ambition but there is something wrong with demonizing the very people you aspire to emulate. For envy to retain some positive quality you have to retain the ability to identify with those you wish to emulate, so hate doesn't corrode your ethics. If you choose to live a life similar to someone you envy you should choose to act more like them as opposed to inventing a false narrative which reinvents their success as a type of appropriation which you will in turn use to justify appropriating that which is rightfully theirs.

Privilege theory correctly divides the world between those who have and those who do not and I have no issue with this provided it remains on an individual level and that you retain some respect for those individuals who have been more successful than you. The problem with privilege theory is it takes a useful idea too far in that it turns successful individuals into an evil collective, a collective which is then demonized in an attempt to both deny the successful the fruits of their success and to shield the less successful from a searching self-examination.

Are there structural inequalities and bigotries in the world? Of course there are. Can these structural inequalities alone be a sufficient explanation into why some individuals fail and why others succeed? Of course not. They are only a small part of the broader explanation. This is a major flaw in all collectivist theories; they go too far and almost exclusively focus on blaming external factors (demonized groups) instead of a broader more balanced answers. The fact is that by focusing on collective identities such as gender, race and color, greater problems are both obscured and facilitated. Successful individuals are willing to live (legitimately and illegitimately) at the expense of other people and unsuccessful individuals are willing to do exactly the same thing. The question then becomes who is behaving ethically and this is almost always correctly answered on the individual level. This is true with all of the collectivist (socialist) theories, which “White Privilege Theory” is definitely part of.

Another part of privilege theory which is just wrong is how it completely misrepresents what privilege is. Privilege theory reduces the whole concept of privilege into a type of unearned advantage, gained via a corrupt law or group consensus, but this is just doesn't hold up to an honest examination of the facts. Elite individuals may have privilege but whole groups don’t and elitism is not exclusive to any of the groups mentioned by privilege theory. Elites come all all races, colors and genders. Collectivist’s love simplistic umbrella concepts as it renders them simple mantras which in turn facilitates the recruiting of the gullible. This is the essence of a thought virus. There are no deserving individuals for collectivists other than the elite who spread the collectivist truth. Everyone is either privileged or oppressed; ergo those who are not oppressed are privileged; circular insanity. They are not legitimately part of the status quo, they are not hard working people who deserve the fruits of the labor, they are the privileged. Currently we live with this insanity which has resulted in government policies which have decreed that all non-oppressed people (those who enjoy the status quo) are in fact privileged and should be oppressed as punishment for this privilege. We are establishing special laws and bureaucracies to find non-oppressed (privileged) people and oversee their oppression.

Academics, bureaucrats and opportunistic pseudo-progressive politicians continually repeat mantras which justify this new discrimination which results in oppressing the non-oppressed. Oppression increases and the status quo is threatened but wealth and opportunity is not increased. Soon the non-oppressed themselves begin to think of themselves as having an illegitimate type of privilege; the ability to avoid oppression. The actual content of this privilege is of course negative in nature as it’s the privilege of not having been oppressed, of not being hungry or of not being tortured by the ruling elite. Most oppression comes from elite individuals misusing the state’s monopoly on violence, but privilege theorists believe that state violence is the solution if targeted on those who had been successful in avoiding this type of violence up to this point. To speak of such a privilege is a circular insanity. Torture, hunger and oppression are bad but if you manage to avoid them you become a privileged oppressor and must be exposed to these very same bad things. This institutionalizes powerlessness, as when confronted by overwhelming force, the best most individuals can do is to hide, avoid and develop an asset base which enables you to get better at this in the future.

Privilege theory says that this avoidance and collection of capital makes the individual guilty. Privilege theory imposes on those who successfully avoid oppression and collect capital a penalty; extra oppression. This is the futility of privilege theory, it fights injustice with extra injustice aimed at those who are successful at avoiding the initial injustice and attempts to disguise the origin of the injustice; the state.

Privilege theory is also a type of binary fallacy. Women v men, black v white, gay v straight, Muslims vs. Christians, majority v minority etc. There is a very deliberate reason for this too and that is by focusing on human constants, elements that cannot change due to biological reason or things which resist change due to cultural reasons, privilege theory itself is cemented. This is also why collectivists hate capitalism so much as if an individual gains capital and you gain upward social mobility, lose capital and you rejoin the desperate. Capital is blind to the groups which collectivists abuse to cement their authority and capital resists the collectivists attempts to make humanity an unchanging solid. Privilege theorists want to preserve existing identity yet most people wish to escape it.

Another flaw with privilege theory is that it states that the privileged rarely notice their privilege. The flaw is not with successful individuals, but with the theory. Where white people are a majority, the western world, they don’t notice their advantages for the same reason the Chinese don’t notice Chinese privilege in China etc. Being part of the status quo is not a privilege, it is a cultural norm. Cultures all have dominant groups and this is not itself a negative. Privilege theorists which to elevate minority groups above majority groups and being treated better than the status quo is the only true definition of privilege I can see.

This is the final absurdity of privilege theory, it wants to bestow privilege to counter the status quo while claiming privilege is wrong. If you retain the ability to identify with the successful within your community as opposed to demonizing them, you can see that they may have rights that you aspire too. They are not privileged and you oppressed. They are to be emulated not defeated and this continues to be the winning argument in my opinion; rights can be earned via individual effort and the ability to avoid the excesses of the state.