Alt-Right Playbook: The Cost of Doing Business (script)

[some of this won't make perfect sense without the visuals]

Say, for the sake of argument, there’s this… call him a “provocateur.” A conservative who makes his living off of being a public figure, saying scandalously evil things in public because controversy = attention and attention = brand recognition. He gets his writing gigs and interviews and guest spots sometimes because people agree with the awful things he says. More often, it’s because he gets views. His economy runs on engagement, and hate-clicks are still clicks.

One revenue stream is speaking engagements. The college campus circuit. Fans at, let’s say, UC Emeryville invite him as a guest lecturer. But UCE is, broadly, a progressive campus, which means his presence would likely provoke a lot of outrage, maybe even a protest.

And a protest would be pretty flippin’ sweet.

Protest means local news coverage. Maybe more than local. Hell, the conservative media machine loves taking stories like this and blowing them up to national importance. If he plays his cards right, he could get his words in front of millions of people instead of just the student body of UC Emeryville. Of course he’s gonna take that gig.

But the progressive students at UCE are wise to his tricks. They’ve seen him pull this stunt at other UC’s - Stockton, Bakersfield, Vacaville - so they make the decision, “We’re not gonna protest. We’re just gonna let him speak. Let the boy stamp his feet. And, in a month, no one will even remember he was here.”

As the date approaches, and the provocateur sees he’s not getting the response he wants, he starts hinting things on social media, trying to bait a reaction: “Psst, psst. Hey. I’m gonna make jokes about the Holocaust. I’m gonna say Americans treated their slaves well.” Nothing. So he ups the ante. Makes it personal. “I’m gonna put up pre-transition photos of your trans students. I’m gonna out the queer students I’ve seen on Grindr. I’m gonna name which of your students are illegal immigrants.”

Student body’s like, “Bro, do your worst. Nobody’s falling for it.” Until one student stands and says, “Hold up… he’s gonna dox immigrants in front of his audience of white nationalist gun nuts… and we’re just gonna let him? You know some of his fans were in Charlottesville, right?”

What we’re seeing here is a game of chicken between one group of white conservative reactionaries and one group of - let’s be honest - mostly white liberals, for whom the stakes are who gets paid attention to. The provocateur doesn’t have the ammunition nor the optics to attack privileged liberals directly, so he pokes and prods at various social minorities whom privileged liberals are supposed to care about until he gets a reaction. Going after people of color is a pure Xanatos gambit for his fans - either they get a protest and a national audience hears their reactionary rhetoric, or there’s no protest and his reactionary audience gets to fuck with some immigrants. And, because white liberals are largely ignorant to the threat posed to those immigrants, white liberals are not great at assessing the full scope of the danger. Often enough, this remains, to them, an argument about ideas and principles. To them, they are but words. (Until someone gets shot or hit by a car and then it’s “who could have predicted?”)

The provocateur’s animating force is not hatred of people of color, it’s hatred of white liberals, just as white liberals’ animating force is less advocacy for people of color than moral victory over conservatives. Neither side acknowledges people of color as entities in this fight; they’re viewed as tools for getting white people what they want, and their suffering is viewed as an “acceptable” byproduct. You’ve maybe heard the phrase, “In the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team, they are the ball.” Well, in the game of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, minorities are not the opposing team, they are the cars, store windows, and newspaper kiosks that get wrecked when the home team loses. Or when the home team wins. It’s the Eagles Fan view of oppression.

And, make no mistake: weaponizing or disregarding students of color is still racism. But it’s racism of a kind most white people have trouble recognizing - or, to speak with a sharper edge, that white people often refuse to acknowledge. From the white provocateur who does not hate minorities directly but is willing to utilize the hatred of others to get what he wants from some white people - who says “I will hurt them a lot just to hurt you a little” - to the white liberal who does mental gymnastics to not come out and say “that is a Black and Brown sacrifice I’m willing to make,” racism is not always a passion. But it is tolerable. Usable. Easy to disregard.

In a white supremacist world, it is the cost of doing business.

Let me make it clear: nothing about this is okay.

Now, the weaponizing of minority suffering is employed against many minoritized groups - I could be making this video about transphobia or homophobia and, while many details would differ… I wouldn't even have to change my intro. Samuel R. Delany (yeah, yeah, take a shot) argues that misogyny is the oldest bigotry, and, therefore, the model on which all other bigotries are based. I’m focusing on institutional racism as my chief example because… because this is America and the cup runneth over. (Also, in the 2016 election, the greatest indicator a person was going to vote Republican, more strongly correlated than being registered as a Republican, was racist sentiments.)

I am going to curb my reflex to try and make every Alt-Right Playbook some kind of definitive statement; I do not have the last word on American racism. If you want to hear about American racism from the people who experience it, here’s a book. Here’s five books. What I bring to the table is: I have, at this point, several decades’ experience being white. And, in trying to explicate white supremacy, it is sometimes worthwhile to look at it from the inside. So my focus will be: What do white people think about whiteness?

American racial discourse has four principle (white) characters.

On the far right end, you’ve got the guy white people picture when they hear the word “racist”: your klansman, your neo-Nazi skinhead, your suit-and-tie ethnonationalist. This guy knows he’s a racist and he’s proud of it.

Next to the white supremacist, you’ve got the white collaborator; the politician, public figure, or businessman who does not agree with the white supremacists “on paper” but will seek out their votes, attention, or money.

Next to the collaborator, you’ve got the white moderate: people who ostensibly believe in racial justice as an end goal, and are somewhat committed to bringing it about, but only with the cooperation of the white collaborator. It wouldn’t be fair to do it without their consent, you see, and thus the white moderate spends a lot less time opposing collaborators than “appealing to their better natures.” They tend to operate on behalf of people of color rather than with them.

Plainly put, the “Cost of Doing Business” maneuver is this group [collaborators] using this group [racists] to attack this group [moderates] using people of color as their weapon of choice. It is white supremacy in the form of three groups of white people fighting amongst themselves.

Finally, on the far end, you’ve got the honest-to-goodness anti-racist. Where the racist supports white supremacy, the collaborator upholds white supremacy, and the moderate seeks to reform white supremacy, only the anti-racist is trying to get rid of it. And even they are not free from racial bias! And, if you tell one of them “you are not free from racial bias,” it’s not guaranteed they will react well! It’s just the group whom you have the best odds with.

Now, this little chorus line is not how white people typically frame the situation. We usually think of racism as binary: there are racists, and there are non-racists. In that framing, the provocateur is someone whose allegiance we get to debate. Does willingly sacrificing people of color without actually hating them count as #racism? This “debate” lasts approximately the rest of your goddamn life, which should be evidence enough that the frame is wanting.

In today’s framing, there are racists of several shades and there are anti-racists. There is no “non-.”

Now, before we map the choreography of how these four types interact, first a quick note on how most white people think about whiteness. Short answer: whenever possible, they prefer not to.

Whiteness, specifically in the United States, is not vanilla, it’s fior di latte. Milk and sugar. Non-whites are flavors; we are the base. The way we don’t think of ourselves as having an accent; Brits have accents, but we speak English "normal-like." If you haven’t built an identity around being white, you probably don’t think about your whiteness very often, and maybe feel uncomfortable when someone points it out. The white experience is to passively, unconsciously conceive of oneself as a kind of raceless default.

This is privilege. As in, this is definitionally part of what makes privilege privilege: it’s the identity that’s treated as a norm. The one you don’t have to think about. A movie with an all-white cast is widely perceived as a movie without race. That is not true of one with an all-Black cast.

Identities being treated as defaults makes institutional racism difficult to understand, even for well-meaning white people. “How can I be racist if I don’t identify as a racist? How could I be part of a group I never opted into?” It sounds like racism without racists. But think, for a moment, how every marginalized person is part of a group they didn’t opt into. People don’t choose to be gay, and people don’t choose to be straight. But if people clock you as gay - or even think they’ve clocked you as gay - it makes you more visible, where being presumed straight makes you invisible. Makes you the “everyman.” The more of these default identities you have, the more foreign the idea that people might group you not by how you think of yourself, but by how you are perceived and by how you impact others. It gets hard to fathom that whether or not you’re racist isn’t up to you, any more than whether or not a light-skinned Mexican gets to be white is up to them. The boundaries are not policed from the inside.

So! Okay. Going again from right to left: this is where we find the titular Alt-Right. What’s novel about the suit-and-tie ethnonationalist is how they break from the iconography of racism. Their goal, like that of many racist people, is to attack and oppress people of color, but in such a way that the white establishment will let them get away with it. The average white person’s shorthand for a racist is still primarily the klansman and the neo-Nazi; respectively, a rural, working-class white nationalist and an urban, working class white nationalist. The Alt-Right is the gentrification of white nationalism. Their pocket squares and MBAs and $90 haircuts short out the white moderate’s brain because they still associate white supremacy with white trash. Racism is worse than evil, it’s common. It’s why they insist reactionary conservatism is propped up by the white working class in flyover states despite all evidence to the contrary. The Alt-Right can’t be as bad as everyone says, because who ever heard of a racist going to Harvard? (Harvard.)

The Alt-Right bridges the gap between white nationalism and the rest of white culture, using class signifiers to gain access to the political and social capital of the more mainstream collaborator and getting the moderate to treat them not as someone to be ignored but someone to be bargained with.

The collaborator finds value in this relationship because, regardless of one’s position on it, racism works. A police officer may not be personally racist, but, when it’s the end of the month and they need to hand out a few more tickets to make quota, it’s safest to do so in a low-income neighborhood where the average driver can’t make their life hell by hiring a lawyer, and, due to decades of racist redlining, most low-income neighborhoods are disproportionately Black and Latine, sooo… And a prison warden may not be personally racist, but racist white people are approved by jury selection more often than people who think the justice system is, itself, racist, so Black and Latine people are the easiest to jail and private prisons get more funding when they’re full, sooo… And a conservative politician may not be personally racist, but Black and Latine people predominantly vote Democrat, and, since they’re disproportionately imprisoned, if the politician denies prisoners the right to vote, they are more likely to get reelected, sooo…

Now, these people frequently are self-identifying, card-carrying racists. My point is, they don’t have to be. Any of them may, but none of them must. The process happens regardless. Racism exists and is efficient. And, in a capitalist society, where cops are competing for promotions, private prisons are competing for contracts, and politicians are competing for votes, if an unethical behavior sees a higher return than the alternative… then ethics are a luxury. There are hundreds of examples of businesses that claim, in periods of prosperity, that they prefer to do what is right over what is profitable. But what tune do they play when prosperity ends? Every boom has a bust - since 1900, the US has gone into recession about once every four years. And, in the lean season, not using this generations-old system built by white people to advantage their descendants is a liability. A values-based business typically goes one of three ways: compromising their values to stay competitive, getting bought by someone who compromised their values to stay competitive, or sticking to their guns and facing a higher risk of going out of business. Many choose to do the right thing, and some even survive. But that’s not the norm. Overall, the market trends toward the optimal strategy.

The collaborator treating nonwhite suffering as the cost of doing business also works rhetorically. The average conservative citizen doesn’t know anything about Syria, but they know the refugee crisis is something the Left seems to care about. So demonizing refugees is mutually beneficial for pundits and politicians who want to rally their base by spiting liberals and for white supremacists who want to mainstream racism against Arabs. The average conservative citizen doesn’t understand epidemiology, but they don’t want to blame their own party for letting half a million die of COVID. So calling it “the Chinese virus” is mutually beneficial for pundits and politicians who want to deflect blame onto a foreign nation and for white supremacists who want to mainstream racism against Asians.

Yet, despite their blatancy in collaborating with white supremacists, and having eerily similar goals to white supremacists, the collaborator maintains that they are, themselves, “non-racist.” Their decades of opposing affirmative action, right to assembly, police reform, fair voting efforts, redistricting, funding for public schools, prisoner’s rights, religious tolerance, shutting down Guantanamo, accessibility for non-English speakers, immigration, investment in low-income neighborhoods, decolonizing school curricula, Indigenous People’s Day, putting Harriet Tubman on the twenty, kneeling, ending the drug war, or withdrawing from the Middle East are framed as problems of implementation. “We agree with the aim of closing the racial pay gap, just not like this. We agree with the aim of Latin-Americans entering the country, just not like this. We agree with the aim of peaceful protest, just not like this.”

Of course, the onus is overwhelmingly on the Left to propose solutions, and, if things aren’t getting better, it’s because the Left’s solutions weren’t good enough. And often the issue they take with the Left’s solutions are the implication that there was anything racist about the problem in the first place; yes, white people are over-represented in the workforce, but it’s probably just a fluke. Their racism exists in the negative space. They never support white supremacy. They just disagree that the individual thing you’re talking about is an example of it. Getting a Republican to identify an actual incident of systemic racism is like trying to point at a shadow with a flashlight.

And it’s reasonable to ask, Jesus, how far can these guys push the envelope before the rest of the establishment calls them what they are? But, if you’re waiting for the moment a white moderate agrees mainstream conservatism has done something unequivocally and unacceptably racist, you’re underestimating what white people can accept and how long they can equivocate.

Which brings us to this little doop. There’s a lot to say about the white moderate. And I’m about to be that lefty who expends as many words complaining about liberals as he does fascists, but, look: as much as this series is about the tactics of the Far Right, it is at least as much about how the Center Left is susceptible to them… as well as complicit.

So, okay. When Democrats lose an election, what happens with the white, liberal, pundit class? Well, there’s suddenly a lot of chatter about how to talk to your racist uncle over Thanksgiving, about how liberals in red states can contact their representatives, about the value of debate. “This is our fault,” they say. “We let this happen because we didn’t have enough conversations with white conservatives.” You hear a lot more of that than talk about how the gutting of the Voting Rights Act cost a lot of the Left the right to vote, and what could be done to guarantee their representation in the next election. In fact, you hear more about how that kind of talk is alienating to the white conservatives who supported gutting the Voting Rights Act, about how reaching across the aisle is gonna mean easing off race talk, at least for now. POC representation is quickly reframed as a critical long-term goal, but, in the present moment, while we are competing for elected office, guaranteeing the minority vote is a luxury.

What’s prioritized is that the people who suppressed the Black vote in order to win an election not be made to feel that they are racist.

The white moderate is very cagey about breaking out the R-word for a fellow white person. There’s this definition of racism that most white people learn in grade school: racism is when you say mean things to other kids based on their skin color and it hurts their feelings; racism is about cruelty. And most harm done by white people, therefore, isn't racism because isn’t cruel, merely ignorant. Or apathetic. But ignorance and apathy can be reasoned with; you just gotta sit down and hash it out. Real white supremacy is about emotional distress or interpersonal violence; it is an uncommon and unpopular hearts and minds issue.

What this definition leaves out is any notion that white supremacy is about power. That white people who disavow racism still live longer, get paid better, get arrested less often, and are typically in position to negotiate with whoever’s in power. That being the default confers power upon you.

When children of white moderates get older and first brush up against this definition, wherein white supremacy is not small but all-encompassing, where it can be cruel, but is more often indifferent, and where every white person in the country is bound up in it and privileged by it whether they want to be or not - where it’s not about hurt feelings but about power - they don’t say, “oh, maybe the definition I grew up with might have been simplified for 9-year-olds”; or, “oh, maybe the definition given by white grown-ups might be less complete than the one Black grown-ups might give.” No, they say, “you can’t just redefine racism.”

Right out the gate, the white moderate is possessive not just of their whiteness but of the very definition of racism.

In the definition they know, racism exists only over here. And the white collaborator is a compatriot who shares their ultimate vision for the future, but who has simply gone off course. And they don’t see themselves as flawed individuals with a long way still to go; they’ve already arrived! They’re the destination everyone else needs to get to! Living proof that white supremacy can be easily and painlessly opted out of. They can’t see collaborators as opponents because there is no definition of white supremacy that includes collaborators and doesn’t also include them.

And this is critically important: they don’t want to start thinking of themselves as white. They don’t want the constant awareness of one’s race or how one’s race is perceived – you know, the things the rest of humanity deals with. And who would want that? I’ll tell you who wants that: Nazis and klansmen want that. They’re the only ones who like thinking about whiteness all day. So, white moderates cling to the other definition, the one that comforts them. They may be more or less willing to collaborate with people of color, but white-as-default is one concession that can never be made, in part because it’s the one they won’t acknowledge.

Their ideal is a kind of Big-Tent Antiracism, where victory comes by winning over reactionary conservatives. This might strike you as odd, given that reactionary conservatives have seen many victories in the last twenty years, none of which came by winning over us. White supremacists bolster their numbers by finding little, disgruntled pockets of America that have not, heretofore, engaged much in politics and radicalizing them to the cause, and then pitching themselves to white collaborators as a demographic now large enough to sway a narrow election. If moderates wanted to counter this strategy, they might look at who out there is sympathetic to progressive causes but isn’t voting, maybe because they don’t feel liberal candidates represent them, or maybe because someone just happened to shut down all the polling locations in their neighborhood. And, you know, mathematically, there’s probably a lot more disenfranchised people of color who match that description than racist white people who aren’t already Republicans.

But that strategy would mean doubling down on anti-racist talking points instead of easing off of them. It would mean a willingness to alienate some white people. It’s… giving up on them. It’s admitting a significant percentage of American whiteness is not on the side of racial equality. It means there’s a definition of racism where it isn’t fringe, but common and pervasive, and where addressing it requires thinking about their own whiteness. It means asking why they feel more affinity for white people who oppose them than people of color they claim to agree with. And, since all that seems intolerable, they fixate on the kinds of gestures that feel like moving in the right direction but run very little risk of arriving anywhere. “How about, instead of defunding the police, we give them more money than any Administration in decades, but, also, Juneteenth is a national holiday now. That should make everybody happy, right?”

The Left has the numbers to leave behind white centrists who slow down anti-racist efforts, and it doesn’t because white moderates don’t want to. They and the white collaborators are supposed to be in this together, and they are… just not in the way they think.

The irony is that the Right feels no affinity for white moderates whatsoever. They hate - and I mean haaaaate - white moderates. Smug pricks always talking about unity whenever they win an election. “Reach across the aisle?” That's what you say when you’ve lost and you want the other guys to make concessions they don’t have to make—you don’t do it when you’re in power! Are they trying to humiliate us, or did we really lose to a bunch of clowns who don’t even know how to win right? Debasing themselves in front of minorities just to get their votes when they clearly aren’t going to do anything real for them. Christ, at least white supremacists are honest!

The Right will threaten POC sometimes just to call the white moderates’ bluff.

I’ve been on here talking about conservative rhetoric for - oof - almost four years now, and people ask me a lot, “When they say X, what should my counterargument be?” And I get where they're coming from, but this is the wrong question. Counterarguments don’t matter because this isn’t a debate. It’s a show of dominance. They have declared the only approved weapons are words and attention. They have decided who is and isn’t included in the fight, and they have defined the victory conditions. It’s all lies - it’s all-white community theatre - but they are testing whether you will submit to the power structure they just outlined. They are banking on white moderates’ desire to keep things collegial.

Asking “what should my counterargument be” in such a scenario - as though the right sequence of words will defeat your opponent, like we’re in fucking Hogwarts? - is essentially asking “how do I make sure this little doop [white moderate] wins?”

But this isn’t who needs to win.

This [POC] is who needs to win, and, if you’re white, you need to be over here [anti-racist] treating them [POC] like allies and not disposable game tokens. I’ve collected as many resources as I can find by POC on what they need and want from white allies, and put them in the down-there part. There’s a plurality of opinions on this, so I recommend reading more than one.

We’ll talk about what to do with provocateurs on college campuses in a later video. But understand two things: they don’t care about words, they care about power; and their way of doing business always comes at a cost. And, in the event you cannot stop business from being done, be prepared to split the bill.