Libertarians and dumb shit

I really should know better at my age (and educational state) than to be wading in to a debate that looks like it could be BLOG BEEF in the making, buuuuuuut...

On Pickled Politics this eve, after strenuous charades and serving of food/washing/loading of dishwashers for about 20 people or so, I sees this.

Now, I guess I have to comment because:

a) my boyfriend is a white libertarian and
b) he's demonstrated this kind of frankly depressing ignorance before.

Though I would like to hope that since that evening, he's going to think a little bit before he does it again. I keep reminding him of it every now and again so that he doesn't get complacent, and he fact-checks me. It's a great partnership. :-D

I don't actually mind libertarians at all. Barring the ones who are actually just selfish, semi-deranged conservatives who use 'libertarian' to mean 'extremely bigoted and misanthropic conservative-in-disguise' (or Randies, as one might term them, since these are also usually the kind of libertarian who thinks that 'not leaving poor people to die' is a crime against their god, the free market), libertarians are OK. I was about to say: hey, I married one.

Um, anyway. Charlotte Gore is OK. I'm not sure that my linking to her is really all that... necessary, but yeah, there you go. I don't really read her or anything, but she doesn't seem to be totally clueless. I mean, she seems to understand what 'racism' is (for anyone who was wondering, racism = prejudice + power) better than most other libertarians I've encountered online. Barring my bf who, let's be honest, is something of a miracle. I would elaborate, but I don't want to give away his identity wantonly.

However, as I've said to him, I often can't help agreeing that libertarianism is for rich, white people, or in the parlance of this country, white middle-class people. The problem is that so many of them argue from this cloud cuckoo land vision, where the world is all a beautiful place and nobody needs help to get anywhere. I know that they're not stupid per se, they're just ignorantly idealistic white liberals. If you are white and middle-class, you have had both racial privilege and class privilege handed to you throughout your life. Racial privilege, for me, is the bigger issue, because it's a lot harder to lose than is class privilege. You can 'downsize,' take a less high-flying job, or be 'an old Etonian on the median wage,' as Devil's Kitchen claims to be. However, if you're non-white, you can't dye your skin - or your family - white. I can pass for white occasionally, but I feel a strong affinity to parts of Indian culture that just isn't there for some parts of English culture. Give me the Mahabharat over the Bible any day.

Which is where my gripe comes in:

OK. So, my class must be defined by my parents; Sunny's race is defined by his parents. I can no more help the income of my parents than Sunny can affect the race of his.

So, there is an equivalence: yes?

Firstly, as LeftOutside points out in this EXCELLENT post, DK totally misunderstood what Sunny was talking about when he said 'class war.' He also misunderstood the definition of 'class' being used.

Secondly: FAIL. As I mentioned above, you can change your economic classification (which is how I generally understand 'class' as well) but you can't dye yourself white! Not that that stops the skin-lightening industry!

This is where the cloud cuckoo land bit comes in:

Once again, we see how the Left prefers to label people by their differences—and why? So that human beings can be kept at each others' throats—through the generation of class envy, race hatred, religious differences. This is an old, old tactic which I call divide et impera—divide and rule—and I have written about it extensively.

It is better for people to be labelled, put into boxes and the differences between them emphasised—rather than uniting them in the realision that we are all human beings together—because that causes problems and tensions.

(All quotes from here).

Um, excuse me, but I am a non-white female. As in, I am one of them who is often figured as the step above the Ultimate Imaginary Victim in bigots' mythology of racism - the one-legged black lesbian, with the implication that I, like she, doesn't exist and that if I do, it doesn't really matter.

Last time I checked - EVERY time I have checked - it was either right-wingers or self-proclaimed 'liberals' who practised racism (quick Q: is 'mild' or 'subtle' racism, as opposed to 'race hatred' OK then?) and the demonisation of religious difference (i.e. if it's non-Judaeo-Christian and it's making a fuss - BAN IT!). The practice of 'divide and rule' was also famously used in India (and Africa) by the British, and oddly enough, none of them were particularly left-wing by any stretch of the imagination. Just ask the Imperial War Graves Commission... What was it the British colonial authorities in Nigeria said when it was suggested that descendants of Africans killed in WWI might want proper graves when they were 'civilised enough to appreciate them' in 200-300 years' time by the then-head of the IWGC (apparently a liberal man for his time)? 'No.'

Misguided lefties in the SWP and Respect have been known to ally with Islamists in a desperate and moronic 'marriage of convenience,' it is true. Still, I would like DK to show me as many properly non-racist right-wingers or libertarians, as are among the regulars on PP, at least. When the debate about libertarians has reared its ugly head between my partner and I, even he struggles to name more 'positive' libertarians than himself and DK (and perchance, Gore?) and he is the only libertarian I've encountered who even remotely understands how much of a handicap - psychological as well as otherwise - not being white is.

I actually kinda like DK, even though I don't read him particularly, or necessarily agree with his views. I mean, it's about as white/male privilege as you can get to know that you can go and have a huge angry-child tantrum on your blog and have scores of white men come to make consoling, pacifying noises because, as with almost everything else, white men think and act like they are the powerful majority (as opposed to just one group of people) on the web (and in political blogging, they sure are). I was particularly impressed by his wife showing up on PP to upbraid Sunny for not using better language than him - nice one, Bella! Do you think you could have a word with the hubby too, though? Thanks.* But dumb shit is dumb shit, and really, there's little excuse when the Net is at your fingertips.

*(Side note: Oh my God, she reads I Blame The Patriarchy too! But she spouts Latin at random! I think I might sort of hate-love her).

Now my legs are aching fit to fall off, so I'm-a haul my freezing self under the covers and hopefully have a crying-free night of sleep. BYE, my pretties!