319
Womens rights (lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] lemonwood@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

I think that's just the dishonest justification, not the actual feeling behind it.

[-] mathemachristian@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

I mean the feeling comes from somewhere right? You don't just wake up hating people, there has to be some propaganda effort that gives a reason to hate groups of people.

[-] lemonwood@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes, but we have to go back further, to find the cause. Rather than the propaganda, which people willingly latch on to, I see the material circumstances as primary. And next is the individual decision of racists to make "weaker" people suffer for their benefit. People marked as targets by hegemonic structures. They do this to materially elevate themselves, to be actually better off. And short term, it works. In the mind of French racists, Muslims need to be disciplined to keep up wage disparity and keep Muslim workers doing the kind of work they don't want to do themselves, keep them living in the bad neighborhoods (banlieues) and so on. They don't need to understand economics for that. They see the difference in living standard every day.

This consciously evil decision comes first. They then go out and look for propaganda to deal with the resulting cognitive disconnance. To be able to go on thinking of themselves as "good" people. This theory is materialist in putting the real conditions first, dialectical in explaining how ideas arise and influence back the material and it also explains, why the propaganda can often be so incredibly bad: it doesn't need to be convincing. The racist has already made the decision to let themselves be convinced, before they seek out the propaganda. They are willing to accept anything that offers a band aid on their aching psyche after they wounded it themselves by deliberately suppressing their inborn human empathy in a consciously evil act.

[-] mathemachristian@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

It's the base influencing the superstructure influencing the base etc. a lot of the islamophobia can be traced to the crusades, later west europe's fight with the ottoman empire (people tend to forget that it laid siege to Vienna, twice!), it got used and repurposed through the ages and is currently being stoked by the bourgeoisie to divide the labor-class into a labor aristocracy and a proletariat. If you wanna know why an individual is racist it's obviously gonna differ from person to person but a lot of the tropes can easily be traced.

The "muslim/asiatic horde" for instance even etymologically comes from the ottoman "ordu", the turkish word for army.

this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
319 points (100.0% liked)

Europe

6648 readers
57 users here now

Europe

Rules:

  1. All sources allowed. Voting decides what is reliable unless
  2. Articles which have been proven false beyond any doubt may be removed
  3. No personal attacks
  4. Posts in English, translations allowed

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS