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Comment by fallenfromgrace | Hacker News Reader

It has hints of "reverse racism" and tends to dismiss that racism is an issue...and if it is an issue, racism against white people is the actual and bigger issue. That's closer to the camp of "white supremacist" or at the very least, a common defense used by white supremacist. Generally, this would be someone who is, in his position, at the very best, wilfully ignorant.

I was not the one dismissed him, nor do I work at basecamp, nor am I Ryan Singer, so I can't be sure that's why he was suspended...can only guess with the same information available to you.

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> It has hints of "reverse racism" and tends to dismiss that racism is an issue...and if it is an issue, racism against white people is the actual and bigger issue. That's closer to the camp of "white supremacist" or at the very least, a common defense used by white supremacist.

This is the problem with cultural Marxism / “wokeness”. It’s a sanctified, totalizing ideology that admits zero daylight between “100% agreement” and “you are a white supremacist/literal Nazi”.

In that way it functions exactly like a “state religion”: in public, you’re either a true believer, act like one or are mute and don’t give away your position. Soon they will make you mouth the words or face denunciation. Perhaps we are already there in the vanguard of coastal tech companies.

This whole thing is counter to the very spirit of liberalism.

I don't know, reading the quote you've included in this comment - it seems a lot less "totalizing" than you're saying, considering the quote itself uses the loose terms "closer to the camp of" or "a common defense used by". There's already nuance and wiggle room there, so, I'm not sure how you're immediately launching into a pretty sanctimonious and totalizing statement that "cultural Marxism" admits zero daylight between extremes.

Could you help me understand why you feel "cultural Marxism" is so, totally, totalizing?

Not OP, but you'd have to have blinders on to not see the political left increasingly branding everyone they disagree with as evil / Nazis / white supremacists. That's what happened above, and you're rationalizing it here.

If you think the political left increasingly branding "everyone" as evil / Nazis / white supremacists is bad - wait till you hear about people claiming the "political left" all brand people as evil / Nazis / white supremacists.

I remember when the political right branded everyone as a communist.

> Could you help me understand why you feel "cultural Marxism" is so, totally, totalizing?

It simply means that the ideology won’t stop until it has transformed all of culture. The progress thus far has been academia -> journalism -> tech companies. It’s coming for the rest of society. There is no area of life or society that this ideology does not claim to address.

You missed “sanctified” - the ideology resists criticism. Do you not see that this is the way religion used to be?

> It simply means that the ideology won’t stop until it has transformed all of culture. The progress thus far has been academia -> journalism -> tech companies. It’s coming for the rest of society. There is no area of life or society that this ideology does not claim to address.

So let me get this straight: You're railing against an ideology that you claim has progressed through a large section of society, and you think it is bad, and you think, presumably, that society ought to not be like that, at least in these many areas. And your criticism of that ideology is that it claims to address many areas of society?

> You missed “sanctified” - the ideology resists criticism. Do you not see that this is the way religion used to be?

You missed the bit where I used the word "sanctimonious".

There is no such thing as "cultural marxism", it's a term manufactured by modern libertarians to distract people with a fake culture war while they're robbed blind by corrupt politicians. Like "virtue signalling". It's also a red flag that someone is racist and ignorant, and should be called out in the same way as flat earth, climate denial or any other range of denialist mindsets.

Marxism is a basis for critical theory. The critical theory that made a species jump from academia to the mainstream has its roots in the ideas of Gramsci and Marcuse, among others.

I call it “cultural Marxism” because unlike plain old Marxism, it has relatively little to say about the redistribution of wealth and other economic interests. In this way it’s made itself innocuous to corporate America, which would otherwise mobilize its immune system to reject the ideas outright.

Case in point: I recently sat through some corporate training on privilege that did not, once, mention wealth or economic privilege.

What's Marxist about it, then?

Marxism is about the politics of the underclass - the revolutionary struggle to achieve a just society by upending the inequities of Capitalism. So the proletarian uprising wrests control of society from the bourgeoisie.

Cultural Marxism redefines the oppressed and oppressor along the lines of identity rather than economy. This makes it much more palatable to a capitalist society.

Ah, so it's just like Marxism, except without any of the discussion of Capitalism? And its an ideology about identity, which you feel sets it clearly apart from other ideologies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...

The commenter did none of those things. They simply pointed out that the defense is often used by actual white supremacists.

"I didn't do it". That's how you know they did it.

The irony of this whole section of the thread in the context of racism...

And if someone sees you making an OK hand sign, that's a secret white supremacist gesture and you should be fired.

"It has hints of "reverse racism" "

"That's closer to the camp of "white supremacist" or at the very least, a common defense used by white supremacist."

This kind of gaslighthing though.

"My opponent disagrees with me and is therefore a White Supremacist, or at least close to one!"

If one person says 'this org is racist because of white privilege' - it's possibly contentious, but not unreasonable to suggest that this statement is racist in and of itself.

Just because you might deny 'reverse racism' exists, doesn't mean that it's true, it's a denial, not a disagreement.

Also, indicating that 'this office is not a place of white supremacy' is not 'denying' someone else experience, or their position that 'racism exists'. It's an observation of the nature of the ostensible problem.

It's not 'wilfully ignorant' it's more like 'wilfully insensitive / disagreeable / inflammatory'

It's not a matter of disagreement about 2 equally valid viewpoints, it's about one side being wrong about everything following a deliberate and calculated campaign of misinformation, and the other side pointing out how wrong they are and how dangerous their ideology is.

No-one likes being told they're wrong, which is why the capitol riots happened on 6 January and Trump still got so many votes despite being an abjectly horrible president, and the head of a party that does nothing for the vast majority of its constituents.

This kind of rhetoric I think might be at the root of the problem.

If you believe the company founders, in the face of being told they occupy their position 'due to privilege' is 'right about everything' then you're the problem.

Telling executives that they are 'denying racism exists' when they are actually only denying that it exists at the company is obviously straw manning.

If you're of the position that 'anyone who questions claims of racism is a white supremacist', then you're entitled to that position, but it's 'war language' that is driving a lot of irresponsible toxicity in the workplace.

"Telling executives that they are 'denying racism exists' when they are actually only denying that it exists at the company is obviously straw manning."

Singer's quote:

“I strongly disagree we live in a white supremacist culture,” Singer said. “I don’t believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist.”

He wasn't talking about the company, he was talking about society. Unless you think he was saying they "live in" the company ...

Saying he got sacked for questioning it at the company is a spin added later by his apologists.

To the extent that white supremacy is synonymous with racism (which, at least at this point in history, I think is arguable given the fact that we live in a world dominated by the vestiges of the British empire, and that structural inequality is almost entirely against non-white people globally) then people who question the claim of racism are at the very least inadvertently advancing the causes of white supremacy.

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