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"To some on the Right, Japan is a paradise of racial purity..." Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? If not, w

"To some on the Right, Japan is a paradise of racial purity..." Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? If not, why bring up the Right in this sentence? When I was growing up, Right overlapped with Conservative, but racists were a discrete group of people. If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist?

zarkov99 6y ago
To be fair, the author mocks the left as well, right after: "while to some on the Left, it’s a bastion of xenophobia and isolationism" He is obviously parodying two extremes: the right's "racism is fine" and the left's "everybody else is racist".
- CivBase 6y ago
  I'm not sure how to read that as mocking the left - unless the author is saying that liberals commonly overstate Japan's isolationist ideals and tendencies for xenophobia. Even if that was the author's intent, it's a pretty minor mock compared to being associated with ideals of racial purism.
castratikron 6y ago
Key word "some". He is talking about far-right politics
aiisjustanif 6y ago
Anyone can be racist. Political opinions need not apply, they might suggest, but that’s not safe route to judge others off of.
bilbo0s 6y ago
If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist? "Conservative". But in the US for instance, there are very few, say, fiscal conservatives. "Fiscal Conservatism" simply doesn't exist the way that we might have been used to seeing it in the 70's or even 80's. Modern administrations on the right consistently outspend modern administrations on the left for example. Which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago, but happens regularly today because on the right there are now different driving priorities. All of which is fine. There's nothing wrong with any of that so long as those on the right are representing the interests of their supporters. Like it or not, that's what democracy is about. But it leaves many, many people in society with no "political home" so to speak.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Conservatism is a lot more expansive than just "fiscal conservatism." The Republican Party as originally constituted wasn't even fiscally conservative. Most center-left people and center-right people just don't meaningfully disagree on, e.g., whether we should still have Social Security. Social and political conservatism are the flashpoints. For examples consider the 1619 Project. It freaks out social and political conservatives because veneration of society's history and institutions is a basic precept. This is not something unique to American Republicans. I once had a Japanese acquaintance go through several hundred years of history to explain to me why Japanese culture is less susceptible to political corruption than Chinese culture. Conservatives internalize the saying that "90% of everything is crap." They believe that our current prosperity is the product of a set of societal choices, and we need to install respect for those choices because if we try something new, there is a 90% probability it will be bad and harmful. Liberals are, by their nature, don't venerate history, and are optimistic about new ideas. It doesn't matter to them that there are almost no examples of successful countries that cast an intensely critical eye on their own history. They don't think we need to venerate Jefferson, the Constitution, etc., to preserve our democracy. They're optimistic that we can replace reliance on history and tradition with new frameworks and new ideas. And they're confident that those things will turn out well.
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    If your dividing line is "who venerates history?" Then there are no differences between the lefties and the righties. It's just my observation, but the issues lefties and righties have with each other spring mainly from which aspects of history they venerate? Do you beleive the most important thing about the Civil War is the Confederacy and their right to self determination even on matters of slavery? Or do you think the most important thing about the Civil War is the defeat of said Confederacy and the abolition of slavery in every land under our dominion, no matter the determination level of its people? "Both may be, but one must be, wrong." Is the Trail of Tears important? Or is the defeat of the Nazis important? If it's the defeat of the Nazis, do we tolerate the people hoisting Nazi flags? Lefties and righties differ on these issues. Believe it or not, we have a mechanism to handle all these contradictions. The US Constitution. Which brings us to the second major issue that lefties and righties make in society. Their selective interpretation of the Constitution. Again, I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment that these people respect the Constitution. Neither lefties, nor righties, really respect the US Constitution. If they did, we wouldn't have people frothing at the mouth at the sight of the nazis/confederates/whatever-they-ares with their flags. Nor would Colin Kaepernick and other black athletes have people frothing at the mouth when they kneel. Nor would "stop and frisk" have ever even been conceived. Nor would privacy violations be done by the state at such scale in the name of security. Nor would minorities be discriminated against. Etc etc etc and on and on and on. The issue with lefties and righties is precisely that they don't believe in the Constitutional rights of whatever group it is they don't like. That, more than anything, is what has caused all of the problems in our society lately. Politics and political people have simply changed considerably over the years. Very little is what it was like 50 years ago. But again, as long as these people represent the beliefs of their supporters, what can you do? That's how it's supposed to work.
secondcoming 6y ago
> what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist? I hope I get this right. Everyone is racist, but it's only bad to be a racist if you have power. White people have all the power and so are the worst type of racist. To deny being racist is to be fragile and also proof that you're a racist. So 'someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist' doesn't exist.
- Avicebron 6y ago
  I hope you don't believe the absolutism of "white people have ALL the power"...
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    I never said I believed any of it, I'm just providing my current understanding of the world.
  - toiletfuneral 6y ago
    Genuinely curious, what structures of power aren’t dominated by whites?
mhh__ 6y ago
> To Some
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? Racial/ethnic/national/cultural (including religious) chauvinism has been an attribute of Conservatism/Right politics forever (also, class chauvinism, though over time that's become less pronounced, or at least less overt, faster than the others, probably because it's one of the things you can't really get away with out loud in systems of universal suffrage.) > If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist? If the not racist extends to excluding most of the other chauvinisms of the right, “neoliberal” is probably the best label. If it's just specifically the absence of racial/ethnic chauvinism, just “Right”; that racism is a characteristic of the faction as a whole doesn't mean it's essential for each member (the fallacy of division is a popular fallacy, but still a fallacy.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 6y ago
  "Chauvinism" isn't incorrect, but a very loaded framing. Conservatives believe that culture is of overriding importance to the prosperity of a society, and do not embrace cultural relativism. What makes the United States rich and Bangladesh poor? A liberal would immediately go to explanations involving colonialism, etc. A conservative is much more likely to go to explanations involving bribery, political corruption, etc. Liberals tend to be cultural relativists, so they perceive those cultural explanations as being "chauvinist" or "racist." But there are plenty of Bangladeshis who would give the same explanation. Among other Bangladeshis I know (I'm from the country), especially ones back home, they're much more likely to blame cultural/political institutions rather than colonialism.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  'Neoliberal' has embedded assumptions about the ordering of society and role of the state on both domestic and international stages that many antiracist rightists would vociferously oppose (whatever Palladium Mag's smoking, or the boogaloo libertarians, for example - though they often pretend to exist outside of the left/right dichotomy). As easy as it is to reduce 'the right' into the buckets of proto-fascism, and the Clinton-era uni-party consensus - it makes the category of little use as anything other than an ad-hominem. The right is, and so far as I can tell, has always been defined in opposition to the politics of the political left, which having a coherent intellectual lineage, and a cohesive network of political philosophers, has been free to define itself. As a result, the right-wing tends to be a hodge-podge of largely unaffiliated political factions whose antipathy to one-another is only constrained by their unified foe.
Spooky23 6y ago
Today, it’s more like a centrist. The average, vocal, “conservative” that you’ll find in US media or politics is a reactionary whose bona fides consist of a few narrowly focused issues that pander to a few core constituencies including now, racists and nativists. They often don’t share conservative ideals beyond that. Growing up, my family were blue collar Catholics. They were fairly conservative from a personal lifestyle perspective, but didn’t care about most of the “Conservative” issues of today. Today middle class Hispanics are probably the closest analog.
- CivBase 6y ago
  > The average, vocal, “conservative” that you’ll find in US media or politics is a reactionary whose bona fides consist of a few narrowly focused issues that pander to a few core constituencies including now, racists and nativists. They often don’t share conservative ideals beyond that. I don't watch much TV (especially "news" channels) so I might just be out of the loop here, but how has US conservative media been pandering to racists?
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    “America First” and “Guns and God” are dog whistles for those types of people. You don’t hear anything about conservative principles. Just demagoguery and wielding of power.
    - CivBase 6y ago
      "America First" is just the principle that the US government should prioritize US interests over the interests of other nations and people. It's about nationality, not race. Anti-gun-control and pro-Christianity are just popular subjects for conservatives. Again, not about race. In fact, those are principles that you just claimed they don't talk about. How are those "dog whistles for those types of people"? Isn't that like saying "defund the police" and "black lives matter" are dog whistles for communists?
rayiner 6y ago
> If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist? There isn't one. Many liberals consider conservative beliefs to be inherently racist. Opposition to the ACA, for example, was decried as "racist": https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2013/11/21/is-opposition-to-obamacare-racist/?sh=315b303da603 https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2013/11/21/is-opposit.... A lot of this worldview isn't unwarranted. Conservative opposition to the federal government is perceived very differently among say Black people, who relied on the federal government to protect their Civil Rights. A conservative might point out, "many homogenous countries have weak federal governments--it's a general principle that's valid irrespective of racism." And at the same time, the view of a Black Democrat on that point is totally valid too.
- jberryman 6y ago
  > A conservative might point out... I wonder who is this platonic Conservative you're describing in these comments; the ghost of William F. Buckley?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Your rank-and-file conservative doesn’t articulate it in those terms, obviously. But my family in Oregon doesn’t like the federal government ruling them from 3,000 miles away for concrete reasons. (In their case it’s long-standing family bitterness at the government seizing their homestead to build the pacific coast highway.) Those same social and political phenomena are present the world over, and are the reason federal systems exist all over the world. Yes, it’s a William F. Buckley type that might make the comparison to Switzerland to explain how federalism is a neutral principle. But that doesn’t mean that what the folks in Oregon feel is merely pretext for racism. Just because someone can’t articulate their attitudes in terms of political theory (in this case, the resentment people have for being governed from afar and the governmental structures created to mitigate that) doesn’t mean that those attitudes can’t be explained in terms of that political theory. The Buckley type is just articulating and explaining concrete social phenomena on the ground.
    - 6y ago
aidenn0 6y ago
The key word in the quote is "some"
treeman79 6y ago
Disagreeing is racist, homophobic, sexist, etc. If you have any opinion not belonging to the loudest angriest group, then you get all the labels and worse.
fomine3 6y ago
Former prime minister Abe Shinzo is famous right-wing politician but interestingly, he introduced limited term immigrants(?) program in weird way due to shortage of lower salary worker.

zarkov99 6y ago

To be fair, the author mocks the left as well, right after: "while to some on the Left, it’s a bastion of xenophobia and isolationism" He is obviously parodying two extremes: the right's "racism is fine" and the left's "everybody else is racist".

CivBase 6y ago
I'm not sure how to read that as mocking the left - unless the author is saying that liberals commonly overstate Japan's isolationist ideals and tendencies for xenophobia. Even if that was the author's intent, it's a pretty minor mock compared to being associated with ideals of racial purism.

castratikron 6y ago

Key word "some". He is talking about far-right politics

aiisjustanif 6y ago

Anyone can be racist. Political opinions need not apply, they might suggest, but that’s not safe route to judge others off of.

bilbo0s 6y ago

If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist? "Conservative". But in the US for instance, there are very few, say, fiscal conservatives. "Fiscal Conservatism" simply doesn't exist the way that we might have been used to seeing it in the 70's or even 80's. Modern administrations on the right consistently outspend modern administrations on the left for example. Which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago, but happens regularly today because on the right there are now different driving priorities. All of which is fine. There's nothing wrong with any of that so long as those on the right are representing the interests of their supporters. Like it or not, that's what democracy is about. But it leaves many, many people in society with no "political home" so to speak.

rayiner 6y ago
Conservatism is a lot more expansive than just "fiscal conservatism." The Republican Party as originally constituted wasn't even fiscally conservative. Most center-left people and center-right people just don't meaningfully disagree on, e.g., whether we should still have Social Security. Social and political conservatism are the flashpoints. For examples consider the 1619 Project. It freaks out social and political conservatives because veneration of society's history and institutions is a basic precept. This is not something unique to American Republicans. I once had a Japanese acquaintance go through several hundred years of history to explain to me why Japanese culture is less susceptible to political corruption than Chinese culture. Conservatives internalize the saying that "90% of everything is crap." They believe that our current prosperity is the product of a set of societal choices, and we need to install respect for those choices because if we try something new, there is a 90% probability it will be bad and harmful. Liberals are, by their nature, don't venerate history, and are optimistic about new ideas. It doesn't matter to them that there are almost no examples of successful countries that cast an intensely critical eye on their own history. They don't think we need to venerate Jefferson, the Constitution, etc., to preserve our democracy. They're optimistic that we can replace reliance on history and tradition with new frameworks and new ideas. And they're confident that those things will turn out well.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  If your dividing line is "who venerates history?" Then there are no differences between the lefties and the righties. It's just my observation, but the issues lefties and righties have with each other spring mainly from which aspects of history they venerate? Do you beleive the most important thing about the Civil War is the Confederacy and their right to self determination even on matters of slavery? Or do you think the most important thing about the Civil War is the defeat of said Confederacy and the abolition of slavery in every land under our dominion, no matter the determination level of its people? "Both may be, but one must be, wrong." Is the Trail of Tears important? Or is the defeat of the Nazis important? If it's the defeat of the Nazis, do we tolerate the people hoisting Nazi flags? Lefties and righties differ on these issues. Believe it or not, we have a mechanism to handle all these contradictions. The US Constitution. Which brings us to the second major issue that lefties and righties make in society. Their selective interpretation of the Constitution. Again, I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment that these people respect the Constitution. Neither lefties, nor righties, really respect the US Constitution. If they did, we wouldn't have people frothing at the mouth at the sight of the nazis/confederates/whatever-they-ares with their flags. Nor would Colin Kaepernick and other black athletes have people frothing at the mouth when they kneel. Nor would "stop and frisk" have ever even been conceived. Nor would privacy violations be done by the state at such scale in the name of security. Nor would minorities be discriminated against. Etc etc etc and on and on and on. The issue with lefties and righties is precisely that they don't believe in the Constitutional rights of whatever group it is they don't like. That, more than anything, is what has caused all of the problems in our society lately. Politics and political people have simply changed considerably over the years. Very little is what it was like 50 years ago. But again, as long as these people represent the beliefs of their supporters, what can you do? That's how it's supposed to work.

secondcoming 6y ago

> what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist? I hope I get this right. Everyone is racist, but it's only bad to be a racist if you have power. White people have all the power and so are the worst type of racist. To deny being racist is to be fragile and also proof that you're a racist. So 'someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist' doesn't exist.

Avicebron 6y ago
I hope you don't believe the absolutism of "white people have ALL the power"...
- secondcoming 6y ago
  I never said I believed any of it, I'm just providing my current understanding of the world.
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  Genuinely curious, what structures of power aren’t dominated by whites?

mhh__ 6y ago

> To Some

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? Racial/ethnic/national/cultural (including religious) chauvinism has been an attribute of Conservatism/Right politics forever (also, class chauvinism, though over time that's become less pronounced, or at least less overt, faster than the others, probably because it's one of the things you can't really get away with out loud in systems of universal suffrage.) > If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist? If the not racist extends to excluding most of the other chauvinisms of the right, “neoliberal” is probably the best label. If it's just specifically the absence of racial/ethnic chauvinism, just “Right”; that racism is a characteristic of the faction as a whole doesn't mean it's essential for each member (the fallacy of division is a popular fallacy, but still a fallacy.)

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 6y ago
"Chauvinism" isn't incorrect, but a very loaded framing. Conservatives believe that culture is of overriding importance to the prosperity of a society, and do not embrace cultural relativism. What makes the United States rich and Bangladesh poor? A liberal would immediately go to explanations involving colonialism, etc. A conservative is much more likely to go to explanations involving bribery, political corruption, etc. Liberals tend to be cultural relativists, so they perceive those cultural explanations as being "chauvinist" or "racist." But there are plenty of Bangladeshis who would give the same explanation. Among other Bangladeshis I know (I'm from the country), especially ones back home, they're much more likely to blame cultural/political institutions rather than colonialism.
crocodiletears 6y ago
'Neoliberal' has embedded assumptions about the ordering of society and role of the state on both domestic and international stages that many antiracist rightists would vociferously oppose (whatever Palladium Mag's smoking, or the boogaloo libertarians, for example - though they often pretend to exist outside of the left/right dichotomy). As easy as it is to reduce 'the right' into the buckets of proto-fascism, and the Clinton-era uni-party consensus - it makes the category of little use as anything other than an ad-hominem. The right is, and so far as I can tell, has always been defined in opposition to the politics of the political left, which having a coherent intellectual lineage, and a cohesive network of political philosophers, has been free to define itself. As a result, the right-wing tends to be a hodge-podge of largely unaffiliated political factions whose antipathy to one-another is only constrained by their unified foe.

Spooky23 6y ago

Today, it’s more like a centrist. The average, vocal, “conservative” that you’ll find in US media or politics is a reactionary whose bona fides consist of a few narrowly focused issues that pander to a few core constituencies including now, racists and nativists. They often don’t share conservative ideals beyond that. Growing up, my family were blue collar Catholics. They were fairly conservative from a personal lifestyle perspective, but didn’t care about most of the “Conservative” issues of today. Today middle class Hispanics are probably the closest analog.

CivBase 6y ago
> The average, vocal, “conservative” that you’ll find in US media or politics is a reactionary whose bona fides consist of a few narrowly focused issues that pander to a few core constituencies including now, racists and nativists. They often don’t share conservative ideals beyond that. I don't watch much TV (especially "news" channels) so I might just be out of the loop here, but how has US conservative media been pandering to racists?
- Spooky23 6y ago
  “America First” and “Guns and God” are dog whistles for those types of people. You don’t hear anything about conservative principles. Just demagoguery and wielding of power.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    "America First" is just the principle that the US government should prioritize US interests over the interests of other nations and people. It's about nationality, not race. Anti-gun-control and pro-Christianity are just popular subjects for conservatives. Again, not about race. In fact, those are principles that you just claimed they don't talk about. How are those "dog whistles for those types of people"? Isn't that like saying "defund the police" and "black lives matter" are dog whistles for communists?

rayiner 6y ago

> If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist? There isn't one. Many liberals consider conservative beliefs to be inherently racist. Opposition to the ACA, for example, was decried as "racist": https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2013/11/21/is-opposition-to-obamacare-racist/?sh=315b303da603 https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2013/11/21/is-opposit.... A lot of this worldview isn't unwarranted. Conservative opposition to the federal government is perceived very differently among say Black people, who relied on the federal government to protect their Civil Rights. A conservative might point out, "many homogenous countries have weak federal governments--it's a general principle that's valid irrespective of racism." And at the same time, the view of a Black Democrat on that point is totally valid too.

jberryman 6y ago
> A conservative might point out... I wonder who is this platonic Conservative you're describing in these comments; the ghost of William F. Buckley?
- rayiner 6y ago
  Your rank-and-file conservative doesn’t articulate it in those terms, obviously. But my family in Oregon doesn’t like the federal government ruling them from 3,000 miles away for concrete reasons. (In their case it’s long-standing family bitterness at the government seizing their homestead to build the pacific coast highway.) Those same social and political phenomena are present the world over, and are the reason federal systems exist all over the world. Yes, it’s a William F. Buckley type that might make the comparison to Switzerland to explain how federalism is a neutral principle. But that doesn’t mean that what the folks in Oregon feel is merely pretext for racism. Just because someone can’t articulate their attitudes in terms of political theory (in this case, the resentment people have for being governed from afar and the governmental structures created to mitigate that) doesn’t mean that those attitudes can’t be explained in terms of that political theory. The Buckley type is just articulating and explaining concrete social phenomena on the ground.
  - 6y ago

aidenn0 6y ago

The key word in the quote is "some"

treeman79 6y ago

Disagreeing is racist, homophobic, sexist, etc. If you have any opinion not belonging to the loudest angriest group, then you get all the labels and worse.

fomine3 6y ago

Former prime minister Abe Shinzo is famous right-wing politician but interestingly, he introduced limited term immigrants(?) program in weird way due to shortage of lower salary worker.