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[AuthenticM]

I'm going to lay my perception of American politics, so do correct me if I'm wrong.

From my understanding, everything the Republicans stand for is in support of white supremacy.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 reshuffled the two main political parties. White supremacists from the Democratic Party defected to the Republican Party, and non-white-supremacists from the Republican Party defected to the Democratic Party. At least, a good chunk of them. So the Republican Party was, at least from that moment on, by and for white supremacists.

The entire platform of that party, after that reshuffling, is about ensuring white supremacy in the United States of America. To me, their economic policies, such as "trickle-down" bullshit and other pro-business and anti-working-man policies, as well as their social policies, such as pro-prison, "tough-on-crime" policies, is all code for "we are going to fuck over blacks and every other non-white race because we want whites to dominate this country". This is the lense with which I observe american politics, and to be honest, it's been serving me pretty well so far. Everything "makes sense".

But I am not American and I do not live in America. So maybe it's not that much black-and-white. So I'm asking you: the Republicans who advocate or support these policies, do they, in their heart of hearts, genuinely believe that these policies are good policies and that they will serve America well? Or are they all in the know about all of it being in service of white supremacy, and they just make sure to choose their words carefully when in public so they can have plausible deniability?

 

[MadLaughter]

100% is pushing it, and a lot of it is subconscious, but it's not hard to connect a lot of platforms and policies to pro-white consequences.

Gerrymandering: Brown votes matter less
Voter ID: Make it harder for brown people to vote
Gun Rights: Protect whites from brown people
Pro cop/Military: Keep the brown people in line
War on Drugs: Keep brown people locked up
Remove Welfare: Keep brown people hungry
Less Public Education: Keep brown people in the dark
Save Christian Values: Resist/smother brown people's religions

Of course that's all a major simplification to fit a narrative, brown people can be replaced by 'poor people' in a number of the examples above, but that's not an accident. The right's policies very largely seem to work out for coal, gun and oil companies, conveniently.

 

[AuthenticM]

Of course that's all a major simplification to fit a narrative, brown people can be replaced by 'poor people' in a number of the examples above, but that's not an accident. The right's policies very largely seem to work out for coal, gun and oil companies, conveniently.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. These are not a bunch of coincidences; everything seems calculated.

Hence my asking: what percentage of Republicans genuinely believe in their heart of hearts that these policies are for the good of America and aren't in support of white supremacy?

 

[Nepenthe]

It's hard to tell to what extent the Republican Party understands they're the party of white supremacy, because there have been so many centuries of bloviating, double-speak, and historical revisionism that it's impossible to tell without being a fly on the wall which currently-living individuals are just drunk off the Kool-Aid or are indeed actively knowledgeable about the history of this country. Like, you can probably make an argument that Sessions is a consciously racist piece of shit, but Paul Ryan is probably still young enough to have lived in a world where he was only taught that the civil war wasn't actually about slavery. That's the thing about "whiteness" and white supremacy: "whiteness" has been an arbitrary and ever-increasing definition for centuries more than a reasonably defined ethnic identifier. It has also been so thoroughly baked into the fabric of this nation since its founding that it's practically invisible to white people who have the luxury of not thinking about it, making them more susceptible to the ambiguous language and appeals to nationalism.

 

[BaltimoreLarry]

A lot of Republicans I know could never be for a Pro-Choice party, and that's the only issue that sways their vote.

 

[Viewt]

From my perspective, it's about complete financial domination and subjugation of the middle and working classes. White supremacy is just how they exploit white America into dumping out their pockets. So while the party's chock-full of bigots, I think it's ultimately about hoarding money more than anything else.

 

[Trojita]

Save Christian Values: Resist/smother brown people's religions

Ehh, at least before the muslim scare it was always a tactic used to get their base to vote for fear of "The Atheist".

 

[Conciliator]

Yeah, that subtext and those inadvertent? consequences are there over and over again. I don't think that means there's a closed-door white-supremacist agenda at the top of the GOP, but, uh...man, sometimes it seems like it.

 

[bionic77]

Republicans have been opposing civil rights at almost every turn so if that is not their intention God help us if they start trying to fuck over minorities.

That said current Republicans are not a good representation of the party for the past few decades. The one thing they all used to agree on was reducing taxes on the rich.

Today? The only common thread is that they are all crazy.

 

[Marmaladefire]

Well, that and oppressing women, LGBT people and non christians.

 

[Toxi]

Republicans have been opposing civil rights at almost every turn so if that is not their intention God help us if they start trying to fuck over minorities.

That said current Republicans are not a good representation of the party for the past few decades. The one thing they all used to agree on was reducing taxes on the rich.

Today? The only common thread is that they are all crazy.

They still all agree on that.

 

[Pattycakes]

I would say it's more about Christian right supremecy. I wish more Christians realized how screwed up the Christian Right was and moved to the Christian center/left.

 

[Ogodei]

100% is pushing it, and a lot of it is subconscious, but it's not hard to connect a lot of platforms and policies to pro-white consequences.

Gerrymandering: Brown votes matter less
Voter ID: Make it harder for brown people to vote
Gun Rights: Protect whites from brown people
Pro cop/Military: Keep the brown people in line
War on Drugs: Keep brown people locked up
Remove Welfare: Keep brown people hungry
Less Public Education: Keep brown people in the dark
Save Christian Values: Resist/smother brown people's religions

Of course that's all a major simplification to fit a narrative, brown people can be replaced by 'poor people' in a number of the examples above, but that's not an accident. The right's policies very largely seem to work out for coal, gun and oil companies, conveniently.

Particularly on the Christian values front since black and hispanic Americans are Christian at higher rates than whites are. It's just Muslims (of North African, West Asian, or South Asian extraction) or Hindus who are the non-Christian dark-skinned minorities.

The modern GOP is built on rolling back the clock in this country. The social wing of the party wants the country to go back to 1954 (pre Brown v Board of Education, pre-Roe, pre-Griswold v Connecticut), the economic wing of the party wants the country to go back to 1932 (pre New Deal, though more extreme parts of the economic side want to go back to 1889, before the Sherman Antitrust law or any kind of government regulation of business).

The donors that fund the party care about the economic stuff and the base that votes for the party is in it for white supremacy.

 

[NealMcCauley]

I think it's more WASP supremacy, not just "white."

 

[shiba5]

Abortion, racism, and Christian "values".

 

[Mammoth Jones]

A lot of White people believe they know what's best for everyone and the best hands the world could be in is theirs because their culture is the most egalitarian at the end of the day.

This isn't limited to Republicans.

 

[Kurdel]

I think it's more WASP supremacy, not just "white."

fyi that W doesn’t stand for winning

 

[kess]

I think it's more WASP supremacy, not just "white."

Bingo. The GOP country club and Chamber of Commerce set just made this a more natural fit in the long run.

 

[Brakke]

This is a sizzling hot take.

"Tough-on-crime" isn't some sole interest of the GOP, either. Lots of Dems (Bill Clinton, yo) played that game. And lots of GOP people today are pushing justice system de-escalation.

 

[Heroman]

I think it's more WASP supremacy, not just "white."

This

 

[Netherscourge]

The Republican platform is about pushing back against social services and legislating Fire-and-Brimstone Christianity into common law.

 

[KernelPanic]

Of course that's all a major simplification to fit a narrative, brown people can be replaced by 'poor people' in a number of the examples above, but that's not an accident.

I think the term you are looking for is "people who would never vote Republican".

 

[BoogieWoogie]

No because dirty poors need to suffer as well.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

It's the party of the status quo, "things are great the way they were back in the day," which, not-entirely-coincidentally, was a status quo carried by white supremacist thought and legislation.

 

[Version 3.0]

I think the term you are looking for is "people who would never vote Republican".

Many poor people reliably vote Republican.

 

[shnurgleton]

No

It's about their skewed, highly idealized idea of what "fairness" is

No handouts
No handicaps
No help of any kind
No acknowledgement of complicated socioeconomic and cultural factors
Just random chance
Wealth is proof of deservingness

Republicans are like college kids who only absorbed their first day of Macroeconomics 101, saw a supply/demand graph and thought that the world worked that way: ceteris paribus.

 

[zeemumu]

fyi that W doesn't stand for winning

That W isn't gonna save you from getting screwed over if you don't meet the rest of the requirements. They just want you to think it will so they can screw you over unnoticed.

 

[cartographer]

A healthy portion of it is about abortion. Even if you can reason your way through to a lot if them, it often just comes down to abortion.

The racism is a massive part of it though.

 

[bionic77]

They still all agree on that.

A lot of the new Tea Party and Trump voters are just angry and insane. I don't know if they really care about issues or even have coherent thoughts.

 

[Nafai1123]

This is a sizzling hot take.

"Tough-on-crime" isn't some sole interest of the GOP, either. Lots of Dems (Bill Clinton, yo) played that game. And lots of GOP people today are pushing justice system de-escalation.

Democrats played that game because they couldn't win the presidency otherwise at the time. That doesn't mean the "law and order" narrative isn't part of the southern strategy that the GOP have been using for decades.

 

[Toxi]

A lot of the new Tea Party and Trump voters are just angry and insane. I don't know if they really care about issues or even have coherent thoughts.

They still agree on reducing taxes for the wealthy. Same old shit, different hat.

 

[shawnbuddy]

Nah, it's just as much about corporate supremacy. It often uses pandering to white supremacy as a means to that end.

 

[rudger]

No

It's about their skewed, highly idealized idea of what "fairness" is

No handouts
No handicaps
No help of any kind
No acknowledgement of complicated socioeconomic and cultural factors
Just random chance
Wealth is proof of deservingness

Republicans are like college kids who only absorbed their first day of Macroeconomics 101, saw a supply/demand graph and thought that the world worked that way: ceteris paribus.

Ugh. Nothing was more infuriating in college than getting into arguments with my Republican friends and them acting as though they had a clearer understanding of economics and us liberals were all ignorant to how the world works. Then the economy collapsed...

The sad reality is that both parties are bad. Republicans are clearly worse, but Democrats have implemented plenty of questionable policies. Clinton reformed welfare which disproportionately harmed black people. Clinton implemented prison reforms. Clinton implemented don't ask don't tell. He also approved expansion of media ownership which has demonstrably hurt news and radio and is directly related to the consolidation of media companies. Plenty of Democrats have gerrymandered. They have also suppressed voter rights when it serves them. Many of these policies are done on both sides, but since black people tend to vote democrat it is in republicans interest to suppress them. Doesn't hurt a lot are racists but it is not the whole story.

 

[Crayon]

At the core of things, it is largely about white supremecy. And as you noticed, that model has some predictive power.

I was in college when 911 happened, and my philosophy teacher invited a guest to speak after the invasion of Iraq began. Super old black guy, and we were a mostly white classroom which I think is an important detail of this little story.

At the beggining of the session, he asked us "What is this war really about?". Then he wrote on the blackboard in huge letters: "WHITE SUPREMECY". I didn't get it at the time, but now I do.

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

Yes, look up The Southern Strategy. Nixon and Republican party leaders purposely catered to racist Southern Democrats after the Civil Rights Act was passed and that's when both parties shifted and solidified their current political alignments. It's always been about white supremacy since then, they've just been using dogwhistles to avoid outright saying racist stuff. Now thanks to Trump it's just a straight up foghorn.

 

[Aaronrules380]

Of course it's not. It's at least 50% fucking over poor and non-straight people as well

 

[Imm0rt4l]

White nationalism is the gravitational center of the GOP

 

[Deepwater]

No because dirty poors need to suffer as well.

Of course it's not. It's at least 50% fucking over poor and non-straight people as well

wait till I tell you about the disproportionality of poor people being LGBT, non white, or both.

 

[TCKaos]

It's hard to tell to what extent the Republican Party understands they're the party of white supremacy, because there have been so many centuries of bloviating, double-speak, and historical revisionism that it's impossible to tell without being a fly on the wall which currently-living individuals are just drunk off the Kool-Aid or are indeed actively knowledgeable about the history of this country. Like, you can probably make an argument that Sessions is a consciously racist piece of shit, but Paul Ryan is probably still young enough to have lived in a world where he was only taught that the civil war wasn't actually about slavery. That's the thing about "whiteness" and white supremacy: "whiteness" has been an arbitrary and ever-increasing definition for centuries more than a reasonably defined ethnic identifier. It has also been so thoroughly baked into the fabric of this nation since its founding that it's practically invisible to white people who have the luxury of not thinking about it, making them more susceptible to the ambiguous language and appeals to nationalism.

Like 60 years. Before that they'd just say it.

 

[Wolfgunblood Garopa]

Of course it is.

Match the policies with the voter demographics. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

 

[Guevara]

Other stuff too:

tax cuts
privatization
limited regulation

 

[L Thammy]

I don't know about Republicans, but I certainly feel like >50% of Donald Trump's shtick is trying to erase any trace of Obama from history for some reason. Thankfully it's not as easy as just ripping up some papers.

 

[Sunster]

republican politicians are about keeping republican donors happy. republican voters are about going back to 1950.

 

[DOWN]

I don’t believe you can vote republican without at the very least some subconscious racially or minority insensitive ignorance

 

[Nafai1123]

Other stuff too:

tax cuts
privatization
limited regulation

All things which help the wealthy and disproportionately hurt the poor. GOP policies are still about giving the slave owners more power and the slaves less. The only difference is the slaves are making minimum wage, assuming they aren't rounded up and incarcerated in private prisons where they do literal slave labor.

 

[Velocity:Design:Comfort]

Replace white with rich white, then yes. To the people who are saying its not a long running calculated plan, well, you're wrong. Look up John Birch Society, James Buchanan, Koch networks, Austrian/chicago school, etc.

 

[Wolfgunblood Garopa]

Replace white with rich white, then yes. To the people who are saying its not a long running calculated plan, well, you're wrong. Look up John Birch Society, James Buchanan, Koch networks, Austrian/chicago school, etc.

It's as obvious as ever today. Trump campaigned on 'Stop and Frisk' and 'Law and Order', which were blatant call outs to the white supremacists to get out and vote.

 

[Gnome Scat]

It started out more regional since Southern Democrats were pretty guilty of this for a while.

 

[ZeroTheShadow]

If you really want to know the answr to that question you wouldn't be asking on NeoGAF you would do real research. NeoGAF definitely isn't the place for informed non-biased opinions on anything let alone politics.

 

[Gattsu25]

If you really want to know the answr to that question you wouldn't be asking on NeoGAF you would do real research. NeoGAF definitely isn't the place for informed non-biased opinions on anything let alone politics.

There's an unbiased opinion on politics?