Thread on Stephen Miller & antisemitic tropes:

We don’t (only) fight tropes because of how they affect the target. We mainly fight them because of how they affect minority groups as a whole.

That’s the biggest thing people miss. They think tropes are ok if someone deserves it.

The reasoning people use to defend comparing Miller to another species is the same reasoning others use to call Soros a puppet master destroying Western civilization from within.

“In this case it’s true! In this case they deserve it! Their being Jewish is incidental!”

Let me clarify quickly. I think Soros is a good person and Miller is the epitome of evil.

This is not a “both sides” argument. This is “all Jews are hurt by antisemitic tropes” argument.

Your personal feelings about Miller being so inhuman as to be compared to another species (even jokingly) does not change the fact that this metaphor has been used, is used, and will be used by antisemites to hurt others.

Your words help fuel those flames by justifying them.

That’s also why intent is partly irrelevant here, and why education about antisemitism matters.

Calling Jews in power animals calls up powerful myths that Nazis used to justify exterminating Jews, for example.

They also said it was true. They also found bad Jews to pin it on.

That’s the power of tropes. They lay hidden in our subconsciouses and the subconsciouses of others, laying in wait to be spread like wildfire (again, see Soros tropes).

Antisemitism, like other forms of bigotry is how people did and do make sense of the world.

In a confusing world, it’s easier to say Jews have their tentacles on the levers of power than it is to say that power structures must be re-examined and evaluated seriously.

It’s also easier to think a group of people are vermin literally infecting your society.

Such tropes give people easy answers (and easy solutions whose logical conclusions are always to eliminate the tentacles/vermin/globalists etc).

Which is part of why it’s easy to fall into using them. We also want easy ways to attack those in power.

But the thing is, no matter what your intent is, there are many many people laying in wait for whom none of this is subconscious or accidental.

People for whom these tropes are a way to suck others into openly hateful ideologies.

How do you think Soros conspiracies gained steam?

How do you think they’ve led directly to the worst massacre of Jews on American soil, among many other attacks?

There are groups of hateful people who use these code words as entryways to radicalize others.

4chan, groypers, The Daily Stormer, and many others coordinate recruiting campaigns using the language of tropes to suck people in.

That includes tropes about Stephen Miller, by the way.

That’s part of how radicalization spreads: tropes allow easy entry to worse ideologies.

After all, how hard do you think is it to jump from thinking one very powerful Jew controls everything to seeing “patterns” (that others share with you) that then lead to thinking that if you only could eliminate this threat it would all be okay?

For the uneducated, not very.

So.

This is the problem: when good people stay quiet when tropes are spread, or spread the tropes themselves, they become unwitting pawns.

They are literally the cover bigots use to spread their ideologies.

Every time someone screams that it’s okay to call Miller vermin or Soros a puppet master because it’s “true” they help a bigot sweep in and say the same thing themselves while then sucking people down the marketing funnel of hate.

That’s why it’s our job to call out tropes.

If we stop tropes, the cover disappears and the conmen using tropes to cover themselves up is eliminated.

But this is very hard. Because the subconscious pull of tropes, easy answers, and the desire to fight evil allow us to justify their usage.

Which is exactly why watching out for our own place in the cover for bigots is so important. We all have a part to play here, no matter how good or right our side is.

Also, someone just sent me a message informing me I’m on a list of “termites” so that feels appropriate.

End.

One last note I forgot to mention: it is not just 4chan bigots who use tropes to hurt others.

It is also those in power.

The powerful *love* antisemitic tropes because it gets them off the hook and divides those who would otherwise take them down.

Don’t help them.