Who Radicalized you?

[Stewie: The below is published without permission from some rando on Twitter – I haven’t made any edits other than attempting to re-instate the paragraph spacing that disappeared when I did the alt Copy and Paste]

In my first month of college, I was banned from a debate tournament because I’m white. The club president was an Indian kid who had interned at Goldman Sachs over the summer. He somberly told the entire room that white kids were winning too much and that it was unfair for minorities.

I had two thoughts at the time:
1. How dare you treat white people like this, Devesh. (His name was actually Devesh.) You live in America. The only reason your family left India is because white people made the United States an infinitely better country. Show some respect to them.
2. Is there any group hated more than young, gifted white men?

College debate now requires trigger warnings before each round. If you don’t provide them, you automatically lose. Tournaments now revolve around topics like “queerness in Wuthering Heights” and “how do we eliminate whiteness?” Gay minorities have ruined an activity that once served as an opportunity for intelligent white kids to demonstrate excellence, become recognized, and enter the elite. That last point has stuck with me for the past three years I’ve been in college.

How can young, gifted white men demonstrate greatness these days? The system has completely abandoned them. If they manage to get into an elite university, they quickly realize how unwelcome they are. In my freshman year, I attended an information session for law school.

All I heard for 45 minutes was about “Women in Law” and “Black Students Association.” It dawned on me how everything has become feminized and anti-white, from something as subtle as the cutesy and intentionally unintimidating design of the PowerPoints to the explicit and unapologetic discrimination of white men.

Young white men have subconsciously recognized that originality and risk-taking are strictly frowned upon. They can climb the ladder if they always obey directions, but they will never be great. They’ll merely be another cog in the machine, eternally replaceable and subject to ridicule. This realization has done profound damage to the psyche of white men, and I think it’s one of the greatest crises of our time.

All of this presents a unique opportunity for the Republican Party. Currently, there is a severe shortage of young Republican leaders. You watched the Republican National Convention. How many of the headline speakers were under the age of 40? Compare that to the Democratic National Convention. Say what you want about the Democrats, but they have the future in their grasp. When the boomers are gone, what will the Republicans do? Do they even know? If the Democrats pander to young black people, then the Republicans must pander to young, gifted white males—another minority whose human capital is incalculably more enormous.

[Stewie – while that part was interesting the rest of the tweeted comment descended into a pivot for the Republican to that demographic versus the Democrat party being the party of single women on the pill, feminized men, fags, and POC’s.

If you are interested the rest can be found here:

[Stewie – okay, from here on in it is me again]

But it raises an interesting question – who radicalized you?

In my case it was the attacks on Australia Day. For many years I had avoided twitter like the plague, as I knew how it would be like social media brain cocaine for my personality type – but when I finally did succumb to its allure my campaign and politiking was actually fairly central left, I think I’d even voted labour back with Rudd FFS (well the first time). My main social media crutch was housing inequality and the outsized influence of the Boomers as a polity, rather than examine the source of the radical resorting of their social priorities.

Anyhow that was the first time I had ever experienced the sort of visceral, irrational hatred of a day that I loved and cherished. No matter how politely or rationally I attempted to argue my case or refute their hysterical claims of genocide, I was met with nothing but hatred and vitriol. Even in the ethnic dominated country town I grew up in, and experienced no insignificant amount of bullying for being white at the time, Australia was universally celebrated. Thus began my journey…