Liberal White Supremacy

Over the last few years, new divisions have formed amongst people in how they express themselves, online and offline. There is the positive-no-matter-what type of people who will not be afraid to cut you off should you bring an iota of negativity since, after all, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” said some motivational speaker once upon a time. Remember those?

So how did we get here? I thought we were supposed to be doing just fine, bumbling along the trajectory of progressivism. Things might not be perfect, but hey, we’ve lifted more people out of poverty than ever! Look on the bright side; the meritocracy ideologues will insist. The World Bank released this press release in 2022, headlining “Lifting 800 Million People Out of Poverty – New Report Looks at Lessons from China’s Experience.”

But one year later, the United Nations Development Program wrote that 165 million people fell into poverty between 2020 and 2023 as debt servicing crowded out social protection, health, and education expenditures. As if none of this was enough, since October 7, Israel, with the support of the so-called democratic Western nations, has participated in the genocide in occupied territory and, during their trial for the war crime at the Hague, commences bombing of one of the poorest nations on earth, Yemen, simply because they refuse to allow Israeli commercial shipping to continue to pass.

History is not linear. Stories do not all adhere to a Hero’s Journey, as the Imperialists will want you to believe. No, there will not be an old white man with a beard that will call you into action at your darkest hour, Joseph Campbell. Often, people get genocided, and when you survive that, you may still end up in a gulag. Or, as Zizek reminded us, the light at the end of the tunnel might just be another train headed right for you.

Having spent half my life in the global north, I notice that those periods are marked with endless white men telling me about fantasies, insisting that they are universal truths. Opinions ranging from Disney and Mickey Mouse or Harry Potter as the most wondrous stories and films ever made (No, clearly it’s My Neighbor Totoro and Evangelion Neon Genesis) to the universality of Moby-Dick or Game of Thrones have never known about the 西遊記 (Journey to the West) and its relationship to Dragonball Z, nor the importance of the 紅樓夢 (Dream of the Red Chamber.) 

So when people attempt phatic expression, aka social grooming, the sharp awakening is, I am not your model minority. 

Some would mark this period as the era of radicalization; older generations will accuse the younger of consuming toxic content, ageism or disrespect through TikTok. “It’s just your age; wait till you get older, you’ll become more conservative like us, too.” It turns out that isn’t happening.

And as people learn to organize and educate themselves, people demand dignity and justice, but this, too, is translated as “reverse racism” or “genocidal intent.” Amidst the protests and boycotts, a sector of the “invisible” class will nod along and say yes, look at those insurgents and horrible racist rednecks. How shameless are the conservative Neo-Nazis? But who are these people? Who are the antisemites today? Who are the boogeyman clan members that are upholding the New Jim Crow?

Angie Beeman published “Liberal White Supremacy: How Progressives Silence Racial and Class Oppression” in September 2022. She argues that white supremacy is maintained not only by right-wing conservatives or stereotypically uneducated working-class racial bigots but also by progressives who operate from a liberal ideology of color-blindness, racism-evasiveness, and class elitism.

This is an era not only of radicalization but of another disturbing realization. A realization not of the newly undereducated, underprivileged global south but a shocking, disturbing realization of the invisible progressive whites. A class of racism-evasive, colorblind European Americans and their Boba liberal cronies who enjoy the benefits of imperialism while conveniently scapegoating the “rednecks,” the “conservatives,” the southerners, and the Christian White Supremacists. The card-carrying Democrats in the United States, the white imperialist “Feminists,” the ideological vegans, and all their pink and greenwashing corporates. This is an era not only of a great awakening but a great psychosis as they come to realize that the world has been watching this entire time. 

We’re unimpressed by your lack of humanity and imagination. The myth of Western democracy has ended.