We need to keep being surprised
Extremists want to reshape the norm. Don’t let them.
Photo courtesy of Nihongraphy 2/Pexels
As I am sure some Lamron readers may be aware—particularly those who fall victim to the siren song of the doomscroll—a right-wing extremist by the name of Lilly Gaddis, who first gained attention on social media for using a racial slur in a cooking video on TikTok, recently did an entire stream in blackface. I intend to spend very little time on the content of this stream because I refuse to entertain Gaddis’s abhorrent cries for attention, but suffice it to say that she made the deliberate choice to attack Black women, weaponizing the heinous prejudices endlessly perpetuated by right-wingers of similarly vile character and punctuating her self-avowed racism with a Nazi salute.
In a time when sentiments of racism and extremism—which have been festering just under the skin of a nation rooted in, built upon, and nourished by the same ideals—are now breaking through the surface en masse, what this “conservative influencer” says in her non-apology “apology” video explains a sinister goal: “What me and several other people do is we come across as rather shocking, we do rather outlandish stunts, and we do crazy things. And we say offensive things and we say the worst things possible in the most wild, outlandish ways possible…”
She elaborates on the purpose of her racist messaging: “What I see myself as is the temperer; I want to temper so that when we have a leader that has the message we want, instead of people digging up his past and [saying] ‘Oh, he said this racist thing,’ and ‘Oh, did you hear he said the “N-word” once?’ that people won’t care because they’re so used to hearing the craziest things ever, that a leader with our aligned views will be able to get into an elected position of power without being taken down by the typical media smears.”
With a president unabashedly crafting and endlessly promoting racist and xenophobic mythologies about anyone not white, with Nazi salutes finding their way into the mainstream with no consequences, it is clear that right-wing extremists in all spheres of society have adopted that very goal: make prejudice plain, and in doing so, make it unremarkable.
At a time where cohorts of proud, self-described racists are working very hard to put discrimination firmly in the mainstream, the way we analyze rhetoric is of the utmost importance. The labels these people assume are particularly telling; when did it become appropriate to loudly proclaim oneself a racist, a misogynist, a fascist?
Some argue that one must take particular care not to legitimize such behavior through debate. A big mistake in the discourse countering this flaunting of extremism is the way many platforms engage with people like this as if they hold a reasonable position. The particular example that comes to mind right away is the video released by the YouTube channel Jubilee titled “1 Progressive vs 20 Far-Right Conservatives (ft. Mehdi Hasan),” in which guest debater Mehdi Hasan says to one participant, “You’re a little bit more than a far-right republican…I think you could say, ‘I’m a fascist,’” at which he laughs and replies, “Yeah, I am!”
The idea is that the problem with platforming stances like these on the grounds of debate is that the simple act of doing so implicitly signals to audiences that forms of extremism (which people have lived and died fighting to neutralize) not only carry ideological value—it tells them that they are in fact not truly extreme or exceptional at all.
I contend that there is some truth to that. Those who describe themselves as white supremacists or supporters of fascism are advocating essentially for less freedom, either for select groups or for all Americans in general. Is it really right for those with such a position to use the constitutional freedoms of speech, press, and assembly to garner support for ideologies that seek to ultimately restrict the freedom of others?
What I often bristle at in situations like these, is the way some try to minimize this delusion, chalking it up to a harmless “difference of opinion.” This kind of language results in the watering-down of stances that are deliberately and pointedly extreme, feeding into designs to transform the cultural reaction to stunts that are shocking and obscene into one of indifference.
It is more crucial than ever to make sure that we continue to be shocked, disgusted, and outraged by people and politics like these. To allow ourselves to be “tempered” in the way that Gaddis and other extremists wish is to sabotage the freedoms of all Americans, especially those of color. We need to continue reacting, while being careful not to validate the far-right radicalism which is continuously attempting to find vindication in the eyes of the mainstream.