New Joke City
Author and columnist
John Ganz↱ reminds, "The Nazis complained about the exact same thing about the 'Aryan' Danes and Norwegians", but one thing that is probably hard to understand from afar is the significance of
Zack Beauchamp's↱ observation that "Chris Rufo is so upset about the Minneapolis protests that he is resorting to anti-Nordic racism".
What explains why endemic disorder seems to plague Minneapolis? My pet theory is that if you look at the history of Minneapolis and compare it to the histories of other American cities that have similarly become hotbeds of left-wing radicalism and anarchy—say, Seattle—there are real commonalities. Both cities have a long history of powerful organized labor movements, factions of communist sympathizers, and a tradition of industrial-frontier progressivism. Each city also has a high density of Scandinavians. There’s something about Scandinavian transplant cultures that simultaneously brings an over-empathizing element—bring in as many Somalis as you can, don’t ask any rude questions about what they might be up to—and also a more militant, socialistic, progressive, and activist element.
(qtd. in Beauchamp)
It comes to this. Norwegian jokes.
Once upon a time, Norewegian jokes were regarded as some sort of good-natured ethnic humor; kind of like Polish jokes accentuating stupidity, the metajoke is that around our region, Norwegian-Americans tell the best Norwegian jokes.
Never mind. Chris Rufo is most assuredly not good-natured, and certainly does not operate in good faith. But, yes, the danger of "Scandanavian transplant cultures", that's what it comes to.
And, yes, American rightists been like this for a long, long time. Since before Trump. And we tolerate it as a society, have even made excuses for it, much in the same way we tolerate sexual abuse. Like that notorious Trump statement about Epstein liking women on the younger side; Megyn Kelly wasn't entirely wrong to invoke the idea of "barely legal"; the difference is that was how we said it in order to not say he's getting on kids. Similarly, the soft-talked racism was always about racism; it wasn't some whoopsie, or some liberal's overactive imagination. That is, yes, they really were about the supremacism and conspiracism; the racism, misogyny, and whatever crazy conspiracy theory could bring them that rush of empowerment. And this is why a bunch of middle-road excuse-makers suddenly don't remember their own history; if you were the one saying dumb things about not calling it racism just because it disagrees, the question remains whether you've figured it out, yet. It was called racism because it was racist.
And now we're down to unsatisfactory white people.
It's why the question of
"Anglo-American heritage"↗ is important to conservatives. To recall
2018↗:
I come from a region shot through with white supremacism and nationalism, and one of the reasons people don't bother with terms like "Anglo-American", for instance, is that if you live in Seattle, for instance, you live in a place where the Norwegian-American heritage is so thick that not only do we lead with Norwegian jokes instead of disparaging the Polish, successive Kings of Norway have turned up to hang out in Ballard, of all places. Anglo-American? Ya, sure, you betcha ... and?
The only reason a friend of mine ever gave a damn that she was Franco-American was that her birthday, by coincidence, is also Bastille Day, so nobody in her family ever lets her forget.
Anglo-American becomes important in a societal condition Americans presently prefer to consider yesteryear. Then again, when Irish-Americans, pale Italian-Americans, and light-skinned Jews all failed to be white enough, people are being pretty specific. We Americans have been through this, over and over, in our history.
And, here we go again.
(If we somehow couldn't see this coming, then, sure, we might have a few words for the people who gave it cover. The people who told us to look away are also the people who tell us they couldn't have seen it coming.)
(So, again: We called it racist because it was racist. We called it misogynist because it was misogynist. If the best you could do was wag about not calling something supremacist just because it disagrees, then you were kind of telling on yourself.)
