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For Ibram X. Kendi, It’s Nazis All the Way Down — His new book describes the “Great Replacement” theory as a convoluted plot, but fails to explain why it appeals to people in the first place
It sounds like the author would be more interested in a book about why people fall for white supremacy and anti-Semitic ideas instead of a book about why politicians promote white supremacist / anti-Semitic ideas.
It’s silly to pretend like this was just invented out of nothing and that there’s no news, policies, administrative decisions, sentiments, press, events, etc. that keep it alive.
Literally how could it still be alive if there aren’t any new bits of info to feed it?
This is so naive. This is like pretending that stereotypes don’t have any truth in their origin.
I read a bit of Arlie Russell Hochschild in undergrad and liked her work, so I looked up the book mentioned...Kindle informs me that I already bought it several years ago. Apparently I forgot to read it. 😣 This is the second time that has happened to me with interesting-sounding academic-ish books (the other was Robert Sapolsky's book Behave).
No real point to this comment, other than making anyone else who has done this feel more normal I guess.
Pretty sure a Black man who has lived in the US his entire life has spent more than enough time, “looking closely at the individuals who keep gravitating toward these ideas.” That subject is not what he wanted to write about.
>That subject is not what he wanted to write about.
Fair. I think the review is a reflection of unmet expectations for scholarship that offers solutions. The Guardian's Nesrine Malik mentions a similar sentiment:
But I was desperate for another book altogether. One that doesn’t become tangled in the backlash against racial justice movements by trying to explain it away as just another manifestation of how pervasive and sophisticated racism is.
It’s just not edifying, nor does it answer bigger questions about how to change racist systems that are held hostage by not only the right, but liberals who have co-opted the language of anti-racism without the goals. Or address how to do so in western economies where more and more people are ravaged by recession, inflation and high costs of living, making them responsive to anti-immigration rhetoric. Or engages materially with strategy.
Chain of Ideas is a long, ambitious book, but it is strained by Kendi’s effort to coin a new theory and press gang the facts into it. What we need now is scholarship on the circumstances that give rise to such poisonous rightwing parties, and ideas on how to strategically connect these similar global experiences Kendi talks about, into not just an anti-racist movement, but a whole politics.
He did. He called it long and ambitious and tangled in the backlash to his first book, and that it was an attempt at coining a new theory (And apparently not a very good one, as the facts had to be press ganged into submission).
Often it doesn’t illuminate issues but obscures them, and its editors apparently fail to ask their writers even the most basic of questions about what they’re writing, never mind the “hard” ones. You are just as likely to come away from an Atlantic article with your head full of propaganda and distortion as you are to come away enlightened, which is why I maintain that it is failing the basic job of a magazine, and we’d all be better off without it.
>Kendi might answer that it is not his job, or any Black person’s job, to unpack the anxieties of white people, and I’d be sympathetic to his exasperation
Completely fair and understandable. I suppose what is an interesting counterpoint for me personally is to think about where I live. I live in London. London has gone from about 90% white post war to about 30% white. The biggest current movement in London is Palestine. The West Bank, where people have been displaced, has also gone from like 99% Palestinian but now its 70% Palestinian.
Its interesting to me, not that I have any skin in the game, is that the author presumably would think one of these populations changes as a genocide and forced ethnic cleansing and the other, as a Nazi conspiracy.
Migration is becoming the core political issue in the UK and I do think our reluctance“unpack the anxieties of white people” is going to lead to similar movements in Europe for the same indigenous rights that we’re seeing in Canada, Australia and interestingly in Palestine.
toosexyformyboots | a day ago
no paywall
Accomplished-Law-652 | a day ago
> Kendi almost completely ignores the people who are attracted to this worldview or the reasons they might be.
The *reasons* are not mysterious.
Korrocks | a day ago
It sounds like the author would be more interested in a book about why people fall for white supremacy and anti-Semitic ideas instead of a book about why politicians promote white supremacist / anti-Semitic ideas.
edward_longspanks | a day ago
The superficial reasons, perhaps, but the psychological underpinnings of those reasons obviously warrant examination.
give-bike-lanes | 18 hours ago
It’s silly to pretend like this was just invented out of nothing and that there’s no news, policies, administrative decisions, sentiments, press, events, etc. that keep it alive.
Literally how could it still be alive if there aren’t any new bits of info to feed it?
This is so naive. This is like pretending that stereotypes don’t have any truth in their origin.
FattierBrisket | 19 hours ago
I read a bit of Arlie Russell Hochschild in undergrad and liked her work, so I looked up the book mentioned...Kindle informs me that I already bought it several years ago. Apparently I forgot to read it. 😣 This is the second time that has happened to me with interesting-sounding academic-ish books (the other was Robert Sapolsky's book Behave).
No real point to this comment, other than making anyone else who has done this feel more normal I guess.
Harriet_M_Welsch | a day ago
Pretty sure a Black man who has lived in the US his entire life has spent more than enough time, “looking closely at the individuals who keep gravitating toward these ideas.” That subject is not what he wanted to write about.
[OP] marketrent | a day ago
>That subject is not what he wanted to write about.
Fair. I think the review is a reflection of unmet expectations for scholarship that offers solutions. The Guardian's Nesrine Malik mentions a similar sentiment:
But I was desperate for another book altogether. One that doesn’t become tangled in the backlash against racial justice movements by trying to explain it away as just another manifestation of how pervasive and sophisticated racism is.
It’s just not edifying, nor does it answer bigger questions about how to change racist systems that are held hostage by not only the right, but liberals who have co-opted the language of anti-racism without the goals. Or address how to do so in western economies where more and more people are ravaged by recession, inflation and high costs of living, making them responsive to anti-immigration rhetoric. Or engages materially with strategy.
Chain of Ideas is a long, ambitious book, but it is strained by Kendi’s effort to coin a new theory and press gang the facts into it. What we need now is scholarship on the circumstances that give rise to such poisonous rightwing parties, and ideas on how to strategically connect these similar global experiences Kendi talks about, into not just an anti-racist movement, but a whole politics.
Harriet_M_Welsch | a day ago
> But I was desperate for another book altogether.
> What we need now is scholarship on the circumstances that give rise to such poisonous rightwing parties
K, so go do that scholarship and write that book. This book isn’t about that. Review this book.
[OP] marketrent | a day ago
>Review this book.
Book reviews by peer authors do not occur in a silo.
purpleplatapi | 3 hours ago
He did. He called it long and ambitious and tangled in the backlash to his first book, and that it was an attempt at coining a new theory (And apparently not a very good one, as the facts had to be press ganged into submission).
CatBird2023 | a day ago
Didn't even have to click on the link to know that this was The Atlantic. 🙄
LD50_irony | 4 hours ago
It's once again time to link to this article about the worst magazine in America
Often it doesn’t illuminate issues but obscures them, and its editors apparently fail to ask their writers even the most basic of questions about what they’re writing, never mind the “hard” ones. You are just as likely to come away from an Atlantic article with your head full of propaganda and distortion as you are to come away enlightened, which is why I maintain that it is failing the basic job of a magazine, and we’d all be better off without it.
DM_me_goth_tiddies | a day ago
>Kendi might answer that it is not his job, or any Black person’s job, to unpack the anxieties of white people, and I’d be sympathetic to his exasperation
Completely fair and understandable. I suppose what is an interesting counterpoint for me personally is to think about where I live. I live in London. London has gone from about 90% white post war to about 30% white. The biggest current movement in London is Palestine. The West Bank, where people have been displaced, has also gone from like 99% Palestinian but now its 70% Palestinian.
Its interesting to me, not that I have any skin in the game, is that the author presumably would think one of these populations changes as a genocide and forced ethnic cleansing and the other, as a Nazi conspiracy.
Migration is becoming the core political issue in the UK and I do think our reluctance“unpack the anxieties of white people” is going to lead to similar movements in Europe for the same indigenous rights that we’re seeing in Canada, Australia and interestingly in Palestine.