Hosted by Thomas Burgos; produced by Thomas Burgos; edited by Thomas Burgos; and engineered by Thomas Burgos
When we stop seeing ourselves in each other, then all sense of self is lost. Without a sense of self, we lose our identity to the things we attached it to along the way.
November & December 2022
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Thomas Burgos
When Elon Musk assumed his role as CEO of Twitter it did not take long for the platform to become a complete shitshow and within 48 hours the landscape of Twitter changed so dramatically that it was so succinctly described to be a worse case scenario wildfire. This devolution was cause enough for several different groups, ranging from hate watch groups, research agencies, and advocacy groups to all begin conducting research studies independently collecting their data out of this growing cesspool of human depravity.
Though each of these groups all set out to produce their own unique findings using specific sets of criteria and parameters that focused on verifying each’s own topic of research, it was undeniable that they all had a shared commonality threaded throughout them that they could hinge their points of study to; the political leanings of Twitter users and the relationship they have with race.
There was one study in particular conducted by a group of researchers whose focus was on showing the existence of a significant change and uptick in the ratio and frequency at which hate speech was being used specifically by Twitter users who identified as holding right wing ideology. This research was used most heavily by journalists and major news outlets and saw a roll out of this information that cascaded over the first days of November.
This research in particular was conducted to spotlight the dangers of Twitters’ lack of moderation all due to the firing of key employees. It also exposed exactly who the intended targets of users partaking in the flagrant use of hate rhetoric to be non whites, peoples of the Jewish community and their varying sects of their practiced faiths, the queer community as a whole with them placing a heavier emphasis directed towards people who self identify to be in some stage of a gender transition, as well as coming for users on the platform who expressly advocate for these demographics and challenge their beliefs.
This study also presented an exact timeline outlining the meteoric rise in activity to directly coincide with Elon Musk taking over as CEO of Twitter. Also found within this report is that within the first 12 hrs of Musk taking over the use of the n- word was up by 500%. In the days that followed its publication news outlets began using this study to draw up reports that went beyond what was happening on the surface of Twitter now able to paint a picture of the madness beneath the surface for the public.
Musk wasted no time in addressing these data sets, as well as the data sets that varied in their focus like the rise in ratio of misogynistic rhetoric etc stating them all to be completely false data reporting. Musk’s rebuttal saw him sharing his own tabled graphs depicting what were the mirrored opposites of the presented findings with what he produced to be research having a clear biased slant in his favor all in an attempt to back up his statements. He did not address the press or the researchers and groups directly but indirectly using his Twitter account to share his rebuttal and his supposed evidence.
All of this…discourse, noise, whatever, was a lot to take in. From the available news reports to the provided takes of Twitter users of all class distinctions, I waded through it all and did my best to leave no stone unturned. What I was left with was a feeling of being uninspired and generally annoyed.
Everything beyond these words will be but a noise I make that hopefully isn’t just a mere regurgitation of what you’ve already heard about or thought about yourself. I also don’t propose that I’ll be coming in hot with any real originality and certainly any unique opinions and thoughts.
What I plan to state and share have their basis of being influenced by someone or something I took in at some point or another, whether it was something that someone has said during this ongoing shitstorm or something that was said at some point before it. But I remain inspired,at least by that somehow, and I hope I can impart on you the same.
With that being said…
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Some of what has transpired this year, and in particular surrounding this Twitter noise, has been disappointingly predictable. Just in case I need to make myself clear, bigotry and hate do definitely disappoint and certainly go deeper than that for me. I mean, I’ve certainly experienced my fair share of racist and prejudiced actions having grown up in a multicultural home located in the southern United states. But it isn’t my personal experience or the stories I’ve heard first hand from those who have experienced similar, or more often much worse, that are the root cause of my disappointment.
The root cause for my disappointment can be sourced from this multi-layered question that’s been banging around in my brain for a time well before any of these studies exposed the racist nature of Americans. I’ve asked it before in this show, in different ways, but never this direct. This is where that changes. As far as questions go, these don’t necessarily need answering so much as it wants to finally speak directly to those who don’t exactly belong to or identify with any of these groups mentioned to be the target of hate speech on Twitter.
Getting this question, or rather these questions and their points, out of my head and into the minds and ears of those who I’m needing to ask will be a slow burn and as such I will be interjecting at specific points to designate as to who the “you” and “they” are as plainly as I can. This interruption will hopefully serve to clarify the points I am trying to make and the questions that they’re attached to.
With that being said, this next section will use “you” to address non melanin having non queer identity peoples and extends to those in proximity of them who benefit from that relationship. “They” “their” and “them” are to reference the people who are operating as antagonists to everyone that is not “you” firstly regardless of coming for “you” after. It should become clear as to why I’m singling “you” out as I push things along, at least that is my hope.
So. What, or maybe who, do you picture in your mind’s eye when you read their words on Twitter? Does seeing their avatar or profile picture change anything or does it further justify that this person definitely fits the profile of someone who is so singularly capable of such rhetoric?
Is it the learned dog whistles you’ve collected to recognize them that provide your justification for your perceived notion that they are also all lacking any discernible intellect? Does your catchall image of them remain the same even after taking a cursory glance over their profile? What happens to this go to character you’ve created and crafted in your brain after you’ve learned that they are a nurse, a doctor, a lawyer, a cop, or a politician? Does learning that they hold such a position of influence change the picture you’ve crafted of what they are at all or no? If there is a shift in how you feel, is it because those civic positions are lionized with an importance to those jobs having an assumed responsibility towards maintaining society as a whole over any personal agenda they might possess? And if so would you describe the shift in how you feel as shock and confusion and if so, why?
And finally the questions that have been banging and clanging around in my skull; Why does your publicly stated positions of having anger for and disgust with them justify you as being morally and intellectually superior in every way to them? And why does you doing so, expressing feelings of anger as outrage, separate you from them and from being any part of the problem and why does this constitute the inaction of doing something about them as something you can get away with by doing nothing? Why does it only ever go as far as online arguments or the placing of a frame on your profile picture and how do these non actions allow you to never start with you being angry and disgusted at yourself for allowing them to operate in real life holding these revered positions as public servants and doing so with the fucking audacity to conduct themselves in such vulgar, ignorant and heinous ways when it is a known fact that the constant losing and or having nothing at all in the way of equality is but an abstract experience to you by choice and to experience it requires you to do so vicariously through those you swear you are defending from it instead of falling on the proverbial sword you smithed from the heat of your fiery anger?
They exist in all shapes and forms. From the backwoods hillbilly deemed to be too stupid to know any better to the charismatic ladder climber with lofty ambitions with an understanding of importance of influence with so many others existing in between and at different levels of compliance to the existence of what is the most evil and persistent social hierarchy that requires all of them acknowledging the need to avert their eyes and minds from others’ actions of hate while never themselves exerting any real admonishment of their prejudices or the beliefs bound to them and if they should do so, which they will not, they risk losing their favor and status in what is their established systems of hierarchy and class.
Just because there are ones who will kill you both doesn’t mean that they will kill you first. A study of the history of men with a motive to kill either mortally or culturally is riddled with them creating a basis of doing so being justified by their commissions of science to validate these needs.
All of these points in time, leading up to the now, have seen them lay their foundations of hate on the back of pseudo scientific data produced by pseudo scientists they propelled to a social status of importance for their investigative research veiling their intent as to cement these pseudo scientists names into the minds of all western citizens. There are a few that come to mind.
Darwin, Bauer, Lenz, Kant, Nietzsche and beyond. Before the need for science to justify the existence of race, race was merely made of notions of some possessing genetic superiority with a goal to assimilate those people who they often referred to as the barbarians. They, being the Greek society, did so with the intention to cure the perceived shortcomings of their own people. It went from this to the practices by the Roman Catholic Church introducing the foundations of what we know today as modern racism and did so in the 15th century spearheaded by their Spanish Inquisition.
Over 500 years of human history have seen what the creation of race was for and why it continues to enable its own myths. Is it any wonder that believing for any moment you couldn’t possibly be capable of enabling or performing acts of racism as a reality even though this in itself an impossibility given how much of what you, and me, were taught to believe and to be empirical truths is in fact a bunch of outright lies?
It’s at this point that I want to interject to change the denotation of “they” and “them” to now reference the people who have been, up to this point, referred to as just targets of racist rhetoric on Twitter. The use of “you” will still remain the same as to who is being referenced when I say “you”.
So
With the condensed history I just gave of the birth of race and the creation of racism, I know that there are some of you who are in some way saying “nuh-uh not me! I engage these bastards always and with no hesitation and prolly do it more than most if I’m being honest” and if that is you, please allow me to ask you some more things;
What does that look like when you’re ripping it up and bringing social justice home? Is it done the same way every time or are some of your performances more grandiose and robust than others? Do you ever think to yourself “well, someones gotta do this work might as well be me.” and if so, and don’t lie, did someone from the groups of people soon to be referred as they and them come to you and ask this of you or what?
Listen, you don’t need to answer that because I can tell you right now, no one from any of those groups has ever done anything of the sort. You not being asked by them to take up a mantle of heroism in their name isn’t personal in that your valor wasn’t overlooked. It’s just that they don’t need you or people like you doing what you’re doing and especially in the way that you are doing it.
It doesn’t matter that the performances are fiery and passionate. It doesn’t matter how many names and quotes you pull from the leaders of their movements to make them look like fools. You may say that everything you do is done with good intentions but when your good intentions can potentially cause the disruption of years of planning making those plans null and void or indirectly cause their deaths, any reason you give is ultimately just a performance that spares you the consequence they will suffer from it.
Your tough and macho and or intellectual posturing only serve to them as a reminder that you can and certainly will leave whenever you please and for any reason offering no explanation because it is your privilege to do so. Your actions whether you’re thinking you’re fighting their fight for them or are completely absent from your fantastical idea of it achieves nothing for them and also serves to drown them out and invalidate any ground that they may have gained.
So I’ll ask you again, do you even know who it is you need to engage with? Do you understand that maybe you don’t know what you’re doing is harmful? Do you recognize you aren’t saving anyone from those you’ve othered as if you aren’t inherently a part of that group and that you certainly aren’t saving them from themselves?
If your purpose in action isn’t the dismantling of monoliths and pulling the weeds rooted deeply in the psyche of their antagonists then what is it you think you’re doing and why do you think it should be anything other than this and on their terms?
It’s certainly easiest to assume all Trump voters are toothless hillbillies with a smartphone or a computer and are living in the sticks with a cache of fully automatic assault rifles and extended mags with stockpiles of food and a whole mess of convoluted American pride. Unfortunately for everyone that is a fantasy with the missed reality being way more complicated. Statistically when you’re arguing with a racist on Twitter, it’s a person that is in some way capable of changing someone’s life, possibly for the worse. These people are doctors, dentists, lawyers, bank managers and bank employees, educators… In the least, the pandemic should have shown you that this is a lived reality for the whole, that they are out there and exist.
A more dangerous act than arguing with these people in these municipal positions is recommending your casual indigenous/queer/black/woman friends to any of these types that serve you. This seems counterintuitive to most with good intentions. I mean, isn’t the working narrative that racists are separatists and as such wouldn’t take your reference on?
Outside of it not being Jim Crow era anymore, the train of thought and operation of those who wish to do harm don’t pass up such opportunities with surface level actions like refusal of service, not always. To some of them, it is an in to psychologically manipulate and tear them down from the inside to the out.
How would you know that this reality exists anyways when your life experience allows you to “skip politics” if only to advance your own health and life and the lives of your immediate family? You could never know the area of effect it has and what it costs if it never directly affects you, except for your private pity party you hold for them.
They aren’t asking to be rescued from racism and sexism.
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What they are definitely doing steadily for thousands of years has been demanding the acknowledgment of their humanity, the acknowledgment of being equal and able in all of humanities forms as an add into the sum of society, an equal inclusion in the society they were born into with an allowance to all facets of it, and a return from the fruits of their contributions that is fair and equal to all.
They have not asked for the basic human rights they were born with but to have it be acknowledged that they were born with them and for that acknowledgment to be put into everyday practice without the pageantry of having them granted as a kindness and veiled as an apology. It’s time to cut the shit cause speaking for myself I’m done with the disrespect. These aren’t unreasonable demands.
Any group who writes the rules that define what a dangerous person is does so having the experience of direct and constant contact with their antagonist. Discerning or re imagining what that means is certainly not needed from you. The people who experience being persecuted, hunted, targeted, and denigrated have articulated perfectly who their antagonists are have done it very well and it pleases me that they do so whether you like it or not.
Instead of working hard to denote who is a danger to them by relegating as to who these aggressive and ignorant bigots are and somehow concluding they are lesser than yourself in every single way is nothing more than an attempt to escape being lumped in with them and everyone on all sides can see it. This type of work whether being conscious of it or not uses them as your shield and that doesn’t go unnoticed by anyone either, and on all sides. You look like a fool.
And all of these things are very frustrating. Beyond being frustrated, I am angry.
So I’m angry. So what. What makes my anger any different than being someone who’s angry about the existence of racism that just says they are angry at racism? Well, it isn’t different I guess. It also makes me angry, just like them, that anyone thinks it’s ok to openly opine over a fantasy where paying taxes, obeying laws, and working hard qualifies for them a place on team “good guys” and that their whiteness or those with a proximity to their whiteness and their position at the top of societies totem pole is merely a fucking coincidence. The implication of there being an existence of a team of “good guys” implies the existence of a team of “bad guys”and this in itself is racist as fuck, I mean, it’s a lot of things, classicist, ablest. And an act of denial baked in hypocrisy. And I’m really disgusted by hypocrisy.
I’m not angry at those who are living in the extremes of that fantasy that has them believing the federal government does not function properly for them because of a perceived drain that’s caused by the bad guys. Long time listeners and generally aware people know the ugly truth of this matter, being a social conditioning by heads of states and their co-conspirators engineering this fishbowl to foster these belief. The design goes something like this:
Imagine if when you’re born you are forced to play a game. Now imagine that there is one half of your whole society who are all playing a game with each other but it is clearly different in some way. Because it is. And because your game isn’t played like that larger half of the whole, that means they will find fault with you and everyone who looks like you for not knowing how the game is played and it’s their way of playing the game that is how it is supposed to be. And so you try to play with those in your half but you can’t play with those in your half that aren’t like you because it’s too frustrating for y’all what with your games being so very different from each other as well. This leaves you wondering if its them, you, or the creators of these games to blame for never getting it right but soon you realize it takes time to know the truth to this and there’s no time allotted for you to figure that out because no matter how good you get at your game, their game, or begin to understand the larger half’s game, you will always lose by design because fuck you that’s why.
I won’t say that my metaphor is bad or that it’s lacking in context but it might be. Anything is possible. Especially when you consider how white I am and what the proximity to whiteness has afforded me. It’s this possibility of never knowing a different truth that informs my opinion that it was never gonna be possible for you or me to imagine the lived experience that’s unique to the lesser half of the whole population and of the fringed and the othered even if the metaphor was perfect. You can try though, I guess. I mean, from where I’m sitting, any stated conclusion to understand what that is seems like an adopted feeling at best. Also difficult to parse is if what you’re feeling is empathy or remorse. My money is on remorse for the lack of understanding it well enough to empathize with it. I’m not convinced there is anything inherently wrong with that as it shows an effort was made, even if it is a little bit presumptuous and slightly disrespectful to think you could live in their shoes when the reality is you can just take those shoes off as you please when it gets too real.
None of this accounts for the loss of life stemming from actions rooted in hate. In the weeks after Elon Musk took over Twitter, words of hate have turned into acts of violence and disruption of living. But to say that his takeover inspired or created any of the hate crimes that happened from the start of his takeover to now would be misleading and without merit. To say that with him at the helm of Twitter allows people with an agenda to make their station of hate known while feeling like they have a place to do so without suffering any real consequence has been verified by the research of those groups mentioned at the top of this episode. With or without Twitter operating as a free for all space to espouse hate rhetoric on its surface, it remains a fact that America is a nation of hate and the citizens whose agenda requires them to act on that to sustain itself will do so, with or without Twitter.
The department of justice keeps quite the log regarding hate crimes. This year so far sees 129 logs of events on their website up to the first few days in December. This is not to say all 129 reports are all hate crimes. As a matter of fact some links are reports of the federal government’s own exhibitions to combat or acknowledge crimes of this nature whether its a forum they are attending or hosting in partnership with an advocacy groups or another branch of government with some merely being announcements regarding a day of remembrance for specific groups of people affected by acts of hate against them.
Unfortunately those things are far outnumbered by the crimes being committed on the marginalized. This is to show that whatever the news does report, there are so many other events that they do not report on. In the year 2022, 58 years after the civil rights act of 1964 was signed into federal law, you will still find that crosses are still being set on fire in someone’s yard. An act I’m sure you had relegated as a relic of hatred’s past. If so, you’d be wrong. There was at least one cross burned in a black family’s yard this year.
There are better, more sustainable paths to be taken in regards to being the ally you want to believe you are. These roads have been laid out by so many over the centuries. I’m not someone who believes that today’s solution is found in the echoes of the past solely for the reason that what applied to the people of those days gone by is not applicable to the modern struggle and especially if the source predates the industrial revolution. I guarantee there are people within your community that have great ideas and that some have or are executing them on some level and to some degree of success, granted the amount of meddling from local, state or federal agencies is slim to none. Their success might in part be attributed to the fact that not all of their solutions include you at the front, middle, or back of their existence, and I hope all of what I have asked and proposed as food for thought highlight the reasons as to why that would be.
It is not your job to eradicate the entirety of racism and to completely abolish hate. It is your job to be present and aware of yourself and your actions when confronted with it. When you choose patience for change over being on the right side of history as a means to win the day and postulate being morally superior, a path that makes sense will present itself. Much like the war on drugs and the war on terrorism were a farce with a motive designed to sustain its eternity while justifying the spending of billions of dollars on it, the war against racism is too an un winable war in the exact same ways.
It might hurt you if you possess noble intentions to change racists into not racists to hear that this is a wasted effort but it is, at least in the way that you think it should be done which is to scold and denigrate until they submit. As was noted earlier, to take this on is to take on 600 plus years of indoctrination that will consume you should you choose that path every time.
Planning for the worst of reality to happen at any moment, working to achieve a heightened level of awareness in public surroundings, and seriously considering and participating in self defense practices all sound like activities reserved only for members of the military or the like or for those you call them and yes you will find these activities and much more happening in those environments but not entertaining these measures of safety relegating them to be nothing more than notions and desires belonging to the violent class will see them continue to take the lives of those you claim to matter to you as the ones you love and possible as well it could be your life that’s taken. But don’t be a living martyr, no one asked for that.
Actions of hate executed in environments with large numbers of people sees no need to discern who is what when their goal is to unalive as many people as possible and at all costs.
The journey to establish safe spaces over the decades in American society has been rife with casualties and sacrifice to get to where we are today with them. Don’t let the pitfalls that exist through legislation undo these spaces. This isn’t a singular statement that has guns at the center of it either. I mean to include everything from human rights to means of protection to the rights that exist as stepping stones towards equality and liberty, this is a statement of truth that would see it fall to nothing should you lose the ability to see beyond what only benefits you and people who are just like you. Even if that in and of itself is an idea that was constructed to hold you to a belief that designates to you an identity that separates people by a dressed up notion of there being a difference between us, this of course being something based on the color of the skin and never reaching beyond to the culture of people and has you bound to the color of skin because that is the system to denote what you are with no regards as to who you are.
Race is a myth. Racism exists to further separate the truth of that myth from the fantasy that some are born to wield power while others could never comprehend it. There is no power that isn’t empty if it comes at the cost of relinquishing one’s humanity to it. Gender constricted to a binary recognition to define it is also a myth. Gender framed in such a way is to make an anomaly of the presence of anyone exhibiting an inversion or eversion to it or showing themselves outside of it.
The assertion of biology being tied to gender sees this myth dictating the existence of a means to measure its claims that a superior specimen exists. This can be found in both of these myths and in both it relies on biology to enable and support its biases.
The ability to measure an individual’s intelligence quotient with standardized tests is also a myth. The need to mythicise that such a measurement is even possible in quantifying one’s intelligence purely exists to enable the notion that there is any truth of the other two aforementioned myths. A brain’s engagement with the world and the activities found within sees the myth of finding the IQ of a person separated by gender and race to discount the truth that it can’t be measured at all. How one engages with reality one day will always be different the next and age seems to be the only real difference between us all and even that doesn’t dictate a reliable measure to exist as a constant between us.
And this, all of these fundamental truths that barely exist in parallel to the myths that supersede them, are the fabric of the curriculum used to create the courses still taught to this day in developmental education, is the real reason why I ask so many questions that all wonder how and why.
These are the myths that drive you. And I think it’s time that you take the wheel from them to drive yourself going forward. It begins and ends with you and is a choice that you’ve been putting off for far too long that has cost the lives of far too many.
And those operating to enforce the beliefs of these myths are many centuries ahead in maintaining their control through acts of terror and violence. Stop waiting for them to execute their next operation and start planning on ways to cut their access and ability to cause harm to you and in this instance you are a collective you that isn’t them. This isn’t a proposition to operate as they do, to be clear. What it is is an opportunity to find ways to fill the gap of failings from those who allege to protect. Because from here on out, the threats and actions towards livelihood and liberty will be more extreme than the last and if that isn’t a worthy enough cause to abandon fear and the shared foundations of what makes a person a person used to portend the confines of an identity then it was always for nothing and all will be lost.
SOURCES
Hate speech is soaring on Twitter under Elon Musk, report finds – The Verge
Why is Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover increasing hate speech?
Musk spars with advocates over hate speech on Twitter – POLITICO
Algorithmic-Amplification-of-Politics-on-Twitter.pdf
All other information used came from Robert Wald Sussman’s THE MYTH OF RACE which can be purchased here
Or you can pirate it. your choice.
Here is an index of pages from the book and other notable sections in THE MYTH OF RACE:
WHITE AMERICA(COX)- 215,217-18,219
WEALTH GAP-284
WHITE NATIONALISTS-277, 299-300
WHITE SEPARATISTS-277
WHITE SUPREMACISTS-277, 290-291, 292
CHAPTER 8- PG 210
JOHN TANTON, FOUNDER OF FAIR-287-291
OTHER TANTON AND FAIR CONNECTIONS-291-301
SOCIAL CLASS-262,270
SOCIAL DARWINISM-45, 48-49,61,110
SOCIAL EVOLUTION-155-157
BASIS OF RACIST THOUGHT TOWARD-13
DEGENERATION THEORY REGARDING-14
PERCEIVED INFERIORITY OF-14, 33-34,82,92,173
INTELLIGENCE-27-29,33-35,160-161
HUMANITY OF-28-30
AS BIOLOGICAL THREAT-212
PERCEIVED THREAT TO CIVILISATION-275-276
All music written, produced and recorded by Thomas Burgos; except “Senator” (Single Version) by Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks recorded at Sunset Sound and The Library; produced by Beck
Another Noisy Noise 