…and they’re just hiding better? Or do you think they’ve genuinely changed and have become collectively less racist?
I’d throwing bigoted and sexist in there too but the answer to that one’s pretty obvious.
My grandma occasionally used the n-word up until like 2003.
idk my dad is pushing 68 or some shit and he was a deadhead and use to hang out with all different types of people in the music industry. w/o doxxing him or myself, it was a very diverse amount of people he worked for and worked with in the industry. He never said racist shit or mentioned immigration ever when I was growing up, even when I was in high school. But around when Obama got elected, maybe like his second term, he started saying weird shit that progressively got to actual racist, xenophobia bullshit and now he hates immigrants. idk what exactly happened but he did become a terminally online reactionary so there is probably a few factors at play. He may be more of an outlier, but i genuinely don’t know and never really thought about what exactly made him become such a piece of shit
Kind of a similar situation with my father. He’s around the same age, and although it wasn’t music, he was involved with some pretty progressive (potentially communist) stuff. He’s not at that level of reactionary, more like NY Times lib, but definitely says weird shit sometimes. Hates immigrants and says some of the “black people need to be held accountable” lines. I just don’t understand how you can go from reading Gramsci to blaming black people. It’s such a strange phenomenon.
i think that phrase, “you become more conservative as you grow older” is true to an extent for some people. I think it’s a combination of things really, it isn’t just that they decide to be more reactionary, it’s just that as things change a lot of people dislike change in a way that can cause them to become like that. I think a big part of why this happens is a person didn’t have a solid set of principles they believed in or believe in anymore. They lost sight of what they believed and fall into that trap. It also doesn’t help how media works as a whole, especially in the US. They start seeing patterns that the media intentionally reports on in a certain way and think, “oh well maybe this group of people is bad, because I only ever read bad stuff about them.” Shit like that. If you don’t have a firm grasp of how things work and have worked and don’t subscribe to your old principles or ideology as much, they do actually become more reactionary. i don’t think i explained this that well, it’s a thought I’ve had for a long time but never really wrote any of it down more coherently before
I think that’s a very good analysis. It’s something that’s bothered me for awhile because he’s a marketplace of ideas guy. Wants to read Current Affairs and the Intercept to see what they say, but also listen to conservative radio to see what they say. I think it does come down to losing your principles and ideology and having it replaced with the Liberal consensus politics, which is inherently reactionary. You don’t really have a firm set of beliefs and need someone else to tell you what to think. I’ve listened to enough Citations Needed episodes to know about the effects of that.
Personally, I’m someone who doesn’t like change either. But it’s more of like not liking the newest Android update. I don’t resent tik tok teens or talk about the good old days. I understand that things change and nothing exists in a vacuum. Historical materialism and all that. I just continue to learn as much as I can about the past, fill in my own gaps in knowledge and read theory. That way I’ll have a firm grasp on what to believe in and stand by it.
