The power of anti-anti

“The true commitment of today’s Republican Party is not to racism (though there are plenty of genuine racists who thrill to what the GOP offers, and especially to former president Donald Trump). It is to what is best described as anti-antiracism.” Which as Paul Waldman describes it at the link, an argument that “we must stop talking and thinking about racism, and most of all we must stop trying to do anything about racism … It allows people to claim a commitment to equality while opposing policies meant to achieve actual equality. It enables them to proclaim their own victimhood, which has become absolutely central to the conservative worldview.”

Case in point, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declaring that black history courses are left-wing indoctrination. A Florida college group for black students having to change its name. Or a pundit arguing that supporting legacy admissions but not affirmative action is the right choice. A trustee for one Texas school district complaining an image of black and white kids holding hands had traumatized a student (the trustee ain’t racist, she just wants to shield the students!).

Or the angry outcries on the right that even thinking about diversity in college or business is a bad thing. I wrote several years back that the people making these arguments wouldn’t be the least bit bothered if we went back to the days of affirmative action for white men.

Ron DeSantis, for instrance, screams a lot about how diversity and wokeness are ruining education; he and right-wing grifter Chris Rufo have taken Florida’s New College and brought in a new class that’s less academically qualified. The incoming freshmen include 70 baseball players even though the school isn’t part of intercollegiate athletics groups, doesn’t have baseball facilities — but Rufo is quite specific it’s a good thing because the college has too many women. A school full of male jocks will change the environment in ways he likes. I suspect he’d share the general distaste on the right for educated women.

Of course Rufo phrases it as trying to counter left-wing ideology, and restoring an even gender balance — as if just the presence of so many women proves something must be hinky. He can pretend he’s not misogynist, just anti-anti-misogyny. Though one difference between anti-anti-misogyny and anti-anti racism is that the misogynists don’t pretend as much. They’re much more open about wanting male dominance and ending women’s suffrage; there’s much less need to use anti-anti-misogyny as a pretense. Though they’ll still squeal that feminism is tyranny.

We could also extend this to the anti-anti-covid wing. They won’t come out and say they’d be willing to see another pandemic for personal or political gain, they just claim any steps to fight covid by vaccines or masking are evil; e.g., right-wing lawyer Matt Staver shrieking bullshit about how vaccines will drive people to suicide — send him money to fight the mandates! I will bet solid cash he and every right-wing pundit who wasn’t a known anti-vaxxer before covid is vaccinated.

Likewise a lot of people who want conformity and submission to authority, at least for others, don’t phrase it that way. They’re anti-anti conformity, grumbling that individualism and personal choice have just gone too damn far. When Dennis Prager argues wives should put out for their husbands even if they don’t want to, he phrases it as “In determining how one ought to act, feelings, not some code higher than one’s feelings, became decisive: ‘No shoulds, no oughts.’ In the case of sex, therefore, the only right time for a wife to have sex with her husband is when she feels like having it.” Yes, how unreasonable (as many other right-wingers think). I’ve linked to this before but with Prager’s teaching videos now telling Florida students climate activists are Nazis and slavery isn’t so bad, it seems worth remembering what a shit he is.

Similarly Paul Deneen condemns feminism as part of the “liberation of humans from established authority, emancipation from arbitrary culture and tradition.” which he thinks is a bad thing (I know, I’ve linked to that one before, too). Women need to be in shackles and he wants to help with that. And no, I don’t think it’s blind chance that he and Prager both worry about women’s roles in their musings.

For more on misogyny, Undead Sexist Cliches is available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holders.