Conclusions I've Recently have Come too, @ 50.

this really took a long time in my life

So I recently had a run in with a friend who I thought was very punk, up until this encounter. I had posted a picture on instagram, of some white nationalists with masks on, protesting immigration in my town of Hamilton. My friend posted in the comment section saying “Anyone who wears masks at protests should be in jail”.

I thought this was an interesting take, for its lack of nuance. So I poked (hoping I wouldn’t get the answer I expected) “You mean antifa as well?” “Yeah they’re all Nazis” I then explained what Antifa means (AGAIN) He told me how he didn’t care, how anarchists a few years ago had smashed windows of stores in a affluent neighbourhood here in the city.

Well, I said, I get how seeing that kind of protest would make you angry. I totally get how you don’t think its useful to destroy property, but they were protesting the cost of living in particular housing costs. You might not agree with the approach, but you can see that its completely different than wanting to push HUMANS out of the country? He told me no. He doesn’t see the difference, that it’s all the same. That he hates violence on either side.

Now before I go on I just want to point out that this guy is white, if you haven’t deduced that by now. Not that being white is prerequisite for anything, just that I need you to understand this part of his identity to understand the rest of the story.

So after he tells me how he’s against violence on either side, I point out that he works for the government, and that the government as a state uses violence all the time. It’s their favorite thing! In fact the like it sooo much, they monopolized it.

So some how we got onto colonialism, and he tells me he doesn’t believe in it. That he was born here and had nothing to do with that. He goes on to explain the Beaver Wars, and how indigenous people killed each other, and how that means he’s not benefiting form colonialism. Which is a very reductive miss reading of that war.

However at that time, I wasn’t up on my Beaver Wars knowledge (After the conversation I quickly read some stuff on it. Didn’t take long to see his sophistry) so I brought residential schools, and how the country of Canada was created thought the starving of Indigenous people, and he said to me… That was in the past, I had nothing to do with it.

I took a beat. Then I said to him ok, nice talking to you, and haven’t spoken to him since. The fact that he used history to affirm his point of view, but then rejected history when it didn’t serve him, was the last of the red flags I needed to see. I got it. This wasn’t a dialectic between two people on a subject they disagree, this was one person in good faith, having a conversation with someone who was protecting their identity. His whiteness is so ingrained in him (despite not earning it) it wouldn’t matter what facts, or ideas I brought to the conversation, he was determined to avoid existential anxiety. And thats what learned this year, after several conversations with people out-sourcing their existential anxiety, I’ve come to the simple fact that I can’t talk to people like that any deeper than “hows the weather”?

The only thing that’s annoys me, is the fact I didn’t understand this idea when I used to be on Facebook.