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This article is trash, and a lie that white parents in the suburbs tell themselves. Trump didn't make Hudson Valley kids racist/sexist. Your kids were already that way, but you don't listen to Black kids, so you don't know that.

amp.theguardian.com/commentisf

NY State is Blacker than the US overall, but Hudson Valley is much whiter than the US overall. Ask a Black New Yorker why that is.

And stop pretending that manly men are conservative. Again: Black men are more masculine + more progressive.

1/N

The Guardian · The boys in our liberal school are different now that Trump has wonBy Guardian staff reporter

@mekkaokereke Abandoning kids to the algorithms pushing extremism and to shtbags like Andrew Tate & his ilk have done enormous damage.

@wendinoakland

Black kids are online *a lot* more than white kids.

And yet, most Black boys think Tate is a loser, and that his fans are even bigger losers. Before the news became common knowledge, I explained what most Black men think of Tate. (CW: Discussion of Tate. It's bad. You really don't have to read this.
hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109 )

The NY Times' trash crime coverage, and copaganda shows like "Law and Order" have done much more to encourage racism in these kids than social media has.

@mekkaokereke @wendinoakland The algorithm shows different kids different stuff.

IMO, the tell in the original story is the dieting. That's always been a really niche idea, but selling diet pills to healthy people is literally the business of right-wing radio.

@tob @wendinoakland

You don't think Black kids and girls of all races get shown Tate videos too? They do. The difference is who responds to it, likes it, searches for more, favorites, shares, comments positively on, Tate videos. I'll tell you who: losers that hate women and girls.

Recommendation systems don't magically know what you like before you've interacted.

The whole fitness industry sells stuff! But again, not everyone sporty goes fash. It's not fitness, or sports, or masculinity.

@mekkaokereke @wendinoakland I think you're being too reductive. These kids don't start out fascist.

I'm not trying to give them excuses. They are making conscious choices based on the media that's presented to them.

If we get out of this, we're going to have to seriously grapple with the challenge to society of giving anyone with an internet connection unfettered access to our brains.

@tob @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland They may not "start out fascist" but they definitely grew up in an environment that didn't push back against it hard enough, so that field was fertile for evil plants to grow. All it takes is one pro-racism friend to turn a whole group of racism-curious white teen boys into a pack of cruel peer-pressure followers.

Ask me how I know.

@louis @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland the "pro-racism friend" is YouTube and Twitter.

@tob @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland It can be. But the point is, there must already be fertile ground for that seed to grow. Without it, the person rejects such evil ideas outright.

Tom Bellin :picardfacepalm:

@louis @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland It's pretty damn obvious that the US has lots of fertile ground.

At the risk of belaboring the metaphor, I'm not saying don't address the fertile ground problem. I'm saying maybe we need to reconsider the giant seed planting device.

@tob @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland Then you also kill the seeds of love, acceptance, diversity, and resistance.

Speech is subjective. Try to eliminate the parts you don't like and you hand the fascists the tool they need to eliminate the parts you do like.

Instead, we just need to educate our children to make them not be fertile to fascist and racist rhetoric. We need to teach them to see it for what it is.