So a friend on Facebook posted the following:
Let’s try an experiment. I see so many people post crap like ‘if you vote for Trump I will un-friend you’, you are obviously a racist. Anyone who knows me would know that is not true, if you don’t by all means un-friend me. I VOTED FOR TRUMP!
I am unapologetically stating in clear terms that I voted for President Donald Trump. If you truly feel that you can’t be friends with someone that voted for Trump, now is your chance, stand by your principles. This is my experiment. I want to see who my friends are and who they aren’t. Real friends will know me for the person I am and not what the mainstream media or the latest meme say’s that I am.
My number of friends at the time of this posting is 394. I want to see what the number is in 24 hours.
This was my response.
I take issue with the framing of your experiment, which suggests an equivalence between “being designated as a friend on a web app” and “being friends in human reality.” I don’t think that cyberspace friendship and meatspace friendship are the same, and I wrote at length about sacrificing the former to preserve the latter (and arguably more important one) almost exactly one year ago.
With that in mind, I will be blocking your Facebook account. I will do so later today so that you have the opportunity to read this (my brief attempt to explain my reasoning) before it and all my other comments and posts disappear from your feed. I will do it before 10 pm though, so that I won’t tarnish the results of your experiment. Because SCIENCE!
Trumpism — the MAGA movement as lead by Trump — is a white fascist movement.
This is not meant as insult or hyperbole. It is as much a fact as 1+1=2.
Trumpism is palingenetic ultranationalist movement built on white grievance: a right-wing ideology that laments America as fallen from its mythical ideal past (when it was “great”) and aims to return it to its former glory by excising the groups it holds responsible (mostly non-whites and immigrants) and eschewing international cooperation. Trump has appointed several noted white supremacists and white nationalists to positions of policy and power; has campaigned using historically fascist slogans and icons; has repeatedly courted white supremacist groups in his messaging (or lack of messaging, cf. the first debate); has broadly sought to eliminate immigrants from nonwhite and/or Muslim-majority countries; organized an unidentified and unaccountable police force to threaten, harm, and detain protestors; has repeatedly disparaged congresspeople of color as less legitimate citizens; and on and on.
I know you well enough to know that you are not a fascist, although I am disappointed that such clear-cut fascist politicking was not a deal-breaker in casting your vote. You are my friend, and I enjoy discussing culture with you — be it geek culture (on which we agree) or political culture (on which we don’t) — and I fully expect we will continue to have some discussions out in the “real world.”
Unfortunately, while I know that you are not a fascist apologist or sympathizer, I do not know that about all the people who have access to your Facebook platform and, because of that, indirectly have access to mine. I do not know who of those will hear you say ‘I unapologetically voted for Trump’ and will assume you therefore share in their glee of “triggering the libs” and “owning the SJWs” and making sure those nonwhite immigrants — you know, like my daughters — know they are not and can never be real Americans. I do not know who will start sharing that stuff with you, which then will percolate onto my feed. I will not platform fascism, even the faux-ironic “it was just a joke” version peddled by MAGA to claim deniability.
Trumpism is a repudiation of everything I value: compassion, humanism, egalitarianism, education, science, and critique. It has no place on my online platforms, even if it comes shared second- or third-hand.
I’ll see you in meatspace, my friend.
