#plus itll make you less susceptible to actual nazis trying to recruit you

[daebelly]

i have a theory as to Why this sort of thing happens. it's a long post and i don't want to make out like this post is addressed to me, so it'll be under the cut.

shaun (the skull guy on youtube) made an excellent point in his video "The Fate of the Frog Men" where white men in the us, especially cis, straight, christian white men, sort of lack a 'narrative' for lack of a better word. oppression has a sort of "allure" to them because it casts them as the righteous underdog fighting the system, where they are the system more often than not, in reality. so they seek out a group to give themselves a narrative.

in the video, shaun uses this as a segue into gamergate, but i think this "search for a narrative," i'll call it, applies outside of that.

(and if you'd like to watch the video, it's here. it's a good watch)

my parents tried to raise me to be a straight, cis, white, chistian man (the only thing that ends up applying out of that is 'white' btw), and my family is of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh descent, so i have a bit of insight into this phenomenon(i do not speak for Irish, Scottish, or Welsh people). my family has almost no cultural practices beyond the most bare-bones holidays, going to church on rare occasions (usually when it was least convenient for me), and a tradition of an annual week-long vacation, so there wasn't a whole lot for me to feel attached to or much to base my self-perception off of(so, basically, i've lived the 'lack of a narrative' that shaun proposed). this is, i suspect, because generally, us american whiteness tries its best to be a monolith, so to speak--to erase anything different within itself to become homogeneous. and, because so much has to be removed to make everyone the same, you end up with the bare minimum(and, asking my grandmother, her grandmother actively went out of her way to not discuss the family's history. the culture vacuum runs deep in the us).

i know for a fact that i was not the only person in the entire united states to be in that same situation, and that many people in that situation were not so fortunate to have met incredibly kind, patient and willing-to-educate friends like i was. i was extraordinarily lucky. so you have a rather large population of people of Irish descent in a highly conservative and white environment without a "narrative" or really much of anything to anchor themselves to.

and in come republicans and, especially, nazis.

one thing that unites people of Irish descent in the us is, of course, being of Irish descent. and nazis are all about being 'racially superior,' co-opting imagery and cultural symbols, and emphasizing that the person they're trying to recruit is, has been, or could become a victim. introduce a vaguely conservative cishet straight white christian man to the idea that, because he is of Irish descent, he is superior, and he might just latch onto it as a facet of his identity. without having any connection to the culture, politics or history of Ireland besides that his great-great-great-grandmother that he never met had parents from Ireland. hell, if his recruiter is particularly savvy, he might walk away believing himself truly disenfranchised because of his race. in the us. while being white.

his idea of Irishness might even be entirely founded in stereotype, especially English anti-Irish propaganda that wormed its way into the states("Irish people get drunk all the time and they're all alcoholics" is not an uncommon sentiment, unfortunately). he's probably never even met an Irish person, or even really considered Irish people to be... yknow, real people, who are more than just stereotypes and cultural symbols divorced from their original context and meaning. and he won't care, either, because why should he? it fulfills a base need to feel a sense of belonging to an ingroup, especially one populated with victims rather than oppressors.

so you get shirts like this. they're a wearable monuments to the desolation and apathy of white culture with another country's flag crudely painted on.

Irish people, I NEED to know: What do you think of these weird shirts that rednecks in my home town wear?