Bolsonaro has won the Brazilian presidency. And my afternoon with Malcolm Nance continues to resonate and horrify and enrage.
In August of this year, a friend and I went to USC to see Malcolm Nance present his theory on Putin’s grand plan: the establishment of a global oligarchy, based on the dissolution of Western democracy. It didn’t seem far-fetched to the many of us in the audience, despite sounding like a John Le Carré plot. Per Nance, Putin and his partners have spent decades laying the foundation for what social media made possible, simple even, all summarized in Nance’s book, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West. The string of Western-dismantling hits have racked up — #Brexit, President Trump and now Bolsonaro are not accidents or loosely connected “trends.” They are part of a clear plan that only France has foiled thus far, with the failure of Marine Le Pen. And Trump’s dutiful attacks on NATO and the UN continue planting Putin’s seeds.
I added the third element: Putin’s Black wife. It’s an expression, or a bastardization of one, in our community. Because I have watched Putin manipulate whiteness, and specifically Western whiteness, with all of its unexamined privilege, entitlement, oblivion and denial, flawlessly. It’s as if he understands daily white primacy as well as Black Americans. And he is manipulating white privilege...to dismantle white privilege. Specifically, it’s extraordinary reward inside of Western capitalism. Not to distribute the world’s wealth equally. But to concentrate it even further into his hands and those of his chosen.
“Putin is manipulating white privilege...to dismantle white privilege. Yours.”
That realization is not satisfying.
As I watch the same playbook unfold in each country Putin tackles: The immigrants are a threat! The non-white people are criminals! They are leeches, draining our country’s resources! No data, no video, no research or scholarship can disrupt it. Because it is the most powerful drug the world may ever have witnessed, white primacy. It is an omnipotent lotus blossom. It demands civility from the oppressed. It ceaselessly attacks and invalidates anger and righteousness because those sentiments mobilize its opponents. It flips on like a bright red switch at its mere mention, unleashing profanity and attack and the white hot need to obliterate any light shining upon it. Read the comments on posts here when deference and sweetness of tone and absolution of all readers here do not accompany mentions of primacy. The social pressure is enormous, even — or maybe especially — in progressive spaces, where whiteness demands respect and gratitude for caring and engaging, while refusing ownership in the dance. And this is Putin’s greatest weapon. We cannot fix what we are never allowed to discuss. What we refuse to acknowledge, much less own. As long as primacy is due to some odious “them,” it cannot be disassembled. And it can keep being used against Western nations.
There are two sure things here. 1) Putin will not stop voluntarily. He is well on his way to his oligarchy. He has more wins than losses. He has a guaranteed strategy: penetrate countries where white citizens still control the institutions and play on their unchallenged sense of primacy. As Lyndon Johnson said so well, they will destroy themselves if you tell them they’re still better than people of color. That’s how Brexit gets passed and Trump still has adoring followers and Brazil falls to a fascist.
2) Only white people can stop him. But he can’t be stopped without discomfort. Without mentioning and acknowledging and owning primacy. Without fighting the need to crush the voices of its targets, its collateral damage, to avoid feeling guilt or judgment. It cannot be stopped without mentally lowering oneself to a state of being equal with those one believes are less than. Not just the verbal proclamation of equality. The actual, disrupting practice of it.
Putin won another one. Will he keep winning?
Watch the video. It’s nearly two hours. It’s deeply important. Listen in the car, on your dog walk, wherever you may.
This is not about a bunch of “thems” with hoods and swastikas. It is, sadly, about a bunch of “everymans.” Who will not face how manipulable they are because it violates the programming of independence and awesomeness. Because it requires truly joining — and even deferring to — the ranks of those who have fought this very thing for centuries, for sheer survival, rather than leading by default. Because it is uncomfortable. Because, at one point, it might have been you. Because, for some, it may still be.
Press play.
Vote.
And consider how you will respond, if you do respond. Ask who needs to be corrected and cursed at today? A person of color writing about whiteness as another country falls to racist rhetoric...or a ruthless world leader who’s another step closer to absolute power.