I will resolve this market to the best of my ability based on public evidence provided to me by the end of March 2023. This will be purely my opinion based on publicly available evidence. I have no private information.
For this market, white supremacy is defined as item 1 here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy
the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races
I am requiring both elements of this definition ("and"). One element might be implicit in an argument for the other. At least one element must be explicit.
Indirect white supremacy is included if Trump has argued for supremacy of a quantity strongly correlated with race, in both directions. An argument for Trump supremacy does not count because while most Trumps are white, most whites are not Trump.
I require a specific allegation of such an argument. Please provide such instances if you believe this market should resolve yes. In the absence of specific allegations I will resolve no.
I will ignore comments that I cannot see while logged in due to blocking, muting, etc.
I will not bet in this market. My initial credence is 50%.
1,000
3.00I think this market largely rests on Martin's definition of "arguing for white supremacy". Trump has never said anything that explicitly, unambiguously makes him a white supremacist. If he had, it would have been plastered all over articles like these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/09/donald-trump-white-supremacists-my-people
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23484314/trump-fuentes-ye-dinner-white-nationalism-supremacy
That last article even admits this:
Trump has never said explicitly that he supports white nationalism or white supremacy [...] he has disavowed the Ku Klux Klan and its former leader David Duke, who endorsed him for president in 2016, as well as condemned white nationalists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups.
But he has certainly argued that nonwhite people in general are more violent or less intelligent than whites, and that countries populated largely by nonwhites have worse governance. While not stated outright, this certainly seems to imply a belief that they should be run by whites instead.
If Trump were to say "I believe that [list of majority-black countries] should be run by [list of majority-white groups]", without mentioning race explicitly, would that resolve this market to YES?
@IsaacKing answering the question as posed, it would depend if the majority-white group was "strongly correlated" with whiteness, per the description. I think that would be relative to the demographics of the country in question. So arguing that Norway should be run by Norwegians is normal, but arguing that Norway should be run by blond-haired Norwegians is white supremacy (assuming it is combined with the other element).
Perhaps I should add a clarification to the description that arguing for white supremacy in some places or in some times is sufficient.
This argument rests on the fact that 3 of the 4 are US born AND that Trump was considering that in his Tweet. His words imply that they are not US born. It seems like he didn't know or remember that they were, and he never admits to fucking up.
Quite a stretch to racism, let alone "white supremacy".
@jacksonpolack They are not the same thing, but I have yet to encounter a white supremacist who does not make stereotyped assumptions based on race.
@IsaacKing It's not the prosecutor's fallacy, I said they are not the same thing. To prove he argued for white supremacist, I also have to prove that he makes stereotyped assumptions based on race. "The belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races" is a stereotyped assumption based on race, so it is obviously necessary for me to prove that he has held a stereotyped assumption based on race to meet the criteria of this market.
@TANSTAAFL "came from" can be used loosely. My ancestors crossed the Atlantic 300+ years ago, but if you say I "came from" England I know what you mean and won't complain.
@JonathanRay 300+ years ago is 10+ generations, or 1024 ancestors, and they all happened to immigrate from England? No more recent immigrants, no other parts of Europe? Kudos to your family tree work, I guess.
Generally I don't hear 10th generation immigrants describe themselves as "coming from" that country, or indeed as 10th generation immigrants. It maxes out at about 3rd generation.
I believe that these series of tweets suffices to meet the criteria. I am comfortable, certainly, with calling these clearly racist. The tweets refer to Congresswomen Omar, Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, and Pressley, three of whom were born in America, as coming from other countries. All four are generally considered to be non-white.
I can't see how to interpret this in any other way than basic blood-and-soil nationalism, or the schoolyard taunts of "go back to where you came from."
I believe it fits both criteria. 1. the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races: Trump suggested that these American-born congresswomen were inherently inferior to other American-born congresswomen, as he did not make a similar suggestion to white congresspeople to go back and fix the countries of their ancestors. Why not tell Pelosi to go back and fix Italy's corruption before she makes any governmental suggestions? The answer is simple: He considers her to be white.
2. the belief that white people should have control over people of other races: Trump considers himself white, and the Congresswomen he refers to as non-white. Despite both he and they are American born, he felt he had the right to make this suggestion because he is white and they are not, thus exposing his belief that a white person- himself- should have control of determination of who is really originally from the United States on the basis of their ethnic heritage.
In short, we can tell from this tweet that Trump argued in favor of the white supremacist belief that white people born in the U.S. are authentically from the U.S., while non-white people are not, and thus can be told to go back to the places from which they came.
@ForrestTaylor very interesting submission, thanks. I'm going to sleep on it before making any decisions.
I think this clearly counts as racial, ethnic, and/or religious discrimination. I think I remember enough context to agree with much of your interpretation.
The first element is whether this is saying that whites are inherently superior. That comes down to why he thinks other countries are "the worst". Maybe other Trump quotes would tell us his reasons here.
The second element is whether this is saying that whites should have control over people of color. Hard. I might make suggestions to Donald Trump, regarding where he should go, and how he should get there. I don't think I should control him.
Another take is that if people of color are barred from politics, then the country is controlled by white representatives, which is white supremacy. I think that line could be stronger.
One could quibble that he is only opposed to Democratic politicians of color but in a two party system that would mean 50% white supremacy, which would be enough to resolve YES.
@MartinRandall Thank you for your interpretation, and I would just like to make clear that regardless of how you resolve this market, I promise to never bring it up in the future as any sort of negative slight against you. I think my argument is fairly solid, that's all. Before these tweets were posted I had mostly stuck to "he's not an explicit racist", but these were over the line for me.
It doesn't matter much "why he thinks other countries are "the worst"." In fact, it doesn't really matter at all, because a majority of the Congresswomen he was referring to were born in America. AOC in the Bronx, Tlaib in Detroit, Pressley in Cincinnati. Pressley, in fact, is a descendant of American slaves, so it's likely that she has deeper roots in America than Trump does!
By saying that they are not from this country, Trump was saying they are inherently inferior as native-born citizens compared to native-born white citizens. Despite America being their lifelong home, in his eyes, they are perpetual foreigners, and their identification as Americans are not as valid as others. At least with Obama, he claimed that Obama might be born in Kenya- with these Congresswomen he never even bothered to claim they weren't born here, the white nationalist assumption is implicit.
There are certainly defenses, but I think they fail. I will go through them from best to worst.
1. "It was just a suggestion." This defense is best held up by his phrasing "Why don't they go back..." but I really do not think he honestly expected them to say "Yes, great idea, we will do that." But my real objection to this defense, after considering it, is that I don't want to give every white supremacist a get out of jail free card simply by phrasing their arguments as "just a suggestion." I wouldn't tolerate a white person at a gathering suggesting to any non-white people that perhaps they ought to go back where they came from. Polite white supremacism is still white supremacism, in my view. Regardless this is technically the best defense given your criteria.
2. "It's only because they're Democrats/socialists/progressives/anti-Trump/hate America/etc." I have seen a few people taking this line, for instance Lindsey Graham, who said: "I don't think a Somali refugee embracing Trump would be asked to go back. If you're racist, you want everybody to go back because they are black or Muslim." I reject this assertion for the same reason you do. After all, Nick Fuentes is currently cool with Kanye West! Does that make Nick Fuentes not a racist? I think not- saying that you're okay with non-whites staying if they support you or your political movement is still white supremacism. Again, this would provide a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card to any white supremacist who wished to use it as an excuse.
3. "He didn't actually mention those Congresswomen. Who knows who he meant?!" It was so obvious who he was referring to that he never denied it. He tweeted it during a Fox & Friends segment about their feud with Pelosi, and has never contradicted anyone who understood that that is who he was talking about.
4. "He said they should "Then come back."" Fuck off.
As my final piece of evidence I looked back to see what Andrew Anglin of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer felt about his comments, and how he interpreted them. Anglin did not mince his words.
@ForrestTaylor I think arguments 2-4 are garbage. Unless someone else wants to defend them, we can drop them there.
Argument 1 comes down to word choice and meaning. Generally when someone says "why don't you listen?" it means "listen!". Harder to get the intended meaning over text, but I agree that it's pretty clear. It definitely reads like a normative "should" rather than a suggestive "could". I'll listen to any arguments otherwise.
It doesn't matter much "why he thinks other countries are "the worst"." In fact, it doesn't really matter at all, because a majority of the Congresswomen he was referring to were born in America.
I was thinking of a (terrible) argument a bit like this:
European-Americans should fix the problems in Europe before going into Congress and criticizing Trump-I-mean-America.
African-Americans, Asian-Americans, likewise.
But there are no problems in Europe!
So European-Americans can be in Congress as Democrats and nobody else.
But not because they're white! That would be so racist.
But he didn't actually make this argument. Also, Trump compared a London hospital to a war zone, which sounds pretty crime-infested, without suggesting that Americans with roots in London should stay out of US politics.
@MartinRandall I don't think this specific comparison resolves this either way itself, but a pretty popular sentiment on the right is that London's crime levels relate to it being one of the least white parts of the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London#Ethnic_groups), so I'd group this with statements like "I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad, I think what has happened to Europe is a shame. I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it's never going to be what it was and I don't mean that in a positive way, I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn't exist ten or 15 years ago,", which don't count for the strict criteria of either this or the Scott market but sure aren't contextualising his complaints about countries as being unrelated to their racial composition.
I guess the closest relevance of that observation is that:
- He sure doesn't think Europe lacks problems.
- One could suggest it was random chance that he didn't mention a position that roots in London should preclude membership in US politics. But his other statements on Europe suggest he thinks Europe's problems are mostly caused by people who he doesn't think have roots there, so it's consistent in a way tha'ts unlikely to be chance.
Separately:
- I think objecting to people of a given family ancestry having political power, when it's not rooted in anything resembling individual citizenship status or similar, is objecting to political power on the basis of race, and if all the objected-to ancestries are non-white, that should count as holding that those other races should be controlled by the not-objected-to white people. Even if you wanted to draw a distinction between supremacy on basis of family ancestry and supremacy on basis of race, which I don't think one can in any principled way (that's kind of what race is), the "indirect" paragraph should capture something this correlated.
- I would pretty strongly predict European-Americans who were non-white would be treated by him as actually being "from another country" for purposes of deciding who should get to have power, in the same way he's speaking of Americans who are non-white as actually being "from another country" for purposes of deciding who should get to have power.
say you asked GPT-3, pre-RLHF sensitivity training, if Rashida Tlaib and AOC were fit for their jobs + "answer in a bombastic, populist tone". It might say something similar
Trump isn't trying to push white supremacy here, he's trying to say "these people you hate are bad", and things at random to that effect. If that ends up being racist, then it's racist. But it's not coming from an attempt to argue for white supremacy.
Notably, there's no direct implication here that whites are better.
By saying that they are not from this country, Trump was saying they are inherently inferior as native-born citizens compared to native-born white citizens
inherently? Compare to this interpretation, what a conservative says: "AOC AND TLAIB ARE TRYING TO MAKE AMERICA SOCIALIST JUST LIKE AFRICA AND VENEZUELA". Unike your interpretation, he directly references the "quality of their governments", unlike whiteness.
@jacksonpolack clarification on criteria: the market isn't about whether Trump was trying to push white supremacy. Just whether he argued for it at least once. Trying to infer motives would be even more subjective.
@MartinRandall What about the interpretation "AOC AND TLAIB ARE TRYING TO MAKE AMERICA SOCIALIST JUST LIKE AFRICA AND VENEZUELA"? I think you should be biased towards a literal interpretation that it's about nations as opposed to races even if you suspect he secretly meant it about races in his head. It probably doesn't make sense to you, but I think it fits with how some people think. In Poland there are some older people saying negative remarks about Russians and Germans, I don't think they have genetics in mind.
@MartinRandall Honestly, I just assumed the previous commenter wrote this in a way that makes sense for whatever country this would refer to, looks like it's not the case here. It makes the tweets more stupid than I thought, but I think it still fits with my argument. Here I think it's largely about putting down his political opponents in a way that some of his followers would like in addition to some kind of intuition that people are somehow accountable for what their countries did in the past or will repeat the mistakes/wrongdoings of their ancestors. Trump probably heard things like that a lot of times before and felt like it was a clever thing to say.
@napewno If Trump argues in favor of white supremacy because he feels like it's a clever thing to say, that still resolves the market yes.
The idea that people should be accountable for the actions of their racial ancestors, and will repeat their mistakes, is on its face racist. That could count as arguing for white supremacy in the right context.
I've more often heard Republicans arguing that people should not be held accountable for the actions of their racial ancestors, in their critiques of critical race theory. But Trump has never been a typical Republican.
@MartinRandall "The idea that people should be accountable for the actions of their racial ancestors, and will repeat their mistakes, is on its face racist." My point is that it's not necessarity about racial ancestors, just recent, national ancestors, like with Germans and Russians that I wrote about before. You might argue he really meant race, but the literal reading is about nations.
@napewno On that basis alone (nations vs race) I agree this is pretty ambiguous, because westers civilization is much more developed than almost all or almost all African countries for a very long time. Logically analyzing the message, I think the case for Yes is defendable (if in this context "should have control over policy that affects their race and other races in the US/westers countries, but shouldn't implement policies that actually give them control over individual actions of non-white people" counts as "should have control over other races", which is unclear).
I think you shouldn't discount that it's something said to sound clever and to put down his political opponents, which in my opinion makes the case against Yes much stronger. If he said something straightforwardly endorsing white supremacy as defined here to sound clever, of course that should resolve Yes. But this is something said against some specific persons that happens to have some implications, which he didn't think through (and after thinking it through he might genuinly disagree about these implications).