Several prominent Black rappers have recently aligned themselves with conservative politicians and media figures, which the author finds concerning. Rappers like Ice Cube, Kanye West, and Lil Wayne have sat down with Tucker Carlson and supported Donald Trump. However, the author argues that right-wing populism threatens Black communities. While some see these moves as opening dialogue, the author believes shared values around money, religion, and distrust in institutions have brought these unlikely groups together against vulnerable people. As the hip-hop industry has become more commercialized and corporate, rappers have also gained wealth and political influence, but supporting policies that don’t help everyday Black Americans. The author maintains that rap artists have a duty to use their platforms responsibly by advocating for politics that materially improve conditions in Black communities.
Because they are rich capitalists.
I think this is mostly just a case of becomming super rich. It happens a LOT to people who become wealthy, it tends to change your personality and the way you think, usually for the worse.
There have been many studies that confirm this. Though there are a few exceptions, the data shows rich people really do tend to behave like entitled assholes, think they know better, think they ARE better.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbqknn/having-a-lot-of-money-affects-your-personality https://www.vox.com/2015/6/16/8790357/rich-people-jerks
Of course. You start to be surrounded by hangers on, desperate to get in your good graces because we have a weird cult of celebrity and wealth.
Your entire world changes when people start to keep your surroundings favorable to your tastes and people only ever tell you “yes.” You start to believe that you are right all the time and your tastes are impeccable and your opinions fascinating. And then people like tucker Carlson will utilize that for his own ends, extending and utilizing that yes-man follower role to pervert your appearance or your fan base, to achieve something he’s always tried to achieve—but for his own desires (those desires that are, again, shaped by growing up überwealthy, being told you’re special and better since you’ve been old enough to fuckin speak.
Everyone is using everyone else. Some people just have way worse—and way larger—intentions.
I think in qi they once bright it like this:
‘What thing you can buy at a newsagents can change the way you vote?’
The answer is a lottery ticket. Most people who win the lottery change their voting habits to reflect their new status.
A bit like people in bmw/Mercedes not using them blinkers. Once prime feel like they’ve made it they change habits pretty fast. It’s pretty shallow, to say the least, but unfortunately not uncommon.
What happens when you are rich and famous and everyone around you treats you like a god… I imagine you lose any anchor to reality.
This is why I stay poor and unrecognized. I don’t want to get a big head.
Glad you chose the right path, boot straps and what not.
I tie my bootstraps to a big rock, so I don’t accidentally get pulled up.
“Why do members of this oppressed group side with oppressors” is a perennial question, like why are there so many Republican women when Republicans generally are anti-woman…
The answer is usually something like, if you’re high on the totem pole in several ways the fact that you’re not high on the totem pole in all ways might not matter so much to you.
If you’re rich, straight, cis, and male, but not white, you get a lot out of being rich and male and straight and cis, so you may support the group that protects the interests of rich, straight, male people, even though they might not be nice to black people, the fact that you’re on the same page on so many other axes means at least they’ll usually treat you OK cause you’re one of them in so many other ways.
See also: middle class white cis straight women, or Log Cabin republicans, or whatever.
Also: poor white straight cis men.
Agreed on the basic appeal of core values, BUT there is another vector that the article sidesteps: unabashed tokenism. The extreme right knows it has a pretty nasty optics problem. Most of them try to avoid directly referencing white supremacists (even when their staff members give the game away). They all know that they walk in the shadow of a KKK costume. So, what’s a nice white politician to do? Get some Black people on stage who will blow right past the obvious racist motivations that has landed them in the limelight. Give them some cheap attention and some easy money. It’s a win-win for everyone on stage, that is until the token has worn out their usefulness.
This is pretty much how I see it. Cash can’t solve everything, but it sure smoothes out a heck of a lot of bumps along the way. A lot of people will look the other way if they feel they can get something out of you.
Anyone hard right I know is either a bigot, well to do, or both. When you can have a single income family or you’re a jerk, many of these issues don’t even make it on your radar. They just seem to not exist or be someone else’s problem.
I’d also bet the different factors have different influence. My rough, mostly arbitrary order would be:
wealth > whether you’re trans > religion > race/ethnicity & sexuality > gender
I’d never thought of it this way. It certainly makes sense to me though, and gives me a new insight.
This is why intersectionality is key and platitudes like “no war but the class war” miss the point entirely (and ignore all the people who are marginalised for reasons other than wealth and class).
Sure, the class war is essential, but without going to war against all other oppression too, you just end up with fucked up and oxymoronic shit like “national” socialism…
Because they’re rich and insulated from (the worst of) racism now. Plus, a lot of these dudes really don’t want to change the status quo, since it got them where they are. Just look at how a lot of Black women get treated by Black men. Look at specifically how these rappers have treated Black women. They want the patriarchy in place, they just want to be at the top of it with white men, and now that they’re rich enough, they de facto are.
Ice Cube is a virulent unrepentant Farrakhan antisemite, he hates and disparages me, my family, and my people. Seeing him used as a source of amusement or toughness or worse hero worship, in a post, is terribly offensive.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-cubes-long-disturbing-history-of-anti-semitism
Fuck Ice Cube, he’s a racist piece of shit.
I don’t understand why anyone is surprised when minorities are racist. Racism is not unique to white people.
I used to have a terribly racist Philippino neighbor and it blew my mind when he ranted about our Hispanic neighbors. Dude was an asshole in general. I am not sure if the racism was a product of that or the other way around.
They think in term of social class, not race.
Because they’re sellouts.
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Yeah, there are a lot of people in groups that one might think “Hey, you know the Republicans don’t like you and want to make your life miserable, right?” but are socially conservative and are not willing to let that stuff go. There are lots of predominantly Black or Hispanic churches from the “Fun is a sin,” denominations like the evangelicals, Pentecostals and Jehovah Witnesses whose members will not make any compromise on issues like abortion or gay rights. Even amongst the more secular people living in these communities can still be influenced by the folks that live around them. You also get a lot of people, especially older people, who are still on board with the law and order, tough on crime shtick, believing this is the sure way to get nice, safe communities to live in.
Religious, older and concerned with security doesn’t sound all that different to the stereotypical white conservatives that serve as the base for the Republicans in rural areas. They just need a bit more of a nudge to get there because they have to overcome some resistance to voting for a party that explicitly targets things that are important to them in other areas.
Huh that makes sense.
Can’t take all the credit. Someone used that term recently and it’s like a hundred lightbulbs went off for me.
The people they’re aligning themselves with aren’t just social conservatives, though. They’re fascists.
Not literally every single person who has a slightly dated social view is automatically a fascist. Yes if they vote for fascists then they are fascist, etc. But you have to have a little more nuance in life man.
The people mentioned, Trump and Carlson, are fascists. There is no more nuanced way to describe them.
Maybe I am missing something but I don’t see either of them mentioned in this particular chain. Totally agree though.
They’re in the original post.
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If, somehow, Republicans ever stopped being so freakin racist, they would have an unbeatable supermajority in the US. The racism of Republicans is the only thing uniting the various faction of the Democratic party. And it’s kind of funny that it’s very rarely talked about.
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Because grifting the stupid is what happens when you lack talent
Ice Cube is a Trump supporter? Wtf?!
They’re rich, but it also makes them stand out, gets them extra headlines.
It wasn’t ever uncommon for rappers to compare themselves to Trump to project wealth and status. Nelly, for example, said “Bill Gates, Donald Trump, let me in.”
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Scrolling through Twitter a couple of weeks ago, I came across a clip of rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing a face I never thought I’d see on his platform: Ice Cube.
He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities.
Still, hip-hop legends like Jay-Z continue to peddle this demented lie because that is the very function of capitalism: keep the poorest in society busy providing cheap labor while they chase an impossible dream.
Say what you want about Democrats and what they have or haven’t done for Black people in America, but Kanye West campaigning for Trump wasn’t some stroke of genius – it was one of the most self-hating and objectively stupid moves that a person in his position could have made back in 2016.
I don’t blame Black people – burned by decades of generational disenfranchisement and then walloped over the head with the illusion of meritocracy – for trying to keep their place at the top no matter who they have to play nice with.
But romancing fearmongering xenophobes isn’t keeping us at the top, it’s digging a pitiful hole to the bottom, a new low from which Black people as a community will not recover if we don’t put a stop to it now.
Bot glitched?
Commercial artists only care about the aesthetic of it doesn’t hurt their chances to make more money.
