they believe in the status quo. really, truly, and deeply. any threat to the status quo is perceived as a dangerous move away from freedom. when black people say that the status quo is fueled by blood, the right hears a dangerous move to authoritarian communism. the past 80 years have seen our society establish an oppressive hegemony meant to stand counter to the oppressive hegemony of bolshevik branded fascism. the result is what many people call neo-liberal fascism. the aspects of bolshevism we sought to counterbalance were:

• overt propaganda (the counter propaganda was the CIA’s promotion of “show, don’t tell”)
• atheism (counter propaganda is the addition of “under god” to the pledge of allegience and adding “in god we trust” to everything everywhere)
• centrally planned economy in which a core political party controls the means of production (counter propaganda to this is an unplanned economy in which a core politcal elite group controls the means of production)

i could go on, but you get the idea. functionally both arrangements are oppressive and cruel. but for the people these systems comfort, they don’t see the oppression and cruelty. ironically, they usually do see the cruelty of the other side for exactly what it is. this is because existing outside that hegemony, they can see what’s really going on better than the people steeped in it.

so anyway. when black people say “the hegemony doesn’t work for us. mass incarceration is a form of slavery, our lack of access to upward mobility in this system is a form of slavery, and your willingness to kill us all is objectively cruel” the people who have been propagandized to think this is as good as it can get interpret what’s being said as something that isn’t being said at all. it’s how tomi lahren can trick people into thinking the real meaning of “black lives matter” is “black lives matter more”: the people she’s tricking already on some level think that’s what’s being said, so she’s just confirming something they were already thinking might be being said.

if you’ve read 1984 you probably understand this next part already. 1984 was about the society we are currently seeing collapse. the reason it seems so much like right now is 1984 is because 1984 is a literary description of how every hegemony ever has worked. there’s always three super powers that play off each other to exploit the workers, there’s always some far off place where the superpowers exploit the resources under the guise of a proxy war to spread their own ideology and limit the spread of the others. the point has never been the ideologies, but rather the amassation of wealth to the elite.

what we are seeing right now is a result of the dissolution of the soviet union as one of the three super powers vying for global dominance. our imperial core has taken 35 years to adjust its hegemonic propaganda to match. it seems more obvious now because the superpowers are trying to figure out how to dominate us for the next century. it’s easier to be aware this is all happening because it’s all happening out in the open.

but what you are seeing with the absolute incongruence of the “all lives matter” free speech absolutists is that some people have been so deeply propagandized to sleep a la brave new world that they can’t possibly imagine they need to be liberated or that they should act in solidarity with oppressed minorities.