this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Every time the “reptile” line gets trotted out, I can’t help but feel it’s insulting neurodivergent people that don’t exactly share neurotypical body language or traits or mannerisms, but it gets a pass because it’s Zuckerberg, a person people really don’t like.
I also really don’t like ad hominem stuff. By all means, hate Zuckerberg for the actual stuff he’s done wrong. But his looks and mannerisms aren’t why he’s a bad person and I feel bad for innocent people who share a physical resemblance or some mannerisms and constantly see his get dunked on. “Am I also unacceptable? Are they just bringing up anything they can to be hurtful, or does this have an actual basis in reality and they legit have a problem with his looks and mannerisms? What does that say about how people think about me, about how I’ll be treated? Am I commonly perceived as a robot who’s faking their way through humanity too?”
The reptilian conspiracy theory can be considered at least antisemitism-adjacent, which makes its popularity with respect to Zuckerberg... interesting.
As someone of Jewish heritage, I agree there was anti-Semitism attached to the idea in the past, it's passed into public discourse as a joke without that malice attached, especially as people were laughing at nutters like David Ike, that I don't see the harm in it at this point.
As a fellow Jew, I agree, but it's worth noting. I wouldn't ever call someone an antisemite for referring to someone as a lizard-person, because at this point no one intends it that way. I have a friend who's pretty receptive to social justice issues and mentioned it to her recently just as an interesting point of conversation.
A weakness of inclusive leftist language is it removes most of the rhetorical shorthand insults that are useful for negative propaganda. What is rhetorically sticky is insulting people looks, behaviors, etc. But it also participates in the stigma of that stuff. Explaining the real reasons your political enemies are bad takes more work, which makes it lose out in comparison to your opponents who don't have this limit.
There are ways to walk this line, but it's very difficult. Stigmatizing language is the norm with stuff like "stupid" and "crazy" which are ableist. There often aren't better alternatives that are equally effective rhetorically.
I don't really have a point here, just acknowledging that this is an issue that arrives from a conflict that isn't as easy to solve as it seems at first.
Honestly never thought of the insults as actually useful, just people wanting to vent aggression. “Hateful fascist” has meaning and depending on context, it might make me investigate the person being called such to see if that checks out, or even totally dismiss them. It tells me about the other person’s views. “Inhuman reptile” gets thrown in the trash immediately. And stuff about someone being ugly, that’s a reason for me to not hire you as a model or take your advice on how to look good. Not a reason to join the side against you. A lot of it really just looks like aggression. This stuff is mostly useful for evaluating “how popular is this side and how much can I expect to be personally attacked for it if I publicly side with them?”
I’m also neurodivergent. So perhaps in this case what’s effective on others might not work on me. I also have a history of getting emotional and hating any “not nice” behavior even if it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of legitimate awful behavior the other side does. I end up recognizing and siding against the ocean of awfulness, but still get very upset at “not nice” behavior against them that seems to serve zero purpose to actually stop them. And this kind of insulting definitely flags as “not nice” regardless of its ends. Unlike violence in self-defense against someone trying to punch you, I can’t think of when this would become a necessary evil. But again, it’s through the lens of my own experiences, where this kind of talk immediately gets tossed out.
EDIT after we seem to have finished discussion, just saw a relevant thought somewhere else online (old Reddit comment of mine that I was in the process of deleting) that seemed very relevant to this conversation. Adding it for any onlookers.
Some of the insults could be taken as conditional acceptance for minorities. If you stay in line, your identity is valid, if you step out your identity is now unacceptable. I’m thinking things like misgendering an awful trans person. The point is probably just to hurt that person and show disapproval for their legitimately harmful actions, but it could probably make other trans people wonder if the person doing the misgendering is actually a trans ally, or if they don’t actually accept trans people but keep their mouth shut around pleasant people and now they’re going mask off now that their target is someone they don’t care about. Keeping your mouth shut around pleasant people is still better than always being visibly unaccepting, but I imagine seeing a person misgender a bad trans person could shake the faith of trans people in just how much support they have. After all, we don’t misgender horrible cis people.
Same deal with insulting based on stuff we are fighting against. Do you really accept us neurodivergent, us less-than-conventionally-attractive and it’s just a propaganda tactic, or do you not accept us but choose to hold your tongue in most situations? How much real support do we have? If you dislike us, will we get the same identity-based insults that we see online towards people like Zuckerberg or do you just reserve that for big public figures and murderers? Is your acceptance of our demographic/identity conditional on your personal feelings towards us?
It sounds like you already have values that align you against him, which makes you not the target of the rhetoric. When people characterize others using ad hominem it's usually with a subtext of alienating then from empathy.
Calling Musk a Boomer Karen buffoon for example, is much more effective than calling him a hateful fascist to people who aren't politically opposed to him. Same with posting ugly pictures of him at the beach or calling him super divorced. All of these things are participating in stigmatizing things that should be fine. But they click with people brains and turn society against people sometimes more than accurate descriptors like calling him a fascist.
This same principle applies to the association with reptiles which is stigmatizing neurodivergence.
That doesn't make all of them the same of course, because people have different priorities and make different judgements on what stigmatizing is too far in different situations. So your assessment of the language accepting a degree of stigma is accurate. Just also want to be clear its a messy layered decision that can't be reduced to black and white in all context for all stigmatizing, without a lot of tradeoffs.
You're also right that using rhetoric that throws certain groups under the bus also alienates those groups, and comes with downsides. It can even plant seeds that can evolve into actual bigotry in movements (a lot of the "boomer" talk for example has basically evolved into general ageism against the elderly, and Karen has transformed into something you can call any women who annoys you or is complaining about something).
So there's a lot of good reason to push back on this stuff. But it can also be effective, particularly with fascists who loath feeling humiliated and form cult of personalities around being charismatic. But also in just turning neutral people into psudo allies. Sometimes. It's complicated, is all I'm saying.
Hey, just thanks for acknowledging this. Bothers me so much.
To be honest, when I was a mildly-homophobic 8 year old, the “they can do what they like in the privacy of their own homes but keep it away from public view” type, flinging insults didn’t do anything to alienate gay people from empathy. Using “gay” as an insult and saying the f-slur would actually turn me away from you and to look at LGBTQ+ with more sympathy.
I’m guessing most people don’t work like that, though. I would like to figure out how we can have most people turn off that part of their brain, that’s susceptible to the name calling, and only responds to peoples’ views. Aside from that complete disconnect in understanding an experience where insults might alienate people from my empathy and helping sway neutrals over to pseudo-allies, understanding how that happens, thanks for explaining, it was pretty helpful. I appreciate it 😊
For the homophobic insult thing, just want to point out we still do it.
Stuff like saying "Trump is Putin's bitch" or using pictures of them kissing to gross people out for instance. The insult purpose is to alternate you from Trump not from gay people, but it can also do that, and it taps into a knee jerk revulsion to effect those with that specific disgust response.
This isn't about personally susceptiblity to bigotry. It's about what the words are doing and achieving socially. There are different things that effect everyone on this level. The aggragate impact is what is relavent.