These past few months have been difficult, for plenty of different reasons. We are
midst-pandemic, and there is yet another big, american, gerontocratic election embarking on us.
We are also currently fighting racism and trying to dismantle white supremacy and the police
force. All the while, that cult-y family from Tulsa is singing harmonies about the re-election of
Trump. It is, to say the least, a weird ass historical time.
The fight for equality has received an immense amount of backlash, and faced violence from
police and “All lives matter”-allies who claim racism doesn't exist; that black people, or other
non-white people, are lying about opression. And that anti-racism only hurts nice white people
who just want their Egg McMuffins and absolute political power at the expense of minorities.
They claim racism is fake and that experienced inequality and oppression is fake.
Politics and the warm-up before the election has also been filled with similar assertions. Some
politicians and powerful people walk around claiming the media lies and publishes “Fake news”.
The Donald, and several other old, white politicians are blacklisting news channels and papers in
a classic totalitarian manner. Ever since the beginning of his political career he has made
criticizing the media into a sport and as a result hating the media has become an accepted
opinion among some people. (Trump has tweeted “fake news, fake media or fakenews” a total of
819 times according to http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com)
During his first campaign rally for the upcoming 2020 election, the big D decided to host a big
event in Oklahoma where masks were not obligatory. This is yet another crazy gambit by the president, however, not an unexpected one. As the death toll is growing, fewer people seem to care about the virus, and some have started to believe it is fake. I have seen several videos of people trying to force their way into small stores sans-mask. Some believe the virus is dangerous, others question its
existence altogether. The family from Tulsa, aka Fleetwood Maga, who performed their self-written song about American freedom and Trump also deny the severity of covid. According to the two sisters who wrote the song, the corona virus is a hoax to get rid of Trump. They call it a “plan-demic”, that corona is a fake disease.
In 2019 Greta Thunberg starred as a guest on Trevor Noah's “The Daily Show”. (watch here)
In the interview Thunberg decided to acknowledge one of the biggest differences between the
american and swedish approach towards climate change. She said that in America, climate
change and global warming are discussed as something you either believe in, or don not believe
in. Even though most Americans do believe in the environmental effects of over-consumption,
travel and the meat-industry, there is still a significant number of (vocal) people who are climate
change deniers. In 2011the journal Global Environmental Change published a study made by Aarin M.McCright and Riley E. Dunlap called “Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States”. It analyzes poll and survey data from the last 10 years and finds that conservative white men are far more likely to deny the threat of climate change than other groups of people. *ironic gasp*
There is an elephant in the room, a white elephant, who is probably named Karen or something.
Because a common denominator when it comes to the people denying facts, and statistically
proven injustice, is that they are white. White people are seemingly obsessed with claiming that
things are fake. Wouldn't it be so much better if we focused on things that are real? Like facts
and statistics.
-Olivia Brask