Day: November 21, 2025

 

By Modern-Day Debate, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151424337

American racists are a diverse group of people who are divided by their views on racism. One area of division is the sincerity of a person’s professed racism. Some racists are no doubt opportunists who do not sincerely and deeply believe in racism, they merely take advantage of it. Other racists are true believers. While racists do question the sincerity of other racists, much of the analysis of sincerity comes from outside these circles. For example, commentators in the media often seemed to agonize over the issue of whether Donald Trump is a racist or merely an opportunist. One the one hand, this can be seen as unimportant. After all, from the standpoint of those harmed by racism it hardly matters whether the racist is a true believer or an opportunist. To use an analogy, if someone robbed you, you would presumably not agonize over or even care whether the thief held a deep and sincere belief in being a thief. What matters is the harm they did to you. On the other hand, the sincerity of a racist is relevant in assessing them morally and can have some practical consequences. In terms of moral assessment, a case can be made that the opportunist is worse, since they are adding dishonesty to their moral crimes. In practical terms, an opportunist would abandon their professed racism when it was no longer advantageous. A second realm of division among American racists is the degree of racism they embrace.

While it is often claimed that everyone is a little bit racist, there is significant diversity in the degrees of racism people embrace. A very mild racist might feel superior to others while professing to be appalled at even the suggestion that people should be harmed solely because of their race. At the other extreme are those who engage in genocide and ethnic cleansing. The United States has a history of ethnic cleansing and it is not unreasonable to consider that the current administration’s immigration practices are aimed at this goal. However, there is disagreement on the right as to what degree of racism is acceptable.

The murder of Charlie Kirk created an influence vacuum that Nick Fuentes seems to be endeavoring to fill. In the process, Fuentes has set off what some commentators are calling a civil war of the right. This dispute centers over the next two areas of division. One is the extent to which the right should be openly racist. The historical shift from open racism to dog whistles and code words is often described as the Southern Strategy. The essentials of this strategy are best presented in the words of Lee Atwater:

 

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

 

While open racism obviously never went away, modern mainstream racists embraced this approach, using dog whistles and code words. Trump’s election and especially his re-election helped rewind the Southern Strategy as people shifted back from dog whistles and code to being more open about their racism. Fuentes, who has been moving into the mainstream, is noteworthy for expressing his views directly, without euphemisms or employing dog whistles.

The other dispute is over who should be considered White. Nick Fuentes is Mexican American and he seems to regard himself as White, though others on the right might take issue with his view. There is also conflict over whether Indian Americans (with connections to India) count and Fuentes has attacked JD Vance because he is married to Usha, whose parents are Indian immigrants.  But a big fight that seems to be dividing American racists is the question of whether Jews should be considered White.  Tucker Carlson is credited with bringing this division into the national spotlight by interviewing Fuentes.

As Nick Fuentes has openly expressed his antisemitic views, he would presumably regard someone like Stephen Miller as not being White. After all, Stephen Miller is from a Jewish family that emigrated from Eastern Europe.  Others on the right profess to reject antisemitism or at least express support for Israel.

As a relevant aside, antisemites can support Israel for a variety of reasons, though this might strike some as bizarre. One reason can be that they favor ethno-states and endorse Jewish people leaving the United States and going to Israel. Another is for religious reasons, because they see Israel as playing an important role in the end times. There can also be purely pragmatic reasons involving Israel’s strategic importance as an American ally. But back to the main topic.

This fight on the right shines a light on the historical fact that being White is a matter of convention rather than a metaphysical reality. To illustrate, consider how the Irish and the Italians became White after being subject to virulent racism from Whites in America. It might strike some as odd that Irish and Italians would be considered non-White and subject to attacks from White racists. After all, one might say, the Irish and Italians look white in those old photos from back when they were not White. But as history shows, being White is not a matter of looking white but being accepted as White by those who are already accepted as being White. This acceptance is, obviously, not a matter of a vote and not all the established Whites accept new whites as White at the same time (or even ever). For the Irish and Italians, it was a gradual and uneven process, and some prejudices and derogatory terms persist.  

The history of Whiteness in America also shows that the right is inclusive and progressive, albeit at a slower rate and with a different style than the American left. In general, the American left has professed to embrace inclusion not by expanding who they accept as acceptable by allowing more people to be White. Rather, they profess to accept people as people. In contrast, the right tends to accept a broader definition of what it is to be White, thus becoming more inclusive. To be fair and balanced, there are those on the right who profess to embrace inclusivity and reject racism, although this seems to often be limited to non-Whites who happen to be in the upper economic classes or share their right-wing ideology. As an extreme example, Nick Fuentes claims to be good friends with Kanye West and they have appeared together with Kanye sporting a giant swastika on a chain.  As a less extreme example, Clarence Thomas has long been accepted by the mainstream right. The fight, then, is over how inclusive the right should be in terms of accepting people as White and which individuals should be accepted even if they are not White. The current main fight, as noted above, is over antisemitism and this is dividing the right. Because antisemitism has historically been embraced by the right and remains strong in the United States, it remains to be seen whether the right will embrace inclusivity or whether the traditional racists will win this fight.

Back before he funded Grok and spawned Mecha Hitler, Musk claimed that we exist within a simulation, thus adding a new chapter to the classic problem of the external world. When philosophers engage this problem, the usual goal is to show how one can know that one’s experience correspond to an external reality. Musk took a somewhat more practical approach: he and others were allegedly funding efforts to escape this simulation. In addition to the practical challenges of breaking out of a simulation, there are also some rather interesting philosophical concerns about whether such an escape is even possible.

In regard to the escape, there are three main areas of interest. These are the nature of the simulation itself, the nature of the world outside the simulation and the nature of the inhabitants of the simulation. These three factors determine whether escape from the simulation is a possibility.

Determining the nature of the inhabitants involves addressing another classic philosophical problem, that of personal identity. Solving this problem involves determining what it is to be a person (the personal part of personal identity), what it is to be distinct from all other entities and what it is to be the same person across time (the identity part of personal identity). Philosophers have dealt with this problem for centuries and, obviously enough, have not solved it. That said, it is easy enough to offer some speculation within the context of Musk’s simulation.

Musk and others seemed to envision a virtual reality simulation as opposed to physical simulation. A physical simulation is designed to replicate a part of the real world using real entities, presumably to gather data. One science fiction example of a physical simulation is Frederik Pohl’s short story “The Tunnel under the World.” In this story the recreated inhabitants of a recreated town are forced to relive June 15th repeatedly to test various advertising techniques.

If we are in a physical simulation, then escape would be along the lines of escaping from a physical prison. It would be a matter of breaking through the boundary between our simulation and the outer physical world. This could be a matter of overcoming distance (travelling far enough to leave the simulation, perhaps Mars is outside the simulation) or literally breaking through a wall (like in the Truman Show). If the outside world is habitable, then survival beyond the simulation would be possible as it would be just like surviving outside any other prison.

Such a simulation would differ from the usual problem of the external world in that we would be in the real world; we would just be ignorant of the fact that we are in a constructed simulation. Roughly put, we would be real lab rats in a real cage, we would just not know we are in a cage. But Musk and others seemed to hold that we are (sticking with the rat analogy) rats in a simulated cage. We may even be simulated rats.

While the exact nature of this simulation was unspecified, it is supposed to be a form of virtual reality rather than a physical simulation. The question then, is whether we are real rats in a simulated cage or simulated rats in a simulated cage.

Being real rats in this context would be like the situation in the Matrix: we would have material bodies in the real world but would be jacked into a virtual reality. In this case, escape would be a matter of being unplugged from the Matrix. Presumably those in charge of the system would take better precautions than those used in the Matrix, so escape could prove rather difficult. Unless, of course, they are sporting about it and are willing to give us a chance.

Assuming we could survive in the real world beyond the simulation (that it is not, for example, on a world whose atmosphere would kill us), then existence beyond the simulation as the same person would be possible. To use an analogy, it would be like stopping a video game and walking outside. You would still be you; only now you would be looking at real, physical things. Whatever personal identity might be you would presumably still be the same metaphysical person outside the simulation as inside. We might, however, be simulated rats in a simulated cage and this would make matters even more problematic.

If it is assumed that the simulation is a sort of virtual reality and we are virtual inhabitants, then the key concern would be the nature of our virtual existence. In terms of a meaningful escape, the question would be this: is a simulated person such that they could escape, retain their personal identity and persist outside of the simulation?

It could be that our individuality is an illusion, the simulation could be like how Spinoza envisioned the world. As Spinoza saw it, everything is God, and each person is but a mode of God. To use a crude analogy, think of a bed sheet with creases. We are the creases and the sheet is God. There is no distinct us that can escape the sheet. Likewise, there would be no us that can escape the simulation.

It could also be the case that we exist as individuals within the simulation, perhaps as programmed objects.  In this case, it might be possible for an individual to escape the simulation. This might involve getting outside of the simulation and into other systems as a sort of rogue program, sort of like in the movie Wreck-It Ralph. While the person would still not be in the physical world (if there is such a thing), they would at least have escaped the prison of that simulation.  The practical challenge would be pulling off this escape.

It might even be possible to acquire a physical body that would host the code that composes the person. This is, of course, part of the plot of the movie Virtuosity. This would require that the person makes the transition from the simulation to the real world. If, for example, I were to pull off having my code copied into a physical shell that thought it was me, I would still be trapped in the simulation. I would not escape this way anymore than if I was in prison and had a twin walking around free. As far as pulling of such an escape, Virtuosity does show a way, assuming that a virtual person was able to interact with someone outside the simulation.

As a closing point, the problem of the external world would seem to still haunt all efforts to escape. To be specific, even if a person seemed to have determined that this is a simulation and then seemed to have broken free, the question would still arise as to whether they were really free. It is after all, a standard plot twist in science fiction that the escape from the virtual reality turns out to be virtual reality as well. This is nicely mocked in the “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” episode of Rick and Morty. It also occurs in horror movies, such as Nightmare on Elm Street. A character trapped in a nightmare believes they have finally awoken in the real world, only they have not. In the case of a simulation, the escape might merely be a simulated escape and until the problem of the external world is solved, there is no way to know if one is free or still a prisoner.