The thief-thief technique, as Noam Chomsky puts it, is when your hand is someone’s pocket and you point to someone else and say, “Thief! Thief!”, hoping everyone forgets you are the robber. It is used by petty crooks, tenth-rate lawyers, propagandists, the press and, when talking about race, by Whites and their hangers-on.
Many of the Broken Record arguments on this blog, the ones that are repeated over and over again almost word for word, are thief-thief ones:
- “The Arabs traded slaves too!”
- “Africans sold their own people into slavery.”
- “You are the racist one!” – for talking about racism.
- “How come you never talk about terrible thing X that took place in country Y?” – instead of racism in your own country.
- “Whites are not uniquely evil” – pointed out even when no one said otherwise.
- Asian Atrocity argument – Whites are not as bad as Mao, Genghis Khan, etc
- Black-on-Black crime argument – Blacks should not talk about police brutality until they bring down their own crime rate.
- Racist Uncle argument – A White person cannot be racist if he is not as bad as the Klan, the Republicans, Fox News, etc.
These seem to be taught at the Secret Course on Whiteness.
Each one is a moral deflection, pointing to some other wrong to draw attention away from the one in question. These arguments support moral blindness. They seem to come from White guilt, that thing Whites deny having, yet makes so much sense of their behaviour, just like how atoms make sense of chemical reactions.
The best ones for Whites to use on Blacks are those that turn the tables on them: Black-on-Black crime, Africa sold its own, and “You’re the racist one!” They force Blacks to defend themselves, letting Whites off the hook.
Likewise, the best one for Whites to use on Asian Americans is the Asian Atrocity argument.
And so on.
As a moral argument it is a logical fallacy: just because there is another thief, that hardly means you are not one too! There can be more than one thief.
The thief-thief argument points away, that is the whole point, but it should be a huge, blinking red arrow pointing at the person who makes the argument. Because while the other accused thief may or may not in fact be a thief, the person making the argument is doing so out of guilt!
The thief-thief technique seems to underlie many stereotypes, like:
- American Indians were savages – said of the victims of genocide by Whites.
- Blacks are thugs – said of the victims of police brutality by Whites.
- Muslims are terrorists – said by those whose countries drop bombs on Muslims.
- Blacks are lazy, a drain on society – said by Whites, who got rich off of Black slave labour and are unwilling to pay reparations.
- Mexicans are taking our jobs – said by those who turn a blind eye to companies shipping jobs overseas.
So, for example, Trayvon Martin became the thug, not George Zimmerman. A complete and utter thief-thief move.
Thanks to Legion for bringing this to my attention.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
- Broken Record arguments
- The Secret Course on Whiteness
- moral blindness
- White guilt / White fragility
- “Stereotypes have some truth to them”
- The word “thug”
- Noam Chomsky
564
Is there a term for using Martin Luther King shame, in these derailments? Because that’s one I’ve seen a lot of too, especially from politicians. The kind of white person who knows nothing about King and largely doesn’t care, but is willing to use a handful of snippets from a couple of speeches to try to shame black people for their activism.
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Really, it’s the adult equivalent of “He did it first!”
So basically with the Arab Trader argument they’re arguing that’s it’s okay for them to have bought people because so,some was selling them.
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Good post about derailment tactics
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OMG. You must of read my mind. Was recently thinking about how whites love to do this.
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@lkeke35
“Is there a term for using Martin Luther King shame, in these derailments? Because that’s one I’ve seen a lot of too, especially from politicians. The kind of white person who knows nothing about King and largely doesn’t care, but is willing to use a handful of snippets from a couple of speeches to try to shame black people for their activism.”—All of this right here.
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..Class dismissed, great post Abagond!
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Mike Huckaby did this when trying to admonish BLM movement with the All lives matter b.s.. Saying how Martin Luther King fought for all people and how disappointed and disgusted he would be.
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I think it’s disgusting that these politicians like Mike Huckaby don’t get that it’s unarmed black people being killed and brutalized by racist cops.
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@Mary
They get it. They just want us not to get it. They want us desensitized to it. They already fooled white people.
Think about this. Whenever a white person dies or is killed. A kid raped, etc. Blacks respond with sympathy, but most whites don’t even care. Whites will tell us to protest over the death of ours, but do nothing when one of theirs die. If one of ours is raped, whites will say nothing then. It is very telling how desensitized white Americans are to things and how they almost bully black people to take the same stance.
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@sharinalr: I agree with that.
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I also remember Dylan Roof’s sick manifesto, “Black people are so stupid they are the racist. They get offended about things when people are not even thinking about racism. Then this miscreant goes and murders 9 people in a bible study.
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Interesting. I happened to call this technique the “turning the Public prosecuter into the suspect”-technique, or else the “kompromat-technique,” after the Russian term. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat
Examples as I have seen before:
– “Why are people protesting against Israel bombing Gaza, while Boko Haram is doing worse things?”
Or, reverse:
– “Yes, the Holocaust, as you just described it, was terrible indeed, back then. However, I never read anything of you in which you condemn the terrible treatment the Muslems are given in Western-Europe nowadays. Why is that?”
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@Abagond:
Do you know this page? http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html
Maybe you’ll recognize something you’ve seen before on your blog. 🙂
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@Mary Burrell
LOL. Yeah. People are totally not thinking about racism according to him.
NAACP was marching in my town last week and white people went bat sh**. Saying “we don’t have racism here” etc. while magically saying racist stuff.
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@sharinalr
Was it something like “We aren’t racist, and if you disagree…, well then f*ck off to Africa!”?
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Sharinalr: My wakeup call on that one was the Newtown Shooting. When a person can shoot up a roomful of 20 babies and White people haven’t done s*** to prevent that from ever happening again , I knew that White people just did not care about lives.
They keep saying s*** like “All Lives Matter”, well apparently all lives don’t matter either and that’s just some BS they’ve been taught to say in reaction to “Black Lives Matter”. If Black people keep insisting that their lives matter, White people might have to get up off their complacent a**es and maybe care about their own lives and the lives of their children and pass some gun control laws or something.
If they don’t care about their own babies dying I know damn well, their not going to give a s*** about a single black life or 300 of them.
We’re obviously going to have to open our mouths and take care of this ourselves because they’re not going to lift a finger or say boo about our plight. They didn’t for their own children.
I’ve become increasingly aware that there are far too many of them that are like a herd of cows. They just stampede in whatever direction the politicians tell them to go.
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The “whoever smelt it, dealt it” paradigm of racist deflections.
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In many ways, the thief-thief technique is synonymous to BLAME IT ON THE BLACK MAN!! propaganda campaign.
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@Jeff Elberfeld
Something like that. Or they will use the, but you can go anywhere train of thought to say there is none. You have freedom type of stuff.
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@lkeke35
I agree and I am so glad I am not the only one who noticed this. There is such a huge indifference to any sort of life from white people that is is almost scary. Looking at some put on the act of caring is almost scary. It really makes you wonder what type of emotional disconnect one must have to not even care that their own kids are getting murdered.
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This technique arises from the just world hypothesis IMHO. It’s the desire to search for every possible way to blame the victim.
From an outside perspective, blacks have it hard because whites are eagerly looking to work against them. An analogous situation is the halo effect for good-looking people and the reverse halo-effect for ugly people.
An ugly can be smart. Sure. But people are always looking for any excuse to disregard him. So, his error rate needs to be much, much lower than everyone else’s for him to be taken seriously.
Ugly guy says something that is 60% right. Result, he and his ideas are dismissed.
Average looking/good-looking guy says something that is 60% right. Result: he and his ideas are added to. He receives credit even as people build on what he said.
“Sixty partners from 22 law firms who agreed to participate in a “writing analysis study” received copies of the memo. Half were told the memo was written by an African-American man named Thomas Meyer, and half were told the writer was a Caucasian man named Thomas Meyer. Fifty-three partners completed the task. Of those, 29 received the memo supposedly by a white man and 24 received the memo supposedly by a black man.
The reviewers gave the memo supposedly written by a white man a rating of 4.1 out of 5, while they gave the memo supposedly written by a black man a rating of 3.2 out of 5. The white Thomas Meyer was praised for his potential and good analytical skills, while the black Thomas Meyer was criticized as average at best and needing a lot of work.”
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/hypothetical_legal_memo_demonstrates_unconscious_biases
The exact same memo.
Proof positive of the difference between a collaborative mindset and a combative mindset.
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So if you call out someone for doing something and then they call you or someone else out for something similar they are calling you a hypocrite.
When is it OK to call out hypocrisy? When you aren’t using it to deflect?
I think the only thing that should matter is the responding accusation is true or not. I mean if you’re guilty of something should you be calling someone else out on the same thing?
The you’re racist for calling me a racist thing is stupid because it is not racist to call someone racist(it could be if you’re just saying that because they are white), but its not wrong just because it’s a deflection.
The “Remove the smote from your own eye before you try to remove it from others” thing…
I’m not sure this is a thing.
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I mean if you’re guilty of something should you be calling someone else out on the same thing?
It’s only hypocrisy if the infractions are roughly equivalent in both kind and degree. It usually never is.
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Swank,
I don’t think degree matters. That’s just more hypocritical. The thing to do is to admit that the deflection if true is wrong also.
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@ Kiwi
The whole point of trolling is to disrupt any and all constructive discussion. That impetus becomes even more clear when dealing with white trolls on black websites.
We’re simply not allowed any space to express ourselves or talk amongst ourselves without heavy white input and on the condition that whatever we talk about either flatters the hell out of insecure whites or confirms white America’s thoughts and opinions about us and our supposed position on this earth.
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lkeke35 asks,
“Is there a term for using Martin Luther King shame, in these derailments?”
I would call it the diversity deflection. Dr. King fought for equality under the law but whites have derailed that message to mean “diversity” because of his “I had a dream” speech. Whites view BLM as racist because it focuses on blacks. White power is racist so therefore black power is racist. That’s the thief-thief technique used by whites to oppose black empowerment. Diversity, within white supremacy, means white interference and non white comprise.
“Look over their” Mirkwood says while he points the finger at conservatives and an arrow at capitalism. In his mind liberals and socialists would never employ theses deflection techniques when it comes to racism or in promoting their ideology.
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@Kiwi
On this blog, numerous White trolls have brought up crimes perpetrated by Nonwhites in response to posts describing crimes by Whites. If you try to engage them in conversation, though, it becomes clear that they’re not interested in having a serious conversation and that the only reason they bring it up is to deflect.
The best way to deal with those White trolls is agreeing with them. Just humbly agree that those non-white criminals are bad too. However, then add that this does not negate at all the fact that the before-mentioned crime by a white person is bad.
This doesn’t work when you discuss with a loud-mouthed bigot in the real word, or when a Fox News-anchor controlls your mike, but on blogs like this, when arguments count, it does.
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@Jeff Elberfeld
It is funny you mention that. On another forum I did just that. Agreed that non-white criminals are bad and then directed him to white criminals. I pointed him to two cases. 1. Of a female who had tortured and killed her 2 year old. Very recent case. 2. Of a male who had raped a young girl. Just as recent. He ignored the rape case. Acted as if it was non-existent while telling me blacks are the scum of the earth. The woman, on the other hand, he acknowledged but dismissed and being only one.
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Kiwi,
“It’s the intention behind it. Almost always, its only purpose is to deflect and get the accused off the hook, not to discuss wrongdoings in a fair manner.”
So what? Does their intention dictate your response? If your response is to excuse or dismiss the accusation you’re a hypocrite and you just got them off the hook.
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Kiwi,
What is that supposed to show? Abagond, already used that example.
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Kiwi, I am no expert on the reparations-issue, but the answer on the second one should be:
‘Yes, black-on-black violence is terrible, and it concerns me too. That said, this doesn’t change the fact that it is a scandal that policemen kill blacks for no good reason.’
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Kiwi, S. tried to ask you why you are bringing those arguments up again. That is why he/she also wrote that “Abagond already used that example.”
That’s all. I do not see how that could be evidence for being “willfully obtuse.”
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I have heard this technique used frequently. We need to call people out on this immediately when they use it. People want to deflect from the issue being discussed rather than have sympathy or consider solutions.
Bill O’Riley is guilty of this and he is paid a fortune to deflect guilt for White America and attempt to put guilt on others. Donald Trump is guilty of this too.
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[…] Sourced through Scoop.it from: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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@ swank
I deleted your comment for use of moderated language.
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[…] The thief-thief technique, as Noam Chomsky puts it, is when your hand is someone’s pocket and you point to someone else and say, “Thief! Thief!”, hoping everyone forgets you are the robber. It is used by petty crooks, tenth-rate lawyers, propagandists, the press and, when talking about race, by Whites and their hangers-on. Continue reading […]
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Okay, “agabond”…and fellow commenters…. let’s have a real conversation about racism, shall we?
Let’s have your working definition of racism– what it is and how it works. And to the rest of you on here, bowing down to trite aphorisms on a subject too complex for many of you to argue even with yourselves—- let’s have your working definition of racism.
You see, some of us have lost everything fighting racism and establishing critical tools for undoing the madness. And we haven’t made a dime speaking out against “whiteness” and other parlor games of the fascist American left, dupes of Marxist philosophy and game players on the American Democratic National Party’s jobs gravy train of non-profits, ngos, and government jobs at local, state and national levels— all of which lip service #black lives matter, but are as racist and myopic as agabond.
So….if you have the gumption: throw down.
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“We’re obviously going to have to open our mouths and take care of this ourselves because they’re not going to lift a finger or say boo about our plight. They didn’t for their own children.
I’ve become increasingly aware that there are far too many of them that are like a herd of cows. They just stampede in whatever direction the politicians tell them to go.” @ikeke35 (and sharinalr), This reminds me of that segment on a tv show titled “What Would You Do?”, a little white girl was pretending to be kidnapped (by a white stranger) and the ONLY ones who even attempted to rescue her were 2 Black, young (urbanly dressed) men whom society would have otherwise viewed by there non-professional clothing as criminals-how telling, indeed!!!
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Good post. Very true.
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@anothony chavez: So what do you propose is the “correct” solution to the VERY BIG AND SERIOUS problem of racism which literally pervades lives? What is this “critical tools” of which you speak?
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So….if you have the gumption: throw down.
I have ‘plenty of gumption’. What were you writing about again?
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[…] Thief-thief arguments (moral deflection): […]
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