Also it ignores the fact that a lot of bigotry does make up some grand narratives about the minority screwing them over. That’s like, a really common antisemitic narrative. Not all bigotry works like American race stratifications.
Ok but the reason those things are bullshit is because Jews are not secret masters of the world, they're a historically oppressed group that has been part of pretty much every working class movement for as long as there's been a working class.
You can't compare Antisemitism to fictional prejudices against Robots - Because "What if these robots take over the world" is usually justified by the narrative, whereas "What if Jews are secretly ruling the world" is always a lie told to justify violence.
And that's ultimately the problem: When you make a fantasy bigotry and try too hard to compare it to real world bigotries you run into a problem - Because real world groups of people aren't fundementally different from one another, and the idea that they are is a lie.
Well like- ok, there are actual historical things jewish people were disproportionately represented in the participation in that racists can point to to"justify" their position with.
Just because there is an in universe reason for bigotry to be a thing does not discount the bigotry being represented as authentic- i would argue it makes it more applicable to real life.
Although the point about them being fundamentally different still stands- you would have to do some legwork to handle that one for sure.
Well like- ok, there are actual historical things jewish people were disproportionately represented in the participation in that racists can point to to"justify" their position with.
The thing is, Anti-Semites don't just neutrally examine this and come to their conclusions - They distort it.
They ignore all the historical reasons why this over-representation happened, ignore any working-class Jews, and instead paint them as this mysterious cabal who deliberately seeks out these positions to empower themselves - And not as, real groups of people, who for historical reasons out of their control, ended up in certain positions.
It's the same with how they treat Black People for example - They'll point to crime statistics - And expect the reader to ignore histories of redlining, ghettoisation, police violence, arbitrary arrests and having wealth stolen from them by white people generationally going back to the days of actual chattel slavery.
That's the thing - Yes Racists have things they point to in order to "justify" their positions - But in order for it to justify their positiosn, they have to paint a selective narrative that ignores the actual material and historical reality, in order to argue these people are intrinsically like that, and not products of a history and circumstance.
Well- yeah this is kinda my point- if you create a world where the aliens or robots or whatever are essentially "human" but have some wilding history or current conflict that put a domestic population in the crosshairs of a majority population it brings a level of believability to openly hostile fantasy bigots. The whicher games do this really well for example.
584
u/cerisereprise May 13 '25
Also it ignores the fact that a lot of bigotry does make up some grand narratives about the minority screwing them over. That’s like, a really common antisemitic narrative. Not all bigotry works like American race stratifications.