2. Is some of this racism "teens thrilling at violating taboos"? Yes, no question. That's fairly wide-spread actually.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
3. I remember guys in high school who had a fascination with Nazi paraphernalia. Trill of touching the taboo was there too.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
4. But Aleksandar Hemon, the excellent Bosnian-American writers, has a story illustrating limits of this explanation.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
5. In 1986, in Yugoslavia, Hemon went to a Nazi-themed party with some young adult friends.
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6. This was communist Yugoslavia, so Hemon saw the party as being fellow kids thumbing their nose at the system.
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7. The Nazi-themed party was investigated by Communist officials, who treated it like a legitimate threat to the state.
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8. But here's the kicker: when Yugoslavia fell apart, the woman who organized the party emerged as a genuine fascist-nationalist.
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9. So what Hemon thought was play-acting and nose-tweaking was, at least in some cases, a display of actual politics.
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10. Peforming racism can become real racism. The mask can become the face.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
11. To put it another way, since racism is not in fact natural but a social artifact, all racism is a performance of racism.
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12. Anyway, the Hemon story is from his superb essay collection, The Book of My Lives. Highly recommended.
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