Indoctrinated free thinkers

Over at the reddit men's rights page, a young person left a message hostile to the idea of a men's political movement:

LOL men's rights?! Are you kidding me Reddit? White men own this entire planet, lock stock and barrel.

Come on, is this a joke? Please tell me this is a joke...

So here is someone who believes that white men own the entire planet and are therefore privileged oppressors who don't need a movement on their behalf.

I responded briefly as folllows:

white men own this entire planet

Is that meant to be a joke? First, women own more of the world's wealth than you imagine:

Women will be the richer sex by 2025, owning 60 per cent of the UK’s personal wealth compared with 48 per cent today, research has revealed. The study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research also found that UK millionaires aged under 45 and over 65 are more likely to be women than men. There are 24 per cent more female millionaires aged between 18 and 44 - 47,355 compared to 37,935 men. Female millionaires aged 65 and over also outnumber their male counterparts - 71,369 compared to 67,865. Researchers found the expected change in personal wealth was due to women performing better in education than men, having higher levels of single home ownership and a longer life expectancy.

Second, whites are being matched by Asians, particularly East Asians, when it comes to wealth and power. In the U.S., for instance, Asians have higher average levels of income than whites. China is now the world's largest export nation; Japan and South Korea also have powerful economies.

So why would anyone imagine that white males own the world? Because it fits into an ideology which tries to explain inequality in terms of one group of people (white men) socially constructing itself and othering everyone else in order to enjoy an unearned privilege. This means that the task of politics becomes to deconstruct the oppressor group.

It's an ideology which never should have been accepted, but these days it's becoming more obviously antiquated.

The reply of the young person to my comment was very interesting:

I don't know, I went to a school that prides itself on free thinking and allowing students to make up their own mind, and it's general consensus that the white male has not only dominated the world the last 3 centuries, but that it has caused by far the most suffering against other people, both for women and other cultures and races.

It shows how clever liberals have been: their indoctrination has had two parts, first, that white men are the evil agents responsible for oppression in society and, second, that the repeated, unceasing promotion of this belief in schools is not indoctrination but is part of a culture of "free thinking and allowing students to make up their own mind".

In other words, they have camouflaged the brainwashing.

In my experience, there are students who don't entirely fall for this: as they get into the senior years they are at least dimly aware that an agenda is being pushed on them that they are expected to go along with. But clearly there are at least some students who go all the way through high school and come out with the views they have been indoctrinated to believe in, including the belief that they have not been indoctrinated but have made up their own mind as a free thinker.