We’re gonna have to talk about Lacan for a second. Wait don’t run, this doesn’t have to be a Slavoj Zizek digression into some obscurantist Freudian nonsense. Instead I’m gonna just bastardize the whole shebang into a crude, sophomoric version that’s easily digestible. Jacques Lacan has a concept called “The Big Other” which is basically just referring to the idea that there is some kind of external standard or formal expectation that you must comport with. I would describe it as the vague sense that you gotta be in line with various legal, cultural and societal norms, as if there’s some ethereal presence constantly observing you. This is likely a prerequisite for building complex societies and might help explain why white folks experience more stress than the blissfully ignorant African race.
The Big Other is the reason you feel like you’ve got to have a marriage license, a current car inspection, and must “keep up appearances” even if no one is watching.
The Big Other is of course a lie, just a projection or reification of something that isn’t truly real. In the same vein I use “Big Normie” to describe a slightly more specific phenomena relating to the idea there must be some vast “general public” out there watching all the time like an audience of your peers. Big Normie is just another projection of your mind, he is the hypothetical “Average Working Class American” and your unconscious supplies him with all sorts of characteristics. Big Normie is skittish, he doesn’t like overt racism, he hates “bad optics”, he runs from Nazis, but he’s also very reasonable and open-minded if you just present him with logically sound argumentation.
In other words, Big Normie is just a projection of a bunch of liberal conceits and some personal insecurities about “proper” decorum.
Big Normie is supposed to be a rational actor, despite the American public largely being a motley assortment of the least rational creatures in human history. Under liberalism everyone wants to believe they’re a sober-minded logical evaluator of the various market options and political choices made available to them, but despite the best efforts of this dehumanizing managerial society we don’t actually think like computers. Worse, there is a tacit assumption you must meet Big Normie where he is and pander to his current beliefs. Capitalism itself would be impossible if anyone else on the planet took this view about the general populace. You don’t pander to someone’s present desires, you give them NEW desires they didn’t even know they had. It could be that yelling “Nigger!” at the top of one’s lungs from the nearest overlook is an imminently marketable consumer experience to white folks, but you’ll never find out because you wrongly assume that everyone’s preferences are largely immutable. This is why other well-meaning people try to insist that individuals demonstrate their implicit racism through “revealed preference”. Humans are conceptualized as static collections of statistical data with no real thought given to how one could infect them with some sort of novel assortment of wants and desires. It would be better to just acknowledge that people are fervently anti-racist but this might be subject to change under the right conditions instead of trying to convince yourself they’re really racist deep down.
Ultimately you’re really struggling with this because you lack full moral confidence in your own positions. You’re worried that Big Normie can sense your wavering uncertainty, and because he’s a projection of your own personality, he certainly can. He represents your hidden fear that no one is going to actually take you seriously and that your beliefs are an embarrassment.
You can’t redpill Big Normie because you can’t convince yourself either.
