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Boomerang Bigot: Difference between revisions
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If done poorly, this trope can lead to [[Unfortunate Implications]], such as that being bigoted is okay as long as it's self-loathing bigotry or that a person must be prejudiced in the "right" way - otherwise they'll be a [[Category Traitor]].
A supertrope of [[Misanthrope Supreme]]. Also see [[Noble Bigot]], [[Pretend Prejudice]], [[Cultural Cringe]], [[Hunter of His Own Kind]], [[Humans Are Bastards]], [[Some of My Best Friends Are X]], [[Fox News Liberal]], [[Cultural Cringe]], [[Internalized Categorism]], [[N-Word Privileges]], and [[Female Misogynist]]. [[Gayngst]] and [[Armoured Closet Gay]] are related tropes for self-hating gays and lesbians, and [[Effeminate Misogynistic Guy]] for a less direct form of boomerang-bigotry. See also [[Self-Deprecation]].
{{examples}}
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* In ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'', {{spoiler|Judge Doom turns out to be a Toon in a human mask.}} Possibly justified in that he was motivated by greed, not bigotry, although he makes several anti-Toon statements prior to [[The Reveal]] as well (claiming, for example, that Toons are naturally lawless and deserve the most brutal punishments imaginable). It's probable that he's saying those things not because he believes {{spoiler|other}} toons are like that, but because he knows that {{spoiler|HE is like that.}}
* The seventh member of ''[[The Magnificent Seven]]'' really hates farmers, though is himself a farmer.
* In ''[[The Seven Samurai]]'', the seventh ronin, played by Toshiro Mifune, actually comes from a peasant background. He hates peasants for being victims and samurai for being bullies.
* In ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]'', Loki's reaction to {{spoiler|learning he's the son of the Frost Giant king}} is {{spoiler|to attempt Frost Giant genocide}}.
* In ''[[Robots]]'' Ratchet's mother Madame Gasket who wants to destroy all older "outmode" robots. While oblivious to the fact she is made of "outmode" parts.
* Played for laughs in ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]''. Edward says "Never trust a vampire. Trust me."
* ''Get On The Bus'' has a [[Honest John's Dealership|successful car salesman]] who intially comes off as [[Positive Discrimination]] as he encourages a Black youth to focus on education to be successful... then in the same breath reveals he went to a "Real college and not some Nigger school," going on a whole Uncle Tom tirade that might as well be spoken by a Neo-Nazi with [[N-Word Privileges]] where he derides ''everything/everyone'' Black, reveals he's a Republican though [[Pet the Dog|pets the]] [[Twofer Token Minority|Threefer Black, gay Republican]] (yes the rest of the bus has the same reaction as you reading that) for the same politics regardless of sexual orientation, [[Kick the Dog|with the kicker being that he reveals he couldn't care less about the Million Man March]] [[Completely Missing the Point|the whole]] ''point'' [[Completely Missing the Point|of the trip]] and [[Money, Dear Boy|is only going to sell cars.]] He finally works their last nerve by telling a racist joke about "lesbians and niggers don't do dick" and is ''literally'' [[Asshole Victim|thrown off the bus into a ditch]] also by Bernie Mac.
{{quote|Bernie Mac's character: [[Ironic Echo|Niggers need coat! Coat need Niggers!]]}}
* A mild example in the Korean War film ''The Steel Helmet''. A North Korean [[Poisonous Captive|prisoner]] of war tries to turn Japanese-American soldier Tanaka against his comrades by appealing to his anger over his childhood in an internment camp. Tanaka gives him a [[Shut UP, Hannibal]] that invokes some Asian stereotypes.
== Comics ==
* [[Played for Laughs]] in a classic Gyro Gearloose story by [[Carl Barks]] where a rival inventor moves next door to Gyro. Gyro angrily declares that he never could stand any kind of inventors or geniuses.
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'''Detritus:''' Trolls. Nasty pieces of work in my opinion. }}
** His partner Cuddy (a dwarf) gets like this about dwarfs. It seems to be a symptom of joining the Watch: Once you join the watch no other labels apply to you, such as race or gender, so Detritus is not a troll, nor Cuddy a dwarf, they are watchmen.
** Similarly Reg Shoe is initially invited to join the Watch after sending in letters complaining about police treatment of the Undead community. Vimes later notices that since Reg Shoe became a watchman the number of complaints from the Undead has doubled and they are all directed against Reg Shoe.
** 71-Hour Ahmed doesn't trust any Klatchians, ''because'' he is one. He actually has to point out to Vimes, who's engaging in some pretty heavy [[Positive Discrimination]] (to counteract the regular-old discrimination that he thinks will get everyone killed by underestimation), that Klatchians can be scheming bastards too.
** In ''[[Discworld/Night Watch|Night Watch]]'' Captain Carrot mentions that a troll, Calcite, has joined a gang that was formed primarily to beat up trolls, apparently because he likes to beat up trolls as well.
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** In a sadder example, one of the dwarves in ''[[Discworld/The Fifth Elephant|The Fifth Elephant]]'' ''hates'' Cheery, a dwarf who openly admits she's female (most dwarf women don't). The dwarf in question is a woman herself, and is jealous of how Cheery's allowed to be who she really is.
* In the ''[[Realm of the Elderlings|Farseer]]'' trilogy by [[Robin Hobb]], Burrich tries to repress signs of the Wit in Fitz because he himself is trying to hide that he has the Wit.
* In the [[Strugatsky Brothers]] novel ''[[Prisoners of Power]]'' it turns out that the political junta which ordered the persecution of the "deviants" is composed entirely of deviants itself. They don't do it out of bigotry though - {{spoiler|deviants are the only members of the populace who are immune to the [[Mind Control]] which the junta uses to stay in power.}}
** Toyvo Glumov in ''The Time Wanderers''.
* Voldemort in ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]''. One of the goals of the Death Eaters was the elimination of any wizard who wasn't pure blooded, specially if they were muggleborn, but Voldemort himself was a half-blood. But then, he ''is'' based off [[Adolf Hitler]].
** Snape as well -- in his youth he was highly prejudiced against muggles and muggle-borns despite being a half-blood himself {{spoiler|and in love with a particular muggle-born}}.
* Queen Jehana in the [[Deryni]] works becomes this after {{spoiler|she tries to use her Deryni powers to protect her son from Charissa at his coronation}}. She fervently believes the Deryni powers are evil, and after [[The Reveal]] at the coronation she goes into self-imposed exile in a remote convent, fasting to the point of noticeable weight loss. She tries to warn Nigel's wife Meraude of the taint of the Haldane powers, exhorting her sister-in-law to keep Nigel safe. She entertains hopes of finding a human wife for Kelson to "redeem" him, and she's rude and hostile to Rothana when she thinks the young novice is too close to her son.
* In ''Sewer, Gas and Electric'', the racist who plotted {{spoiler|with GAS the supercomputer}} to unleash a plague that kills only black people has a black distant ancestor. Partially subverted in that he didn't show any ''visible'' sign of African ancestry; nonetheless, his "one drop"-caliber bigotry led him to design the plague to spare anyone with green eyes like him, for fear it would latch onto that "one drop" and kill him too.
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* In the new ''[[Flash Gordon (TV series)|Flash Gordon]]'' series, Ming was extremely tough on [[Mutants|Deviants]] and was of course himself a Deviant. He did his best to keep this fact hidden, though.
* Done as kind of a joke on ''[[Dollhouse]]'' when Sierra is imprinted with the personality of someone who doesn't seem to like "Orientals." Or at least, she ''says'' she doesn't like them...but she does seem to in some ways, given how she [[Les Yay|hit on Ivy]]. We're [[Noodle Incident|never really told]] what that engagement involved.
* ''[[Noah's Arc]]'': Wade is this early on, with a very vocal aversion to gays despite being gay himself.
* On one episode of [[Seinfeld]] George's mother rejects the advice of Jerry's girlfriend Donna Chang because she finds out (having previously talked to the woman only on the phone) that Donna is not Chinese. "I don't want to take the advice of some girl from Long Island!" she shouts.
* ''[[Law & Order|Law and Order]]'' did this with a [[Tragic Mulatto|half-Jewish]] [[Those Wacky Nazis|neo-Nazi]]. Likewise, one case had a Hispanic kid with neo-Nazi sympathies as a suspect. He swore to the detectives that he was fully Spanish with no mestizo blood, but he still looked quite delusional.
** Of course, since (according to some historians) modern anti-Semitism got its start in Spain's ''limpieza de sangre'' ideology, this may not be as ironic as it first appears.
* ''[[Andromeda]]'' had a radical group bent on destroying space travel in order to preserve planetary ecologies. It was founded by a warship's AI.
** A much softer version shows up in ''The Unconquerable Man'', an alternate-universe episode where Gaheris Rhade - the main character's Nietzschean second-in-command that betrayed him in the pilot - replaced Dylan (said main character). Gaheris ends up so bitter about how the Nietzscheans turned out that Harper (a character with little reason to be fond of Nietzscheans) calls him "the only one I know that hates Nietzscheans more than I do".
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== Stand Up Comedy ==
* [[George Carlin]] reserved some of his more searing criticisms for white people.
* Chris Rock's division of north Americans of color into "black people" and "niggers".
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== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Wild
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'', Morrigan has such a moment with Zathrian.
{{quote|'''Morrigan:''' ''"Is that why you are here, sorcerer?"''
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** Another borderline example is when [[Inexplicably Identical Individuals|one off the]] Duffman energetically proclaims at an Oktoberfest celebration [[Putting on the Reich|"This Reich will last a thousand beers! Oh, Ja!"]] Then under his breath, he mutters [[Only in It For the Money|"I do this, and I'm Jewish". ]]
* On one episode of ''[[King of the Hill]]'', there's a group of mostly white Hipsters who move into the neighborhood after Peggy agrees to rent them a house, who have a strong aversion to other white people.
* On ''[[Gargoyles]],'' Demona is an interesting case. She's a gargoyle who wants to [[Kill All Humans]] for nearly wiping out her species, but when she asks [[Literal Genie]] [[Trickster Archetype|Puck]] to make her not turn to stone during the day (as gargoyles do), he grants her request by [[Be Careful What You Wish For|making her turn into a]] ''[[Be Careful What You Wish For|human]]'' from dawn to dusk every day. Notably, this doesn't stop her--instead, it just lets her find ''more'' ways of reaching her goals, since she can now blend in with her "enemies" undetected.
** Throughout the series she easily takes to human society and tools, such as human sorcery and technology, even ''before'' she gained her human transformation curse. She even started her own freaking company (named Nightstone)! For all of her hatred towards humans, Demona fits in far more with human civilization than she does with her fellow gargoyles. [[Fridge Brilliance|Which makes sense]], since after Canmore destroyed her (second) clan she's spent hundreds of years apparently without any other long-term gargoyle companionship.
* In the ''[[South Park]]'' episode "The Entity", Kyle's cousin Kyle Schwartz -- who is a walking touchstone of virtually every Jewish stereotype -- comes for a visit. Towards the end of the episode, Kyle catches himself criticizing his cousin's personality and exclaims "Oh my god! I'm a self-hating Jew!"
* Helga from ''[[Pasila]]'' is a female [[He-Man Woman Hater]] (with an emphasis on "he-man", even though that's not even part of the trope), taking after her father who never remotely accepted her.
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** Although prior to The Night of Long Knives, Hitler and the Nazi Party had not adopted an aggressive stance towards homosexuality, and for some early anti-Nazis, e.g. among Catholics and the military, the Nazis' pre-1935 "acceptance" of homosexuals and in particular Röhm's prominent and high position in the party hierarchy were important or at least contributory reasons why they opposed Nazism. And for many in the military who started out distrusting Hitler, the Night of the Long Knives proved that he was okay after all. This included Stauffenberg, who eventually changed his mind again and in 1944 would attempt to blow Hitler up.
* It could be said Hitler himself was also a [[Boomerang Bigot]], because he did not fit his own definition of the "Aryan race" he deemed superior to all other men -- and to this day recent DNA results say that he had some "Non-Aryan" ancestry (though others insist it's opposition propaganda). It has also been seriously suggested that he may have been in a relationship with Albert Speer, his chief architect.
** Heinrich Himmler did not meet the SS entry requirements for "racial hygene" and phsyical fitness. He also talked of how the SS must "harden their hearts" and grin and bear the moral and mental consequences of murdering millions, but the only time he ever watched an ''Einsatzgruppe'' in action, he was so appalled by the sight of blood that he became hysterical.
* Tomás de Torquemada certainly had Jewish ancestry, and [[Richard Wagner]] reputedly did as well. (Torquemada may not quite count. He was theoretically persecuting a belief not an ancestry and ancestry would presumably be irrelevant to that. Of course he was primarily persecuting Jewish converts for allegedly lying about their conversions based on the "evidence" that they were born Jews. So whatever.)
** Torquemada was strongly influenced in his heresy-hunting by the concept of ''[[wikipedia:Limpieza de sangre|limpieza de sangre]],'' which held (perhaps not entirely unreasonably, but with disastrous results) that crypto-Judaizing and Islamizing was more likely among those with more Jewish or Arab ancestors. It has been theorized that the doctrine of ''limpieza de sangre'' is what shifted the emphasis of anti-Semitism away from religion and toward race, and so that this was the root of the Holocaust.
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* In the early 20th century, it was common for light-skinned African Americans to hold "[[wikipedia:Paper Bag Party|paper bag parties]]" in which only those with skin lighter than a brown paper bag would be allowed in. The goal was to exclude darker-skinned African Americans and is considered an example of "[[wikipedia:Colorism|colorism]]".
** A related phenomenon was the [[wikipedia:Uncle Tom|Uncle Tom]] stereotype, also known as the 'House Negro' by [[Malcolm X]].
* The Filipinos have a long history of having this kind of bigot, with [[Cultural Cringe|their cynical views toward their own country]] and strong exposure to foreign influences. It has been known in the Spanish era that some Filipinos strove to look like Spaniards. (There was an old joke that may have been truer than it seems that some Filipinos pinched their noses with clothes hangers to try to make their noses sharp, like those of Spanish blood.) Similar cases followed after the Americans' arrival and when the Chinese-Filipinos came into prominence. Early Filipino films promoted Filipinized modern American lives, Western movies, and even Medieval stories, preferring the latter two over actual Philippine historical settings. Up to now certain Filipinos define their worth by their ability to speak fluent English or Chinese (with foreign accents), embrace Western or Chinese culture, being able to visit Western countries (namely the USA), or to have Western or Chinese physical features (skin whitening soaps are very popular up to this writing), coupled with how much they have renounced their Philippine heritage with abhorrence. Any person of this type who gets even a small taste of any of these "privileges" would act like he never had Filipino blood at all and would be quick to openly show scorn for other Filipinos.
* Hipsters who hate other Hipsters for being Hipsters.
** Slags who slag off other slags for being slags.
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** When Navajo medicine men were approached by Ghost Dance leaders, they (possibly because the Navajo conception of ghosts makes J-Horror movies look like [[Casper the Friendly Ghost]]) rather firmly rebuffed the overtures. One is reported to have described the Ghost Dance as "Nothing but worthless words." That, and, well, they already had a dance—When the Two Went to Their Father, AKA the Enemy Way—for killing foreigners. Unlike the Ghost Dance, it's just an ad-hoc blessing for warriors going out to a particular fight, and has no complicated eschatological theories (although it does involve channeling the god [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|He Kills Hostile Gods]]).
* One could say "Forrest Carter" of ''[[The Education Of Little Tree]]'' fame claimed to be this. But he was really white, explaining his Ku Klux Klan connections.
* It's worth noting that on the ultra pro-Israeli website ''[[Israel Insider]]'', any Jewish person who goes on the talk forums and who dares voice even the slightest reservation as to Israel's domestic or foreign policies, or to challenge settlement building in the occupied territories or land-grabs from Palestinians, or anything Israel is doing in the name of the Jewish people and religion, is invariably flamed and accused of being a "self-hating Jew".
* Related to the above, this is on the road to becoming a [[Discredited Trope]] in the US, where accusations are thrown around so freely that pretty much ''any'' minority, woman, or homosexual who expresses right-of-center views is more likely than not to be called [[Straw Traitor|"self-hating"]] at some point.
* In the documentaries ''Eye of the Storm'' and ''A Classroom Divided'', the teacher did an experiment about bigotry by discriminating based on eye color. The boomerang involved occurred on the second day, where she stated that brown-eyed people were better than blue-eyed people, and that blue-eyed people were inferior and needed to be treated as such.
* Russian politician Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky leads the fanatical, anti-Semitic, anti-Western, Slavic-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. He is half-Jewish. When asked about this, he emphasizes it was only his father who was Jewish, not his mother, who was a Russian Slav.
{{quote|"Why should I reject Russian blood, Russian culture, Russian land, and fall in love with the Jewish people only because of that single drop of blood that my father left in my mother's body?"}}
* [[wikipedia:Dan Burros|Dan Burros]] was a Jewish member of the American Nazi Party. His colleagues knew about his heritage.
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