The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville did not unite the right.
The groups in attendance—from alt-light to straight-up Nazi—reacted with anything but unity to the death of Heather Heyer, the young woman mown down by a white supremacist in August 2017. Some groups condemned the killer, though without taking responsibility for Heyer’s death. Jason Kessler, one of the organizers, blamed the police: “Police stood down and refused to separate the counter-demonstrators, and now people are dead. They were not prepared. Their number one priority was shutting down the alt-right.” Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke blamed the “the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.”
Whether or not Trump’s infamous “good people on both sides” comment was meant to include the white power crowd or those who were protesting the removal of Confederate statues, the president did condemn the worst actors but, characteristically, with a degree of ambiguity.
The neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer blamed Heyer herself, claiming that she died from a weight-related heart attack, while James Mason, something of an elder statesman among American Nazis, did not deny that his work over the years might have contributed to the thirty-two year old woman’s death. He regretted only that there “should have been more. I think somebody should have opened up on that crowd of communists down there and just laid waste.”
There is, however, one point of agreement among white nationalists, separatists, alt-righters, neo-Nazis and identitarians everywhere: we’re the victims here!
The terminology used to categorize these groups can be confusing. White separatists claim that they just want an ethnostate of their own because they are different from other races and because multiculturism has failed. Their rhetoric suggests that—despite their denials—they believe themselves to be superior to others or at least hope to be. The alt-right is the domain of Pepe the Frog and so-called ironic racism. It is a sad online phenomenon, almost entirely concerned with meme-making. If one were to make a Venn diagram of all these groups’ motives, the overlap would be self-defense. Of course, they all hate Jews, bash blacks, disparage women, ridicule homosexuals, despise the government, resent immigrants and loathe communists and globalists (whom they equate with Jews), but all this would be nothing without the limitless fuel of grievance. White people are—they somehow believe—barely surviving. This unites them like nothing else.
In fact, they’re not even all white.
Take the Proud Boys, whose brand received a boost after Trump’s bizarre comment that these self-styled western chauvinists—of whom the president claimed to know nothing—should “stand back and stand by.” Their current leader, Enrique Tarro, is a dark-skinned Miami-born man who identifies as Afro-Cuban. The Proud Boys claim to welcome anyone who believes west is best into their ranks. Even homosexuality is not an obstacle to membership. Or so they say.
Like many of these groups, they have recently splintered. Groups of this sort are constantly fracturing, closing shop, reopening and rebranding. Kyle Chapman, who earned the nickname Based Stickman after publicly beating an anti-fascist demonstrator with a stick, has formed a rival faction. Chapman is an explicit white supremacist, very concerned about white genocide. Chapman has called his sect The Proud Goys, making it the only known white power organization whose name contains Yiddish.
Why Can’t They All Get Along?
The lack of cohesion among these white supremacist gangs is in part the result of their having been successfully targeted by law enforcement. The Klan, the neo-Nazis and the skinheads have all been infiltrated and their members have turned on each other. Some are now serving long prison sentences.
In addition, groups of combative and paranoid young men cannot easily be molded into a smoothly run organization, especially when effective leadership is so rare. Not only are attempts to create an all-white ethnostate plainly ridiculous, but separatists won’t get so much as their own clubhouse without a charismatic leader. Fascism won’t work without one. Donald Trump has many of the necessary traits and the right sense of style for such a role, but he was born in a time and place that limited his ambitions so he has remained merely an authoritarian populist, a demagogue.
The task of assembling a group of like-minded bigots is further complicated by the fact that attitudes towards race, religion, sexuality, etc. have dramatically changed. Gone are the days when the KKK had upwards of six million members, many from the middle and professional classes. One can argue about the nature of contemporary bigotry, but there’s definitely less of it. The election and re-election of Barack Obama illustrate this, and those who counter that this is just a matter of some of my best presidents are black are reflexively unwilling to recognize progress.
A final obstacle to creating a robust far-right hate group of significant size and lasting power is that anyone with an axe to grind can now choose from a salad bar of grievances dressed up as ideologies. And here’s where lines get blurred and slopes get slippery. Just as the goals of violent anarchists are perversions of those of garden-variety liberals, the aims of white supremacists are warped versions of the policy prescriptions of many card-carrying congressional Republicans. Not every gang of angry, armed white males is motivated by racism or ethnic or religious hatred.
Take the Boogaloo movement, a study in taxonomic weirdness. These supremacists hope to put white Christian males—after so long in the wilderness!—back in charge where they supposedly belong. But not all of those who call themselves Boogaloo Boys are racist, and some have openly joined Black Lives Matter marches. All Boogaloos, however, are accelerationists, who wish to hasten a massive social upheaval leading to the violent overthrow of the federal government. The deadly confrontations at Waco and Ruby Ridge are proof—as they see it—of the villainy of an establishment that gladly uses lethal force against citizens who dare assert their constitutionally protected liberties (read: unfettered access to guns). This perspective—wildly oversimplified at best—lacks an ethnic element.
This does not make them harmless by any means. In fact, private anti-government militias of this sort could pose a much larger threat than any other kind of hate group, since the men who join militias are by definition locked and loaded. Dozens of Boogaloo members have been charged with crimes, including murder. The men who planned to kidnap Michigan’s governor and put her on “trial,” were affiliated with the movement.
White Russians
No place is more militia-friendly than today’s Russia. Supremacists the world over view Vladimir Putin as a manly symbol of resistance to the spread of secularism, political correctness and jihadism. Russia’s tolerance—at the least—for the presence of paramilitary groups has lured young, adventurous men from all over the world to the fight against Ukrainian government forces in Ukraine’s Donbass region. Somewhat confoundingly, many have made the trip to fight against Russia. Why someone from Berlin or Kentucky would choose one side over the other is unclear—and perhaps it is even unclear and unimportant to them. What matters is that the Donbass is a place where white males who enjoy mixed martial arts and gunplay can indulge those preferences. Their violence is not necessarily motivated by ideology—a fact that should reassure no one.
The most influential of the local militias is the Azov Battalion, a regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard that counts self-confessed neo-Nazis among its ranks and has welcomed foreign fighters to join its cause. To give some sense of the Azov Battalion’s reach, one of its symbols was worn on the jacket of the man who massacred fifty-one Muslims at prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand. The battalion numbers in only the hundreds, but it has an outreach program that solicits other Europeans to “save Europe from extinction.” Furthermore, Azov has established ties with the Atomwaffen, a particularly vicious neo-Nazi group that originated in the American South, but which now has affiliate organizations in Canada and several European countries. Members of Atomwaffen have been implicated in mass murder plots as well as plans to damage public water systems and power grids. They’ve also been accused of scheming to blow up nuclear power plants (their name translates to nuclear weapons)—all in order to overthrow the federal government. Once again, ethnic hatred is secondary to anti-government “resistance.”
But even among these dedicated hard cases, there is no universal agreement as to an ultimate goal and acceptable methods. It may seem perverse to distinguish between different shades of Nazi, but understanding these individuals is crucial to blocking their actions and stopping the spread of their ideology.
Behind the Hate
These people are not imbeciles. Some are nihilists—like the skinhead who busts heads just for the thrill of transgressive behavior. Others, however, require justification for their actions and a rationale for their grievances—and one doesn’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to recognize that societal forces have left many working class people feeling sucker-punched and swept aside. In the US, the near death of the coal industry, the outsourcing of jobs and the general decline of the manufacturing base have made it tough to find blue collar work that offers much in the way of pay or pride. Globalization has hurt these people. Even those who hold no racial animus are frustrated that their problems are never aired on cable news.
But railing against a faceless, impersonal process like globalization isn’t very satisfying. So instead George Soros becomes the enemy, the secret puppet master. Nancy Pelosi wants to take your guns. FEMA is building concentration camps to house opponents to the coming world government. It’s all predicted there in the Turner Diaries. Besides, Hillary Clinton is coming for your kids and … down the slope we slide. Sure, QAnon is crazy, but the people who subscribe to this fantasy are not themselves insane. They are—just maybe—understandable.
And even, for the most part, harmless. The vast majority of those at the sparsely attended barbecues where warm beer is consumed, tattoos are compared and threats are leveled at imaginary enemies will not kill, even if they refer to themselves as Odin’s Stormtroopers. Being a part of a group might not even be such a bad thing for these dissatisfied and distrustful individuals: the biggest threats posed by white supremacy or any other form of prejudice are not concerted acts of mass violence.
The most significant act of domestic terrorism in the United States was the murder of 168 people in Oklahoma City committed by Timothy McVeigh with the help of Terry Nichols. Others knew of their plot and may have aided them, but it was essentially a two-man operation.
In July 2011, one man, acting on his own, killed 77 people in Norway using a bomb, a semi-automatic rifle and a pistol. In August of that year, a gunman in El Paso, Texas killed 23 in an anti-Latino attack at a Walmart. Eleven people were slaughtered by a shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and two years earlier 49 people lost their lives to a single shooter inside a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. None of the perpetrators were members of a hate group.
The term leaderless resistance is sometimes used in such cases, but the phrase obscures a simple reality: these men acted on their own not because they were devoted to the idea of non-hierarchical systems, but because they were exceptional. Others believed in the same doctrines, read the same books warning of the end of the white race, felt similarly threatened by the celebration of women’s and gay rights and were convinced that the feds wanted to disarm them—but lacked the mental and emotional pathologies that lead a person to believe that mass murder can be for the greater good—pathologies not to be confused with mental illness. The planning and execution of mass murder typically involves an individual crippled by emotional pain, feelings of humiliation and, often, substance abuse.
How Big, How Bad and What Should We Do?
The FBI publishes an annual Hate Crimes Statistics Report. In 2019, the total number of reported cases was 8,559. Of these, 51 were murders, and of the murders, 31 were motivated by race/ethnicity/ancestry, 12 by religion, 7 by sexual orientation and 1 by gender identity.
These numbers are compiled from police departments and agencies that voluntarily provide the data, so there is reason for skepticism regarding their completeness. But the raw numbers don’t tell the whole story: these hate crimes take a toll on all those of us whom they remind that someone might end our lives at any time just because of who we are. But these figures pale next to the heartbreaking number of deaths by suicide, drug overdose and car accidents, as well as the number of homicides in general. White supremacy is a blight on us all, but only rarely does it turn violent.
But it does, and it will. Conspiracy thinking and scapegoating will be with us for the foreseeable future. Which doesn’t mean that we should do nothing about them.
Law enforcement is crucial. Most planned acts of racist, ethnic or religious violence are stopped by police, who are themselves targets of anti-government assassins.
Private tech firms could continue to deplatform advocates of violence—a delicate but necessary task.
Instead of concentrating attention on the perpetrators, media outlets could focus on the lives of the victims. Capital punishment, which creates martyrs, should be abolished.
Individuals who have left hate groups should be given every opportunity to tell their stories and debunk the twisted myths of racial supremacy.
Intelligent laws could reduce the ease with which anyone can get their hands on massively deadly firearms.
People on the left could refrain from exaggerating the extent of societal racism and from minimizing the destruction and violence perpetrated by those who claim to be anti-racists.
Critical reasoning and source-checking could become an essential part of everyone’s education.
Over the past 100 years, we’ve made fantastic progress in combatting bigotry. Right now, however, knotty and divisive issues such as mass immigration, racial and economic unrest and jihadism, together with the free flow of (dis)information, threaten to derail that progress. In addition, the pandemic and government responses to the pandemic are meat and drink to individuals prone to seeing conspiracies everywhere. Every one of us—including our elected leaders—needs to unequivocally reject violence from whatever source, and try to locate, understand and even connect with those among us most likely to do us harm.
49 comments
Thanx for the clarification, that business is indeed on their home page.
Alas, nowhere in your post, did I find citations of specific primary or secondary sources for specific claims (tho this is journalism/ historiography 101, esp.when attributing controversial deeds/ words to specific people/ groups).
If you (and Aero’s editors) want fair minded, intellectually street-wise folks to take you seriously, it behooves you (and Aero’s editors) to show readers that sort of basic journalistic respect.
Those writers, who fail to provide such sourcing, are automatically suspected of pushing agitProp.
As I understand it, even rags like Pravda and Völkischer Beobachter occasionally deigned to respect such journalistic standards, altho most often doing so in rather hatchet-job (e.g. quotes out of context) fashion.
Kaishaku 1) I wrote about the PBs claim regarding creating the modern world in a comment, not in the article. 2) It’s not a controversial thing to say. It’s their motto.
Whether it’s a controversial thing to *specialists* on WS is irrelevant, and thus this is a rather slender-reed response, to the issue of whether your claims are responsibly supported, esp. at a site for the general public.
The general public (incl. of fair minded, intellectually street-wise folks) pays minimal attn., to mottos etc. of fringe outfits (like the PBs or the Avov Bn).
So. this public reasonably expects that, when specialists purport to be providing info on such fringe groups, conscientious efforts are made to furnish proper sourcing.
Here at Aero, links to supporting source material are often provided, e.g. in today’s Kronen post “Towards a New American Humanism”.
So, it can’t be that hard, for specialists here (incl. on such heated topics as WS) to emulate his sourcing conduct..
Or, to give the general public fair warning (e.g. in a subtitle), that the article is addressed primarily to specialists, and thus assumes things of which he general public is likely unaware.
So, the point still remains, your approach was still patently contrary to journalism/ historiography 101.
“Whether or not Trump’s infamous “good people on both sides” comment was meant to include the white power crowd or those who were protesting the removal of Confederate statues, the president did condemn the worst actors but, characteristically, with a degree of ambiguity.”
It’s fact-fluid takes like this that put me into skimming mode. There is no good excuse to keep peddling this meme. There isn’t even a question here, if you bother to avail yourself of the readily available information on the topic. For someone who is supposedly a political idiot, Trump waited for the facts to come out – a wise course of action avoided by anyone protected by their confirmation bias. His subsequent remarks lacked all ambiguity.
Perhaps I misread and the author prefers a more unambiguous, racially supremacist take like, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
At least the author is attempting to defend his insinuations and vagueries.
Hello gmmay70. As I wrote, DT did condemn the worst actors — eventually. I’m glad he dd. The ambiguity that I refer to is in part because his first comments, in which he referred to an “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides” bothered many at the time for not outright condemning the neo-Nazis at the march. Others in his party did just that. Waiting for all the facts is fine (though not a typical Trump move) but in this case, it was clear immediately that this was a march of supremacists. A year after Charlottesville, DT took the opportunity to mention “the riots in Charlottesville” and to condemn “all types of racism.” There was no mention of neo-Nazis or other White Supremacists. DT’s praise of Robert E. Lee (without criticizing the general’s aims) and his tweeting of bogus racially categorized crime stats by a non-existent “Crime Statistics Bureau” are also the kind of thing that makes many question his motives. Regards, Adam
Edit: “I’m glad he did.”
Again, kudos to you for attempting a defense of your arguments here in the comments. “Eventually” is a tendentious way to say ’48 hours later’. The “ambiguity” you keep clinging to here was a wise political move, your feelings of its typicality being perfectly irrelevant.
And no, it was not immediately clear that it was a march of white supremacists as the facts and your own writing indicate that there were others there to protest the removal of the statues. Unless you’re going to continue the gambit of claiming what you strongly implied wasn’t what you meant. Given that you’re appending more questionable argument to your article to support your original dubious assertion, it seems that’s the case. So because Trump didn’t highlight the one camp of bad actors among two (or more), or he didn’t offer the criticism of Lee you would have preferred, his motives are questionable?
Completely unmentioned go the policies both direct and indirect from the Trump administration which enormously benefitted the black community, it’s much easier to keep up your bona fides with the fashionable, confirmation-biased take on the matter with shoddy rhetorical analysis.
It was clear at the time that there were WS there. It was their rally/march. If people suspect me of being a racist, I would be all over that. If I was a public figure, especially so. As the president, I would not retweet racist stats, and I would not praise Lee without condemning what he stood for. I would take the time to listen to those who have misunderstood me and then addressed them with respect and see where that got me.
I didn’t go into DT’s administration policies because the article was not about him. He’s barely mentioned. I would recommend you read — not skim — the article. I’d be curious as to what you have to say about the main thrust of the piece.
Very interesting piece – thank you Adam. It makes many solid and important points built on a foundation of actual information. And its clarity and simplicity demands that one who takes exception must present an actual evidence-based argument. I for one find very little to argue with, and much to think about. Kudos.
You’re welcome!
Wow, surprised by the number of alt right trolls in the comments. But then again, I guess I am an “Elite,” whatever that means.
As my comment the other day about “Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Books” and “Wobbly ballads” versus Rush Limbaugh” suggested, there used to be a time a few generations ago–in the 1900’s, 1910’s, 1920’s, and 1930’s–when the American white working class was not nearly so down on liberals, leftists, intellectuals, and the liberal media as they are today. Back in the 1910’s, 1920’s, and 1930’s, it was quite commonplace for White blue-collar workingmen and -women to express views close to those associated in the past few years with figures like Bernie Sanders–while at the same time, the Left back in those days, to their vast credit then if unfortunately not now, very seldom if ever indulged in our own time’s “white guilt,” “white privilege,” and “intersectionality” nonsense. There was also a widespread hunger back in those days for working-class self-education, a hunger for self-education we rarely ever see in our own time any more among our present-day working classes. It was that hunger which the socialist and freethought journalist and publisher Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951) tried to help satisfy with his “Little Blue Books,” 3 1/2 by 5 inch paperback booklets sold by the hundreds of millions between 1919 and 1951 at a nickel, dime, or quarter apiece on almost every possible subjects–literary classics, science, history, philosophy, politics, economics, sexology, religion, self-improvement, humor, etc.–from his printing plant in Girard, Kansas.
Article completely misses the mark. Fails even at the most basic level, i.e. cannot describe phenomena without blaming and condemning. (Nope, I’m not one of the groups mentioned in this text. Sorry.)
I so thoroughly don’t get your comment I am not sure where to start. Maybe you can provide some examples of your claim?
What baloney.
The notion of some in any way significant ‘white’ nationalist movement is ‘projection’ as part of the longstanding backlash against ordinary people by the Left in its ‘identity politics’ totalitarianism.
The Left elite hates us for not buying their fatuous ideology, leaving them with ‘cognitive dissonance’ re their failure, prompting a now near century-long developing hate-mongering. [The roots go back to circa 1930, when the core of what became contemporary feminism arose from Marxist intellectuals invoking Freud’s now wholly discredited notion of ‘repression’ to explain how ‘the workers’ didn’t ‘rise up’, wedded to Engels’ bizarre notions about the family. The US New Left then co-oped the civil rights and Stonewall movements, adding ‘black’ (> all ethnic minority) and gay (> LGBT*?) to women, and everyone well knows the rest.]
What’s going on is that people en mass have woken up top the fact that the elite hates them and that ‘identity politics; is completely empty of anything but hate.
That’s not in any way ‘white’ nationalism.
The Left elite is going to be toast.
This is a terribly written article which shows a complete lack of understanding of the subject
The biggest hate groups in the United States are the mainstream media.
Our present-day American dislike and distrust of the mainstream media, a social and cultural historian might well argue, became inevitable sooner or later when the American white working class stopped reading the Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Books (H.-J.’s “University in Print, at a nickel, dime, or quarter apiece) and singing Wobbly ballads, and instead started listening to Rush Limbaugh and attending megachurches.
Listening to Rush Limbaugh and attending megachurches was mostly limited to Mov’t Conservatives, who were edged out by Trump 4 years ago, with help from folks “radicalized” by (LImbaugh’s covering for) Dubya’s wars, and ’08 bailouts.
Then, after Trump declared for building a Wall, the MSM slobbered all over Merkel’s importation of Syrians, and this reminded folks of how, for decades,the MSM had covered for importation of Mexican illegals.
Then, after he won, the MSM slobbered all over Hillary etc. emulating McCarthyism about “Russian hacking”, showing Dems to betray their prior tradition of concern, for peace w/ Russia.
And, the MSM slobbered all over the Deep State’s pursuit of Flynn etc., betraying their prior tradition of concern for civil liberties.
More recently, they scolded Deplorables about social distancing vs. covid, while slobbered all over antifa/ BLM disregard for such concerns, in favor of Social Justice War vs. “systemic racism”.
It just keeps getting clearer, that MSM whining really owes to upper-middle class hate of Deplorables, using race issues as a cover.
The Pulse shooter Omar Mateen, was an American-born Muslim of Afghan family background–i.e., from a Muslim ethnic group universally classified as Caucasoid by anthropologists. The photograph of Mateen. from his driver’s license, in the Wikipedia article on the Pulse shooting is quite “white”-looking–he might as well be a Mafia don or the owner of a Greek restaurant! :=) :=)
It’s interesting how these people’s skin tone changes depending on the website.
Goy is actually a term used by gay men who don’t engage in anal intercourse. They are more like male body worshippers. So rather than fully “gay” they are “goy.” And yes they too have a support group full of grievances against those of us gay men who go all the way. Also, the Pulse nightclub shooter is Muslim, not white. I’m still shocked how few people know this. It doesn’t help that the MSM refused to cover the trial, which revealed closer connections to radical Islam than even prosecutors had thought, extending to his entire family.
“Also, the Pulse nightclub shooter is Muslim, not white.” Such Muslim peoples as Arabs, Turks, Iranians, Chechens, Afghans, and Pakistanis may very often be virullently anti-Western and anti-American–but they are classified by virtually all physical anthropologists as belonging to the Caucasoid racial group–and many Turks, Arabs and Iranians are almost indistinguishable in physical appearance from Greeks, Israelis, or southern Italians. If you’re looking for clearly, indisputably non-Caucsasoid Muslims, you should go to sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Nigeria), or to Malaysia, Indonesia, or Turkic-speaking central Asia.
An interesting bit of history that has not yet been investigated is the black member of Quantrill’s gang of raiders who scouted Lawrence, KS for the attack the raiders made on that town. Wonder what motivated him?
The Wikipedia article on Quantrill’s Raiders mentions suggestions that John Noland, the African-American freedman scout for the Raiders, may have been embittered by abuse at the hands of pro-Union “Jayhawkers,” and also claims that he was a popular participant in later reunions of the Raiders.
“The proliferation of digital media has created new outlets for alt-right ideology, many harboring white-supremacist discourse under the guise of free-thought.
Take Areo magazine, whose brand received a boost over the past three years with the rise of Trump and the demise of traditional media outlets….”
Doesn’t this kind of sophistry infuriate you? With its presumption disguised across paragraphs, it’s a ‘drive-by’ declarative version of the loaded question: “So why do you beat your wife?” I made up the quote (sorry Aero magazine), but it may as well have come from identity activists on the far-left who have said similar things about Areo, Quillette and other heterodox outlets. Now take a quote from this article:
“In fact, they’re [the White Nationalists] not even all white.”
“Take the Proud Boys, whose brand received a boost after Trump’s ….”
The only reason I know the Proud Boy’s as a White Nationalist group is by this and similar ‘drive bys’; repeated over and over until that is what I and everyone else believe as matter of course. I’m not sure if the author is pulling the rhetorical trick or if he is just a performative repeater of it.
If the Proud Boys accept all races, religions and sexual orientations while affirming that the “West is Best,” they sound a lot like Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay defending “Enlightenment Values” and pluralism. Maybe the Proud Boys are a low-brow, Fight Club analog to a Cynical Theories book club?
I would love to know if the Proud Boys are indeed a White Nationalist organization; candidly or surreptitiously. Are they just a wacky men’s club that can’t filter racist outcasts? Perhaps they are misunderstood? They’re probably complicated. I would love some investigative journalism with real data and interviews. Same for the Boogaloo Boys.
How big is White Nationalism in America? I’ve heard it asked more in the past five years than in the previous 40 of my life. This is a critically important topic, but this article is a pastiche of what the title promises. Being an American who has not known or consciously met a White Nationalist in all my life, I suspect pretty small. Am I deluded? Perhaps the White Nationalists are hiding out in America’s backwaters, like in the film Deliverance. Should I think twice before pulling into a rural gas station?
If there are 8559 hate crimes per year in the USA, then that is about 0.09% of all US crime (violent and property). If that’s the case I’d rather spend my energies lowering spousal abuse or gang violence. By the way, I derived that figure using data from a five minute Wikipedia search. This topic could use depth beyond what a few hours of Googling can provide.
Hi Dualist. I agree that the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys are, as you say, “complicated.” This was one of the main themes of the piece. Regarding the PBs, you quote my saying that some of these groups are “Not even all white.” Exactly — it’s complicated. As to the BBs, I precede my discussion of them with this line: “Not every gang of angry, armed white males is motivated by racism or ethnic or religious hatred.” Again, complicated, confusing, and in flux. And sometimes — let’s remember — especially in the case of the BBs, highly dangerous. Also, you emphasize the relative smallness of the number of hate crimes in the US, but I’ve done the same. After giving the FBI figures, I state they “pale next to the heartbreaking number of deaths by suicide, drug overdose and car accidents, as well as the number of homicides in general. White supremacy is a blight on us all, but only rarely does it turn violent.” Of course this could change in the next minute, but it’s more likely to come from a lone, deeply troubled young man inspired by supremacist rhetoric, rather than a group effort. That’s the other main theme of the piece.
Kudos on you for replying and a good clarification. My problem with the article is that it talks in absolute terms about something that you admit in your clarification, is complex. Not absolute! Yet the term “white supremacy” is definitive. It’s a bullseye. A sharp category, not a broad church.
Ultimately calling the Proud Boys a racist group is just plain wrong but you call them white supremacists! Calling them white supremacist (whilst being the mainstream view of them), is catastrophically erroneous.
They are and always have been a group with a mixed racial following. To say that white supremacy is complicated then point to a mixed racial group with a black leader, is like saying mammals are complex, then pointing at a fish or a snake to make the point.
Another problem is the idea that all of those who identify with their white identity are on a spectrum with white supremacy or the far right. At best a worrying trend with the potential to produce the lone Wolf like the Christchurch killer and at worst the slippery slope to a potential Hitler type leader and corresponding Holocaust. People who don’t think their white identity is irrelevant and might actually have no shame in their identity, is just de facto framed as negative. Sinister. Beyond the bounds of acceptability. Motivated by hate.
The fact is, once you leave educated middle class circles most people know what identity they are and are unapologetically proud of it but they aren’t racists just because of that.
And once you leave the West, almost every nation, society, group and civilization has some kind of deep ethnic/racial identity and pride in that identity.
The Indians, Thais, Ghanaians, Malays, Jamaicans, Sudanese, Egyptians, Tibetans, Vietnamese etc etc
By Western liberal standards, the entire population of the planet is dangerously ethnocentric, right wing and, supremacist/racist.
The idea of having zero ethnicity/racial identity or pretending that it’s irrelevant, is only the norm for a microsecond of history and consigned to a tiny slither of educated white Westerners.
If identifying as a native European (white) is a worrying far right trend, you might want to think about the fact that those who fought the Nazis would qualify as worryingly far right and perhaps white supremacists.
As for the rest of the world?
They are a nest of far right, ethnocentric vipers.
Yet very few are like Nazi Germany.
I write this sitting in my home of 15 years. Bangkok Thailand.
They are extremely ethnocentric, nationalistic and jingoistic, but Nazi Germany it is not.
A more friendly and welcoming people you could not wish to be hosted by.
The attempt to squash group identity is futile and Nazi Germany was an anomaly of what identity leads to. For most of history and most of the world today, group identity and pride is the norm and rarely results in racist violence, pogroms or gas chambers.
People who identify as white should not be demonised or written about like Islamists anymore than the average Asian or African person.
They should be engaged as equals rather than studied like a cancer.
Hi James. My clarification, as you call it, just references what I actually say in the article. The complex, fluid nature of these groups makes it difficult and pointless to classify them. I suppose I could have made it clearer that I don’t consider the PBs an officially WS group, but they certainly are supremacists, and if some people see them as White, not just Western Supremacists, it’s somewhat understandable. If you write a piece entitled “10 Things I Hate About Jews,” and refer to “F…in’ C…Feminists” and use one of the SS lightning bolts in your merchandise, and use the “OK” hand gesture, and have a vice-president who goes on to start an explicitly WS group . . . people are going to draw conclusions. If they do not wish to be thought of that way, then it would be a good idea for them to make a contribution to society instead of complaining; this is what fraternal organizations typically do, as opposed to a frat. And the idea that these guys “created the modern world” is silly, no? My feeling is that people should generally take pride in their own accomplishments. As to group identity, I believe that as we mature, our in-group expands. Regards and happy holidays. Adam
“And the idea that these guys “created the modern world” is silly, no?”
Who oh who is saying, that “these guys ‘*created* the modern world’ is silly, no?
Certainly not James T.!
If any PB wheel says that, please give us a quote, in context, so that we can be sure that one of “*these* guys“ actually claims to have *created* the modern world”.
“as we mature, our in-group expands.”
Often so, until we (street-wise folk) sniff out, that many folks outside of our “narrow” in-group seeking to play us for fools, e.g. by systematically trying to hammer us with straw men, e.g. that *we* claim to have “created the modern world”.
Until I see folks like you give anywhere near as hard a time to SJW Deplorables-haters (or, as James T. refers to, the *non-white ethnocentric*, nationalistic and jingoistic groups), as you give to crowds like the PBs, I’ll suspect that *most* folks like you are mainly aiming to cover for the SJWs.
(BTW, I’ve never had, and likely never will have, any truck with the PBs.
AS for most SJWs, while their power of self-reflection is quite limited, their power of self-delusion is enormous, esp. regarding their hatred of those beneath their class-level, and their determination to Virtue Signal at others’ *expense*.)
The business about “creating the modern world” is part of the PB motto. It’s on the home page of their website. I’ve heard them chant it.
“Who oh who is saying, that “these guys ‘*created* the modern world’ is silly, no?” should’ve been
“Who oh who is saying, that *they ‘created* the modern world’?
“folks outside of our “narrow” in-group seeking to play” should’ve been
“folks outside of our in-group *seek* to play”.
Nice to meet you Adam. I acknowledge with you that the effect of White Nationalism seems nearly negligible. I didn’t mean to imply that you said something with a different affect. You said 51 people died from hate crimes last year. Approximately 50 people die every year in the United States, a country of 350 million, by random bolts of lightening; with sympathy to those who perished due to the heavens and the bigots. These just seem to be the easily accessible facts. If these simple facts are as compelling as they seem, then we should call White Nationalism what it would then be – a moral panic. If, like some virus, White Nationalism is hard to detect at present but is geometrically spreading as a social phenomenon, then it seems we have to discover the data that will compel us to act now, because that data is currently missing. Instead we seem to hold White Nationalism in limbo as a specter; something dead that still needs to be alive.
I do think you clearly lump the Proud Boys into the white separatist category, despite the comment that not all angry white men are racists; buried six or seven paragraphs down from the insinuation. Perhaps they are racist, perhaps not. Whatever the case, it seems White Nationalist/Separatist is a heretical category for lumping all the deplorables. They may be deplorable, but the one-size fits all stereotype doesn’t assist my understanding. I think the real complexity may be that these groups have no substantial similarities with one another in ideology or method. The binary of American politics ensures that disparate groups often find themselves together under one of two tents, even in the fringe corners. On the left, the Democratic Socialists of America are awkwardly in the same corner as Woke evangelists. It may be that America is fracturing rather than splitting.
Hello again. Many times while writing this piece, I wanted to refer to well . . . these groups, but no one term did the trick. Hate group wasn’t quite right, nor far-right. As I say in the piece, however, they do have in common a sense of aggrievement, of victimhood. But they also, as I wrote, are hostile to many of the same groups, especially the federal government. This is certainly true of the PBs. But I would not absolve the PBs of bigotry. As I tried to make clear, the situation is fluid. The group was started by a man who wrote a piece called “10 things I hate about Jews.” He then modified the title to “. . . about Israel” and claimed that humor was intended. And the man I refer to who left the group to start an overtly supremacist outfit WAS A PROUD BOY right before leaving. Ethnic pride, civilizational pride, nationalism — whatever you want to call it — will invariably attract haters. As to the numbers being so small, I did write that the numbers don’t tell the whole story. These acts of terrorism affect many more people than most acts of violence, including lightning strikes. And the numbers also don’t reveal all the failed acts of violence. I couldn’t include all the facts (though I do refer to plans to blow up power plants, etc.), but there have been many plots that have been foiled. I think my prescriptive remarks at the end of the passage list some ways to help keep us safe without succumbing to a moral panic. Regards.
Thanks for the nuanced writing Adam. I’m not too concerned by exactly which paragraphs you acknowledge complexity within, as long as you do. After all, opinion pieces at Areo are meant to be read from start to finish. 🙂
Don’t you consider that they are reacting to the now mainstream idea of critical theory that has made ‘whiteness’ problematic? From top selling books like ‘White Fragility’ to compulsory workplace training on ‘white privilege’ to woke media like the ‘New York TImes’ these ideas are mainstream. White people, particularly males, are told to ‘educate themselves’ and examine their complicity in a reversal of standards of guilt. It’s to be expected that labelling and villifying a group based on inmutable characteristcs would lead to this reaction. The academic backlash has started with James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose et al. Others bewildered by the current ideology and uncomprehending of their supposed ‘privilege’ are left angry and reactive to a world blaming them for the evils of society.
This should surprise nobody, though oddly many people seem very surprised by it.
Decades of theory saying “ethnic identity is the most important thing and defines you as a person” (roughly – probably unfairly, but that’s life; people don’t react to your dissertation, they react to how you talk and act) ends up with people who weren’t the desired target also believing that, and acting accordingly.
I think that ethnic identity politics is pure poison for democratic and free society (and possibly for individual mental health?), but that doesn’t change that it’s very popular – and that “white people” are, sadly, increasingly deciding that they need to play that game, too.
Anyone could have told them this would happen. Hell, people did, and were simply ignored.
“It’s to be expected that labelling and villifying a group based on inmutable characteristcs would lead to this reaction.”
Hate mostly comes from fear. Fear can come from confusion — not knowing WTF is happening or where we are going. Hate can also be a reaction to a gross injustice. I’m told that my Whiteness needs curing and that I was born in sin (Privilege). I’m told that every time a black felon dies in a police incident it is my fault. Outrage slowly builds in my guts and although I resist it — I don’t *want* to hate anybody — the fact is that hate builds too. I am becoming a Hater and it is wokeness that is driving me to it.
But, hate also comes from Elites’ (pushing) *Hate, Inc.* (as described by Matt Taibbi), e.g. when Elites see a need to distract the rabble, from Elites’ systematic efforts to rig the system, to impoverish the rabble (of all races).
So, when shills for the Elites make the biggest possible cow about White Supremacism, (as the author here seems to be leannig toward) while saying nothing about, or systematically sneering at, reasonable fears of white impoverishment or extinction), whites reasonably wager that, indeed,
white impoverishment or extinction may well be on the agenda.
While the author here briefly referred to alt-Righties’ etc. “feeling sucker-punched” by “free trade” etc., he used far more space to stress the Azov Battalion’s reach, as if that had anything to do with the appeal of the alt-Right *in* the US.
And, he can’t refrain from charging ” Of course, they all hate Jews”, and “Pelosi wants to take your guns”, as if that fear is oh-so paranoid.
So, while he gives a nod to
“People on the left could refrain from exaggerating the extent of societal racism”, he also urges that
“laws could reduce the ease with which anyone can get their hands on massively deadly firearms”, perhaps not imagining that we would fear, that enforcement of such laws would just so happen to target Righties, not BLM.
After all, it’s clear enough, the that the Obama/ Comey (+Mueller) FBI etc. was much more focused on, say, Gen. Flynn’s “lies”, than on, say, Swalwell’s ChiCom squeeze.
Typo correction: “as the author here seems to be leanING toward”
Hello Kaishaku. You raise too many points for me to address here, and there’s probably not much either one of us would gain if I tried, but . . .
I think a careful reading makes it clear that I’m not leaning towards making the “biggest possible cow” about WS. Also, I don’t spend all that much more space discussing the Azov Battalion than I do on working class people feeling sucker-punched, etc. Furthermore, the article was not limited to a discussion of the US situation, so it was appropriate to discuss this group, regardless of whether it had much to do with “the appeal of the alt-right in the US.” Regards.
Thanks for your reply.
Of course, your article *turned out* to not be “limited” to a discussion of the US situation, but the feature photo showed Rebel, not Azov Bn. flags, so we didn’t imagine that the Azov stuff would appear at all, until it did.
The Azov part was clearly15 lines long (this, in a *whole* Segment on “White Russians”), while the sucker-punched part at most 8 lines long, so, yeah, I’m calling the Azov part to have “far more space” than the sucker part.
OK, for the sake of argument, I’ll suppose that *you’re* not leaning towards making the “biggest *possible* cow” about WS.
But it’s hard to believe, that the article’s point wasn’t to imply, that WS is far more significant a threat than, say, antiFa, BLM, or, for that matter, the (Deep State, etc.) “law enforcement” agencies, in which you seem to place such trust.
In your list of 7 ideas for fighting WS, we see all-but hagiography of “law enforcement” (and tech firms), but *no* reference to Deplorables’ mistrust of Federal (and Big Tech) power (of the sort wielded at Waco, and recently vs. the NY Post on Hunter B.).
Similarly, with your reference to “knotty and divisive issues”: no hint, of the extent to which the Establishment has richly earned the massive distrust of so much of the public.
Seeing that McVeigh *specified* his main motive to be (not a Conspiracy Theory about “FEMA building concentration camps”, but) his outrage at the *actual* conduct of ATF etc. in Waco and Ruby Ridge, readers might reasonably assume you to be caring far more about WS Conspiracy Theories, than about world-famous massacres inflicted by Big Bro, or about the Elites’ utter disinterest in probing the ATF etc.
Only after McVeigh committed his crime did the Elites deign to construct the Danforth Report, which is viewed by various knowledgeable folks (e.g. Ramsey Clark) to have been a whitewash.
And, of course, very few believe, that the Feds have come clean, about what really happened to JFK & Oswald.
Whether or not there’s “not much either one of us would gain if I tried”, matters rather less to me, than whether readers here are edified.
@T. Peter Park: “As for preserving your heritage and your culture, nobody’s stopping you from reading your Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kant. and Jane Austen, listening to your Bach and Mozart, or looking at your Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Renoir prints!”
A slightly strange statement. I had no idea that Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kant, Bach and Mozart belonged to me. But if so, you must forget about them, they are mine! Otherwise it will be cultural appropriation on your part.
Which is nice, but I include civic culture as well. Democracy, liberalism etc. all those things that whitey invented and I’d like to keep. Islam has quite different ideas, blacks have trouble with anything close to civilization, the Chinese are certainly capable of civilization but I’d still like to preserve the white way of life here. Just my personal view.
“…blacks have trouble with anything close to civilization.” You really need to get out more.
I’m a white-supremacy lite sort of guy. Don’t so much hate anyone as I want to preserve my heritage and my culture. Am I a bigot?
As for preserving your heritage and your culture, nobody’s stopping you from reading your Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kant. and Jane Austen, listening to your Bach and Mozart, or looking at your Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Renoir prints!
“Am I a bigot?” Yes, if you fail to toe the SJW line, down to the last scintilla.
Let alone, if you dare if you say anything nice about whites qua whites.