The Elephant in The Room: Toxic White Privilege disguised as "Far-Right Extremism"

The Elephant in The Room: Toxic White Privilege disguised as "Far-Right Extremism"

In New Zealand, killer Brenton Tarrant praised Trump as a "symbol of white supremacy" in a 74-page manifesto before calmly going out and murdering 50 Muslims, injuring 50 more.... 

* In October of 2018, domestic terrorist Cesar A. Sayoc pledged allegiance to Trump...right before he mailed out 16 packages that allegedly contained improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, billionaire investor George Soros, actor-director Robert De Niro and other prominent Trump critics....

* Florida high school shooter Nikolas Cruz, wore a MAGA hat during target practice just months before February 14, 2018, when he opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing seventeen students and staff members and injuring seventeen others.... 

* On August 12, 2017, James Alex Fields Jr. a former teacher said was fascinated by Nazism and Hitler, deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of mostly black counter- protesters, at a "Unite the Right" rally, organized in part to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. Before the fatal crash, Fields was photographed holding a shield with the Vanguard America emblem, one of the hate groups that participated in the rally.... 

* Anthony Comello, the man who brutally gunned down Gambino crime boss Frank Cali, came to court with a message, inked in ball point pen on his hand: "United We Stand, MAGA Forever".... 

* Sitting in an office in Coast Guard headquarters, where the mission is to ensure the safety of the nation, Lt. Christopher P. Hasson took illicit opiates and plotted to "murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country." A self-proclaimed white nationalist, Hasson had reportedly admired the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, pondered the use of biological weapons and attacks on food supplies, and created a spreadsheet of targets that included prominent reporters and Democratic politicians. Hasson had previously spent five years in the Marines and two in the Army National Guard, slowly rising through the ranks without attracting notice for his dreams of a 'white homeland.'

* Donald Trump Jr. shared a picture of his father's face on a machine gun's magazine ('MAGA'-zine) on the same day as the New Zealand shootings.... 

* On October 24, 2018, in Kentucky, Gregory Bush tried to enter a black church but, after failing at this goal, went to a Krogers supermarket shot and killed two black customers. Upon entering he pulled a gun from his waist and shot Maurice E. Stallard in the back of the head, then kept shooting him multiple times as he was down on the floor. He shot and killed Vicki Lee Jones in the parking lot, while sparing a white customer saying, "whites don’t kill whites." 

* In 2017, Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd of more than 22,000 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas, killing more than 50 and wounding more than 200. 


* In May of 2017, a 35-year-old Jeremy Joseph Christian began harassing Muslim teenagers on a train in Portland, telling them "We need only Americans here!" Two men interceded; Christian then stabbed and killed them both. 

The list goes on and on and on in some macabre, never-ending perverted faustian reality show. When white extremists kill, politicians do not demand that they be racially profiled. They do not call for bans on white people coming to the United States. They do not insist that white people’s freedom of movement be restricted, their houses of worship be surveilled, their leaders be banned from holding public office, or their neighborhoods be "secured" and occupied by armed agents of the state. And they do not demand that taxpayers foot the bill for a massive, symbolic monument that will register America’s official disdain for white people in perpetuity. These things don’t happen because, as America’s largest demographic group, white people have the political power and influence to prevent such proposals from even being contemplated. 

This is a form of political correctness so powerful that it shapes behavior without being mentioned or publicly acknowledged; it is simply the way things work. From the beginning, fascism and racism have always been tied to white supremacy. Mussolini himself was preoccupied with the idea that white people in Italy were dying out and being replaced by the minority groups who were the targets of his hatred. He attracted followers, mostly veterans of World War I and businessmen, by encouraging the systematic assault and killing of socialists, who were viewed as disloyal for having opposed the war and whom factory-owners saw as a threat to their power over labor. 

Modern far-right parties generally avoid the term like the plague, and tend to use coded replacement words and substitute language which enables these hateful, racist, vile, hate-filled, and sickening ideas to come back in different guises and forms. Meanwhile, given that 70% of all mass shooters are toxic white privileged males, most of who espouse racist, far-right, "white nationalism" (don't you just love how innocuous and harmless they keep changing the grammar to bleach, and camouflage, the appearance of genocide and hate out of it?), and particularly in the aftermath of New Zealand shooting, U.S. President Donald "Yeti Pubes" Trump believes white nationalism doesn't pose an imminent threat. 

New Neo-Nazi groups like the 'Atomwaffen Division' are engaging in paramilitary exercises and encouraging members to acquire military training to prepare for a race war. Between 2002 and 2017, the Department of Homeland Security spent an astounding $2.8 trillion on counter-terrorism efforts, most of it to fight Islamist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, both at home and abroad. Domestically, the Countering Violent Extremism Task Force has focused on immigrant organizations and Black Lives Matter activists. By comparison, elected officials seem uninterested in the threat posed by the greatest danger this nation has ever faced.....white extremists. 

Americans should react to violence from religious and ethnic minorities with the same sense of proportion they reserve for "far-right extremists". This predatory disease is all the more dangerous because it is homegrown, and all the tentacles of white supremacy have been set in place to protect these killers. As we say in the 'hood, "they have the complexion for the protection." Recently a former national security official and a U.S. attorney both advocated laws to create new federal terrorism charges to address such threats. While well-intentioned, these proposals misfire for several reasons. First, law enforcement officials do not need new terrorism charges to counter domestic extremists. 

Prosecutors already have hundreds of federal criminal charges at their disposal, which they have used to prosecute Charleston shooter Dylann Roof, the Charlottesville, Virginia, assailant; James Alex Fields; and Hasson. In addition, prosecutors already use the (RICO Act) Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act charges to seize assets of domestic terrorist groups and increase penalties against their members. Moreover, in light of federal agencies' history of targeting civil rights activists and communities of color, there is no guarantee that federal agents would aim expanded charges at white nationalists, rather than Black Lives Matter members, indigenous rights activists protesting oil pipelines, or Muslims. 


But nobody wants to address the elephant in the room. 

The entire racist mentality of everything American needs an exorcism. From the spate of Barbecue Becky's frantically calling the 9-1-1 'white-privilege-concierge-service' on people of color, to cheating to get into colleges, police brutality in communities of color and whatnot, every thread of American daily life is chockfull of the symptoms that give rise to these monsters. And while rescinding racist policies and holding accountable a president who issues them will do more to improve U.S. race relations, in reality every aspect of American life deflect/ignore/justify/humanize the deadly actions of white American terrorists while stoking fears of immigrants and Muslims. But it goes back further than that. 

The U.S. Constitution, written by slave-owning, wealthy white landowners, was designed to keep power in the hands of white men. Although that power has continually been contested, it has never been relinquished. Only in the last few decades have Americans of different national, religious, and ethnic backgrounds begun to enjoy even half the rights and privileges of citizenship. 

When will America begin to acknowledge that the foundation of this entire vulture capitalist system, the origins of this great nuclear superpower, and all its institutions, be they religious, economic, political, military, or social, has been dependent on an inexplicable hatred of people of color, while simultaneously, economically exploiting them. 

When will Americans be brave enough to peer into the abyss and call the inhuman, and inhumane part of them by its rightful name? How many more prayers for the dead will we make? How many more pithy, meaningless, and disingenuous speeches proclaiming, "this is not who we are", will our leaders give? 

Despite America becoming increasingly diverse, or perhaps because of it, white nationalism is back with a vengeance. Defeating it will be the moral, electoral, and educational challenge of a generation.



































































                                                  That is the elephant in the room.....speak on it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Letter to Mark Zuckerberg: The Deeper Ramifications and Implications of Selective Social Media Censorship