A little over 100 years ago, the President of the United States – who was the former president of Princeton, an Ivy League university, not some pettifogging Son of the Confederacy – re-segregated the Federal government, opened the statutory floodgates for Jim Crow, and showed Birth of a Nation in the White House.
Eighty years ago, the Klan controlled entire cities and states. The could claim tens of thousands of members, and easily muster hundreds of marchers…in Minnesota.
Racial swamp critters like Father Coughlin and Gordon Winrod commanded massive radio audiences; in the thirties and forties, they commanded audience shares of the audience easily comparable to today’s talkers.
And the Deutch-Americanische Bund, an American outcrop of the Nazi party, had a significant following in the US – peaking during an evening in 1939 when, NPR reminds us, the Bund held an event in Madison Square Garden that drew 20,000.
A little over fifty years ago, segregationist Democrat George Wallace carried five states, cementing Hubert Humphrey’s political humiliation. The Klan actively, sometimes violent, resisted Civil Rights efforts earlier in the decade – in some cases, with relative impunity.
30-40 years ago, “Christian Identity” murdered Denver talk show host Alan Berg (no relation) on his way to the station. Groups like the American Nazi Party, the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, and (in my home state) the Posse Comitatus operated in the openly (and, in 1983) violently.
20-25 years ago, there was a Nazi cell operating semi-openly (at least, if you believed their Usenet BBS account) in Saint Cloud, and there was a White Supremacist record label operating in Saint Paul. A “Klan” rally drew about a dozen wan-looking “Klansmen” and a couple hundred counterprotesters to the Minnesota state capitol . There was a map of the greater Denver area that advised hikers and campers not to go into the mountains north of Boulder because of all the “Christian Identity” members that made their homes up there (although that was arguably humor or hysterics in action).
Today? The “Klan” musters nine people to a rally in Dayton, a city that was once one of their hotbeds north of the Mason Dixon. “White Supremacists” from 8-10 states mustered maybe 100 people in Charlottesville a couple years ago. You can search the world far and wide for a White Supremacist (off the Internet, anyway) who isn’t a doughy mid-thirties convenience store clerk who lives in his parents’ basement and leads a band of race warriors…on Reddit.
By any objective, concrete measurement, “white supremacy” as an organized activity has nearly disappeared.
(“White Supremacy” as an academic chanting point designed to bully and gaslight the vulnerable is another matter – but that’s another article).
And yet the media pushes the notion that “White Supremacy” is waxing across the country.
Am I the only who to whom it seems like the Big Media – and the Big Left for whom it works – is pushing the story to convince more loonies to try the White Supremacist lifestyle?
“Hey, dysthemic losers! Look at these other people like you! Come on out in the sunshine and romp and play! And maybe assemble in a group in front of this camera, with hand-lettered, misspelled signs? And when you do, make sure the one with the MAGA hat is up front! You are not alone!“
It reminds me of the Red Scare movies of the 1950s – if you get people thinking there are commies behind every bush, pretty soon someone will start seeing commies behind the bushes.
Herd mentality. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Of course the US is a white supremacy nation! Generations of school children have been taught to sing “God Bless America”! You know who recorded God Bless America? Kate Smith. You know what other song Kate Smith recorded? “That’s Why the Darky Was Born.”
How can you expect the Black man to rise from his chains when, at any moment, he may hear the white supremacist song “God Bless America,” or worse, be made to sing it?
The thing I find most frustrating about the “White Supremacist” witch-hunt is the Potter Stewart-style ever-flexible definition: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . but I know it when I see it.” That’s how Liberals act when throwing around the White Supremacist label.
I’m White and I’m also a parent. I want my kids to get good grades, even if that means worse grades for other kids, some of whom may be children of color. I want my kids to get into good schools, even if that means other kids – some of whom may be children of color – don’t get into those schools. I want my kids to get good jobs, even if that means worse jobs for other kids, some of whom may be children of color. To help my kids achieve all that, my wife and I read to them, we stayed married, we lived within our means, we didn’t do drugs or crimes, we forced them to do homework. If our family plans succeeded and my kids became successful, it was because we all worked very hard to achieve it.
Liberals claim that makes my kids the beneficiaries of White Privilege bestowed on them by White Supremacists. Nonsense. I don’t want these things for my kids because they are White, but because they are my kids. That fact that other parents aren’t able, or aren’t willing, to make the sacrifices my family made, to put in the effort we put in, has nothing to do with race.
And you know how I can prove it? Asians. Look at the advances the Asian community has made in the last 50 years, to the point where Harvard has a limiting quota on them because Asians are no longer an oppressed minority, they’re so successful that Harvard now counts them as White.
Its funny, the Left screams racism is overall I think the best example of Bergs 7th Law thats ever existed. The best example is how Lefties treat black conservatives. There is literally no parallel on the right, until you get to the Alt-Right at least.
Twenty-two people ID’d by the Justice Department as being members of an MS-13 machete murder squad are from Central America:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/22-los-angeles-based-members-ms-13-transnational-gang-named-federal-racketeering-case
I suppose I am a white supremacist if I point out that 14 of the 22 are in the country illegally.
Something worth repeating (already pointed out by this very blog on 20161116) from John Podhoretz on Twitter:
Liberals spent 40 years disaggregating U.S., until finally the largest cohort in the country chose to vote as though it were an ethnic group
Things will get even more interesting once that cohort, and especially those of a certain gender in that cohort, realize how important they are to life today, on a daily basis as well as historically.
I like Neal Stephenson novels; they’re always thought-provoking projections of the future based on the anthropology of the past. I’m reading his latest book now, “Fall: Dodge in Hell” (for Stephenson fans, the novel brings together the families from his previous novels, the Waterhouses, the Shaftoes, and the Forthrasts) in a future about 15-20 years out.
In this world, parts of the Midwest have essentially seceded into a region called “Ameristan” where the bumpkins drive armored trucks with machine gun mounts and follow the teachings of the “Leviticans” who renounce all Bible teaching not in the Book of Leviticus, and everyone’s thoughts and attitudes are shaped by reactionary regional warlords that control what can and can’t be seen or read. The “elites” from outside the area are content to leave these folks to their customs because there’s no real need for anyone to go there. The children of the “elites”, of course, have their media interactions and news feeds carefully curated for them by Editors hired by their parents with all the care and due diligence a family would put into selecting an attorney or accountant. If a “client” begins to access problematic content, the Editor can initiate an intervention. I’m only 30% of the way through the book (which means, since it’s Stephenson, that I’ve already read more pages than are in a typical novel), and I’m not sure yet if he’s being ironic or just obtuse. I’m betting it’s more of the former, but it’s an interesting example of “blind spots”.
The reprobates have convinced cucked Caucasians that it is bad think to prefer the company of others of their race and culture. Our history must be erased and replaced with a new, inclusive narrative…even if that narrative is a complete work of fiction. Leftist morality matters more than facts, or some crap.
It’s nobel when Negroes and Latins do it, though. In fact, it’s absolutely necessary they have their own congressional caucus, lobbying groups, TV and radio channels.
Even though they are welcome into any University in the country, Negroes have to have their own “historically black” institutions.
But Caucasians and Asians? Not a chance in the current year.
It’s all BS. There is nothing more human than seeking out people who share common traits. It’s as natural as breathing.
So stop feeding into the reprobate’s narrative. It’s not just OK to be white; it’s wonderful. And it’s OK to say so.
It may be just as wonderful to be Negro; I’m not so I don’t know. But I don’t expect them to share my enthusiasm, nor do I reject their right to enthuse among themselves.
In any case, I don’t let reprobate leftists dictate what I think or what I say. They only matter as long as we let them.
This week, all of the reprobate candidates for President are expected to appear at the annual AACP convention and prostate themselves. There will be actual groveling…we can expect a real side show out of Kreapy Uncle Joe, bet the farm.
If you renounce all biblical teaching not in Leviticus, doesn’t that make you some kind of Jew?
That is correct MP. And if you only subscribe to what’s written in Leviticus, your a homophobic, misogynistic bigot of the worst sort *unless* you can produce the proper family lineage to connect yourself to the Tribe.
It’s all pretty tricky.
Im so tempted to jump in but… no I just am not going there…
The deeper implications of the Leviticans theology is largely unplumbed in the narrative. It is interesting, though, that their preferred symbol is a flaming cross, and they erect crosses powered by gas-lines in some places. I think it’s more likely the author’s attempt to conflate the Klan and the Leviticans as the superstitious unwashed.
The problem with depicting the central plains and the south as uniformly inhabited by religious bigots is that it has never been like that. There were Southern Catholics and Jews in positions of high political and social power. In the old days, Southerners were united by their seeing slavery as a positive good, and by their hatred towards a federal government controlled by the free states.