The author of this opinion piece is a graduate student in history and, until fairly recently, in agreement with the rest of his family that white nationalism was a good thing. The point he makes is that America was founded as a slave-holding country and only allowed citizenship to free, white men. The Civil War only abolished slavery; it did not give black people equal rights. This situation only changed in the fifties and sixties with, first, the integration of the Army, then repeal of segregation policies and securing the right to vote for black citizens. The final piece was to be affirmative action, but that has been weakened officially and only exists voluntarily in private institutions. So the equal rights movement is still far from its goal of winning the hearts and minds of Americans. Oh, and you can forget about reparations. Here is a quote from his opinion piece in the NYT:
The United States was founded as a white nationalist country, and that legacy remains today. Things have improved from the radical promotion of white people at the expense of all others, which has persisted for most of our history, yet most of us have not accepted the extent to which white identity guides so much of what we still do. Sometimes it seems that the white nationalists are most honest about the very real foundation of white supremacy upon which our nation was built.
The president’s words legitimized the worst of our country, and now the white nationalist movement could be poised to grow. To challenge these messages, we need to acknowledge the continuity of white nationalist thought in American history, and the appeal it still holds.
It is a fringe movement not because its ideas are completely alien to our culture, but because we work constantly to argue against it, expose its inconsistencies and persuade our citizens to counter it. We can no longer count on the country’s leader to do this, so it’s now incumbent upon all of us.
Here is a helpful hint on how to survive an encounter with a bear: (from the NYT)
‘‘Help the bear identify you as human,’’ says John Hechtel, a retired wildlife biologist for Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game. Talk to it in a calm but firm voice. Put your hands above your heads and wave them slowly. Avoid reacting to a confrontation in a way that makes you look like prey: no screaming, flailing or running.
Biologists put attacks, which are exceedingly rare, in two broad categories: defensive and nondefensive. The best strategy for fending off a bear depends greatly on correctly diagnosing the bear’s state of mind. A defensive bear tends to look agitated. It might paw at the ground, roar or salivate. This bear attacks because it is usually trying to protect its cubs or food. The nondefensive bear wants to eat you. Such a bear tends to look coolheaded and confident — what Hechtel calls ‘‘pushy’’ — with its head held high and ears erect. In a nondefensive attack, fight for your life. Use anything you can — stone, log, knife. Aim for the face and ears.
EFDRN
Richmond Va 6 hours ago
Hundreds lit torches and marauded the streets of Charlottesville Friday night like a pack of wolves.
These marauders (people Trump called “innocent protestors”) assaulted UVA students on their own campus . THIS KKK and Nazi inspired torch march had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LEE STATUE, which was miles away.
They then beat a handful of students on their own campus with the torches they carried and pepper sprayed them, attackers Trump defends as “Very Fine People”, as one student cried in despair, “where is everybody?!
They marched to the church I WAS IN with the Charlottesville clergy collective,i.e…., a Presbyterian church holding an ecumenical serving calling for peace and love.
These marauders menaced a church service “Heil Trump”, “Heil Hitler” “Jews will not replace us”, “You will not replace Us” “Blood and Soil” (Blud en Boden) [Blud und Boden] with their torches.
Im talking going out of there way to INTERRUPT A RELIGIOUS SERVICE AND ATTEMPT TO TERRORIZE CLERGY
On Saturday I saw and treated all, including a Neo Nazi leader who stumbled into our medic tent after police sprayed him, who tried to direct his “troops” via walkie talkie while receiving care and was told to stop or he would have to leave.
This was not a “many sides event”- this was an armed invading army of out of staters, (first thought they were the national guard, until I got closer and saw SWASTIKAS on their uniforms) colliding with locals repelling the invasion.
#NeverAboutTheStatuesTheyAreAnExcuse
Quote of the Day: Republicans and Racism
In 1994 John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser and a Watergate co-conspirator, confessed this to the author Dan Baum:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
The era Ehrlichman referred to was the beginning of the War on Drugs. Nixon started his offensive in 1971, declaring in a speech from the White House Briefing Room: “America’s public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”
The object of disrupting communities worked all too well — more than 40 million arrests have been conducted for drug-related offenses since 1971, with African-Americans being incarcerated in state prisons for these offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that for whites, according to Human Rights Watch.
In 1970, Nixon’s political strategist Kevin Phillips told The New York Times, “The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.”
–From a column by Charles Blow in today’s New York Times
The president’s top advisers described themselves as stunned, despondent and numb. Several said they were unable to see how Mr. Trump’s presidency would recover, and others expressed doubts about his capacity to do the job.
In contrast, the president told close aides that he felt liberated by his news conference. Aides said he seemed to bask afterward in his remarks, and viewed them as the latest retort to the political establishment that he sees as trying to tame his impulses.
–From an article in yesterday’s New York Times
A new meta-analysis reports that sperm counts have declined by about half in Western men over the period 1973-2011. The report was presented in “Human Reproduction Update”, an Oxford Academic journal, on July 25, 2017; the cause of this decline has not been determined. By “Western”, the study means North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.
The decline in sperm counts has been reported before, most notably in 1992 (that report referenced “the past fifty years”) but has been highly controversial due to variations in counting methods and variations in the quality of analyses. The concentrations of spermatozoa in men’s semen were averaging roughly 100 million per milliliter but have dropped to the neighborhood of 40-50 million, still “in the normal range” but now at the very bottom edge of that range. Declining sperm counts are associated with multiple problems, including increased mortality among offspring, cryptorchidism, and testicular cancer, and are often blamed on the presence of multiple chemicals in the environment including plasticizers like phthalates.
The problem is associated with declines in fertility, particularly in Holland, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and among whites in the United States, that have led to reproduction rates below replacement rates. This means that the populations of these countries, particularly European whites, are declining. While populations should be declining for relief of climate change, this phenomenon is currently limited to whites, who have a particularly selfish reason for opposing it: white nationalists believe that the declining population of whites is a bad thing.
So there you have it: scientific evidence that could be interpreted by white racists as genocide against the white race. How reasonable is this interpretation? Not very. The causes of this problem are most likely related to environmental chemicals that were released as a result of society turning to the ubiquitous use of plastics for food containers; this does not represent an intentional effort to eliminate the white race. Scientific evidence can be misused and abused in the most despicable ways.
Comments of the Day: The Non-Equivalency of Violence on the Left and Right in Charlottesville
old norseman
Red State in the Old West 2 hours ago
Yeah, right. Sorry, but the radical right is using as tactics the equivalent of shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater to deliberately stir up controversy. This is not a “both sides do it” moment.
Alan Wallach
Washington, DC 2 hours ago
In 1927 Trump’s father, Fred, marched with the KKK. In 1973, after numerous complaints the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ investigated Fred Trump for violating the fair housing act. The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree. Donald, schooled by Fred and Roy Cohn (formerly Senator Joseph McCarthy’s right hand man), has built his political career on racism. Yesterday’s rant was from the heart. Trump is not the first overtly racist president of modern times–that honor belongs to Woodrow Wilson–but he is without a doubt the US’s first alt-right president.
BrooklynNtheHouse
Brooklyn, NY 5 hours ago
I’m troubled by the fact that no one is publicly connecting the dots in the likely trajectory of this escalating conflict between the malignant fantasy world of Donald Trump and the modern world. Trump gets a warm and fuzzy feeling from the support he receives from racists with guns. It is not a huge leap of the imagination to picture Trump calling these miscreants to arms when the hammer finally comes down on his presidency. He knows everything that Mueller has and more because he’s done every deed that’s being investigated. He was there. We would be kidding ourselves to imagine Trump will go quietly. I hope the GOP can pan back and take a comprehensive view of what is really happening here.
Judy
Greenville SC 5 hours ago
I wake up this morning and cry for my country. I am a veteran, my husband is a veteran, my father is a veteran and my nephew is on his way to Jordan to once again fight for our country. I am not to be put in a, “left wing” box because I believe the President and many Republicans are ruining our country. They are degrading our strength of diversity. Our strength is in all our people. Women who help make strong families, are endless caregivers to our youth and old and yes to our country as patriots. Our strength is in our people of many colors and sexual orientation as they work to be part of our nation’s strength. Our strength is in our hearts that want to build and not destroy. What makes us weak is divisions in the infrastructure of our goodness and our compassion.
We have allowed the worst of who we are to now lead our country. We have allowed the worst of who we are to try to push in health care that hurts instead of helps. We have allowed the worst of who we are to make policy behind closed doors without women or those of color in the room. Really! Is the worst of who we are, these terrible white men? Are they our weakness? I do not believe this to be true, yet they are looking like the worst of who we are? Are they becoming our weakness instead of our strength? Is the only way they feel empowered to oppress? Is the only way they feel empowered to take guns and torches and threaten those who love peace. From the President down, this is disgusting.
Greek Goddess
Merritt Island, Florida 4 hours ago
Trump has succeeded in bringing the United States to the brink of international war and civil war at the same time.
David Meli
Clarence 2 hours ago
Even Gandhi argued limits to non-violence, it should never be the first course of action, But what you are missing is the moral difference between the two sides. Nazis and the KKK are inherently un-American. It is the duty of every American to oppose their ideology. By creating a moral equivalency he has given legitimacy to these un-American ideals and by default suggest they have a place in our national dialog. Shame! Booth may have assassinated Lincoln, but trump just assassinated the party of Lincoln.
Siebolt Frieswyk ‘Sid’
Topeka, KS 2 hours ago
Let us be plain spoken. This is our Nation where antisemitism thrives as does racial bigotry. Violence is vaunted in a massive military force that surpasses all in the history of civilization. We are also a Nation that sustains wildly partisan support for a sport that slowly kills its players by irremediably destroying their brains. Blunt force trauma is inflicted in moments of intense violence. Wild cheering and boos for the ‘losers’ follow. Who are we? Why are we this way? We sustain unending bigotry and abandon our children to inner city chaos and violence. Failed city services and corrupted law enforcement target minorities without remediation. A bit less than half of American voters chose a man who has all the attributes of a tyrant. He acts in grotesque ways to awaken the hopes of our enemies and destroys treasured alliances we have built after two murderous World Wars. He is making it possible for us to be discarded in the rubbish heap of history as a failed democracy. Rise up America! Ask yourselves can we really say, “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free…’cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land. God Bless the USA.” We need to speak up and get out there to declare we are NOT happy with a president who revives the animus of our hideous Civil War and its inspiration in slavery and bigotry. We are a Nation where democracy, equity, equality and opportunity are fostered throughout our land. Be proud. Be an American who loves the USA!
Ana Luisa
Belgium 4 hours ago
Here’s why you couldn’t be more wrong:
- Studies show that during the last 10 years, 74% of all casualties of extremist violence in the US were the result of right-wing extremists, 24% of Muslim extremists, and 2% of left-wing extremists. So yes, it would have been VERY surprising of the terrorist attack of Saturday would have been perpetrated by the radical left (apart from the fact that there are ten times as many right-wing extremists in the US today as there are left-wing extremists).
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One side fought for publicly celebrating a General who killed white Americans and almost destroyed the country only in order to keep slavery as a legal system, the other side fought for no longer publicly celebrating people whose behavior is explicitly contradicted by the Constitution. There’s NO “moral equivalency” between both ideologies here.
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One side exists because it wants to fight racism and discrimination, and doing so through peaceful and democratic means. The other side exists because it wants to use force in order to change America into a white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-semite nation. So there’s absolutely NO “moral equivalency” between what causes both sides to exist either.
(see part 2 for the other arguments)
Ana Luisa
Belgium 2 hours ago
@ Paul Daley (part 2)
- If you believe that giving “time and publicity” may strongly increase the number of extremists on any given side, as well as the violence used by them, I hope you understand that this is what Trump has done for days in a row now … for the right-wing extremists, who are already responsible for most extremist terrorism in this country. Why do you think that was a wise choice?
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EVEN when you take a look at extremist domestic terrorism for the last half a century, it’s right-wing extremists who are BY FAR most responsible for killings (12 times as many) and injuries (36 times as many).
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If you fear “vigilante groups” on our streets, I suppose you’ll explicitly reject the tactics of the far-right (being better armed than even the police COULD be, as the Charlottesville police declared) much more strongly than those of the “other side”, who only used shields and pepper spray … ?
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Right-wing extremists killed an American and injured 20 others in what the U.S. Attorney General called a “terrorism attack”, left-wing extremist did NOTHING comparable.
Conclusion: there’s no “moral equivalency” WHATSOEVER, and the president only created more division, strongly hurt the victims of this heinous crime and all Jews and African-Americans in this country, and clearly encouraged white supremacists, the KKK and neo-Nazis to take the weapons and hateful rhetoric more often to our streets, as they themselves explicitly and happily stated.
That’s SO wrong.
It is as foolish for Americans to believe that their generals will save them from Trump as it was for liberal Germans to believe the military would protect the nation from Hitler’s excesses.
From a piece in yesterday’s Guardian by a 94 year old veteran of the WW II RAF warning that this summer feels like the summer of 1939
A NYT article describes the origin of the new missiles that North Korea is using to threaten the United States: a Ukrainian missile plant that for years produced engines for the Soviet Union’s most powerful ICBMs. The plant has fallen on hard times since the Russians stopped using their missile engine in 2006 and switched to an indigenous Russian design. In fact, they have been reduced to making trolley cars and are near bankruptcy. The once massive missile engine plant is the original source of the modified engines that the North Koreans have been using since last fall to power their suddenly revitalized missile program, but it appears that the engines they are using were part of a stockpile that the Russians had left over from their use in the SS series of ICBMs.
The conclusion: the Russians, either a criminal gang or Putin’s government, gave the North Koreans the engines to power their new ICBMs. Why? Putin is interested in weakening the US and distracting us from the threat that Russia poses to our security. A cheap way of doing that would be to build up the North Korean threat by jump-starting their ICBM program. Or is that just paranoia… to paraphrase Thomas Pynchon, author of “Gravity’s Rainbow”: Proverbs for Paranoids #1: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that there’s not somebody after you.
Comment of the Day: Something is Happening
Always, always remember that there is only one undeniable fact:
something is happening.
Everything else is a theory about that something.
From an article about Elon Musk and his theory that we are in a simulation in the Guardian.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 