By making Steve Bannon his top strategic adviser, the president-elect made his intentions vis-à-vis race crystal clear: He plans to “make America great again” by ensuring that white males remain in what he views as their rightful role of dominance in this country, and you really don’t have to be all that good at reading tea leaves or between the lines to figure this out. It’s right there in everyone’s face, plain and simple.
And the media seems hell-bent on normalizing his behavior, just as members of Congress are making preparations to abdicate their roles as protectors of the Constitution — both entities operating out of fear, while they discreetly closet their loathing for the man. Similar to the European appeasers of eight decades ago (many of whom later would become quislings), they convince themselves that things are “not going to be all that bad” when knowing all the while that it’s incrementally going to get even worse. History, in addition to being a great educator, is also a tough taskmaster. We can’t lie to ourselves and say we’ve never seen the likes of this kind of hatred before. We know the logical outcome if we allow the virulent hatred to take hold.
But the more extreme statements won’t come from the mouths of President Trump or those with him in the White House; they’ll leave the white nationalist talk to surrogates, men from the alt-right that are closely associated to Bannon, men like Richard Spencer, whose goal is to normalize hate and make it mainstream —the order of the day.
But who is Richard B. Spencer? A cursory glace at Wikipedia reveals a rather normal character. It states, “He is president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think-tank, and Washington Summit Publishers, an independent publishing firm. Spencer has stated that he rejects the description of white supremacist, and describes himself as an Identitarian, a movement that, in its broadest sense, holds the view of prioritization of social identity, regardless of political persuasion. Examples include white racists, black nationalists, male chauvinists and gender feminists.”
But I suppose Spencer would chafe at the “white racist” label also, which is the insidious part of the alt-right movement. They deny the fact they are racists, while in fact are constantly making racist arguments. The primary plank in Spencer’s platform is the creation of a state that has, as its primary goal, the protection the white race — and he wants to achieve this goal by separation, something I’m an advocate of. I don’t care to be around white supremacists any more than they want to be around me. Where we differ is the manner in which this separation is achieved.
White racists want to expel anyone they deem undesirable from this country, rather than removing themselves from those they view as noxious. If internment camps are to once again be utilized (something the alt-right has begun to suggest since the election victory of Trump) then white supremacists should willingly move into them, not the other way around.
It’s not as if they have not already been doing so for decades. There are parts of Idaho and Utah that are white supremacist strongholds, places where minorities dare not enter. The media knows about these parts of the country but turn a blind eye since these are white folks who really are not bothering anyone else. If they like their all-white lifestyle, I love it.
Indeed, Spencer lives in such a location: Whitefish, Montana, which sits on the shores of Whitefish Lake, about 100 miles due north of the Idaho border, and 75 miles south of Canada. It doesn’t get any whiter than this in the U.S., so one has to wonder what’s really disturbing Spencer.
The national media has been giving a pass to these white nationalists, dismissing them as kooks of little import. But things changed on November 8 and we’d better start taking a harder look at them. We ignore this demographic at our own peril.
Spencer and his ilk are, like other totalitarians, consumed with the notion of racial purity, even though the idea of “race” as a construct had been thoroughly debunked. And while they speak out on the subject obliquely at present, Trump’s ascension to the While House has emboldened the alt-right, although they still couch their hatreds and fears in the language of PhDs.
But essentially their position is this: They want to expel all immigrants, block Muslims from entering the country and convince those Americans of African descent to voluntarily return to Africa since this experiment in racial diversity cannot and will not work. They will do everything within their power to assure that it doesn’t.
They view America as theirs since whites stole it fair and square from its true owners: Native Americans, the one non-white group the alt-right fails to mention in their ranting. I suppose the white nationalists would just allow them to starve to death on their reservations.
Next: What white nationalists really fear
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com
One Response to “MANSFIELD: The White Right”
Bill R.
That is some scary shit Mr. Frazier and it gives me a stomach ache to even think about heading down this path.