The Very Real Politics of Postmodern White Nationalism: The White Victim Charade on Parade

Counterpunch

Mike King
March 17, 2014.

“We are struggling against the deliberate extermination of our race by an alien elite that has hijacked almost all of our institutions. This criminal cabal is using everything at their disposal, including Third World immigrants and other non-Whites, to eradicate White people from the face of the Earth. We are faced with a daunting task, but we must prevail, so as to secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.”

– White Man March’s Call to Action 

From this country’s origins, race has been the fundamental political contradiction of our society. From the conception of the American racial system in the U.S. South in the early 1600s to the current moment of mass incarceration, unequal education, and vigilante violence, white supremacy has been challenged, but also re-fashioned, re-packaged, reproduced. “The White Man March” took place this past Saturday, March 15th, in a number of U.S. cities, as well as several more internationally. The website for the march is filled with neo-Nazi imagery, anti-Black, anti-Jewish, and anti-immigrant sentiment. These marches, and the associated propaganda, are basically the same as they were 20 years ago. These marches, like the many that have come before, are designed to (like any march) illustrate and amplify the demonstrators’ politics and ‘grievances,’ to mobilize and express their strength, and to recruit new members. Not unlike the ever-present Liberal “tone and tactic police,” the website instructed marchers on how to seem more palatable to potential supporters:

“The media would like our people to believe that pro-Whites are all Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, Skinheads, and the like, which discourages many White people from becoming advocates for their own interests. We will be showing that many pro-Whites are well-educated, attractive, and respectable people who are concerned about the future they and their families are facing. We encourage people to carry themselves with dignity, pride, and a sense of professionalism when demonstrating for their race.”

What should be more disturbing than skinheads’ and the KKK’s attempting a 21st Century makeover, to bring them closer to mainstream whites, is the empirical evidence that suggests, quite clearly, that mainstream white political culture has come to reflect the foundational assumptions of the neo-Nazi political platform.

White Nationalism on Main Street

“The history of white people has led them to a fearful baffling place where they have begun to lose touch with reality – to lose touch, that is, with themselves… They do not know how this came about; they do not dare examine how this came about.”

- James Baldwin

“If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”

- W.I. Thomas

60% of working–class white Americans feel that racial discrimination against whites is at least as great as discrimination faced by racial minorities, according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute report. 49% felt that the government had done too much in recent decades to benefit the conditions of racial minorities, while 57% “agree that illegal immigrants taking jobs that would otherwise be filled by American citizens are responsible for our current economic problems.” (This belief in “reverse discrimination” is not borne out by social indicators, which illustrate economic stagnation or loss for the bottom 80% of earners, but a concomitant expansion of racial inequality – with the average white family now having 20 times the average wealth of Blacks and Latinos.) The use of racialized scapegoats to explain American decline, and its effects on white Americans, has clearly been successful. Reading reports and studies of white public opinion, alongside the White Man March’s call to unity – a clear and thick overlap is present. It is a story of white victimhood, a baseless but widespread belief that there is systematic societal and governmental discrimination against whites – a growing belief steeped in anger, fear and ignorance.

Read the rest here.

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Comment: White identity is predicated on stoking the fear of the other.  This buffoonery is just the most blatant exhibition of the phenomenon.

Onward!