To me, it seems obvious that white nationalism is a problem in America. However, Tucker Carlson famously said it isn’t. Even after Charlottesville, the church shooting in South Carolina, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the El Paso massacre, Carlson said it ranks low on America’s problems.
I wondered who agrees with him and found, as many people quickly pointed out, that former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke cheered Carlson on.
White supremacy is indeed a hoax, affirms…David Duke. ? pic.twitter.com/dxDiyfDDlg
— Mark Pitcavage (@egavactip) August 7, 2019
This is not good company.
Who else?
C-Fam’s Austin Ruse
“Hundreds” marched in Charlottesville…we live in a country of 320 million. White supremacy is not an issue. Tucker is correct.
— Austin Ruse (@austinruse) August 7, 2019
The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway
Tucker Carlson is correct. The “Everyone who opposes my politics is a white nationalist” narrative being pushed by the media and Democrats is the latest version of the damaging and divisive Russia collusion hoax. It is both dangerous and false.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) August 7, 2019
The Federalist
Tucker Carlson is under fire for saying something blatantly true: that American society is not facing a crisis of white supremacy.https://t.co/yoeIjUrTFi
— The Federalist (@FDRLST) August 8, 2019
Talk Show Host Vicki McKenna
Tucker Carlson Isn’t Wrong That America is NOT Facing A Crisis Of White Supremacy https://t.co/NzO6ICPAhG @sherifflclarke
— Vicki McKenna (@VickiMcKenna) August 8, 2019
Kellyanne Conway defended Carlson. “But what about Antifa?”
The Stream’s John Zmirak and Eric Metaxas
The key issue NO ONE is apparently thinking about: How can we douse the flames of hatred being whipped up against Americans of European descent, BEFORE that hate makes white identity politics morally legitimate? Because that’s the end of our country.
— John Zmirak (@JZmirak) August 7, 2019
John Zmirak is a Senior Editor at The Stream, a Christian online publication conceptualized by James Robison. I responded to this tweet:
Stop denying that white nationalism is a problem.
— Warren Throckmorton (@wthrockmorton) August 8, 2019
And then Zmirak replied:
It’s so trivially small that it’s less dangerous than Scientology, or other superstitions such as Darwinism.
— John Zmirak (@JZmirak) August 8, 2019
After that tweet, Zmirak blocked me. Eric Metaxas retweeted Zmirak’s original tweet.
League of the South is Ready for Battle
This weekend the League of the South is having their annual convention in Florida. According to the League, they are ready for war. The League was one of the groups who did battle at Charlottesville. The League’s leader Michael Hill, wrote this in 2014:
But what about that liberal canard that says that no matter how well armed the citizens are, they will never be able to defeat the modern military in a toe-to-toe confrontation? First, that presumes that the US military would fire on its own people, a question whose answer we do not know. And, second, it presumes that the fight would be a conventional one. More likely, it will be Fourth Generation Warfare, which is just another way of saying guerrilla war.
In 4Gen Warfare the lines between the military and the political, economic, cultural, and social are blurred past the point of recognition. To oversimplify, the primary targets will not be enemy soldiers; instead, they will be political leaders, members of the hostile media, cultural icons, bureaucrats, and other of the managerial elite without whom the engines of tyranny don’t run.
4Gen Warfare doesn’t require that the populace be armed equal to the military and law enforcement. In fact, having such firepower, with few exceptions (such as full-auto “assault weapons,” silencers, and a handful of other esoteric toys), would be a logistical and tactical burden to the common 3- to 5-man group so common in this type of warfare.
Make no mistake about it, the League and groups like it engage in rhetoric unlike any Scientologist or evolutionist. They are dangerous with enough numbers to create terror and motivate criminal activity.
According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, white supremacist groups account for a significant number of criminal investigations. Watch:
While white supremacist* motivated crime isn’t the greatest threat, it isn’t trivial and one should question the motives of anyone who minimizes it.
Additional information: See this report on domestic terrorism 2018. Yes, the numbers are small but the potential damage is great and the threat appears to be growing.
*white supremacy and white nationalism have been distinguished by some as the difference between attitude and political objective. Supremacy is an attitude that whites are better than other races; nationalism is a political objective of make America a majority white country or favoring segregation. It is hard for me to make much of a distinction in attitude. To me, it seems to be a rationalization of racial prejudice to claim white nationalist political goals while claiming to have no bias toward people of color. For the purpose of this post, I am considering the terms synonyms.