Combating Racists
What’s the most effective way to combat white supremacists? Matching violence with more violence only plays into the hands of the extremists.
After the riots in Charlottesville VA that left one peaceful protester dead, President Trump blamed “both sides” for the conflicts.This preposterous statement, condemned on both sides of the aisle, provided cover for the KKK and the other white supremacist hate groups. KKK leader David Duke praised Trump’s statement in a tweet, justifying his own group’s violence by saying that the Antifa and Black Lives Matter crowd were violent, too.
Logical arguments about the benefits of a diverse society will never win over the likes of David Duke. There is no compromise, no middle ground available to the white supremacist. Either he is absolutely right, and God has blessed Caucasians with the duty and privilege to dominate and oppress all other peoples on Earth, or he is completely, terribly, tragically wrong.
If black lives matter today, then they mattered back then, too, and his ancestors, instead of sitting at the right hand of God, may instead be burning in Hell. David Duke would rather go to his grave, convinced of his righteousness, than to admit that he and his kind must atone for 400+ years of crimes against humanity.
So, what are we to do? We cannot save the committed racists. They need to die of old age and disappear into dusty history books. But, there were plenty of people at Charlottesville who were simply angry. Alt-right media outlets like Breitbart News are appealing to these men by giving them a scapegoat, a target upon which to vent their anger and frustration. “The blacks, the women, the foreigners, they are taking away your jobs and driving you into poverty. We will help you get back what is yours!”
It’s a seductive argument, one that plays on fear and anger rather than logic. Our challenge as a civilized, diverse, liberal society is to keep these young working class white men from becoming the next generation of hard core white supremacists.
How to we do that? As I have pointed out in previous blogs, anti-establishment anger is real and legitimate. Wages for most people have stagnated. Costs, particularly insurance premiums and drug prices, have risen astronomically. Economic and political power is being concentrated into a few wealthy families who have little understanding or regard for the struggles of regular people.
The solution, not just for white men, but for men of other ethnicities too, is good high paying jobs and comprehensive, affordable health care. For the health care piece, I recommend adopting universal health coverage, coupled with controls on drug prices. To bring thousands of necessary, high paying jobs into the economy, nothing beats giant infrastructure projects.
To do both of these will take a big expansion of what former Trump advisor and leader of Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, calls “the administrative state. We will need to raise taxes, particularly on the wealthy, and increase the reach and vigor of Federal regulations.
Steve Bannon and Breitbart News propose to do exactly the opposite of this. Bannon wants to “deconstruct the administrative state,” or in other words, take apart the Federal government, weakening it and making it even less effective than it is now. It is important to note that Breitbart is funded in great part by a pair of millionaires, the Mercers. (They also fund another right wing bastion, the Heritage Foundation.)
The Mercers, and other members of the super-wealthy oligarchy, have the most to lose from Bernie Sanders style populism. It is their taxes that will go up, their slice of the economic prosperity pie that must be reduced. They have a vested interest in pitting one group of working class men against another. This tearing of our social fabric, combined with policies that amount to vandalism upon our institutions and ideals, is the real danger, the representative democracy.
This is the group we must beat, the millionaires and billionaires who buy politicians to say and do whatever makes them the most money, while at the same time propping up a dying, racist creed via their media empires. We must defeat them, not with torches and guillotines, but at the ballot box. We can defeat them in the way that we treat others in our daily lives, and by posting positive messages on truly free speech forums such as this one.
If we can make Washington work again for everyone, we can grow the middle class and infuse the economy with good paying jobs accessible to everyone in every corner of our nation. This will not only bring about widespread prosperity, but it should mute the seductive, siren call of the alt-right hate media. We will deny white supremacists the new young recruits needed to keep their ideology alive.
After the riots in Charlottesville VA that left one peaceful protester dead, President Trump blamed “both sides” for the conflicts.This preposterous statement, condemned on both sides of the aisle, provided cover for the KKK and the other white supremacist hate groups. KKK leader David Duke praised Trump’s statement in a tweet, justifying his own group’s violence by saying that the Antifa and Black Lives Matter crowd were violent, too.
Logical arguments about the benefits of a diverse society will never win over the likes of David Duke. There is no compromise, no middle ground available to the white supremacist. Either he is absolutely right, and God has blessed Caucasians with the duty and privilege to dominate and oppress all other peoples on Earth, or he is completely, terribly, tragically wrong.
If black lives matter today, then they mattered back then, too, and his ancestors, instead of sitting at the right hand of God, may instead be burning in Hell. David Duke would rather go to his grave, convinced of his righteousness, than to admit that he and his kind must atone for 400+ years of crimes against humanity.
So, what are we to do? We cannot save the committed racists. They need to die of old age and disappear into dusty history books. But, there were plenty of people at Charlottesville who were simply angry. Alt-right media outlets like Breitbart News are appealing to these men by giving them a scapegoat, a target upon which to vent their anger and frustration. “The blacks, the women, the foreigners, they are taking away your jobs and driving you into poverty. We will help you get back what is yours!”
It’s a seductive argument, one that plays on fear and anger rather than logic. Our challenge as a civilized, diverse, liberal society is to keep these young working class white men from becoming the next generation of hard core white supremacists.
How to we do that? As I have pointed out in previous blogs, anti-establishment anger is real and legitimate. Wages for most people have stagnated. Costs, particularly insurance premiums and drug prices, have risen astronomically. Economic and political power is being concentrated into a few wealthy families who have little understanding or regard for the struggles of regular people.
The solution, not just for white men, but for men of other ethnicities too, is good high paying jobs and comprehensive, affordable health care. For the health care piece, I recommend adopting universal health coverage, coupled with controls on drug prices. To bring thousands of necessary, high paying jobs into the economy, nothing beats giant infrastructure projects.
To do both of these will take a big expansion of what former Trump advisor and leader of Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, calls “the administrative state. We will need to raise taxes, particularly on the wealthy, and increase the reach and vigor of Federal regulations.
Steve Bannon and Breitbart News propose to do exactly the opposite of this. Bannon wants to “deconstruct the administrative state,” or in other words, take apart the Federal government, weakening it and making it even less effective than it is now. It is important to note that Breitbart is funded in great part by a pair of millionaires, the Mercers. (They also fund another right wing bastion, the Heritage Foundation.)
The Mercers, and other members of the super-wealthy oligarchy, have the most to lose from Bernie Sanders style populism. It is their taxes that will go up, their slice of the economic prosperity pie that must be reduced. They have a vested interest in pitting one group of working class men against another. This tearing of our social fabric, combined with policies that amount to vandalism upon our institutions and ideals, is the real danger, the representative democracy.
This is the group we must beat, the millionaires and billionaires who buy politicians to say and do whatever makes them the most money, while at the same time propping up a dying, racist creed via their media empires. We must defeat them, not with torches and guillotines, but at the ballot box. We can defeat them in the way that we treat others in our daily lives, and by posting positive messages on truly free speech forums such as this one.
If we can make Washington work again for everyone, we can grow the middle class and infuse the economy with good paying jobs accessible to everyone in every corner of our nation. This will not only bring about widespread prosperity, but it should mute the seductive, siren call of the alt-right hate media. We will deny white supremacists the new young recruits needed to keep their ideology alive.
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