Talking Loud and Saying Nothing…

Nazis and other assorted racists have a penchant for running their mouths and threatening violence. It's all they have: a politics of intimidation and phony bravado. So ever since last week, when my open letter to the white right went viral, they've had their lederhosen in a wad, screaming as loudly as they can to all those willing to listen that I "hate white people," because I am "genetically programmed as a Jew" to destroy the white race. And of course, my perfidious Jew-inspired plans for their demise require them to inform me that they will — in the words of one caller to the non-profit organization that books my speaking engagements — "come after me and hang my Jewish ass."

Note to Hitlerites: aside from lousy reading comprehension skills — my letter, after all, was aimed at the white right only, not whites generally — perhaps you haven't noticed that most people respond to claims of pernicious Jewish evildoing with eye rolls (at best), realizing, as one almost instinctively does at that point, that the persons launching such an attack are, well, ya know, Nazis. And though you seem to have missed it, most Americans — indeed most carbon-based sentient beings — hate you. Even most white racists think you're assholes, and that's saying a lot. Without Jews, after all, they'd be forced to watch "Touched by an Angel" re-runs, over and over again. And frankly, I'm pretty sure even that show had Jews involved in its production. I'm just saying.

Anyway, so after my letter blew up, I started getting hate mail and death threats. Yawn. That's been a constant since I was 18. The first time it happened, Reagan was president. It was like a month after Bill Buckner flubbed that pathetic ground ball hit his way by Mookie Wilson in game 6 of the 1986 World Series. And while that may seem like yesterday to Red Sox fans, that shit was a long time ago. In short, I'm used to it. Like, my-entire-adult-life-used-to-it.

So last week, when I got an e-mail from a New York area racist named Jim Clyne, who runs some outfit called Nighttown Media, letting me know that he had — in his own words — "fucked me up at Sewanee and Cal State L.A." (where my next two appearances were scheduled), I immediately laughed and wrote him back to ask how so? He didn't respond of course. Nor did he "fuck me up," unless by "fuck me up" he meant to say, "produce sustained and even standing ovations for long periods of time." As it turns out, about 400 people came to my talk at Sewanee (also known as the University of the South) — an incredibly conservative campus — and none caused trouble or even asked a challenging question. In Los Angeles, some kid with "White Power" tats apparently did show up near the end, during the Q&A (according to a friend who saw him and alerted security), but, unable to fashion a point any more profound than the one inked on his arm, he slinked away as the event broke up. Wow, scary.

And so it goes. Racist assholes, in the words of James Brown, "talking loud and saying nothing" (and doing even less).

More to the point, every time I speak at a campus, or in a community, I meet hundreds of people — folks of color and white — all of whom are prepared to crush these Nazi jackholes, politically, physically, whatever it takes. They are not "going back" to whatever days the Hitlerites glorify. New generations of white folks by and large reject the sociopathic hatred of the organized white supremacists. That's not to say that the young don't have any race issues to resolve, or that they are free from the racism that has so marked their forbears. But it is to say that when someone like me can get prolonged applause at a place like Sewanee, the Nazis are losing. They are finished.

Now if they would just take to their bunkers and emulate their hero once and for all — after all, why revere Hitler if you're not prepared to go out like he did? — the world would be a better place. And the rest of us could get on with building a new future.