Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
The United States has never quite gotten over the Civil War. It has never gotten over Reconstruction, either, that brief experiment when people of color tried to exercise full citizenship.
The failure is evident when the president of the United States calls immigrants “vermin” and warns of Mexican “rapists” and gangs, or when Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who has never hidden his disdain for blacks, Latinos and Muslims, wonders aloud: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
Of course, King has plenty of company in the white nationalist camp. Birthers, appalled at seeing a black man in the White House, still try to delegitimize Barack Obama. Fox News Channel pundits rant about cities with African American mayors being hellscapes of mayhem, while President Trump wishes the United States could receive fewer immigrants from countries such as Haiti and more from Norway.
None of this is new, nor did it arise spontaneously. In fact, King, Trump and the rest of the (white) America First fraternity are borrowing from a narrative popularized by a North Carolina novelist more than 100 years ago. His name was Thomas Dixon Jr., and he was the great-granddaddy of white nationalism. Dixon’s stories of virtuous white people victimized by violent and incompetent black people were not merely expressions of white supremacy but had brutal and deadly consequences.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...can-white-nationalism/?utm_term=.fd314df0ab9a
The failure is evident when the president of the United States calls immigrants “vermin” and warns of Mexican “rapists” and gangs, or when Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who has never hidden his disdain for blacks, Latinos and Muslims, wonders aloud: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
Of course, King has plenty of company in the white nationalist camp. Birthers, appalled at seeing a black man in the White House, still try to delegitimize Barack Obama. Fox News Channel pundits rant about cities with African American mayors being hellscapes of mayhem, while President Trump wishes the United States could receive fewer immigrants from countries such as Haiti and more from Norway.
None of this is new, nor did it arise spontaneously. In fact, King, Trump and the rest of the (white) America First fraternity are borrowing from a narrative popularized by a North Carolina novelist more than 100 years ago. His name was Thomas Dixon Jr., and he was the great-granddaddy of white nationalism. Dixon’s stories of virtuous white people victimized by violent and incompetent black people were not merely expressions of white supremacy but had brutal and deadly consequences.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...can-white-nationalism/?utm_term=.fd314df0ab9a
