Are YOU a ‘White Nationalist’?

Posted on | July 12, 2023 | 1 Comment

When my wife and I were stuck at the Minneapolis airport for a nine-hour layover Monday, I had to come back in through the TSA security screening every time I went out to grab a smoke, and on my final trip through the line, I noticed a teenage girl in front of me removing her shoes. This being Minnesota — a state with a large Scandinavian population — the girl was blonde and had her hair braided in such a way as to remind one of a Bund Deutscher Mädel propaganda poster.

The absurdity of the situation probably wouldn’t be noticed by most air travelers, who have long since become accustomed to the hassle of TSA screening implemented in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. But watching this blonde girl unlacing her sneakers reminded me of what I’d written when we started our trip:

Remember the “Shoe Bomber”? In December 2001, would-be terrorist Richard Reid was aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami when he failed in an attempt to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his shoes. Because of this botched terrorist attack, all commercial airline passengers to this day are required to remove their shoes and send them through the X-ray scanners before boarding their flights.
More than 20 years have gone by, and if this safety protocol has apprehended or deterred a single copycat “shoe bomber,” I’m unaware of it, but it keeps TSA busy, on the taxpayer’s dime, inspecting us all just to make sure we aren’t some kind of Al-Qaeda sympathizer.

Everyone must remove their shoes, and everyone must empty their pockets and send their belongings through the X-ray scanners because the government can’t differentiate between who is and is not actually a terrorist risk. That would be RAAAAACIST, you see, and we can’t permit that. Therefore the Scandinavian teen with her Bund Deutscher Mädel braids must consent to be searched just the same as any Palestinian. Noticing the absurdity of this? Yeah, that’s also RAAAAACIST.

Even if you don’t pay much attention to such things, it’s easy to see why Sen. Tommy Tuberville is being targeted with a “white nationalist” smear. Ever since the 2020 exit polls showed Republicans gaining ground among Latino voters, liberals have been in a state of quiet desperation as they lay the groundwork for re-electing Mister 81 Million Votes.

It is no longer sufficient, given the circumstances, for liberals to point their fingers and scream “RAAAAACIST!” Gail Heriot has remarked:

The word “racist” got used up a few years ago. It had been used so often to apply to things that obviously weren’t racist that it lost its sting. “White supremacist” took its place, but it’s headed in the same direction.

As the “white supremacist” label gets worn out, now liberals have increasingly begun using “white nationalist,” thus taking a giant leap toward accusing people of being outright Nazis. With that in mind, take a look at these recent headlines in l’affaire de Tuberville:

Jake Tapper Slams
‘Most Abjectly Racist Statement’
He’s Ever Heard From A Senator
— HuffPost

McConnell denounces white supremacy
in response to Tuberville controversy
— The Hill

Tommy Tuberville triples down
on claim that white nationalists
are unfairly labeled racist
— ABC News

Tommy Tuberville Is Either
Extremely Dumb or Extremely Racist
— Rolling Stone

Tommy Tuberville now says
‘White nationalists are racists’
after refusing to denounce them
— CNN

MSNBC Expert Arrives At Darkly Hilarious
Take On Tommy Tuberville
— HuffPost

There is a game being played here, you see, and whoever is advising Sen. Tuberville apparently doesn’t understand the rules of this game.

The first thing to do, when facing such an accusation, is to question the authority of the accuser: Who appointed you — Jake Tapper, or whoever — as the Grand Inquisitor of this anti-racist crusade? Where are the credentials that establish your authority to conduct this inquiry?

Liberals never anticipate such a response. They take their authority for granted, and never expect to have their bona fides called into question. This explains why everybody says, “Charles Who?” whenever I mention my 2009 blog war against Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs.

The premise of CJ’s assault on my reputation was that I was a neo-Confederate white supremacist, whereas the premise of my defense was that Charles Johnson is a goddamned fool. Check. Mate.

To this day, I have no idea what genius was behind the comic-book parody Chuck Johnson: Race Detective, but it struck the perfect tone in mocking the absurdity of CJ pretending to be morally superior to the various conservative bloggers (including Pamela Geller) whom he accused of harboring crypto-fascist sympathies.

Having vowed not merely to survive this attack, but to destroy the attacker, I took advantage of the fact that, over the course of the preceding couple of years, CJ had been purging LGF of any commenters who disagreed with his madcap jihad against Geller & Co. There were a lot of people fed up with CJ’s bullshit, and so when I stood up to him, there was a ready-made audience cheering me on in that fight.

Nearly 15 years have gone by, during which I’ve covered politics at every level — and damned near got that ambassadorship to Vanuatu that I coveted for so long — whereas Little Green Footballs . . .

Well, “Charles Who?”

If more people understood how to respond to such attacks, we could permanently wreck the Progressive Smear Machine, and leave it in a heap of discredited scrap metal. Forget about denying the accusation, or explaining away whatever “evidence” the accuser is waving in your face. Question the premise of the accusation (i.e., the belief that there is some eminent danger from a secretive cabal of right-wing RAAAAACISTS!) and question the authority of the accuser. Why should anyone care about me (or you or Tommy Tuberville) as a suspected member of this alleged “white nationalist” conspiracy? What have I done — or what am I supposed to be planning to do — that poses such a menace to the commonweal that my allegedly malevolent intent must be “exposed”? To ask such questions is usually enough to make reasonable people pause and examine the important question of motive: What’s the point of all this “investigative journalism” stuff about accusations of racism (or “white supremacy” or “white nationalism,” etc.)?

What do these self-appointed investigators aim to achieve by “exposing” the terrible Thought Crimes of the Wrongthinkers?

Even if some people are indisputably far gone down the path of race-obsessed kookiness (e.g., Kevin DeAnna and the “Wolves of Vinland”), do we really need an army of self-appointed investigators to root around for every telltale clue of secretive “white nationalist” sentiment in order to DEMAND THAT EVERY REPUBLICAN DENOUNCE IT?

The bottom line to this whole thing is that it’s just partisan politics — “Democratic Operatives With Bylines” trying to help their bosses win another election by smearing Republicans as crypto-Nazis.

There is no actual danger — no genuine nexus between violent extremists and, for example, a senator’s objections to Pentagon policy (which is why Tuberville has been blocking military promotions, thus making himself a target of this crazy “white nationalist” attack).

If the intent of the “We Must Expose the Racists” crowd were to reduce the level of racial hostility in America, they wouldn’t be operating the way they operate, which tends to exacerbate paranoia all around. Constantly being told that a sizable proportion of white Americans harbor hateful sentiments, black people and other minorities are encouraged to hate and fear white people, and to buy into a victimhood narrative, where every problem in their lives is to be explained by “systemic racism.” Meanwhile, any white person concerned about the drift of social and political trends — e.g., the lawless anarchy in “Killadelphia” — is confronted with evidence that the media elite are actually in favor of turning the country into a nightmare dystopia of unpunished theft, open-air drug markets, drive-by shootings, etc. Every day, observant people can see headlines like “Illinois to Require Landlords Rent to Illegal Aliens” and calculate which way the winds are blowing, and if they don’t like it? Well, they’re “white nationalists,” according to the liberal media and, after a while, some people will start asking themselves, “Am I really that name they keep calling me? Maybe I should check out this ‘white nationalism’ stuff and see what it’s about.” Where might this lead?

Well if you want more Trump, this is how you get more Trump.

The more liberals keep denouncing everything and everybody as “racist,” “white supremacist,” “white nationalist,” etc., the more indifferent people will become to these accusations, and many of them may start sympathizing with genuinely dangerous people. Liberal journalism is like free advertising for the kook fringe. If CNN keeps calling your Republican senator a neo-Nazi, and you think the senator is an OK guy, well, why not just go check out some neo-Nazi threads on Reddit or whatever?

Free publicity? Yeah, I need me some of that. It sure would be nice if a liberal journalist, maybe a guy with a diploma from Harvard, were to write a hit piece this week about what a dangerous right-winger I am.

Stay tuned, my loyal readers . . .

 

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