I never said that …
by Tom Sullivan
Image by Jérôme Dessommes via Creative Commons.
The New York Times’ Emily Badger examines the processes by which we identify beliefs as “fringe.” Tina Fetner, Associate Professor of Sociology at McMaster University in Ontario, believes white supremacist groups are actively trying to mainstream views once considered taboo. By staging events that get press national coverage, they are doing just that. Having a president and a major party slow to condemn those views helps normalize them as well.
Badger writes:
When norms change, the highly educated tend to adopt them the fastest. And when political leaders agree, those attitudes spread through the population the more information people have about them. When political leaders don’t agree, attitudes tend to polarize (for example, liberals say climate change is human-driven; many conservatives say that it’s not).
Polarized issues have two-sided information flows, as John Zaller, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has described it. Mr. Trump’s comments about Charlottesville raise the possibility of creating a two-sided issue out of racial equality.
“That’s what really dangerous about what’s happening right now,” said Michael Tesler, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine. “There should be a one-sided information flow condemning Nazis. And when there’s not, it’s very problematic.”
The Center for Investigative Reporting’s “Reveal” radio program last weekend revisited the alt-right and an interview with white nationalist Richard Spencer. Host Al Letson questions Spencer’s giving a straight arm salute and saying “Hail Trump” during a speech after the president’s inauguration. That was just “being provocative,” Spencer insists, and finds it unreasonable that people might think him a Nazi because of it.
Like Grover Norquist and Ann Coulter, Spencer seems to enjoy being provocative in public appearances. It gets him attention and press. It makes him marketable. He tut-tuts any notion that his actions and statements make him complicit in inciting violence. When Coulter gets blowback, for example, she tosses her hair, rolls her eyes, sighs, and claims she was just joking. Her stock reply is lefty critics are so humorless they simply don’t get it. But a tone is set. Signals have been sent. Plausible deniability is part of her shtick. And Alex “the performance artist” Jones’ shtick, too. And Spencer’s. Personal responsibility can be shrugged off should some overzealous fan kill and injure people with a car. No one told them to do that. In the “Reveal” interview, one can almost hear Spencer toss his hair, roll his eyes, and sigh.
The exchange that most caught my attention was Spencer’s complaint that white people are losing their power in America. Letson asks, isn’t Spencer’s being “provcative” giving license to his followers to engage in violent behaviors he doesn’t expressly condone while winking at it? Spencer replies [timestamp 21:04]:
“I actually fundamentally disagree with you. I would actually say the opposite is the case. The fact is, when people have a suppressed identity — and I am referring to white people — when they are not allowed to express their sense of themselves, their sense of their extended family, and so on, in the real world …”
Letson (himself black) interrupts to point out that power in this country is solidly in the hands of the white majority. Who’s suppressing them?
Spencer replies that white people are bringing about their own demise:
“I don’t really blame black people for this. I really don’t. I blame ourselves. We are bringing about our own demise. We are removing ourselves from cultural and social power. If you say white people have accumulated a lot of wealth, yes. Where is that arrow pointing? Which direction are we headed? It is toward the loss of power for my people in North America and around the world.”
In a couple of interviews, Letson says, he never got a satisfactory answer from Spencer to the question of who he thinks is suppressing white people.
But by the provocative symbols and signals white nationalists employ, it is understood who they think is suppressing them: anyone who isn’t white. By definition. Loss or dilution of white majority power after enjoying centuries of unchallenged dominance equals “white genocide” committed by Others against them, not auto-genocide, as Spencer argues when pressed. That genocide demands a response, perhaps a violent one, is also understood, even if Spencer coyly never calls for one.
It is a perspective white nationalists, the KKK and Nazis hope to mainstream with the help of the sitting president. Because sharing power is a bad deal. Sharing isn’t part of their social contract. They scratched through that clause and initialed in the margin, or didn’t you notice?
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