White supremacy—our greatest global threat

    Three days after the massacre of 50 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a white supremacist terrorist, we remain numb with shock and horror.  We are sickened by the act itself, as well as by the canny way the murderer harnessed modern media to amplify his message of hate, uploading his 74 page “manifesto” to the internet and outfitting himself with a body camera in order to stream the carnage in real time, (Source:  “A Mass Murder of, and for, the Internet,” by Kevin Roose, The New York Times, 3/15/19).

     The footage went viral before people could fully process what they were watching.  Images of men, women and children being senselessly slaughtered while in the midst of Jumu’ah will be seared in the consciousness of the countless people who clicked unthinkingly on the retweets and shares that raced ahead of the social media platforms’ efforts to take them down.

    New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s response was swift and decisive.  She forcefully condemned the hatred that fueled the attacks, lauding New Zealand as a country that “represent[s] diversity, kindness, compassion, a home for those who share our values, a refuge for those who need it.”  Ardern immediately announced that gun laws would change as a result of the mass shooting, and New Zealand’s Attorney General, David Parker, announced that semi-automatic weapons would be banned.

    Meanwhile, the notorious Islamophobe squatting in The White House contorted himself to appear sympathetic, tweeting his “warmest sympathies” to the victims of the attack. Unable to conceal his true colors for long,  Trump also stated that he failed to see white nationalism as a rising global threat, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, (Source: “Trump says white nationalism is not a rising threat after New Zealand attacks:  ‘It’s a small group of people,’” by Colby Itkowitz and John Wagner, The Washington Post, 3/16/19).  Those comments are hardly surprising coming from a man who has repeatedly demonized Muslims, stating that “Islam hates us,” and enacting a literal ban on Muslims entering this country, (Source:  ibid). Given that Trump proudly called himself a nationalist and that the Christchurch terrorist called Trump a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose, the half hearted efforts of his supporters to absolve Trump of responsibility for emboldening violent racists falls flat. In addition, let’s not forget just days ago that Trump hinted that his political opponents might suffer violence at the hands of his supporters in “the military and the police,” (Source:  “Trump Just Said His Friends in the Military, the Police and a Biker Group Might Get “Tough” on Democrats,” by Jeremy Stahl, Slate.com, 3/14/19).

      It is long past time for us to face the fact that the greatest threat to democracy, or even to our collective safety and security, is the global movement for white supremacy.  Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Blackness are merely different strains of the same poisonous philosophy that springs from demented paranoia about demographic obsolescence and paralyzing fear that if previously subjugated minorities attain political power, we will use it to exact revenge for centuries of abuses ranging from The Crusades to chattel slavery.

    Americans need to recognize that we are a key source of this dangerous worldview that has spread around the globe. The Jim Crow laws of the United States served as a model for Nazi Germany.  The original white supremacist handbook, “The Passing of the Great Race,” written by the patrician American, Madison Grant, was such a source of inspiration for Hitler that he wrote Grant a fan letter, calling it his “bible,” (Source:  “White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots,” by Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, April 2019).

   Our survival will depend on whether we can wean ourselves from deeply ingrained habits that preserve a profoundly unjust status quo.  Habits like repeating that individual effort is all it takes to succeed in our society. Habits like refusing to call out overt racism, preferring the infuriating timidity of phrases like “racially charged.”  We fail, at our peril, to recognize that we are dangerously out of balance. We dither on about civility while aggrieved and emboldened violent white men slaughter us in churches, synagogues and mosques. Our allegiance to the myth of the American Dream is literally killing us.  We had better wake up before it is too late.