White supremacists have murdered 73 people since the Charlottesville march. I don’t believe any other ideology, including extremist versions of Islam, comes close. I’ve thought that the thread title has been accurate for pretty much all of American history, but it’s becoming more urgently dangerous in the last couple of years, as compared to recent decades.
This has always been the worst of America, and the biggest ideological danger to Americans, IMO. If you disagree, what other ideology do you think possess such a clear and deadly threat to Americans?
If I posted, “Communist are the biggest ideological threat to American lives, by far”, would questioning the definition of communist be fascist? It is a legit question. Is my 85 year old Uncle a “White Supremacist” or just a cranky old man who uses non-PC words?
Don’t start an argument from an unassailable position. Next comes, “I know when I see it”.
It is really sad the White Supremacist are still organized and in fairly large numbers in this day. It sucks in fact. You would hope we were moving past this and that younger generations would be free of it.
Pithy, but stupid. The argument hinges on how iiandyiiii is defining dangerous. For example, if he’s going by body count alone, then all the white supremacist murders in the last 20 years combined don’t equal 10% of the death toll of 9/11. So the answer is that white supremacists aren’t the biggest ideological threat to American lives.
On the other hand, if he’s going by frequency of attacks, then white supremacists probably are the biggest threat (at least, I can’t think of another). So definitions matter.
Also, it’s pointless trying to have a debate about white supremacy without clearly defining exactly what it is. Of course, in past years this wasn’t a problem. Ten years ago, you tell me Bob is a white supremacist and I’d know exactly what you meant. Today, you tell me Bob is a white supremacist and I don’t know if he’s a member of the KKK or just owns a MAGA hat. Again, definitions matter.
Feel free to use your own definition - I’ve talked about mine in many, many threads. It’s okay if you disagree - I’m interested in what others think about this statistic and my supposition.
It’s not just the number killed, it’s the number of Americans whose skin is various shades of black or brown or yellow or whatever who are terrorized by the combination of the attacks themselves, the increased level of hostility in meatspace and online, and a government that, at multiple levels from the President down to local racist cops, clearly is on the side of those hostile to these minorities rather than taking the side of the minorities over against those who would make them feel threatened.
White supremacists at all levels feel far more empowered than they did just a few years ago. This is Trump’s doing, but given how much things have changed since he took power, getting rid of Trump won’t be nearly enough to rewind things to where they were five years ago.
I haven’t read around enough to be 100% familiar with your definition but my impression (and do correct me if I’m wrong) is that it’s considerably more expansive than mine. My definition of a white supremacist is someone who believes that America should be a white ethnostate. If such a person got into power, they’d deport non-whites, ban interracial marriage, forbid immigration from non-white countries and other things. To me, white supremacy is an ideology in a way that simple common-or-garden racial bigotry isn’t.
The ADL report linked to in the article in your OP doesn’t say how it’s defining white supremacy. They’ve included the Parkland massacre as a white supremacist incident, so I’m guessing they’re using a more expansive definition than me as well. To me, that throws the cited death toll of 73 into question, which makes it difficult to offer an opinion.
A white supremacist could wear a MAGA hat or a white hood. But this thread isn’t about counting the number of white supremacists; it’s about assessing the damage they do. A guy in either sort of headgear who just stays at home posting rants online about Those People is loathsome, but mostly harmless. A guy in either sort of headgear who grabs his guns and goes out to shoot Those People is a serious problem.
The emergence of right-wing nationalism and white supremacists around the world is undoubtedly the greatest existential threat of our time. It isn’t the body counts or the associated statistics linked to racially motivated crimes du jour - those are merely KPIs. It’s the public sentiment and the shockingly large numbers of tacit supporters of this evil ideology that has been revealed that is truly staggering. Despite my own cynicism, it is to my shock and horror that I find democratic societies edging ever closer to the precipice of another worldwide tragedy fueled by fascism.
The problem with the spread of global nationalism and authoritarianism is that it takes a world that is predicated on cooperation between people, and replaces it with one in which there is an ever-intensifying competition for land and resources. Nationalists live in a zero-sum world, and they live based on assumptions of scarcity. It is the assumptions of scarcity that allow them to justify both to themselves and to others the atrocities that they commit.
The rationalize goes something like this:
“What choice do WE have? THEY are invading and taking OUR resources! WE have to defend OURSELVES against THEM. WE must destroy the invaders and the backstabbers who enable THEM”
I disagree. They guy who stays home and posts rants online helps create the culture where the supremacists feel both more aggrieved and more empowered to do anything about it. He and the large majority who won’t do anything more in meatspace than yell derogatory things at brown-skinned people make the iceberg larger that the guys who grab their guns are the tip of. Larger iceberg, larger tip.
It’s the people online who reinforce the attitudes of the MAGA hat-wearing goons and the white nationalist terrorists. Moreover, bit by bit, day by day, the online racist holy warriors also help to normalize their racist ideology. Sure, the average person understands that white nationalism is going to be found on sites like Stormfront, and everyone assumes and understands that they’re on the fringe - that’s not really the point.
The point is that while mainstream society recognizes that Stormfront and 8ch may be fringe spaces of the internet, they are visited by people who operate without notice in mainstream society - and that is the danger. There are seemingly “normal” people who go home on a Friday night, spend the entire weekend deepening their radicalization online, and head to work Monday with more hardened and toxic attitudes than they had when they came home on Friday. And they take toxic ideas and potentially toxic behaviors out into the mainstream world without anyone noticing until they show up at a synagogue or a shopping center with assault rifles and body armor.
The danger is, you don’t know who from “normal” world is lurking and engaging in these fringe spaces. It could be your boss, your co-worker, your next door neighbor, or even a friend or relative. You’d have no idea.
That’s why I said mostly harmless. And I meant that by comparison with the crazies who go on shooting sprees. Even mostly-harmless folks can be dangerous in sufficient numbers.
Or to put it a different way: If there were only a small number of the stay-at-home trolls, they wouldn’t be a problem. But even a small number of shooters is a problem.
ISTM that if this same thread had been written 10 years ago, but replaced “white supremacists” with “muslims”, then the posters who are nit-picking and arguing would have been 1000% “F*ck yeah!”
The argument that young muslims were radicalized by online echo chambers would have been accepted without dispute, and all arab mulims would have been suspect and tarred with the same bruch. Yet now, we observe the identical process occurring, but with white people, and OMG!
Most of them are not going to do physical harm themselves, but you get enough of them together, with them all stoking each others fears and hatreds, and the chances that one of them goes out and starts shooting people starts going up quickly.
Individually harmless; collectively a very serious threat.