[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 02 October 2018 06:43.
New Observer, “New US Law Obliges Americans to Pay Unlimited Billions to Israel”, 1 Oct 2018:
In what has been described as an “unprecedented gift of executive power to Israel,” the US Congress has passed for the very first time a law that forces the American president to give Israel a minimum of $3.8 billion per year—without limitation and no matter what Israel does.
Passed by the House of Representatives on September 12, 2018, the “United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018” rolls back any limitations that the US places on the amount of “aid” American taxpayers must hand over to Israel.
The bill states in “Sec. 102. Statement of Policy) that it “shall be the policy of the United States to provide assistance to the Government of Israel in order to support funding for cooperative programs to develop, produce, and procure missile, rocket, projectile, and other defense capabilities to help Israel meet its security needs and to help develop and enhance United States defense capabilities.”
According to a review of the law published by the If Americans Knew group, the AIPAC-lobbied law, introduced by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), whose maternal grandparents were Sephardic Jews, originally from the Ottoman Empire, who had been active in Cuba’s Jewish community, and Ted Deutch (D-Florida), whose grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Belarus, the bill is “even more generous to Israel than the Senate bill and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding and “amounts to $7,230 per minute to Israel, or $120 per second.”
The If Americans Knew review adds that the bill “guarantees $38 billion to Israel over the next ten years” and “is a dramatic departure from the deal offered under President Obama’s 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
“Most dramatically, this new act would eviscerate the ability of President Trump and his successors for the next ten years to withhold United States aid to Israel,” the review continued.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 01 October 2018 07:41.
W. Barnett Pearce
Sexists, racists, and other classes of classifiers: Form and function of “...Ist” accusations
by Julia T. Wood and W. Barnett Pearce
An “. . . ist” accusation indicts an individual as a racist, sexist, or other “. . . ist” whose thoughts and/or acts discriminate on the basis of class membership. The self‐reflexively paradoxical structure of “. . . ist” accusations precludes refutation, but response is possible. Pragmatic and moral implications of alternative responses to “. . . ist” accusations are evaluated.
In late 1989, I wrote to W. Barnett Pearce to discuss his work and how it might resolve problems that I was struggling with. Noting my struggles with accusations of ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’ - and having compassion! - he sent me this article, so on target and deft in the manner which it handled my concerns, that it demonstrated unequivocally that his was a discipline that I needed to be apprised of. Indeed, this article provided two of the most important clues for my WN advocacy. The first being that ‘race’ is (in an important regard) a matter of classification - at very least being treated as such by people who mattered, particularly by our foes, but also by our people, where they know what is good and necessary for them. Secondly, as the blurb above hints at, our antagonists can always shift its paradoxical structure to their anti-White agenda:
Viz., if you say, “no, I don’t discriminate based on race, sex, etc. I judge everyone on their individual merit”, then they will charge you with being disingenuous, willfully ignoring “the long history of discrimination, oppression and exploitation of these groups.”
But then, on the other hand, if you take the measure of saying, “ok, lets take that into account and use, say, affirmative action to help these groups into positions in which they are under-represented”, then you are classifying and a racist by definition.
- which I found ironic, that being the exact name (same year as well) of the girlfriend of mine who drove me to psychic melt-down.
Anyway, the (very helpful) gist of that article, which I’ve noted several times before, is that within the context of liberal feminism, even a well intentioned man can always be put into the wrong:
You can always be treated as either a wimp or a pig, no matter what you do as a man.
If you try to treat her with deference, gentleness, help and respect, then you can be looked upon as a wimp and a condescending patriarch who does not respect her strength, agency and autonomy.
On the other hand, if you treat her as one of the boys, respecting her toughness and autonomy, then you can be looked upon as a pig, a male chauvinist pig, not respecting the special quality of her gender, but rather a male chauvinist pig, projecting the hegemony of your patriarchical world view over all and everyone.
When nostalgic Brexiteers look back to the ‘good old days’, the summers were warmer, the food was tastier, and the dogs and people were friendlier. They have convinced themselves that it was a Golden Age before we joined the old Common Market in 1973. They have forgotten about the strikes and confrontations, the poor productivity, and the years of stagnation.
Some of them believe that the British Empire was destroyed by conspiracies but history tells a different story. When the Japanese won their war with Russia in 1905 they showed that the European powers were vulnerable, and when they took Singapore from Britain in 1942 they proved their point to the subject peoples of Asia and Africa. We fought colonial wars in Malaya, Kenya, Aden, and Cyprus but there was no stopping “The Wind of Change.” Within thirty years of WW2, all that was left of the Empire was a few outposts like Gibraltar and the Falklands.
Those of us born in the last days of the British Empire are proud of our achievements. We built roads, railways and bridges all over the world and bequeathing a civil service, a judiciary, and a parliamentary system to our colonial subjects. The British Empire was a force for civilisation and progress, but it was also the source of cheap food that damaged our agriculture, the producer of cheap cotton goods that destroyed our textiles industry, and the supplier of immigrants that undercut our wages and conditions. We discovered the hard way that commerce overrules sovereignty and that people follow goods across borders. In the days of Empire we recruited workers from the West Indies; as members of the EU we signed up to its rules and conditions, and if we are swallowed up by the United States we will import contaminated food and commit our troops to ‘perpetual war’.
Capitalism has been global since the days of the East India Company. We fought the Chinese to force them to buy our opium; we fought the Afrikaners for their gold and diamonds, and we fought the Turks to steal the Arabian oilfields. But the days of trade enforced by bayonets are over. We belong to NATO and our armed forces are under the command of General Curtiss Scaparroti, Supreme Allied Commander Europe. We are members of the United Nations and subject to the International Court of Human Rights. We belong to the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. If we leave the EU we will operate under the World Trade Organisation. And the majority of our immigrants come from outside the EU, mainly from Africa and Asia.
We pro-Europeans believe in beneficial access to markets, incoming investment, and peace in Northern Ireland. And, realising that the Empire has gone, we see our future in terms of European co-operation. We also know that wages are far too low and that immigration can only be controlled by international agreement.
These arguments have been thoroughly debated but the decision to leave the EU was largely emotional. Abstract ideas of ‘sovereignty’ were more important than economics. In fact, some on the Brexiters are happy to accept a lower standard of living for the illusion of sovereignty.
As for immigration, the Brexiteers don’t regard West Indians, Africans and Asians as foreigners, after all, they play cricket and most of them speak English. They are happy to admit our former colonial subjects but they are determined to stop the Poles.
Neither side has a monopoly on patriotism but some people are fond of shouting “traitor” at the opposition. That’s unfair because we all want the best for our country. People are not traitors because they have a different opinion, and shouting abuse at foreigners does not make one a patriot. We are entering uncharted waters and time alone will tell who is right and who is wrong.
The BBC
John Reith 1889-1971 photo credit BBC.
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a state-owned media empire that was founded by the brilliant Scottish engineer and radio pioneer John Reith in 1922. His original intention was for the service to be educational as well as entertaining. Left-wingers accuse it of being right-wing and right-wingers accuse it of being left- wing. The truth is that it supports the establishment, not necessarily the government of the day but the overriding liberal-capitalists consensus.
[MR editorial note: Nationalists being against corrupt establishment is indicative of what we are calling “Left Nationalism”]
The Corporation is funded by an annual ‘licence fee’ of £147.00. If you watch TV in the UK you must pay the licence fee, even if you are watching a foreign station. This unfair levy is the main source of the BBC’s massive income of nearly five billion pounds. It wastes this money on presenters like Chris Evans who earned £2.2 million last year, Gary Lineker who earned £1,7 million, and Graham Norton who got £850,000. The BBC also has legions of journalists, researchers, and photographers who fly around the world gathering news stories. And it spends a fortune on legal fees and settlements.
The British government is struggling to find money for the National Health Service, defence, education, and almost everything else. But we allow the bloated BBC to waste billions of pounds on broadcasters and bureaucrats. We should stop this madness by selling it off; the TV and radio stations, the buildings, the news service, the sports franchises, and everything else.
And we should not fall for the myths of impartiality and quality surrounding the Corporation. It’s forever congratulating itself on its high standards, but it’s as biased as any other state-owned propaganda outlet, and most of its TV and radio programs are made by independent production companies.
The licence fee should be abolished and the slimmed-down company should be paid for by adverting revenue, with any profits going to the state. Presenters should be paid an industrial wage and the service should be returned to John Reith’s founding principles. The current BBC is a money-gobbling monster that’s out of control. We should sack the lot of them and start again.
Post-Brexit Policies
When we leave the EU the political parties will no longer be able to blame everything on Europe, they will be forced to address our problems. As I write, they are holding their annual conferences and making their promises for the future.
Theresa May is clinging to her Chequers plan despite the fact that it has been rejected by the EU and most of her party. The Tories have abandoned austerity and are promising to build more social housing and increase public spending. They have also promised to reduce corporation tax so an increase in income tax is inevitable.
Jeremy Corbyn expects to win the next general election and he has promised to renationalise the railways, the Royal Mail, and the water companies. His chancellor, John MacDonald has revived the manifesto of the Italian Social Republic to give shares and seats on the board of companies employing more than 250 workers. When Benito Mussolini introduced this policy it was overtaken by events.
Vince Cable pledged that the Lib Dems would lead the fight against Brexit but our ‘first past the post’ electoral system is rigged against them. They have 12 seats at Westminster but under proportional representation they would have more than 50.
Ukip and the various parties of the far-right will lose most of their reasons for living when we quit Europe. But immigration will still be with us because most of them come from outside of the EU. The latest ONS figures show that in the last year 127,000 EU citizens came to the UK and 179,000 from the rest of the world. In fact, if we sign trade deals with China and India we will probably admit more of them.
All of the parties are promising to increase defence spending, but if our economy shrinks we will have even less money to spend. We may have to stop pretending to be a world power and deploy our armed forces for the defence of the UK, instead of getting involved in Afghanistan and the Middle East. That would mean more frigates and destroyers but we would not need two gigantic aircraft carriers and a fleet of nuclear submarines.
Education also needs sorting out. France and Germany provide free education from nursery to university and so should we. We must gear our educational system to provide the doctors, engineers and scientists that we need instead of relying on immigration.
Now Biggest Donor in all of US Politics, Sheldon Adelson Brings an Israel First Agenda to Washington
Adelson’s massive expenditures in federal elections this cycle are being made because he believes that Republican control of the House and the Senate is vital to maintaining right-wing and pro-Zionist policies and his influence in Washington and at the White House.
by Whitney Webb
WASHINGTON – According to publicly available campaign finance data, Sheldon Adelson – the conservative, Zionist, casino billionaire –is now the biggest spender on federal elections in all of American politics. Adelson, who was the top donor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Republican Party in 2016, has cemented his role as the top political donor in the country after giving $55 million in recent months to Republicans in an effort to help the party keep its majority in both houses of Congress.
Adelson’s willingness to help the GOP stay in power is likely born out of his desire to protect the massive investment he placed in the party last election cycle. In 2016, the Republican mega-donor gave heavily to the Trump campaign and Republicans, donating $35 million to the former and $55 million to the top two Republican Super PACs — the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Senate Leadership Fund — during that election cycle.
Adelson’s decision to again donate tens of millions of dollars to Republican efforts to stay in power is a direct consequence of how successfully he has been able to influence US policy since Trump and the GOP rode to victory in the last election cycle.
A New York Times article on Adelson, titled “Sheldon Adelson Sees a Lot to Like in Trump’s Washington,” notes that Adelson “enjoys a direct line to the president.” Furthermore, Adelson and Trump regularly meet once a month “in private in-person meetings and phone conversations” that Adelson has used to push major changes to U.S. policy that Trump has made reality — such as moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and cutting aid to Palestinian refugees, among others.
Adelson’s new title as the top spender in all U.S. elections shows that he, along with his wife, is willing to spend big to keep that direct line open in the months and years ahead. Citing sources close to the Adelsons, the Times writes that the Adelsons’ massive expenditures in federal elections this cycle are being made because he and his wife believe that “Republican control of the House and the Senate is so vital to maintaining these [right-wing and pro-Zionist] policies” and their influence in Washington and at the White House.
Sheldon Adelson arrives prior to US President Donald Trump’s speech at the Israel museum in Jerusalem, May 23, 2017. Sebastian Scheiner | AP
“Pleased as punch”
The fact that Adelson is “pleased-as-punch” with Trump’s performance as president should hardly come as a surprise, given that the president has fulfilled his campaign promises that were of prime importance to Adelson, while many of his other campaign promises – namely those that were populist or anti-war in nature – have rung hollow.
These Adelson-promoted policies include the moving of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Adelson had aggressively promoted and even helped to finance, as well as removing the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal. Another recent policy move bearing Adelson’s fingerprints is the U.S. decision to withdraw its funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), as Adelson once infamously stated that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.”
For years we have been flying Africans to America and placing them in hundreds of US towns and cities, and President Trump’s State Department will continue that trend as its number one refugee admissions priority!
The UN asked the US to take in 50,000 Congolese over 5 years and we are doing just that!
Frankly, as I said just yesterday if Africa doesn’t soon slow its population growth and get the Islamic extremists under control, Africa is going to sink first Europe, and then us under the weight of millions of needy (mostly unskilled) people in the not too distant future.
Based on current trends, Africa as a whole is projected to double in [population] size by 2050. Between 2050 and 2100, according to the United Nations, it could almost double again.
(from 1 about 1.3 billion in 2018 to over 4 billion in 2100!)
Yikes! See the Africa ticking (time bomb) population clock, here.
Trump to prioritize Africa…..
cover fy19 report
Although the US State Department has announced a greatly lowered refugee cap (30,000) for the coming fiscal year which begins this coming Monday! the administration will place a priority on Africans according to the just released ‘Report to Congress’ that explains why the President is setting the level where he is.
This year it is a slimmed-down version of a report I have handy for FY16 (Obama’s last full year) which is 71 pages. The Trump report, at a mere 39 pages, does not go in to the great detail that Obama’s did.
I encourage serious students of the US Refugee Admissions Program to read it (LOL! I haven’t read it all yet, but I will!) because it is a very useful educational tool even if it is discouraging.
Here (below) is a screenshot of the Trump priorities. At least we can cheer about the dramatic slowdown in the Near East and Asia (where most of the Muslim countries, besides Africa, are found).
And it is an improvement on Obama’s last full year when he set the ceiling for Africa at 27,500 and came in at 31,624!
By contrast, from 1 Oct 2017 to 1 Sept 2018 (11 months of the fiscal year), Trump admitted 9,007 Africans. But, what on earth makes anyone in the Western World think we can save Africa by serving as their population pressure valve.
There is no way, even if we wanted to, to take enough refugees to keep up with their exploding population growth.
Let’s look at the DR Congolese
Anne Richard and then UNHCR Antonio Guterres who is now Secretary General of the United Nations. By the way, Trump is still without an Asst. Secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration
I reported here in 2013 that then Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Anne Richard, told the UN (told UNHCR Guterres) that we would ‘welcome’ to America 50,000 UN Camp-dwelling Congolese over 5 years.
I just checked Wrapsnet and although we were bringing these people prior to FY14, since Richard’s announcement we have admitted 45,667 from that fiscal year up until today.
(In fact, from FY08 to the present day, we have admitted 56,106 from the DR Congo.)
And, by the way, I checked numbers for this month and in a little over 3 weeks we admitted 684 DR Congolese refugees, followed by Burma (290) in second place. In case you are wondering, most Congolese are not Muslims but there are a few in the flow to your towns and cities.
So by my calculation we have 4,333 DR Congolese to go to fulfill a promise we never needed to make!
But, do not hold your breath that it will end at 50,000 because our track record is that we just keep taking them long after the supposed cut off number has been reached—see Burmese, Bhutanese and Somalis for starters!
Endnote: I did a quick check and am not seeing anything about prioritizing persecuted white South Africans. Let me know if you see any mention.
Monday a big day for refugee contractors, expect more stories like these….
What is Monday? It is the beginning of the federal fiscal year. It is the first day of FY19. It is the day when the writing will be on the wall for many refugee resettlement offices around the country.
Dumb way to run an organization! Did no one in the refugee industry ever question a business model where some non-profits are 97% and up federally funded?
Why? Because in 1980 Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980 in to law and set up a house of cards that needs to fall now. Originally (supposedly!) designed as a public-private partnership, the federal government and ‘humanitarian’ non-profit groups were to share equally in the costs of admitting tens of thousands of refugees to the US each year.
But, over the years, because Congress has been so remiss in overseeing the program (the Rs want cheap labor!), those non-profit groups (aka federal contractors) have gotten fat and confident (like Aesop’s grasshopper) on ever larger amounts of federal funding and too lazy to raise sufficient amounts of private money to see them through if for any reason the number of paying clients/refugees declined.
(An aside: The inability to raise enough private money is also indicative of the fact that there isn’t enough interest by average Americans in financially supporting the program in the first place.)
So here we are with one story after another about what Monday will bring to dozens of resettlement contractors around the country.
From Austin, Texas we learn that a Catholic contractor—Caritas—is closing its refugee program.
EXCLUSIVE: As refugees dwindle, Caritas will end resettlement program
Since 1974, the organization has helped thousands of people fleeing war or persecution find a new life in Austin. But after 44 years, Caritas is ending its refugee resettlement program and as of Monday, it will no longer serve new refugees.
“It’s really a tragedy that this program has to go away,” said Jo Kathryn Quinn, executive director for Caritas.
[….]
For the past two years, Caritas has seen a sharp decline in the number of refugees arriving in Austin, and the development has made the program “financially unsustainable,” Quinn said. Between 2010 and 2016, Caritas resettled an average of 576 refugees each year. Since last October, Caritas has resettled 151 refugees, but the nonprofit has not received any new refugees since April.
“Having zero refugees arrive in two months was unheard of for us,” Quinn said. “It was the final alarm bell that told us that we couldn’t continue this way.”
[….]
In June, Caritas’ board of directors voted to close the program at the end of the fiscal year at the recommendation of the nonprofit’s executive leadership.
When fewer refugees arrive, less federal money comes in to support them as well. Refugees receive a one-time amount of $1,125 from federal funds for resettlement needs, including housing and food, said Adelita Winchester, Caritas’ director of integrated services. Caritas would supplement federal funds with about $1 million annually in philanthropic donations,Winchester said. [The reporter has missed an important piece of information. The refugee gets $1,125 and Caritas gets another $1,125 for themselves per refugee.—ed]
“We didn’t have any excess philanthropic dollars to shift to aid this program,” Quinn said.
The newly-released FBI “Crime in the U.S.” Report for 2017 has once again deliberately added all Hispanic (including all gangs such as “MS-13”), North African, and “Middle Eastern” crimes to the “White” category as part of the federal government’s ongoing efforts to disguise the fact that the vast majority of crime in the US is committed by nonwhites.
Then the FBI figures go on to claim that “In 2017, 68.9 percent of all persons arrested were White, 27.2 percent were Black or African American, and the remaining 3.9 percent were of other races.”
1. “White”
2. “Black or African American”
3. “American Indian or Alaska Native”
4. “Asian”
5. “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.”
From this it is obvious to see that all crime which is not black, American Indian, “Asian,” or “Pacific Islander” has been included under the “White” category.
This includes all Hispanic crime—which is vast, and includes drug gangs such as the murderous MS-13 and many others—along with all crimes committed by North African, Arab, and all “Middle Eastern” criminals.
“White – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”
This devious definition allows the FBI—and the federal government—to classify all Hispanics as “white” because their alleged Spanish ancestry. In reality, as everyone knows, although there are whites in South and Central America, the vast majority of the population are a mixed race made up of a tiny number of Spanish settlers, and vast numbers of Indian tribes and black slaves, the latter who were imported during early colonial times.
To make the deliberate deception even more evil, the FBI statistics do not give any indication of the Hispanic crime rate—even though a look at their own “Most Wanted” list shows that they do keep records of “Hispanic” arrests, even though they still officially classify them as “White.”
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 25 September 2018 14:32.
New observer, “Trump Commits America to Extended War in Syria, Reverses Withdrawal Policy”, 21 Sept 2018:
US President Donald Trump—in accordance with instructions from Israel—has reversed his previously declared policy of withdrawal from Syria and committed to an indefinite “military effort” in the country to remove Bashar al-Assad, the Washington Post has reported.
Trump, who “just five months ago said he wanted ‘to get out’ of Syria and bring U.S. troops home soon, has agreed to a new strategy that indefinitely extends the military effort there,” the newspaper reported.
There are already 2,200 US army personnel on the ground in Syria—a fact almost completely ignored by the controlled media, and now there are plans to increase this number and to look at other sanctions against the Syrian government, all in line with Israel’s demand that the Iranians be kicked out and Assad deposed.
“Although the military campaign against the Islamic State has been nearly completed, the administration has redefined its goals to include the exit of all Iranian military and proxy forces from Syria,” the Washington Post continued, justifying the move as the “establishment of a stable, nonthreatening government acceptable to all Syrians and the international community.”
“The new policy is we’re no longer pulling out by the end of the year,” said James Jeffrey, a retired senior Foreign Service officer who last month was named Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “representative for Syria engagement.”
Jeffrey said U.S. forces are to remain in the country to ensure an Iranian departure and the “enduring defeat” of the Islamic State. “That means we are not in a hurry,” he said.
Asked whether Trump had signed off on what he called “a more active approach,” Jeffrey said, “I am confident the president is on board with this.” This is of course an understatement: Trump has slavishly followed Israel’s demands with regard to Syria from the very beginning, ordering bombing raids on Syria over non-existent “chemical attacks” and breaking the “nuclear deal” with Iran.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 24 September 2018 14:30.
It was only after he began attending New College of Florida that Black began to question his own point of view. Previously, he had been home-schooled, but suddenly he was was exposed to people who didn’t share his views, including a few Jewish students who became friends. Black’s new friends invited him over for Shabbat dinner week after week. Gradually, he began to rethink his views.
NPR, “How A Rising Star Of White Nationalism Broke Free From The Movement”, 24 Sept 2018:
Derek Black was following in his father’s footsteps in the world of white nationalism until he had a change of heart.
As the son of a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Derek Black was once the heir apparent of the white nationalist movement.
Growing up, he made speeches, hosted a radio show and started the website KidsStormfront — which acted as a companion to Stormfront, the white nationalist website his father, Don Black, created.
“The fundamental belief that drove my dad, drove my parents and my family, over decades, was that race was the defining feature of humanity ... and that people were only happy if they could live in a society that was only this one biologically defined racial group,” Black says.
It was only after he began attending New College of Florida that Black began to question his own point of view. Previously, he had been home-schooled, but suddenly he was exposed to people who didn’t share his views, including a few Jewish students who became friends.
Black’s new friends invited him over for Shabbat dinner week after week. Gradually, he began to rethink his views. After much soul-searching, a 22-year-old Black wrote an article, published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2013, renouncing white nationalism.
Derek Black’s “awakening” is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eli Saslow’s new book, Rising Out Of Hatred. Saslow also interviewed Black’s father and other leaders in the white nationalist movement.
Interview Highlights
On the “rebranding” of white supremacy, led in part by Derek’s father, Don Black
Derek Black: My dad popularized the term “white nationalism” ... when he founded Stormfront and called it a white nationalist community, and he saw the distinction between white nationalism and white supremacy as being one that he didn’t want anything bad for anyone else — he just wanted everybody to be forcibly put in different spaces, and that that was not about superiority, it was just about the well-being of everybody. ... Looking back on it, that is totally irrational. How exactly do you think you’re going to forcibly separate everybody and that that’s not supremacy?
Eli Saslow: They believed America was founded as a white supremacist country. ... Their job was just to give people a space to say racist ideas in a more explicit, proud, confident way. ...
White nationalism, I think, effectively identifies a movement of people who are actively pursuing an end cause of separating races into different homelands. White supremacy, unfortunately, is something that’s much more endemic, and much more structured into what the country is.
On Black’s usage of white nationalist talking points in a campaign for the West Palm Beach County Republican Committee
Black: I knew from the time that I was a child that white nationalism, as long as it was not necessarily calling itself white nationalism, could win campaigns. So I did things like run little Republican county elections [to] demonstrate that I could win with the majority of the vote [using] white nationalist talking points in a very normal South Florida neighborhood.
I ran training sessions on how people could hone their message to try to get that audience, not freak people out and just tap into things like, “Don’t you think all these Spanish signs on the highway are making everything worse? And don’t you think political correctness is just not letting you talk about things that are real?” And getting people to agree on that would be the way forward.
On how President Obama’s election motivated white nationalists
Saslow: I think a lot of white nationalists saw President Obama’s election as a huge opportunity for their movement. Because what white nationalists have done, with dangerous effect, is play to this factually incorrect sense of grievance that exists, unfortunately, in large parts of white America.
Polls consistently show that 30 to 40 percent of white Americans believe that they experience more discrimination and more prejudice than people of color or than Jews, which is factually incorrect by every measure that we have, but by feeding that sense of grievance and by playing to these ideas of your country is being taken away, things are changing, this is turning into a place that you don’t recognize. We don’t need this kind of immigration. We don’t want these signs in Spanish — that has a huge effect with a lot of voters, and it’s what got Derek elected [he was unable to serve in office], and it’s what has gotten other politicians elected in our country as well.
On the responsibility Black feels for racially motivated violence that was inspired by the white nationalist beliefs he once espoused
I said things that tried to energize racist ideas and get people to be more explicit about it. And then people who listened to that and who believed it, some of them committed horrible, violent acts.
...That is a moral weight that is very difficult to reconcile.
Derek Black
Black: I spent so many years rationalizing that that was not us. We were not responsible for that. We were not advocating violence, so therefore when people committed violent acts who had all the same beliefs as us, that that was not us. That was the media portraying us in a way that attracted psychopaths, and that we were somehow not responsible for that because it was not clear how to tangibly connect what I was saying and what I was promoting to the actions that those people took.
And now I look back on it and I said things that tried to energize racist ideas and get people to be more explicit about it. And then people who listened to that and who believed it, some of them committed horrible, violent acts. And what is my culpability and responsibility for how these things went out into the world and they continue to bounce around in the world, and I can’t take them back? That is a moral weight that is very difficult to reconcile.
On how the actions of various students Black met at college helped him move away from his white nationalist beliefs
Saslow: In addition to being the story of Derek’s transformation, the book is also the story of the real courage shown by a lot of students on this campus who invested themselves in trying to affect profound change. And they did that in a lot of different ways. There was civil resistance on campus by a group of students who organized the school shutdown, and shut down the school, and sort of cast Derek out, and made it clear to him how awful, and how hateful, and how hurtful this ideology was.
And it was also students like Allison, eventually his girlfriend, who won his trust, built a relationship, but [who] also armored herself with the facts, and sort of like point by point went through and showed how this ideology is built on total misinformation.
And then there were also [Jewish] students like Matthew [Stevenson] and Moshe [Ash] who, in a remarkable act, invited Derek over week after week after week, not to build the case against him but to build their relationship, hoping that just by spending more and more time with them he would be able to begin seeing past the stereotypes to the people and to the humanity. I think it’s important to note that that did not happen quickly, and that they knew the full horror of a lot of the beliefs of this ideology and things that Derek had said.
Heidi Saman and Mooj Zadie produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.
W. Barnett Pearce
It was only after he began attending New College of Florida that Black began to question his own point of view. Previously, he had been home-schooled, but suddenly he was was exposed to people who didn’t share his views, including a few Jewish students who became friends. Black’s new friends invited him over for Shabbat dinner week after week. Gradually, he began to rethink his views.
Sheldon Adelson arrives prior to US President Donald Trump’s speech at the Israel museum in Jerusalem, May 23, 2017. Sebastian Scheiner | AP
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