Tonight, I was scrolling through the Twitter feed for the #RacismIsASickness account. If you aren’t following us on Twitter, consider doing so.
Anyway, I came across the above tweet, which was among many linked to a 23-second video of alleged alt-right White nationalist Richard B. Spencer speaking at Texas A&M University earlier this evening. Here are some screenshots.
Shoutout to the Texas A&M students and others who are peacefully protesting, live tweeting and sharing content to keep the rest of us in the loop.
A quick read of Spencer’s Wikipedia page revealed that Spencer prefers the term Identitarian. Okay, whatever. With that bit of insight, I went and checked out the wikipedia page for the same. Interesting reading. What stood out for me while I was reading the “Identitarian Movement” page was this:
According to Christoph Gurk one of the goals of the Identitarians is to make racism modern and fashionable[4] and they have good connections to Hungarian and Polish Neo-Nazis, according to Anna Thalhammer.[5]
With a bit more context, I went back and I listened to the 23-second video, and listened to it again. I’ll be honest. It gave me the heebie-jeebies.
So I get that Spencer is who he is, and to be honest with you, I have more respect for him because he doesn’t make an effort to hide the fact that he’s who he is. But what about the rest of you White folks? Now that extremists like Spencer have really become emboldened by Trump’s election where does it leave you? Does it make sense to call yourselves White in the midst of all this nonsense? Are you White like Richard Spencer? White like Tim Wise? Or a different kind of White altogether? And why should I take time to suss this all out?
All of what has transpired over the last 18 months has got me to thinking about a lot of things. Whites (white men primarily, but not always) are the main ones admonishing non-Whites, women and others to stop playing “identity politics” games but yet and still, here is evidence that Whites don’t mind playing the same games when it suits them.
Trump will be installed as our next president in a little more than a month. A lot has been said on both sides about whether or not he has ties to the alt-right, White supremacy/White nationalist movement.
Either way, I have questions.