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Democrats, You Can Have Your White Supremacists Back
Look, you folks invented the KKK, and the Nazis took your best ideas when they started their racket. Shoot, you’re still the party that has problems with the Jews. Check out the crowds at one of your anti-speech rallies if you have any doubts about that.
The only reason you folks don’t welcome the KKK into your big it’s-all-about-identity tent is that identity politics, to really work right, has to have a bad guy — and you’ve decided to make it white men this time. You tried demonizing black men, but people eventually saw through that. And the Nazis overdid the Jew-hate thing so badly that you have to call them “Israel” if you want to play to that ancient bigotry. All that’s really left now is straight white guys — the one group for which you don’t have an I’m-a-victim 12-step program.
Which makes it pretty obvious why the handful of KKK retreads and skinhead losers don’t feel welcome anymore in the party of their birth. You’ve moved on: it’s white men you’re teaching people to hate now. Same product, different clientele.
But it still seems unfair to have kicked your flagship racist group to the curb. So come on, welcome them back. We didn’t like them when they were your boys, and we don’t like them now.
Published in Culture
That’s one of your best.
Well said! Maybe the KKK can pursue legal action against the Democratic National Committee for abandonment and seek child support payments?
Nathan Bedford Forrest could not be reached at the Democrat National Committee meeting. Bull Conner answered but not the general.
I never understood the logic that the KKK, Nazi, Alt-Right or whatever these idiots call themselves are something I, we need to denounce. Why do you need to denounce something that is not part of you?
But they like you:
Which may be unfair, but there it is.
And they don’t seem to much like the Democrats any more.
Zafar, it isn’t unfair, merely irrelevant.
Think about it. If you’re one of the few actual racists in America and you’re looking to attach yourself to a political party, what are you going to do? If you’re a minority racist, you’re going to join the Democrats, because they’ll encourage you: they’ll tell you that you’re a victim, that white people are inherently racist, that the system is rigged against you, and that they’re looking out for you. In contrast, the Republicans kind of don’t believe in racism, and think we should all just get on with our lives.
But if you’re a white racist, someone who would have been at home in the Democratic party of the late Senator Robert Byrd (D-KKK), what can you do? The Democrats are busy telling blacks and Hispanics how evil white people are; you’re hardly going to feel welcome hanging out with them, even though they’re talking the same kind of racist identity politics they did when they were the party of the KKK, just from a different angle.
On the other hand, the Republicans don’t have a problem with white people (or black people, or Hispanic people, or Chinese people, etc.). They’re pretty much oblivious to race, and would rather we all stop talking about it. So, even if they won’t go along with the white supremacists, at least they represent a place where anti-white racism isn’t being preached. So, if you’re going to be involved in one of the major parties, it’ll have to be the Republican party — because the Democratic party, while it’s perfectly comfortable with racists, doesn’t have room for racists of your particular color. Not anymore.
Why? To prove that you are guilty of being associated with these groups. That’s why.
That sounds like a nice principled position to take — but I think it’s wrong.
One of the things that distinguishes Republicans from Democrats is that the Democrats will ally themselves with pretty much anyone: if you’re willing to join their march, they don’t care what flag you’re flying. There’s an awful lot of hypocrisy buried in their ignorance — so-called anti-fascists wearing Fidel Castro tee-shirts, stuff like that.
Republicans don’t do that. We aren’t a big tent for every kind of angry misanthrope out there. We aren’t a catch-all party willing to embrace whatever radical comes along. So when someone truly noxious, someone who doesn’t reflect Republican or conservative values, starts marching alongside us, supporting our candidates, self-identifying as a part of us, we explicitly reject them — and we should. Because, unlike the Democrats, we actually stand for something. We have standards more exacting than “likes to break things” (which is pretty much all it takes to be a player on the left these days).
The Democrats can get away with having some awful people under its tent, because the cameras will shy away from them and they won’t be mentioned in the stories. That isn’t true of Republicans: we won’t get a pass for tolerating loathsome people in our midst.
I think it isn’t good enough to ignore the charge that we have white supremacists among us, because it’s true. We have to reject them, and not let their claim that we share their values to go unanswered.
The best way to do that is the way your OP did it. The wrong way is the way the left wants Trump to do it. The wrong way is the way the likes of Romney did it.
I agree. We should never say that they represent us, that we inspired them, that they’re something we’re sorry about.
They’re racists. We don’t do racist. We don’t care about race, and we’d just as soon everyone else stopped caring about it as well. Race-obsessed people can go elsewhere, because that’s not who we are here on the right, here in the Republican party, here among the conservatives.
Racism and identity politics go hand-in-hand, and it’s the left’s shtick. It’s the Democrat’s weapon of choice. If you want to be a racist, go knock on their door, because we aren’t interested.
But, just to be clear: we have to say something like that. We can’t simply ignore the racists who claim to stand with us.
I’m still ignoring them. But it’s fine that you say something, and you said it well. I don’t think “we” are required to say anything. I’m not a raving individualist, but this is an individual thing, not a collective thing.
General rule on this: never never never let the left tell you what to do.
And nowadays we have to add: never never never let the NT elites tell you what to do.
And then: never never never read or listen to George Will on anything important.
You are right, of course. When I say “we have to say something,” there’s an implied “if we want to win.”
I appreciate @larrykoler‘s comment: we don’t want the left telling us what to do. But that doesn’t mean we have the luxury of surrendering the narrative to them without a response — not if we want to win.
Well, if we insist on trying to influence the narrative while leaving the narrative-weavers alone it’s always going to be hard. While, tactically speaking, it may make sense to charge their entrenched positions with our hands empty but our hearts pure, after the first few decades, and the massive losses incurred, it ought to occur to us to try something different. Naval artillery and flame throwers would be my suggestion.
I think it’s a great approach to remind people that the Democratic Party is the natural home of racists, pointing out that their party welcomes racists of every type. It’s just that their anti-white racism in the party is so strong that white racists have been kicked to the curb. Orphaned. But the Dem Party is their birthplace and are their true parents.
Ha! Call me too conservative, but I still want to work within the political process. ;)
In fact, I think we’re doing better on the political front than people like to think. The cultural front, not so much — but I believe that’s because we don’t speak up. Because we’re too stinkin’ polite.
(PS And yes, I do believe that politics trails culture, and that, if we lose the culture war, we’ll eventually lose the political war. So it’s incumbent on us all to start speaking up sooner, rather than later.)
This truth has to be hammered, hammered, hammered. Democrat Jim Crow was well within my lifetime. I don’t give rat’s ass what anyone’s skin color is. I find the term “white” deeply offensive. Given history, I consider it impolite to note someone’s skin color. Calling someone a racist is one of the deepest insults there is. The racist Democratic party should choke on its historic vomit.
I don’t see what it has to do with our “winning.” I don’t mind engaging in verbal combat with the occasional white racist who makes an appearance here on Ricochet, though the CoC compels me to keep some of my thoughts to myself. But to engage in moral posturing? Yeah, I might do that, too, but it isn’t going to get anybody any votes.
I’m not sure I understand your comment.
I don’t know that it’s “moral posturing” to educate people about the nature of racism as practiced today, and to point out where it’s being exploited and the harm it’s doing. That just seems like common sense political activism to me.
I think most people aren’t strongly political, and most people just kind of soak up what they hear around them. If all they hear is the “popular wisdom” that tells them that Republicans are a bunch of racist white men and Democrats are the party that believes in getting past race — and that only embraces what look like racist practices in order to do that — then that’s what they’re going to tend to believe.
We can leave them to that misunderstanding, but I don’t think it’s in our best interest to do so — any more than it’s in our best interest to leave them believing that there’s a big male/female wage disparity, or that the police murder black people, or that Islam is the religion of peace, or that wind power is a viable replacement for fossil fuels. Countering any of those could be seen, I suppose, as some kind of “posturing,” but I think of it as simply being a responsible citizen trying to influence the debate toward a sensible alternative to what the left and the mainstream press are spewing.
For me, the KKK, the Neo-Nazi’s, Antifa, Blacks Lives Matter, the Democratic Party and a host of Leftist groups all have one thing in common – they all want to rip the Constitution to shreds and replace it with something that let’s them discriminate as they please.
My favorite Republicans all to one degree or another believe in the strict construction of the Constitution. That is the difference between us and them. We do not need to defend the Neo Nazi’s, the White Supremacists or whatever intolerant group you might choose because we are in fact 180 degrees from their central political philosophy, nor to we need to get overly defensive when some Leftist accuses us of being aligned with the White Supremacists et al, because anyone with a brain knows that charge of bigotry is wholly without merit and grossly untrue.
In these troubled times, one needs to know who he or she is, stand your ground, defend your principles and don’t take any crap from someone who is trying to smear you.
Well, you say that.
But, in fact, I’ll bet a big double-digit chunk of the electorate hasn’t got a clue which party panders to racial bigots and which does not. And the mainstream press will do its best to make sure that they never do.
So I agree that we shouldn’t be defensive; we have nothing about which to be ashamed.
But neither should we be silent.
Yes, a great portion of the country is illiterate politically and/or listens to sources of news that only pollute their minds. Never mind. Some things are beyond your control.
We should not be defensive. We should not be silent. We should be loud and strong , in fact, because the “media” all too often is purposely distorting the facts, and that ‘fake news” needs to be countered with no hint of guilt or shame.
Agreed. And agreed with the OP*’s point.
But who is making this argument? DJT tries his best, but for all his gifts, a silver tongue is not one of them. There is the non-mainstream righto-media, from Instapundit to Ace by way of Kurt Schlichter, but what high-profile** Republican would rather undermine the MSM and The Narrative than pander to it by appearing on CNN – and taking them seriously? Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan don’t seem to be doing much at the moment – perhaps they could throw a few bombs the MSM’s way and help get the “media” out of the way of democracy?
* I’m sorry, Henry, but I always read your name “Raclette”.
** Perhaps the only way to be “high profile” is to play the establishment game and pretend “Meet the Press” is important, and so one cannot be both high profile and a courageous truth-teller.
Accurate.
The other thing that hardly ever gets mentioned – the “white supremacists”, in whatever form they take, represent a very wee slice of the population. So wee, in fact, that I can argue that absent the left’s attempt to attribute any negative event to evil Republicans – even when riots occurred in some states (including mine) last year, in the form of angry black men smashing windows and cars in uptown Charlotte, evil white people were blamed for blacks being so angry with them as to cause said smashing – that both the white supremacists can and should be ignored, and claims about their “rise” batted away easily with the generally accepted knowledge that their klan consists of (maybe) tens of thousands of losers.
At best. Idiots rally to a statue, a national rally, and can only cough up 150-200 people. This is not a movement, nor a cause, nor anything, other than stupid. There will always be stupid. You cannot legislate it out of existence (in fact, I’d argue we see more stupid the more Congress creates laws).
Douse the stupid flame before it gets extrapolated by people that are classically horrible at math, and explain that a couple of hundred jamokes with tiki torches doesn’t represent much of anything. The average wedding has more people showing up to it than their “national” rally.
Then go home to family and friends, and live your lives happily.
So, so true…
Not so fast. If you hold any beliefs that the Klan held, then you are as good as a Klan member and part of the Klan influence. Or so I read in an article in Michigan History magazine. For example, if you favor immigration restrictions, you represent the KKK, because the KKK did, too.
Or to take another example, if you are opposed to state aid to church schools, you are a virtual Klan member, because the Klan opposed it, too.
Well, that second example wasn’t in the article, but I presume the rule holds for that one, too.