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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 10/14/17

What Do "White Supremacists" Believe?

By       (Page 1 of 4 pages)   4 comments, In Series: No Rich and No Poor

John Spritzler
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There are two very different beliefs that are both labeled as racism and "white supremacy" by some people. Here they are:

Belief #1. "Black people ought to be treated worse than whites; blacks ought to have fewer rights than whites; and whites should benefit at the expense of blacks in ways that--if it were the other way around--would be wrong." [This is the viewpoint that defends things like chattel slavery or Jim Crow, for example. It is truly a "white supremacy" racist viewpoint.]

Belief #2. "The government, mass media and liberal politicians are biased against whites in favor of blacks; blacks are being allowed to benefit unfairly at the expense of whites." [This is the viewpoint of people who object to Affirmative Action, who respond to the slogan "Black lives matter" by replying, "All lives matter," and who say that welfare steals from whites to give to blacks, for example.]

In both the mass and alternative media, people who hold either of these two beliefs are often referred to as "white supremacists" and labeled as racists. Clearly the first belief is properly labeled as "white supremacy" racism. But what about the second belief?

The second belief does not have the word "ought" in it; it is entirely a belief about what is, not what ought to be. If a person espouses belief #2 it does not logically follow that he/she also holds belief #1; it is very possible that he/she disagrees with belief #1 and simply thinks that racial discrimination (regardless of which race is favored) is wrong. This is why I don't think it makes sense to characterize belief #2 as "racism." One can argue that belief #2 is factually false, but that is very different from arguing that it is racist (i.e., equivalent to belief #1.) One can conjecture that a person espousing belief #2 also holds belief #1, but that is just a conjecture. It may be true for some and untrue for other individuals. The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" would suggest that one ought to confirm the conjecture before asserting it to be true for any given individual or individuals, right?

If somebody you know holds belief #2, the appropriate way to respond is to respectfully ask them to spell out exactly what they think is true, and then to investigate the relevant facts and discuss what the investigation reveals. This is the way that leads to recruiting good people to the side of egalitarian revolution. It is also the way to find out if the person in question is merely using the espousal of belief #2 to organize support for actual white supremacy, which some people do.

So, what do the so-called "white supremacy" websites say?

What about David Duke?


Let's start with David Duke's website (http://davidduke.com/ ), since he's been in the news recently as a "white supremacist" and former Ku Klux Klan leader offering his endorsement to Donald Trump. There was a time when the KKK was an overtlyracist organization advocating belief #1 and violently attacking those who opposed the harsh discrimination (such as Jim Crow laws and lynching) against blacks that the former slave owners imposed after they lost the Civil War and that their descendants imposed for many decades after that.

One reason David Duke is not to be trusted is that, while he claims only to hold belief #2, he does not acknowledge that he was once a KKK leader and he does not explicitly repudiate the past racist violence of the KKK.

David Duke's website is clearly an attempt to recruit whites on the basis of belief #2, not #1. The banner of his site reads: "David Duke: For Human Freedom and Diversity" for crying out loud! Since I don't trust Duke, I'm not particularly interested in him as an individual. What I am interested in is the substantial number of people who are attracted to him today. Are these people necessarily correctly characterized as racists? Do they necessarily believe in white supremacy (i.e. belief #1)?

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I am the editor of www.PDRBoston.org and www.NewDemocracyWorld.org, the author of No Rich and No Poor: The Populist Goal We CAN and Must Win, Divide and Rule: The "Left vs. Right" Trap, The People as Enemy: The Leaders' Hidden Agenda in World (more...)
 

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