How the fractured media landscape is fueling the resurgence of white nationalists

“White genocide” is one argument defending “white nationalism,” the idea that Caucasian-Americans need their own homeland.

Without a state devoted to Caucasians only, this thinking goes, enemies will forcibly destroy “white” European cultural identity, and even the very genetics of paled skin.

White nationalists have worked hard to soften their image while sharpening their messages. They say that every race should have a homeland, a purported example of the equality they seek.

{mosads}These nationalists demure about mere separatists and purportedly reject white supremacy, but fold both sub-groups into their commentariat. The movement’s leaders have replaced the openly racist epithets of lynchings and cross burnings with gentler “alt-right” euphemisms.

But the bold red type on a seminal white power homepage still holds Stormfront forth as “the voice of the new, embattled White minority!”

Older, “superseded” Stormfront writings still suggest that DNA drives intelligence, thus supposedly proving that “If Blacks or Mexicans become a majority, then they will not be able to maintain the White man’s social, cultural and economic systems because they do not have to minds needed to do so.”

Today’s white nationalists view themselves as an exploited race of givers trying to protect their children from a world full of non-white takers and Caucasian “self-haters.” But their ideology remains the same, boiled down to “the 14 words”: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.”

What I learned most from a white genocide advocate is just how organized these groups are in the electronic age, and how prepared they are to overwhelm a reader with philosophical-sounding, but circular logics and on-hand slogans that challenge anything except segregation.

Because to them, anything less than segregation is white genocide.

In our era of self-supporting false “information” and language manipulation, anyone can try coopting words into whatever meaning serves their ends. Common misuse can become its own definition.

Merriam-Webster today even defines “literally” as not just actually being something, but it also allows how the word is commonly “used in an exaggerated way.”

One body’s patriot occupying a public space, be it a Wall Street park or an Oregon wildlife refuge, is another’s “terrorist.”

When a definition of common words depends only on how many online followers agree, meanings lose all meaning. Language is no longer about communicating, but arguing instead. Words are weapons that do and say different things, depending on the listener.

Common discussion is lost to a competition between self-professed experts struggling to acquire — and manipulate — the largest social media followings.

The same is true for the “paleo-conservative” movements. And here is where the mainstream media itself has opened the door for the likes of Stormfront. In the race to win every quarter-hour of ratings in a non-stop “news” market, accuracy — indeed, news over opinion –— has sometimes suffered, with greater consequences than errata statements can correct.

One errant report, or a bungled statement in an otherwise solid report, lets those who do not want to believe scream “fake news” and reject the source entirely. Less than perfection, while a fault of every human, is taken as evidence that the entire source is not worth acknowledging, let alone considering.

Funding losses also drive mainstream media to publish short, sensational pieces that generate the “clicks” that sell sidebar ads and pop-up commercials. Outrageous claims draw outraged reactions, and internet news lives or dies on the reaction it generates for advertisers.

Complex issues like criminal justice reform or urban redevelopment are often boring, and always nuanced. Neither the average reader nor an underpaid editor will (or can) take the time needed to approach these difficult symptoms and causes of modern discord.

And that is the great strength of the “white genocide” crowd, the deep distrust of accepted knowledge that can then be washed with waves of sound bites and internet memes. Tolerance of diversity becomes “forced assimilation” that “by itself is genocide for Europeans.” Anti-racists become “Anti-Whites.”

Caucasians opposing segregation transmogrify from “race traitors” to “self-haters.” The language gets sanitized, but the message remains “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

The white power movement is organizing like any other modern political bloc, and its modern leaders are savvy in the ways of propaganda and electronic media. This is why we must keep calling “white nationalism” what it is – that plea for racial segregation.

A Stormfront FAQ page plainly states that “those who are guilty of ‘integrationism’ should do the sensible thing and flee” when the White state comes. Support tolerance now, and you will not be welcomed – and might be in danger – in the Caucasian homeland.

We must also address the “white genocide” argument for what it is – terrified cries from groups who liked life better when they ruled if not by law, then through unchecked fear. This is the savage, un-American America they want to make “great” again, when Caucasian protestants made the rules and everyone else — black, brown, Jew, Catholic, gay, immigrant — was to take it or risk becoming that “Strange Fruit” that Billie Holiday mournfully observed.

Segregationists are actively trying to recruit us, and our kids, into this notion that the “white race” must be defended. Those calls cannot go unanswered.

But our answers open the door to a well-organized and thoroughly meme’d counter-attack. As this article’s inspiration wrote early in our banter about the lose-lose position:

“[I]f they just call white people slurs like “racist” & “nazi” and threaten whites with violence (as they have been doing), all they are doing is recruiting for pro-whites. If they DEBATE their views on race, they lose to us, and become recruiters for pro-whites. For obvious reasons, we don’t care what route anti-whites take.”

The white genocide crowd believes it has already won, no matter what we do. And they have already won over those disaffected who want to believe. In that case, we might as well do something. And that something includes that the majority they fear actively and openly speaks, and raises our children to reject those 14 words that drive the racists.

Unless you really believe that a “‘respecting neighbors isn’t genocide’ argument is like nazis saying ‘a train ride isnt [sic] a holocaust.’” In that case, brace, because the 21st Century is going to be very hard on you.

E.J. Hurst, II is an attorney based in Durham, N.C., who practices in the federal court system. He concentrates on criminal sentencing, appeals and habeas corpus matters.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.