Perhaps we need an internment camp for white folks. Not all white
folks. I know a lot of white people. Some of my best friends are white,
and they are overwhelmingly peace-loving people.
But we know who they are. White males between the ages of 18 and 45
who subscribe to an ideology of white nationalism. These people have
similar physical markers and attire. They generally like to shave their
heads and they wear black or camouflage military garb, and many wear
white hoods for ceremonial worship. They subscribe to an ideology with
historical roots we can trace back to Southern slavery, and later, Nazi
political thinking from World War II.
The South has a long history of anti-government activities. It was
white nationalists from South Carolina, afterall, who started the Civil
War in an attempt to overthrow the government. Folks like Wade Michael Page, JT Ready and Jared Loughner all have an overwhelming sense of entitlement. Even liberal white males, folks like James Holmes, can be dangerous when they feel this sense of entitlement slip through their fingers.
We do not need to go very far to justify such a policy. After the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th,
Michelle Malkin wrote a much celebrated defense for interning
individuals who come from demographic groups we know have a potential
for danger. Michelle Malkin’s book, In Defense of Internment,
argued that given the stakes, racial profiling was an important tool
that liberals were denying our security forces in the name of civil
rights. Those pesky civil rights.
It is not an entirely impractical proposition, and these white
nationalists have infiltrated our government. Arizona had to recall
their Senate President, Russell Pearce, who had a cozy relationship with white nationalists. He even called JT Ready a “true patriot”.
Joe Arpaio,
the so-called “toughest sheriff in America”, has built his reputation
on catering to white nationalism, by instituting a system of racial
profiling that has been a feeder program to the private prison industry.
Maybe the private prisons will take a look at the dollars and cents,
and conclude it’s worth a shot, for the good of the country and their
pockets. Latinos make up fully 30% of the Arizona population and the
state government has managed to racially profile in a way that has been
very specific and accommodating to the majority of the population.
Perhaps the same can be done for white nationalists.
Civil rights activists are always saying, “what does an illegal
immigrant look like?” to imply that this has something to do with race.
And folks may say, “what does a white nationalist look like?” to imply
that many white folks who are not white nationalists may get caught in
the dragnet to root out these terrorists.
But the white folks I know are patriots. They would be proud to be
pulled over by police officers questioning their status based on what
they look like. What do they have to hide if they aren’t breaking the
law?
As I said, the overwhelming majority of white folks are peace-loving
people. Many are very religious, and its true that white nationalists
make up a small fraction of the total white population. But white
nationalists are able to move about freely in their communities because
of what they look like, and even though the vast majority of whites are
not violent, its obvious that the signs of white extremism are being
ignored by these communities and allowing them to operate under the
radar until it is too late as a result.
How many more good Americans have to die before we take these white nationalists seriously?
Of course, before I am accused of being serious, I am not. But given
the arguments coming from conservatives over the last two decades over
Islamic terrorists and immigrants, its curious that the same argument
isn’t being applied to white nationalists. I wonder why.
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