your moment of zen

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John Scalzi joked the other day that among the verified miracles of St. Obama is the simple fact that he’s a black man named Barack Hussein Obama who may very well be our next President of the United States. (Also, he not only heals the sick but springs for their copay.)

With all due respect to Mr. Scalzi, that doesn’t quite cover the full extent of the miracle.

There are white supremacist leaders supporting Obama for President.

Esquire did a piece quoting several such leaders — warning, there’s a lot of racist talk on the other side of that link. And certainly not all of them are in favor of a President Obama. But when the Chairman of the American Nazi Pary says things like “White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally Iā€™d prefer the negro,” you really can’t help but feel you’ve entered the Twilight Zone.

That’s how weird of an election we’ve got here, folks. Guys who have made a lifelong hobby out of being racists are finding a way to reconcile that racism with the conviction that the black guy would be a better President. (And not by saying “he’ll screw it up and then everybody will see we were right all along,” either.)

There’s hope for this country yet.

0 Responses to “your moment of zen”

  1. d_c_m

    White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally Iā€™d prefer the negro,” you really can’t help but feel you’ve entered the Twilight Zone.
    To these eyes, my friend, that’s what revolution looks like. šŸ™‚ Squee!!

  2. drake_rocket

    It’s very easy to completely dehumanize racists as being psychotic individuals with such alien mindsets that there is absolutely no chance they could ever have a reasoned or sane thought. However, most of them are people who are misguided and have a few very unpleasant viewpoints rather than being individuals so saturated with evil all they want to do is kill the darkies.

    • Marie Brennan

      I don’t believe I was dehumanizing them. One thing anthropology taught me is to try and see a situation through a different point of view. But that’s what surprised me here: I didn’t expect a lot of “kill all the darkies!” ranting, but I also didn’t expect that white supremacists, whose racism is often based on the sincere (though wrong) belief that black people are inherently inferior to whites, would be willing to say that Obama was the better choice in this election. Or even that McCain was the worse choice, which is not quite the same thing.

      I don’t think they’re saturated with evil, but I do think the assumption of racial inferiority is usually higher up on the list of filters by which such people make their decisions.

      • moonandserpent

        A lot of modern White Supremacists or Christian Identity Movement thought is more grounded in the idea that the races need to be separate before issues of inferiority or racial nature come into the mix. It’s a complicated mix of politics, religion and an attempt at creating a racial identity for whites.

        Sure you have lots of guys who just joined up with the Brotherhood in jail, or those recently arrested whackjobs who had obviously read the Turner Diaries waayyy too many times, but the top rungs of these groups actually espouse a very complex system of beliefs and ideologies that often put an outsider’s notions of “racial inferiority” way down the food change on the priority list.

        Dear god, I sound like a White Supremacist apologist. I’m going to go wash my brain out.

        • Marie Brennan

          I’d noticed that a bit myself; I only skimmed the responses, after Kyle read a few of them to me last night, but the notion of separation clearly cropped up in more than one. (Frex, the supremacists praising Obama for “racial consciousness” and being proud of his black heritage.) So while I’m sorry for you having to wash your brain out, it helps clear things up to have someone more informed than I am tell me I wasn’t imagining that element.

          At the risk of further sullying your brain — would you say they’re primarily concerned with miscegenation, or are they generally advocating separate nations for the different races?

          (We will, for the purpose of that question, take as a given that they’re ignoring all the scientific evidence against “race” being a real, biological thing.)

          • moonandserpent

            I’ll reply to this later on when I’ve got more time. But as it’s something I rarely get to talk about, I’ll cover that complicated question when I get back. šŸ™‚

          • Marie Brennan

            Who knew you would be my go-to resource not just for Renaissance astrology, but the modern American white supremacy movement? <g>

          • moonandserpent

            When growing up in rural America with an abiding interest in conspiracy theory, you discover that you have things to talk about with people in the Militia movement.

      • drake_rocket

        That’s fair. I think I came across as more accusing than I meant to. I didn’t entirely mean to imply that you yourself were dehumanizing them, more that they are often dehumanized and their opinions summarily dismissed by many groups. This is even true of theories that hold some water, technically speaking. Eugenics, for example, has been carried to unreasonable and even monstrous extremes by those who believe in it, but has some honest-to-goodness placement in scientific truth and very helpful things that are arguably rooted in eugenics exist (like medicines that are aimed at helping people of African descent). Such topics, however, are viewed with such disdain by many individuals and academics that they are summarily dismissed as evil.

        But no, I apologize if my comment had a tone of accusation to it, this was unintended. More, I tend to think that many of the more educated individuals with white-supremacist views are still capable of making rational political decisions and don’t always go along the traditional lines one might associate with them.

        Also, MoonandSerpent bring up below another topic which I had thought to touch on, but I think he explains it better than I could.

  3. mindstalk

    Making up a dark side

    “Besides, he’s half-white, so there’s that going for him. While if McCain wins then dies, there’ll be a girl in charge.”

  4. dsgood

    John Roy Carlson’s 1943 Under Cover is about his investigation of Americans who worked for the Axis. Among them were — Black supremacists.

    My paternal grandmother was a Polish nationalist — and prejudiced against ethnic Poles.

    Coming back to the present:

    In diaries on Daily Kos (http://dailycos.com), I’ve seen reports by people doing doorknocking for Obama being told “I’m voting for the n***r.”

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