‘Sins of the son’ haunt US father
ALL WEEKEND, Pearce Tefft was fixated on his TV. In his home in North Dakota in the US, he flipped between news channels, watching protesters waving swastika flags, shouting “You will not replace us” and mimicking the salute to Adolf Hitler.
He thought of his father, who served in World War II, and his mother, who cared for soldiers who nearly died fighting against the Nazi ideals of white superiority. Now Tefft was watching those ideals on TV, wondering whether he would see the one protester he knew he would recognise among the sea of white faces.
Last Sunday, that protester showed up at his door. He had just flown back from Charlottesville, Virginia.
Tefft let him inside. This “pro-white” protester was still his son, after all.
For more than two years, Tefft had been arguing with 30-year-old Peter, hoping he’d stop embracing the racist and sexist “garbage” he found online. Now, Tefft had seen undeniable proof of what his youngest child had come to align himself with.
“I told him his actions were not acceptable,” Pearce Tefft said this week. “And I told him what I was going to do.”
What he was going to do was publish a letter in Fargo’s local newspaper, the Forum. He was going to openly denounce his son’s beliefs. It would appear the next morning.
“I have shared my home and hearth with friends and acquaintances of every race, gender and creed,” Tefft wrote in that letter. “I have taught all of my children that all men and women are created equal. That we must love each other all the same.
“Evidently,” the letter continued, “Peter has chosen to unlearn these lessons.”
It was once easy to assume that if people were openly racist, they had probably learnt those views at home. But today, the teachings of unvarnished, unapologetic racism are accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
Internet sleuths were sifting through photos of other protesters at the “Unite the Right” rally, determined to gather their names, ages, home towns and employers. With each name uncovered came the possibility that somewhere, another parent was finding out for the first time that their child was an avowed racist.
Like Tefft, these parents will be presented with a decision perhaps unique to the internet age: what are you supposed to do when you find out your kid sympathises with Nazis?
Love them unconditionally, knowing you will feel the wrath of public backlash? Or speak out against your child publicly and risk losing your chance of getting them to change their ways?
Tefft’s family members, especially Peter’s mother, have been inundated with social-media messages and phone calls from people who assume they share or condone his opinions. The backlash began when Peter started discussing his beliefs locally, but it snowballed this past weekend, when the Twitter account @ YesYoureRacist posted a photo of Peter at the Charlottesville rally.
Peter Tefft, who identifies as a “pro-white activist” online, did not respond to requests for comment.
His father said the messages the family received because of “guilt by association” were so vile he wouldn’t repeat them. He cancelled his landline phone service.
“Why do they automatically think he learnt it at home?” he asked. “He didn’t learn this at home.”
Tefft first heard of his son’s changing views a few years ago, when Peter encouraged him to check out the websites he had been reading. A lifelong independent, Tefft had always urged his six children to try to understand the world from multiple viewpoints. So he was not surprised that his son was seeking out knowledge. But what he found on the sites Peter mentioned was nothing like the values he tried to instil in his family. “I point out to him where they are wrong, and other sources, and he just dismisses it.”
None of his arguments worked. “It’s like banging my head against the wall.” When Peter returned to North Dakota from Charlottesville on Sunday, Tefft told his son he would no longer be welcome at family gatherings.
He hoped the cruel messages to his family would subside after his letter was published.
On Monday, the letter was published on the newspaper’s website. In his closing words, Tefft recalled a sick joke his son once told: “The thing about us fascists is, it’s not that we don’t believe in freedom of speech,” Peter had said, according to his father. “You can say whatever you want. We’ll just throw you in an oven.”
“Peter,” his father pleaded in the letter, “you will have to shovel our bodies into the oven, too. Please son, renounce the hate, accept and love all.”
He hasn’t heard from Peter since. – The Washington Post