USA TODAY International Edition
Through the eyes of an ex-white nationalist
We can’t hide from the truth: Words have consequences
Growing up among the leadership of the white nationalist movement, there was a routine every time reports of a new act of mass violence ticked across cable news. We’d hope that the attackers were not white, and, if so, that they did not espouse our ideology. When they often did, the national fallout and blame could last for weeks.
Ultimately, accepting that we were not guiltless when we condemned whole swaths of America, and threw up our hands when a lone wolf took our rhetoric to violent ends, was a major part of what led me to denounce and speak out against the white nationalist movement in 2013 at the age of 22.
Today, the president and his followers are in a similar position to mine back then, advocating an anti-immigrant worldview and absolving myself of responsibility for violent acts that used my ideology. All of us must recognize that rhetoric can incite violence.
After each attack, the news media would draw parallels between our calls for immigrants to leave and the same language espoused by the attacker. Each time, we took solace in the fact that any threats of violence or illegal activity were banned from our website. My family condemned the violence and hoped the attacker had never posted on our forum. Often, as President Donald Trump did, we’d condemn the violence and also suggest that the presence of immigrants was the real cause.
“We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain,” Trump tweeted, calling for background checks on gun purchases and “marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform.”
‘Dumping ground’
In July 2011, a white supremacist mass murderer killed 77 people in Norway — mostly teenagers — and wrote in his manifesto that Norway had become “a dumping ground for the surplus births of the third world.” We condemned his violence as inhuman and horrendous, but on our radio show we also implied he never would have been driven to this act had immigration been controlled in the first place.
In 2015, I was shocked to hear thencandidate Trump mirror the “dumping ground” comments of the killer.
The alleged El Paso shooter said that “at least with Republicans, the process of mass immigration and citizenship can be greatly reduced.” He repeatedly talked about a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas, mimicking Trump’s frequent claim that “people hate the word invasion, but that’s what it is.”
I was committed to the idea that we were not culpable for violence if we stoked the flames of anti-immigrant ideology and crafted better talking points to advocate for white nationalist ideology. Yet, if someone calls for the removal of a vulnerable group from this country, they cannot deny responsibility when someone hears that message and escalates their rhetoric to violence.
We are now two years from the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which ended in chaos and the death of Heather Heyer.
As the images of public brawling, racist slogans and idle police were projected to the world in August 2017, the question was whether that show of real-world presence would lead to a renaissance of white power. Trump’s comments that there were “fine people” among their ranks marked the high water mark for their legitimacy.
White nationalism in disarray
Instead, white nationalism as an organized, ideological and political movement is in disarray, the result of collective action directed against it by mass protest, legal challenges and investigations. Public scrutiny has not been higher in decades.
The most prominent websites that facilitate white power communities and organizing have had to hop from one server host and domain registrar to another. Payment processors have refused to allow electronic donations. Subsequent college campus events were met with overwhelming protest that often prevented them from taking place at all.
One of the largest white nationalist organizations is now defunct. Nearly every leader responsible for the Charlottesville riot faces legal challenges. As a former organizer, concerted efforts like these were powerful in interfering with organizing efforts. They work.
Violence has never been far or entirely separate from the “legitimate” public-facing activities of white nationalist activists. This movement’s ideology calls for the removal of entire groups from the American population, and many of its cultural touchstones are violent fantasies of revolution.
It is no wonder individuals have taken that ideology and acted in unspeakable ways.
It should be clear to us that rhetoric vilifying immigrant communities and communities of color is a threat to those already vulnerable people. And yet the administration is willfully turning away from its responsibility to defend all Americans. The president is taking the same position that many white nationalists have: Condemn individual acts of violence, while continuing to attack those threatened communities.
We must be clear that words have consequences, and that the threat is not from immigrant communities but rather they are the ones threatened.