Spencer

For some reason, I find myself writing more and more about Nazis and cancer. This is, as far as I can tell, a coincidence, although, as someone who is at the very top of the Nazi shit-list (Aktion T4, folks), I will admit that I definitely have an interest in keeping up with the Fourth Reich’s latest shenanigans. Nazis are directly analogous to cancer though, in that both need to be dealt with quickly and mercilessly, because neither will have any sympathy for you.

This week, a leaked audio from Richard Spencer revealed him using horrific racial epithets, threatening genocide — everything you’d expect from a Nazi who was functioning as a sleeper agent to get white, middle-class America comfortable with overt racism (as opposed to the covert racism we’ve quietly acknowledged and tolerated for decades). White, middle-class people, who are - based on this and the Trump’s continued belief that as long as criminals don’t say on a landline anything like, “This is definitely a corrupt, illegal, quid pro quo deal,” they aren’t guilty of anything — completely unfamiliar with subtext, found this shocking. (If you’re really interested, here’s the source and audio https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/11/4/20947833/richard-spencer-white-nationalism-audio-milo-alt-right)(with the trigger warning that it’s disturbing, but he literally does not say anything your hyper-racist uncle hasn’t said after smoking meth — it’s almost depressing and shocking in how unoriginal it is).

People who have been the victim of scum like Spencer and his odious policies — which I can only begin to describe as “fascism-lite” — have learned, the hard way, to listen for “dog whistle” politics. There are entire primers and texts better-written about them; I’ve written about them, but it basically boils down to this: it’s the very subtle use of language to receive tacit endorsement/implementation of policies that, while in theory, might seem okay and mostly-ethical, in practice, are monstrous. It’s the difference between the writings of Marx and Engels, and the USSR, and how, by embracing collectivism as an end rather than the means to that end, you get monstrous disasters like the Holodomir, Mao’s industrialization/famine policies, the list goes on.

R. Spencer is the walking, talking embodiment of the old adage that people remember 70% what you look like, 20% how you say something, but only 10% of what you actually say (this is also why I usually close my eyes when I’m trying to listen to something, which seems to bug able-bodied people — the brain-damaged can watch you, or listen to you, but rarely both, and it might be a low-spoon day). He dresses well, looks almost-handsome in that unmemorable, generic white-guy way, and we all, apparently, forgot that he was espousing terrifying, genocidal policies.

Richard Spencer’s (hereafter referred to as dick, because he is one)(no, I’m not going to capitalize it) thing is — and forgive me, I did virtually no research on this, because time spent researching and fact-checking Nazis is time spent not punching them, and history teaches us one of these approaches is significantly more effective than the other — “white nationalism.” Again, that great taste of Nazism, none of the imperialism or genocide!

The idea behind this is that people tend to congregate in homogeneous groups, when left to their natural inclinations. Like everything else dick says, there is a kernel of truth to this, and it’s that leap from “this is just like how my neighborhood works” to “applying the same thing to a diverse nation of ~350 million, with millennia of history and traditions” (unlike dick, I’ll count Native American history in there) that fucks you up and leaves you with a hankerin’ for meth on the weekends. Wait, that’s your racist uncle, sorry (all bigots look alike).

So, dick’s thesis is that because people tend to organize and live with people in similar industries, sociopolitical status, religious ties, etc. (and, shockingly, when you start dividing people based on things like jobs or amount of money they have, you start seeing some racial divisions), everyone should be herded into box cars and sent back to the country their great grandparents came from. Sorry, that’s what he means, not what he actually says. He claims that white people should get their own country where they can be as white as they want, if not whiter (enter Rod Serling, “Imagine a world just like yours, only without sushi, jambalaya, heart surgery, rocketry, Biggie remixes, professional sports, dance, or Michael Jackson”). What happens to the racial/cultural minorities in this scenario? DON’T ASK QUESTIONS LIKE THAT, IGNORE THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

Anyone with a measurable IQ can start poking holes in this asinine hypothesis. I could live to be 200 years old and still wouldn’t have enough time to even start in the gazillion ways dick is wrong. But, a brief, off-the-top-of-my-head list…

1. White people already have an entire continent to themselves; it’s called Europe. Moorish and Carthaginian occupations? What?
2. We wouldn’t have to worry about all this retro-Ward Cleaver bullshit if Europeans had just stayed the fuck in Europe. If they hadn’t gone out and claimed and conquered a significant portion of the globe, a lot ethnic minorities wouldn’t have been kidnapped/displaced/forced to flee for their lives. White people getting antsy and tinkering with things that seem to be working are what lead to privatization of healthcare, privatization of warfare, colonialization, and Reaganomics. If you’re a white heteronormative, able-bodied dude who sees a glaring problem that needs to be fixed, step 1 is to take a ten minute smoke break and just come back when you’re feeling a little less crazy-genocidal, because there’s a solid chance you’ll screw the situation up worse.
3. An almost-exclusively white ethnostate already exists; it’s called Connecticut. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, dick, just move to a gated community.
4. A white “ethnostate” is exactly what Hitler and the founders of apartheid in South Africa had in mind as their end-goal. If it walks like a Nazi, has identical goals as a Nazi, maybe don’t be surprised to catch him screaming, “Kill all the kikes!” like a Nazi. (Yes, he said that, when he thought no one was listening).
5. Your minute of zen; if it seems like the world is crumbling in the face of far too many white dicks, let’s recall what made dick vanish from the public discourse two years ago:
   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/richard-spencer-punched-face-what-was-it-like-speech-neo-nazi-question-woman-a8012071.html
   If you’re not one of those people who can get behind the wholesome, all-American sentiment, “Punch Nazis” (I can not believe I have to spell this out, but some nitwits are going to talk about escalation — I’m not advocating murdering Nazis (yet), we’re just talking about punching them in the head)(Don’t worry, they’re the master race, a right hook won’t hurt them)(enough, anyway), maybe we just need to reframe that as, “Punch dicks.” Yeah, I said it.

For some reason, we let this indescribable wanker live. We killed Bobbie Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We’re going to have to do better, America, if we’re going to survive global warming. We’re going to have to actually start listening to what people say, and what they strategically do not say (again, Spencer’s lack of discussion about how he’s going to achieve a “whites only” nation is sinister and damning). To take that to dick’s buddy in unapologetic covert racism, I hope we get better at reading not only what The Donald says (or what he claims he says), but what he strategically does not say. Or, maybe, we widen the list of punchable people a little.