Who are the white nationalists and what do they want?

Photo: twitter / BFMTV @BFMTV

Charlottesville campus in Virginia, attractive for its quirkiness, where the legacy of slavery is still felt, became the epicenter of clashes between white nationalists and other right-wing groups on the one hand and protesters on the other side last weekend. The reason for the conflict was the planned demolition of the statue of Confederate General Robert Lee in a city park.

Protest called Unite the Right gathered under his banners men with flags of the confederation, members of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and armed militiamen. They chanted "You will not replace us"(" We are not replaced ") and exchanged peresvistami and volleys of pepper gas with those who came to protest against them.

When the police dispersed the crowd, a car drove into the “oppositionists” of the protest - one person died, 19 were injured. In the clashes, another 15 man was injured.

Photo: Twitter ACLU of Virginia

Governor Terry McAulif declared a state of emergency and summoned the National Guard. Experts from the Southern Center for the Legal Protection of the Poor called the event "the largest gathering of xenophobes in the last few decades."

So who are the white nationalists and what do they want?

The term “white nationalism” originated as a euphemism for the expression “white supremacy”. It means the conviction that white people are the best of all other races, and therefore must dominate society, explains Oren Seagal, director of the Center Against Defamation and Extremism.

Persons who adhere to these beliefs are also called ultra-right, "Indentarians" and racial realists. However, this is just a rebranding, “a new name for the old xenophobia,” says Seagal.

The term “ultra-rightists” was coined by Richard Spencer, president of the Institute for National Policy (an expert analysis center with a bias towards the dominance of the white race) and editor Radix Journal. He says: “I do not use the term“ white nationalist ”in relation to myself. I like the term “ultra right”. It has openness. He is understandable. We come from a different perspective. ”

The Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis also adhere to the ideas of the white race. However, none of them belong to any organized group, says Segal. Some even try to keep a distance from the well-known xenophobic groups of the KKK type.

“This complicates the task of tracking these people, and also shows that the groups arising on this basis are very flexible and vulnerable,” the expert adds.

Some Kukluksklanovs still prefer white shirts with hoods. But the ultra-right groups, which are mostly Millennial boys (born at the end of 20 century), wear khaki and collars. They are active users of social networks and love to use irony and humor when communicating, says Seagal. But they have one goal: a white ethnonationalist state, where each race lives separately.

Photo: twitter / Yesha @YeshaCallahan

White supremacists and their colleagues see diversity as a threat, says Seagal. One of their popular slogans: “Diversity is the code word for the white genocide”. In addition, the ultra-right movement combines a sense of sacrifice of the white race, said George Hawley, a political scientist at the University of Alabama.

“They feel like whites are being held hostage, deliberately being pushed out by enemy elites who want to usher in a new multicultural order,” Hawley says.

“They don’t like culturally alien immigrants who come to the US and work for low wages; they do not like the political and economic elites who invite them. They are also hostile against the media and academia who, in their opinion, advocate against the whites. ”

What forms can white nationalism take in the USA?

They are already visible, says Daryl Johnson, owner of the national terror tracking group DT Analytics and a former anti-terrorism expert at the Ministry of Homeland Security.

“Xenophobia is increasing against immigrants,” says Johnson. - US policy is becoming more isolationist - building a wall on the border, a ban on entry, mass deportations. I saw these ideas in chats of supporters of the white race ten or fifteen years ago. Today they are becoming state policy. ”

Johnson mentions the blood-curdling section of the Turner Diaries, a neo-Nazi novel about the "white partisans," which is called the "Bible of racists." This section is called “Rope Day” and describes the mass lynchings of thousands of “racial traitors”.

Photo: twitter / @ YesYoureRacist

“The Turner Diaries set forth a US vision led by the government, committed to dominating the white race,” says Johnson. “People go outside, and all they see are bodies dangling in loops on street lamps.”

Heidi Beirich, project director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks xenophobic and extremist groups, said white supremacists promote genocide and ethnic cleansing. “People need to be removed like cattle,” she says. “But their plans are not very well thought out; at best, these are just ambitious dreams.”

But the tyrannical government of Beirich clearly described: “All civil rights for non-whites will be abolished. All political power will be in the hands of white people, namely white men, because this movement is very masculine, toxicly masculine. They have a very retrograde attitude towards what women should do. ” She adds: “If anything, their vision of America’s future is very much like 1600, or even earlier.”

Experts agree that the chances of the emergence of such a society in reality are very small. “The real political leaders are so far from reality that not much stands in the way of the political documents of the far right, which contain detailed instructions for various government agencies,” says Howley.

Seagal calls this “an anti-utopian fantasy, which has virtually no chance of being realized. ... But it can be said with confidence that a country with white nationalism is not the place where most Americans would like to live, regardless of race. ”

How big is the threat from these groups?

Since only a few supporters of white domination belong to one group or another, it is very difficult to assess the scale of their movement and the threat it carries. For example, the far right does not have a formal organization or membership, and most of those who identify themselves as a rule participate, as a rule, anonymously and online, according to Hawley.

But Seagal says that the ultra-right movement is growing, and his followers are moving from predominantly online participation to real events like protest. Unite the Right in Charlottesville.

Photo: twitter / Joel Gunter
@joelmgunter

“They want to take advantage of the current political environment, which they feel is more conducive to their worldview than ever before,” Segal says. “Reaction to the Charlottesville protest and other events this year will give them an idea of ​​how generally people are accepting of their views—and will certainly help them decide their plans for the coming months.”

According to Johnson, the number of supporters of the idea of ​​white domination in the United States — groups like the KKK, neo-Nazis, skinheads, Aryans, and others — is measured in the order of a few hundred or thousands.

The Southern Center for the Legal Protection of the Poor has counted more than 900 xenophobic groups in the US, compared to 600 in 2000, says Beirich. But not all of them are supporters of the ideas of white domination.

Many of the protesters Unite the Right clung to ambiguous comments by President Donald Trump about Muslims and Mexicans, the expert notes. “They feel support,” she says. - They feel that they suddenly got the opportunity to become part of the political system. For the past few decades, supporters of the idea of ​​white domination in this country have considered both Democrats and Republicans to be useless. That is, politics was a dead end for them. But with the arrival of Trump to power, everything changed. "

Before the tragedy in Charlottesville, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke called the protest Unite the Right fulfilling President Trump's promises.

“This is a turning point for the people of this country,” he said during the event. - We want to return the country itself. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump, and we believe in it. That is why we voted for Donald Trump - because he said that he would return our country, and we must do it. ”

Trump himself condemned the act of violence in Charlottesville. He is also trying to isolate himself from Duke and the groups that support the white dominance.

“We strongly condemn this blatant manifestation of hatred, fanaticism and violence from many sides, many sides,” the president said the day after the events. However, his comment provoked the indignation of critics, who said that Trump should have more directly and firmly condemned the movement for white domination and not equating it with those who protested against him.

Beirich says that the ultra-right movement was a source of inspiration for several acts of violence in the country: for example, the killing of two men who defended an 16-year-old girl and her Muslim friend in Portland, Oregon, in May; killing a young black student at the University of Maryland in May; racially motivated murder of a 66-year-old black man in New York in March.

“If we analyze the isolated acts of terrorism committed by people under the influence of radical right ideas in the last five years of Obama’s rule, it turns out that one planned attack happened in America every 34 of the day,” the expert says.

Another study found that people associated with the extreme right-wing movement committed 74% extremist killings in the US from 2007 to 2016 a year, according to Seagal.

“Extremists of any direction are always a threat,” he says, “but if any extremist group feels its strength, this is already a serious problem.”

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