Check out this article about Obama and white supremacists. No, the movement is not dead; it was not driven into obscurity by the groundswell of populist racial solidarity that seems to have swept through the country last fall. But when was the last time you read a story or watched a TV feature about some off the hook neo-Nazi or KKK family? If you're under thirty, and even if you've been paying attention to the popular media feature stories in recent years, I'll wager that you've probably never heard of the Aryan Nations, David Duke, W.A.R., Posse Comitatus, and the A.N.P. That last acronym, by the way, stands for the American Nazi Party.
I can assure you that such stories were commonplace in the 1980s and most of the 1990s. There was talk of the entire state of Idaho being taken over by white supremacists--and some people argued that we should let it happen in order to "just get rid of this country's rogue elements." You could hardly turn on the daytime television without surfing past a story about a family that thinks Satan lives on earth disguised as a Jew or that black people "rose out of the mud." The news of marches and beatings and secret societies captured the public imagination back in those years. And while these groups never went away, they've certainly not captured the interest of mainstream media outlets for well over a decade.
But they're back. The skinheads, the Nazis, and the Bruders Scheweigen--they're all back and they have some things to say to everyone who is not a convert. They want to talk about this Barack Hussein Obama guy. They have some things to discuss about Mexicans and gays and lesbians...and this country's future. And if we are to believe the following article, pretty soon we're all going to once again start finding their recruiting leaflets on our windshields when we return to our cars after a fun day of search for blue light specials at K-Mart. I'd like to imagine that we've moved beyond such polarized thinking, but I'm afraid that that has not happened. And so we are probably in for some rather interesting 20/20 episodes--"Are there Nazis working somewhere in the White House?" On the bright side, the return to the limelight of these nefarious characters will surely keep Jerry Springer on the air for another four years.
"Obama Called a 'Visual Aid' For White Supremacist Recruiting"
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 207 of 207Why do we even allow white supremacist groups to exist in a nation that is supposed to be one of equality? Freedom of speech and protest should not include groups such as the KKK or the American Nazi Party. How is it possible to say to the world that we are so advanced, and the best, and the world power when we cannot even get people to live in the current decade? Sure we have running water, and civilization, but you would not know it by listening to the ideals of these extreme groups. For those who are so caught up on everyone not being a WASP or part of the Aryan race, it is never going to happen. We will never have a nation or a world of one specific “race”, whether that race is defined by physical characteristics, skin colors, beliefs, or religion. Sure prejudices and stereotypes exist, and probably will for a very long time, but why can’t we embrace our differences and see diversity as a benefit? What if we could have a world made completely of the Aryan race? It surely will not end there. Then we’d have to remove another “race” and say that only people with blonde hair ranging from 1-5 on a scale of 1-10 are fit to live. That is absurd. Barack Obama was elected by the people, and if these groups do not think he is fit for the job because of his skin color, eye color, or whatever other crazy standards they would like to use, why live in a nation where “anyone” can be president? And oh by the way, no one in the order of succession is going to agree with the ludicrous ideas of these extremists anyways, so even if you pick them off one at a time you will not get what you want because the rest of the world is beyond primal stages of thinking that we should all follow the lead of Adolph Hitler. I am not sure what rose colored glasses these white supremacists are looking through, but a nation made up of just 12.8% blacks elected a black president with 52.9% of the popular vote. As a whole, we have moved beyond the major issues of race that we saw in the in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done, but most people are willing to work on it, and I doubt that these 888 groups are going to persuade a nation as large as the United States to turn against such an honorable man. These supremacist groups need to realize what decade they are living in, and change accordingly like the rest of the population has.
I don’t exactly remember where I watched it – it was either on the History Channel or National Geographic – but it was a documentary special on White Supremacists and how prevalent it still is in this country. We just don’t know about it.
One of the things that struck out while watching was a little segment on this underground radio host. He recruits neo-Nazis through his radio talk show and preaches on white supremacy. There was a statement that he said that kinda scared me, I can not exactly quote but it was along the lines of: Let the people think that we are all equal. Let blacks and minorities rise to power. Let us be right there to support them …and when they think they are secure in their place in society, we’ll take everything away from them. It’s all about finding the right timing.
That scares me.
To think that there are people out there who still believe in such ethnocentrism to such extremity…it’s crazy. No matter how diverse we think our surroundings are, it really is not. Deep down, we are not all equal. We may want to believe so, and I am sure that many are striving for our world to be so. But really, racism still lives.
With Obama’s election, should come change, right? - “Change we can believe in.” He is the face of this country’s future after all. His election opened the road to all minorities. He is the hope this generation (whose voting served a big part in his victory) believes in. To read that he is now also the “visual aid” for white supremacist recruiting breaks his vision for this country – the equality (for gays, for minorities, even for the elderly) we are all yearning for.
Reading the article on the SPLC Intelligence Report, it is chilling how accurate their statements are. Obama does serve as a visual aid for angry white Americans which will provoke a backlash among relative mainstream whites. And it can result in a dramatic increase in extremists.
Not to mention, the economic meltdown is fueling their fury. It is just what they need, a reason to be angry and a cause to get together. Neo-Nazi Jeff Schoep explains how the economy can be exploited: “Historically, when times get tough in our nation, that's how movements like ours gain a foothold," the leader of the National Socialist Movement told USA Today. "When the economy suffers, people are looking for answers. … We are the answer for white people."
We have to fight back. That’s the only way. We cannot let a white supremacist overhaul happen – now or ever. The only way for us to do this is to fully understand people. But then we are stuck with the dilemma of stubbornness and narrow-mindedness. So unless the self is willing to be aware, the society will be stuck in a plateau.
Immediately after reading both sam richard’s blog and the article referring to Obama as a “visual aid” I began to think about the reasoning behind such an increase in these white supremacist groups. I have a strong opinion that this is just simply the direct result of such a radical change in our nation: having a black president, or in this case, a president who is not white. I feel that electing the first black president is a very dramatic and radical change to what our country has been used to since our government was first instated, obviously. Due to this being just a big change there has to be a similar type of affect on the other end of the spectrum which in this case is the ignorance and intolerance of strong believers of what a US president should be, in other words white supremacist groups. The increase in members and heavy traffic flow on these group’s websites immediately following Obama winning the election should be considered inevitable in my opinion. What did everyone expect to happen? Everyone in the entire United States is going to agree, support, and overall be happy about the most current presidential election? Is comes down to the fact that this election is like none other in our nation’s history and even more so that it is such a big change in what a typical US president “should be.” There will be people who disagree and it boils down to what extent do these people want to take it to? I find it amazing that there are still strong followers and an actually supporting community for such an ignorant cause and basis of ideology. I mean its 2009 and I was definitely surprised to learn that the increase in interest in these groups rose so much but in a sense I figured it would have happened. Even though I feel that these group’s overall purpose is not of what I would ever dream to believe in, we as American citizens must respect how these people feel, even if people do not obviously agree… I mean the majority of the nation obviously feels that having a black president, or a president who is not white, is way over due and that it is an amazing stride towards equal rights and what some may consider Martin Luther King’s “vision” being fulfilled. So even though at first I saw this as a shock regarding it actually making news and being in an article, it really cannot be as big a movement as in the past and I really do not see anything to ever come from these groups except for solely being a way for people to express their feelings about current political situations.
The fact that these fundamentalist/racist white people say that black people rose from the mud is absurd. Though I doubt that we would see advertisements from these so called organizations on TV but it is very well known that KKK is still very active in the current era. They will most probably be always in motion but not as much as it was before. These organizations have their way of manipulating people into changing their views of races and religions. They will do whatever it takes to get people on their side, even if it means to go over board.
Recently a KKK member was caught in a convenient store cause he was robbing it. After he was taken in custody they found out that he along with his fellow KKK members were planning on murdering Barack Obama. They had a whole plan on how to carry out the assassination. I was amazed when I came to know this happened. We are in the 21st century and even now we see such episodes so its still surprising. This world and its people have come a long way and its taken a lot of sacrifices to get here. When we hear of these organizations its sad cause it shows that some people are just not ready to change their ways of living. They are still living in a single dimension.
White supremacists have certain issue that they need to get over. The fact that they think they are above the law in someway or above a certain kind of race is absurd. No one gave them the right to be so. It isn’t their fault that they were born Jew’s or has black skin. If everyone had the option of choosing their religion or skin color they would obviously go with the superior one, so to speak. If I had an option I would probably choose Bill Gates as my father. Who better then him; he is white, rich and powerful. What these white supremacists don’t realize is that if they were born black then how would they like to be treated in such a way. They need to realize how it feels to be in another person’s shoes. It’s the only way for them to come to terms with reality.
Life isn’t easy and these people are only making it harder for some more then others. There isn’t much difference between them and the southern with confederate flags hanging on their front porches. They are still in a state of mind where they are not willing to accept the truth. The truth that needs to be accepted not denied. The truth is that everyone has equal rights in this world but these people think otherwise.
This is crazy I never realized that this movement even existed in today’s world. What is even more shocking to me is that it exists in such large numbers. It is true I have in fact never heard of any of those terms or organizations. If this all exists, it is surprising that none of it is portrayed in the media. There should be more on television about this. It is very surprising that after everything that the nation has been through, and after all the changes that have been made and all the breakthroughs that the nation has been through, that organizations and people like this still exist today. This is a very different perspective that Obama’s election actually “helped” the cause of these people (white supremacists and Nazis) and organizations. It is weird how stories about these people and organizations all just suddenly dissolved. It is wrong if it is true that Obama’s election helped these peoples and the organizations’ cause. This is scary to even think about that people still have such a mindset and that there are people with the white supremacist attitude. It is disgusting that people are still like this and are using such a historic presidency of Barack Obama as a stepping stone for their lowly cause. After all the education and after all the changes in the world and modernization, such white supremacists still have these thoughts. It would be nice if there would be some kind of a transformation in their minds. These peoples’ eyes need to be opened. Hopefully at some point these people will realize that they are wrong and that they need to drop such a cause that should have been dropped a long time ago. Hopefully what they claim, will not take place. Hopefully they won’t look for any recruiters and hopefully they won’t get any recruiters. People need to do something about this so that this problem and these people and organizations do not get out of hand. This needs to be stopped now or else it is very possible that it will go too far. It is unbelievable that no one has ever done anything about this. It is true that there will always be the “bad” guys, but that does not mean that nothing should be done and this all should just let happen. There is always hope and there is always a way for something to be done. People cannot just lose hope that nothing can be done because there is always something. It will not be easy but then again nothing in life is easy. A step forward needs to be taken to get a start and to slow down this movement and to prevent future members.
White Supremacist Recruiters "Thank" Obama
I think the part of this blog entry that sums up what is going to happen with this new found revival in the white supremacist group was the part about keeping Jerry Springer on the air for another few years. That is really all that it’s going to be. White supremacists have found an entry into the mainstream with the recent election of Barrack Obama and are going to try and ride it as much as they possibly can. Yet, I believe that race won’t be as big of an issue as the presidency of Obama continues and it will be more about policy, and less about his skin color. With that in mind, the uprising of the Neo-Nazis will just flicker away into rare pockets of extremism, just like it was before and just like it will always be from here on out.
The Neo-Nazis are just taking advantage of an opportunity, and it’s not going to affect mainstream thought. We are too advanced as a whole in our thinking in terms of race relations to take even one step back. That is unless one of these radicals does something such as go after the life of the President. Like I have written before, if something along those lines happens, it is going to be hell on earth in many places of the country. It scares me to think where our country will be if that happened.
More than likely though, nothing is going to happen and it’s all more hype than anything. Sam is right to say that people put too much in isolated incidences of radicals acting out and it more than likely just needs to be looked at in a sense of the rough edges of our society, rather than mainstream thought. Mainly, stories such as these are over hyped by the media to make it seem like a bigger deal than it really is. Sure, maybe the white supremacist movement will get a few more recruits than they did in the past from whites that are a little upset over having a black man in office, but it’s not going to be some dramatic up rise in numbers that sweeps the nation. It will increase for a little, and die down just as quickly, just like most things in this country do. It’s not like millions of people are thinking, “hey, there is a black guy in office and I hate that, maybe I should join the white supremacist movement.” If they felt that passionately on the subject in the first place, they would already be members. The Neo-Nazis fifteen minutes of fame will fizzle out and we can hopefully look past Obama’s race and focus on more important things in his presidency, like the economy, war in Iraq, etc.
Stop using skinhead interchangably with racist. True skinheads aren't racist skinhead has its roots in jamacian reggae.
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