This post is probably not what you would guess based on that headline. Before I go any further, let me tell you what you won’t be reading here. This post is not going to bash Trump. For those of you unfamiliar and are wondering, the short explanation of my views is that I don’t care for Trump, but understand his appeal. This post also is not going to bash the vast majority of Trump’s supporters. Yes, he has the unenviable endorsement of the KKK, but contrary to what the Radical Left likes to believe, not every supporter of Trump’s is some xenophobic bigot. Actually, that’s not a fair statement about our Lefty pals – a handful believe that not all Trump supporters are racist, they see the rest as being ignorant rubes who fail to see the seductive bliss of the bread lines that Bernienomics promise. So if this post isn’t to bash Trump or his supporters, what is it about? In the words of the great Damien Sandow, allow me to beg your indulgence…
National Review’s James Kirchick just wrote a piece called “Among the Thugs”. It’s byline reads “Donald Trump, White Nationalists, and the politics of the crowd”. Unfortunately it’s in print and the digital version is mostly behind a pay wall that even a subscriber like me can’t read online without paying extra (WTF, NR?). At any rate, I’ve transcribed the parts that caught my attention. First off:
Crude expressions of bigotry are generally frowned upon; today’s white supremacists sound much like the campus social-justice warriors the claim to despise, the major difference being their disagreement as to which racial group deserves top-victim status. You need simply substitute “white men” for “African Americans”, “women”, “trans-gendered”, ad infinitum in leftist jeremaids about the plight of “marginalized” peoples and you pretty much have the entirety of identarian talking points. The language of “oppression” is much the same, regardless of who is complaining about it.
Kirchick goes on to quote one of these groups’s leaders, Bill Rehnery:
…he bemoaned the conservative movement for having “too much involvement with the mechanics of Old America, the Constitution, bromides…” Asked to elaborate, regnery replied that “the Brits have done pretty well without a constitution and maybe this country would do well without a Constitution.”
I was rather surprised by this open disrespect for America’s founding document, especially from someone to the right of Genghis Khan. But it turns out the Constitution is largely unloved, if not outright disdained, among identitarians, who despise it primarily for extolling te virtues of egalitarianism. Writing on the website of Spencer’s Radix journal, a contributor denigrates the Constitution as a “primitive article of antiquity” that “will not solve the problems we face in the 21st century.” Proposing that “cucservatives” who speak reverently of the Constitution be denigrated as “paper worshipers”, “vellum supremecists”, and “parchment fetishists”, he argues that the object of their admiration “has ceased to be a vehicle for progress and has instead devolved into a major obstacle to our future.”
I think that everyone reading this can agree that these White Supremacists are the worst of the worst that come out of the right – rabid identarians that have zero tolerance for any outside of their unique, superficial traits along with a disdain for a system of laws that prevents them from achieving “progress” as defined by their narrow views. Contrary to what too many on Radical Leftists fantasize, this is a small, fringe element on the right, and one that most of us would prefer didn’t exist and choose not to associate with.
But look at this on the other side – identity politic bigotry? Disdain those who do not embrace their notions of identity-driven superiority? Contempt for a legal system seen as outdated because our founding fathers failed to see the need for a power system centered around a handful of self-selected bigots? As Kirchick pointed out, these philosophies that are no different from the various Feminist / BLM/ LGBQwerty groups. But where on the conservative side this is the fringe, on the left these views are considered completely mainstream.
One of the equally irritating and amusing elements I’ve noticed about Leftists is their ability to project their ugliest traits onto Conservatives without the slightest hint of irony of how much said trait exists with them (A great current example is their howling that Trump has this cult-like following behind some substance-less authoritarian, while apparently suppressing all memories of 2008). It says a lot that this fringe element on the right has had a few appearances in the news while the fact that the same element is mainstream on the left has not.
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Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
