Um. This is beyond weird.

[xiphias]

Esquire Magazine did an article interviewing several leaders of White Supremacist movements in the United States about who they were voting for for President.

I'm using the same pull-quote that swan_tower used.

White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro.

-- Rocky Suhayda, Chairman, American Nazi Party

Comments

[ron_newman]

"We're voting for the nigger" (and another, from the same site)

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

talvinamarich posted this link back on Oct. 18. Here's the comment I posted there:

I can say something somewhat different -- in fact, very different from the impression that this anecdote gives. They say Pennsylvania has Philadelphia in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the northwest, and Appalachia in between, and that's what I see here. Please bear with me for some context-setting so I can make my point.

First, I am a language scientist by profession. In my business we talk about words, including taboo words, all the time. Think of a forensic chemist, who works with poisons and drugs, but never uses them on himself or others. Similarly, in my line of work we have to clearly distinguish between mentioning a word and using it. I have never used the word "nigger" [and that was a mention] since my stupid early teens, and I'm not going to start now, but that's the word we're talking about here.

Second, I have to set the scene. In the summer of 1967 I was part of a project in Kentucky coal country run by the youth branch of the Ethical Culture Society. Some of the (white) people around there didn't like our project. We not only talked with and met with some of the black people in the area, there were black people in our group! One of our meetings was cut short when the counselors told us to go back out to the buses without interacting with the crowd that had gathered outside. As we passed between them there were no outright threats, but we sure heard the word "nigger-lovers".

As part of that project I lived for a week with a family there. The man of the house, who I guess was in his fifties, had been away from the area only twice in his life: once in the Army and once doing construction work in Chicago. Other than those two periods he had never worn shoes. He did not read or write. But he had no problem at all with our project or with us.

Yet he used the word nigger as casually and without rancor as my parents would use "Negro" or as I today use "black" or "African-American". He used it while talking about the black and white Americans he'd met in Chicago and in the Army, and how the black people were no worse than the white people and often better. In the dialect of his part of the country, that simply was the word for a black person.

And that's what I see in this news story. Don't read any contradiction or craziness into it. Hard as it may be to believe it, I think that's simply their word, their basic and unloaded word, for a black person.

[rosefox]

The other day, I met a British woman Of A Certain Age who was talking about being mugged in London. At one point, she said, "Some nice Negress found my wallet and turned it in to the police."

I was rather taken aback, but it was clearly just part of her vocabulary and not meant to be insulting in any way. I'd think a bit more highly of her if she were aware that different terms are presently in vogue, but I wasn't about to brand her a racist because of her old-fashioned lingo.

(The other woman who was complaining about how all Thais are whiny and she wants to slap them, however, was proof positive that one can demonstrate prejudice without ever using overtly prejudiced terminology.)

[tidesong.livejournal.com]

Wow. I just don't know what to say about all of that. There just aren't words.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that I'm not surprised the "We're voting for the nigger" thing happened in PA? Cause I'm not. Thanks.

People are weird about their racism. My father likes to tell the story about his mother...she had this habit of taking in strays. One of them was a black lady whose husband was abusing her who ISTR was somebody in the family's maid at some point. Anyway, my grandmother moved her into the house with the family, where she lived for the rest of her life. However, she was quite prone to spouting off about black people at any given time, so my father used to say to her, "Well, what about her, she's black", and she would get all annoyed and say, "Not her. She's DIFFERENT".

And then he would bring up about a billion other black people she knew, and she'd say the same thing every time.

So basically anyone she knew PERSONALLY was exempt from her bad opinion of black people, and she was fine with getting to know any individual black person and having them become exempt. It was just the Strangers Out There.

Bigotry and fear are weird, weird things.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how the Nazis, the individual people who were Nazis, were about the Jews in the Third Reich. Goebbels complains about it in his diary. When they passed the Nuremberg Laws, everyone came to him with their exception -- they hated the Jews as much as anyone, they said, but what about their neighbour that very nice Mr X, he was a Jew but he was different. Didn't stop him ending up in a camp, but that's how they felt.

This is why it's important not to go along with being accepted as an exception but to identify clearly as what you are and that there are lots of others too.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

I hope I don't have to point out here that I in no way meant to imply that bigotry should ever be ignored or treated with complacency.

Just sharing a data point about how hard it can be to predict voter behavior based on this sort of thing.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This is why it's important not to go along with being accepted as an exception but to identify clearly as what you are and that there are lots of others too.

Next time I get tired I'm going to remind myself of what you've said here.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*laughs sadly* I have been told to my face "no, *you're* different!" You can guess in response to what protestations from me.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

That's incredibly weak. I guess you can never underestimate the power of stupidity, huh? :P

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

I can't find the story now but last week, I read an interview with some white supremacist who was advising others to vote for Obama, as he felt that having a black president would drive more people to his group.

Man, that's messed up.

[navrins]

There was a long story on that on NPR (probably All Things Considered) sometime last week on my drive home from work. It's probably on their website.

[cheshyre]

The Ezra Klein entry I showed you:

I knocked on a door in Ohio and when the guy opened it the first thing I saw was his hand-- with a swastika and a skull tattooed on the back. I was bracing for a short and ugly conversation, but he saw the Obama button and his face just lit up as he told me how great it was that I was out there and how much Ohio needed a change after eight years of Republican rule.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

Did anyone make up a Nazis for Obama badge?

[florafloraflora.livejournal.com]

Hey, if they want to make like Lenin and heighten the contradictions, I think I will let them.

Other than that: I'll take incoherent scum over coherent, disciplined scum any day.

[theclamsman.livejournal.com]

That pic looks Photoshopped, BUT Max (on my friends page) did a post about the Esquire article.

The gist is that these white supremecists see Obama as a black surpemecist/racist, so his racism is a-o.k. with them.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree that the header photo is probably 'Shopped, but it does such a good job of illustrating the concept of the article that I left it in.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Sort of the inverse of when KKK Grand Dragon or some such David Duke ran for Louisiana governor against someone (I think a former governor, but I'm not sure) who'd been convicted on corruption charges.

The informal campaign slogan against Duke was "Vote for the crook. It's important."

[tpau]

i must say... anytime a white supremacist or Nazi says they support someone i am much more inclined to vote tthe opposite on general principle...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, the majority of white supremacists and Nazis are against Obama.

And al Qaeda is hoping for a McCain win. (He's far more likely to keep the war in Iraq going, which wiped out the Baathists, who were the main anti-al Qaeda force. and the US occupation has made the Baathists illegal, and, besides, the US occupation has been the best thing that Islamofacists have ever had for recruitment.)

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, for me this is kind of the mindblowing exception that proves the rule (in both the original sense of 'tests' and current sense of 'confirms').