We need to address the very real violence in this country being carried out by fascists and white supremacists.
Right now, I assume that some people in this country think it's a joke. That it's a bunch of hysterics being put up by people on the left and that there isn't actually a problem at all.
I know that the people of Charlottesville Virginia don't think it's a joke. They watched as out in the open, white supremacists openly came together and killed a person protesting the occupation of the town.
The killing of two people on a train in Portland, Oregon where they were
stabbed by a white nationalist after they defended two women who were
the victims of an unconscionable verbal assault.
The people of Pittsburgh don't think it's a joke after a white supremacists attacked the Tree Of Life synagogue, murdering 11 innocent people out of pure hate.
The town of Gilroy California where a white supremacist killed three and injured 17 more.
The city of El Paso, where 22 people were killed, another 24 injured in the name of a white supremacist and far right conspiracy of a white genocide and replacement. The exact same theory that inspired the Christchurch, New Zealand shooter who killed 51.
Dylan Roof who took the lives of 9 praying southern Christians for no other reason than they were black, and to specifically spark a race war.
Now is the time for those well versed in what the far right and white nationalist are doing, to talk to the public about what is going on in our country.
However, instead, I got an ill-informed sports centric Texan giving his off the cuff opinion whether or not he thought those cadets were giving what has now become a sign for the white power movement and the trolling of others.
I assume Will Cain probably isn't aware of the long history of the far right recruiting racist sympathizers in the military going as far back as the civil war. He probably doesn't know about George Lincoln Rockwell, who founded the American Nazi party, Louis Beam a member of the KKK who advocated leaderless resistance, but he might know a little bit about some guy named Timothy McVeigh.
I assume Will Cain has still done absolutely zero work in researching and understanding hate and extremism in America. Because why would he want to? This kind of thing is very depressing, it would be better to pretend it was never there and we can all go back to just like football.
Hell he's there to talk about sports. He shouldn't even have to.
But then, sports and the world of far right extremism collided in the Army-Navy game. And Will had to go and talk about it.
Because Will's role on ESPN it seems is to play the conservative pundit at the network, the general tenor of his show is that where he bemoans the politics and culture getting in the way of sports and enjoyment of the game (even though he is the one that constantly brings up the material.) I assume he does this appeal to approximately half the country. It's no different than what Fox News does. Give the base it's red meat.
However, in this particular exchange, Will Cain steps way out of his depth. And while I can gather that someone at the show had the good sense to at least tell Will that maybe he shouldn't go so deep into this pool, Will instead says that there is a 2% chance that those cadets had any clue about the high-jacked hand sign.
This is dangerous because it completely misses the points of evidence that the military has had a problem with white extremism, and it's had it for a while. He essentially tells his thousands of listeners that the military doesn't have an extremist problem, that white nationalism isn't a problem in America and that this is just some PC culture nonsense.
This bothers me.
This bothers me because people die to White Nationalism and extremists in this country.
Black people are targets.
Hispanics are targets.
Jews are targets.
LBGTQ are targets.
Anyone perceived to be allied with them are targets.
This past October, Christopher Paul Hasson pleaded guilty to charges stemming from domestic terrorism. He is a White Nationalist and Neo-Nazi. He is also a veteran of the military, in this having served with Marines, the Army, and the Coast Guard. He also believes in the white genocide conspiracy.
Right now, as I'm typing this, there is incredible evidence that Stephen Miller, the person that designed a system to rip apart families at the border as they ask to become citizens is also a believer of the white genocide conspiracy theory.
I understand for some people, maybe white nationalism and terrorism isn't scary. That they know they're safe. But for so many others, that have lived through lives of persecution, the idea of hate gaining traction once again is a serious one.
So I come back to Will Cain. Like I said, he likely has no earthly idea of the ideology of hate and it has worked in America. He is like most white christian male figures, blissfully unaware of the connections between our military and hate groups such as Nazi's and the KKK.
We need to become more aware. We need to understand that the white supremacists have existed within our military, withing out communities and within our leadership structure and it needs to be addressed by people who understand it and have researched the issues.
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