Stand Back and Stand By

One of the most depressing things about living in this day and age is that I have to keep saying things like:

• Nazis are bad.
• White supremacy is bad.
• People who say they plan to start a race war are often telling the truth.
• People who say only they have rights – to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, not to mention the Constitution – are dangerous.

Etc.

Look, even I know who the Proud Boys are. You can read some summaries of their "beliefs" here:

SPLC - Why are the Proud Boys so Violent?; Anti-Defamation League - Proud Boys; USA  Today - Who are the Proud Boys?

Meanwhile, we had some more proud militia types - the Michigan Wolverine Watchmen (???? - obviously they've been reading too many Marvel comics; that or they all went to UofM. Although I doubt it...) - who decided kidnapping Governor Gretchen Whitmir and trying her for treason at a kangaroo trial and then executing her on national television was a great idea, along with attacking police officers and starting a civil war “leading to societal collapse”.  (NYTimes)

NOTE:  Why, why, why do so damn many white militia types want societal collapse?  Where do they think they can buy their favorite gummy bears?  And lest you think these are rugged survivalists, remember that most of this gang was involved in the armed protest / assault / invasion at the Michigan Capitol building back in April as they sought... <checking her notes...> access to haircuts and hardware stores.  (The Guardian)

Update:  turns out the Michigan Wolverine Watchmen were planning to not only kidnap, try and execute their governor, but also the Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam.  Listen, you rugged semi-constitutionalists, if states' rights are the most important of all, what the hell gives you the right to interfere in the governance of another whole state? 

And what is that they really want, anyway?  I've noticed that most white supremacist organizations - including the Proud Boys - have quit using the term "white supremacist" (puts people off) and instead call themselves "Western chauvinists".  And there's a key right there - because the mind set of these groups is predicated on a false idea, a toxic nostalgia, for a world in which (white) Americans (men) ruled the world, we were the wealthiest and strongest nation in history, everyone did what we said (except, of course, the Russians who back then were mortal enemy #1), and life was perfect.  Gas was cheap, a man - any [white] man - could earn enough to support a family, and the women could stay home and take care of the family as God intended.  Our suburban way of life was the envy of the world, and only we had it and we deserved each and every bit of it because we worked hard for it.

Granted, people did work hard for it - but the reason for our prosperity of the late 1940s through much of the 1960s was because we were the only industrialized country which had not had its major cities bombed to rubble in the almost 7 years of WW2.  70-80 million people worldwide died in WW2. Some 60 million Europeans became refugees during the entire World War II period. According to the United Nations, a million people had yet to find a place to settle by 1951, more than five years after the fighting stopped.  There was a need for massive rebuilding all across Europe, Asia, north Africa, and the Middle East:  buildings, infrastructure, factories, homes.  After a war that long, everybody needed consumer goods:  clothing, shoes, cars, furniture, etc.  And for years, the United States - relatively untouched by war - had a monopoly on production and sales of just about everything.  That was the economic miracle of the 1950s.  Based on the desperate poverty of almost everyone else in the world.*

And that is why I call it toxic nostalgia, because to bring back the glory days of the 1950s and 60s would require a return to that level of global poverty.  Instead, what we're seeing today (pandemic aside) is a world in which poverty is decreasing, countries are increasing production and prosperity - and instead of accepting it and joining in, some Americans are waxing way too nostalgic about when we "ruled the earth".  And dreaming about how to get back there. 

And that's not even nearly as bad as the superfund toxic nostalgia about the good old days of the ante-bellum South, in which slavery wasn't so bad, and somebody needed to pick all that cotton, and at least the slaves all got converted to Christianity and were saved.  That, too, lingers on - along with all the old BS about how slaves deserved to be slaves, because they were so inferior to whites.  Iowa Rep. Steve King asked a while back, "which nonwhite subgroups had contributed more than white people to “civilization.” 

Well, I taught a year-long class every year on World Civilizations which would have answered his question; but I think he would have flunked for citing Ancient Aliens as a source.**  See also SLATE on "Why It Makes No Sense to Judge Groups of People by Their Histories of Invention."  

This, and far too many other reasons are why we have a serious white supremacist problem in this country.  Thanks to Wikipedia, here's an incomplete list of White Supremacist Groups in the United States:

• 11th Hour Remnant Messenger was a group founded by two wealthy retired entrepreneurs who believed that whites were the true biblical Israelites.
• American Renaissance, is a "race realist and white advocacy website", formerly a monthly magazine, published by the New Century Foundation.
• American Freedom Party, formerly known as the American Third Position Party, is an American political party which promotes white supremacy.[12][13][14][15] It was founded in 2010, and it defines its principal mission as representing the political interests of white Americans.[16]
• American Nazi Party, is an antisemitic, neo-Nazi organization based largely upon the ideals and policies of Adolf Hitler's NSDAP in Germany during the era of the Third Reich. It also supports Holocaust denial.
• Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is, according to the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the largest and most violent white supremacist prison gangs in the United States, responsible for murders and other violent crimes.[17][18]
• Aryan Republican Army was a white nationalist terrorist organization.
• Aryan Nations, is a white supremacist neo-Nazi organization founded in the 1970s by Richard Girnt Butler as an arm of the Christian Identity group known as the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has called Aryan Nations a "terrorist threat",[19] and the RAND Corporation has called it the "first truly nationwide terrorist network" in the US.[20]
• Asatru Folk Assembly, part of the racist ("folkish") branch of the Heathenry movement.[21]
• Atomwaffen Division, a Neo-Nazi terrorist organisation.
• Council of Conservative Citizens, is an American political organization that supports a large variety of conservative and paleoconservative causes in addition to white separatism.[22]
• Creativity Alliance, (formerly known as the World Church of the Creator) is a white supremacist political organization that advocates the racialist religion, Creativity. Mainly religious rather than political, the radical Creativity Alliance or Church of Creativity, founded by Ben Klassen in 1973, worships the white race itself rather than any deity, and advocates a radical form of white supremacism known as RAHOWA.
• EURO, is a white separatist organization in the United States. Led by former Louisiana state representative, presidential primary candidate and Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke, it was founded in 2000.[23][24]
• Hammerskins, also known as Hammerskin Nation, are a white supremacist group formed in 1988 in Dallas, Texas. Their primary focus is the production and promotion of white power rock music, and many white power bands have been affiliated with the group.
• Identity Evropa is an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization established in March 2016.
• Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as The Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present [25] organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy and nationalism. The Klan is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.[26] It is estimated to have between 5,000 and 8,000 members, split among dozens of different organizations that use the Klan name as of 2012.[27]
• National Alliance, is a white supremacist political organization. It was founded by William Luther Pierce, and is based in the Pierce family's compound in Hillsboro, West Virginia.
• National Association for the Advancement of White People, was a white supremacist organization in the United States incorporated on December 14, 1953 in Delaware by Bryant Bowles which presents itself as a civil rights organization such as the NAACP.
• National Policy Institute, is a think tank based in Augusta, Georgia in the United States. It describes itself as the right's answer to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
• National Socialist Movement (United States), a party founded in 1974. Since 2005 the party has become very active, staging many marches and demonstrations.
• National Vanguard, was an American National Socialist organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia, founded by Kevin Alfred Strom and former members of the National Alliance.
• Nationalist Movement, is a Mississippi-based, white supremacist organization that advocates what it calls a "pro-majority" position. It has been called white supremacist by the Associated Press and Anti-Defamation League, among others.[28][29]
• Occidental Quarterly, is a printed far-right quarterly journal with a web segment, TOQ Online, including interviews, essays and reviews on the website.[30]
• The Order, or Brüder Schweigen ("Silent Brotherhood") was a white supremacist Revolutionary organization founded by Robert Jay Mathews, active 1983-1984, probably best known for the 1984 murder of talk show host Alan Berg. Berg's killing was to be the first in a planned series of assassinations, followed by attacks on the United States government, all meant to bring about a race war which would result in fulfillment of White Separatist ideals (see Northwest Territorial Imperative).
• Pacifica Forum, is a controversial discussion group in Eugene, Oregon, United States. It has been listed as a white nationalist[31] hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
• Patriot Front is a neo-fascist american nationalist group and an offshoot of Vanguard America[32][33][34]
• Phineas Priesthood, is a Christian Identity movement that opposes interracial intercourse, the mixing of races, homosexuality, and abortion. It is also marked by its anti-Semitism, anti-multiculturalism, and opposition to taxation.
• Pioneer Fund, a white supremacist non-profit that funds scientific racism research.
• Volksfront, describes itself as an international fraternal organization for persons of European descent.[35] It has been called "neo-Nazi" and a "racist-skinhead group" in press reports.[36][37][38] The Anti-Defamation League has called the group "one of the most active skinhead groups in the United States."[39] The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has added Volksfront to its list of hate groups.[40]
• White America, Inc., a group founded in Arkansas to prevent racial desegregation of the state's schools.[41]
• White Aryan Resistance, is a neo-Nazi white supremacist organization founded and led by former Ku Klux Klan leader Tom Metzger.[42]

I can guarantee you that each and every member of all of these organizations knows what "Stand back and stand by" means.  

I've mentioned this before, but this incident will always haunt me.  Years ago right after the Timothy McVeigh bombing, one of our regular militia visitors at the courthouse told me, "War has been declared."  When I said the children in the day-care weren't soldiers (remember, 19 children were killed in a daycare there, as well as 3 pregnant women), he replied, "There are no innocent victims."  And he meant it.  And was not apologizing for it.  And was proud of it.  

White supremacist literature (see "The Turner Diaries") is all about "getting rid of" (i.e., killing) everyone who doesn't meet their standards, to the point where you wonder if even in our weapons-rich environment, there really are enough bullets to get that job done.  Because they are all about purity policing the world.  They really do want to create a white paradise, but of course, there are a lot of "whites" in their world who they don't consider truly white, or white enough. And as their immediate world gets whiter, they expand their list of undesirables, and make more and more "white people" non-white.  In the long run, there's no one "good enough" left. 

 

Remember, the Nazis declared European Slavic people to be non-white, and good for nothing, according to Hitler, but to be "slaves to our culture". That and be slaughtered to make room for more pure German Aryans.

 

Remember, Timothy McVeigh bombed a government building knowing there was a day care center in it full of children.  

 *I told this to someone last week, who was amazed - they'd never heard this explanation of the American 1950s before.  God knows what they're teaching about WW2 these days...

**Not to denigrate Ancient Aliens - it's a great piece of mental cotton candy. 

ALSO:  We finally got an update on the South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravsborg case - 4 weeks later - where Gov. Kristi Noem and Public Safety Secretary Craig Price on Tuesday gave an update on the Saturday, Sept. 12 crash that killed 55-year-old Joseph Boever. Noem and Price spoke to reporters from the Sioux Falls City Hall.  The audio of the 911 call made by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg was released, but otherwise, "The incident remains under investigation, and Price declined to answer some questions, saying he wants to release a full report when the matter is concluded."  (Argus Leader) 

 

Color us all suspicious.  Because if this had been anyone but a high government official, this investigation would be over and charges would have been filed.