Over this past weekend, white nationalist organizations converged in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest the city’s removal of Confederate monuments. What started out as an expression of free speech — no matter how offensive — quickly descended into violence as opposition members confronted the nationalists. The biggest and most horrific news item involved a 20-year old white supremacist running a car into a group of counter-protestors.
All violent crimes, irrespective of origin, are condemned, as President Trump made clear. The murderous actions of one deranged individual does not speak for white Americans, or even the white nationalist movement. If western governments and societies bend over backwards to distinguish Islamic terrorism from the Islamic religion and its practitioners, then we must also extend the same courtesy to white Americans.
Instead, the Charlottesville incident fueled racist undertones and the broad demonization of whites. The true hate crime has always been the liberal agenda that condemns white racism, but rationalizes or ignores non-white hate crimes.
In the wake of Charlottesville, social media vigilantes launched a campaign to expose members of white nationalist organizations in an effort to apply economic pressure against their employers. One individual was fired from his restaurant job as a direct result of these campaigns. The vigilantes have promised further action, to the cheers of social-justice warriors and left-wing extremists.
The willingness to extract financial penalties for the practice of free speech — and the mainstream’s lame-duck acquiescence to such pressures — is startling on all fronts. The only condemnation that should be rendered is to those who endorsed or committed criminal acts. Merely being a racist is not a crime in America, much like an aversion to dating fat people. We are free to hate or love whoever and however we please, so long as we do not infringe on other people’s rights.
But if American society broadly endorses exposing white nationalist members, then we must also expose members of all ideological extremists. First and foremost, mosques that preach Wahhabi doctrines must be denounced, along with the imams and congregants. Furthermore, we must boycott all businesses that hire illegal immigrants, as such practices indirectly support the influx of drugs and crime across the border.
But I know America, and we won’t do that. Rather, we will cloak ourselves in the putrid blanket of political correctness and pretend that only white nationalist groups are responsible for all acts of racism.