Friday, January 20, 2006
Another Teachable Moment
For those interested in comprehending the White Power Movement in order to defeat it, the present media fix on Minutemen militias and their political allies in Congress is another opportunity to drive a stake through the heart of the monster known as white supremacy. For those who are organizing popular educational curricula on the topic, putting this particular incarnation of mainstream vigilantism in context historically and politically should be a top priority. Otherwise, we just keep responding every ten years or so to the latest outbreak of organized malicious harassment of minorities as if it were some unexplainable, mysterious aberration, rather than an ongoing project of anti-democratic social forces that have continued unabated since our country's founding.
In the current conflict over immigrants, the militias and their political manipulators have had a five year head start on many of the social justice organizations that have no ongoing programs, but rather hibernate between outbreaks of violence as though there were no continuity of organized hate, no daily war of ideas in the media. Now, once again, after the failure of institutions and markets to address the problem, the pious are cautiously stepping forward with little preparation or thought into a field of battle they barely understand.
Another teachable moment.
In the current conflict over immigrants, the militias and their political manipulators have had a five year head start on many of the social justice organizations that have no ongoing programs, but rather hibernate between outbreaks of violence as though there were no continuity of organized hate, no daily war of ideas in the media. Now, once again, after the failure of institutions and markets to address the problem, the pious are cautiously stepping forward with little preparation or thought into a field of battle they barely understand.
Another teachable moment.
