I have spent the past several years in the company of Nazis.  Most were of the Sid Vicious variety: a few — a lot fewer than you might imagine — took their cues from George Lincoln Rockwell. While this has caused my reputation to suffer a bit, it has also provided access to a great deal of information I would not otherwise have acquired.

One of the first things I learned is that today’s Angry White American Right (AWAR, if you will) bears very little resemblance to the 1930s NSDAP.   “Nazis” implies they are an organized group with clearly defined goals rallying behind a strong and charismatic leader. The White Right is actually a loose conglomerate — I’d say confederacy but, you know — with as many differences as common goals. Fighting them, rhetorically or physically, isn’t going to be like going to war with the Third Reich.  It’s going to be like cleanup duty in postwar Iraq.

I have very little interest in German National Socialism save as laugh fodder, and even that’s getting old. I am not a White Nationalist and believe America will be a multicultural and multiracial nation even after the collapse of the American government. (Which I expect to see in my lifetime: if not my daughter will see in hers).  I believe It’s OK To Be White, but I also acknowledge that racism exists and bear no personal animus against any individual or group.  Also, I do not want to start a race war.  I’m trying very hard to stop one.  And the only way to do that is for all parties involved to understand each other.

So, am I a White Supremacist?  Let’s check this pyramid, courtesy of our friends on Facebook group Maine For Everyone.

Swastikas: Check featured image.  Racist Jokes, Racial Slurs: Check my Gab feed.  That should provide abundant evidence that I am not just a White Supremacist, but a socially unacceptable one.  So are many young White men.  Last month the Daily Stormer received nearly three million page views.  I may be in bad company, but I am not alone.  Personally, I would consider Higher Infant and Maternal Mortality Rate for POC to be a lot worse than Racist Jokes; Hiring Discrimination a much bigger problem than Confederate Flags; and School to Prison Pipeline far more threatening than an iconic Sid Vicious photo.  But that may just be me exercising my Socially Unacceptable White Supremacist Privilege.

Those pleasantries aside, let me tell you a few things about AWAR.

AWAR is largely male. Many are underemployed, sexually frustrated and burdened with student loan debt. Their attitudes toward women range from ugly to horrifying. (Most of the racist jokes and memes are performative. There are serious discussions about breeder camps and collecting “war brides” after the collapse). They are caught up in an existential crisis and trying to figure out what it means to be White Americans in a post-Civil Rights world.  As per their name, they are also angry.  They are very, very angry.

You cannot shut down AWAR’s online gathering places. Sure, you can take down a Daily Stormer here or an 8chan there. But that’s whack-a-mole, and it hasn’t even worked long for those odious varmints.   And remember, anybody with the power to lock down “racists” can also lock down “subversives” or “radical Leftists.”  (That’s another misconception about AWAR, by the way.  Though often classified as “authoritarian,” most are deeply suspicious of big government.  Politically a Sovereign Citizen and Antifa anarchist have more in common than either has with your average Democrat or Republican).

But here’s an interesting thing: there is nothing on the Internet today which could not be found easily two decades ago.  Usenet was home to Nazis, Christian Identity types, White Power skinheads and other White Nationalists peddling their wares.  In the days of Geocities there were pro-White forums like Stormfront and crude racist websites like Niggermania  (And there’s another step up the pyramid).

I visited Niggermania decades ago.  I discovered jokes I already knew and which weren’t all that funny the first time.  (Glue Velcro to the ceiling? My sides, my sides!!!).  I went on to search for more interesting material.  Most White people followed my lead.  Phase 1 of the White Internet Revolution ended not with a bang but with a yawn.  We are now in Phase 2.  And the audience is no longer yawning.

You cannot shut it down.  But you can address the issues which have roused them.

One of the steps on the pyramid deals with “cultural appropriation.”  Today we’re told to be ever-vigilant about cultural appropriation.  We are warned that we will be called out on our cultural appropriation.  We are sold workshops where we can examine “the complexities and opportunities for exploitation and oppression of non-dominant cultures by even well-meaning people.” Yet amidst all this breast-beating we miss a very important point: cultural appropriation is not a problem so much as a symptom.  People who are secure in their own identity and their own Ancestral traditions don’t feel the need to appropriate other cultures.

And what are young White people told about their culture?  Here are some thoughts which appeared on Maine for Everyone but which many White people are told throughout their school careers.

When you tell White people they have no culture and no identity worth preserving you can hardly be surprised when they look elsewhere.  And when you then start telling them those efforts are just a horrible extension of all the horrible things their ancestors did, you can hardly be surprised if they decide you don’t like them very much.  Or if they decide they don’t like you.

So what do I want out of all this?

My working-class White brothers and sisters haven’t caught a break in over 50 years:  every economic boom has passed them by and every economic bust has hit them full-on. They are dying of overdoses.  They are dying of alcoholism.  They are dying of suicide. They are dying of fucking despair.

I want you to stop laughing at them.  I want you to stop treating them as a problem to be solved. I want you to help them. If you do that you’re going to have a big band of loyal followers ready to tear the System down alongside you.  If you don’t do that, if you keeping following your current path, then your War on Whiteness is going to get a whole lot bigger and a whole lot bloodier than you ever imagined.