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Nazis, You Suck

Jill

…but Doug Giles kind of understands.

Sure, he’ll take a strong anti-Nazi position — look, Nazis, you guys failed to take over the world, so clearly the movement is a loser. Better luck next time. Pick up a Marvin Gaye record and move on. But, as much as Doug dislikes people who follow dead movements (Communists, for example), he dislikes people who more actively dislike those people even more. Black people, for instance, whose constant, unending looting makes them appear “sub-human” to folks like Doug (Nazism, what?). Mr. Giles lives in fear of these folks, who inexplicably become angry when a group of neo-Nazis show up in their neighborhood to protest their very existance.

I mean . . . what’s going to set them off next? Long lines at Taco Bell, sold out tickets to Snoop’s concert, no booths available at the Olive Garden, a two-week waiting period for 22” rims?

…Because being angry at Neo-Nazis who tell you you’re sub-human is sort of like being angry when you can’t get your Taco Bell fast enough. And, really, the Olive Garden? Wouldn’t something about fried chicken and watermelon be a better racist reference? Jeez, Doug, get it together…

The cherry on top of this multi-layered, dysfunctional cake is that we’re told we have to understand the plunderers . . . yea, feel their pain. Look, I understand getting ticked off and wanting to mess someone up. I feel that way at Starbucks every morning when I’m standing behind a JLo wannabe who uses nine words to order her coffee. It’s all I can do to keep from pile driving her skull with a big French coffee press from their display rack for eating into my schedule and for polluting the atmosphere with her preening self-love.

Dude, you’re in Starbucks. If you don’t want to hear someone use nine words to order their coffee, get a 50-cent cup of black from a cart on the street (50 cent! Black! What am I thinking??). And what was that snide comment earlier about black folks getting mad about long lines at Taco Bell? Pot, kettle, etc etc.

And is anyone else disturbed that the simple act of a woman ordering her drink at Starbucks is enough to send Doug into such a rage that he wants to pile drive a coffee press into her skull? That is genuinely frightening, and it sounds like Mr. Giles needs some help.

Since this great land is still the land of opportunity, my suggestion to the violent ones “without” is this: Why don’t you take all the energy you normally exert in choosing which bandana you’ll wear to hide behind, what moving vehicle you’ll pelt with a fist- sized rock, how much crack you’ll smoke before breakfast, determining what alley has the best bottles for Molotov cocktails and what hole you can slink into post-riot and focus that get-up-and-go into getting your GED, going to college and giving your life to Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Tony Robbins, Oprah or someone of higher power?

Right. Because Doug gave his life to Jesus, and now he only fantasizes about breaking the skulls of young women who have the audacity to waste his precious time by ordering their coffee. Particularly when those women are Puerto Rican, or otherwise resemble JLo (perhaps it’s the amazing ass that infuriates him?) That, my friends, is far more productive and laudable than reacting when Neo-Nazis show up on your doorstep.

80 thoughts on Nazis, You Suck

  2. “…a two-week waiting period for 22” rims?”

    I know that always causes me to riot. I will not be denied by car jewelry.

    From that little Starbucks rant I think we should be more worried about something setting Doug above anyone else.

  3. It might be the booze talking, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that his reference to braining a woman with a coffee press was an exaggeration. Yeah! Absurdist exaggeration for emphasis. A similar example might be, “If I read one more post from Jill distorting a right-wing op-ed to suit her agenda, I’m going to tear out my own eyes and smash them with a ball-peen hammer.” ‘Cause, see, I’m not really going to do that. It’s an exaggeration. For emphasis.

    More crazy speculation since I’m already out on the limb: his objection to Nazism actually doesn’t have much to do with the fact that it’s a dead movement. Yeah! He taunts them for losing the war, but he also calls them “sick” and “yet-to-evolve.” It’s only a hunch, but I suspect he feels that way because he disapproves of their ideology, not because they weren’t as successful as he would have liked in executing the Final Solution. As I say, though, just a hunch. Also a hunch: he doesn’t find it “inexplicable” that blacks would be angry at Nazis parading through their neighborhood. I base this inference on the fact that he devotes an entire paragraph at the beginning of the piece to the proposition that Nazis shouldn’t be allowed to parade through black neighborhoods.

    And now just a wee bit further out to the very edge of the limb: he doesn’t think all black people are looters, and he doesn’t think those who do loot engage in it on a “constant, unending” basis. My suspicion here is based on two very subtle facts. First, he doesn’t accuse all black people of being looters (although it’s certainly interesting that you would jump to that conclusion). Second, he doesn’t accuse looters of looting constantly. He gives three specific examples of when looting is likely to occur — after hurricanes, Nazi rallies, and championship sporting events. Oddly enough, looting in recent years actually has occurred after hurricanes, Nazi rallies, and championship sporting events. One would think this might tend to enhance his credibility, but alas, his thoughtless willingless to remind people of those incidents reveals him to be a big reactionary meanie.

    Got to get back to the booze now, but let me just note that this —

    as much as Doug dislikes people who follow dead movements (Communists, for example), he dislikes people who more actively dislike those people even more

    — is an absolute masterpiece of euphemism. Laying aside the fact that beating the shit out of paramedics is a curious way to express one’s dislike of Nazis, I have to wonder how far we can extend it. E.g., rapists don’t rape; they simply assert their sexuality “more actively.” Klansmen don’t terrorize blacks; they simply dislike blacks in a “more active” manner than garden-variety racists. Anyway, duly noted for future reference.

  4. Ah, now I remember who he is. He’s the pastor that fantasizes about his opportunities to blow people away under Florida’s new gun law. Classy.

  5. “(perhaps it’s the amazing ass that infuriates him?” More likely, the innaccessability – to him – of such

  7. Wow. That column is really pretty vile, even for Townhall. I’m surprised the line about smoking crack before breakfast didn’t faze the editors.

  8. Allah –

    “If I read one more post from Jill distorting a right-wing op-ed to suit her agenda, I’m going to tear out my own eyes and smash them with a ball-peen hammer.”

    Bingo.

    Hacktackular, Jill. You aren’t just charging windmills, you’re actually obtaining construction-perm loan financing, buying vacant patches of farmland, hiring contractors to build the windmills, slapping a green coat of pain and nylon sheeting that looks like dragon wings on the sides, and then charging them.

    “Facts are the enemy of truth!”

    And I think that Giles column is pretty crappy, btw, though not for the specific reasons that you describe..

  9. If I had rounded up some of the local rednecks and went off to DC to beat the shit out of Farrakan and his followers for calling white people sub-human, would you be defending my actions?

  10. How is Jill overreacting or distorting anything? This column seems based on a lot of awful racial stereotypes (crack, fast food, rap concerts) and honestly, that’s pretty scary that he talks about homicidal impulses induced by a woman who dresses and talks in a way he doesn’t like. I think we’ve all seen fashion victims, but wanting to kill them? That’s way different than homicidal impulses induced by people who support racial violence “if you ain’t white you’ll be dead” (http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1).

  11. “If I read one more post from Jill distorting a right-wing op-ed to suit her agenda, I’m going to tear out my own eyes and smash them with a ball-peen hammer.”

    What, exactly, is my “agenda” and what am I distorting? I don’t think most people on the right are racist assholes, but Doug Giles has certainly proven himself to be one.

    he doesn’t accuse looters of looting constantly. He gives three specific examples of when looting is likely to occur — after hurricanes, Nazi rallies, and championship sporting events.

    From his op/ed: “I mean . . . what’s going to set them off next? Long lines at Taco Bell, sold out tickets to Snoop’s concert, no booths available at the Olive Garden, a two-week waiting period for 22” rims?” So, no, he isn’t being specific about three types of events which lead to looting — he infers that anything will set these crazy black men off into a looting rampage.

    I’m gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that his reference to braining a woman with a coffee press was an exaggeration.

    Yeah, we all got that. But it’s still disturbing that such a benign event — a woman ordering her coffee in Starbucks — is enough to merit such an exaggeration. Particularly when it comes from out of nowhere in the middle of his op/ed. And there’s a difference between “Jill is such an idiot she makes me want to scratch my own eyes out” and “Jill ordering her coffee in the morning makes me want to pound her skull in.” See it?

    he doesn’t think all black people are looters

    …I didn’t say that. It is clear, however, that he thinks most looters are black people. Evidence of this: all the racist stereotypes he uses to describe the looters — bandana-wearing, crack-smoking, 22-inch-rim-desiring, Snoop-concert-going, etc.

    let me just note that this —

    as much as Doug dislikes people who follow dead movements (Communists, for example), he dislikes people who more actively dislike those people even more

    — is an absolute masterpiece of euphemism.

    Ok, yeah, I’ll give you that one. I was going for parellism in the sentence structure; I assumed I was addressing an audience with enough common sense to know that I’m not a big supporter of looting, and that I don’t support injuring paramedics, etc. It was — what did you say earlier? — “an exaggeration. Yeah! Absurdist exaggeration for emphasis.” Yeah!

  12. B. Moe:
    I won’t speak for Jill or all liberals, but as for Farrakhan, the liberal site dailykos (usually a good thermometer for the state of the liberal base) frontpaged a quote from Oliver Willis describing him as a “hustler, bigot and crook”. He had a few defenders, but individual posters said he was “a racist, a loon, and a downright evil man”, “he has crossed the bigotry line both in terms of his comments on Jews and gay people for me”, “I don’t see how he’s any less loony than the 9/11 conspiracy theorists”, “just not credible, he’s offensive”, “unrepentant anti-semite”, “I myself cannot stand Farrakhan” and “a complete and total raving lunatic.”
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/16/155143/15
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/17/143052/42

  14. Doug represents an extreme case of antisocial personality. He should be shunned, not memorialized in an argument.

    So many of us (mea culpa) do the same thing. We see something out in the world and we go beyond describing what happened, we carry out acts of character assassination.

    That’s a problem that I have with blogging: we apply what I might call an asshole morality to people we describe out in the world. We kvetch kvetch kvetch and go on about our rages. But what do we really say? We say that the world is filled with assholes.

    Personally, aside from the occasional descriptive anecdote of a strange encounter, I try to see everything. I call it realism because it attempts to present a complete picture. Isn’t that what is so lacking in blog and media alike? We simplify and when we simplify we misrepresent.

    Again, Doug presents a splendid example of what I speak, but I make a practice of not empowering him by admitting to my consciousness. He’s a predator, an energy drain, too easy a target, and toxic. For me, it’s much more important to concentrate on misconceptions about brain disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as I have done lately on my blog and to save my arguments for reasonable people who raise issues that don’t throw us back to medieval times.

  15. Evidence of this: all the racist stereotypes he uses to describe the looters — bandana-wearing, crack-smoking, 22-inch-rim-desiring, Snoop-concert-going, etc.

    Whoops.

    That would be your racism being displayed, Jill. There are plenty of white and brown people who do the big rims and wear the bandanas and suck down the crack. (About Snoop, I don’t know.)

    You’re the one assuming he’s just talking about blacks when he uses these themes. I’m sure he is talking about blacks – as one part of the larger group of looters – but he’s describing a dysfunctional subculture, not a dysfunctional skin color.

  17. I am trying to point out the differing responses to the same stimulus. No one rioted in DC because of the rhetoric, and it would have been wrong if they did. The point Giles was trying to make, I think, is that it was not really the Nazi’s that set off the riots in Toledo. Get your head out from under the PC blanket and it is obvious there is a “any excuse to fuck shit up” sub-culture blooming in our inner-cities.

    And Jill, it is kind of hard to excuse the behavior because the Nazi’s hate blacks, but then accuse someone of being a racsist for pointing out the rioters were black.

  18. That would be your racism being displayed, Jill. There are plenty of white and brown people who do the big rims and wear the bandanas and suck down the crack. (About Snoop, I don’t know.)

    I’m with Joel. Pointing out that a stereotype is not in fact true is not a strong rebuttal to people who argue that, accurate or not, it is being referenced. There are plenty of white women on welfare. That doesn’t make “welfare queen” any less of a racialized stereotype.

    Same with “inner city.”

  19. Yeah, that’s pretty much the standard liberal reaction when it’s pointed out that it’s a liberal who’s taking the stereotype at face value.

  20. This is hopeless, refusing to excuse bad behavior because the offenders are black makes me a racist. You folks need to apply your Orwellian logic here as well as the post below.

  22. Robert:

    Jill’s not taking the stereotype of black people at face value, she’s taking the stereotype that white people who use examples like ‘what’s going to set them off next? Long lines at Taco Bell, sold out tickets to Snoop’s concert, no booths available at the Olive Garden, a two-week waiting period for 22″ rims’ are being racist at face value.

    And that’s not much of a stretch considering that this column comes at the end of a monthlong orgy of racism from certain elements of the right, in which I include Steve Sailer, much of the Corner, and now Pastor Doug.

  23. Pointing out that a stereotype is not in fact true is not a strong rebuttal to people who argue that, accurate or not, it is being referenced.

    Of course, you’re missing the little detail that the people that did the looting and are being referenced in Ohio aren’t just “black people,” rather representatives of a subculture of gangbanging criminals (according to the mayor of the city, who is black).

    Thus, references to crack, rims and bandanas are not particularly racist when applied to GANG MEMBERS, now are they?

  26. So if he’d written a column about “welfare queens in the inner-city with their baby-daddies, squeezing out child after child so that they can cheat the government out of even more money to support their crack habit,” it would have been racist to think he was probably saying racist things about black women? Recognizing that these extremely insulting comments are generally made about black women and not about white women would be the same as agreeing with those statements?

    This is ridiculous. No one here is saying that any of these things are true of all or even most black people. The point is that he’s referencing the stereotype that they are, and doing it in pretty textbook language.

    Say he’d been writing about a rally in response to gay-marriage-opponents and said, “lard-assed bullish women with hairy legs and buzzcuts, arm-in-arm with prancing, overglossed club kids and leather-clad gym rats.” Would it be homophobic to assume he was bashing gays and lesbians, since, y’know, some straight people look like that, too?

  27. a monthlong orgy of racism from certain elements of the right

    = noticing that the people acting like criminals are largely, though not entirely, members of one ethnic group, and declining to play the victim politics game to excuse wrong individual moral choices.

    Observational skills and a belief in responsibility for one’s actions are now racism in the halls of the left.

    (“Close your eyes, children! If you see the color of the people robbing us, you’ll be a racist!”)

  29. So if he’d written a column about “welfare queens in the inner-city with their baby-daddies, squeezing out child after child so that they can cheat the government out of even more money to support their crack habit,” it would have been racist to think he was probably saying racist things about black women?

    No, as the article above referenced a specific group of people (gang criminals in Ohio) that did a specifically bad thing (looting, burning, beating innocent people). Typically mocking groups of criminals/thugs – cultural traits and all – is sort of an acceptable paradigm. But since this story involves a bunch of Nazis and a black neighborhood, the argument becomes one of black people being stereotyped by the author, when he references behaviors/items that can very easily just be ascribed to gang culture (or the author’s clumsy interpretation of gang culture – I think Snoop is too soft with the kids these days).

    I think the author is a hack. I think his opinion was clumsy. I think he used a bunch of populist cliches, and his exagerration about braining someone at Starbucks came off weird in an attempt to be flip. But about as clumsy are the rationales that assert that his motivations to generalized racism against black people.

    As one example, I don’t typically think of “Olive Garden” references as a cliched slap against black folks, I think of them as a slap or reference to everyday lower to middle class consumerism – a populist cliche. He was just as easily referencing stupid everyday things (going to Olive Garden) as ludicrous examples of what would set off a disproportionate response. Because, you know, the black gang members setting off on a tear of violence and destruction was disproportionate. The Nazis didn’t even march.

    He utilized exaggeration. Poorly. His writing and examples were stupid and clumsy.

    But ascribing insidious racism to his motivations and executions as a self-evident fact is also pretty clumsy.

  30. I love Olive Garden. I guess that makes me trashy.

    I’d take Jill there for dinner, if I weren’t afraid that she’d get all weird and shifty if our server turned out to be black or Hispanic.

  31. Since this great land is still the land of opportunity, my suggestion to the violent ones “without” is this: Why don’t you take all the energy you normally exert in choosing which bandana you’ll wear to hide behind, what moving vehicle you’ll pelt with a fist- sized rock, how much crack you’ll smoke before breakfast, determining what alley has the best bottles for Molotov cocktails and what hole you can slink into post-riot and focus that get-up-and-go into getting your GED, going to college and giving your life to Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Tony Robbins, Oprah or someone of higher power?

    I might buy it if it weren’t for this passage, with its references to “crack” and “bandannas.” He can’t possibly be referring to drunk college kids after a football game here.

  32. I am trying to point out the differing responses to the same stimulus. No one rioted in DC because of the rhetoric, and it would have been wrong if they did. The point Giles was trying to make, I think, is that it was not really the Nazi’s that set off the riots in Toledo.

    Hardly the same stimulus. Farrakhan and the MMM went to a public space in DC that is the site of many, many protests and marches for varying causes. The neonazis pointedly marched through a black neighborhood in Toledo. It was a deliberate slap in the face to the residents of that neighborhood, much like “marching season” in Northern Ireland used to be.

    And really, Robert, Olive Garden? Do you know that involves a trip to Times Square?

  33. I am trying to point out the differing responses to the same stimulus. No one rioted in DC because of the rhetoric, and it would have been wrong if they did. The point Giles was trying to make, I think, is that it was not really the Nazi’s that set off the riots in Toledo.

    I agree with zuzu: it’s not the same stimulus. The equivalent might be if Farrakan et al showed up in, oh, Bakersfield for example, perhaps near the Gaede place and started harranging. One might expect that the locals might take it amiss and, perhaps, react violently. If a local resident or several local residents, perhaps only angry at the noise and the mess of having the MMM show up on his or her doorstep, perhaps enraged at the skin tone of the marchers, took a shot at Farrakan or threw a rock into the crowd, would you expect commentators to say after the event: “What’s going to set them off next? Long lines at WalMart? Survivor being canceled? A two week waiting period for Hummers?”

  34. For the record, I agree with Bill about Giles’s column. It sucked. He can’t write worth a shit, and his main point — “Nazis are bad, but looters are also bad” — is so banal as scarcely to warrant a full sentence, let alone a full column.

    But that doesn’t justify accusing him of being soft on Nazism, which of course is what you were trying to do here, Jill. You make three nudges in that direction in the first paragraph alone: asserting that Giles “kind of understands” Nazis; insisting that he finds looters more objectionable than white supremacists, even though he goes out of his way to condemn both; and then twisting his description of looters as “sub-human” into a supposed slur against all black people. The whole post boils down to an attempt to place Giles on an ideological continuum with the people who marched in Toledo. I’d sum up your point this way: “Sure, he may not want to gas people based on broad cultural stereotypes, but he’s still perfectly willing to draw them, isn’t he?”

    Other random points:

    1. On what planet does the Olive Garden cater to a gangsta clientele? Their commercials usually feature Italian families in full “you’re a-gonna love it!” mode. Same with Taco Bell. Every time I’ve been in there, most of the customers were distressingly caucasian.

    2. Yes, you did say that Giles thinks all black people are looters. Quote:

    [A]s much as Doug dislikes people who follow dead movements (Communists, for example), he dislikes people who more actively dislike those people even more. Black people, for instance, whose constant, unending looting makes them appear “sub-human” to folks like Doug (Nazism, what?).

    That’s equivalent to “Giles dislikes black people, and one of the reasons he dislikes them is their supposedly constant looting.” If you were trying to say that Giles thinks most looters are black, you might have written, “Looters, for instance, whom Giles seems to assume are predominantly black.” But whatever. We’ll chalk it up to sloppy writing.

    3. Finally, re: this —

    I assumed I was addressing an audience with enough common sense to know that I’m not a big supporter of looting, and that I don’t support injuring paramedics, etc.

    — sigh. No one’s accusing you of endorsing looting, Jill, just like no one but the most hardcore hawks accuses the anti-war crowd of endorsing the tactics of the jihadis in Iraq. It’s not a question of endorsement; it’s a question of providing them with moral cover. I.e., “I don’t approve of looting myself … but I can understand why they’d do it.” (Which, ironically, makes for a nice parallel with the charge you level at Giles in the opening sentence of this post.) Just look at how you describe the looting: “reacting” to neo-Nazis, “being angry” at their racial slurs. You go out of your war to use value-neutral language to describe their actions — which, let’s remind ourselves once again, included throwing bricks at a paramedic’s head.

    I’d love to see your reaction to, say, the Black Panthers marching through some Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. In case it ever happens, don’t forget: it’s not that the people who’ll be lining the street and tossing garbage cans at the marchers are acting like thugs. They’re just expressing their objection to the Panthers “more actively” than might you or I.

  35. Observational skills and a belief in responsibility for one’s actions are now racism

    Yeah, you know those left wingers. They’ll jump all over you just for noticing that the vast majority of serial killers, high school shooters, and KKK members are white men.

  36. What’s with white folk and golf, anyway? I mean, is it just an excuse for the country club set to dress like pimps?

    [Oh no he Di’int!]

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  38. If a local resident or several local residents, perhaps only angry at the noise and the mess of having the MMM show up on his or her doorstep, perhaps enraged at the skin tone of the marchers, took a shot at Farrakan or threw a rock into the crowd, would you expect commentators to say after the event: “What’s going to set them off next? Long lines at WalMart? Survivor being canceled? A two week waiting period for Hummers?”

    What a bullshit analogy. Besides the fact that the target and scope of the reaction that you describe is nothing like what happened in Ohio (burning, looting, beating), something tells me that if a group of “backwoods rednecks” as a cultural element rioted in a small southern town because a march led by Kamau Kambon showed up to assert black power, a lot of you would find it perfectly acceptable to note the pick-up trucks, inbreeding, confederate flags and banjos slung across their backs.

    Come off it.

  39. Jeff, if you keep talking out of your zionist racist mouth like that, I won’t be able to take you and Jill to the Olive Garden, and your Forbidden Love will never flower!

  40. This editorial piece, like most, is overblown. I don’t see why papers even waste room on this junk. Why not add more coupons or cartoons or sumptin’?

    These writers intentionally go over the top to draw attention to themselves. Like the Hollywood bad boy actors who catch a case just so people will hear their names, it’s all hype.

    And it comes from the Left and the Right.

  41. And note that in all cases, we’re talking about riots that don’t even challenge the original “spark” – white supremacists and/or metaphorical black supremacists. Rather, these people tore up businesses and beat up innocent people that had nothing to do with the supposed target of their ire.

  42. I’d love to see your reaction to, say, the Black Panthers marching through some Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. In case it ever happens, don’t forget: it’s not that the people who’ll be lining the street and tossing garbage cans at the marchers are acting like thugs. They’re just expressing their objection to the Panthers “more actively” than might you or I.

    What on earth is that about? I posted something about the Toledo riot, and I got a whole bunch of responses saying, “Oh, you’d say it was cool if the Black Panthers were marching, so you’re full of crap!”

    Actually, I don’t think it would be “cool” if the Black Panthers tried to terrorize a white neighborhood. I don’t think that any group that endorses violence is “cool,” and it’s ridiculous to try to turn someone’s argument around just by invoking the Panthers. “Black Panthers! I win!” Let’s focus on the situation at hand.

    Oh, and last I checked, the Nazis have acted upon their beliefs, and I haven’t seen Black Panthers or Farrakhan following through on that kind of scale, so I can understand why people would be so irate to hear that Neo-Nazis wanted to march in their neighborhood. OK, some people took advantage of the situation. Those who did should be arrested, but that doesn’t mean that people should just stand aside and let Neo-Nazis stroll through.

  43. If a local resident or several local residents, perhaps only angry at the noise and the mess of having the MMM show up on his or her doorstep, perhaps enraged at the skin tone of the marchers, took a shot at Farrakan or threw a rock into the crowd, would you expect commentators to say after the event: “What’s going to set them off next? Long lines at WalMart? Survivor being canceled? A two week waiting period for Hummers?”

    First of all, the rioters in Toledo didn’t get anywhere near the Nazi’s, the Nazi’s were not allowed to march after all. The rioters trashed their own neighborhood because the city was going to allow the march.

    a lot of you would find it perfectly acceptable to note the pick-up trucks, inbreeding, confederate flags and banjos slung across their backs.

    Exactly right, and the overwhelming majority of you would be outraged, and indicting the white rioters because of their ignorance rather than using it as a defense.

    Our inner cities have become very dangerous places because of a sub-culture of crime and violence that is overwhelmingly black. You can call me a racist for acknowledging it, but you are a liar if you try to say otherwise. Not a fucking one of you would walk into an inner-city housing project alone at night. Most black people aren’t criminals, and most criminals aren’t black, but this sub-culture exists just the same.

    We need to admit this, and address it honestly if we are going to change things. Excusing behavior from black people you would condemn from whites is wrong, and far more racist than anything said on these boards.

  44. I’m not excusing the violence. I think the people who committed crimes in Toledo should be arrested. But should Toledo have allowed the march in the first place? I think not.

    I also think it is a bit of a stretch to assume that all crime happens in the inner cities. I myself have seen plenty of country violence and white-people violence, and I don’t know why so many people have the idea that the country and the suburbs are oh-so-clean and pure and goody-goody. Just saying.

    Not to get all personal, but I was a violent-crime victim. And the crime took place in the suburbs. (Near a Macaroni Grill – is that close to an Olive Garden?) So every time I hear people say that the inner cities are crime capitals, I tend to roll my eyes.

  45. Oh, and last I checked, the Nazis have acted upon their beliefs, and I haven’t seen Black Panthers or Farrakhan following through on that kind of scale

    Tell that to my dad, whose police academy classmate was shot in the back of the head by a couple of Black Panthers, executed at a traffic stop. If you’re talking about the REAL Nazis, then yeah, of course not nearly on that scale. But if you’re talking about a bunch of American skinheads calling themselves “Neo Nazis,” you bet the B Panthers and their splinter groups approached that level of violence, in the 70’s.

  47. Bill – I’m very sorry for your loss. I mean that sincerely (dunno how this is going to come off in emotionless type). I’m afraid I don’t have any data on skinheads or the Black Panthers – still I don’t imagine anyone here is excusing racist murder, on the part of blacks or whites.

    Pepper – think we should add the KKK as a violent white supremacist organization and they lynched and intimidated thousands of people (not just black people, too) from the 1860s onward.

    Jeff G – Sorry to be snarky, but if you have something to add that’s actually serious/substantive, I’d like to hear it.

  48. I also think it is a bit of a stretch to assume that all crime happens in the inner cities.

    I agree, that is why I made no such assumption. You know what is not a stretch though? That everyfuckingtime I try to talk about this some dipshit says “not all crime happens in the inner city”.

  49. Jeff G – Sorry to be snarky, but if you have something to add that’s actually serious/substantive, I’d like to hear it.

    I was totally serious. “Copacabana”? That was number one for, like, ages!

  50. Bill – I’m very sorry for your loss. I mean that sincerely (dunno how this is going to come off in emotionless type). I’m afraid I don’t have any data on skinheads or the Black Panthers – still I don’t imagine anyone here is excusing racist murder, on the part of blacks or whites.

    Not my loss, don’t worry, though your sincerity is noted. I was merely pointing out that – contrary to conventional perception – the Black Panthers (mostly their offshoot groups) committed some atrocious violence, now popularly mythologized and often accepted in the name of “revolution.” This was in specific response to a commenter’s assertion that they never rose to the level of violence of Nazis (presumably American Neo Nazis). That was my point.

    Which begs another question – how violently active have NeoNazis been in the US in the past couple of generations? I honestly don’t know. The KKK was active from 1870’s to the 1970’s or so (if recollection serves), and there are isolated incidents like Robert Byrd’s death (and white power offshoots against the Fed govt like Oklahoma City), but as a legitimately scary, active and organized force, most of these white supremacist knuckleheads just randomly posture and pontificate. Shrug.

  51. I don’t think the Neo-Nazis were barred from marching, I think they just decided not to show up. Good idea, too. I think they would have been outnumbered.

    They just wanted to cause problems–and they did.

  53. The KKK was active from 1870’s to the 1970’s or so (if recollection serves)

    Minor historical note: The Ku Klux Klan has gone through a few incarnations. The original Klan was founded in 1866 and embarked on its signature program of terrorism against African-Americans and their white supporters. It was destroyed in the early 1870s when the Grant adminstration moved vigorously to oppose it (Army troops then occupying the South aided in this).

    The Klan was revived in 1915, and this second Klan was more broad in both its membership and in terms of whom it opposed – it was more explicitly anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant. Its height was in the 1920s, but then declined after some scandals involving prominent members.

    Ku Klux Klan is a name now used by a number of groups, but it’s not centralized as it was in the early twentieth century.

  54. Linnaeus – Thanks for the info. I always thought it was ironic in the book “Gone with the Wind” that the Irish Catholic Scarlett O’Hara supported the KKK, because its second incarnation would have hated her as much as the next black or Jew.

    Bill – I can’t remember the guy’s name, but there was a white supremacist a few years ago who shot an Asian postal worker and a bunch of little kids at a Jewish daycare center. There has also been a fair amount of violence directed at South Asians post- 9/11 – I read a story about a man who killed a Sikh because he was a “true American”. Indeed.
    Here’s a good (if irreverent and broken-linked) resource, too: http://www.comebackalive.com/df/dplaces/unitedst/index.htm
    The opposing viewpoints series has a book about violent hate groups has some testimony from white supremacists that’s really scary.
    Sort of an aside, but “liberal, tolerant” Europe also has some of the scariest white supremacists – and there has been an upsurge recently- and also mainstream extreme nativist politicians like Le Pen and Haider.

    On a general note, I think almost everyone – even the most tolerant among us – has some prejudices and stereotypes. I consider myself fairly colorblind and even I’ll laugh at the racial jokes in movies like “Better Luck Tomorrow” or “Go”. It just depends on how far you take them – if you recognize that a stereotype is just that, and that it is not truly representative of all members of a group (for example, it’s a stereotype that Asians play tennis, but it’s not like one should assume that all Asians play tennis and Asians who don’t play tennis should be ridiculed) – and whether you apply stereotypes to real people/policy decisions (like what Giles seems to be doing, applying stereotypes of ethnic groups and anecdotal evidence, and damning entire segments of the population with it.)

  55. Also, please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks that the statement about how Mr. Giles seems to say rather seriously that he wants to seriously injure a woman simply because she exists is MAJORLY scary. I mean, we’ve all run into people who are annoying, I got stuck on a five-hour flight wedged between a bunch of sorority girls and frat boys who were gabbing with each other in the most stereotypical way and I often wished they’d all fall asleep and shut up, but honestly, manners and clothes are such minor things that such violence incited over them truly appalls me. I will sometimes defend conservatives and Republicans’ viewpoints, but if this is sort of intolerance and self-righteousness is mainstream conservatism (as I believe townhall is), I’m appalled and speechless.

  56. The Klan is a good example of the point I am trying to make. Although it’s leaders were sometimes wealthier and a bit educated, in it’s heyday the KKK thrived on poor, uneducated, oppressed whites. At least that was the excuse alot of southern Democrats back then used. But rather than make excuses for their behavior, and trying to justify and understand their anger, civilized people and the Feds squashed them like the vermin they were. Barbaric, violent, hateful sub-cultures should not be tolerated by civilized people, either clean up you act or clear out.

    Also I want to make clear I am not defending Giles essay, I found it over the top and quite bizarre also. But I cannot understand what would motivate people to defend mindless violence unless you think that somehow the rioters aren’t capable of civilized behavior.

  57. [The original Klan] was destroyed in the early 1870s when the Grant adminstration moved vigorously to oppose it (Army troops then occupying the South aided in this).

    Not so much destroyed as hibernated, since most of the Southern state governments were in the process of being ‘redeemed’ at that point, and blacks and white Republicans could be openly intimidated without fear of meaningful reprisal.

  58. Not so much destroyed as hibernated, since most of the Southern state governments were in the process of being ‘redeemed’ at that point, and blacks and white Republicans could be openly intimidated without fear of meaningful reprisal.

    Good point. The federal government’s success against the Klan was pretty much rendered moot by the ascendancy of Jim Crow after Reconstruction. I meant to convey that the Klan as an organized force per se was in disarray after the early 1870s, but its legacy lived on in Southern state legislatures.

  59. Our inner cities have become very dangerous places because of a sub-culture of crime and violence that is overwhelmingly black. You can call me a racist for acknowledging it, but you are a liar if you try to say otherwise. Not a fucking one of you would walk into an inner-city housing project alone at night. Most black people aren’t criminals, and most criminals aren’t black, but this sub-culture exists just the same.

    And our white rural areas have become very dangerous places due to crystal meth. “Meth mouth” has caused huge increases in prison medical/dental expenditures in the last few years in places like Minnesota, with large numbers of white, rural inmates.

    Bill, what happened 30-35 years ago with the Black Panthers is not what’s happening now with Neo-Nazis. Hopefully, we’ve learned a few things since then. One of those things should be that, at the very least, humor involving oppression is far more effective when it comes from the oppressed group against the oppressors than the other way around. Because then, it’s just mean, and not funny. Which is the problem with right-wing humor.

  60. Jill’s NYU indoctrination serves her well… perhaps if Giles had pulled a Franken and called himself a satirist, all would have been forgiven… but given our girl’s kneejerk history with all things Townhall (eww, icky!), I rather doubt it…

  63. “Meth mouth” has caused huge increases in prison medical/dental expenditures in the last few years in places like Minnesota, with large numbers of white, rural inmates.

    Uh, nasty.

  64. I have to mention that Klan-esque groups are alive and well in Northwestern states like Idaho. And here in Indiana (I’ve met a few).

  65. Yes, there are still Klansmen around, and yes some drug problems and violence exist in rural America, but they are considered unacceptable to mainstream society. Country music has it’s issues and meatheads for sure, but it doesn’t have stars killing one another, and it can have award shows without people stabbing one another. It doesn’t promote crime, it’s heroes aren’t flesh merchants and drug dealers. Does it not disturb feminists that “pimp” is now a compliment?

  66. Yes, we do.
    “Subvert the Dominant Pimpiarchy”: How did the abusive, exploitative role of Pimp become the epitome of cool?
    http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2004/11/subvert_the_dominant_pimpiarchy
    Plus a lot of feminists didn’t like Eminem. Myself, I can’t even comprehend the lyrics and I don’t listen to rap.

    No one has slammed country music and no one has said that mainstream hip-hop is wonderful. I think we’re talking about the stereotype of blacks as thugs wearing gold chains and bandannas with rap vibrating out of ghetto blasters. The really scary music genre is white nationalist music – if you’ve heard any of the Prussian Blue or other white nationalist bands, they do promote crime and racial hatred.

  67. By no one, I admit that I’ve skimmed a lot of the comments and I’m too lazy to read them all over again now. Shame on me 😉

  68. Speaking of the Indiana Klan, I got a wacky story about the self proclamed grand dragon who lived in Knox, Indiana. He had all sorts of flags in front of his house, and he would place spray-painted signs of hatred along the road every so often. He was also a wife beater, shocker huh? Now what I don’t understand is if you are going to beat your wife, why do you not only keep guns but you also show your wife how to use and fire them? I ask that because he did do just that, and after one ferocious beating the wife had enough and got a gun and killed the guy.

    She went to trial and was acquitted of murder. True story.

  69. I think we’re talking about the stereotype of blacks as thugs wearing gold chains and bandannas with rap vibrating out of ghetto blasters. The really scary music genre is white nationalist music

    You obviously don’t listen to a lot of rap.

  71. Yes, there are still Klansmen around, and yes some drug problems and violence exist in rural America, but they are considered unacceptable to mainstream society.

    If it’s unacceptable, where is the handwringing and hysteria about meth babies? Where is the clucking about how white people are just, you know, prone to meth abuse and violence and bad music?

    For further reading on the Toledo riots, I give you David Neiwert. Not surprisingly, the coverage of the riots did not tell the whole story — that the Neo-Nazis were inciting violence, shouting racial epithets, intending to march without permits, and that the police were, nevertheless, arresting only black residents and protesters. Unsurprising that the day culminated in violence, since the actions of the Neo-Nazis were designed to incite it.

  72. Sample quote from Neiwert (emphasis mine):

    People like Bill White deliberately marched into the heart of a mixed-race neighborhood and incited a riot, which to no one’s great surprise got out of control (I think Michael Brooks’ predictions were uncannily accurate.)

    Their entire purpose was to spark a race war — and unfortunately, Toledo officials gave them the opportunity to do just that.

    But is there any discussion of that? Uh, no. What we mostly seem to hear are lectures about the innate violence of black people.

    As if a long fuse won’t get lit when someone holds a blowtorch to it.

  73. Zuzu makes an important point, one that I was mulling over in my head myself.

    Violence committed by white people, even violence that is organized and explicitly racist (such as lynching), tends to be explained in terms of individual moral choices, environmental circumstances (these white people have grown up in a milieu of racism and have internalized its values) or a combination of both. What we rarely if ever hear, and rightly so, is an essentialist explanation, i.e., there’s “something” about being white that makes white people commit violence, especially racist violence.

    In the case of violent behavior among black people, it seems to me to be more common to suggest racialized and essentialized explanations for such violence relative to white violence. Granted, it’s less acceptable to do so than it once was, but it still comes up.

  76. Yeah, that white nationalist music is really a scourge of society. You can’t even turn on MTV or the radio anymore without hearing the latest white nationalist jam.

  77. Yeah, we always talk about the ‘underclass’ but nobody ever wants to talk about the ‘overclass’.

  78. Sorry, Jon, but white supremacist music is parallel to hardcore music and more teenagers than you’d like to think listen to it. I hate to say it, people, but after being in this school for week three, these attitudes are alive, well, and condoned by authority. Wake up.

  79. In fact, that parallel has led to the coining of the term “hatecore” to describe white supremacist music. Compared with mainstream entertainment, the market for hatecore is small, but it nonetheless reaches into the millions of dollars worldwide and has actually grown since the early 1990s, when hatecore labels were being founded.

    Just because it’s not on MTV doesn’t mean it’s not out there.

  80. I like Liberal Larry’s take on this:

    But when a small band of [Nazis] descended upon a predominantly black Toledo neighborhood to denounce its residents as subhuman animals prone to violence, the community came together to prove them wrong by rioting, looting, and throwing rocks at police officers.

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