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To defeat white nationalism, let whites stop calling themselves ‘white’
After the horror of El Paso, people are asking deep questions about guns, race, and violence in America. There are a lot of good policy answers on guns and mental illness, but less that address the deeply rooted, systemic problems of race in America — and the way that white nationalists are getting increasingly well-honed at their strategic exploitation of it.
White nationalists are using the grievances of race to recruit and inspire, often to violence, at a scale not seen in many years. That’s because white consciousness has spiked in the face of demographic, cultural, and political changes, some of which is associated with decades of wide-ranging immigration. In particular, that white consciousness has found thought leadership from the Alt-Right, cheerleaders in the gutters of 8chan, Gab, and Voat, and, quite often, political guidance from President Trump himself.
Defeating white nationalism, however, is a long, slow road. I will argue the solution to white nationalism is not electing to office people of color, criminal justice reform, or booting Trump in 2020 (even as these are inherent goods). I will argue that the logical solution to white nationalism is the abolition of whiteness — by whites themselves.
