What will it take to put an end to this new racism of the woke thats emulating the real & overt racism of the past?
By Victor Davis Hanson
Racists those who assume those of different races always act collectively in predictable ways usually far worse than does their own tribe who charge racism assume... that unlike the proverbial wolf crier there is currently no downside to their hysteria or fantasies.
While such racist projectionism can often be a psychological tic that assuages the guilt of ones own rank prejudice just as often accusing others of racism is a peremptory careerist move to win media attention or job advancement.
The term projection more or less sums up much of the woke identity politics movement were hearing so much about these days in which obsessions with racial privilege and tribal exceptionalism are justified by accusing others of just such bias.
That is the racist who for a variety of reasons lobs Racist!" at others assumes that even when his tired charges are proven false he can argue these accusations always could be true and therefore no one would ever accuse a self-identified victim as a racist perpetrator himself.
For example a Louisiana State University student who falsely claimed she encountered a noose on campussupposedly planted by whites to intimidate African-American students such as herselfwas hardly contrite about inflaming tensions with a false accusation when the noose" turned out to be simply a dangling power wire cable. Instead of apologizing the accuser redoubled her claims: Considering what is currently happening in this country someone hanging a noose certainly seems plausible . . . Black students all over are being threatened for speaking out. Ive previously been threatened for talking about race at LSU."
The Logic of the Tribe
In some sense todays hip new racists have rejected the ideology of Martin Luther King Jr.
Segregation not integration is the new racist mantra by dorm by theme house by caucus by safe space by graduation ceremony.
True intersectionality is impossible for racists given that competing tribal agendas can never be reconciled. Far from creating force-multiplying woke ideologies by uniting various identities" black Latino Asian LGBTQ female and non-American.
It becomes (the high-minded call it Intersectionality these days) becomes a logical contest among professed victims in order to acquire preeminent tribal victimhood and with it DNA-sanctioned superiority.
The logic of the tribe leads to sectarian warfare not harmony.
- We see just that when Asians revolt against black and Latino preferences in college admissions.
- Feminists push back against the endemic misogyny of rap music that is given an intersectional pass to demean women and freely employ the n-word.
- Doctrinaire Islam makes few concessions for the Muslim convert to Christianity; he is still an infidel to be shunned even killed.
Enter the Anti-Enlightenment Squad
The new racism is epidemic among those in the so-called Squad the self-referenced nickname for four media-obsessed first-term Congressional representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) who without their daily charges of bias would largely be unknown back-benchers.
Take Pressleys recent formulation of the new racism at a recent Netroots Nation conference:
If youre not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice dont come because we dont need any more brown faces that dont want to be a brown voice.
We dont need black faces that dont want to be a black voice.
We dont need Muslims that dont want to be a Muslim voice.
We dont need queers that dont want to be a queer voice.
If youre worried about being marginalized and stereotyped please dont even show up because we need you to represent that voice.
In sum Pressley just outlined the classic anti-Enlightenment mindset: we are all permanent captives of our superficial race religion and sexual orientation. We must at all times think act and speak in such tribal fashion and do so monolithically and collectively adopting the party line as set down by elites such as Pressley herself.
Blacks who oppose affirmative action or Muslims who recognize Israel or queers" whose sexual preferences are incidental not essential to their personas are thus declared not authentic and as such are not to be welcomed by Pressley or others into the new racialist Democratic Party.
Ilhan Omar said the following in a 2018 interview with Al Jazeera when asked about purported American paranoiac fear of Islamic terrorism":
I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country.
And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe Americans safe inside of this country we should be profiling monitoring and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.
Omar was not merely racially stereotyping but lying as well.
African-Americans not whites according to the various Department of Justice figures commit a somewhat larger percentage of the nations likely total of annual homicides despite comprising a percentage of the population almost seven times smaller.
The circle always widens until racists devour one another
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of being a racist for criticizing fellow squad members. In turn Pelosi recently had called Trump a racist for his tweeting and declared that his efforts to secure the border were racist efforts to hurt the nonwhite.
No matter. There is no exemption from being charged with racism for old rich white and liberal females like Pelosi. In the new racist cosmology the multimillionaire Pelosi can never escape her white privilege.
One element of the new racism is thus Jacobinism the idea that the circle of racists always widens until the racists devour one another with charges that everyone but themselves is insufficiently racially woke.
On matters of immigration it is no longer enough to endorse the old bipartisan compromises on border security and amnesties or to see the problem as one of illegality. No longer is it sufficient to advocate making DACA the law of the land and extending amnesty to the dreamers."
Instead now the border has become for some presidential candidates an existential racial question of bringing in millions of supposedly nonwhite" rather than just illegal immigrants and in public photo ops escorting them as they illegally cross the border providing them with amnesty legal residency sanctuary from immigration enforcement and free health care while calling anyone a racist" who complains that such caravan immigration is not diverse legal measured or meritocratic.
Anti-Semitism Again
Another trait of the new racism is the old hatred of Jews or anti-Semitism.
Omar Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib want Congress to endorse the anti-Israeli Boycott Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement to isolate the Jewish democracy as if Israel was an international outlaw far worse than China North Korea or Iran.
Omar who recently said Israel has hypnotized the world may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel." has likened her effort to endorse BDS to the 1930s humane boycott of Nazi Germany. Earlier she claimed with a clumsy two Benjamins" metaphor that nave Americans were deluded by Jewish money and Benjamin Netanyahu into supporting Israel against their supposed own interests.
Ocasio-Cortez believes the detention centers at the border (where far fewer illegal aliens have died annually than during the Obama administration) are analogous to Nazi Concentration Camps and thus by extension the Holocaust.
Apparently she believes that the 218 tragic deaths in 2018 at the border (471 died in 2012) as a result of a massive wave of illegal migrants into the U.S. is analogous to the 6 million Jews who were gassed or starved to death during World War II.
In the puerile mind of honor student Ocasio-Cortez the 15000-20000 Jews who died on some days in the Nazi death and concentration camp archipelago are analogous to 218 accidental deaths at the border of those who entered the United States illegally en masse.
When everything is the Holocaust and everyone is a Nazi then nothing is and no one is. It is hard to calibrate whether Ocasio-Cortezs anti-Semitic editorializations were designed to downplay the Holocaust or libel her own country or both.
Being a woke anti-Semite is no longer any big deal. For the woke no one cares about having his picture taken with Louis Farrakhan (Barack Obama included) or mouths anti-Semitic tropes like Georgia congressman Hank Johnsons comparison of Jewish settlers to termites."
What will put an end to this new anti-enlightenment racism of the woke that is emulating the familiar overt racism of the past?
It will cease only when the majority of Americans of all racial heritages are brave enough to call out those projectionists who are obsessed with constructing or promulgating racism as the purveyors of hate themselves.
They are the sad and the pathetic dividers who seem to believe they are innately and collectively superior on the basis of their superficial appearance or creed.
Victor Davis Hanson is currently the Martin & Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush.
