White Student Unions and the New Face of White Nationalism

In the last several days an orchestrated launch of “White Student Unions” has resulted in such groups popping up on Facebook, alleging to represent “safe spaces” for white students at different universities across the country.

Though it seems these groups aren’t the creation of students at these universities and are more likely just racist Internet trolls, they’re emblematic of the new, more socially acceptable White Nationalism. And while the creators of these groups might not be the students they’re posing to be, certainly some of the people “liking” these pages and engaging in the comments of posts are white students at universities and other ignorant, impressionable white people.

Whether the White Student Unions are being made by students or racist Internet trolls doesn’t change that this is a serious issue. Particularly in light of the hostile climate Black and/or people of color face in many universities across the country—a climate that courageous Black protestors have forced into thenational discussion.

These White Student Unions shine a light on the latest version of White Supremacy, White Nationalism, and the modern Ku Klux Klan.

This newer version feigns a kinder and gentler worldview and has appropriated the identity politics historically oppressed groups have used as a tool to work toward correcting injustice and weaponized the concept and deployed it in the fight to maintain our nation’s white supremacist roots.

This latest face of White Supremacy is the heir of David Duke’s efforts to reform the image of the KKK into that of a political party rather than a hate group or terrorist organization.

This backward ideology of modern White Nationalism is bolstered by ultra-conservative media and think tanks that espouse and produce bigotry disguised as research, bias and hate speech disguised as fair and balanced news, and who promote a culture of white victimhood while simultaneously denying the real oppression faced by minorities in the United States.

As a result of this we have ridiculous public opinions becoming commonplace—for evidence of this look no further than recent polls showing that, “Half (50%) of white Americans—including 60% of white working-class Americans—agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem today as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.”

In this new age of White Nationalism, we have a GOP field fighting over who can be the most overtly fascist, barring asylum seekers from our borders entirely, or prioritizing their entry based on their religion, to win their Party’s presidential nomination.

In this new age of White Nationalism, we have a crowd of white people at a rally for the current leader of this GOP shit show chanting “All Lives Matter,” as its members pummel a Black person.

Make no mistake, though, this latest iteration of White Supremacy and Nationalism is just like the old, and the old version hasn’t gone anywhere. Indeed, it appears White Supremacists shot several Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis last night, reminding the world that regardless of how it’s packaged, White Supremacist ideology isn’t kind or gentle, but truly terroristic.

And now we have these so-called “White Student Unions,” parroting talking points found on the American Nazi Party’s website or echoed across social media bemoaning an imaginary “White Genocide,” that claims the changing of demographics in what they call “white countries” are evidence of the fictional tragedy that is White Genocide.

Now, regardless of how ridiculous you or I might find it to compare shifts in demographics, different birth rates among ethnic/racial groups, immigration policy, and such to genocide, these clowns’ point-of-view is becoming more and more acceptable among ignorant white people.

So, let’s consider a few of the points these hate groups and racist Internet trolls are trying to raise and break them down a bit.

First, from the American Nazi Party’s website:

“By 2025 – given only CURRENT population trends, coupled with this “amnesty” – WHITE AMERICA will be a total MINORITY in a nation that WAS ONCE THEIR BIRTHRIGHT! Does this please you? “HOW” do you think a White MINORITY will be TREATED – once it’s an established fact? Do you think that life for your children, and their children will be “business as usual”?”

And now from the Union of White NYU Students:

“We condemn the cowardly campaigns of moral subjugation and propaganda that seek to instill self-hatred and surrender within European-American youth and justify the continued invasion and degradation of the lands, institutions, and cultural heritage that is rightly ours.”

Among these statements there’s a shared effort to instill fear among white people by emphasizing the fact that white people won’t make up a majority of the US population before too long. Ironically, such fear mongering is a tacit admission by these White Supremacist groups that minorities are treated poorly in the US by the current and historic majority group—white people.

But they also confuse a few things, like the difference between majorities, pluralities, and minorities; and they ignores the realities of white institutional control.

First, while the US will be a “minority-majority” country in the next few decades, white people will still make up a plurality of the population. So relax racists, it’s not like you’re going to wake up on New Year’s Day some year and all of the sudden white people are going to be some endangered species—we’ll still be around and make up the largest single racial group in the US for awhile yet.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, institutional control has been a white (mostly male, cishetero, able-bodied, upper class) thing since as long as our nation has had institutions. And no, having one Black president didn’t change that.

In this instance, this control isn’t going to go away just because white people won’t always make up such an outsized portion of the US population. This control is written into the rules of the game—you know, because white people made up the game, wrote the rules, implemented them, rewrote them as we went, and continue to pretend the game is unbiased in the face of routine evidence to the contrary, and that we aren’t privileged, we’re just winning the perfectly fair game. And this institutional control exerted by white people (also known as institutional racism) will remain long after white people aren’t an overwhelming majority of the populace.

Unless we burn all the institutions to the ground and start fresh, that is. (Grabs torch).

The Union of White NYU Students’ reference to, “the continued invasion and degradation of the lands, institutions, and cultural heritage that is rightly ours,” at least partially accepts the fact that whites have exerted undue control of the lands and institutions and cultural climate in the US since its inception, while it also casually suggests these were rightly ours to control.

That’s some old school Manifest Destiny, White Nationalist bullshit right there.

Let’s be perfectly clear: White people stole this land. White people created oppressive, white supremacist institutions. And white people did everything we could to erase the cultural heritage of those deemed Others. That legacy of theft, oppression, and erasure… that, my friends, is white cultural heritage. And that, is nothing to be proud of or to form student unions to celebrate.

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