A Diatribe Against the Alt-Right and the Dangers of Predictions

I meant to write an entirely different post this morning. But I've been unifying all my disparate web presences here and uploading old back ups of other blogs to this blog. And in the process, I found a piece I wrote that feels eerily prescient in the wake of the rise of the Alt-Right and Ascendancy of President Trump and Trump's America.

I called the Post:

The Souls of White Folk?

. . .

And yes, the title was intentionally provocative. In the post, I point out that the legacy of White Europeans throughout the world is not good, to put it lightly. We have colonized and murdered, conquered and raped our way across the globe. I could easily line up a list of indictments and do so in the post itself.

If you are interested in properly educating yourself, I recommend some research into:

• The Congo Free State (The Belgium Congo)
• The Trail of Tears (United States of America)
• The Residential School System (Canada)
• The Lost Generation (Australia)
• The Amritsar Massacre (British India)
• The Middle Passage (The Atlantic Slave Trade)

And obviously this is just a sampling. Back to the original post however, because in the post I argue: " ...if the white folk don't find their soul and reclaim a collective identity that is positive- the world won't survive for much longer."

In the intervening years I have seen a strong case made for cultural identity on a smaller scale, taking pride in things such as Italian or Swedish cultural heritage, rather than white heritage.  This makes a reasonable amount of sense to me, given how diverse the cultures of Europe are, and thus, how diverse the cultural heritage of European descended white Americans would be. However, in the post I was primarily referring to ongoing damage caused to the planet ecologically.

But what is interesting (and not in a good way) is how the rise of the Alt-Right and Trump's America so clearly serves as a rejection of what I was arguing. The Alt-Right and the self-proclaimed deplorables are refusing to re-frame their cultural identities into something forward looking and positive. Rather than address the legacy as Germany did following World War 2 and the Nuremberg Trials, the Alt-Right are taking a stance of denial and pride in their monstrous past and nasty cultural heritage. They are doubling down, and fighting back against the progress made.

So I have to admit, looking back to April of 2010, I was right for the wrong reasons, and things are so much worse than I expected when I wrote those words.