Neo-Nazi groups not comparable

By James C. Sida, Henderson

Saturday, Sept. 9, 2017 | 2 a.m.

I recently engaged in a back and forth with one of my former law enforcement colleagues who rhetorically asked why we never heard any outcry about the Black Guerrilla Family, Black Lives Matter and Black Panthers when they commit violence. He chided me by saying that it was funny how you liberals forget so quickly.

I pointed out that he was engaging in false equivalencies or “whataboutism.”

I went on to explain the difference between these groups and the so-called white nationalists, who represent a coalition of people who live in a constant state of paranoia and in fear of losing something. They are poster children for the zero-sum game, believing that if one group gets something, then another group loses something. Of course, history tells us that this is not true.

The point that I really hoped to make was that groups like the Black Panthers, Black Guerrilla Family or the Students for Democratic Society, which became most active in the 1960s, are ephemeral.

In other words, they burn hot and bright but they burn out fast. These movements that pop up from time to time have historically done more to inflame our sensibilities rather than cause any long-lasting harm. The harm that they do cause is generally not long lasting and does not impact large swaths of society.

On the other hand, the white nationalist movement has deep ties to two horrific events that have survived over many years and are stubbornly persistent and more violent. These two events are the rise of Nazi power in Germany and the secession from the United States by the South over the issue of slavery. White nationalism embraces the madness of the Nazi mindset that caused the extermination of over six million Jews and other innocents.

In the United States, what I refer to as the American Holocaust was born out of slavery. Slavery in the United States lasted over 250 years. In their refusal to grant African Americans basic rights, the Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws that lasted another 100 years.

The so-called “alt-right,” neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and white nationalists have several things in common:

First, they are based in irrational fear (the zero-sum game) or the need for authoritarian power.

Second, they are exceedingly violent with a long history of murder and abuse of innocent people.

Third, despite their repugnance to most of society, these groups seem to persist like a bad infection that won’t go away.

This obnoxious coalition of white nationalist groups has proven to be a stubborn stain on mankind and is intrinsically evil. To conflate the existence of other groups who demonstrate this kind of aberrant behavior minimizes or at least distracts from the long-time and radically violent nature of the protesters who ventured to Charlottesville, Va., with the clear intent to instigate violence and to promote their lunatic thinking.

That is why this is very different.