Last Updated on October 3, 2013
There are two major threads to white supremacy: revolutionary and mainstream. The skinheads, neonazis and Klan are revolutionaries. That is the smallest faction. The mainstreamers are far more numerous and their rhetoric is strongly reflected in the Minutemen (anti-immigrant groups) and Tea Parties. The main difference between the two factions is their approach to electoral politics.
The revolutionaries reject electoral politics and the mainstreamers embrace it.
Zeskind’s book, Blood and Politics is framed around an analysis of the revolutionary/mainstreamer factions.
There is a third faction, the separatist anti-government survivalists known as the Christian Patriots. They propose withdrawal from society and creation of isolated areas under their own law and authority. These were the groups behind the militia violence of the 1990s. They draw on a mixture of revolutionary and mainstream propaganda and ideology. The hard core of the Christian Patriots are racist Christian Identity believers who rejected the overtly revolutionary approach of Aryan Nations under Richard Butler. John Trochmann of Montana, now a fairly obscure character, was the paradigmatic leader of Christian Patriot militias in the 1990s. Pat Buchanan’s political persona was a fusion of mainstreamer and Christian Patriot influences.
All three groups have adopted a core ideology of white racialist nationalism. The core to this is an idea of distinct racial classes to citizenship and the separation of races by both law and custom.
The sunlight v shunning debate is an old one. Every time there has been a crisis, the sunlight approach wins. The key to defeating reactionary racist politics is education and exposure. They work mostly by deception, infiltration and subversion and these tactics are impossible when they are subject to scrutiny and exposure leading to confrontation and rejection. Shunning them actually give them additional cover.
The worst setbacks to the Tea Party have been due to exposure, not people trying to ignore them.
–Paul de Armond, MetaFilter, October 1, 2010
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