The State of White Nationalism: The Year 2009 in Review

[babsbunny]

http://www.irehr.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=42:the-state-of-white-nationalism-the-year-2009-in-review&catid=10:analysis&Itemid=23

Saturday, January 23, 2010 08:45 Leonard Zeskind .The presidency of Barack Obama dominated political events in 2009. Whether it was discussion of the bank bailouts last winter or the continuing failure of the government to solve the problem of depression-era unemployment, the blame or success will be laid on the doorstep of Obama’s White House. Whether or not Congress passes meaningful health care reform, it will be on this president’s watch. After announcing an American troop surge in Afghanistan, this administration now owns that war. And whether the fortunes of the far right and white nationalist movements rose or fell during the past year, Barack Hussein Obama will be regarded—rightly or wrongly—as the cause.

A militia revival, as noted by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others, did start during the last year. The militia movement was a ubiquitous feature of the white supremacist landscape throughout the mid-1990s, but faded after the Clinton administration cracked down hard in its last years. Many of the issues that spurred militia activity fifteen years ago are absent today. No martyrs to the cause exist, like the Weaver family in 1992 and the Branch Davidians in 1993 did. Further, the Supreme Court ruled in June that the Second Amendment insures an individual’s right to bear arms, and the Obama administration, unlike Clinton’s, has not made gun control a legislative priority. Support for Second Amendment rights and opposition to gun control are always in the sights of gunners Hence, there appears to be a smaller political space for militias this time around. Whatever their limitations now, however, any time that white paramilitary groups gather strength, the potential for organized racist and bigoted violence increases exponentially.

[David__77]

1. As an aside, were the Branch Davidians in fact racist?

I heard that they were a very diverse organization ethnically and had a non-racist ideology. I know, of course, that regardless of that they were "heroes" to the white nationalists.