Column: Lessons of the audio leak: Solidarity is dead. Let’s ditch the label ‘people of color’ and replace it with ‘people of color’.
(1) A long period of racist and xenophobic sentiment, and even the current Obama administration, seems to have triggered a reaction inside white nationalist movements that has been going on for years.
(2) The reaction appears to have manifested itself in the most bizarre forms. Most of the reaction has been in the form of audio leaks to the press.
(3) I’d like to talk about the reaction from the press to the audio leaked from the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer’s speech to the white nationalist conference in D.C. in September. Why did the press go to such lengths to try and destroy him in this way?
I was surprised to find an interview on the New York Times website with Richard Spencer in which he called the media the “enemy” of white nationalism and said that it had been unfair during the campaign because “they did not show us who we are in the true spirit of the white nations.” He also said of the media: “They don’t want to take a stand. They don’t want to be called haters.” In the interview, he said: “I don’t think we’ll have to have a police state where you can literally wave a gun around, ’cause I think that’s a cop-tactic. At the end of the day, people are like me: They want to live in a free world with a white-nation and a free-press and freedom of speech – those are our rights.”
Why would he say something like that? Why would he call the press the enemy? I would presume that would be a reaction to the neo-Nazis calling the press the enemy of white nationalism which is exactly what Spencer said. The reason why the reaction from the media to Richard Spencer is so bizarre is that one would expect most of the media to be sympathetic