{"id":1975,"date":"2017-03-14T14:42:07","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T14:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2017-03-15T16:38:36","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T16:38:36","slug":"white-supremacy-on-campus-an-ahistorical-campaign-of-racial-prejudice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/white-supremacy-on-campus-an-ahistorical-campaign-of-racial-prejudice\/","title":{"rendered":"White Supremacy on Campus: An Ahistorical Campaign of Racial Prejudice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Racism comes in many forms. Some strains mask themselves in institutional legitimacy and free speech. Others advance claims of victimhood, loss of religious freedom, or champion assertions that they are defenders of local custom and tradition. Regardless of its shape, however, racism is always the product of two forces: ignorance and malevolence. Racism is perpetually ignorant because it relies on ahistorical constructions of difference to advance universal assertions of racial, cultural, social, or national superiority. In this manner, racism is also always malevolent because it seeks to impose hierarchical configurations of \u2018race\u2019 in an otherwise multicultural, multiethnic world.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Where racism exists, violence follows. Whether in the form of physical altercation, civic dispute, subtle euphemism, public harassment, or state-sponsored campaigns of political disenfranchisement, violence is an inherent outcome of racial prejudice. Racists seek to defame, intimidate, or physically attack those they deem inferior both as a means to avow their own superiority and to defend the biological, cultural, and national \u2018purities\u2019 that make them a preeminent people. The problem for racists, however, is that a \u2018race\u2019 does not exist and never has\u2014at least in a primordial sense. Indeed, a \u2018race\u2019 is nothing more than a construction, a product of cultural practices that is built on linguistic commonalities, shared historical teleologies, and national myths. \u201cThe fact of the matter is that nationalism thinks in terms of historical destinies,\u201d writes the international studies scholar, Benedict Anderson<\/a>, \u201cwhile racism dreams of eternal contaminations, transmitted from the origins of time through an endless sequence of loathsome copulations.\u201d In this manner, racists can justify domestic repression and domination within national boundaries more easily than across them because \u2018the Other\u2019 is already here.<\/p>\n

The history of race and the origins of racism is long and violent, which brings me to Nathan Damigo and the association formally known as \u201cIdentity Evropa.\u201d This group is a neo-Nazi white-supremacist student organization crafted in the same mold as Richard Spencer\u2019s National Policy Institute. Identity Evropa\u2019s website claims that they speak for \u201ca generation of awakened Europeans who have discovered that [they] are part of the great peoples, history, and civilization that flowed from the European continent.\u201d The group rejects \u201cthe idea that our identities are mere abstractions to be deconstructed.\u201d In essence, Identity Evropa is a movement characterized by racism, but whose message relies on a veneer of legitimacy in the shape of a provocative mission statement, sleek website, and \u201chipster haircuts<\/a>.\u201d The group recently began a nation-wide campaign to spread its racial prejudice on university campuses known as \u201cProject Siege.\u201d Last week, Identity Evropa made its presence known at my home institution of Black Hills State University as part of this national effort.<\/p>\n

\"IE_Nathan
Nathan Damigo (very far left) and Identity Evropa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As someone who has dedicated his professional life to the study of humanity\u2019s darkest chapters, specifically European colonialism in Africa and the Holocaust, I am not surprised that white supremacist groups continue to advocate messages of hate and ignorance in the world today. What does astonish me, however, is that Nathan Damigo and his supporters are so willing to admit\u2014even celebrate\u2014their lack of historical knowledge. In a recent interview with The Tab<\/em><\/a>, an online news site launched by Cambridge University, Damigo expressed his indifference toward history in response to a question about Holocaust denial:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m just not really interested in history or any of this stuff. We\u2019re focused on the here and now and the issues that we\u2019re facing. Other than that, I believe in free speech, I believe in the First Amendment, I think people have a right to say whatever they want, question whatever they want. With things like [the Holocaust], I\u2019m neither here nor there. I\u2019m not a history buff. . . . We\u2019re an identitarian [sic] organization. We\u2019re not interested in historical revisionism or anything like that. We\u2019re concerned with identity and race and how it affects us as people of European heritage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Damigo expresses total apathy for the very history that he and his supporters seek to defend. Identity Evropa\u2019s poster campaign attempts to inspire like-minded citizens to \u201cSupport Your People,\u201d \u201cReclaim Our Future,\u201d and \u201cMake Europe Great Again,\u201d but behind the fa\u00e7ade of token generalizations and catch-all phrases, the group only offers sanctuary for chauvinism and racial bigotry.<\/p>\n

\"IE_Poster.jpg\"
Identity Evropa Poster<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I arrived on campus last week, I was dismayed to find a \u201cProject Siege\u201d poster on the walls of the History Department. Though troubled, I knew that the posters\u2019 intended audience was not me, but students from minority backgrounds and of color, the LGBTQ community, Muslims, Jews, and non-Christian religions in general, and anyone else who Identity Evropa professes has no part in \u201cwhite America<\/a>.\u201d Identity Evropa hides behind a guise of \u2018whiteness\u2019 only so it can publicly vindicate its true purpose: violence against communities who it deems adverse and foreign. When recently asked about how Jews \u201cfit into America,\u201d Damigo stated<\/a> that \u201csome aspects of that history get focused on so much that you miss the other aspects of it. One of the other aspects that\u2019s been really missed is Jewish power, Jewish influence.\u201d At first glance, people might assume that such an answer came from someone living in Weimar Germany in 1931, not the United States in 2017. But the fact remains that racism is not\u2014and never has been\u2014the exclusive property of the Nazi Party or Ku Klux Klan. Racism lies at the heart of every group that masks nativist fantasies with pejorative generalizations and blanket promises. History cautions us to be wary of such parties and organizations. \u201cWhat comes next can be very frightening,\u201d says Weimar historian, Eric Weitz<\/a>, \u201ceven worse than imaginable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Dr. Adam A. Blackler is an Assistant Professor of History at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, South Dakota. His current book project explores how Germans fashioned an imperial image of the Heimat ideal in response to colonial encounters in Southwest Africa. He is also completing chapters in two forthcoming edited volumes on the German colonial empire and a cultural history of genocide in the long nineteenth century.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Racism comes in many forms. Some strains mask themselves in institutional legitimacy and free speech. Others advance claims of victimhood, loss of religious freedom, or champion assertions that they are defenders of local custom and tradition. Regardless of its shape, however, racism is always the product of two forces: ignorance and malevolence. Racism is perpetually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2078,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[49653,92132,82,4291],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-adam-blackler","tag-identity-evropa","tag-racism","tag-white-supremacy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2078"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1976,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}