racism

DEI Makes America Great, or How Trump Ended the American Century

~ Randy Blazak ~ Leave a comment

January 28, 2025

Watching Trump dismantle the very fabric of America is soul crushing. This is the final nail in the coffin of the American Century. Every day another pillar of democracy is attacked by a petulant man with deep-seated inadequacy issues. I fear for the America my daughter will inherit. But if Trump has is way of striking down the 14th Amendment, she may not even be an American.

On day one, Trump ended federal spending on DEI programs, a favorite bogeyman of some straight white men who see efforts for equality as “reverse racism” and a bunch of other complete b.s. that is viewed as threatening their “God-given” right to sit in the privileged seat at the top of the heap. The federal government now has the right to discriminate. I’ve worked in the DEI field for over 15 years and I’ve seen these men whine and whine. As one of those very privileged men, I’ve tried to talk to them, bro to bro, about how embracing the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion makes their own lives better, even more profitable.

But then they got the most insecure bully in the land as their “defender.”

The Trump chaos hits me on a personal level. Besides the fact that all my federal DEI work was just cancelled (so much for affording groceries), much of my work to make workplaces safer spaces for others, including women and people with disabilities, is unraveling. The racist attack on DEI mirrors the racist attack on Affirmative Action in years past. White men fear their hold on power is slipping, and it is. (It should be pointed out that the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action have been white women and white men who are veterans.)

I could write a dissertation about how Donald Trump is taking a big steaming dump on the vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. but let me make just two important points about DEI.

DEI programs make workplaces safer and more productive. A famous study in the 2000s found that when employees felt respected for their identities, they were 4.4 times more productive. That means that instead of spending energy dealing with Racist Johnny, Sexist Carl, or Islamophobic Betty, they put that energy towards getting the task at hand done. DEI programs can educate around issues like implicit bias and micro-aggressions that suck the energy out of employees who are members of marginalized groups. Instead of spending time negotiating the minefield of co-worker bias, they can focus on the work, which increases profit.

And these workplaces are more safe. Not just emotionally but literally. I did some work in the local construction field after black construction workers were harassed (including a noose being hung on a construction site). If I was a black worker who had been hazed by fellow white workers, do you think I’m going to concerned about white workers’ safety? Hey, if Cleatus looks like he’s about to step off a third story girder, I might just think, “Oh, let’s just see what happens.” Workers who value inclusion look out for each other. As they say in the military, you’re only as strong as your weakest link. There is great benefit in creating safety by creating equity.

Secondly, DEI programs can help creating workforces and leadership that reflects the population being served. “Merit” is a myth. This fable that skill required should be the only criteria applied ignores the, not decades, but centuries of discrimination that have kept millions of Americans, including straight white men with disabilities, out of career paths that allow them to create intergenerational wealth. As much as it makes MAGA soil their Depends, America is no longer a country for old white men. The piece of the pie that looks like the father on Father Knows Best is rapidly shrinking. There are now more women in the workplace than men (so men better know how to see them as co-workers and not “girls.”). My incredibly diverse Gen Z students don’t even know what the acronym “WASP” stands for. No amount of ICE raids (starring Dr. Phil) will change the changing face of America. Trump can try to kick trans people out of the military, but the American rainbow genie is out of the lamp. DEI programs can help facilitate these welcome changes in a way that sees Americans for who they are, not force them to hide in the attic to allow fragile white men imagine they are in control.

On Inauguration Day, which was also MLK Day, Trump dared to mention Dr. King’s dream. If Trump was a scholar instead of a buffoon, he would know that King believed that his envisioned “symphony of brotherhood” would not be achieved until the institutional levers of oppression were dismantled. DEI programs are a vital tool in getting us there, as part of our broad civil rights goals. My great hope is that Trump, Musk, and the other white men of privilege who have decided to wage war on American diversity, the vital need for equity, and the great cultural and financial benefit of inclusion, are met by a much larger movement that burns their ideology of hate in the ash heap of history. If not, making America the 19th century again will end the promise of American greatness.

Read: A Study Finds That Diverse Companies Produce 19% More Revenue and How Diversity Increases Productivity

Guilty Jews, Black Nazis, and Pet-eating Immigrants: Donald Trump’s Not So New Brand of Racism

~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

Sept. 21, 2024

A hundred years ago there was an organization in Weimar Republic Germany called Verband nationaldeutscher Juden, the Association of German National Jews (VnJ). They were fascist German Jews who opposed immigration (including by Eastern European Jews). They also fought against German communism and believed they were part of the racially superior German race. Their newspaper, Der Nationaldeutsche Jude, The National German Jew, had a circulation of 6,000 in 1927 and supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

The VnJ saw Hitler’s platform as good for the German economy. His fierce nationalism would serve to make Germany great again, restoring their might that had been destroyed by humiliating defeat in the first world war. The group saw Hitler’s emphatic anti-Semitism as merely a rhetorical tool to “stir up the masses.” Mainstream Nazis initially saw them as the “good Jews,” praised by Reich leaders with the refrain, “If only all Jews were like you.” After Hitler’s appointment to the position of Reich Chancellor in January 1933, critics of the VnJ joked that their motto was, “Down with us!” In 1935, Hitler outlawed the organization and the vast majority of the members and their families died in the Holocaust.

I always think of the VnJ when I see that “Blacks for Trump” guy.

Trump’s Long History of Racism

It’s increasingly difficult for Trump supporters to defend his over-the-top racist appeals. White guys will say, “But he’s got a black friend! I heard he gave a donation to Jesse Jackson! He CAN’T be racist!” But we’ve got the receipts and they go way back. They include the 1973 federal lawsuit brought against Trump for racial discrimination at his New York housing developments, the full page ad he took out in 1989 calling for the execution of the Central Park 5, his campaign to prove that President Obama was not a U.S. citizen, and the 2015 launch of his presidential campaign, where he said, and I quote, “Mexicans are murderers and rapists.” And there is so much more.

In 2019, after President Trump’s incessant blathering about an immigrant “invasion” at the Southern border, one of his supporters drove to El Paso, Texas to turn Trump’s words into action. There, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius walked into a Walmart and opened fire. He killed 23 Hispanic shoppers and injured 22 others. Crusius pre-attack manifesto, posted on 8chan, was full of anti-immigrant diatribes, lifted from the rhetoric of Trump and conservative television personality Tucker Carlson. The slaughter of innocents didn’t quell Trump’s xenophobia and in 2024 it has only increased.

The scapegoating of immigrants has a long history in the U.S.. “Dirty” immigrants were blamed for the “Spanish Flu” in 1918. (It started in Kansas.) The second era of the Klan, beginning in 1915, was fueled by anti-immigrant hysteria with the anti-black racism. The waves of Catholic and Jewish immigrants upset the dominance of Protestant culture. In 1924, the 6 million member-strong Klan successfully supported the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act, that severely limited immigration from non-WASP nations, including those that Donald Trump would later call “shit-hole countries.” Trump’s own reference to COVID-19 as the “Wuhan Flu” echoed the pandemic xenophobia a hundred years-prior. It’s not surprising that hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans exploded following Trump’s scapegoating.

The latest version of this has been Trump, and his Mini Me, JD Vance, and their retelling of the lie that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. It’s been proven that both Trump and Vance knew that the story, initially spread by a neo-Nazi group, was untrue. But it fed their anti-immigrant, anti-black mantra that (white) Americans are threatened by outsiders who have been “dropped in” (Vance’s term) to Small Town, USA by Democrats. The reality is that Springfield’s crime rate was higher when Trump was president and that the cat that was originally believed to be stolen by immigrants, Miss Sassy, was found safe it her owner’s basement. The impact of the lies of Trump and Vance have been devastating. There have been dozens of bomb threats, repeating Trump’s lie. Schools have been shut down and cultural festivals have been cancelled. The Proud Boys have marched in Springfield and the KKK have handed out flyers. Immigrants are being harassed and the city fears an El Paso-style mass shooting.

That Trump chose Springfield to trot out this old tired trope that immigrants are invading your town (and here they are legal immigrants, which is neither here nor there from Trump’s racist base). Springfield is Anytown, USA. There are 34 states with a Springfield (including here in Oregon, site of another mass shooting in 1998). Springfield was the fictional town on the TV sitcom Father Knows Best (1954 – 1960). There were no immigrants on Father Knows Best, Haitian or otherwise, to “infect the blood” (Trump’s words) of the country. There were no people color at all. No queer people. No disabled people. And women’s job was solely to support their men. It’s the “Great” Trump refers to on his red caps. Make America Springfield Again. And to do that, there needs to be “mass deportations” of anyone who doesn’t look like the mythical Anderson family.

And Trump has been very vocal that his mass deportation plan will be molded on President Eisenhower’s 1954 program,  “Operation Wetback.” Those sweeps rounded up nearly two million Mexican immigrants, many of them U.S. citizens and legal residents, and dumped many in the desert, across the border, leading to scores of death from heat. In July 1955, 88 deportees died in 112 degree heat, left without food or water. This is Trump’s immigration policy model.

Trump’s racism is also evident to his complete unwillingness to acknowledge that the casualties of his abortion bans have mostly been women of color. White women with resources can travel to safe states, but lower income women are stuck in Gilead. If Ivanka Trump wants to terminate a pregnancy, for whatever reason, she can hop a plane to California, but not so for less fortunate women, like 28-year-old Georgian Amber Thurman, who is dead and won’t be voting this fall. Maybe that was Trump’s intent. We’ve watched Kamala Harris, who is a human being, shed tears over these preventible deaths. Trump refuses to acknowledge them, even when Harris forced him to hear the details at the Presidential debate. They’re just black women.

Blame the Jews

Of course behind all this, just like with another sociopath who came to power 91 years ago, is anti-Semitism. Speaking to Jewish groups in Washington DC on Thursday, Trump said that if he didn’t win in November, the Jews would be to blame. And if blaming Jews wasn’t enough (Where have we seen that before?), he told his audience that if Harris was elected, “Israel would cease to exist in less than two years,” which a) is completely insane, and b) uses the same old anti-Semitic trope that Jews only care about Israel and no other issue. Jews are not a monolith. It should also be pointed out that Trump’s evangelical base loves Israel, but not because they love Jewish people. The see Jews as keeping the “promise land” warm for the return of their messiah, and then they will be dispensable. Trump did get a warm round of applause in DC, and some likely chanted, “Down with us!” (At these events, Trump also stated he would re-instate his Muslim ban to prevent people from coming to America from “infected” countries. An anti-Semitic/Islamophobic two-fer!)

Trump’s flirtation with neo-Nazism is also not new. He used anti-Semitic imagery to claim that secret sources of money was behind rival Hillary Clinton in 2016. He referred to the murderous Nazis who marched in Charlottesville in 2017 as “very fine people.” Trump hosted Nick Fuentes, a notorious neo-Nazi, at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and could not seem to get enough of famous Hitler fan Kanye West. “But he can’t be an anti-Semite! He has a Jewish son-in-law!” If you like Trump, he likes you. And neo-Nazis REALLY like him.

Trump’s Black Nazi

This brings us to North Carolina and the black man Trump described as “twice as good as Martin Luther King.” North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, an ideological basket case, has cast doubt on the occurrence of the Holocaust, praised slavery, and said he would prefer if women did not have the right to vote. Trump, endorsing Robinson for governor of the state, called him “MLK on steroids.” (Apparently, all Trump knows about King is that he was a black man who gave speeches.) This week it was revealed that Robinson, who has an established history of eating pizza in porn shops, had been claiming to be a “Black Nazi” on an adult website called Nude Africa, where he posted that he preferred Hitler to Obama. Robinson fits the profile of fellow black Republican Byron Donalds of Florida, who Trump said, “is one of the smart ones.” As long as Black Nazi praises Trump, he has the orange seal of approval.

Let’s be 100 percent honest. The core of Trump’s base are old white men who see their Father Knows Best America fading from view. They desperately want to make America 1954 again. They are thrilled that Trump is weaponizing a segment of the population’s fears about the rapid pace of demographic change. The good news is that the old white man vote is shrinking fast. Like Trump himself, that demographic is increasingly incoherent, shaking their fists at clouds. But those mean old white men can do a lot of harm to others on their way out the door, including training a new generation of white men, like JD Vance, to continue their politics of hate and exclusion. A massive rejection of Trump’s racist views of America is the only way we can move forward.

The Mulatto Panic: MAGA’s Racial Confusion

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

August 7, 2024

The first epic film was D.W. Griffith’s 1915 opus, The Birth of the Nation. The 193 minute-long silent black & white classic is based on the novel, The Clansman, which glorified the birth of the Ku Klux Klan after the defeat of the South in the Civil War. A central character is Silas Lynch, a mulatto who Reconstructionists elect lieutenant governor of South Carolina. Lynch, who lusts for a white congressman’s daughter, attempts to reign in the KKK, who ride to a violent victory in the end of the movie.

The word “mulatto” has fallen out of favor but has become relevant again with Donald Trump’s inability to define Kamala Harris’s racial identity,

The term mulatto was originated by Spanish and Portuguese slave traders to identify the children of African slaves who had been raped by Europeans and served to blur the color line between white and black. American slave states popularized terms like “quadroon” and “octoroon” to identify slaves that had a white grandparent or great grandparent. In 1910, Tennessee adopted the “One Drop” rule that dictated that if an individual was 1/32 black, they were legally a “negro.” The original 1859 Oregon constitution contained references to mulattos, including an 1849 exclusion clause that stated, “Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oregon that it shall not be lawful for any negro or mulatto to enter into, or reside within the limits of this Territory.”

So what’s the problem with mulattos?

Yesterday’s mulatto is today’s bi-racial person, which includes a massive percentage of the human race, including my daughter. But in the slave days this designation was essential as all non-European people were defined as less-than human after Pope Nicholas V signed the Dum Divervas in 1452. The decree paved the way for four centuries of chattel slavery. The dehumanization of non-whites also meant the offspring of white and non-white unions were not fully human, even if they looked white. And by looking white, these half-human beasts could sneak into white civilization. So the need to maintain the white/not white color line became the prime directive of white supremacy.  They believed then, as they do now, that miscegenation (“race mixing!”) would destroy the white race and, therefore, their God-given domain over non-white subhumans.

This is why Silas Lynch is the villain of The Birth of a Nation. His whiteness gets him access to the halls of power and his blackness brands him a “savage” with his sights set on planting his seed in white women and oppressing white men. Once the color-line is destroyed, white supremacists no longer can tell who is on their side and who is the enemy. Much of this narrative was revised when bi-racial Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008. Racists argued his whiteness would get him elected and then he would unleash blackness on white America. “He’s firing white people from their jobs,” a racist skinhead told me shortly after the election. “He hasn’t even been sworn in yet and we’re in a massive recession. Everybody is getting fired!” I told him.

Next to the fear of non-whites “passing” as white is the need to maintain a simple us vs. them color line. Race is a human invention so it’s always been challenging to maintain racial boundaries. One hundred years ago, the Irish were not considered “white,” and Irish immigrants were the target of the 1920s KKK. Most people who call themselves “white” are multiracial mutts. I’m Slavic on my father’s side and Anglo-Saxon on my mothers side (and, according to 23 and Me, 0.2 Middle Eastern!). We’re all “mulatto.” Among those who identify as African-American, 18 percent have identifiable white ancestors and a whole bunch of white supremacists of have black branches in their family tree. But the myth of racial purity continues to fuel racist ideologies over who is more “human.”

But there’s a certain brain type that can’t handle the complexity of our racial identities. They need people people to fit into one box or the other. They ask people of color, “What are you?” The many shades of gray explode their brains. “Are you Asian or Mexican?” “Um, I’m Filipino.” Their world is divided into good vs. evil, right vs. left, and white vs. black. “Context” is a liberal concept and non-duality is some foreign Buddhist mumbo jumbo. “You’re either my version of Christian or you are an agent of Satan.”

This is where Donald Trump’s buffoonery comes in. While speaking to a convention of black journalists last week, in one of his more unhinged word salads, Trump mused on when Kamala Harris “turned black.” “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” he said. Trump’s binary brain can’t understand that she is both, Indian and Black. “You can’t be both! That’s not allowed!” Tell that to anyone who defines themselves as Scotch-Irish. Unlike millions of Americans, Trump’s never had to choose which box to check on a form when more than one apply. And he’s never had anyone stare at his face and ask, “What are you?” 

Trump’s limited cognitive ability is reflected in his knuckle-dragging MAGA base, who immediately went to work attacking Harris’ racial identity. One Trumpie on my social media feed posted, “She’s not African-American, her father is Jamaican!” I had to give him a brief lesson on the African diaspora. He agreed that Bob Marley was black, so I took it as a win. The MAGA narrative that Harris is a “ho” and a “DEI hire,” is in line with their core values of racism and misogyny and their need fit human beings into handy categories. The 33.8 million Americans who identified as multiracial in the 2020 census have heard the “What are you?” question too many times and are just about done with trying to fit in a box for the comfort of white people. Their box routine allows them to define you. Shattering the box allows you to define yourself and that’s exactly what Kamala Harris is doing.

Kamala Harris is a successful woman, who is the daughter of immigrants. She has a complex racial identity and has a husband who actually loves her. And she loves America. You can see why that confuses Donald Trump and his base.

The Moral Arc: Did MLK Get This One Wrong?

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

January 15, 2024

In this world of soundbites, memes, and famous quotes as commodities, there are few people that are more misquoted or quoted out of context than Martin Luther King, Jr., who we celebrate today. I could make a full-time job out of correcting white people who quote one line in Dr. King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream Speech” to absolve themselves of the accusation of racism or cast the Black Live Matter movement of undermining King’s “dream.”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

They don’t know anything about the speech or why he gave it, other than that line. “Well, I was raised to be colorblind, so we’re good.” A. No, you weren’t, and B. No, you’re not. King was very clear in the context of THAT speech (You don’t have to read anything else!), that that dream cannot be realized UNTIL we dismantle the systemic racism that disadvantages people of color. You don’t get your “colorblind” desert if you have not first fixed the problem of racism. And, white people, we have not fixed the problem of racism. In 2021, MLK’s daughter, Bernice King, tweeted, “Please stop using out of context quotes from my father to excuse not working to eradicate racism. His ‘content of their character’ quote lies within a full speech, ‘I Have A Dream,’ in which he talks about ending racist police brutality and economic injustice.”

There’s another oft repeated line from King that bears revisiting in the contemporary context.

MLK’s last Sunday sermon was on March 31, 1968 at the National Cathedral in Washington DC, where he famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He was there to preach about American poverty and the Vietnam War. That day he also said, “This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.” But it’s the “moral arc” line you will see on social media today.

I always took great comfort in his moral arc quote. It made me feel that I was on the right side of history. That we might lose a battle here and there but the larger victory of social justice would be attained. “We shall overcome, someday.” Someday. That must have been motivating to civil rights activists in 1968, who had experienced their fare share of setbacks. President Obama loved the line so much he had it sown into a rug in the Oval Office.

But the problem is that there is a false comfort in the historical determinism of that line. That the defeat of the forces of inequity is an inevitability. It WILL happen. Now it should be pointed out that for Dr. King, a Christian minister, “justice,” was likely defined more theologically than sociologically. The “moral arc” line was borrowed from 19th century clergyman Theodore Parker. But for the rest of us, it meant that, sooner or later, racism would be vanquished and we could live in Star Trek-world, were things like racism, poverty, and homophobia would be sad relics of ancient centuries.

More I study history, the more I think that is a dangerous idea. Just ask Plato what happened to his vision for a just society. (Quick answer – Romans.)

I like to start all my sociology classes with a discussion of the Enlightenment. In the 1700’s, when we finally began to pull ourselves out of the centuries-long “dark ages,” when the anti-science “church” burned people at the stake, and the landed gentry ripped people’s bodies apart with such regularity, they created some serious intergenerational white people trauma. This “age of reason” gave us our modern sciences and the democratic experiment that is the United States of America. The values of rationality and empiricism guide us to this day, whether it is expanding voting access or sending probes to Uranus.

But will this enlightenment last forever?

Scholars generally mark the intellectual explosion that occurred after the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 as the start of the Enlightenment. But are we still in the Age of Reason? There was much discussion in the early 2000s, after the 9/11 attack by religious fanatics and George W. Bush’s war on climate science, that the Enlightenment was over. A new dark age was upon us. The rise of anti-intellectual and anti-Democratic aspiring authoritarians like Donald Trump would point us in that direction. The nihilism of the MAGA movement could not be more counter to the basic principles of the Enlightenment.

Students of history can easily point out the fallacy of MLK’s “moral arc” claim. History is more like a pendulum than an arc. Two steps forward, one step back. The science (and ethics)-based future we get in Star Trek may be promised, but it is not guaranteed. (And MLK was a Star Trek fan.)The future might look a lot more like Road Warrior. It’s completely reasonable to say that when my daughter is my age, the United States of America might not even exist. There are no DEI programs in the MAGA dystopia.

In the face of a rapidly accelerating climate crisis, an expanding gap between the wealthy and the rest of us, and populist authoritarians, like Trump, who know how to politically instrumentalize our fears, our utopian fantasies of the future, where we live in King’s envisioned “beautiful symphony of brotherhood,” could go off the rails in a flash. The barbarians are at the gate and they have red caps and fully automatic weapons.

The title of Dr. King’s speech that Sunday was, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” At the end of that speech, he proclaimed, “If we will but do it, we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood and peace.” The faith can’t be in the “moral arc.” Instead it must be in our dedication to redouble our work. Those who want to make America Jim Crow again are marching. Their voices are getting louder every day. I’m betting Martin would urge us to remain awake and put our shoulders to the wheel before the arc of the universe swings us into another dark age.

Danger, Will Robinson! Anticipating a Next Wave of Political Violence

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

October 3, 2023

“Hindsight is 20-20. Looking back, we should have known that would happen.” That is a common refrain for every major historical calamity, from Hitler invading Poland to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. We have an entire federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security, created, in large part, to address all the indicators the intelligence community missed in the lead up to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Will we ever have the science down that accurately predicts some calamitous event so we can prevent it?

The good news is we’re getting better at preventing bad things from happening. After the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, that killed 168 people (including 19 children), the FBI made the investigation of right-wing militia groups a priority and broke up several plots leading up to Y2K. Since 9/11, there are 44 known terrorist plots that were thwarted by government agents, including a 2012 al-Qaeda plot during the Obama administration to blow up the U.S. Capitol, and 2019 neo-Nazi plot during the Trump administration to kill numerous Democratic politicians and mainstream journalists.

These acts of mass violence are prevented for three main reasons. First, people who are close to the plotters come forward to authorities with concerns that there is some suspicious activity. “Hello, 911? I think my neighbor and his friends are building a bomb in his garage.” Second is old fashioned gumshoe detective work by law enforcement agents. “Our confidential informant in that anti-government militia group is telling us the plan of attack has been made.” But group working on this issue is the not-as-exciting work of data scientists. “The chat on Discord referencing gun training spiked 63.2% following the fourth Trump indictment.” It may be the data scientists that keep us safe at night.

Since 2021, I have been working on a federally funded project that looks for ways to reduce extremist violence across the political spectrum called Cure-PDX. The sheer scope of the attack of the January 6th attack woke up a lot of folks in both public and private sectors to the fact that the stability of our democracy might be more fragile than we ever thought. Part of this work has been utilizing data to find where the flashpoints for political violence are, and it is a sad reality that they are often school board meetings and LGTBQ events. How drag queens managed to trigger the Proud Boys would probably give Sigmund Freud a thrill, but there are real victims in these violent clashes. For example, last March, the Proud Boys and other right-wing activists attacked a crowd at a Drag Queen Story Hour in Manhattan’s West Village, a historically gay enclave of the New York City.

Focusing on the Pacific Northwest, our project has noticed more tension around these flashpoints. Much of this has been fueled by local right-wing groups, like the Portland Active Club, Patriot Front, and the Rose City Nationalists. These groups have been dubbed White Nationalists 3.0 by monitoring groups (and by the activists themselves). The violent skinheads of the 1980s and 1990s were 1.0. The keyboard racists of the “alt right” that rose under Obama and came to the mainstream under Trump were 2.0. These new 3.0 groups are not hiding behind keyboards, and are actively fashioning themselves as foot soldiers in what they believe to be an approaching race war. I was bantering with one last weekend and he was quite clear what his immediate agenda was:

Him: Be scared, buddy always be scared of the republicans lol

Me: done

Him: I’m sure

Me: I feel sorry for you and want to help you.

Him: You all could not survive three days without food

Me: Oh, lord. Let me guess. You are prepping for the race war.

Him: Absolutely and you will be the first I’m coming after

Much like in the Timothy McVeigh-era of the 1990s, there is a growing subculture of heavily armed anti-government activists who are hellbent on a second civil war in which the Confederate values of white supremacy are an organizing principles. Unlike the 90s patriot militia movement, thanks to social media and the encouragement of a certain four time indicted presidential candidate, this well-armed anti-government movement is massive. In the 1990s, it was a handful of guys building bunkers in Idaho. Now, it’s soccer moms, drunk on QAnon conspiracy theories, and suburban mixed martial art clubs training for combat with the “woke mob.”

2024 is gonna be a rough year. Gas prices aren’t coming down. LGBTQ people are not going to be shoved back into the closet, triggering Kid Rock and all his fragile boys who pretend this is the fall of the Roman Empire.  The southern border, which has always been a rolling crisis, will be shoved in our faces on the nightly news. There could well be another COVID lockdown (or whatever the next plague will be). And whether Donald Trump wins, loses, or gets thrown in jail, there are going to be some people who will be seriously pissed off.

We’re heading into a dark season and yes, we’re going to need whistleblowers and ace detectives to foil plots. But we’re also going to need an army of data scientists who are willing to scrape the data from the armpits of the internet and other electronic platforms (including CB radios!) where the enemies of civility thrive. With good data, we can plan interventions that include preventing people falling into the rabbit holes of violent extremism. It’s go time for democracy and we need science to save us.

Not Woke:  Mauritania, where slavery exists and gay people get the death penalty

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

September 7, 2023

I was reading recently how four Republican legislators in Florida, Dennis Baxley, Keith Truenow, Taylor Yarkosky and Stan McClain, were threatening the Florida town of Mount Dora (population 14,516) with “all legislative, legal and executive options available.” Mount Dora’s offense? A city-supported program that allowed local businesses to put “Safe Space” stickers in their windows, letting local LGBTQ citizens know they have a place to turn to if they feel threatened. The letter that Baxley, Truenow, Yarkosky, and McClain (their names should be known) sent Mount Dora is part of Governor Ron DeSantis’ “war on woke,” that has amped up the institutional marginalization of queer and BIPOC folks in Florida.

Let’s put aside the fact that the vast majority (all?) of the people who are hostile to “wokeness” couldn’t tell you what wokeness is, even if you offered to pay them in Trump Steaks. I would argue that caring about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI!) regarding historically marginalized communities is a good thing. Dismantling bigotry has generally been celebrated as a reflection of truth, justice, and the American way. But there is an army of powerful (mainly straight, white cisgender male) voices who are beating the drum, that woke is fundamentally transforming America and robbing people like them (straight, white cisgender males) of their God-given privilege. They want to make America Jm Crow again, when gay people were back in the closet, where guitarist Carlos Santana recently said they should remain.

I could give you a long lecture about how people respond to rapid social change, about internalized bias, or about how people are attracted to overly simplistic ideologies when they feel they have no personal efficacy. Instead I’d like briefly discuss a place where woke is dead as a doornail. No, it’s not in Ron DeSantis’ wet dreams. It’s in Mauritania, a country in western Africa.

First of all, anytime you start talking shit about a country in Africa, you MUST acknowledge the majority of that shit is the result of centuries of colonialism that have savaged the continent. So many of Africa’s problems are a direct result how those in the Northern Hemisphere have carved up the 12 million square miles and pillaged the land and exploited its people. Having said that, Mauritania has banished woke and become one of the planet’s most violent human rights abusers.

America is finally celebrating Juneteen (well, some of us are) to commemorate June 19, 1865, when the last slaves were finally freed. We can save the discussion for the loophole in the 13th amendment that allows for slavery in prison, but we generally agree that slavery in the United States ended 158 years ago. Slavery is alive and well in Mauritania.

Mauritania was the last country on earth to ban the practice (1981) and didn’t actually criminalize slave ownership until 2007, but the practice is still widespread. Contemporary slavery is rooted in the racist ideology learned from its European colonizers, with “white Moors” enslaving thousands of “black Moors,” as ethnic groups are ranked by skin tone and ethnic affiliation. The social caste system has led to between 10 and 20% of population living and working as slaves, according to a 2013 report. (About 10.3% of Americans were enslaved in 1860.) Now let’s talk about the Confederate flags flying in Florida.

On top of that, Mauritania is one of four African countries (along with Nigeria, Uganda, and Somalia) where being an LGBTQ person warrants the death penalty. (Several other African nations give long/life prison sentences for being queer.) Penalties for homosexuality are based on a strict interpretation of Sharia law, as religion is the primary weapon in the oppression of LGBTQ people in both Mauritania and the United States. While there have been no recent reports of gay or trans people being stoned to death in the African nation, there was a widely circulated 2020 story about 8 men who were arrested at a birthday party and imprisoned for “acting like women.” 

In 2023, the president of Uganda. Yoweri Museveni, signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act that mandates the death penalty for homosexuals. It should be mentioned that Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz condemned the act, saying “Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ is grotesque and an abomination. ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse.” There have been many cases of gay men being executed for engaging in homosexual sex in Saudi Arabia, a country controlled by the same religious law as Mauritania.

The arrest, imprisonment, and torture of political opponents has made Mauritania one of the world’s great human rights offenders. The sadistic abuse of those who have opposed the national government have been well documented by Amnesty International (2008), the U.S. Department of State (2014), and the United Nations (2016). Not dissimilar from the book banning happening in Florida, citizens in Mauritania are prohibited from accessing literature that counters state doctrine. Gender-based violence is also viewed as a cultural norm in Mauritania. (The domestic violence rate in Florida is 37.9%, compared to the national average of 29%.)

When A Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, author Margaret Attwood said that her fictional novel was based on the reality of events under religious and authoritarian regimes. “I didn’t put in anything that we haven’t already done, we’re not already doing, we’re seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress… So all of those things are real, and therefore the amount of pure invention is close to nil,” she said. In one form, Attwood’s fictional Gilead exists in Mauritania. Is it coming to America (or at least Florida)?

Watching the “war on woke” that seeks to make Florida (and America) more like Mauritania (and Gilead) should shake every freedom-loving American who cares about all off us, not just the exalted straight, white cis-gender men in the nation. In Florida, women have less rights they did two years ago (before Dobbs). Seeing DEI programs, rainbow flags, and black history classes being banned in the state may be DeSantis’s agenda to make Florida 1950 again, but I have to think that the majority of Americans are awake to what that looks like. If not, there are some gay black Moors in Mauritania that can wake them up. And for those who are so emphatic that “wokeism” must be stopped, I would beg you to stop and clearly define what you mean by “woke.” Woke might be something you actually believe in.

Either way, you know the establishment in Mauritania, who supports the death penalty for queer people and allows slavery continue, sees the “war on woke” as a vindication of their values. And, without a doubt, both Florida and Mauritania have redeeming qualities. Sandy beaches? But they don’t reflect the basic value of respecting the whole person and that’s the slippery slope.

Note: If you interested in helping LGBTQ people get the F out of Mauritania and other countries where they face state repression, please support the Rainbow Underground. Bring them here, where they are free to buy Bud Light at Target.  For more information, CLICK HERE.

Jacksonville is America and America is Sick: Can We Cure White Supremacist Violence?

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

August 29, 2023

You hate to say it’s textbook, but Saturday’s mass shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, that killed three innocent African-American people at a Dollar General store, fits a now familiar pattern. A young white man, living at home, with swastikas drawn on legally purchased guns, travels to an area associated with a minority community with the specific intent to kill non-white people. Terrorism experts, like Tim Clancy, refer to his method as a template.

The shooter, Ryan Palmeter, 21, penned lengthy a racist manifesto, alerting the authorities (and his parents) to his murderous intentions, and scrawled racist messages in white on his weapons. This is now the template, seen in Christchurch, New Zealand (2019, 51 killed), El Paso, Texas (2019, 23 killed), Buffalo, New York (2022, 10 killed), and other racist attacks. Brenton Tarrant, the New Zealand gunman, has become a role model for disaffected white males in America who see “their” country being “stolen” by the “woke mob” and their only recourse is mass violence.

But is it?

Much of will be made that this attack happened in Florida, a state framed by policies hostile to civil rights, critical race theory, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) efforts, black history, and a particular practice of disproportionately incarcerating its black population. African-Americans make up 14 percent of Florida’s population but 48 percent of its prison population. (African-Americans represent 12 percent of the U.S. population and about a third of the prison population.) Black Floridians are five times more likely to be locked up than white Floridians but offending is relatively equal across races. Florida is not a good place to be black.

On May 20, 2023 the NAACP issued a rare “travel advisory” for black people thinking of visiting the Sunshine State: “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.” 

But the assertions made about the imbedded nature of racism in Florida could be made in every state in this country, included here in the “woke” (whatever that means) Pacific Northwest. This happened in Florida but it could just have easily happened here in Oregon. As someone who is wrestling with a family a member with cancer, I recognize that denial is the first obstacle in solving deeply systemic problems. My brother is in denial that his Stage 4 rectal cancer is in multiple parts of his body and will likely be the cause of his death. Similarly, America in denial that white supremacy has metastasized and is present throughout our society.

It’s 2023 and America has a serious white supremacy problem. In 1992, during the Rodney King riots, a white student raised his hand to tell me, “Racism ended in the sixties. Black people are just complaining now.” I responded, “What day? What day racism end? Shouldn’t we mark such an important day with a holiday, or at least a  comparative plate that says, ‘The Day Racism Ended and Black People Just Started Complaining’?” He had no response because racism never ended. It evolved.

Diagnosis 

So dealing with the denial allows us to get to the diagnosis; America has a white supremacy problem in 2023 and it’s not just the criminal justice system. Like a cancer run wild, it is in every aspect of our society. Every system in this county, from schools to health care, is infected with white supremacist norms. There is still a “death gap” between black and white life expectancies in America. The extra 4 years that whites get has nothing to do with gun violence and everything to do with access to health care. But it’s also in all of us. The most progressive liberal Barbie-loving, Bud Light-drinking American, white, black, or otherwise, internalizes white supremacist ideas. I’ve seen it in my young daughter and in myself. Racism is a cancer.

The good news is many of us are treating it. We’re reading, learning, and talking, and acknowledging our mistakes, and building our resistance with healthy doses of antiracist ideologies. We’re exercising our antiracist muscles in hopes of exorcising the racist demons inside us. But a whole bunch of people aren’t. And they are ripe for body crushing tumors.

The treatment

I don’t know if there will ever be a cure for cancer. It’s a slippery thing. There are a bunch of treatments, including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. My brother is in chemo but he thinks buying pills advertised on InfoWars will save him. Who knows? He might be right. Racism is much the same. We know education and interaction with different populations can serve as a good inoculation, like sticking to a solid Mediterranean diet (olives!), but it’s not perfect. Greeks die of cancer and white people in diverse Florida get infected with Stage 4 racism.

So, like investments, you want to diversify your treatment options (to mix metaphors). My brother can stick with chemo and put his hopes in turmeric. When treating (not curing) racism we need a number of options for different stages of sickness.

So let’s come back to Jacksonville. We should not go any farther in this discussion without acknowledging the incredible trauma that the August 26 attack inflicted on black people across the country. To be black in America is to be constantly reminded that there are people who want to kill you for being black in America. I am writing this in a bar in Northeast Portland and I happened to open my laptop next to a young African-American man who noticed me writing.

Him: What are you working on?

Me: I’m writing a piece about what happened in Jacksonville on Saturday.

Him: They will never stop killing us just for existing.

I didn’t have to tell him what happened in Jacksonville. He’s black. He knew. And he didn’t say “They will never stop trying to kill us,” because we white people are killing them, and not just in discount stores.

So doctors who view black pain differently than white pain (and recent research shows they do), might need a different treatment plan than neo-Nazis who draw swastikas on their AR-15s.

Could Ryan Palmeter have been treated?

Ryan Palmeter, the Jacksonville shooter, is dead. His racism killed him, along with three innocent people who he took out on the way. He initially wanted his killing field to be the halls of Edward Waters University, a historically black college, but he was turned away at the gate. He is not here to answer for his crime. He has ceased to exist. But we are left wondering what could have been done to prevent this wounding of America.

According to the FBI, 80 percent of terrorist plots that are thwarted are stopped because someone close to terrorist came forward. They contacted law enforcement with concerns or talked the potential terrorist into turning themselves in. That’s a lot of carnage that didn’t happen because someone acted. Palmeter lived with his parents and in the days to come we might learn why his parents did not intervene. (Palmeter had come to the attention of authorities in the past.) But what if others had done so?

We will likely get a glimpse of Palmeter’s manifesto, what Jacksonville Sheriff TK Waters called a “diary of a madmen.” And we will learn that Palmeter had been building to this attack over a long period of time. He didn’t suddenly become angry at blacks on Friday and go on a killing spree on Saturday. There will be a long trail of red flags that pointed to his escalation towards terrorism. Obviously, he had been studying previous attacks, including Christchurch, Buffalo, and others. What if someone had seen this young man’s obsession with violent racism and stepped in to divert his path to death?

All of us are credible messengers to someone. There is at least one person on this planet who cares about what we have to say. What if some of those people in Ryan Palmeter’s circle had said, “Dude, what’s going on? I’m worried you’re going down some black hole that you’re not going to come out of.” And if had replied, “Well, black people blah, blah, blah….” And then his credible messengers could have said, “Are you 100% sure that’s true? Where did you learn that? And if it is 100% true, what’s the most effective way to do something about it? It’s probably not violence. Let’s look at other options.”

Violence has become an unacceptable norm in this country. It’s too easy to utilize gun violence as a form of expression. “I’m angry at the world, so I want the world to suffer.” But we’re all angry about something. I’m angry that CenturyLink charged me for three months of wifi after I had their router unplugged. I could go shoot up a CenturyLink kiosk at the mall or I could try to be better about keeping track of my bills. Grievances can be incredibly emotional but we have choices about what to do about them. Sometimes we need a little help figuring that out, especially if we are young men with access to high powered weapons.

Treating Stage 4 racism

In my line of work I encounter a lot of angry white men. They have been told that all of their problems are because of “them.” And the scapegoating comes from the hills to the ivory halls. They haven’t learned that for every problem they’ve got, people of color have 99. They think “their” country is being stolen. But it’s never been their country. It’s only ever been our country. If we can empower the credible messengers among us to have those hard conversations, things may sink in with those angry people. That includes some kid who has been hanging out on fringe websites, like 4chan, and drafting his manifesto. “Yeah, I never thought of it that way. Killing people is probably a stupid idea.”

We’re not going to “cure” every racist mass murderer, like the one who put Jacksonville in the news on Saturday, but there is a chance that this treatment changes the culture, making it more resistant to racism, like getting Americans to eat more Mediterranean food. And that these intervening conversations may help to de-escalate situations that might otherwise add to America’s long national nightmare of hate crime. For those who suffer from the trauma of our past inaction, it’s worth the effort.

How to Be Less White

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

April 6, 2023

White supremacy is a real thing. Let me be more specific, white supremacy in 2023 is a very real thing. And it’s not just Klansmen and whoever pays the “Blacks for Trump” guy to stand behind the GOP’s favorite felon at every rally. It’s in all of us who have grown up in a society that brainwashes us to believe “white” is the standard to judge all other races by. If you think Jesus Christ was a white dude, you are a victim of internalized white supremacy. And White Jesus has done more damage than any Klan rally ever could.

I shouldn’t have to convince you of the damage all this white supremacy has done on people of color. From the Mexican-American woman who is considered “fiery” Latina to the black man bleeding in the middle of the street because police assumed he had a gun, and a trillion other examples of micro-aggressions, discrimination, bias crimes, and hate groups dreaming of genocide, I shouldn’t have to convince you. But if you are a white person who thinks racism magically vanished in the 1960s and all this is liberal fantasy, just read any account by a person of color. (I have been reminded that it is not black people’s job to educate white people about reality.) And don’t you dare say, “I was raised to be colorblind,” because you weren’t.

This isn’t about how white supremacy hurts BIPOC folks. It’s about how white supremacy hurts white folks.

As a feminist scholar, much of my work centers around how patriarchy hurts men. Yes, we benefit greatly from it, but it also squeezes us into a small box called “masculinity,” where you better not “cry like a girl,” and solving a problem “like men” means beating the shit out of each other. There’s a reason women live, on average, seven years longer than men. Whether it’s young men popping wheelies in crotch rockets on the interstate or older men not going to the doctor to have that lump looked at, men’s internalized sexism presents them infinite stupid ways to die. We are afraid to be vulnerable and it is killing us in droves.

Similarly, white supremacy puts us white people in a bland box. The monster of American assimilation screams at non-WASPs to do their damndest to look, think, act, pray, and eat as WASPy as possible. But his “melting pot” con also burns people of European origin. It tells them to give up their ethnic identity and morph into this imaginary, but powerful, thing called “white people.” How many times have you heard a white person describe themselves as an ethnic “mutt”? Whites gain entry into an elite county club but the price is their beautiful culture.

The category of white people is a relatively recent invention. There were no white people before the late 17th century. There were European people but there were no white people because there are no people who are the color white. (Ghosts not withstanding.) White people were invented to distinguish themselves from “black” Africans (who are also not the color black) to rationalize the dehumanization of Africans for the purpose of chattel slavery. The invention assured that even the most impoverished white person would perpetually hold power over the masses of earthlings now defined as “non-white.”

So how can we help “white” people escape the yoke of slave master?

There are three parts to this strategy. The first two must be undertaken before the third can even be considered as an option. The first is the need to acknowledge the expansive privilege that goes along with being considered white. Not only are you white folks more likely to get the job and less likely to be profiled by the police, you’re more likely to not have to think about the issue of race. Ever. This extends to the shade bias of colorism. Barack Obama has had it a lot easier than Jesse Jackson. My bi-racial daughter presents as “white,” and will escape much of the hell her Mexican cousins would endure in the same settings.

Second is the importance of taking an active anti-racist life position. Don’t tell me, “I’m not a racist.” That’s crap. Internalized white supremacy makes us all racist to a degree. I am a life-long anti-racist educator. I would never say I’m not racist. The question is, what are you doing to fight the evil of racism? And if you are “white,” what are you doing to dismantle your privilege? If you are a liberal white person and you think listening to Beyoncé and putting a Black Lives Matter sign in your yard is enough, you are part of the problem. Roll up your damn sleeves and get to work, even if is just unpacking your own internalized white supremacy.

OK, here’s the payoff that will make your white lives matter. Stop thinking of yourself as a white person and reclaim your ethnicity!

Even if you are “mutt,” you have an ethnic identity somewhere in your family line. And ethnicity, unlike race, is culture and food and music and history and celebration. My last name, Blazak, is an Americanized Slavic name. My great grandfather came to America in 1891 from Prague (at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the assimilation started. My mother’s family were English immigrants in the 1770s. According to genetic test 23 and Me, I’m a quarter Czech and a whole bunch of other stuff (including 1% middle eastern!). So I chose Slavic as my primary cultural identity.

Rediscovering my Slavic roots has been liberating, from diving into the rich history of Czechoslovakian literature to helping my daughter make Polish pierogis each Christmas, there is so much to uncover. The de-assimilation includes learning about my family’s buried Catholic history and the heroism of my Slavic cousins in tearing down the Iron Curtain. I first travelled to Prague in 1991 and immediately felt a part of the land of the Velvet Revolution. My connection to that people was a major factor in my decision to head to Ukraine last spring to help people who physically looked like many family members. I learned, while I was there, that there is a small Polish town on the Ukraine border called Błażek, the likely starting place of my great grandfather’s clan. I don’t have to suffer from ethnic envy. I have an ethnicity and it’s wonderful. (Now if I could just perfect the polka.)

White people get a small version of this every St. Patrick’s Day, when they struggle to identify some lone Irish chromosome in their DNA. “My great grandmother’s wet nurse was from Killarney! Give me a beer!” On March 17th each year, white people briefly discover they are “ethnic.” What if we did that everyday?

There’s a good chance that if you are in the white people club, you have more than one ethic history in your family tree. That’s even better. Spend some time shopping from the menu and pick the one that most speaks to you. (Helpful hint: Pick the one with the best food and the fewest slave traders.) “White pride” is racist A.F., but “French pride” is cool as shit! Start finding restaurants, festivals and events that cater to your new ethnicity. You will see me every August at Portland’s Polish Festival drinking pilsners with my fellow Slavs, gorging on plates of latkes.

So stop being white. You have so much to gain by being your chosen ethnicity. And if you are adopted, even better! Just choose a random ethnicity out of a hat! (I might suggest Czech as a good option.) Stop with the self-defeating “mutt” business that forgoes your rich ethnic history for the power mad invention of whiteness.

Racists often ask me, “Why do you hate white people?” Obviously, I don’t. I hate whiteness and what that social construction has levied on the world. Europeans and European-Americans have done many amazing things. The invention of the bidet, for example. White people, as a category, have propped up centuries of violent oppression. That’s not a club I want to be a part of.

So help me destroy it.

Foreshadowing Fascism: The Spike in Anti-Semitism is Bigger than Trump and Kanye

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

December 7, 2022

Every December 7th, we remember the 1941 attack on Japan by imperialist Japan. December 7th, 1941 is also the date that Hitler made his “Nacht und Nebel” (Night and Fog) decree, the order that instructed the Gestapo to round up all the enemies of Nazism in the lands controlled by Berlin, and send them to concentration camps. Sadly, many of those who supported Hitler’s anti-Semitic vision were political activists in the United States. That included aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, spokesperson of the America First Committee, founded in 1940. Four days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States, declaring that Franklin Roosevelt was a spawn of the “eternal Jew.”

It’s important to remember that the Holocaust didn’t begin with gas chambers. It began with anti-Semitic hate speech. The fact that former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump gleefully dines with anti-Semites like Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, tells Proud Boys to stand by, refers to the neo-Nazis of Charlottesville as “fine people,” and has routinely retweeted disinformation from white supremacist accounts should exclude him from any political credibility whatsoever. Instead, it places him in the center of right-wing politics that has always had its right foot in the mud of anti-Semitism. Blaming the Jews isn’t back. It never went away. It’s now just got a media platform so expansive it would make Father Coughlin drool on his frock.

First, let’s dispense with a crucial piece of bullcrap. Saying, “I can’t be anti-Semitic, I support Israel!” is like saying, “I can’t be racist, I support the Lakers!” Support for Israel is not the same as support for Jewish people (including Jews who are critical of the state of Israel). Evangelicals see Jews as “unsaved people,” who are just getting the Holy Land ready for the return of Jesus. MAGA support for Israel is inherently anti-Semitic. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the MAGA subculture has plenty of neo-Nazis, like Nick Fuentes, it its ranks.

This isn’t about Trump and “Ye.” There has been a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes and incidents over the last few years. The ADL reported that 2021 was the highest year on record for anti-Semitic incidents and 2022 looks like it could end up worse. Oregon has already logged 257 bias crimes and incidents with Jewish victims this year. Just last month, New York City saw a 125% increase in hate attacks targeting Jews over the previous November. Trump and Kanye just make it more acceptable for those people to come out of the shadows.

While the Jewish people have a long history of oppression, the Adolph Hitler/Kanye West version of anti-Semitism has a fairly recent starting point. The 1789 French Revolution not only brought the promise of democracy to Europe, and the end of the divine right of kings, it emancipated French Jews, making them full French citizens. So when the defenders of church and monarchy needed a convenient scapegoat to blame the revolutionary chaos on, the “anti-Christian” Jews were an easy target. Aside from the fact that European Jews had a fairly good reason to not be fans of the Catholic Church, Jewish participation in the French Revolution was fairly minimal. And yet a new myth was born; the pro-democracy/anti-church rule movements around the globe were the work of secret cabal of Jewish rabbis. The puppet masters; controllers of banks, media outlet, competing political parties, and all things liberal.

This new belief that Jews “control the world” spread like wildfire as the old empires began to crumble. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the bizarre conspiracy theory was codified in a supposedly real (but fully fabricated) document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was used to blame the Russian Revolution on Jews and used by Henry Ford to blame unionization efforts on the “international Jew” (the title of a series of booklets Ford wrote in the 1920s). The conspiracy theory became equally popular among jihadists and Neo-Nazis into the twenty-first century. We are almost a quarter of the way through the century and Trump acolyte Kanye West’s proclamation that “I like Hitler” on disgraced conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show barely sparks a response from the Learned Elders of the Republican Party. That should make the world say, collectively, we’ve seen this movie before.

Volumes have been written on how the authoritarian tendencies of Donald Trump map on to other nations’ slide into fascist rule. American democracy is not guaranteed and Trump’s recent claim that the U.S. Constitution should be “terminated” is straight-up Germany 1933. All we need is an economic collapse to send the “stable middle” into a panicked blame-game and a charismatic figure to convince them that all their problems are because of George Soros/drag queens/woke bankers/deep state agents and we’ve got pogroms in the streets of America; the Proud Boys and their ilk, who have been on “standby,” leading the charge to “make America great again.”

This might seem like a lot of hysteria but let me conclude with two thoughts. Every single Jewish person has a deep personal connection to the violence of anti-Semitism. Every news story about a synagogue covered in swastika graffiti, or about Jewish people attacked just walking down the street, or another “crazy” claim about Jews by an popstar who has 16 million followers on Instagram is a reminder of the long history in the belief that the complete annihilation of the Jewish people is a good thing that is both dreamed about and acted upon. The trauma of living in that world must be immense and yet the Jewish people continue to contribute to a world that imagines destroying them.

Finally, as I’ve written, earlier this year, I spent a snowy April day at the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps in Poland. After walking though the gates that still read, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work sets you free), I suffered my first panic attack, realizing that it was all very real. A population, motivated by fear, was willing to commit mass genocide. Children, like my daughter, were ripped from their parents arms and thrown into the fire pits of Birkenau. Why? Because they were “dirty Jews.” I stood on that spot and wept. Because, unlike what certain guests at Mar-a-Lago believe, the Holocaust happened. And, like certain guests at Mar-a-Lago hope, it could happen again.

We must stand together against this insanity or it will be our children who will be thrown into the fire pits.

Panic in Auschwitz: Putting the Present Moment in Context

~ Randy Blazak ~ 6 Comments

“The present moment began with fire. And still, it burns.” – Ben Okri, Nigerian poet

April 2, 2022

Once again, I find myself in a white van, crossing the, now snow-covered, fields of southern Poland. My very first record, Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love” is playing on the radio. The lyrics hit at an odd angle, “I just might turn to smoke.” Because we are headed to Auschwitz. Seeing the upside down world of April Fools Day, I try to make a joke with my fellow passengers, but my wartime dark humor is not received well. I was scolded earlier in the week for posting that the guy who was snoring in the bomb shelter we were sharing in Lviv, Ukraine made me pray for a bomb. I get it. But humor is also a way to cope with the endless trauma of this world. The DJ, sharing my skewed take on the day, next spins Ella Fitzgerald singing, “Let it Snow,” a Christmas classic in April.

Maybe the awkwardness was to prepare my brain for what was to come. How does one plan a day-trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camps? How do you transition from this moment to that one? I’ve been a student of the Holocaust for as long as I can remember and lectured about the camps for 30 years. In my recent Research Methods class at the University of Oregon, I presented gut wrenching evidence of how Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele perverted the values of science in a sadistic attempt to demonstrate Aryan superiority. My life’s work revolves around studying neo-Nazis who both pretend to believe the Holocaust never happened and fantasize about perpetuating similar acts of genocide. The previous day, I had wandered around Krakow’s old Jewish district that had been emptied of Jews by the Nazis, except for the lucky few who were rescued by Oskar Schindler. It was important for me to do this.

The van carried a varied lot, an English couple from Birmingham, a Norwegian couple, a young German woman who must have been filled with dread and her English friend who puked, on and off, during the hour drive from Krakow because she had had too many shots of vodka the night before. Our driver, who went by Mike, was wise enough to ease us into the arrival into hell. He took us to his “secret location,” which was an abandoned box car on a track between the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps that had been used to carry the doomed to their final destination. There, in the snow, I began to slip through time.

Auschwitz is where it is because Oświęcim, Poland was a railroad hub, and industrial town that could manage the importation of countless slave laborers and then the millions who were to be exterminated. It still feels like such a town, ringed with McDonalds and KFCs when you arrive. For better or worst, the area around the camps has been preserved in amber. When we arrived at the Auschwitz tour center, with the crematorium chimneys visible behind it, snow fell gently down, smelling cleaner than the ash that fell 80 years earlier. In the gift shop, I bought a copy of Ellie Wiesel’s Night and watched the other tourists. Some stared somberly, some teenagers laughed, as teenagers do, and a group of Israeli students, draped in their flag, did both. I held my breath.

My group got their headsets so we could better hear our tour guide, a Polish woman in her late sixties who had lost two uncles in the camp. We stepped back into the snow and walked under the “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”) gate as she began to describe the buildings. For the first time, I had a 360 degree view of this thing. I could see the grey clouds above and the mud below my boots. This was not a fantasy, a conspiracy, or a scene from a film. This was real.

The tour had just started and I began to hyperventilate. Then I began to sob. I got light-headed and thought I was going to pass out. I had to lean against one of the barracks that had housed 500 prisoners at a time. Nothing like this had happened to me before. I think I was having a panic attack.

It was the realization that this was a real place and that horror had actually happened. Holocaust deniers be damned, the systematic annihilation of millions of men, women, children, and babies was carried out with methodical precision here from 1940 to 1945. I could feel the terror and it was too much to bear. All those books and lectures and movies and documentaries and sitting listening to Holocaust survivors, choking on the pain in my throat. It all happened in this spot and my body convulsed at the realization. The weight of what humanity was capable of in its darkest moment.

I sat down for a bit, half listening to our presenter, half trying to get my bearings. I flashed to a scene in Schindler’s List. The black and white film had one moment of color. A little Jewish girl in a red coat, her body later appears in a pile of corpses. It was 1993 and she reminded me of my then 5-year-old friend in Prague, Suzanka, who was living too close to the genocide in Yugoslavia. I burst out sobbing in the Phipps Plaza movie theater. The memory, as I sat on barrack steps in Auschwitz, caused me to burst out sobbing again.

Gradually, I wiped my eyes and rejoined the tour as we entered the slightly warmer barracks and viewed their displays. Our guide returned to the refrain, “You must remember,” and how the total count of those exterminated may never be known, because the Nazis burned the paperwork along with the bodies. Each display was more devastating than the last; children’s shoes, human hair removed from the gassed to make into fabric, luggage waiting to be claimed. The one that put me back in my panic was the massive collection of crutches, canes, and prosthetic limbs of the “invalids,” deemed too defective to work and put to immediate death. That specter of ablism did not fade with the Third Reich.

I soldiered on for the rest of the tour, through gas chambers, past the gallows, in front of the “wall of death,” where prisoners were shot, and down to the ovens, and finally to the spot where Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss was finally hung on this day (April 2) in 1947. But this was only the first half of the trip. Auschwitz had a sequel, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, ordered built by Heinrich Himmler in 1941 to accelerate the extermination of the Jews. Mike ferried us over to the second, much larger camp, much of which was destroyed by the Nazis at the end of the war in a futile attempt to hide their crimes. Our guide walked us along the train tracks where prisoners were divided between those who would be forced into labor than those who were marched straight to the gas chambers. Babies and small children were thrown into open burning pits. I stood there, as a father, unable to move. Where was goodness? Where was God? Where was the empathy that should have been present among Hitler’s willing executioners?

On the ride home, we were all silent, including puking girl. I thought about what I had seen in Ukraine; the faces of frightened children forced out of their homes by an unprovoked war-monger. I thought about the concerns of my Polish friends, that nuclear weapons would turn them to ash like those who left Auschwitz and Birkenau through the chimneys. I thought about the new rise of authoritarianism in the form of Putin and Trump, that gleefully weaponizes hate and the threat of violence. I thought about the anti-trans laws and voter suppression acts that are slowly eroding democratic freedoms in my “beacon of liberty” home country.

The first chapter of Ellie Wiesel’s Night is a cautionary tale. The Jews who lived in his Hungarian village thought they were far enough from the war not to worry about the rumors of Nazi anti-Semitism. When they were pushed into a ghetto, many thought it was to protect them from the violence of the Allied invasion, and when they got to the platform at Birkenau, and Wiesel saw his mother and sister forced into the line for the gas chambers, many thought that no such horror would be allowed in the mid-twentieth century. The Holocaust was not a sudden tsunami of death. It was a slowly rising tide that drowned those who never realized they were so far from the shore.

That tide is rising again. I will not sit on my hands and hope things get better. I will use every tool at my disposal. This trip has taught me that I must.