By David Harsanyi
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Why does the March for Life, a rally that attracts tens
of thousands of pro-life Americans to Washington every year, get less prominent
media coverage than a fringe neo-Nazi gathering? Because institutional media
and white nationalists have formed a politically convenient symbiotic
relationship.
For Jew-hating racists, the attention means they can
playact as a viable and popular movement with pull in Washington. In return,
many in the media get to confirm their own biases, and treat white supremacy as
if it was the secret ingredient to Republican success.
Meanwhile, this obsessive coverage of the alt-right not
only helps mainstream a small movement, it’s exactly what the bigots need and
want to grow.
Check out the coverage of this weekend’s National Policy
Institute conference in DC. As far as I can tell, these pseudointellectual
xenophobic bull sessions have been going on for years, featuring many of the
same names: Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow, et al. (although they’re now
joined by Tila Tequila).
These people have generally been given the attention they
deserve — which is to say exceptionally little. If you read this week’s
headlines, though, you would have thought the German American Bund had packed
22,000 cheering fascists into the Ronald Reagan Trade Center in DC.
Here’s The New York
Times: “Alt-Right Exults in Donald Trump’s Election With a Salute: ‘Heil
Victory’”
Politico:
“Alt-right celebrates Trump’s election at DC meeting”
NPR: “Energized By Trump’s Win, White Nationalists Gather
To ‘Change The World’”
Every major cable news network had a discussion about the
importance of the NPI. Yet here’s a little nugget from the NPR piece, which
asserts that the election has given this “once fringe movement a jolt:”
About 300 people — split nearly
evenly between conference attendees and protesters of the conference outside —
were on hand at the downtown D.C. event.
So about 150
people? Some jolt. To put that into context, there were well over 150
people at thousands of individual churches and temples across the DC area this
weekend praying for peace on Earth. In this country, you could pull together
150 people for a meeting about anything, actually. Thousands of “UFO
enthusiasts” got together in the Arizona desert last year in hopes of not being
mass abducted by space aliens.
A few years ago, I attended the annual Socialist
convention in Chicago, where at least a thousand activists gathered to discuss
how to end economic freedom. Since then, 43 percent of Democrat primary goers
have given this extreme movement a jolt, I guess.
Then again, it’s possible not every self-styled American
“socialist” is an ideological purist about handing production of iPhones to the
state. We’d be wise to view many on the alt-right with similar skepticism.
Still, it is indisputable that many of these people are
odious — and not odious in the way liberals think of Republicans who worry
about refugees from Syria or immigration laws are odious. We have a
responsibility to use morally precise language when referring to this group
(which in this case, is “neo-Nazis”), to contextualize their influence (little,
but more than it should be), and to unequivocally call them out. We should
never, ever glamorize them for political purposes.
Why would The Los
Angeles Times give the GQ
treatment to a guy who “heils” victory and quotes Nazi propaganda onstage in
German, as Richard Spencer did this weekend? I suppose it’s the same reason
every major publication gave David Duke, who was polling at 3-4 percent in his
Louisiana Senate race all year, their undivided attention. (What am I talking
about? We’re still hearing about Duke
on a daily basis.) It’s to create the impression that they matter.
Surely one story letting us know a former Klansman with
no constituency is a Trump fan would have sufficed. After all, the father
of Orlando ISIS shooter, also fan of the Taliban, was a Hillary supporter.
White supremacists like Trump in
the same way Hamas liked Barack Obama. Is ISIS or Hamas a bigger or smaller
threat than the NPI? Does it matter? Or is it just a way of connecting
candidates — all worthy of criticism — with support they have no control over?
None of this is to say Trump shouldn’t be called out for
his vulgar rhetoric or ideas, some of which gave these people the space they
needed. Nor does it absolve Republicans who look the other way when genuine
bigotry appears. Yes, GOPers shouldn’t “normalize” the alt-right, and neither
should the media imbue the movement with an outsized importance to feed its
preferred narrative regarding the election.
For some reporters, I imagine it’s a matter of
perception. Conservative critics of Trump were relentlessly attacked by
astroturfing neo-Nazi types on the social media during the primaries. After the
primaries, when liberal journalists finally focused on Trump, they too became
the target of harassment. The hate became a huge story because of these
personal experiences.
But that’s a generous reading of events. Another reading
is that coverage is driven with the cynical purpose of exaggerating the
importance of neo-Nazis to tie them to Republicans. The media will now demand
the administration denounce white supremacists every time they have a meeting —
which itself intimates that there is a connection. Conflating these scary
things can create the impression that conservatism is Trump which is Bannon
which is Duke which is Spencer.
I’m afraid it’s not that simple. And attempting to make
it that simple only weakens legitimate criticism of the president-elect — of
which there is plenty.
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