If you’re white, go kill yourself!

Earlier I read about a radical nutjob I’d heard of before who seems to specialize in mainstreaming outrageous and despicable ideas, this one being that all white people should go kill themselves. The way he talks to people said to be in his circle you would think that anyone who disagrees with him is so absurdly laughable as to be beneath contempt:

Fortunately, I was able to arrange a telephone interview with the professor. I felt he deserved a chance to tell his side of the story. A side that our radical and racist far-right media refuse to report. The transcript of our dialogue follows below:

Ivan Fernando: I want to thank you for agreeing to this interview. It’s a pleasure to be able to talk to an esteemed academic of your calibre and impressive credentials.

Prof. Ignatiev: Thank you. I am happy to talk with you today.

Ivan Fernando: I understand that a few people objected to your advice to your white male students on your last day of teaching. Why do you think that is?

Prof. Ignatiev: I chalk it all up to white supremacist attitudes. The goal of destroying the white race is simply so desirable, it boggles the mind trying to understand how anyone could possibly object to it. Those who object to my advice, knowingly or perhaps unknowingly, are themselves white supremacists. They wish to go on oppressing and exploiting other races and maintaining their own privileged positions of power. That is the conscious and sometimes subconscious motivation of all of my critics. That is why they object to destroying the cancer of humanity known as the white race. That ugly disease, which dares to call itself a people and a culture.

Ivan Fernando: All whites, or just white males should commit suicide?

Prof. Ignatiev: Obviously, all whites need to be destroyed, but why not start with white males? They are behind most of history’s greatest atrocities. Besides, some of the brothers like to bang white women. Eventually white women can breed out, but my feeling is that if you are a white male, you should kill yourself now. If you are a thoughtful person, with a social consciousness who considers himself white, you will consider suicide. It’s the right thing to do. Let me read you an e-mail that I received today from a xenophobic white-supremacist.

“I’m not a racist, in fact I am an avowed anti-racist, I just think calling for all white males to kill themselves is extreme. When you say that every white person is bad or advocate violence against them, it sounds almost as though you are becoming a kind of racist yourself. You say it is good for everyone to be proud of their culture. Blacks, Mexicans and everyone else. Why should whites be the only exception? For the sake of argument, supposing whites have wronged many other races historically. Should we punish people today for their ancestor’s sins? Today minorities have affirmative action and generous social welfare programs to protect them. Can we really say that most whites are racist now or that the government is? Should Blacks who descend from Blacks who owned or sold slaves feel guilty and be punished for ancestral wrongs?”

Ivan Fernando: Wow. (laughter)

Prof. Ignatiev: I know, mind boggling. What an absurd and irrational line of reasoning. They just throw logic out the window entirely. It’s impossible to dialogue with these people. Notice the blind and irrational hatred behind every word! No one has committed violence, genocide and dispossession on the level of white males. The whole purpose of white male culture is to perpetuate their privileged status and continue their oppression of non-whites. Whites don’t have a culture like other races in which traditions and customs are preserved as an expression of a common identity. White culture is an entirely economic and social culture which is about shutting out other people deemed “non-white” as a means of preventing their social and economic advancement! In other words all of ‘white culture’ so-called, stems from hatred of the other, unlike other ethnicities which do have cultures. White people are a disease, they are parasites! They don’t deserve to live!

I found myself immediately wondering whether the guy is some kid of agent provocateur. For what he says is recruiting material — not for the nutjob left, but rather, fighting words for the far right. Those who want to see Ignatiev as emblematic of liberalism and leftism generally would doubtless consider the man a gold mine, if not manna from heaven. (That very few liberals think whites should commit suicide does not matter in the least.) His interviewer was described as “a liberal, racist, pantywaist ignoramus by the name of Ivan Fernando of the Diversity Chronicle” and taken quite seriously, but reading through the so-called “Diversity Chronicle,” I get the impression that the web site is far from what it purports to be.*

Shit, you’d almost think the idea was to start a war.

I’m almost tempted to ask questions like “Why don’t people on the left condemn Ignatiev?” but I doubt most of them have ever heard of him. Nor will they, for he is a marginal kook whose rantings are mainly circulated on the right.

I suspect the man is a fraud, and I resent being asked to take him seriously.

Sometimes I wonder whether there is an unacknowledged IQ war online.

* To give just one example, when I read this article from the website, I saw a number of things that were so palpably untrue that I wondered whether the website was some sort of clever satire:

Six Year Old Transgendered Girl Suffers From Hate Crime In School Restroom

By Investigative Reporter Derek Caldell

At Grover Cleveland Elementary School in Oakton California, a transgendered girl was cruelly mocked and ridiculed for using the girls bathroom. Samuel Washington, a bright young African-American girl who prefers to go by Samantha, had the misfortune of being labelled male by doctors at birth. She is actually female, she states. Washington had been using the girls restroom at her school for two days before another student, Jessica Hernandez cruelly attacked her in the restroom stating “You’re a boy, why are you in the girls bathroom? You aren’t supposed to be in here!”

Under the school’s zero tolerance for hate crimes policy, the six year old Hernandez was expelled. “It is disgusting that this kind of bigotry and ignorance persists in our community.” Principal Sharon Johnson stated when we requested her comment on the matter. Tyrella Williamson of the local chapter of LGBT Americans United offered her insight on the tragedy. “Somebody ought to kick that little transphobic bitch’s ass. Obviously this hate is coming from her parents, she was taught to hate. No person is born a transphobic hate criminal.” Williamson stated.

The facts of this case are not in dispute, but that hasn’t stopped some extremists from attempting to use this case to promote hatred. Some unenlightened reactionary Neanderthals on the extreme and radical right claim that Jessica should not be forced to use the same restroom as a transsexual since transsexuals are legally and anatomically of the opposite sex to the one they profess.

There is no such place as Oakton, California. Nor is there any such school as the Grover Cleveland Elementary School there. Other than the above, there is no story about a “Jessica Hernandez” being expelled. Nor is there any such organization as the “LGBT Americans United.”

After all these years, I don’t like to get hysterical about these things, but I think people are a bit too inclined to believe claims that seem to confirm whatever it is that they want to hear.