“Annual Brotherhood Day” is celebrated at the end of my novel, “Skyscrapers.” It is a celebration of diversity. I truly believe America’s diversity is one of its greatest strengths. That is why one of my two CEO’s is a Mexican immigrant female, and why “Annual Brotherhood Day” ends the novel.
Nowadays Americans are challenged by anxiety over Islamic State’s proselytizing American youth to leave home to fight for Islam. But there is another virulent and surprisingly similar movement percolating within American society, almost unperceived by the average American. We just saw an example of it in the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Most people see this as an act of someone who hated black people and wanted to start a “race war.” The church and its many supporters have spoken of love and hope and working together to ensure peace. This is admirable. This is the way we want America to be and to feel and to behave.
But the facts tell a different story. Dylan Storm Roof is a fully committed white supremacist, to judge from his actions, from his clothing patches and from his website posts. He forms part of the current resurgence of white supremacists, far-right terrorists, out-of-sight but not out-of-business Ku Klux Klansmen and violent racists. We see ISIS recruiting the young and easily impressionable to give their lives for Islam, but fail to notice that white supremacy is on the rise not merely in the United States but across the world. In “The International New York Times” (6/26/2015), Morris Dees and J. Richard Cohen wrote, “When, according to survivors, Mr. Roof told the victims at the prayer meeting that black people were ‘taking over the country,’ he was expressing sentiments that unite white nationalists from the United States and Canada to Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Unlike those of the civil rights era, whose main goal was to maintain Jim Crow in the American South, today’s white supremacists don’t see borders; they see a white tribe under attack by people of color across the globe… The message of white genocide is spreading. White nationalists look beyond borders for confirmation that their race is under attack, and they share their ideas in the echo chamber of racist websites.”
I just spent a month in Europe watching two terrible crises: the Greek bankruptcy and the massive immigration from Africa, the largest number of homeless people fleeing violence since World War II. Hidden underneath the reluctance of northern European nations to accept more refugees (Britain has refused to accept any) is a reluctance to have any more dark-skinned people, though it is generally couched in phrases such as “the refugees have no education, they won’t be able to hold jobs, they’ll be a drain on our already over-challenged social services.” All these statements are true, but all these could be remedied. It’s their skin tone that cannot be changed.
In “The Chicago Tribune” of July 5, the Perspective page (by Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzofer) was captioned “10 things you might not know about PATRIOTS.” Fifth in the list was this: “The Patriot Movement in the United States is often vehemently anti-government. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2013 there were 1,096 such groups, of which 240 were militias, a big jump from 2008, when there were 43 militias among 131 groups.” Militias are armed, dangerous and racist. They were responsible for the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents, as well as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. We as responsible Americans need to realize that in addition to ISIS, the exact same tactics are being used to encourage young racists to kill people of color because they believe “white genocide” is already occurring. Anders Behring Breivik, a loner who killed 70 people in Norway, was a member of Stormfront, a web forum founded by a former Ku Klux Klan leader that has more than 300,000 members (about two-thirds are American.) In other words, Dylan Storm Roof is not a madman nor an anomaly. Notice his middle name. Remember who gave him a gun for his birthday. Realize that he acted as a member of an invisible army whose numbers we can only guess at. Be aware it is certainly as dangerous as and as large as ISIS. Let’s call it, for lack of a formal title, “White Supremacists without Borders.”
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