Turn Away

Submitted by Kepha Hor (United States), Nov 16, 2015 at 19:43

It has reached the point where I will ask people to define "racist", "bigot", and "fascist" the next time they yell these epithets. If certain definitions are given, maybe I might find myself willing to call myself a racist (even if my family is not all of one color), a bigot (even if I am willing to be open to individuals), and a fascist (even if I believe in less government centralization). These terms have been so abused that they no longer hold much water for me.

There is a good and legitimate love of one's own that does not have to be mean and exclusionist towards the outsider, and can even be open and accepting towards any outsider who is respectful and willing to assimilate to a certain degree. I sense a lot of this in the basic American Way of openness to law-abiding immigrants and acceptance of a certain amount of cultural and religious pluralism. When I see that some of the European anti-Islamicist movements accept Jews and other minorities, I sense this kind of love of one's own rather than racism.

For a generation or more, we've been subjected to a progressivism that celebrates Franz Fanon's message that the colonized must regain their manhood by murdering the colonizer. Does this mean that if, in the wake of this Parisian horror, some hotheaded indigenous French youth should "reclaim their manhood" by burning down the banlieux or choking some mullah on raw blood sausage? After all, it has been a long time since French Pieds Noirs polluted Islamic Algeria with their vinticulture; and no so long since gangs of Yoots have decided they have the right to terrorize their host societies.

Rome (and Paris) burned, and Christians (or Jews, or Zoroastrians) had nothing to do with it.

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