The Extremism Double-Standard
For those committed to the policing of language, why should it come as a surprise that this just might manifest itself in real-world violence?
The indispensable journalist Glenn Greenwald, had a sobering take concerning Frank James, the man who attempted a mass shooting at a New York City subway station on the morning of Tuesday, April 12:
Greenwald is referring to the fact indisputable evidence exists that James was both a Black nationalist and motivated by that very ideology to carry out his mass murder attempt. However, the media has not only made an effort to downplay this fact, they’ve spent years attempting to gaslight the entire matter:
Frank James may have been a deeply disturbed, mentally ill man. He also espoused an ideology which motivated him to carry out an act of violence which, miraculously, didn’t kill anyone. No matter how much the Left and the media may downplay it, what James, who is Black, says matters, if for no other reason than the fact it would most certainly matter had he been White.
Despite YouTube’s attempts to cleanse its platform of James’ venom, the Internet is forever because someone always bears witness. Here’s what a look at James’ social media reveals:
The social media rants of the 62-year-old suspect reveal a man consumed with hatred of white people and convinced of a looming race war.
“O black Jesus, please kill all the whiteys,” was one meme he posted.
He’s not too complimentary about Hispanics, Asians and his own race, for that matter, and claims to have had long-term mental health problems. The 29 victims of Tuesday’s shooting were a multicultural mix, as you would expect in a crowded rush-hour subway train. Police say James detonated a smoke grenade before firing 33 shots on the Manhattan-bound N train. Police found a hatchet, three ammunition magazines, fireworks and gasoline. It’s a miracle no one was killed.
But whatever his psychiatric issues, James sounds very much like other ideologically fixated, identity-obsessed killers emerged since the BLM-Antifa racial movement of 2020 and the hate speech it unleashed.
Like Darrell Brooks Jr., who allegedly plowed his car into the Waukesha Christmas parade last November, and Noah Green, the Nation of Islam adherent who rammed Capitol Police last April in a quickly memory-holed attack, James espoused the rancid, racist ideology of black supremacy, once known officially as “black identity extremism,” which we have been assured by the FBI and other legal experts doesn’t exist.
Had the shooter been a White supremacist or nationalist, there would’ve been a non-stop, wall-to-wall, around-the-clock media discussion on the terrors of such ideologies and the grave threat it poses to the security and soul of America. Instead, what we get here is hedging or outright denial of the significance of James’ political views. One commenter on Twitter, whom I won’t directly quote here, claims the media’s ham-handedness over the shooter’s motivations are reasonable “because [the shooter’s] views are incoherent and all over the place.”
Really? Then the views of White racial extremists are what, exactly? Coherent and consistent? Is this going to be the fulcrum upon which our collective judgment of extremism is going to hinge upon? What are we doing, here?
Take a look at what one psychologist had to say about the mindset of White nationalists:
Arie Kruglanski, a social psychologist at the University of Maryland, said people become white nationalists for three reasons: a desire to feel significant, attribution of their lack of personal success to another group, and a sense of belonging among other white nationalists.
These motivations could stem from feeling "humiliated" or "insignificant" at school, in relationships with loved ones, or by society at large.
People experiencing these feelings may go on to build a narrative around their sense of insignificance by identifying a group of people (or a person) responsible for their disempowerment.
Now, compare that to something Frank James had to say:
He also criticizes New York City Mayor Eric Adams and black people who don’t perceive themselves as victims. “You got your Ph.D. career and nice shoes. You got an education but now you’re just a carbon copy of the person who made you a slave … you’re there to serve these motherf—ers.”
See a big difference? Nope, neither do I.
This isn’t the time nor place to compare/contrast White supremacy/nationalism vs. Black supremacy/nationalism. Nor am I saying one is more of a threat than the other. My personal opinion is that the Regime overstates the threat of White supremacy/nationalism and does so deliberately, while downplaying the significance of incidents contrary to that narrative. There’s no consistency to any of this and consistency is absolutely necessary to assessing the intentions behind a certain policy or tack.
The simplest conclusion one can gather is that the Regime (academia, media, schools, all the institutions that possess socio-political capital in the country) isn’t all that concerned about extremism and will, in fact, protect certain kinds of extremism from scrutiny. It’s disturbing, but not surprising. In fact, it’s consistent with the way the Regime has come to regard the unfortunate relationship between crime and race. From the Washington Free Beacon:
Media critics on the right say that the conspicuous omission of James’s race from these news reports illustrates a trend among prestige papers, which deemphasize or omit the race of non-white criminals while playing up the race of white offenders. But is it a real pattern?
Yes. A Washington Free Beacon review of hundreds of articles published by major papers over a span of two years finds that papers downplay the race of non-white offenders, mentioning their race much later in articles than they do for white offenders. These papers are also three to four times more likely to mention an offender’s race at all if he is white, a disparity that grew in the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020 and the protests that followed. [bold mine]
The unfortunate truth is, someone like Frank James, terrible as he is, sees the world in much the same way as those who work in the media, the universities, or even in Washington, D.C., than any White supremacist/nationalist has in common with the average White person, conservative, Republican, etc. James might even harbor views shared by a large number of Americans who have accepted the narrative of the country as being irredeemably racist. Back in 2020, Zach Goldberg published a lengthy study showing how, in the middle of last decade, a noticeable shift occurred in the mainstream media, where “racism,” “white,” “whiteness,” and other loaded terms surged in usage, obviously in a negative light. Goldberg assessed:
If white people have become increasingly associated with racism, unearned privilege, and white supremacy in the media, what of nonwhites? Well, first off, they are no longer “nonwhites”—they are “People of Color.” And because they are “People of Color,” they are necessarily “marginalized” and rendered “vulnerable” by the “whiteness” around them.
This led The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher to ask, “Did America become 300 percent more racist after 2014? Or is it more likely that liberal elites self-radicalized, and began telling themselves stories that fit their ideological priors?”
Recently, Goldberg also cited preliminary research on his part, showing that anti-White sentiment seems to have increased beginning in the early-2010s, particularly among White liberals!
As if more evidence was needed to prove the pervasiveness of the anti-White sentiment in the media, look at how many articles implicate “Whiteness” as a problematic aspect of everything from neuroscience to even the Democratic Party:
The point here is that the actions of people like Frank James or Darrell Brooks (who mowed down a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI and murdered six, in case you forgot) aren’t occurring in a vacuum. It’s an all too expected outcome of an effort, orchestrated at the highest levels of our society, to re-shape the way Americans think about themselves, their country, and their fellow citizens. For those committed to the policing of language, why should it come as a surprise that this just might manifest itself in real-world violence? These are the same people who once laid right-wing violence at the feet of Fox News and talk radio personalities like the late Rush Limbaugh and told us to “never forget” any time someone holding extreme right-wing motivations, like Dylann Roof, James Alex Fields, Jr. et. al., carried out a mass murder.
Mind you, I’m not blaming the media for what happened at the 36th Street Station in NYC. Frank James, Darrell Brooks, et. al. were all violent criminals long before the media made the decisive narrative shift described in the previous paragraphs. The lesson here is that there’s an intent behind the way the media treats these incidents depending on the identity and motivations of the perpetrator. It’s my belief that we, as a society, are being conditioned to accept the emerging anarcho-tyrannical regime I’ve described in this blog. Like much of the violent criminal class: Frank James is a repeat offender with a long rap sheet:
James, 62, was arrested at least 12 times by the NYPD between 1984 and 1998 on charges ranging from burglary, possession of burglar tools, and criminal sexual acts, cops said. The outcomes of those cases, however, were not immediately available.
The suspected shooter also “has a record of terroristic threats in New Jersey,” one NYPD official told The Post. He has no record of a conviction in the Garden State.
For a supposedly unequal legal system, even the most violent criminals seem to be getting a second chance. Of course, none of this concerns those who claim crime is a product of America’s racial history and inequity. According to them, savagery like that seen in this video (WARNING: It’s disturbing to watch) is just the price we have to pay as Americans for our country’s past sins and our unwillingness to adopt Critical Race Theory as our national ideology:
Where’s the bottom? I saw the other day that Santa Monica has become one of the least safe cities in all of California. The idea that Santa Monica, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, would ever be considered one of the most dangerous cities in California, was unfathomable just a few years ago. Yes, there were homeless. Yes, cleanliness had deteriorated. But there’s a world of difference between that and having to watch your back when in the city. Consider the following facts concerning Santa Monica, according to the latest Census:
- Population: 93,076
- Median household income: $98,300
- Median value of owner-occupied housing: $1.45 million
This is one of the most un-safe cities in the state. It’s pretty obvious those who live there are no longer getting what they pay for. This is self-destruction, but hey, as long as it’s done for a good cause (social justice), why do otherwise?
I’m not sure how long this can go on for before the contradictions and double-standards become irreconcilable. It could go on for a very long time, unfortunately. It’s up to all of us to decide whether we want to be a part of the madness or come up with a means of surviving it.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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