Aryan ARetroreregressions

reretroregressions

Aryan Ashraf, 2021

On Friday, August 11th, 2017, at 8:45 PM, something happened in the Nameless Field near the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America.

About 250 young white men, clad in polo shirts and khaki pants, holding up lit kerosene tiki torches from Home Depot, organized in pairs, walked militantly in a line and marched the area.

They yelled what you expect:

“You will not replace us!”

“Jews will not replace us!”

“White lives matter!”

Honestly, this could have been comical. A bunch of white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, KKK members, and every other rancid brand of racist, elitist white male collected together in no place other than Virginia, in front of a statue of iconic slave owner Thomas Jefferson, wearing none other than the preppiest of privileged, coddled white-boy clothes — polo shirts and khakis. Then, the counter-protestors came. Then, the slurs began. Then, the rocks were thrown. Then, the clubs were used. Then, Saturday came.

Then, larger groups appeared on both sides.

Then, the violence escalated to an all out riot.

Then, a Dodge Challenger drove directly into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others.

And it just could not be funny anymore.

I was a freshman in high school when this happened. I was just starting the school year. I felt a lot of things. As a Bangladeshi-American, as a brown boy, as a child of immigrants, as a Muslim, I often found myself, at many times in my life, the only one who looked like me in a room. Though, I can say, fortunately, despite growing up in Georgia and the infamous Bible Belt, I have rarely come face to face with a racist, xenophobe, or Islamophobe or, at least, have rarely come face to face with an outspoken one. But, I won’t say that my experience was perfect. Since I would be the only one

who looked like me in a room, people would sometimes say things about my identity that just didn’t sit well to me, but it was never extreme. So, when I saw that this happened, I couldn’t help but look at it with impersonality, since I could not imagine these people actually existing because I had never met one.

However, as the years went by, I learned that the people at the Charlottesville rally (the “Unite the Right” rally, as they called it), the Nazis, the white supremacists, the raging racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes… they actually exist. Not just as a concept or a thing of the past. Not just as a troll-sounding comment on the Internet. These are actual people that actually exist that actually live in and interact with the world with these beliefs. Since times have changed, bigotry has as well, and Nazis and white supremacists and such are no longer the stern, militant white men with angry, exaggerated expressions from WWII but, rather, young people in a polo shirt and khakis. Even worse, people in casual clothing, speaking in colloquial language, with a camera and a platform.

All it takes is for one severely wrong turn on the Internet to reach those people. While the Internet can be an amazing place for learning and creativity, it also serves as a deposit for the awful, awful opinions of the awful, awful, awful people that have them. Somewhere within the rotten cesspools of forums like 4chan or Reddit, you will find these people and their beliefs, completely typed out in a post of their own volition.

You’ll see white supremacists who will flaunt their positions proudly. Forget just the depths of forums! Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi who helped organized the “Unite the Right” rally, and others like him are still on Twitter, talking about Jewish people and people of color and women and Muslims and basically everyone who doesn’t look like them and whether or not those people have the right to exist. You’ll also find those people who aren’t quite neo-Nazis or white supremacists but very close to it - sympathizers, you could say. Self-proclaimed “intellectuals” who care more about “facts” than “feelings,” thinking that telling immigrants to go back to their country and thinking that diversity is killing “Judeo-Christian values” are both points that have solid standing and defending these neo-Nazis and white supremacists on the very, very vague and flimsy basis of free speech.

A group of white nationalists/supremacists marching in Virginia

Even beyond white supremacists, you’ll also find raging misogynists and their noxious, self-destructive cultures. Deep within chat forums like 4chan and Reddit, you’ll also find the men of the “mano-sphere.” Incels (involuntary celibates) whine about how women don’t wanna be with them while degrading themselves into inescapable pits of despair. MGTOW (men-going-their-own-way) talk over modern female rights movements

and modern relationships as too hedonistic and unorganized for them. Pick-up artists come up with schemes amongst themselves, objectifying the women they see and discussing new manipulation tactics. Regardless of whatever sect they come from, they’ll be there, all together, complaining about women and feminism and political correctness and how traditional manhood is being undermined because of all of it.

You’ll also find those self-proclaimed “intellectuals” I mentioned earlier debate transgender people as though they’re the Trolley problem, making a conscious and active effort to refer to trans women as “he” and trans men as “she” or, more often, to either as “it.” And don’t even think about mentioning non-binary people to them - that just rattles their gears.

As a user of the Internet, I find myself thinking about these people often.

Not even as a person of color or someone who generally would not survive the restrictions and persecutions of a white ethno-state. Usually, when I come upon these things, it is usually my humanity that gets offended before my identity. I just cannot understand how people could actually believe in this without feeling morally depraved.

And, yes, although I make fun of them by talking about them as though they’re complete outliers from normal society, they are, at the end of it all, real, actual, living, breathing people. These are the people who have the potential to later commit those sporadic hate crimes to people of color and women and LGBT people on the streets, the ones that you hear about on the news. These are the people who have the potential to take guns and malicious intent to places like Oak Creek, Isla Vista, Charleston, Roseburg, Parkland, Santa Fe, Pittsburgh, and El Paso. And, yes, these are the people who take tiki torches, polo shirts, and khaki pants to a protest on a university campus to claim that the white race is being eliminated. And, yes, these are the people who would drive their Dodge Challenger into a crowd.

I get panicky when I use the Internet now. I get a weird feeling when I see racist troll comments because I don’t know if they are troll comments. I can’t bear to watch a video from any of those “intellectuals” on YouTube because, even though they themselves are not encouraging violence, those videos are the very videos that could inspire the next hate crime. A man who attacked a mosque in Quebec City in 2017 was known by police and law enforcement to have “obsessively visited the Twitter accounts of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, Fox News personalities; David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan; Alex Jones of Infowars; conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich; Richard Spencer, the white nationalist; and senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway” and to have “checked in on the Twitter account of Ben Shapiro, editor in chief of the conservative news site the Daily Wire, 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting,” according to a Washington Post article (Coletta, 2018).

So, I look to see online if people are doing anything about it. It could just be that I’m too sensitive, but I really would like to see more outrage about it online.

But, all I see is outrage over some random YouTuber or Instagrammer and such over some microaggression or weird comment or shady incident. While many times the criticism is valid and brings up many things that are important to address, sometimes it just isn’t worth the effort people put into it. In the back of my head, I always think, “This would be much more useful if they directed it towards a KKK member.”

And, for a moment, that happened. After Charlottesville, several clear pictures of those men’s faces were released, and they were identified, their employers and schools were notified, and they were rightfully punished.

But, not all of them. Not their leaders and their influences, like Richard Spencer. Why?

Because it’s scary to do that. It’s easier to go after a YouTuber or Instagrammer over something insensitive they said or did because, most of the time, they’re already on our side. At that point, it’s just petty infighting, a petty game of progressives on the Internet fighting to get the moral high ground. Richard Spencer is not that. People like him are not that. They are the real thing. Going after them, trying to “cancel” them like one would with an influencer like James Charles, is not as simple because he and his supporters are on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, and everyone knows it’s harder to convince someone to change then to convince someone to do something they’re already doing better.

We’re almost to the third anniversary of Charlottesville, and I don’t see anything really changing. Don’t get me wrong, though. A lot of things are getting better, much better than it was fifty, forty, even twenty years ago. But, I just can’t help but think about these things when I use the Internet.

The scariest part is that there is no right solution. I certainly think of one right now without thinking about the ways it could agitate the situation and make the problem worse. However, while this may just be a call for attention to the issue without the solution, I want it to serve as a personal catalyst to anyone reading this to think about what they think will help. It’s going to need more than just me or you; it’s going to need all of us to amend

this. Above: A “Black Lives Matter” movment against white su

And, I realize that, if one of the people premacists that I criticize in this piece were to read this, they wouldn’t see my point. All they would see is my name and my identity and get enraged at the fact that I’m the very person that they’re trying to eliminate in order to create their warped utopia.

And, I can’t help but think about how long it will take before the next Charlottesville happens. Charlottesville, and I don’t see anything really changing. Don’t get me wrong, though. A lot of things are getting better, much better than it was fifty, forty, even twenty years ago. But, I just can’t help but think about these things when I use the Internet.

And, I realize that, if one of these people were to read this, they wouldn’t see my point. All they would see is my name and my identity and get enraged at the fact that I’m the very person that they’re trying to eliminate in order to create their warped utopia.

And, I can’t help but think about how long it will take before the next Charlottesville happens.

Cai, W., Griggs, T., Kao, J., Love, J., & Ward, J. (2019, August 2). White Extremist Ideology Drives Many Deadly Shootings. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/04/us/white-extremist-active-shooter.html.

Coletta, A. (2018, April 18). Quebec City mosque shooter scoured Twitter for Trump, right-wing figures before attack. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/18/quebec-citymosque-shooter-scoured-twitter-for-trump-right-wing-figures-before-attack/.

Heim, J. (2017, August 14). Recounting a day of rage, hate, violence, and death. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/ local/charlottesville-timeline/.