I can’t believe I have reason to write these words, but it appears there is still some confusion in some people’s minds.
So here goes: Nazis are the bad guys. White supremacy, the ideology that led Nazis to commit horrible atrocities, is bad. The “alt-right,” basically a rebranding of white supremacy, is bad.
If someone is morally bankrupt enough to support or align themselves with white supremacy groups, with Neo-Nazis, with the Ku Klux Klan, with the alt-right, then they are — and excuse my tough language here — no-goodniks.
Phew, what a strange sensation it is to write those words — words which up until quite recently seemed quite unnecessary. These are unassailable truths. However, last weekend a white power rally — the largest in the U.S. in several years — was held in Charlottesville, Va., with protesters and counter-protesters making their opinions known.
The white power guys showed up with matching polo shirts and hardware store tiki torches, earning well-deserved derision for what looked like the world’s crappiest luau. But something more sinister was at play, and events turned much more tragic the next day when the two sides clashed, culminating in a white supremacist ramming his car through a crowd of people, killing a woman named Heather Heyer and wounding several others.
For most of the world it was yet another indictment of the hate-filled white supremacist movement and the violence that results from their open and stated goal of wiping large populations from the face of the earth. For some, however, there was debate about who was at fault. Included in that number was the president of the United States. Donald Trump’s remarks were widely criticized by people from all walks of life and all political stripes, although they did win praise from a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
I’m not going to debate Trump calling them “very fine people”. We’re all flawed in some way. The contrast, however, is in what white supremacists are fighting for. They believe they are superior to others based solely on the colour of their skin and they wish to expel, do harm to, or even exterminate other groups of people from their lives.
On a more specific level, in this instance, people were fighting to preserve the placement of a statue of a Civil War general, a monument to a time when white people owned, bought and sold black people like property.
On the other side were people motivated by the simple goal of stopping white supremacism.
Was the Second World War so long ago that some have completely forgotten the history? I haven’t. My grandfather left his home in Saskatoon when he was 17 years old, lied about his age to do it so that he could go to Europe and fight against Nazis, whose doctrine of white supremacy led them to commit horrible atrocities against millions of people, Jewish people in particular. And now, some 80 years later, hundreds of dudes in polo shirts are marching with garden candles chanting “Jews will not replace us!”
There’s no “both sides” here. This isn’t about Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, left or right. This is about love and hate. There’s only one side for me. Call me old-fashioned — narrow it down to the year 1939 if you like — but I’m siding with my grandfather.
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the The Tri-City News’ sister publication The North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column.
