Around Thanksgiving 2016 it was brought to Facebook’s attention that I was a white supremacist. I don’t know what white knight originally took it upon themselves to alert society at large that I’m a villain from a comic book, but it pretty much ruined my holiday with my girlfriend and her family. I didn’t go digging through the posts, but a friend told me it had grown legs and been shared tons of times, and the conversation was hundreds of comments long on multiple shares. People were threatening my safety, threatening to alert my employer, and dragging my emo band into it. Seriously, I’m in an emo band.

I’m a provocateur, a contrarian, and a egoist who has a constant compulsion to broadcast his opinion. When I was younger this meant discourse with a friends who had a diversity of thought, now that I’m out of college and out of the public arena for the most part, this means posting incendiary stuff on facebook. Which, I’ll admit, is pretty lame, but it’s an outlet that usually leads to interesting discussion. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do is challenge people’s perceptions and have a discussion. This has always made me sort of a lightning rod, but it seems that in the past two years or so, during the rise of social justice, it has become dangerous to have a dissenting opinion.

My mom reminded me of the time in high school when, because of an argument with some United Pentecostals who said I wasn’t “christian enough” because I listened to punk/hardcore music. I wrote 666 on my forehead in permanent marker and ran around like I was a demon. You want to label me a satanist because I listen to punk? I’ll give you a satanist.

After all of the incendiary stuff I’ve posted, I figured there would be a backlash, but I hadn’t prepared for the fallout. I was naively thinking it would start a conversation, but instead it led to a witch hunt that I wasn’t invited to. I was naive because before Trump’s election, people kind of just left me alone. They maybe rolled their eyes when they disagreed with me, or I don’t know, did what those of us on the right have done for the past eight years and pressed “unfollow”. I think my opinions were tolerated because they weren’t a threat to their superior liberal progressive high castle. But that’s all changed with a president trump. The bubble has been burst and now the red blooded normal every day conservative, or merely someone who disagrees with the liberal narrative, is a racist, a bigot, an islamaphobe, a deplorable, and a white supremacist/white nationalist.

The anger and resentment for those of us who didn’t vote for the coronation of Queen Clinton is manifesting itself into westboro baptist church levels of ugliness (and so we are clear, I did NOT vote for Trump). So the Witch Hunts began and disgruntled leftists have created a strawman to burn in effigy.

So what do I do now that strangers, acquaintances, and former friends are threatening my job,my band, my reputation, and my safety over a hashtag? Last time, I took the high road. I stayed away from social media while the straw man version of me turned into a forest fire, and ignored the situation so as not to legitimise it. I didn’t defend myself, and I didn’t apologise. Apologising is an admission of guilt, and a placation to a frenzied mob. I don’t negotiate my ideals. Besides, explaining the nuances, misconceptions, and missed points of the hashtag aryan underneath a caption of a picture of my girlfriend and brother that says “beautiful white family” will fall on deaf ears. These people don’t want a conversation, they want blood. The original offending post was shared to the punk scene without my knowledge, and without my side of the story being considered. Shared by people who barely know me to people who don’t know me, or probably know “of” me, tarnishing my reputation.

There’s no arguing with a witch hunt. There’s no pleading your case. The damage is done. The hivemeind is made up and you either burn or drown. I’ve accepted that, but I’m here to set the record straight.I’m not going to let perpetually offended leftists have complete control of the narrative. They’re welcome to their opinion, but I have an interest in explaining mine as well.

Freedom of speech has been important to me since I was a 13 year old little mall punk photocopying the cover of our school’s rule book with the words “SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PRISON” across it because I was fed up with tax dollars being spent on treating my friends and me like we were criminals. It was juvenile, but it was something I needed to say. Fast forward to myself at 30, living in a country in which 98% of the media resides on the other side of the political spectrum from myself and free speech becomes even more important. Freedom of speech is not there to protect the beautiful, the status quo, the accepted, the agreed upon.It’s there to protect the ugly, the divisive, the controversial, the radical, the minority. If you allow the side you disagree with to be censored, and give the tools and power for it to happen, it’s only a matter of time before they rise to power and use those same tools against you.

Thankfully our government is pretty good at upholding the first amendment. What we have a problem with in The United States is horizontal censorship. Safe spaces, speakers being boycotted on college campuses, professors and presidents of universities being forced to resign, social media platforms censoring opposing viewpoints, and SJW witch hunts are shutting down conversation instead of fostering understanding. Without encountering opposing viewpoints, the sharing of ideas, the diversity of thought, the broadening of empathy, and the refining of personal opinions is diminished. After all, iron sharpens iron, and when you shut down any conversation with someone with whom you disagree, eventually your ability to argue your own viewpoint suffers. The longer you shield yourself from uncomfortable opinions, the more your own argument devolves into “well you’re a nazi” and other ad-hominem attacks and what you end up doing is arguing with a straw-man cartoon character of your own creation that doesn’t exist and you come to confusion conclusions like, ” He’s a white supremacist in an MC that allows all races to join, wonder how that works, lol?” “He’s a nazi but he’s in a band with three mexicans, huh what?” Right. Because you aren’t arguing with the actual person, you’re launching attacks at your own creation and your creation is flawed. Maybe you’re running into these fallacies because your premise is flawed.

And by the way, while you ever-expand the parameters of the words “racist” and “white supremacist” and “bigot” to include everyone who disagrees with you, you actually de-weaponise the word, the power of which should be reserved for ACTUAL BIGOTS not just people who want immigration laws to be enforced or have a “Don’t Tread on Me” bumper sticker. I blame it on simple supply and demand, which explains most of our issues. There is a demand for nazi villains, and the supply is so low that someone who looks like an Aryan (You’re judging me for my skin color now aren’t you?), has a macklemore haircut, and has vaguely right wing opinions, is a nazi.

Anyway, isn’t it better to let the assholes come out and play in the open, and just, I don’t know, here’s a radical idea, ignore them, rather than publicly shaming them into the underground? Making people who are toying with ideas you deem fanatical fear for their jobs, their safety, and their reputation, only sends them and their kind underground where radicalisation happens. Every asshole on r/the_donald is one doxing away from STORMFRONT or one enlightened friendly conversation away from seeing your point of view in a different light. You have not changed one person’s mind in your purritanical witch hunts and public shaming, if anything you’ve driven them farther down the rabbit hole. You know this, right? You’re virtue signaling at best, and riding an ideological supremacy high horse at worst. And isn’t that what you’re accusing me of?

“But the things you’re saying aren’t nice. They’re offensive!”

Your hurt feelings are subjective. Words are subjective. Feelings are subjective. If being offended is an entirely subjective experience that only you can control, then it’s not my responsibility. Hate speech and offensive speech are in the eye of the beholder. I’ll admit being incendiary, being provacative, and being a loud mouthed contrarian, but your being offended lies solely on your shoulders. I have the right to be offensive. You have the right to be offended. You do NOT have the right to not be offended. That’s an anti-free speech attitude and is fascist in nature.

Deconstructing the “evidence”.

I think this is the first post that alerted the “anti-fa” SJWs to my obvious White Supremacy views. Note that I didn’t say “if you don’t speak English you shouldn’t be allowed to vote”. My point was that if you can’t speak the language of the political discourse, you might be an underinformed voter. Both parties have tried, throughout history, to exploit immigrants who have a low level of understanding of the political process, and especially those who don’t speak the predominant language.

Not long after, this was floating around the internet:

Now, this was actually debunked, sort of (one of the posts is from Germany and they have different standards on German twitter) but I made the following post to test it myself. I figured if I wrote something as inoculous as “beautiful white family” someone would call me out as a racist, when you KNOW if someone said “beautiful black” or “beautiful brown” no one would bat an eye.

I made a mistake by jovially hash tagging “Aryan”, since the three people in the picture are blonde hair, blue eyed, and two of the three have ghostlike skin. I can’t believe I have to say this, but I’m not a supporter of the Aryan Brotherhood or Nazis (btw Nazis were not white supremacists, or even European chauvinists, they were GERMAN SUPREMACISTS). I knew the connotation would be incendiary, but I was naive to what degree it would set people off.

So someone I barely know took offense to those two posts in conjunction, and took it upon herself to “out” me as a white supremacist. Her only proof being that instagram post. I didn’t respond to that shitstorm, nor did I let it ruin my Thanksgiving holiday. It did get out of control, bled out into the real world, and honestly I thought it was over.

I changed my behavior just a little bit and stopped being so naive. I made my instagram private, made my facebook private, and stopped posting on facebook just to rustle people’s jimmies. It wasn’t making anyone’s lives any better, it wasn’t spurring conversation, so what was the point?

All was quiet on the western front until last night. I don’t know what triggered it, but someone called me out again.

At the time of writing this has been shared 33 times and has hundreds of comments. Of course she has blocked me and everyone on my friends list that isn’t a mutual friend of hers and people are throwing around all sorts of rumors and epithets and insulting my girlfriend, who has nothing to do with my political views.

So let’s take a look at the “evidence” of my White Nationalist views together, shall we?

Ok. Fair enough, the SS bolts are a little on the nose, aren’t they? Wonder what the Anti-defamation league has to say about them? “The SS bolts are typically used as a symbol of white supremacy but there is one context in which this is not necessarily always so. Decades ago, some outlaw biker gangs appropriated several Nazi-related symbols, including the SS bolts, essentially as shock symbols or symbols of rebellion or non-conformity. Thus SS bolts in the context of the outlaw biker subculture does not necessarily denote actual adherence to white supremacy”.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

Nobody mentioned the Fred Perry shirt but I’ll go ahead and do it for the lazy SJWs of Houston: Fred Perry shirts have long been associated with skinheads in England and is part of the “uniform”. I wear it as an “f-you” to the people who originally called me out as a racist, and got the whole “skinheads against racism” community on my butt, but also because it looks great on me.

I can’t tell if they are saying that the St. George’s Cross is racist? Or the fact that I hate hearing Tejano music being blared so loud that I can hear it inside my house. I don’t know what’s racist about either of them. The St. George’s Cross is the flag of England, and recently leftists and cultural marxists in England have deemed it offensive. That would be like liberals in America calling the American Flag a racist symbol. I am majority English in heritage, and I think it is well within my right to associate with that part of my history. You don’t see anyone objecting to hispanics flying the flags of their country after they come to America for a better life. As far as the tejano music, what does that have to do with race? If someone was blaring rap music I would have said the same thing. If someone was blaring Bro country I’d be saying the same thing. I DON’T LIKE TEJANO MUSIC. IT SOUNDS BAD TO MY EARS. A musical preference is not racism. And if you’ve ever lived in a majorly predominant mexican neighborhood like I do, and have in the past, then you know how that whiny, crooning, polka inspired music can reverberate down a street.

Don’t know what is racist/white nationalist/ white supremacist about this. The FACTS aren’t racist and the facts are that the sister of a shooting victim urged “protesters” aka looters and rioters, to go to “white neighborhoods” because “we need our weaves”. Those were literally her words.

Similarly:

Hate facts? I guess? Those are the facts. That’s what happened. That’s how it played out. Maybe you don’t like it, I know I sure don’t like it, but it doesn’t change what happened. Pointing out the hypocrisy and fallacies of the BLM movement does not make someone a racist.

Not sure what this proves except that I don’t like socialism. I don’t. I think Bernie was a snake oil salesman and a sell out. I agree with some of his goals but not the implementation of them, and I sure as heck don’t agree with socialism. Is that a thoughtcrime? Is that hate? Have we gotten so far away from traditional american values that disagreeing with socialism makes someone a nazi? What the hell? I won’t even point out that Nazis were NATIONAL SOCIALISTS except I just did so scratch that.

This one really pissed people off. And it was meant to. Although no one on my actual friends list even batted an eye, most instead just rolled their eyes, people I don’t even know took offense to it, and the worst part about it is that they didn’t even get the joke. That picture shows people with distinctly different hair colors, distinctly different eye colors, and distinctly different skin colors, all who come from different ethnic backgrounds and different cultures and countries. What isn’t diverse about that? The commonplace meaning of diversity in america means “People of color”, which is fine, but it negates the very real diversity within the white “monoculture” and it’s not a crime to celebrate that diversity. Another post that was meant to make people see something from a different angle, not meant to spread hatred.

Look I’m done splitting hairs here. Frankly it’s beneath me, and it saddens me that it needed to be done.

I’m an unapologetic Western Chauvinist. I reject cultural relativism. I think Western Culture is the best culture. Classical liberalism, democracy, the republic, first wave feminism, the industrial revolution, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, rights of the individual, the abolition of slavery, private property rights, child labor laws, indoor plumbing, public schools, free market capitalism, rationalism, scholasticism, humanism, Hellenistic philosophy, human rights, equality, and Christian charity are all precepts of WESTERN CULTURE. But let’s get something straight: I don’t give a shit what color your skin is. I think skin color is a poor indicator of worth. I don’t think white people are the best at everything. I am not a White Nationalist, even though I can hold a conversation with those that are, and I am certainly not a White Supremacist. That word is so old and stale. White Supremacists think whites should lord over minorities and I sure as hell don’t think that.

But of course, no one asked me what I believe. I treat ALL PEOPLE the same, regardless of their race, religion, culture etc until they give me a reason not to. People that know me, know that about me. While I think West is the best, and I’m proud of my ethnic heritage, that doesn’t denigrate your culture or your heritage.My favorite hockey team is the Pittsburgh Penguins (hence the black and gold fred perry) and I think they are the best, but that doesn’t mean I want all the other hockey teams to be deported, or sent back to africa, or killed.

Dislike my opinions if you want, that’s well within your right. But just because someone’s words hurt your feelings, or you were offended on someone else’s behalf, doesn’t give you the right to threaten their safety and their well being. Actions supposedly speak louder than words, and I’ll continue being a stand up person with some admittedly unpopular beliefs. That’s the great thing about Western Culture, it affords us that right.