Lesson from deprogramming a white nationalist

Sar Shalom

Some background about Derrick Black. He was the godson of David Duke and was brought up in a controlled environment of white nationalism. His father, Don Black, founded the website Stormfront to which he contributed a kid's page as a teenager. As he built his following, Don recognized in him a future leader in the white nationalist movement. All of this came crashing against reality when he went to college and studied medieval history where he learned that white Europeans were not always as prominent in global development as he was led to believe by his upbringing. He was helped along in making this conclusion by the ostracism he encountered on campus when he was outed for his white nationalist activism. I would like to convey some lessons from Black's experience to landscape surrounding discussion about Israel.

A start would be the specifics of how Black came to renounce his past white nationalism. It began shortly after he was outed for his activism. For his safety he moved off campus and only came onto campus for classes. However, someone on campus decided that a better way to convince of his errors would be to engage him. This was done by inviting him to Friday night Shabbat dinners hosted by the one Orthodox Jew on campus. Faced with the prospect of having no other social outlet, he accepted. There he came face-to-face with some of those who were on the receiving end of the anger he had stoked as white nationalism activist and learned things about them that contradicted everything he had taught by white nationalist compatriots.

Unfortunately, this does not provide much guidance for how to deprogram those who have swallowed the Palestinianist narrative because Black's willingness to enter an environment where he would see the targets of his hate as human beings was facilitated by the ostracism he experienced for his promotion of that hatred. In contrast, the purveyors of hatred against Jews, or at a minimum against Jews who refuse to make their backs available to Arabs who would flog them, face no such censure from polite society.

On the air, Derek helped popularize the idea of a white genocide, that whites were losing their culture and traditions to massive, nonwhite immigration. “If we say it a thousand times — ‘White genocide! We are losing control of our country!’ — politicians are going to start saying it, too,” he said.

Most people, even those claiming that whites are now the victims of reverse racism, would probably find the notion of whites being victims of racism to be laughable. However, the laughability of a claim is not an obstacle to anyone making it. This is the case with the Palestinianist claim of a Palestinian genocide perpetrated by Israel.

The white genocide idea he had been championing had finally become a fixture of conservative radio. David Duke had started trying to build a relationship with “our friends and allies in the tea party.”

Just as Black's characterization of Blacks gaining civil rights as a white genocide caught on in the white nationalist movement, so did the characterization of Jews gaining civil rights as a Palestinian genocide gain traction among the Palestinianists. If we can ever equate the Palestiniasts' placards declaring "Zionism=Apartheid" and "Zionism=Genocide" with the alt-right's "Diversity=White Genocide," we will make a large step in discrediting Palestinianism.