John Ganz writes the substack Unpopular Front. Sometimes I find his highbrow intellectual history a little precious. People have died, if not directly in consequence, certainly under the cover of fancy right wing racist apologia. They don't deserve much explication.
And as push comes to shove, Ganz does know it. He takes off after one such apologist. (I've added paragraph breaks for easier reading and emphasis on what I take to be the vital point.)
... this guy is just totally baffled someone could feel passionately about anything—other than maybe that some races or groups are unnaturally inferior.
It’s true that Nazi salutes make me feel burning rage and hatred. Nazis and fascists are my enemies as I think they should be everyone else of goodwill. That was my whole point. It might have something to do with the fact that these guys murdered my family members. It also might have something to do with the fact that I view that ideology and movement as the worst thing ever devised in history, as a deep affront to everything good and noble in the human experience.
Racism, like the author’s, that tries to pass itself off as scientific or dispassionate does not soothe me into complacency: it makes me even more angry, because it is coldblooded and slimy. I don’t consider it a legitimate object of discussion. It’s an insidious ideology that dissolves the common bonds of humanity.
I have more tolerance for ignorant prejudice than for “scientific” racism that tries to organize itself as a body of scientific knowledge that would systematically degrade and ultimately destroy the equality of mankind.
To me, a preacher of racism—no matter how subtle or qualified—is not just my enemy, but the enemy of all mankind. Even if it were not all pseudoscience and charlatanism, I would reject it in principle. The division of humanity into racial castes is destructive of the very notion of shared humanity.
I try, imperfectly, to follow Adorno’s categorical imperative, that we must “arrange [our] thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.” To me, racist ideology, especially when it’s sanitized and scientized, is the first whiff of poison gas.
I also don’t think this person understands what a profound insult racism represents. My family fought and sustained wounds in Germany’s wars, they earned medals, they believed in the goodness and rightness of their nation, and felt called to sacrifice themselves for it.
Look at the soldiers in America’s armed forces now being demoted, removed, and humiliated because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. Or the attempts to erase black citizens’ contributions to America’s wars. These men and women were willing to sacrifice their lives for this country and now some in their country say they are not worthy. It’s been decided they are fundamentally not American.
That betrayal should provoke anger in anyone with a sense of honor.
I’m charged with intolerance of those with different views than me, but even the author says that the right is now infested with Nazis. I’ve seen this political movement turn into something monstrous and absurd in my lifetime: a strange cult of personality around an evident moron, and then I’m asked for more forbearance towards my political opponents.
I once had hopes in a rational center-right to reject these things. Those hopes have been repeatedly dashed, largely because people like this author are unable or unwilling to see things in their proper perspective. You may read but don’t remotely understand my work or much else in the world. ChatGPT will not help you.
While claiming to be defenders of “Western Civilization,” writers like this one have already betrayed its greatest accomplishment in ways they will never fully understand.
Once upon a time, an earlier generation of Americans were much clearer in their thinking. I give you Dr. Seuss:
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