I'm not sure what bigger picture I'm to extract from this brief Esquire piece by David Peisner, but it's an interesting read. He interviews several white supremacists (the sheet-wearin', Hitler-lovin' kind) and a self-described black nationalist who advocates resegregation of black and white people within the US. Three of the white guys he interviewed want Obama to win, the black person wants McCain to win. Hardly a representative sample of either camp, but it's an unusual glimpse inside a way of thinking you may find foreign. Snip:
NAME: Erich Gliebe
Who: Chairman, National Alliance
Likes: Third Reich, the movie Rocky
Dislikes: Integration, Jewish-controlled media
Career Highlights: Turning white-power record label, Resistance Records, into a million-dollar-a-year business juggernaut; an 8-0 record as a professional boxer under the nickname, "The Aryan Barbarian."
"Obama might be a better candidate for our cause because he's racially conscious. One of our big things in the National Alliance is to raise the racial consciousness of our people. Young whites in universities, they've been stripped of any kind of racial identity. Obama may be a racist in a positive sense for his people–that will awaken a lot of the whites, knock some sense into them. They'll see that non-white Americans are allowed to be proud of who they are, to be racially conscious, to talk about their people or their community without being attacked as being racist. Let's face it, white people aren't going to fight for their causes, for their kind with a white president. I don't think McCain even acknowledges that a white race exists. He's all about granting amnesty to illegal aliens. The fact he wants to keep us in wars in the Middle East for 100 years, that's not a good thing. I give Obama credit, he seems to have stuck to his guns as far as pulling the troops out of Iraq. He's a very intelligent man, an excellent speaker and has charisma. John McCain offers none of that. Perhaps the best thing for the white race is to have a black president. My only problem with Obama is perhaps he's not black enough."
Why White Supremacists Support Barack Obama (Esquire, thanks vinsanity). Above, a screengrab of the National Alliance website, in which Mr. Gliebe identifies "mediocre singers" from the seventies like Janis Ian as one of the greatest threats to the future of the white race, and points to an album cover from her 1975 release "Between the Lines" as evidence.
Incidentally, remember how earlier this year, SNL re-ran its first episode ever, hosted by George Carlin, on the occasion of his passing? Ms. Ian, surprise white supremacist enemy number one, was the musical guest. Her stripped-down acoustic performance was simple, moving, beautiful, and timeless. Video clip below: At Seventeen, from the aforementioned album. Consider it a unicorn chaser, and enjoy. It is, at heart, a song about being a stranger in a world that doesn't reward strangeness, and prevailing anyway. That's something the bigots can't take away from us.
