There is a common thread between the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, Texas, and Laguna Beach, California, the January 6 insurrection, everyday police lethality, and the overturning of Roe v Wade. Add to this list the critical race theory and queer American discussion bans in public schools across the country. It is the tangled web of violent white supremacy, or at least, the threat of it.
The goal here has always been to terrorize, cower, exploit and marginalize anyone who isn’t a straight white male. Although white males are the primary practitioners of violent white supremacy, one need only subscribe to its main tenets – racism, elitism, narcissism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and control over the bodies of women and the marginalized – to be one.
White males who are die-hard white supremacists and their fellow travelers have and will continue to create hypothetical hurts, slights, and people (especially theoretical children) to create their ideal nation-state. One that fully represents their worldview while fully denying the rights and humanity of everyone else. And while hate may be the trigger for white supremacists to commit their domestic terrorism, power and the pursuit of such is the everlasting fuel for white supremacy.
The recent near-violent incident in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho is yet another example of this seeming contradiction between the rhetoric around protecting children (in this case, from the harms of queer “indoctrination”) and the planned harm of hurting and killing people over queerness.
For many white males and their allies, preserving access to military-grade firearms is just as important as legislating against reproductive care and telling children the truth. President Barack Obama once said, when white people “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them”. But for many white males regardless of socioeconomic status, and other converts, violence and the threat of it is their Bible. Defending the rights of hypothetical children provides the perfect cover for their violent means and ends. They have decided that if marginalized “others” have to endure trauma and die in order for them to hold onto power, then so be it.
