white nationalism - book - 2003 - Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America

Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism
Carol M. Swain and Russ Nieli
Cambridge University Press
2003
298 pages


    Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism is the second book that I’ve read by Carol M. Swain.  This text can be viewed as a companion to her book, The New White Nationalism in America, which has already been profiled on this blog, and which purports to analyze and critique new forms of radical hate organizations in pre-Millennial America. In this book Swain and her collaborator, Russell Nieli (a lecturer at Princeton University), interview several leading figures of the contemporary White Power scene that Swain already discussed at length.  Such individuals as Lisa Turner of the World Church of the Creator (a footnote mentions that she has since left this organization) National Alliance leader William Pierce (now deceased, but arguably the most influential American Neo-Nazi of the last forty years) David Duke, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, Matthew Hale (currently incarcerated), and a number of others are all given a forum by Swain and Nieli.

The book reveals the interviewees as articulate and thoughtful despite their hateful rhetoric.  This is not necessarily surprising since the interview subjects are already the spokespeople for a variety of hate organizations, and being articulate and thoughtful is their only real job.  Interestingly, many of these subjects, such as David Duke, have internalized aspects of politically correct discourse (despite their overt hostility to that form of language) and position themselves as simply crusaders for equal rights for the white race.  The implication is that granting equal rights to all races is, in fact, to give preference to all non-white races, even though there was a time when white-preference was taken for granted and a social structure that largely remains in-tact to this day was built on such a principle.
Typical of the speech of these leaders are expressions that the races are better off as separate but equal social entities.  According to these society would function better, and  everyone would be happier under the circumstances of racial separatism.  As articulate as these interview subjects may be, they are essentially calling for a return to prehistoric tribal units where each group's name for themselves is also their linguistic term for 'people'. 

The interviewers do not ask challenging questions of their subjects.  Presumably this no-pressure approach was a means to elicit as much about their ideologies as possible when, I'm sure, they're treated with hostility in so many other contexts.  In merely asking questions about their white power perspectives, however, this book is virtually useless.  Leaders of fringe movements generally strain themselves to have their voices heard and make use of virtually every low-fi communications technology available to them to get their messages out.  Conducting research on any of Swain and Neili’s subjects is not difficult as they have all made frequent use of the internet to speak in their own words. Furthermore the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center (possibly the two best sources for recent information on the racist right-wing) have been collecting information on all of these people for years.  Contemporary Voices White Nationalism is only really notable for being a book.


Contemporary Voices White Nationalism significantly altered my perception of Swain's other book, The New White Nationalism in America... for the worse.  The New White Nationalism in America goes to great length to present the contentious issues surrounding the affirmative action program, and suggesting that this is the issue that’s driving people towards White Nationalism organizations.  Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism reveal that many of these leaders simply believe in the superiority of the white race over all other races and that affirmative action is a means of bringing inferiors into positions where they don’t belong.  These interview subjects state such views themselves and no one needs to add any commentary to make their views clear.  While Swain, in her extended discussion of white nationalism, suggests that there is a need for reform on affirmative action programs, Contemporary Voices brings Swain’s arguments back to this Earth, where the white nationalists are exactly the deranged bigots you would expect them to be.  If there is to be a discussion on such programs, lets not have it at the request of fringe white power people.


The New Voices of White Nationalism shows its author (Swain) arguing that an emerging group of educated white-power radicals were gaining in strength because they were capable of articulating arguments about racial issues in a manner that appealed to a particular segment of the American populace.  Contemporary Voices in White Nationalism shows that very group of educated white-power radicals to actually be pompous and intellectually bankrupt pseudointellectals (a number of them hold advanced degrees and some have or do hold academic positions) who base their racial views on scientific theories that are generally laughed at, and studies that are methodologically ridiculous.  Many of the interviewees believe that the differences in the races are obvious, and are enunciated through the social performances of each race’s members.  This kind of “just open your eyes, goddammit!” argument fails to consider that many races have previously functioned under an elaborate cultural edifice of white privilege that arguably still exists, which prevented non-whites from participating in society.  The white nationalists who interest Swain tend to believe that white privilege is a natural right that has been subverted by the civil rights movement.  The real truth to be apprehended by an aware gaze is that multi-cultural societies actually function fine. Generally people of different cultures can come into contact with one another without conflict erupting.  

Unfortunately the memory of a past where society was organized strictly around white privilege lingers in the present day. The justification for that society was never based on anything truthful, but rather it was built (in part) upon the symbolic force of a large number grotesque racial stereotypes that continually return to haunt a minority of white folks who now must occasionally make contact with the embodiments of those repulsive images.  What's difficult for these White Nationalist people is the reality that inherent white superiority is no longer a socially diffuse idea that lives in everyone's heads.  As a closing note, I think that researchers who use this text and The New White Nationalism in America should also read Melvin L. Leiman's excellent text The Political Economy of Racism, as a counterpoint to some of Swain's textual representations of racial tensions and their causes.