A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind: The Reds and the Greens

Islamism--a supremacist interpretation of Islam deeply incompatible with the American Spirit--is ideologically as anti-Woke as imaginable. Shared anti-Americanism has bred their red/green alliance.

The American Spirit Essays #34

(continued from The Rest of the West)

Supremacism

Islamism is by far the highest profile contemporary proof that not every denomination or interpretation of every faith tradition is compatible with Americanism—or can serve as a viable completion to the American spiritual platform.  That incompatibility has nothing to do with the Islamic roots of Islamism.  It has everything to do with the supremacist roots of Islamism. 

It's hard to think of any belief more antithetical to the idea that “all men are created equal” than supremacism.  Supremacism starts with the racist belief that there are meaningful and inherent differences among groups.  It moves from there to assert that group inequality is real and appropriate; it establishes a pecking order assigning distinct rights and responsibilities to each group.  It ends its toxic brew by proclaiming the essential superiority of one group over all others.  That supreme group is entitled to rule.  All lesser groups must remain subservient and pay homage to their superiors.  Universalist supremacists believe that that pecking order, the right to rule, and expectations of homage extend to all people at all times.

As obviously anti-American as supremacism is, it has hardly been alien to our history.  White supremacism was central to slavery and Jim Crow, as well as to immensely powerful organizations like the Ku Klux Klan.  Though by the dawn of the twenty-first century we had more-or-less eliminated white supremacism as a significant political, social, or cultural force, it has never disappeared entirely.  Today, it persists in the fever corners of the Internet and social media, where it serves as an inspiration to some of society’s lost, disturbed, violent misfits. 

Wokeism, in its constant drive to defame Americans, has deconstructed “white supremacism” to include all forms of peaceful coexistence with any society whose history includes the taint of actual white supremacism.  In other words, pretty much any non-Woke Westerner who does not rail against European and American history qualifies as a white supremacist in the deconstructed Woke lexicon.  For the purposes of these essays, we’ll stick to the actual definition of the term.

White supremacism remains worth noting and tracking, but unless you have the misfortune of a personal encounter with one of America’s relatively few bona fide white supremacists, it’s unlikely to play much of a role in your life.  It’s also worth the effort to ensure that it never rises, phoenix-like, from the ashes.  No, in America today, the only indigenous supremacist movements of any consequence come from black supremacist groups like Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, the leadership of groups like Black Lives Matter, a handful of other corners of Wokeism—and from Islamists.