Christopher Donovan: Frank Rich is Right About One Thing

Christopher Donovan: The rage isn’t, in fact, about healthcare.  Nobody is throwing bricks through windows in defense of insurance companies.  Bricks get thrown when people are angry about very fundamental things, like racial displacement.

So, Frank Rich, the Jewish New York Times pundit with a history of white-bashing, is at least half right in the notorious Sunday column that drew 606 reader comments.  He is more correct on that point than “Laurie from Bartlett, NH”, a “tea party” sympathizer and one of 606 commenters on the column:

Dangerous piece. Horrified when I read this because this writer obviously has never attended a “tea party” and knows not of what he speaks. The Americans who are giving of their precious time,limited funds and heart wrenching courage should NEVER be demonized and misstated like this.There were 10,000 people in Nevada today,there will be thousands in Boston on 4/14…these are faithful,hardworking,honest Americans. They have seen the takeover of our biggest freemarket institutions by government. They are frightened,concerned and,yes,angry. How dare you misinterpret and misrepresent the message of this great uprising. This has NOTHING to do w/race..it has everything to do with what our fathers,grandfather,greatgrandfathers fought for..LIBERTY!! LIBERTY!! LIBERTY!!!

Laurie from Bartlett, NH

Rich is more correct on the white rage point than even the venerable Pat Buchanan, who weakly suggests in this reaction column that because some non-whites think immigration needs controlling, the “tea party” crowd isn’t necessarily white resistance by another name.

But Laurie is wrong.  Pat Buchanan is wrong.

It is about race.

Where I part sharply with Frank Rich, of course, is whether the white anger is justified — and requires organized action by whites to act on that anger.  He dreads the prospect, while I cheer it.

But Frank Rich, to my mind, is only part of our problem.  “Laurie from Bartlett, NH” is an equally bedeviling problem for white advocacy.  Here’s a (no doubt) conservative white woman who appears to have convinced herself that “This has NOTHING to do w/race…”  It instead has to do with “LIBERTY!!”  Among the liberating aspects of race realism and white advocacy is the abandonment of the belief that anyone anywhere is motivated by abstractions like “freedom” or “liberty”.  Of course, they’re not.  Blood and soil is more like it.  It seems to me that a more important task for us to persuade “Laurie from Bartlett, NH” to shake herself from slumber and realize what’s really going on.  I don’t think debating with Frank Rich will do any good.

There are fewer more disturbing trends than your average white conservative’s hyperventilating that “I’m not a racist” and “race has nothing to do with it — it’s about the free market!”  Trust me, white-conservative-in-denial:  admitting that race is real — and that whites have legitimate group interests — is like untying that other hand from behind your back.

As a reader service for TOO, I waded through all the comments.  Most, disappointingly, cheered Rich on.  Some openly disparaged whites, like this likely Jewish commenter:

We can’t say the GOP is not diverse. They run the gamut of white billionaires, white millionaires, white run-of-the mill McMansion “owners”, white trailer inhabitants, white gun nuts, to white oolitical opportunists, etc., etc.,

Anne Green from Columbia, MD

The “conservative” responses all took the tack of “Laurie from Bartlett, NH”:  don’t smear us tea party activists as “racists.”

There was, that I saw, a lone pro-white comment:

what a disgusting article. the real people who face discrimination are whites (that is, people of european descent). white students are purposefully rejected from colleges just because of affirmative action for ‘minorities’ (who will very soon become the majority.) meanwhile, white adults are denied jobs just for the color of their skin! this, my friend, is racism.

whites are becoming a minority in the usa, canada, europe, australia, etc. europe will become majority muslim. and yet, it is a sin to want to preserve one’s heritage? in the usa, we have indian groups, asian groups, black groups, but white groups are racist!

it is about time we fight for our rights, and values and culture. it is not racist, everyone else is doing it. it is just fighting against racism and discrimination that is facing whites all over the world.

John from USA

Quite right, John from USA.

As a post-script, I’m doubting that my letter will run in the NYT.  Here’s a piece by letters editor Thomas Feyer that sheds light on why.  He is, he says, the son of “survivors of Nazism.”  Where does this crap end, for God’s sake?

Christopher Donovan is the pen name of an attorney and former journalist. Email him.