Re: Nazis on the Net

["E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>]

From:	IN%"tallpaul@pipeline.com"  1-MAY-1996 13:19:10.69

>I stand behind my original post and the analysis in it. 
 
>I am amused at the tremendous attempts by people with certain political
>affinities to bail out Weaver by a series of arguments based either on

	Actually, the political affinities seem rather to be on the other foot.
Every organization I know of that calls Weaver a racist, as opposed to a
separatist, also tries to deny exactly how wrongful the government's actions
were at Ruby Ridge. The biggest example of this is the US government, but
organizations such as the American Jewish Committee are also guilty of this
apologia. If you don't believe me on this (Rich, for instance, had doubted that
anyone was defending the actions at Ruby Ridge), I suggest reading "A Force
Upon the Plain", which is by the AJC's person on hate groups. In it, he calls
the actions of the USG at Ruby Ridge as, at worst, a mistake - and a more
justifiable mistake in his view than Weaver's not showing up for his court
hearing. In almost all cases in the chapter on Ruby Ridge, he states the
government's side of the story as fact, and uses quotes - prominently labelled
as from "white supremacists" - to describe the Weavers' side of the story.

>profound ignorance of political realities or with their own private
>dictionaries.

	If you believe that my definition of racism is out of my "own private
dictionary," I invite you to see Webster's Second College Edition New World
Dictionary of the English Language:

Racism. 1. Same as racialism (sense 1). 2. Any program or practice of racial
discrimination, segregation, persecution, and domination, based on racialism.

Racialism. 1. A doctrine or teaching, without scientific support, that claims
to find racial differences in character, intelligence, etcetera, that asserts
the superiority of one race over another or others, and that seeks to maintain
the supposed purity of a race or the races. 2. same as racism (sense 2).

	The second definition of racism is actually _more_ restrictive than
my definition. I call someone practicing "racial discrimination, segregation,
persecution, _and_ domination" a racist, whether or not they believe in some
superiority of some race. I do appreciate the inclusion in Webster's of
"without scientific support," since I am a scientist.
 
>The whole argument of racism vs. white separatism vs. white suppremicist
>seems more to come from people who argue whether someone is a Baptist or a
>Christian or a Southern Baptist or a Protestant. (In mathematical set
>theory one would trace the fallacy in thinking to the false idea that any
>given element of a set cannot be the element of more than one set. Thus, if
>(X is a member of Y) it cannot also be a member of Z.) 

	I regard racism and racial supremacism as two sides of the same thing.
Racial separatism overlaps with racism, but someone who practices one is not
necessarily in favor of the other. I do not dispute that someone who is a
racial separatist can also be a racist, and indeed often is. I simply am not
willing to condem someone as a racist when the only organizations calling him
such have clear motives to call what happened at Ruby Ridge something other
than premeditated murder.

>I understand that James D. is not accusing me of being a "child molester"
>but merely using it as a reductio ad adsurdem argument. 
 
>Let me continue in this vein. 
 
>The issue of  child molestation was dragged in and had no relevance on the
>immediate political isues of Weaver et al. 
 
>But imagine people are arguing about the deep fundamental differnces
>between someone who is a "child molester" vs. a "pedophile" vs. a "boy
>lover." 
 
	The analogy works quite well, in some ways. A pedophile who carries
out his (usually his) desires is a child molester. A boy lover may be a
pedophile, and may if a pedophile be a child molester. But I have known someone
who had sexual attractions to underage boys but controlled them - he regarded
carrying out such urges as wrong (I agree with him, if anyone is wondering).
I would not call him a child molester.
	-Allen