There is no room for the hatred and bigotry repeatedly expressed by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in America and the world – highlighted in Charlottesville, VA, that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer, Virginia State troopers Jay Cullen and Berke Bates, not to mention the 19 injured protestors.
There is no room for false moral equivalency either!
I was in Australia and New Zealand when the Charlottesville anti-Semitic and racist chants, followed by the deadly mayhem, were replayed across all news channels to the horror and disgust of my fellow white Anglo-Judeo-Christian viewers. They were horrified. Australia was colonized by racists and had racist immigration laws that banned Asians.
Australia, where my father and grandfather are buried, was as racist as America. Aborigines were thrown off cliffs. Chinese were barred from entering the country. No different than people of color being lynched in America and Chinese being excluded or being lynched, topics I have discussed in Custom Maid Spin for New World Disorder. The saying “not having a Chinaman’s chance” expressed the fact that Chinese – coolie-slaves — could also be lynched for no reason. Today Asians, especially Chinese, their labor and money, are part of the national fabric that make America, Australia and New Zealand great multi-racial countries, with people of all colors and religions, including Jews and Muslims. Anti-Semitism is not limited to Jews. It also applies to Muslims – because Muhammad and early Muslims were Arabs — Semites.
America’s Founding Fathers, many of whom were slave-owners, created a Constitution designed to end slavery and treat all people as equals. America’s founding ideals of equality and justice for all is America’s shinning beacon on the hill — alive and transparently dealing with its ills.
I was delighted to see at least 40,000 anti-white supremacist protestors turn out at the Boston Common last weekend to drown-out the racist-anti-Semitic speeches and express their outrage to the few hundred supremacist-Nazis who fled their own “Free Speech” Boston flee party to the chant “Hey, hey, ho ho. White supremacy has to go.”
America’s national and global moral leadership and compass are seriously impaired when anti-Semitic and racist rants are not unequivocally condemned by America’s president and citizens. We all have a responsibility to take a stand against white supremacists and neo-Nazis. After all, many Americans fought and died in World War II to stop Nazism.
Heather Heyer did and paid for her beliefs with her life. “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” her Facebook cover photo read.
America fought a Civil War to end slavery, passed Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws to end racism, yet racism against America’s descendants of former slaves is still alive and well in America, a subject I have discussed in disgust at length in my books—not only against African-Americans, but Asian-Americans and Latinos.
The Charlottesville rally was the largest white-supremacist gathering in more than 40 years according to Richard Cohen, the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
America’s Founding Fathers, many of whom were well-versed in the Judeo-Christian Old Testament values on which America was founded – and spoke Hebrew – must be groaning in dismay at what the Republic they founded is experiencing today – joyously chuckling with satisfaction at how their fellow Yankees performed at the Boston flee party.
Trump’s unequivocal condemnation of the Charlottesville white-supremacists last Tuesday in Phoenix, AZ, was a right step on America’s path of global political redemption.
On my flight back to Hong Kong, in light of Charlottesville and its aftermath fury, I watched I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO again – a movie everyone must see at least once! After watching James Baldwin share his observations of racist America, and re-digest his reminder “that nothing can be changed until it is faced,” with more than six hours flight time remaining, I decided to double down and make it a double bill, and watched The Zookeeper’s Wife, about Polish Christians saving Jews from the Nazi gas chambers during World War II – another must-see movie if anti-Semitism is to be honestly tackled.
The time is long overdue for America to fulfill the Founding Fathers – Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, Adam and Burr – The Magnificent 7’s vision that all people are created equal without anti-Semitism and racism if America is to come together as one, survive, continue to guide, and be truly committed to its constitutional cornerstone and re-ignite the beacon on the hill so it can shine at home and glow brightly again for all to see and practice.