Soi-Disant “Responsible White Separatist Community” Concerned About Image Problem

An amusing find from my colleague Matt Corley, who finds moderate white supremacist John de Nugent telling the Washington Post that he’s worried James von Brunn will give the movement a bad name:

De Nugent called von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of “a loner and a hothead.”

“The responsible white separatist community condemns this,” he said. “It makes us look bad.”

In the real world, of course, racism and violence go hand-in-hand. Integration-oriented movements often operate with an ethos of non-violence, as seen in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Gandhi’s movement in India, or the main current of thinking in the African National Congress’ struggle against apartheid. By contrast, though you sometimes see mass movements in favor of racist violence (lynchings in the US, or the Hitler’s Willing Executioners phenomenon) I’m not familiar with any examples of mass non-violent action in favor of racist ideology.