I stand against white supremacy.\u00a0 Full stop.<\/p>\n
I stand against white supremacy in the Pagan community.\u00a0 Full stop.<\/p>\n
I stand against white supremacy in modern neo-Pagan witchcraft, and in reconstructionist polytheism, and in the New Age movement.\u00a0 For that matter, I stand against white supremacy in academia, and in queer culture.\u00a0 I stand against white supremacy in art and\u00a0literature\u00a0and in fantasy and science fiction and horror and every other community of which I am directly or tangentially affiliated.\u00a0 On the one hand, I would hope that — however I may, at times inevitably, fail to live up to my antiracist ideals — that would be clear from my record.\u00a0 On the other hand, I’ve been around the block too many times to think that it goes without saying.<\/p>\n
This comes to mind today because it has come to my attention that\u00a0an occult store in the Kansas City area has given a platform to a white supremacist author.\u00a0 When the author’s political leanings and affiliations were revealed, and the store owner was asked to cancel the\u00a0event, the store owner and\u00a0the general\u00a0community at large responded predictably: doubling down, waving the false flag of free speech, and accusing all detractors of censorship.\u00a0 They say it is the author’s detractors who are the real racists, that membership in an explicitly white supremacist organization is not proof that the author, himself, is a white supremacist.<\/p>\n
I am utterly unsurprised\u00a0by any part of this.\u00a0\u00a0What else does a white conjure shop owner have in common\u00a0with an Asatru author?\u00a0 And the deflections are fucking textbook: “They’re not really racist, just proud of who they are.”\u00a0 “Giving racists a platform doesn’t make you racist.”\u00a0 “Censorship!”\u00a0 “Do you believe it’s possible to be racist against white people?”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, over on the author’s folk assembly page, he and his crew are bragging about rumors of Antifa intervention.\u00a0 You know who brags about fights with Antifa?\u00a0 Fascists.\u00a0 Out-and-proud fascists brag about confrontations with Antifa.\u00a0 Fucking Nazis.\u00a0 And the KKK.\u00a0 And, apparently, folkish Asatru assemblies.<\/p>\n
Giving a white supremacist a platform does not make you one, per se, but it does make you complicit in white supremacy.\u00a0 Likewise providing a platform for homophobes, transphobes, and mysoginists.\u00a0 Denying them a platform is not censorship, nor is it denying them their free speech: it is the exercise of your own free speech.<\/p>\n
So, too, is providing a platform an exercise of speech.\u00a0 It is a statement: this is speech I support.\u00a0 If, per chance, you offer an individual or an organization a platform on a particular subject, and it is brought to your attention after the fact that they are best known for speaking on another, then … then you have a choice.\u00a0 You can either double down or make a judgment call.\u00a0 Mainstream racists will attempt to convince you otherwise, but there is a difference between sticking with an author who, say, believes that our government is run by lizard people or that the pineapple and anchovies are an excellent pizza, and sticking with an author who is part of an explicitly white supremacist, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist\u00a0organization.<\/p>\n
In case you didn’t know, that’s what “folkish” Asatru is.\u00a0 Don’t take my word for it: go check out their websites.\u00a0 There are dog whistles everywhere, and you don’t have to dig very deep before they get really, really explicit about those views.<\/p>\n
Stand against white supremacy.\u00a0 Stand against homophobia.\u00a0 Stand against transphobia.\u00a0 Stand against misogyny.<\/p>\n
Stand against them in the Pagan community.\u00a0 Stand against them in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I stand against white supremacy.\u00a0 Full stop. I stand against white supremacy in the Pagan community.\u00a0 Full stop. I stand against white supremacy in modern neo-Pagan witchcraft, and in reconstructionist polytheism, and in the New Age movement.\u00a0 For that matter, I stand against white supremacy in academia, and in queer culture.\u00a0 I stand against white … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[321,83],"class_list":["post-4662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-antiracism","tag-feminist-witchcraft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1dc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4662"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4666,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662\/revisions\/4666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}