This week I spoke with four of my friends about what I have learned throughout the semester about white nationalists in general. I got a lot of surprised reactions, although I’m not surprised by this myself. Throughout the course I’ve become more and more prone to underreacting to most things I’ve learned: little really surprises me about their movement. However, I’ll go over a brief summary of my discussions with them.

I would have to say that the most shocking thing that all four of my friends learned was all of the information regarding the ZOG. The Zionist Occupied Government, dubbed by white supremacists, is a group of twelve Jewish men that secretly work towards overtaking the United States as their own land and controlling all others. They deny the Holocaust, which although three of my four friends were aware that they didn’t believe it had happened, they didn’t know that white supremacists believed it was made up by the Jews in order to gain more control. A cartoon below shows an outlook that they have.

White supremacists also believing that the ZOG is in control of Hollywood also shocked them as well. They believe the use of interracial couples in the media is one tactic to weaken the white race. Making black people seem cool, and stealing the white women is their way of showing the white children that this is okay, forcing the “stigma” to grow. They believe that the United States is in danger of being taken over. Lauren, one of my friends asked me where they would even get an idea such as this. Her disbelief that such an obscure idea could be spurred within their minds was just too weird for her, as it is for me as well.

I applied some of our first assignment and asked them all what they thought a white supremacist would look like. To no surprise, they described the stereotypical skinhead: combat boots, camo, shaved head, tattoos all over, and very violent. Although they were aware that not all were like this, they were surprised to learn that this is more a representation of certain gangs. White supremacists just like any other person are very prevalent. As shown below, a typical skinhead in comparison to say David Duke, an extremely powerful man in the movement today, shows a very far range of what they appear as today.

  

I went into a short discussion about what they thought about cyber racism. I described what cloaked websites were, websites with hidden agendas that are supposed to pull you further in by not showing the blatant political view of the page initially. I showed them the MLK.org example, and both Hillary and Alex both had run into the page before while writing a research paper in high school. I too was in the same boat. So of all of us, the majority had seen the page. It brought about a further discussion of how this could affect children reading such information. Although the internet has not been much of a recruiting tactic as stated by Daniels, it still penetrates some children’s minds through cloaked websites and games such as Border Control or Ethnic Cleansing.

  

Overall, all of them were surprised by how prevalent white supremacy really is today, regardless of how hidden it can be. Violence still occurs, as you can see by the white nationalist prison gangs still being so widespread. Racially based gangs are everywhere. More importantly, this discussion spurred two of my friends to want to switch their schedules to be able to take this course. The subject is full of interesting information that makes you want to know more.