The Time of White Supremacy

by KARL STEEL



Photo from Btown Justice

A set of fliers posted at University of Indiana, Bloomington, targeting the doors of faculty who have spoken out to protect immigrants, Muslims, and a heterogeneous America.

I'm struck by the claims these fliers collectively make about time:
"Let's Become Great Again"
"Protect Your Heritage."
"Our Destiny is Ours"
"Our Future Belongs to Us"

Only the present is missing here. In white grievance culture, the 'now' is the one thing they can never be claimed, because it's precisely this childish resentment in the now that fuels their fits about Wars on Christmas and the like. They know that the present isn't giving them what they want. They haven't accepted the independence of the world; they're babies. Murderous babies. So they claim that they have lost something ("Let's Become Great Again"), that they once had it ("Heritage"), that there's a certain automatic, unthinking future that will meet them if they can only find it ("destiny"), and that only by abandoning themselves to this destiny, the one thing that knows and accepts them, will they finally arrive at what is theirs ("future"). Here we have the double motion of nostalgia, which responds to the ill fit of any existence by reaching to other times, past and future, where things are supposed to work.