A conservative journal is urging the New York Times to “get over its white supremacy fetish” after the newspaper published the latest in a string of articles that betray a morbid fascination with race relations.
“In the past year, the Times has published articles about a white supremacist’s wedding registry, whether black and white preschoolers can really be friends, and how “nachos” and “Nazi” share the same etymological origin,” writes Christopher Rufo in the Federalist. “The coverage has been so over-the-top, you might even say the New York Times has a ‘white supremacy fetish.’”
One could add many other examples to Rufo’s modest list, since the New York Times has been reveling in white supremacy stories ever since the 2016 presidential campaign.
In past days, the flagship newpaper of the American left has seen fit to publish articles called “The Lowest White Man,” “The White Supremacy Caucus,” “Monuments to White Supremacy,” “No One Is Coming to Save Us from Trump’s Racism,” and “A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland,” all of which deal with white supremacy.
The latest example cited by Rufo comes from the New York Times Sunday Review, in which journalist Audrea Lim contends that “the white supremacists on the far right have ‘yellow fever’—an Asian woman fetish.”
In her essay titled “The Alt-Right’s Asian Fetish,” Ms. Lim suggests that white nationalists have a particular attraction to Asian women, citing a social media comment to the effect that “exclusively” dating Asian women is practically a “white-nationalist rite of passage.”
The essay wanders into some uncomfortably embarrassing self-exploration as Ms. Lim recalls “being a 14-year-old Asian girl in an overwhelmingly white school who wanted to be interesting, self-possessed, and liked.”
“Instinctively, I knew it meant distancing myself from the other Asian kids, especially the nerdy and studious ones. I knew I had succeeded when a friend remarked that I wasn’t really Asian, I was white, ‘because you’re cool,’” she wrote.
More important than the silly content of the essay, however, is the insistence of the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets that “white supremacy” is a major social issue to be dealt with, one presumably affecting tens of thousands of Americans—whether they realize it or not. By battering Americans with article after article on white supremacy, the Times is effectively creating a perception that for many becomes reality.
Stoking the flames of racism as the New York Times is doing—whether anti-black, anti-white or anti- any other ethnicity—is profoundly irresponsible and damaging to the nation.
The Times’ interest here, of course, is essentially political, and stems from an ongoing campaign to tar President Donald Trump—and more generally, all conservatives and Republicans—with the brush of white supremacy or any other epithet that conveys moral depravity and ugliness. They evince little concern for the immense harm they provoke in the process.
What the Times fails to realize is that the vast majority of white men and women (who are not racists or white supremacists) resent being scolded over and over for a label with which they do not identify.
In addition, the more liberal elites—so well personified by the New York Times—insist on denigrating hard-working Americans for moral flaws they do not in the main possess, the more the rebellion of the forgotten, the despised, and the marginalized will continue to steer the course of America’s political future.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
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