Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina, wrote many disturbing things during his days as a poster. Porn forum nude africa. But one of Robinson’s comments stuck out as particularly perplexing: “I’m a black Nazi!”
The idea of a black man pledging allegiance to a movement based on his inferiority seems preposterous, a Chappell’s show sketch Yet the absurdity that comes to life points to something real. As strange as it may seem, there are a disturbing number of black and Latino Americans who hold extreme right beliefs.
Two of the country’s most prominent anti-Semitic voices today, Kanye West and Candace OwensBlack Trump supporters. Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist who had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, is of Mexican descent. Enrique Tario, leader of the Proud Boys Sentenced to 22 years imprisonment For his role in the 6 January riots, Afro-Cuban. Mauricio Garcia, a Hispanic mass shooter who Eight people were killed 2023 was in Dallas-area shopping centers Posted neo-Nazi rhetoric on his social media pages before his attack.
Academic research suggests that these are not merely a few cherry-picked examples. There are non-trivial numbers of right-wing black and Latino people who express extreme right-wing ideas — up to and including outright bigotry.
In 2022, two academics — Ethan Hirsch and Laura Royden — Results published A large national survey on the prevalence of anti-Semitic beliefs in the United States. Their study found that anti-significant attitudes were significantly more common on the right than on the left. But it also found significant racial divisions among right-wingers Black and Latino conservatives are about 20 percentage points more likely expressing anti-Semitic views more than their white conservative peers.
Recent studies have also found that, among Latinos, political conservatism predicts High levels of racial resentment toward blacks people and Greater skepticism about the role of racism Ongoing social marginalization of black people. another one Recent research found that Latino conservatives express higher rates of hostility toward undocumented immigrants than their liberal or moderate peers, as well as higher support for reducing legal immigration rates.
A separate study White and black Americans are found That, in both groups, “prejudicial attitudes toward Latinos … are the most consistently significant factors in shaping opinions about the number of immigrants admitted and the consequences of immigration.”
None of this is to say that most non-white conservatives are bigoted, or that ethnic minorities are more bigoted than white Americans in general. All available research confirms common sense: that white people are far more likely to be white supremacists.
But this evidence also suggests that some things that seem like common sense—that black people like Mark Robinson couldn’t be Nazis by definition—simply don’t match reality. As odd as it may seem given traditional far-right attitudes toward ethnic minorities, there are high-profile black and Latino Americans who hold bigoted and extreme beliefs — and a small but significant percentage of the general population of both groups who agree with them. (Although Robinson denies writing the Nazi post, overwhelming evidence points to him as the author.)
Understanding non-white extremism
So how can we explain this phenomenon?
One theory is that much of this is rooted in perceptions of Americanness. Hostility toward other minority groups is, for some black and Latino people, a way to solidify their own place in the country—to distinguish themselves as good Americans from bad others.
Journalist Paula Ramos offers such an explanation in her newly published book Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America. After spending a day with Pedro Antonio Aguero, a far-right activist who obsessively patrols the southern border in search of undocumented immigrants, Ramos wrote“I felt that by hunting them, he was distancing himself from them and from his own foreignness.”
Some academic studies point to similar conclusions. a test Presented Latino respondents with written materials reducing the status of Latinos in America. Some respondents saw a news report that Latinos are doing worse in the United States on metrics such as educational attainment; Others saw the same story with an additional line comparing Latino and black outcomes.
Individuals who viewed the comparison story subsequently expressed significantly higher negative attitudes toward black people—the spike was interestingly centered among them. generous Latinos (who were less prejudiced than conservatives before exposure but equally prejudiced afterward). This, academics theorize, is because conservative Latinos already care a lot about their Americanness, and therefore have already built a sense of status threat into their overall worldview.
in his book When Americans are black, Nyambi Carter of the University of Maryland argues that black skepticism about immigration is rooted in the fear that “whites may favor immigrants more than blacks in hiring decisions, housing, and other social interactions.” It was, he wrote, a “confrontational nativism” born of black insecurities about their own status and social status as Americans.
But this is only a theory, and one that does not explain all the phenomena. Some things, like the unusually high rate of opposition among Black and Latino conservatives, are a little harder to fit into the script.
In their paper on race and antisemitism, Hersh and Royden concluded that “the roots of anti-Semitic attitudes among minority groups are broad rather than narrow and are not well explained by commonly proposed theories.” Basically, they say, no one really knows why anti-Semitism seems to be disturbingly popular in those groups.
In general, this is a matter that calls for caution. The phenomenon of far-right politics is fairly new, or at least newly documented. As something we’re just starting to grapple with, we can’t really say for sure why It’s happening in social science and journalism is hard work, and we don’t have enough of it.
One thing we can say for sure is that Mark Robinson calling himself a “black Nazi” is outlandish – but not as outlandish as it sounds. There are more people like him and they will play a role in determining the future of the American right.
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