The social conflict theory states that human beings tend to strive for survival. However, when it comes to sharing the limited resources that are provided, it becomes very problematic. Some individuals tend to have this selfish subconscious that makes them act irrationally, where they would rather choose to form a feud over what’s theirs than to come to some sort of agreement that would satisfy both ends, and still maintaining the peace amongst themselves. This Marxist-based social theory applies to the modern-day conflict between the white supremacists and the interracial societies in the United States, in which these ‘white power’ groups see that the American territory belongs to the Americans and not to the foreigners, nor the non-white citizens of the nation. They don’t believe in the idea of sharing with the mixed races, which is why, according to Durso & Jacobs (2013), “hate-group presence starts to decrease after black presence reaches 18.
8 percent,” since they believe that being surrounded by others like them, white Americans, it would make their mission of ” cleansing the country” easier to achieve, which is every white supremacist’s dream. Meanwhile, these ethnically diverse U.S. societies are quite concerned with this dilemma and feel as if their rights are being violated. Unfortunately, this feud isn’t new, which is why the U.
S. government is not concerned of the fact that these groups will do anything out of the ordinary, but will rather continue to commit “little” illegal crimes every once in a while. But this tension between the white supremacists and interracial societies in the United States has been slowly growing ever since the end of the Civil Rights Movement, where white supremacist groups like the Aryan Nations, the KKK, and the Skinheads are patiently waiting to make their big move that will ultimately change the game for the nation. The truth is, this progression of the conflict between the white supremacists and interracial societies in the United States has contributed to the disruption of peace within the nation by having white supremacists interfere with the World Wide Web in order to gain more followers and through various violent activities they seem to provoke against these innocent people.
As of lately, the white supremacist groups have become increasingly popular, especially in states like California and Texas where they “had 33” active hate-groups in the early 2000s due to their large populations, and to our dismay, this number has only grown over the years in not only these two states, but in others as well, (Durso & Jacobs, 2013). This growth in the number of white supremacist groups in the U.S. today could not have been achieved if it were not for the help of the Internet, which is concerning since anyone can easily access these web pages and fall into the dark world that the white supremacists have created.
Apart from the Internet, the amount of violence that sprouts from the anger and hate that these groups have buried for centuries, poses a threat to all the advancements seen in modern society. These groups have no sense of mercy and will do anything and everything in their power to make sure that these interracial societies no longer exist in the United States. The fact that this conflict has had a rather gruesome and an ethically improper past during the Civil Right Movement, where these groups would do the unthinkable to those of different races, leaves people wondering if the United States will still continue to be known as the Land of Opportunity, despite its troublesome citizens that are preventing these racially mixed individuals from obtaining any chances at succeeding in life if they step on, what they call, ‘their’ land.
When parents tell their kids to be careful of what they read or see on the internet, it’s usually for them to understand that they should avoid what is known as the “dark web.” However, now that these white supremacist groups have “harnessed..
.the Internet…in an impressive fashion,” and their websites can be easily accessed on search engines like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc., parents will have to cautious as to what their kids and even themselves read on the Internet, (Adams & Roscigno, 2005). Due to the Internet’s numerous possibilities of receiving and sharing information, it is no surprise that white supremacists would use it to their advantage.
By having possession and control over certain parts of the Internet, it will now be even more dangerous to search up on the World Wide Web and could potentially endanger our society into trusting what these groups have to say on certain issues. One example would be the website MartinLutherKing.org, who was created by former KKK member: Wizard D. Black. This website allows white supremacists to not only spread the idea of ‘white power,’ by mocking one of the most important historical figures who represent the nation’s idea of peace and equality, but also “has made the job for leaders to recruit new members for their white supremacy groups a whole lot easier,” while still being able to stay under the radar, (Bardach, DiPersio & Guttentag, 2000). They have gained much from having control of the Internet like followers and popularity, and it appears that their goal of controlling the people in the nation is only a step closer to them.
But over the years it has begun to be noticed as a problem, and it has been pointed out in an interview with Morris Dees by Joana Eppinga. According to Eppinga (2006), children have stumbled upon this website to do research for school projects or assignments and end up discovering an alternate universe in which Martin Luther King Jr. is seen as a sinful man, which only proves that the white supremacists who created this website have the power to “plant bias and prejudice into the minds of children.” Children are innocent human beings who are meant to make a change in the nation in the future, for the better, and by having these websites out in the public where anyone can seem to reach isn’t going to allow that change to happen. Although white supremacists goal isn’t technically to directly attack children, they are thinking ahead and managing how they can alter the world’s views and still disrupt the peace within the United States.Throughout the World Wide Web, there are chat rooms and video chats with white supremacist followers and leaders that have become extremely populous, especially Stormfront.
org. The creator of this internet forum from 1995, Don Black or Stephen Donald, is an American white nationalist and white supremacist who made this website in order to allow leaders of white supremacist groups to communicate and send a messages into homes around the world, ” meaning their ideas and views on interracial communities and people of different races and cultures is now spreading not just across the nation, but also around the world, (Bardach, DiPersio & Guttentag, 2000). There are also chat rooms where white supremacists may discuss and exchange ideas about how communities in America should be “majority white,” and podcasts where people can learn about their ‘racist’ ideology.
These websites that were created by the white supremacist groups only aim to benefit themselves, not the people. They are poisoning the minds of the innocent people of the web in order to gain more followers by pushing them to understand their reason for why they do what they do. However, this not only dangerous for the adults in the world, but also the teens who are confused and learning more about themselves and what they believe every day and are always on the Internet, and even the kids who trust the internet to provide them will reliable and truthful information. As reported by Bardach, DiPersio, and Guttentag (2000), they discovered that the “son of the creator of Stormfront.org, Derek Black, created his own webpage for white kids called “Stormfront for Kids,” which is understandable since his father must be feeding these unjust ideas to his brain and making him believe that “whites should not have to live with non-whites,” in life.
So not only are adults being involved in the world of white supremacism, but also children, and the bad thing is that they are being pushed to be unfair with other kids just because of their beliefs in another God or just purely because of their skin color. On the downside, this means many people around the world can be exposed to websites like these, which means not only is the peace in the nation being disrupted but also across the world. Modern-day tools and utilities have made the lives of white supremacists a whole lot easier and making the idea of a peaceful and non-violent nation almost achievable. By utilizing the Internet, the number of white supremacist groups has begun to grow across the nation since there are more people joining and following what these white supremacists had fed these innocent people. According to Bubolz & Simi (2015), a research done by Potok in 2013 explained how “the number of hate groups in the United States increased from approximately 600 to more than 1,000,” from the year 2000 to 2012.
This is all as a result of these different hate groups whose intentions are to gain more than to give. White supremacists would rather gain a large number of members than to provide useful and truthful information because they hope to conquer their goals of making the nation a wholesome white and American country. Through the Internet, they were able to convince more than 400 people that this idea of mixed race communities contains bad people. This may not seem like a lot but in fact, this has been a big achievement for many white supremacist groups since they were able to create more groups in different locations around the nation.
Although the Internet is their main form of recruiting new members, they also use a variety of other methods…like the distribution of flyers in high schools and nightclubs and targeting neighborhoods that suffer from economic deprivation,” which all push forth this new wave of white supremacy supporters in the world, (Bubolz & Simi, 2015). These different methods are just as promising as the Internet since they both will ultimately lead them to gain more followers on their side of the feud against the interracial communities. Another way they achieve this is through social media, where they can trick teens or young adults into thinking its a support group and instead they fall into the clutches of white supremacy. These easy yet dangerous tactics that the white supremacist groups have developed have ultimately been successful and have led them into disrupting the peace both physically and virtually. Now that they have a larger population to spread the word of white supremacy, one can only imagine how much more violence will come to the surface in the United States.
White supremacy is an extremist belief that the white race is superior to others, which is why it is no surprise that violence is how they choose to disrupt the peace within the United States in order to directly harm these interracial communities and to continue to create their dream of a nation, a white nation. Various reports have been made over the past couple of years about white supremacists brutally attacking people, both physically and verbally. These threats are all targeted to the entire mixed-race population in the United States. According to an article found in Northwest Asian Weekly (1994), white supremacist Skinheads rolled up into an African American community, and “fired several rounds… where a bullet hit an 11-year-old youth,” who was nothing but an “innocent bystander” that got hurt due to a hate group’s heartless and inconsiderate nature for certain races in the world.
Unfortunately, the people in this community are used to these attacks and the violent nature of these people, which in fact, they shouldn’t be because no community should have to deal with the constant need to be afraid and worried that someone will harm you because of your race, gender, ethnicity, beliefs, etc. These white supremacist groups are uncontrollable on the streets, and the people in charge are not taking action on this. However, there was a trial that the government and the media seemed to take an interest in. It was published by Bill Moyers on the United States: Films Media Group. This murder trial was accusing “three men from East Side White Pride: Mieske, Brewster, and Strasser,” who were all guilty of beating three black men that were peacefully sitting in their car in a parking lot. Lamentably, Mieske managed to kill one of them for “racial reasons” with a metal baseball bat, (Moyers, 1992). These men were said to be a part of Eastside White Pride, the most violent group of skinheads in Portland, and they admitted that they viciously acted upon those men and accepted their consequences with no regrets or fear evident.
These men felt no shame for their actions committed and believed it was necessary for the man to die for the sake of the country, which is what most white supremacists think on matters like these. These groups see it as their duty, their mission, to remove all of these interracial communities and replace them with people like them, white American people. The fact that white supremacists are becoming so disorderly, to the point where the people in these interracial communities are too terrified to even step out of their homes, is unacceptable and depicts clearly how white supremacists have power over the majority.In addition to the amount of violence these hate groups bring to the plate, they seem to love expressing their ideas and their necessity of petrifying these communities through vandalism. As seen in an article from the Los Angeles Times by Wilkinson, a white supremacist named Brad Kelly of Monrovia was “accused of joining an illegal cross-burning ceremony eight years ago in the Kagel Canyon area,” and failed to show up to trial. It was said that the incident was videotaped and many participators replied by saying “the ritual was held to incite violence and intimidate residents in the racially mixed neighborhood,” (1991). However, due to Kelly’s sudden disappearance, the trial could not be completed, leaving these frightened eye-witnesses unsatisfied and unprotected from any other indirect attack that could occur in the near future.
Many white supremacists get away with these illegal acts by simply saying it is their religion and that they have the right to practice it, regardless of how racist their ideas are. On the other hand, the people are well aware that they are breaking laws in the process, such as the vandalism executed on the Washington CAN! Office grounds. The newspaper, International Examiner, was able to capture the scene and the responses of the mortified Hispanic workers as they saw what these hate groups did.
A lot of damage was done to the building complex and the vandals were able to spray paint on phrases like, “RaHoWa 88,” which stood for “Racial Holy War,” and the “88” which symbolized “Heil Hitler.” Apart from that, a victim explained how white supremacists saw Latinos, as “advocates on issues like health care, immigration, and economic reform,” and that these white supremacists see them as more of a problem in society rather than equal individuals living amongst them, (“Vandalism Strikes,” 2010). This white supremacist view of the Hispanic race is similar for many other races, where groups see Africans Americans, Muslims, Asians, etc as problems in society, flaws in the nation, rather than the unique and inspiring individuals they are.
Unfortunately, this recent modern-day tragedy demonstrates how society has not progressed in our acts of helping the United States become the free and peaceful nation it says it is. Instead, white supremacists have been getting closer to accomplishing their goal: to make the United States a purely white and American country.Ultimately, these white supremacist groups prosper in their savage-like actions towards these interracial communities, but what societies fail to realize is that they may be plotting the unexpected. Based on true events, the major motion picture, Imperium (2016), which was directed by Daniel Ragussis under the United States: Lionsgate Premiere, displayed the story of an FBI agent named Nate Foster, that went undercover to discover why a group of white supremacists got a ton of cesium-137.
The smuggled cesium-137 was to be used to create deadly bombs or weapons that would be inflicted upon these interracial communities, but lucky for Nate, he was able to catch them all red-handed, including Gerry Conway, who was the “leader” of the group and was arrested for his crime. This successful yet suspenseful mission of the unacknowledged hate groups proves that although these white supremacist groups may be lightly exploiting their violent nature here and there, they could always be plotting something much worse right under our noses, right in their hometowns. Another true yet horrific event that occurred in the United States was all caught on tape by ABC News Productions. This documentary demonstrated what it was like for the citizens of Leith, North Dakota to have a lonely man named Craig Cobb to move in, only to later discover he was secretly plotting disaster for them. Craig Cobb, a racist and white supremacist extremist, wanted to take over the town for all the white supremacists. He became so involved in his believes that he brought not just “friends,” but also guns and fear to the small town of about 20 people.
Eventually, the police “arrested him in November of 2013 for terrorizing and menacing his neighbors by walking around with a gun” throughout the town, to prove that his control of the town was not going to be ripped away from his fingertips, (“What life was like,” 2015). Although the community is by a majority white, they do believe that the rights of the people shouldn’t be different because of their race, gender, ethnicity, etc. and that the nation should be peaceful and more secure, so imagine their surprise when they were under this man’s dictatorship. To prove that the peace in the U.S. is being disrupted even to this day, the events that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, explain it all. According to a broadcast on Weekend All Things Considered titled, “Charlottesville: Reflecting On And Dissecting What Happened,” the host explains how the “20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. allegedly slammed his car into a group of people” that were marching in protest against the white supremacists, resulting in 19 injured and the death a thirty-two-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer, who was an innocent bystander watching the march from afar.
The man driving the car was known to be a part of a white supremacist group and simply wanted to show “the power” that these groups hold over society. Although the police were able to arrest the man, they were unable to stop him before the incident occurred. It was said that the police tried to detain the peaceful march from being violent, but instead, an outside force, the man in the vehicle, was what made this march very bloody and violent, (“Charlottesville: Reflecting,” 2017). However, in other future marches and rallies, the police were able to make it safe for the residents in Charlottesville, Virginia, but they all could never forget about the events that took place in that day in August of 2017. The residents of the city were shocked but mostly scared of the fact that angry people like James Alex Fields Jr.
would be capable of doing things like this because of the differences in beliefs and race amongst many people. With these ferocious and aggressive incidents occurring in the United States, it seems that these interracial communities may be exposed to even more danger than they could imagine since, according to white supremacist’s, there can be no peace amongst this nation without justice.The United States of America will always remain as the Land of Opportunity for many people of the world, despite the fact that these white supremacist groups are trying to change it to be for “only whites.” As stated before, this selfishness that these groups display is based on the Marxist social conflict theory, and ultimately, it is not through violence nor popularity that these white supremacist groups will be able to achieve this goal they have set. But instead, it is with the peace, love, compassion, justice, and togetherness that the interracial communities will be able to win in this conflict against the white supremacists of the nation.
White supremacy is a racist ideology that can be eliminated or at least diminished so that it no longer poses a threat to the peace that this nation is trying to create and establish for the future. The free people of the United States have the power to make their mark on the nation, or even on the world. They can change the way people think, act, speak, etc. People change people. By spreading this idea across the nation, across the world, ultimately, the human race can achieve many things, even world peace. Although the white supremacists are growing and becoming stronger and more violent than ever, this does not mean that we, the people of the United States cannot overcome this obstacle.
The impossible can be achieved if everyone has the right mindset. With the help of the Internet and through the violent activities they seem to support, this progression of the conflict between the white supremacists and interracial societies in the United States has contributed to the disruption of peace within the nation, but, the peace can be brought back and can overpower these groups by having people make a positive influence on the world rather than point out all the flaws in government for not attempting to solve this conflict that has been going on for centuries. Again, people can change people, and it can be either in a good way or in a bad way. Let this land continue to be known as the Land of Opportunity and not the Land of the Whites.
