Your Contributions Are Welcome

My hope is that rich discussions will occur on this blog. You can comment on my individual blog entries or you can use this page to post your ideas. Please join in on this important subject. To comment on this page go to the "Post a Comment" box at the end of this page or at the end of each post.

Here is my first posting on this blog:

Why This Blog?

 

I have spent thirty years studying the rhetoric of white supremacist groups such as the Aryan Nations, White Aryan Resistance, and neo-Nazi Skinheads. My studies have taken me to a world filled with hate, not love; bigotry, not tolerance; oppression, not liberation.

I have given many lectures in which I describe the communication strategies of these groups, focusing on their powerful use of words and symbols to promote their vision of supremacy. I have watched as these groups focused on the "other." Jews and African-Americans are portrayed by white supremacists as sub-human, "false starts in G-d's" quest to create man." Like Hitler, the white supremacists label Jews "cockroaches, vermin and bacilli."

Last night I watched a video that I was sent for contributing to my local PBS station. The video was of a PBS special from 2004 featuring Peter, Paul and Mary, Carry it On. On the video, trio member Mary Travers, who died in 2009, states: "If we are going to teach the world to stop hating the different, the other, then we are are going to have to start with children."

So, my friends, I have started this blog in the hope that through collective wisdom we can find the means needed for ending oppression and welcoming the other.

Please, share your ideas.

Prof Jack