Denial Gets You Nowhere

I moved to Eugene under the impression that it’s a progressive college town and a hippie mecca. It didn’t take long to learn that its days of being a hippie mecca are … pretty much over. I know this isn’t the 1960s or 70s but still, hippies are still a thing on the West Coast, and they were still a thing in St. Louis, at least in the 1990s.

In the past week or so, I’ve discovered disturbing things about Eugene via Nextdoor. I’ve learned that white supremacists are organized enough in Eugene to be making sure that no yards have Black Lives Matter signs. It got me reflecting on my impression—that started not long after I moved here—that while Portland has radicals such as anarchists and socialists, Eugene is more about liberal Democrats. It can be a bit frustrating.

On top of that, denial among white people in Eugene is apparently a normal everyday thing when it comes to local white supremacists.

I posted a link to the GoFundMe page to help Isiah Wagoner, the black activist who was supervising the Children’s March when a white supremacist deliberately ran over him. This was after I read about how the driver gave him the finger before stepping on the gas and aiming for Isiah Wagoner. This was obviously intentional… and yet the cops let the psycho free. Meanwhile, Isiah Wagoner is in the hospital—hence the GoFundMe page.

The only comments I’ve received for posting this on Nextdoor were a couple people claiming that maybe he isn’t a white supremacist. The second commenter even made some bizarre comment, suggesting that it wasn’t intentional and that maybe he was distracted… because people are pulling people out of cars?!?!?!? Um, no. So with a roll of my eyes, I found the original Eugene Weekly article and copied and pasted the url into my post about the GoFundMe page.

Denial isn’t just a river, especially with closed-minded fools.

Nazibook

Facebook says that the neo-Nazi hate group page, Proud Boys, doesn’t violate their policies.

Just…wow. I reported the page, and they sent me a response refusing to take it down. Someone mentioned that Zuckerberg is a Dump-supporter, and someone else said they rarely take it down the first time you report it, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

Um,  your white supremacist policies, you mean? Your pro-neo-Nazi policies, you mean?

Fortunately, there was space for a comment, and I spelled out to them the fact that it’s a neo-Nazi group. I wonder if that’s even sufficient, especially with a white male supremacist in charge of fb. I would totally dump fb, if there was social media that was technically about the same–with groups and events, etc., but politically didn’t suck.

Now I feel like continuing to read the book Fascism Today: What it is and How to End It, by Shane Burley.