Fruit Salad.

 I have mentioned before that I am Asatru, a servant of the Old Norse Gods for those of you not familiar with the name. I have been so since I was a young man, and over the years I have had to contend with members of several racist and bigoted groups that think because of my faith, I will naturally share their views.


I don't. And none of their propaganda will *ever* work on me because of a single fact:


I have an ancestor who was a respected Norse warrior who was born in the area that is now Nigeria. I won't go into detail, as the story is long, and is not the main focus of this article. But, I know that he left his village around 1160 or 1165, to travel the world and see other peoples. He eventually settled in a small village outside Storuman. 


I also know that he was *black.* The reason I know this is that at one point, the Jarl's third daughter asked her father if she could ask him to marry her. Now, this was common among lesser nobles all over Europe for both their male and female children, as they needed to show that their intended was 'worthy' of joining their family. She used his history with the clan as proof, citing how he had used his 'skin woven from the night' to sneak into enemy camps and sow confusion and disable defenses. 


The Jarl accepted this argument, and the two of them had several children, somewhere between 5 and 9, though the records are not clear on this point.


But, because these bigots can not 'see' anything but my white skin and very public faith, they assume I will be an easy convert to their cause, and over the years I have heard every single argument they make for their position.


These arguments all follow the same exact structure, something experts on the rhetoric of hate speech call "Crisis-Culprit-Solution." And once you learn to see it, you can't miss it. It goes like this:


-


Crisis: "The world is being ruled over by a shadowy cabal."


Culprit: "This cabalists are actually Zionist Jews."


Solution: "Let's send them to work camps, where we can force them to be productive members of society."


-


Crisis: "Young people today are turning from the church."


Culprit: "Witches are subverting them to their evil religion."


Solution: "Burn them."


-


Crisis: "Crime is rising in America."


Culprit: "this is happening in Black communities, because Blacks prey on each other and Whites."


Solution: "Send them back to Africa."


-


Now once you get to notice it you start to see it whenever you encounter hate speech, and can start to point it out in Anti-LGBT groups, nationalist organization, religious groups, and so on. It's like a how an expert on art history can look at a painting and without knowing the artist, can tell you where it was painted and when.


In Matthew 7:16, Yeshua talks about this very thing, saying 'You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?" The point he was making is that if you pick up an apple, you know what kind of tree it came from. Similarly, if someone spouts hateful and bigoted rhetoric, you know what kind of person they are.


This has an unfortunate side effect for me. One that over the years has become harder and harder to overlook.


-


Crisis: "Women face systematic hurdles, in the form of lower pay, reduced job advancement, and other restricted opportunities."


Culprit: "This is caused by the fact that men hate women and grow up in a culture that enforces misogyny that they are to privileged to see."


Solution: 'Smash the Patriarchy. Girl Power."


-


A tomato is a fruit. A tomato is bitter. I don't like tomatoes. And I have never understood why the rest of you swallow them so willingly.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can you read the writing on the wall?

​I want to take a moment to talk about myself and something said about my faith that makes no sense once you look at it closely. But to talk about it, I need to set the stage, and to do that, I have to start somewhere else. So, I ask for your indulgence as I take you on a journey. ​Firstly, I am a long-term follower of the ancient Norse pantheon, and this post is targeted mostly at my "brothers in faith," but I think the rest of the class might want to follow along as well. I don’t think that they are the only game in town, but they suit me and my style well. ​Now, most of us are familiar with the Runes, at least in passing. I don’t think I need to—at least not in this group—drone on about their use, their meaning, or how they are written. In anthropological terms, the Runes are what is known as a "sacred alphabet": a form of writing believed to be handed down from on high, and sometimes, not by the gods' choice. ​The Runes are not unique in this respect; there ...
Read more

Jen did nothing wrong.

If you grew up in the 80s, like I did, you could not avoid Jim Henson. His work was everywhere, the Muppet Show, Labyrinth, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock... The list goes on and on.  So when, in 1982, a new movie by Henson began to be advertised, every parent in the small Oregon town we were living in bought tickets. The theater was booked for over a week solid. And every member of my grade school got to see it... Once... Every child that went to see the movie was inspired. There were arguments about who would be a Gelfling or a Skeksis or a Podling. There were even a few that wanted to be Mystics. As an adult, I wish I was still in touch with those last ones, but not the point. The reason we only got to see it once is that none of the parents would buy tickets for a second showing. Think of how that felt for a minute, every one of your friends, enemies, bullies, every kid wanted to see it again, and the adults who had bought tickets without even pausing said no. Now in case you are ...
Read more

Under the hood.

 When I was in high school, my dad kinda... made me buy a pair of broken down Volvos. The theory was sound, they were the same model and year range, so Frankensteining them together is kinda obvious. This plan failed. I was 14. I was a nerd, so for safety reasons I did not take shop class with the Jocks. This was before the internet, so no YouTube. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. This was compounded by the fact that in the 2 years between the models they had rearranged shit. Years later, I ended up taking a professional mechanic's course. I learned a lot about how the engine worked, not a specific model, more the theory behind it. What makes it work. You need that kind of knowledge to fix a car... or really any system. Computers, engines, sewers... Families... Now, I know that no two families are identical, nor should they be, but there are common themes. Relationships serve two roles, reproduction and companionship. Some are better at one than the other, and some...
Read more