'Saviors of the white race': Perpetrators of hate crimes see themselves as heroes, researchers say

[DonViejo]

By Terrence McCoy October 31 at 8:15 PM

In Kansas, a middle-aged man yells, “Get out of my country!” and shoots dead an Indian-born immigrant. In New York, another man, convinced the white race is being destroyed by interracial marriage, allegedly finds an African American homeless man and stabs him to death. And on Saturday, in Pittsburgh, police say a man entered a synagogue with an AR-15 rifle, murdered 11 people, then explained his actions to a SWAT officer this way: “They’re committing genocide to my people. I just want to kill Jews.”

These killings, the fear, and the men radicalized by it: They all reflect what some experts describe as the ­evolution of the hate crime in the United States.

Over the past several decades, academic researchers have charted how hate crimes, which have been rising overall, have increasingly gone from sadistic quests to inflict pain on members of minority groups to violence used as an angry defense against rapid ­social and demographic changes.

The perpetrators of this share of hate crimes are largely white men who hold the belief, exacerbated by rhetoric in politics and media, that they are protecting their culture, race and an endangered way of life that has historically — and, in their view, rightly — placed them at the top. Some belong to white-supremacist groups, but many don’t.

In their version of the story, these men are not the villains, but the heroes, according to those who study them.

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[Thomas Hurt]

1. Ur-Fascism Characteristic #11

10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism.

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco 1995