One of Robert Bowers last posts on Gab before he murdered 11 people. © Associated Press.

Over the past few days several articles started with, “October 27th, 2018, we saw the largest ever attack on a Jewish community on U.S. soil.” These articles usually go on to accuse Donald Trump of being an anti-semite and or of allowing this attack to have occurred in the first place.

Unlike the attempted mail bomber, Pittsburgh shooter Robert Bowers didn’t approve of the President. Even Trump was too Jewy for Bowers, whose grievances were against the Jewish people for promoting immigration into the West to commit “Genocide” against White people. It’s not an original schtick; fears of a Jewish cabal controlling the world, working to eradicate Whiteness through immigration and miscegenation predated the Third Reich. White Genocide theories don’t always point the finger at Jews, but they’re almost always at individuals who also just so happen to be greedy, shifty, foreign, and want to undermine national culture and morals because they’re, “Cultural Marxists”.

A clearly not racist tweet from Ron Paul’s Twitter account. Don’t worry everyone, he managed to delete it before the KKK could pay to use his words this time. Via Screengrab.

White Genocide theories rely on the historical link between anti-semitism and racism; the latter doesn’t always require the former, but because they both desperately call for the preservation of Whiteness and “Western Culture” against the Jew who is not really white but is actually an infiltrator into Western, Christian societies who seeks to let in the invading brown hordes.

A tweet from Iowa House of Representatives member Steve King. Via Twitter.

Both Whiteness and Western Culture are fictitious constructs. Whiteness was a category created in order to justify the institutions of colonialism and slavery in the 17th century when before the distinctions between nations were built along boundaries of culture, geography, and religion not skin color. Whiteness is built around the exclusion of the “Other”. A person’s Whiteness is contingent upon their blood being “untainted”. To those who treasure Whiteness, the only way to prevent White Genocide is White Supremacy. Neither Whiteness nor Western culture really exist, they are just constructs to justify power. They are why Bowers shot 11 people.

When asked to respond to the Tree of Life shooting, Trump said, "It looks definitely like it's an anti-Semitic crime, and that is something you wouldn't believe could still be going on," and said that it was “unimaginable”. While he condemned the attack, Trump’s answer betrays his complete lack of understanding of modern race and religious violence. He and the American Republican Party see race as an issue of the past, and these moment of violence as aberrations, exceptions to the norm.

To those who could have been sitting in the pews of the Tree of Life Synagogue or Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, these acts are not “unimaginable”; they are painfully real and depressingly of the present.

Candlelight vigil for those slain at the synagogue. © Associated Press.

By downplaying and dismissing discrimination and oppression, promoting fears of “virile young foreign men” coming into our country, and just upholding policies and mementos of racism, the Right allows these ideas to grow. When push comes to shove, most Centrists and Conservatives would rather stand with White Supremacists than allow for Progressive action. For the Right, this meant electing a man whose career was built upon racism, a disregard for deep thought, and whose words and actions have emboldened and implemented racial violence.

I don’t believe that Donald Trump is anti-semitic, nor do I believe that he is responsible for this attack. Of course, it makes little difference to me whether or not he actually is racist or anti-semitic when his actions have consistently been praised and shaped by racists. However, Trump is not the cause, he is just a symptom of a long and horrible history that will not end anytime soon.

Robert Bowers isn’t the extreme form of the Right, he’s its logical conclusion.