I understand why you're reluctant to identify Wade Michael Page as a white supremacist, but I'm an expert in visual rhetoric and I'm here to help you out. Consider the photograph of Page you're currently using:
There are some subtle clues as to Page's ideology hidden in this image. First:
That is a Nazi flag. You can tell because it contains a Swastika in a white circle surrounded by a red hem. It is highly unlikely that someone hung it because it means "good luck" in Sanskrit. Also:
The repeating patten on that guitar strap is the Confederate Battle Flag. It reminds white people of those glorious antebellum days when blacks were in their place and no real American had even heard of Muslims. Also:
That is a Celtic cross. It is the most favorite symbol of the good people at Stormfront.org. Also:
That is the number fourteen. It stands for the Fourteen Words most dear to oppressed white men in America today. Those words are "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children."
So let me assure you: if you have correctly identified the man in the photograph above, you don't need to "speculate" as to whether he was a white supremacist. Because there's no room for speculation. That man in that picture is a white supremacist. Whether his white supremacist beliefs influenced his decision to murder peaceful Sikhs, that may well be a matter for debate. But that man? The one in the picture? He's a white supremacist.
You're welcome.
I think it's important to point out that the Celtic Cross in and of itself is not a WN or 14/88 symbol, even though losers like Wade Michael Page and other Stormfront motards make use of it.
Like with the Thor's Hammer (which I as a Heathen happen to wear as a sign of my belief in the Aesir and Vanir), context is everything.
Posted by: AQ | Monday, 06 August 2012 at 06:20 PM
Woah, the Celtic Cross is major confusion on their part. Historically white supremacists targeted the Irish. A name like Wade Michael Page sounds Anglo.
Little did he realize that Gaels were not "white" to his ancestors.
Posted by: Mickmack | Monday, 06 August 2012 at 11:26 PM
Bang-on about the Gaels not being white to his ancestors, Mickmack. The Irish themselves are a mongrel mix of invasions, and up until the mid-19th century, many Irish along with Africans were taken and enslaved in Barbados (and for a while in Virginia). It was called being Bardados'd, and Swift even mentions it in the beginning of A Modest Proposal.
But that's neither here nor there. One of the issues in this case is the misappropriation of external symbols when a group has no symbols of its own to convey their beliefs or positions. That in itself is telling, and in part betrays a lack of imagination and lazy thinking -- which may help explain why they're racist in the first place.
The swastika is the most famous of the misappropriated symbols, and that's from India. The Celtic cross is another misappropriated symbol (presumably because so many of us Micks are nearly transparent). It predates Christianity: There are standing stone Celtic cross arrangements in Scotland that were there eons before Christianity, and it was most likely was a sun symbol. Thor's hammer is yet another misappropriated symbol to represent whiteness; Snorri Sturlson, the chronicler of Scandinavian myth and history, even suggests in one of the Eddas (or maybe a Saga) that their people originally arrived from an area around Turkey -- the Lake Van region (hence your Vanir, AQ). How many white supremacists would accept an Anatolian origin?
FWIW: TG4 (Ireland) and BBC Scotland did a joint documentary on the Celtic descendants of Barbados slaves, called Redlegs (the Scottish one is called Barbadoe'd). It's difficult to find, and much of the TG4 version is in Gaelic, but it's an excellent glimpse into the legacy of slavery (or continuous indentured servitude, which amounted to the same thing). When the British freed the Barbados slaves, they didn't give the Irish slaves the same rights as the African slaves, which resulted in a segregated culture much like the one that existed in the U.S. South for African descendants. Today, a lot of Barbados locals just see the descendants as "poor whites" with a strange accent and spooky folk traditions (imagine the X-Files episode "Theef" in an Irish-Caribbean accent).
The problem here is that this legacy has been misappropriated by many white supremacists in the U.S. as their own equal-but-opposite black experience, which they believe gives them the right to challenge African-Americans on civil rights (i.e. 'Where are my reparations?'). Of course the scale and scope of African slavery eclipses the Celtic example, and nobody of Scots-Irish descent is being racially profiled today simply because they're of Scots-Irish descent.
The other thing such white supremacists wouldn't cotton to is the history of integration that African and Irish slave descendants shared. Jazz musician Willy Ruff found a great example of this when he was trying to rescue an old hymn form that was sung in southern black churches going back to the slave days. The hymn form was called "lining out," and had almost disappeared. He scoured southern churches for pieces of sheet music, and found a lot of it was in Gaelic. Turned out it was an old form still used in the Gaeltacht regions of Ireland and Scotland, and was adopted into black churches way-back-when because Gaelic-speaking people were living among and worshiping with African slaves.
Posted by: mxyzptlk | Tuesday, 07 August 2012 at 06:44 PM
That's one damn fine comment there, mxyzptlk. Don't want to let it pass unappreciated.
Posted by: SEK | Tuesday, 07 August 2012 at 07:31 PM