White people sometimes complain that derogatory words like honky, cracker and whitey are equivalent to the N-word — but there’s actually another, more widely used term that hurts their feelings even worse.
William Johnson, a former Donald Trump delegate and head of the white nationalist American Freedom Party, explained how he feels the word “racist” strips racists of their value as a human being — just as the notorious racial slur has been used for centuries to strip black people of their individual identities.
“Nowadays, no one would call a black man the N-word,” Johnson said during a lengthy interview with Fusion. “That is a slur that is not accepted. But they can call me a racist, or a white supremacist, or a KKK person. These are worse slur words than the N-word, because those slur words pit the whole world against me.”
Johnson, who has proposed a constitutional amendment revoking U.S. citizenship for all non-white Americans, complained that media depictions of him and his views as “white supremacist” automatically turned people against him.
“Everybody who reads that hates me because of that slur,” he said. “Society, particularly the media, needs to stop using those slur words towards us, just as you would never the N-word toward a black man. Just because what happened in the past doesn’t give people the right to use slur words against anybody. Whether the blacks have had a harder time or whites have a better time, using hateful slur words towards everybody is not all right.”
The distinction Johnson fails to make, of course, is that the N-word — which is so reviled that it’s not usually spoken aloud or even typed out — is used against black people simply on the basis of their skin color, while terms like racist — or more specific variants such as white nationalist, white supremacist or neo-Nazi — are used to describe a person’s own deeds or stated viewpoints.
The 62-year-old Johnson’s views on race are preposterously retrograde — but he’s somewhat progressive on economic and environmental issues, which partially explains how Trump has managed to exploit an ideological tilt within the conservative spectrum.
“The epic battle from here on out is not the battle between progressives and conservatives, which has occupied the media and the politicians for the last 40 years,” Johnson said. “From here on out, the battle is between the globalists and the nationalists.”
He categorized Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, and Mitt Romney, the failed 2012 Republican presidential candidate, as globalists and praised Trump as “the herald, the leader (and) the founder of the resurgence of the nationalist platform.”
“They promote open borders. That’s wrong. They promote consumerism. That’s wrong,” Johnson said. “Consumerism is destroying the environment, because it’s just, ‘Make make make, buy buy buy. Grow the NDP, make a lot of money for shareholders.’ That’s wrong.”
However, even Johnson’s environmental concerns are inherently racist.
“Globalists promote multiculturalism and diversity, and that is killing the white race,” he told Fusion. “Nationalism promotes a homogenous population. Globalism is empire-building by corporations. We’re past the colonial stage of empire building by governments, so we need to get past the empire-building by big business.”
Johnson ridiculed the “touchy-feely, feminist” leadership of Clinton and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and longed for the days when women typically stayed home to raise children — even as he expressed support for equal pay for women.
“People are yearning for a strong, male figure,” Johnson said. “White males have been beaten down for a long time in this country, and Donald Trump is the resurgence of the strong male leader. How many times have you heard about the Philippines president? Not very often, but you’ve been hearing about all the time recently because he’s a strong leader. In other countries, you’re seeing strong leaders also, and that’s a hallmark of a nationalist.”
The white nationalist then decoded the campaign slogan Trump wears on those goofy red hats.
“We need to move beyond feminism and support the traditional family, where the husband works and the wife raises the family, and they can afford to live in their own home on a single workers’ income and raise their children,” Johnson said. “That’s the ideal solution. That’s the solution in the ’50s, and when Trump says ‘Make America Great Again,’ that’s what we think it means.”