I promised a thread about why we see some non-white folks, minority ethnic communities etc might support white & western supremacist extremism. It’s not as strange as you think. First, as many scholars of race have shown repeatedly, the boundaries of whiteness are always 1/ expanding. The Irish, Italians, Slavs were all non-white and became white. Middle Easterners were white for ages and just moved from white to their own category on the census. The very category of whiteness is always changing. & neo-Nazi, WSE movements are not only about race 2/

later today I will do a thread on why it’s not so weird to see white supremacist, western supremacist ideas & violence embraced by non-white ethnicities or by Latinos who may identify as white. But for now, here’s an explainer of what RWDS patch means 1/ theintercept.com/2021/02/04/pin… in short: it’s a horrific & violent reference rooted in Pinochet’s death squads, a call for torture & mass assassination & elimination of enemies, including through mass kidnapping & murder by throwing enemies from
military helicopters (hence far right “free helicopter rides”) 2/

I too am learning of these revelations just this morning & have ended my affiliation with the GWU Program on Extremism. While my role was in name only- unpaid & w/no obligations, & I saw it as a courtesy- I refuse to lend legitimacy to an organization w/such an egregious 1/

https://twitter.com/hilarymatfess/status/1641827001647476738

ethical breach. I too feel I should have done better diligence before agreeing to join, & I apologize to all Muslim organizations in particular who were directly harmed by these false, slanderous claims that came from leader whose organization had my name attached to it. I am 2/