Opinion: Central PA has a white supremacy problem. We must rally to defend our community
Central Pennsylvania is a thriving place. People live here who practice many creeds and no creed at all. They come from all over the world and from different ethnicities. Some will be here briefly and some are from families who’ve lived here for generations. We engage our governments, festivals and sporting events. Our economy includes high-tech advanced materials development and small-scale vegetable farms.
We also have a white supremacy problem.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, we are surrounded by white supremacist groups and individuals who want to roll back our multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy. By failing to confront them as threats, we are less safe and the world is more intolerant.
“What has my reaction been to acts and expressions based on antisemitism & other ideologies hatred? What can I do to make our world a better & safer place? And then, start doing it.” That’s what the Auschwitz Memorial shared the day after anti-Semite and Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes, came to Penn State to incite violence and garner attention. He got it.
He downplays the horror of the Holocaust. He has been recorded sharing the many ways he’d like to kill people. He was unwelcome. Yet, he was here.
Given the inaction by Penn State leaders, the deafening silence of too many of our faith and political leaders, and the unserious way the media have approached violent fascists like him, it feels like the event was inevitable. Most importantly, the failure to confront white nationalism is a mistake. History reveals ignoring fascism in the United States and elsewhere, to pretend it isn’t dangerous, or to negotiate with fascists, only allows fascists room to grow.
Take these separate but connected events. In 2016, the Ku Klux Klan’s Daily Stormer endorsed candidate Donald Trump. In 2017, white nationalists held the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, chanted “Jews will not replace us,” and then murdered Heather Heyer. In 2018, an anti-Semite used Gab to foment hatred before murdering 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue. One Unite the Right’s offshoot, Patriot Front, vandalized the Bellefonte Pride Wall on Jan. 7, 2021. A month later, someone attempted to burn down the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County that displays a Black Lives Matter banner. On Feb. 21, 2022, a local Republican Party leader told the State College Area School District’s board that calling swastikas anti-Semitic was “subjective.”
The KKK is a hate group. Swastikas symbolize genocide. These are not negotiable. Anything contrary corrodes the highest teachings from our religious and spiritual traditions.
How will our community and leaders respond now? How can we make our community a better and safer place?
Fifteen years ago this month, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel visited Penn State. He said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
We cannot be indifferent. Good people from all walks of life need to unite to defeat the threat of white nationalism and to stand together to make central Pennsylvania a place where everyone can thrive.
Our community must rally to defend itself from white nationalism both online and in person. Label this behavior for what it is — hateful and anti-social. We do not mean endless tone-policing or flippant cancel culture. Rather, we implore you to root your actions in compassion, dignity, curiosity and justice. Finally, our institutions — churches, schools, businesses, nonprofits and governments — in Centre County are called to create venues that celebrate our common humanity, respect our differences and commit to working through them, and promote freedom from fear, intimidation and violence.
While it should not take an event like the Proud Boys founder coming to our community and his supporters attacking students for this conversation to begin, it has.
As Wiesel said, “Action is the only remedy to indifference.” Do the next right thing.