Dear Joe,
Greetings my friend. America is about to close out another year of Empire and one of our clarion bards is about to retreat to Belize, leaving the appreciative of us in exile in our own land.
The last time we communicated you were entertaining the idea of giving the Neo-Nazi Bill White a forum for discussion and my reaction, I suspect, was probably harsh as I compared the old bastard to a coral snake. LOL. You were gracious enough to land it with reflective comment. I imagine that if other inquiries were tested, the same violent animus directed toward the Neo-Nazi zeitgeist was evident. The comment you published by Phillip from New York -- "anti-semitic crap" may have been the milder of a more rancid collection. The generations of those who carry the Nazi history of genocide and the Holocaust do so in the blood, not as intellectual ideology or in forgiveness as 'political correctness -- the First Amendment, and all that. Thus, the coral snake analogy.
My reaction was strong, negative and brought up that old canard about what limits are placed on free speech. I can't assume your motivations, but if I'm intuitive on the subject it may be that I'm just catching up with you. There hasn't been a voice like yours since the journalistic days of Mark Twain and your profound understanding of the hate culture of the working class resonates in the Beowolf projections of creatures of articulate evil such as Bill White.
My own Irish/Scots parents divorced themselves through education and conscious decision from the agrarian/working cultures of their ancestors, precisely because of the swampy muck of murderous prejudice lying beneath the church sanctified limitations of struggle. With no place to go -- hate, 'down.' Deer Hunting With Jesus, and your other numerous articles document what we all know and refuse to admit in America: that without mandated Federal Civil Rights, this country will descend into a chaos of unbridled hatred and violence, precisely like that we now project on Iraq.
You are prescient in considering Bill White and I think that if his particular spew of articulate evil is set up correctly, your mail reaction will be extraordinary and possibly the context for a next book, "In the Belly of the American Beast." Your inquiry has set off a feast of ideas here and we thank you. If you have time, check out a recent post, "In the Rubble of the Towers".
In war and peace,
Michael
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Yo!
What an articulate letter! An infused with warm humor too.
Regarding Bill White:
Well, as a writer and journalist, both of which I have always considered a calling, rather than a profession -- and damned fortunately too, since there has been nowhere near professional money in it for the most part -- I've always considered it my duty to know and have access to the entire spectrum of society. Beyond that, I believe it is important to find some common ground with people whose philosophy or politics you may abhor, because without some degree of mutual human respect of some sort, you will never understand the truth of that other person.
For instance, Bill White's political foundation is made up of things most working people would embrace in a heartbeat, such as bringing outsourced jobs back to America, etc. People such as Bill do not gain a following for no reason at all, and racism is by no means the total source of attraction for Bill's following. For the life of me I cannot see how Bill, who is smart as hell, and his people can embrace such a wretched view, and based upon such 12-volt reasoning to boot. Whatever the case, I felt that letting Bill White express his position without censorship would show readers that no figure and is as simple as the iconography they are reduced to in the media. And besides, I felt I owed him a bit, for a short piece I once published online in which I got a couple of facts wrong out of basic research laziness.
Well, Bill wrote us something. And wouldn't you know he puked all over his own shoes by making it almost entirely about racism -- although he did have a couple off good licks in there about how the American masses are suckered in by this illusionary two party system of ours. While I don't want to be censoring anybody, there are plenty of sites where one can get a daily dose of racism. So I didn't feel compelled to run it on joebageant.com, mostly because it didn't contribute anything new. (Bill has written a subsequent letter that will be posted in the near future.)
Now here's the crazy thing about it. I rather like Bill. He's funny, practical and by no means simple. And I'd trust his word far more than I would trust some leading figures on the left. I think he feels the same. To that extent, he says, "Joe, you'd make a good Nazi." Certainly a compliment in his order of things. Of course I don't plan on buying any khaki underwear or jackboots anytime soon.
People are what they are. Just people. And none of them surprise or scare me. Not even George W. Bush and his criminal cartel.
It's the terrible spiraling sequence of big picture events that keep me awake at nights.
Thus it goes...
In art and labor,
Joe
