Elise Stefanik- Let's Keep It White
The White Replacement Theory Queen discovers that karma's a bitch
17, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
If you’re going to be a White supremacist GOP leader in Congress and run for re-election…well, you’d best be sure you’ve got your bases covered when securing domain names, eh?
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the White Replacement Theory Queen of Congress, neglected to secure one very logical domain, which Toby Morton, one of the creators of South Park, snapped up. Now she’s going to live to regret this for the next almost six months:
I wrote about Rep. Stefanik yesterday, mostly wondering how someone so smart could wander so far over into the Dark Side. How could someone who once claimed to be among the “most bipartisan” of Republicans have devolved into such a moral black hole? Even her hometown newspaper has taken her to task for her reliance on racism and stoking racial hatred.
The problem, one which Rep. Stefanik seems to neither acknowledge nor accept, is that it’s possible to draw a line connecting racist theories like White Replacement Theory to mass shootings like what happened in Buffalo. The shooter’s manifesto mentioned White Replacement Theory and focused heavily on racism.
Sadly, politicians like Rep. Stefanik have leaned into this sort of racism and have used it to enhance their political prospects. She’s weaponized hatred and division to help ensure her re-election and to help re-elect other Republicans.
It’s despicable, and it needs to stop because it’s killing people.
I wish you understood that diversity is better. Other faith traditions, other pigmentations, other expressions of love, other experiences of the world don’t do anything to diminish yours, they simply show you the beautiful complexity of humanity and they let you get better stories about people you may have only seen from a distance. Difference is not dangerous.
I wish you understood that life does not have to be a war, despite the ways your preachers and politicians spend their days convincing you otherwise. You do not always need to be in battle with other human beings or to be readying yourself for some encroaching enemy, so you can stop clenching your fists. This life can be collaborative instead of competitive. Someone else’s gain does not have to be your loss.
The people who died in Buffalo are Americans. They’re Black. They’re not the enemies of Republicans. Yet Rep. Stefanik and others in the GOP have continued to weaponize hatred in ways that have resulted in real-world consequences. So can the shooting in Buffalo be laid directly at Rep. Stefanik’s doorstep? That’s a more difficult connection to make; she wasn’t the one who walked into the grocery store and started shooting.
Still, she and other Republicans have helped to set the table for those who’d marry their racism with action- in some cases, deadly action. So Rep. Stefanik needs to understand that she bears some responsibility. She won’t, of course, and she’s already doubled down on blaming everyone but herself, but her deflection doesn’t change the truth.
Rep. Stefanik may not have created the current environment, but she’s helped foster an American polity that runs on conflict, hatred, and division. Our politics have become more about who you hate and oppose than who you support. It’s more about what you’re against and what you don’t want The Other to have than what you want for yourself.
It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. Diversity is America’s strength, and we all learned in school that America’s a melting pot. Unless you’re Native American, you can trace your lineage to somewhere outside our borders. My lineage is Scottish, Irish, German, Czech, Norwegian, and Swedish. Most of us have similar stories. We’re all Americans, but we’re all hyphenated in one way or another.
That sort of diversity isn’t wrong. It’s a measure of America’s strength. Our forebears arrived with the skills and stories to create a New World, even as they tried to preserve what they could of their old world. Whether your skin is White, Brown, Black, Yellow, or Chartreuse, you’re part of America's story.
Diversity is complex, and America is nothing if not complicated. But, it’s what makes us who we are. All of us are the total of what and who came before us. There is no “White” culture, per se, just an accumulation of cultures and traditions. The same holds true no matter what your skin color happens to be.
It’s too bad that Rep. Stefanik and her fellow Republicans refuse to recognize that and feel that, to be successful, they must fan the flames of racism and hatred.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
In the meantime, I hope Rep. Stefanik enjoys her campaign website, which is far more accurate than her “official” website.
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