Terry Sarten: Ignoring white supremacists doesn't make them go away

A young skinhead displays a tattoo on the back of his neck at a white supremacist rally in America. Photo / Getty Images

There's Them then there's Us.

Even satire can do little to change this but it is worth a try because W.E (Without Exception) are all Us to Other people.

It is too easy to see different things as being the same. "That lot over there are not like us". The shouted rebuke to 'Go Back to Where You Came From' is the silly end of Otherness.

Most of Us can trace our ancestors back to a place that We came from. Rabid right-wing white supremacists should hone up on their geography, set a good example and leave first so the rest of Us can see they really mean it.

We could feel a bit sorry for them. It must be hard to live in a world that is full of people who are not like them and just hating everyone in a kind of indiscriminate completed bigoted way.

This must require considerable effort compared with tolerance. Hating all those Other people in an all-inclusive equal opportunity way must be tiring. Then there's all the work – hours writing manifestos, social media posting, taking occasional breaks to chant at rallies or shout at foreigners in the street with only a bit of sad aggro macho posturing to lighten the load.

It is generally assumed that white supremacy types are all a bit thick. It does seem that thinking is often a weak spot for them though the mere suggestion that they might be weak in some way tends to set then off.

If you laugh at their ideas they get grumpy as they regard mocking as their own verbal equivalent of a power tool so it annoys them when someone uses it on them.

Then there is the whole white power belief structure based on being superior to others and a fear that this dominance will be lost, undermined and overwhelmed by other sections of society.

Having the ability to see this threat in all its forms must be exhausting - keeping them up late at night searching the internet for others who share their righteous anger while typing missives extolling the need to fight back.

Many of them do not have girlfriends and that makes them even madder, firing up their sense of injustice and entitlement.

Accusing them of being Nazis simply gives them another reason to restate their beliefs in order to prove they are not.

If we tell them they cannot say hateful things that may incite violence, then we are told we are infringing on their rights and trying to ban free speech which is the corner stone of democracy – even though they don't like democracy much because it gives minority groups a voice – completely missing the glaringly obvious bit that white nationalism is actually a minority group. All further evidence that they are a bit thick.

Pointing out that their attitude does not make them superior in any way provokes them, so what can we do?

We can make sure we do know what they are thinking and saying by hearing and seeing them. Ignoring them does really annoy them because they like the attention but it does not make them go away.

We must watch them carefully as hatred can be very catchy.

Terry Sarten is a Wanganui writer, musician and social worker - feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz or www.telsarten.com/