Sometimes called America’s
dumbest senator, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., may not
know much, but he does know that he is fine
with white nationalists in the military and
stands with them.
On Monday, while speaking with Kaitlan
Collins on CNN’s “The Source,” Tuberville said
he’s against racism but is fine with white
nationalists in the armed services. “My opinion of a white nationalist — if
somebody wants to call them a white
nationalist — to me, it is an American,”
Tuberville said. “Now, if that white
nationalist is a racist, I’m totally against
anything that they want to do. Because I am
110% against racism.”
Later, Tuberville conflated white nationalists with white
people in general. “So, if you’re going to do
away with most white people in this country
out of the military, we got huge problems,” he
said, adding. “There is nobody more military
than me.”
In the CNN interview, the senator was
doubling down on pro-white nationalist
comments he had made a few months earlier. In
May, the senator defended
white nationalists in the military, saying in a WBHM radio
interview “I call them Americans” and arguing
the military was losing in readiness and
recruitment “because the Democrats are
attacking our military, saying we need to get
out the white extremists, the white
nationalists” and those who disagree with
Biden’s agenda. He later doubled down and told
NBC News, “I look at a white nationalist as a
Trump Republican. That’s what we’re called all
the time.” (Tuberville would
later concede that white nationalists are
“racists” without elaborating, and he refused
to apologize for his earlier comments.)
Let’s cut to the chase. Sen. Tuberville,
whose main claim to fame and qualifications
for the U.S. Senate stem from his role as a college
football coach at Auburn, is dumb as a sack of
grits. But it is also possible that he is
following the Republican Party and the white
supremacists’ handbook — and making a name for
himself among folks in Alabama who like that
sort of thing.
(For the record, white
supremacists believe white people are superior
and should have political, economic and social
control over other races. On the other
hand, white
nationalists believe in white supremacy and
white separatism and support enforced racial
segregation and the creation of a white
ethnostate.)
Aside from his recent comments,
Tuberville has inserted himself into military
matters when he singlehandedly blocked hundreds
of military nominations, leaving a branch of the armed forces,
the Marine Corps, without a confirmed head in
over a century. The Alabama senator is holding
up the process because of the Pentagon’s policies
to ensure that servicemembers have
access to abortion care regardless of
where they’re stationed. That is interesting, considering
Tuberville and the other Republicans always
claim they support the troops. But we do know
that white nationalists care a great deal
about abortion, which, for them, is rooted
in the
Great Replacement Theory and fears of white people being
outnumbered by melanated people.
The Coach walks in the footsteps of a
long line of white supremacists. One lone
racist white man can do much damage. Consider
Sen.
Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the
segregationist who staged the longest
filibuster in U.S. history on August 28, 1957.
Taking a stand for white power, Thurmond
blocked the passage of the Civil Rights Act of
1957, talking on the Senate floor for 24 hours
and 18 minutes. Although the legislation
eventually passed and President Eisenhower
signed it into law, you get the idea. A single
racist white man, acting in the spirit of
rugged individualism and buttressed by a
movement of violent and evil white
nationalists, can do a great deal of harm.
In the age of white nationalists
normalizing white supremacy while gaslighting
the nation about systemic racism and
pretending it doesn’t exist, Tuberville
reminds us of Donald Trump. Responding to the
neo-Nazi rally held by Unite
the Right in Charlottesville, Va, in August
2017, Trump said there were “very fine people
on both sides.”
And Tuberville sounds a lot like Ryan
Walters, Oklahoma’s pro-Trump state
superintendent of public instruction, who said
teachers could teach about the Tulsa 1921 race
massacre, but cannot “say that the skin color
determined it.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of
individuals. Oh, you can, absolutely.
Historically, you should: ‘This was right.
This was wrong. They did this for this
reason,” Walters said. “But to say it was
inherent in that … because of their skin is
where I say that is critical race theory.
You’re saying that race defines a person. I
reject that.”
Benjamin
Dixon connected the dots between
Tuberville, Walters and the larger project of
white nationalism at hand. “He wants to
systematize all white people underneath the
banner of white nationalism while making the
responsibility of racism the individual’s
problem,” Dixon said of Tuberville on his
podcast, “The Benjamin Dixon Show.”
“What do both those individuals have in common? They want
to individualize the problem of racism, the
fruits that come out of white supremacy and
white nationalism. They won’t let you identify
anything as a system-level event,” Dixon said.
“But you can call them out individually so
long as you never look at the systemic nature
of their evil.”
Speaking of systemic evil, Sen.
Tuberville said the quiet part out loud when
he expressed his support for the white
nationalists in the military. It is no secret
that white
supremacists are a big problem in the military.
And because white supremacists are part of the
Republican Party base, GOP politicians either
cannot go against their base or they must
actively support them. Domestic extremists and
white nationalists are the greatest
terrorist threat in the country, responsible for
more deaths than any other groups. Now these
domestic extremists are an internal threat to
the military.
Active-duty service members, veterans and police officers
participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the
U.S. Capitol, with an overrepresentation of veterans with white supremacist
beliefs. After all, as the Pentagon warned,
white supremacist groups view military
personnel as “highly prized” recruits and their leaders attempt
to enlist in the services with the goal to
obtain arms, skills and military legitimacy
and swagger — all to advance their racist
agenda.
The Oath
Keepers, one of the major Jan. 6 insurrection
groups, have had hundreds of active-duty
soldiers and police officers in their ranks.
At least 25% of militia
members come from a military background,
according to one estimate. And over one-fifth
of applicants to the white supremacist group Patriot
Front claim to have current or past
military ties.
According to a 2020
Military Times survey, more than one-third of active-duty
troops and over half of minority service
members had personally witnessed white
nationalism or ideologically driven racism.
So, the military has a white nationalist problem that
threatens to undermine it, just the way Tommy
Tuberville likes it. One would assume he would
like to see another Jan. 6. Chickens are
coming home to roost, indeed.
This commentary is also posted on The
Grio.