Sooner or later white nationalists are coming for me. I have done nothing to them but it doesn’t matter what I do; whether I resist them or not they will eventually try to kill me and mine. The reason for this is simple and it can be understood from even a shallow interpretation of white nationalism and its stated aims.
The version of white nationalism we know, is predominantly a phenomenon of westernised, colonial nations: the United States, Canada and Australia. All three have Indigenous or Native populations who were displaced by invaders from Europe. It is those invaders, the interlopers on other people’s lands, who seek to claim a white homeland. The problem is, obviously, the ancestral homelands for Europeans are in Europe. The countries where white nationalists predominantly live have people on them for whom they are homelands.
They cannot have a ‘white homeland’ in Australia while Indigenous people exist because, simply, Indigenous Australians are not white. In order for white nationalists to achieve a white nation in Australia, Indigenous people must become extinct. Therefore, Australian white nationalists seek the genocide of Indigenous Australians.
After Christchurch some of us became aware of eco-fascism, a weird admixture of neo-nazism and environmentalism. They too seek to create white homelands, if they are in Australia they too seek to remove Indigenous people from Australia. The Christchurch terrorist was Australian. We should be very worried.
I am one of those Indigenous people. My bloodline has flowed here over 60,000 years, longer than white people have even existed. We, the Indigenous people of Australia are not white, not European; we have no place in the white nationalists’ theoretical white homeland. What they seek, therefore, is the genocide of my people.
They seek my death.This understanding can be assumed in any country where white nationalists live on colonised land. Australia, the USA, Canada, New Zealand all have this problem. Some white nationalists seek to create white homelands in Zimbabwe and South Africa, colonised nations in Africa, far from the places people affiliated with Europe can call a ‘homeland’.
White people who hate racists, fascists and white supremacists can choose whether or not to fight them. We, the Indigenous people do not have the luxury of choosing a side. If we follow their beliefs to the logical conclusion we know they are gunning for us.
Our lives are forfeit whether or not we resist them. The only hope I, and the other Indigenous people have, is to ensure white nationalists never gain power in Australia. If we are going to fight them we should fight them before they gain power.
So, when you debate them remember this. It’s not a debate between ideologies, it’s a debate on whether or not Indigenous people get to live. Don’t ever tell me to calm down when I face white supremacists. They want me dead.
Moderates and centrists, there is no middle ground in this ‘debate’. Either you support the genocide of Indigenous people or you do not. If you let the white nationalists continue unresisted because of your ‘all arguments are equal’ rhetoric, you end up supporting them. There is no middle ground, either you stop them or you don’t.
In the end everybody whose side has not, like mine, been determined by birth, must chose a side. You are either for the killing of Indigenous people or you are against it. If you are against genocide you must resist the white nationalists. If you don’t resist them and they gain power the genocide of Indigenous people will escalate. If you have chosen a side be grateful; you are in the position to make a choice.
Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin-Noongar-Australian writer and poet, whose 2017 debut novel, Terra Nullius, won the Norma K Hemming Award.
