This was intended to be published on January 7th, but I dealt with a personal crisis not long after so I had to put it off. I'm not sure what the date will say when it's published.
I've been wanting to write a post like this for awhile. Since George Floyd, since Breonna Taylor, since Tony McDade and their deaths - after which Tony's was completely brushed over by the media and even some protestors because they didn't want to call a black trans man by his name. This post is long overdue, and though I did continue activism through donations, education, calls to the Department of Justice, and my other blogs; I feel that a lot of other activists have discussed the issue of white supremacist violence far better than I can; and there are valid reasons I took some time off from this blog, I don't want to make this post about that. I don't want to try to justify why I would make a post about classism and abuse apologist rhetoric against white people as a working-class white person, but then be completely silent for months about both the murders of black civilians and one of the most historically significant elections in my country's history.
I'd like to talk about the fact that one member of the recent attempted coup was a Norse pagan, from my own perspective as another white pagan.
I've experienced my share of religious discrimination as a pagan, and yeah it is almost certainly amplified by me being a nonbinary bisexual and not having been seen as a legitimate Christian even before my conversion. I've read about other instances of anti pagan discrimination as well. So like, it does annoy me that people act as if pagans don't face any marginalization, because if I as someone living in a liberal area with a relatively high population of pagans and witches can be ostracized by my family, lose a 14-year friendship, and almost be kicked out of my home because of my faith then I'm sure it must be even worse for someone living in, say, a conservative, highly evangelical town in the bible belt. I introduce my post with this as a way of saying that I understand some of your frustrations, but they are not my priority.
That said. White, goyische, American pagans, including LGBT pagans, we need to acknowledge that we are not the intended or primary victims in political conflict. The fact that so many of us are culturally Christian may be alienating when it comes to family interactions or losing social support but when it comes to state-sanctioned religious oppression, we have privilege over Jewish and Muslim people (as well as Sikhs, black ATR practitioners, Hindus, etc) and over Christians of color.
Nowhere in our reaction to the invasion of the US Capitol building should there be any centering of our own feelings or any defensiveness when Jewish people and PoC point out the racism and antisemitism rampant in the white pagan community. At no point should we interrupt their (incorrect, as I've discussed in another post) assertions that white pagans face no oppression - even though we do face some, the fact that we're also white gentiles assumed to be Christian, white gentiles raised Christian, white gentiles with the connections and leg up of things like past youth group involvement and knowing people from church who are able to get us into certain elite circles means that we're also massively privileged. None of us are immune from that. We are not "special" whites.
White, goyische pagans, the religious violence in this country is almost never targeted at us, and some of it is committed by us. The fact that we are often assumed to be Christian and can frequently blend in with Christians and are very commonly culturally Christian is a source of privilege and is something that has caused many people to treat me and many of you with more respect!
We need to remember this and not center ourselves in discussions of religious discrimination, and we need to remember that we are just as capable of being white supremacists! Racist, islamophobic, and antisemitic behaviors, thoughts, and tendencies must be stamped out in our community and ourselves. It is our job to stand in solidarity with Jewish and Muslim people and with PoC of all religions, including Christianity. The brown Christian immigrants at the border and the black Christians who are shot in church and the Jewish and Muslim people who are some of America's most frequent victims of hate crime face racialized religious oppression that I can only hope to fight for but will never fully understand.
We need to acknowledge that even though electing Biden was a form of harm reduction over the very real possibility of another four years of Trump and the possibility of a Pence presidency, having a Democrat in the White House is not the end for racism, islamophobia, antisemitism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, classism, or misogyny any more than Trump's election was the start of it - both are enablers of and participants in white supremacy. Biden is right about one thing, we need unity. But not with him, with the most marginalized people in America and abroad, and it will not involve reaching across the aisle to make nice with the right and using our whiteness to remain complacent.
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