Responding angrily to white supremacists won’t work

Interviews with six, mostly young, white supremacists in the balanced news magazine “This Week” (“The Making of a White Supremacist,” Sept. 1) explain what underlies their rhetoric. These activists are feeling passed by, discriminated against, desperate and angry as hell about it.

All the counter-protests, letters to the editor and pronouncements by officials that say the supremacists’ messages can’t be tolerated, and they should be shut down, driven out of town, or even out of the country will only harden their determination and increase their numbers. We need to listen to what is underneath their words. We certainly have known since the recession that, much as in the depression, we have multitudes displaced by tremendous economic shifts.

Don’t the people using angry rhetoric against white supremacists realize they are being as hate-filled and intolerant as those they oppose? Surely people who are angry at supremacists can reply to their views without calling them racist vermin. This will only prove to them that they’re being victimized.

There’s a reason to allow freedom of speech. Every voice has something to say that is important to that person or group. It’s better to civilly reply, “I understand your viewpoint but am angered by your language” than to return angry provocations. Or worse, to reply illegally with fists and sticks.

Sonja Larson

Mill Creek