We look at the extreme right and it would be tempting to label them the “most dangerous”. In a sense they are. They seek violence (if not physical violence, at least the rhetorical kind that alienates those who oppose them). However, there is another political beast that I find almost equally dangerous: the white liberal who is secretly a racist, a xenophobe, a bigot. Those stand by your side, supposedly as allies, supposedly as “your kind of people” but then one day, because familiarity breeds the kind of self confidence where they feel they can talk freely in your presence, they say something so horrifying that you suddenly believe to be in the company of a complete stranger. This is the liberal that can make a passing remark about “them Muslims” or “those foreigners” (always with the caveat that “you, of course, are not like them”).
And they scare me even more (or as much) as the openly racist extremist because the bigoted liberal might find him or herself in pursuit of their political ambition. And you know they will sell themselves to appeal to the values of inclusion that you hold dear and that is exactly how they will get a voter base big enough to put them in positions of power. However, you also know that this supposedly liberal secretly hates those like you. And you also know that it is never in his or her best interest to change the status quo too much because then, white liberals like him or her would no longer be in complete charge of affairs.
I know one such individual. And they terrify me.
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