I am from Australia and I love all the eucalyptus trees in Los Angeles.
When I travel the world and find a Jewish community, I also feel happy. I love getting on the internet wherever I go in the world and check in on my favorite football team — the Dallas Cowboys.
I am not opposed to foreigners and to all non-native species. I think many of them benefit us.
On the other hand, I want there to be places in Southern California with only native vegetation. I don’t want invasive species wiping out the natives. I only want non-native species to the extent that they can be controlled and used for our benefit. And I think the same way about human immigration. Some immigrants are an excellent fit and some are not.
I Googled native vs non-native vegetation in Southern California and found this list of invasive species.
* Alligatorweed, also known as pig weed, is a pernicious invasive plant that was first discovered in Alabama way back in 1897. It’s native to South America, but was transported to North America through ballast water. It forms dense, pervasive mats that make it hard for native species to thrive. It can also impact boating, fishing, and swimming.
* The water hyacinth is known among botanists as one of the worst aquatic plants in the world. While it’s native to South America, it has infested freshwater regions of California. It’s sold in big box and garden stores because of its beautiful flowers, but tends to grow and reproduce at astonishing rates, leading to millions of dollars per year in plant management fees.
* Another invasive aquatic plant, hydrilla probably originated in Asia before making its way to California around the 1950s. It came through the aquarium trade, escaping into local freshwater areas. It’s found in deserts, the San Francisco Bay Area, and even in more remote areas like Shasta. Typically, it forms mats like the water hyacinth above, blocking water flow and causing millions of dollars of damages.
* The Uruguay water-primrose is a noxious weed that invades the water ecosystems in California and many other areas of the western United States. Again, it is a mat-forming plant that has bright yellow-orange flowers. It’s been in California for over two decades, but is growing at an alarming rate, making it a growing concern for plant biologists and conservationists.
* Giant Salvinia looks kind of like floating mushrooms or heads of lettuce. It’s yet another plant that made its way to California from South America via the aquarium trade. As a serious threat to lakes, ponds, and rivers, it will completely cover water surfaces and create stagnant waters in once-moving streams. On top of that, these thick mats will often become havens for mosquitoes.
R. Derek Black (son of Stormfront founder Don Black) writes in the New York Times:
While we all know that Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence, which declared that “all men are created equal,” his writings also offer room for explicitly white nationalist interpretation.
My father observed many times that the quotation from Jefferson’s autobiography embedded on the Jefferson Memorial is deceptive because it reads, “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these [the Negro] people are to be free.” It does not include the second half of the sentence: “Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.”
Jefferson’s writings partly inspired the American colonization movement, which encouraged the return of free black people to Africa — a goal that was pursued even by Abraham Lincoln during the first years of the Civil War.
The most fundamental legislative goal of the white nationalist movement is to limit nonwhite immigration. It is important to remember that such limits were in place during the lifetimes of many current white nationalists; it was the default status until the 1960s. In the 1790s, the first naturalization laws of the United States Congress limited citizenship to a “free white person.”
Legislation in the 1920s created quotas for immigration based on national origin, which placed severe restrictions on the total number of immigrants and favored northern and western European immigration. It was only with the civil rights movement of the 1960s that the national origin quota system was abolished and Congress fully removed the restriction favoring white immigrants…
The United States was founded as a white nationalist country, and that legacy remains today. Things have improved from the radical promotion of white people at the expense of all others, which has persisted for most of our history, yet most of us have not accepted the extent to which white identity guides so much of what we still do. Sometimes it seems that the white nationalists are most honest about the very real foundation of white supremacy upon which our nation was built.
The president’s words legitimized the worst of our country, and now the white nationalist movement could be poised to grow. To challenge these messages, we need to acknowledge the continuity of white nationalist thought in American history, and the appeal it still holds.
The shower signs, which Israel’s Foreign Ministry escalated into a diplomatic incident with Switzerland, seemed to me an open-and-shut case.
But as I listened earlier this week to Thomann’s passionate explanations and apology — “the signs should have been addressed to all the guests instead of Jewish ones,” she said, near tears – I realized that despite the damning evidence and anger against her, she was probably a tolerant person who, for lack of tact, was being pilloried internationally with devastating consequences for her business.
And so what began as a clear-cut expression of Europe’s growing antisemitism problem turned, in my mind, into a reminder of how important it is precisely during these times to judge people innocent, even of hate crimes, until proven otherwise.
In addition to the sign about the pool, Thomann also posted one instructing “our Jewish guests” on when they could access a hotel refrigerator. Both signs circulated on social media, where Israeli journalists found them.
“You have to understand,” she pleaded with me, “the sign about the refrigerator goes to Jews because I kindly allowed only the Jews to keep their food in the staff’s refrigerator because I know they bring their own food,” she said. Her Orthodox Jewish guests needed to store their food there because of kosher issues, she explained.
“My God, if I had something against Jews, I wouldn’t take them as guests!” she said.
Technically, excluding Jews would be illegal in Switzerland. But an antisemitic hotelier could get around it, since Orthodox Jewish tourists typically book hotels in the Alpine country through specialized travel agencies. And so in principle, all a Swiss hotel needs to do to “lose” its Orthodox guests would be to inform their travel agent of some imaginary deal breaker — say a nocturnal pulled pork bake-off contest, or zero accommodations for storing kosher food.
So what about the shower signs, I asked.
“Well,” Thomann paused, searching for words. “I’m sorry to say but I know the hotel, and the only people who go in without taking a shower are the Jewish guests.”
And how exactly does she know that, I inquired, bracing for comments on body odor.
“They go in wearing their T-shirts!” Thomann said, adding that the behavior drew complaints from other guests, who found it unsanitary.
I have not verified the claim about T-shirts. But in my extensive travels across Europe, and especially to places that receive many Jewish visitors, I have seen culture clashes between secular Europeans and vacationing members of insular haredi communities from Israel and beyond.
In Uman, a Ukrainian city where each year 30,000 Jews convene for a pilgrimage, many apartment owners who used to rent rooms to the visitors have stopped because of damages and fires. Last year, the Uman City Plaza hotel also adopted this policy, citing the same reason.
Perhaps different groups have different standards of behavior and different interests.
Could you imagine a Washington Post article about six Jews developing their Jewish identity called “The road to hate”? Yet social identity theory applies equally to Jews as it does to other groups — the more you identify with your group, the more likely you are to have negative feelings about outsiders.
For Connor Perrin, 29, of Austin, who grew up upper-middle class, it was during college when he felt campus liberals were ostracizing his fraternity because it was white. “If only people would stop attacking us,” he said.“I can’t say anything just because I’m white. I can’t talk about race, and I can’t talk about the Jews because I’ll be called an anti-Semite, and I can’t say I want to date my own race.”
For Eric Starr, 31, of Harrisburg, Pa., who has been convicted of disorderly conduct for fighting and possession with intent to manufacture or deliver, it was growing up white in a poor black neighborhood. “I got bullied and I got made fun of and I got beat up,” he said. “Cracker, whitey, white boy.”
And for William Fears, who has been convicted of criminal trespass, aggravated kidnapping and possession of a controlled substance, it happened while he was incarcerated. “I don’t think any race experiences racism in the modern world the way that white people do in a jail,” he said. “In jail, whites come last.”
From these disparate geographies, social classes and upbringings — rich and poor, rural and urban, educated and not — they converged on a single place last weekend, Charlottesville, with a shared belief that they, white men, are the true victims of today’s America.
