MAGA Kids and Progressive Scapegoating's Religious Undercurrent

This is a little bit of a ramble, but I figured that I'd throw this out there.

It’s been a few days since the now-infamous confrontation between a group of MAGA hat-bedecked Catholic school boys and a Native American elder in Washington, D.C. Since that day, news media, pundits, celebrities, and average folks alike had jumped upon a frenzied bandwagon suggesting that the kids were engaging in hateful and intolerant behaviour towards an Indigenous man, only to have the facts set more-or-less straight and forcing them to either abandon ship or double-down – depending on how committed to facts one is.

Well, Niigaan Sinclair certainly isn’t burdened by the desire to find and assess the facts, and has come out with a pithy little piece in the Globe and Mail dumping on the kids, and by overt expression, on North American society.

Just to give a quick rundown: a group students from an all-boys Catholic high school in Kentucky went to the US capital for a Pro-Life march. There they were met with protest by a small group of Black Hebrew Israelites who believe that they're descendants of ancient Israelites. The Black Israelites taunted the students, calling them 'child molesters', stating that Trump is a 'fa**ot', and that the black students should depart from the group because 'ni**a, they're gonna steal your organs'. 

In an attempt to drown out the Black Israelites' taunts, or rather to taunt right back, the students began to engage in their high school cheers. During this, Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder, was observing the commotion and decided to intervene in an attempt to 'diffuse the situation'. 

He walked up to the students whilst drumming and singing the American Indian Movement (AIM) song. The cadence of his drumming matched the cadence of the students' chants and they, apparently, thought that he was drumming to their chants. In accordance, they continued to chant in the cadence of his drumming. 

As Phillips walked into the crowd of students, they parted, and he continued to walk until he met Nick Sandmann, a student who stood in Phillips' way. Sandmann said he did so in order to demonstrate that he didn't want any trouble - figuring that if he stood still, he wouldn't be doing anything wrong. Sadly for Sandmann, he was wearing a MAGA hat, and as soon as the video hit social media, the shit hit the fan.

That's the scenario. That's what happened. 

Now, reading through Sinclair's terse and punchy piece, one gets the impression that he didn't engage in any due diligence in attempting to understand the event, instead relying on Nathan Phillips' narrative as fact. It reads as though Sinclair listened to a CNN segment wherein Phillips shared his take on the occurrence, and that was enough for Sinclair to consider this an open-and-shut case. Racist white boys versus noble Indigenous man. Bang the gavel: the kids are done. However, there is roughly two hours of audio-video footage detailing the somewhat chaotic event, and it is precisely this evidence that debunks Sinclair's claims.

Instead of investigating the issue, as a good scholar would, Sinclair engaged in the same lazy practice as his cohorts in the media: look at some footage that has been given to you, see if it suits you ideological positions, listen, believe, and pontificate. Oh, and scapegoated the kids. 

Sinclair quotes Phillips' description of the encounter with the students as 'hate unbridled... a storm', and 'dangerous'. And yet Phillips lives to tell the tale... Sinclair also strongly suggests that the kids were 'mocking', 'belittling', and 'demeaning', and that they displayed 'blatant racism, hatred and disrespect'.

Blatant racism? Hatred? Disrespect? Really? At worst I see irreverence. I see young boys being young boys who have found themselves in a bizarre and aggressive scenario that they don't fully grasp, and being immature in the process. I saw no malice - aside from the Black Israelites yelling profanities and insults at the kids, and there was an Indigenous man with Phillips who accosted the kids saying 'Go back to Europe! This isn't your land.' 

Now, folks will say that we're guilty of carrying our biases, and that these colour our perceptions, but if that is the case, then Sinclair et al. are seeing what they want to see, and what they see isn't a child, but an enemy.

Sinclair states that:

'The video of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Sandmann went viral. Some called it a 'face-off.'
I call it America.
North America'. 

Calling Nick Sandmann 'Mr. Sandmann' enables him to speak of Sandmann not as a child, but as an adult - with all of the expectations and lack of leniency for immaturity that comes with it. (Could this be because of editorial standards? Perhaps 'Mr.' and 'Ms.' are used to refer to subjects... If so, it's inconsistently applied by the Globe and Mail).

Nonetheless, Sinclair is able to say such things because he's not seeing the MAGA kids as children. He is seeing them as representatives of an ideology he hates. Or perhaps he sees them as repositories of ideas and ideologies he hates. He's seeing this event between individuals as a microcosmic representation of the macrocosmic battle that's occurring at large.

That's Sinclair's take, but where is the undercurrent of religiosity in Progressivism?

Aside from the overt scapegoating, there is another element that I think is in play, here.

Now, I do take Niigaan Sinclair's piece to be in lockstep with many Left-wing and Progressive folks on this issue. Having read several articles, I do think that they align. Sinclair has a particularly interesting vantage point since he is an Indigenous man in Canada, but that aside, there is a remarkable amount of similarity between him and his non-Indigenous fellow travelers.

I've tried to put my finger on why this event exploded, and why the reaction was so visceral. My view, for what it is worth, is that one can see here, possibly, is a confrontation between two worlds: the ancient and resilient Indigenous world coming face-to-face with the new Era of Trump/Whiteness. To the folks who are so upset, the Indigenous people have suffered for hundreds of years at the hands of Europeans and their descendants in North America, and this is true, also these MAGA hat-wearing kids are viewed as the latest instantiation of a new generation of oppressors. They are a continuation of that hateful past they hope to get rid of. 

I interpret the event thusly: 

Nathan Phillips is the representative of his people, and the moral and spiritual weight of his traditions - the drumming and singing giving a sense of spiritual formalism to the whole thing. In his approach to the boys, drumming and singing in an attempt to diffuse the situation between the students and Black Israelites, he was bringing that weight, that profundity, to the boys. He was hoping to approach them, and pass through them with stoic reverence and song, and leave a lasting impression that would calm the situation. However, he was met by Sandmann who did not move. They met and stood, locking eyes with one another, unwilling to budge. Sandmann's unwillingness to move, and his smirk/grin (though from nervousness, perhaps, or maybe due to the ridiculousness of the whole scenario) was a sign of an abject repudiation of the moral and spiritual weight of Phillips' actions.

Now, I don't think this is what happened in the minds of the people involved. I think Sandmann was confused and nervous, but well-meaning. In fact, footage shows that he was, indeed, trying to diffuse the tension that was beginning to arise. I think Phillips was also trying to diffuse the tension between the students and the Black Israelites. What has happened is that this event occurred and people who were not there are foisting their political, racial, and social baggage onto it thereby making Phillips a hero and the kids the scapegoats.

All of this reminds me of something Richard Dawkins said in his book, The God Delusion.

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.

In, this our Current Year, children are not just children. They are Christians, Muslims, Trump supporters, racists, xenophobes, drag queens, et cetera. Children are being viewed as representatives of things that they don't understand, and certainly as responsible for things they had no part in making.

The worst people in this whole scenario have been the adults: the Black Israelites who have somehow gotten off scot free despite them being the 'blatant racists': calling the black kids in the groups (yes, they were present) n***gas, as well as calling Phillips an 'Uncle Tomahawk';  Nathan Phillips who has insinuated malice to the kids in subsequent interviews; the chaperones of the students for letting things get out of control; the 'Blue Checkmarks' on Twitter calling for these kids and their families to be harassed, doxxed or even attacked; and commentators such as Sinclair who are riding the crest of the wave in an opportunistic fashion trying to soak in the rays of attention.

We'd like to think that these kids, as well as others, would behave better, and be respectful instead of irreverent, calm instead of rambunctious, courteous instead of uncivil. But they're kids, and we can expect that. However, alongside the kids, what we have are adults who are criticising these kids whilst being all the things they're criticising the kids for being: hateful, bigoted, disrespectful, and, I think, racist. They've taken on the worst characteristics of their perceived enemies, and have even stooped to the level of taking children to be their enemies.