This chapter describes a series of attacks that I was subjected to after delivering a lecture on the topic of ‘white anxiety’. The focus of the attacks concerned the notion of the ‘end of whiteness’, and the idea, discussed at length in the foregoing chapter, of a type of ‘white suicide’. The chapter cites indicative extracts from the barrage of hate messages. The over-arching purpose of the attacks was to consolidate an oppositional hard-right political identity—often, but not always of a generally White Nationalist sort—and, accordingly, to stoke a politics of grievance, by linking together a series of maligned signifiers associated with a progressive or leftist position. What was less expected was the sheer extent of the ‘unreconstructed’ types of racism and antisemitism on display. I try to understand this via the discursive trope of the ‘race traitor’ and by means of the idea of performative offensiveness, that is, the demonstrative attempt to offend, by explicitly saying and relishing that which is typically prohibited. Oddly enough, despite that many implied threats were issued, and a great many unpleasant things were wished upon me and my family, there was still a suggestion that I might be rescued, retrieved from ‘woke indoctrination’. I close with a few critical reflections on my own position of enunciation. 

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Reflections on a Scene of Attack

  • Derek Hook

摘要

This chapter describes a series of attacks that I was subjected to after delivering a lecture on the topic of ‘white anxiety’. The focus of the attacks concerned the notion of the ‘end of whiteness’, and the idea, discussed at length in the foregoing chapter, of a type of ‘white suicide’. The chapter cites indicative extracts from the barrage of hate messages. The over-arching purpose of the attacks was to consolidate an oppositional hard-right political identity—often, but not always of a generally White Nationalist sort—and, accordingly, to stoke a politics of grievance, by linking together a series of maligned signifiers associated with a progressive or leftist position. What was less expected was the sheer extent of the ‘unreconstructed’ types of racism and antisemitism on display. I try to understand this via the discursive trope of the ‘race traitor’ and by means of the idea of performative offensiveness, that is, the demonstrative attempt to offend, by explicitly saying and relishing that which is typically prohibited. Oddly enough, despite that many implied threats were issued, and a great many unpleasant things were wished upon me and my family, there was still a suggestion that I might be rescued, retrieved from ‘woke indoctrination’. I close with a few critical reflections on my own position of enunciation.