A guy who looks like he definitely listens to Kid Rock and is saving up to get a massive face tattoo of the Monster Energy drink logo was filmed in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend hastily removing part of his neo-Nazi uniform after being chased down by a protester. The video, captured by documentarian C.J. Hunt, shows the man running into the frame before taking off his white nationalists-favored polo and pleading with the crowd.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," the man, who is also literally carrying multiple containers of Monster Energy, says. "I'm not really white power, man. I just came here for the fun. Fuck. I'm sorry. I just came here for the fun, to watch." Asked by Hunt to clarify his relationship with white supremacy, the man says he's "barely" a white supremacist. "It's kind of a fun idea, just being able to say, like, hey man, white power," he says.
Just so we're absolutely clear here, this fucking guy is basically arguing that neo-Nazism is nothing more than a fun weekend activity for his Kid Rock-addled brain. When shit actually gets real, as it often does when non-Nazis (also known as good, normal people) call someone out on their alliance with Nazis, this guy thinks he can just make a quick change of clothes and everything will be cool.
In his essay for GQ Wednesday, Hunt pinpointed what this bizarre display of a "part-time Nazi" and "junior secessionist" says about white privilege:
Cut off from the pack, forced to face the consequences of his inflammatory behavior, he found escape in a costume change. Since I'm a person of color, my identity is not a uniform I can take off when I am feeling unsafe—when I'm stopped by police or when my white girlfriend and I travel through southern towns where Confederate flags billow from porches and pickup trucks.
Thankfully, this guy hasn't gone unnoticed:
Typically, the U.S. would be able to rely on our White House team to—at bare minimum—not actively encourage and embolden Nazis. In 2017, however, that's simply not the case. Just yesterday, Trump backpedaled on his previous halfhearted condemnation of Nazis by saying there was "blame on both sides."
