I’ve written here before that “Systemic Racism” is a myth. A fact-free political fantasy as evidence-based as witch trials, as substantive as Pizzagate, as rational as Trump-Russia Collusion. But myths don’t need underlying facts to wield enormous power.

The myth that Jewish people in subsequent generations carried “blood-guilt” for Jesus’ death, for instance. That nonsensical claim got thousands of Jesus’ distant cousins killed, and millions driven into exile. The demands came from mobs that wanted to loot their stores, steal their homes, and trash their monuments. However often Christian leaders tried to counter that falsehood (and yes, they should have tried harder) mobs used it as a pretext to bully, rob, and murder. This blood libel on the Jews certainly helped prepare the way for the Holocaust.

Today, a more potent myth among Muslim zealots blames Israel for the dismal failures of Arab states. It calls Israel an “apartheid state” squatting on land where Jews never lived at all. (Archaeology be damned.) The same left-wing groups in the West that speak of “white privilege” also talk of “Jewish privilege.”

What About Yellow Privilege in China?

Weirdly, they never speak of “Han privilege” in China, though the Han-dominated Communist government holds more than a million Uighurs in concentration camps. No one complains of “black privilege” in Jamaica or Nigeria. The fact that historic majorities tend to have certain advantages in countries is still a normal part of life … except in the countries the zealots have chosen to scapegoat. In those places, it’s evidence of historical injustice. Of sin, of crime, in fact of the worst crime imaginable: racism. You know, just as witchcraft was the worst crime in Colonial Salem. Those accused are presumptively guilty, and anyone who defends them is probably guilty too.

Catholic philosopher Rene Girard spent his career analyzing how mobs choose scapegoats, and use them to wield vast social power. Scapegoaters operate by whipping up a moral panic, provoking violence, and offering social peace once you cave in to their demands. Once they take their pound of flesh, or collection of scalps.

Myths That Kill

Marxism, for instance. This conspiracy theory only masquerades as economics — the way National Socialism pretended to be the inevitable outcome of Darwin’s theories. Marxism is nothing but a post-Christian end-times myth. It offers a languid egalitarian Utopia to the whole world. But to get there, you must let the Party’s dictatorship rule unhindered. You must let it have its massacres. Some 80 million people probably died at the hands of Marxist governments. “Blood-sucking” capitalists, greedy (i.e. hard-working) peasants, troublesome ethnic minorities, and millions of stubborn Christians all died in purges, camps, and famines. The largest nation on earth still lives as the slaves of its Chinese Communist Party masters. You know, the folks who sent us this pandemic.  

Now the overtly Marxist group Black Lives Matter demands that every American take a knee, and send it money. We aren’t allowed to question the crackpot, radical leftist program it calls for. If we won’t tear down every statue in America, dissolve the police, and abolish the nuclear family? Then we’re the equal of brutal cops. We bear the blood guilt of George Floyd, just as Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld bear the blood guilt for Jesus, in bigots’ minds. Question this blood-guilt theory, and you’re guilty too.

Each week, the Woke mob’s demands escalate, as the piranhas get excited by fresh-spilt blood. Conservatives who foolishly wrote off Confederate monuments were shocked, shocked that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were next. Then Christopher Columbus, St. Louis of France, and Fray Junipero Serra. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Now activists demand that a picture of St. Michael trampling Satan be struck from a British royal honor because it’s somehow (drumroll please) … racist. You see, St. Michael is acting like a brutal cop or something.

The paint still isn’t dry on the statues of General Grant and Abraham Lincoln that looters defaced (for the crime, presumably of Emancipating While White), before activists ratcheted up their demands. Now activist Shaun King demands that all religious images in every church that portray Jesus as white (as those in China make Him Chinese) be removed or destroyed.

Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down.

They are a form of white supremacy.

Always have been.

In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went?

EGYPT!

Not Denmark.

Tear them down.

— Shaun King (@shaunking) June 22, 2020

Nor will the demands stop with Christians. As night follows day, the attack on Christians gave way to attacks on Jews.

Martin Luther King was a racist and a Zionist.
Cancel MLK day. Take down his statues.
Replace him with Malcom X. pic.twitter.com/MFzX6i1BYf

— Syrian Girl 🇸🇾 (@Partisangirl) June 22, 2020

Say “No!” in Thunder

Where will this stop? When we start saying “No!” in thunder.

Only when Christians demand that their leaders reject such demands, and reject the white blood guilt myth as most have that of Jewish blood guilt, will this destructive frenzy end.

What about you and I? We can at least stand with Alexander Solzhenitsyn and “live not by lies.” We should reject the false assertions of “scientific” racism. And try to root out exaggerated stereotypes in our own minds that drive us to treat anyone unjustly. We should treasure in our hearts the absolute equality of every human being before the throne of Christ, as His beloved creatures. There’s a whole chapter on this in the book I co-wrote with Jason Jones, The Race To Save Our Century.

But we must not acquiesce in destructive, anti-social falsehoods spread by power-hungry zealots. We shouldn’t issue false apologies, confess to sins we never committed, or demonize our forefathers. (No, they weren’t perfect. They tolerated slavery. We tolerate abortion. Which is worse?) We shouldn’t seek cheap grace points by making empty gestures, especially when they hand control to dangerous extremists. Those who blow the horn of “Anti-Racism” today, and hand over wealth or power to reckless revolutionaries, are the Pharisees of 2020. We know what Jesus said of them. “They already have their reward.”

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism.