A group known as the National Alliance threw fliers and membership information on the lawns of residents in Mesa's Dobson Ranch the same week that two unidentified men vandalized a valley Mosque with symbols of white supremacy.
On Sept. 19, Joel Breshin, a consultant with the Arizona regional office of the Anti-Defamation League, told The State Press the work "is most likely the work of a neo-Nazi group, perhaps the National Alliance or Aryan Nation."
These two linked incidents got me thinking about just how ridiculous white supremacy or any other ethnic supremacy groups are. If you think you are better than everyone else, then good for you. Apply this to the honors college or something. We've got enough campus and statewide problems without having to deal with your shenanigans.
People who associate themselves with a group like the National Alliance aren't bestowed with the vital argumentative gift of making sense. Take the fliers that the National Alliance threw on the lawns in Dobson Ranch: They depicted a little white girl and read, "Missing: A future for white children."
Unfortunately, what the National Alliance doesn't realize is that whether or not there are minorities in society, white children have a future. Minorities aren't going anywhere, regardless of fliers and hate crimes. So the National Alliance should ask itself what kind of future it wants for white children. If members stopped their ignorant hate-mongering, maybe their children could grow up to be successful citizens.
But as long as they continue to run their organization, I'm afraid the only future that the white children of National Alliance and other white supremacy groups have includes throwing fliers onto someone else's lawn.
Note that I used the action of "throwing" to describe the way the fliers ended up on the Mesa lawns. Unlike Jehovah's Witnesses and other canvassing religious organizations, the National Alliance doesn't have the courage to ring doorbells and recruit members through a face-to-face interaction. At least the members of other groups, perceived by much of society to promote extreme views, believe in their cause enough to pitch it to you in person.
So since I'll never get the members of the National Alliance to tell me about their group in person, I was forced to go to their Web site to find out more about this group. The Web site has plenty of information about what they believe in and why they believe it; unfortunately, like every other supremacy group, there isn't a single argument on the National Alliance Web site that a person of an average IQ couldn't tear apart with spork.
One such belief is that they are members of the European race, but they like to be called Aryans instead. So since they're members of this European race (not any specific country or anything, just from Europe) their ancestors had to find a way to survive the cold European winters; therefore, they are evolutionally more capable of solving problems. If that's the case, why didn't they set up shop in Siberia or Antarctica, where their temperature-induced evolutionary superiority could really thrive?
But their ultimate goal is easy to agree with: The National Alliance seeks to establish a society made completely of Aryans. If it would get them the hell out of our society, we should probably help them with this. Take people who consider themselves to be Aryan, and then ship them off to the Bikini Islands. This is a win-win situation: We get rid of the destructive Aryans, and they get to live in a society where their debate teams won't be annihilated every time they compete.
Unfortunately, there are still radical, nonsensical Aryan groups in our country like the National Alliance. Supposedly it's a part of the American melting pot, too, but it's definitely not one of the favored ingredients.
Chris Fanning is a journalism junior. Reach him at christopher.fanning@asu.edu.
