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"So it was a shock on Monday afternoon to see myself attacked in National Review as, essentially, a traitor to the white race."

"'Max Boot Fans the Flames of Racial Hatred' was the headline of an article by John Hirschauer. This was a response to a Post column I had written last week taking aim at the 55 percent of whites who in a 2018 poll said that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minority groups.... In reply, Hirschauer labeled me one of 'the self-loathing whites' who has adopted 'the politics of self-hatred.' He accused me of 'speaking in … totalizing racial language' that 'is stoking the flames of race hatred.' So telling whites not to be racists is an incitement to race hatred? How Orwellian.... I have no idea what 'totalizing racial language' means; it’s the kind of cant that [National Review founder William F.] Buckley, a stickler for precise language, would have mocked. What I do know is that this article employed the language of 'race treason' against me. Yes, Hirschauer attacked white supremacists in passing but he also engaged in moral equivalency and implied that, by denouncing racism, I was driving whites into their arms. ('Boot sets up a Faustian choice for ‘white’ readers: Side with the white supremacists and their detestable program, or sell your political soul to Max Boot and become one of the self-loathing whites.') This is part of a rhetorical strategy also employed by Trump, who occasionally denounces white supremacists but more often promotes racism while insisting his critics are the real racists."

From "National Review’s ugly attack on me reflects the Trumpification of conservatism" by Max Boot (in WaPo).

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