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Comment by knewter | Hacker News Reader

Why are you referring to Mauricio Garcia, the Hispanic shooter, as a white supremacist? I read through ten articles about him just now - all of them said he was a white supremacist, none of them bothered explaining how a Hispanic man was a white supremacist. Surely in a sane world one of them would at least pay lip service to explaining that to me, but nope.

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Have you ever applied for a job in the US, or answered a census here? White is broken down into Hispanic White and non-Hispanic White in our racial categories. That’s about as official as you can get.

Also consider what “Hispanic” means in the first place. Plus, ultimately, anyone can have any beliefs if they really want to. If you’re non-white and try to be a white supremacist, it’s not like the universe will prevent you from doing so.

It would make you a hispanic supremacist or white hispanic supremacist if using the official categories. Using incorrect labelling is done on purpose to keep a false narrative going and attract more attention.

The media not describing a guy (who checks “Race: White, Ethnicity: Hispanic” on the census), who had a swastika and SS tattoo, as a “Hispanic supremacist” in headlines is maybe the weakest media criticism I’ve ever read.

I have the craziest hunch that maybe you aren’t being genuine, but I’ll leave that alone.

100 genuine. I would have expected them to use the common latin or spanish. Not white supremacist. That feeds into a stereotype that doesn't exist here. It's like labeling the Oklahoma city bomber a muslim terrorist after 9/11 to fit in with the stereotyping of the day.

Suuuuure you're "100% genuine" in suggesting that calling a neo-Nazi with a fondness for sharing violent white supremacist rhetoric a white supremacist is like calling Timothy McVeigh a Muslim, and insisting they ought to focus on the neo-Nazi's Spanish name instead of his "right wing death squad" patches. Can't be having the media accept people as white if they have Spanish names, can we?

So isn't the reason that Mauricio Garcia is labelled as a white supremacist because he himself actually wrote and self-identified as one?

If the Oklahoma city bombers did not leave behind any jihadist or pro-Islam writing of any sort and only left behind their white supremacy stuff I don't think they would have been labelled as Muslim terrorists if they did their attack soon after 9/11. The media very likely would have done something more like "white supremacy as displayed by the Oklahoma City Bombing is similar to the jihadist doctrine displayed by Al-Qaeda". Which is to say the media would have made links between the two (some spurious, some genuine) without actually saying the Oklahoma City Bombing was done by Muslim terrorists. This is so obvious to me to the point that I am beginning to feel empathetic to commenters doubting your being genuine - as much as I hate to admit it since I think trusting others are arguing in good faith is generally a better norm.

Whether the 9/11 era or now when someone commits a crime and actually leaves behind writing where they admit their beliefs, and motivation this is what they get labelled as. Why are you surprised when someone like Mauricio Garcia who admits white supremacist beliefs is then labelled as one by the media? Or is your claim that actually his writing is not white supremacist?

Are white supremacists generally believed to be referring to Hispanics as supreme? If not, I contend it is reasonable for me to have assumed at least one of the ten reports I read would spend a moment addressing this dissonance.

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