My Letter to the Editor for the Calvin Chimes

On May 3, the most recent issue of the Calvin Chimes included a feature article titled "White nationalism rises nationwide; Calvin maintains anti-racist commitment." In this article, I found many things that I thought were, to put it kindly, incorrect and I felt it necessary and beneficial to Calvin as a whole to write a letter to the editor in response to the article. Because of my proximity to the issue at hand, I have access to information that the author of the article wouldn't have seen when researching for the article. This means that I am somewhat uniquely able to shed light on this situation. I sent the letter to the Chimes and was told May 6 that it was in the process of being edited for publication. However, it is now the end of the semester and it wasn't published. As such, I have decided to publish it here.

In citing the internet meme of “Kekistan” as a symbol of white supremacy, the most recent Chimes feature article spreads falsehoods that do this school a disservice. Garrett Strpko quotes the Southern Poverty Law Center saying “Alt-righters are particularly fond of the way the banner trolls liberals who recognize its origins.” This is patently false as the idea of Kekistan was created, in part, to poke fun at white nationalists. Per a creator of Kekistan, “Kekistan exists as a parody of identity politics… take the piss out of all of these things that are blown so out of proportion and used to try and hurt other people…The true beauty of Kekistan is how it is the exact opposite of what most people will think it is if they don’t understand it…if you wanted to say ‘is Kekistan for white people? Maybe it’s for black people?’ I’d have to say but neither…You can’t be a black supremacist and Kekistani. You cannot be a white supremacist and Kekistani. You can’t be any of those things because all ethnic Kekistani are green supremacists.” The Kekistani flag was modeled after a Nazi flag, but it is a parody of the Nazi flag and not a tribute. As such, the 2017 flag incident referenced in the article was not “an example of how hateful iconography can hide in plain sight, without being noticed” but was rather an example of a lie getting halfway around the world before the truth can put its pants on.

-Adam Hoshiko (Sophomore)

You can find the video I cited here: https://youtu.be/3q9SIVhLI6o and the article here: https://calvinchimes.org/2019/05/03/white-nationalism-rises-nationwide-calvin-maintains-anti-racist-commitment/