With ‘White Sharia,’ Neo-Nazis Push Misogynist Meme
Protestors at the white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Virginia. Image by gettyimages
By Sam Kestenbaum November 28, 2017
There were many white nationalist chants heard at the torch-lit Unite the Right rally in Virginia this summer. Some of them — like the Nazi-reference “blood and soil” or “Jews will not replace us” — clearly evoke racism or anti-Semitism.
But one was much stranger: “White sharia now.”
A new Southern Poverty Law Center post explains the phrase.
“White sharia” began as an online white nationalist meme in 2016 as a reference to Islamic religious law. The white nationalist turn of the phrase plays on the reductive misconception that sharia is simply the means by which Muslims subjugate women. White nationalists, the thinking goes, should similarly dominate women — and impost their own “white sharia.”
“White Sharia” and militant white nationalism https://t.co/GYsXLX4xxq
— Hatewatch (@Hatewatch) November 27, 2017
But, the SPLC explains, white nationalists were divided on whether they should include the “dominion over women in their white ethnostate platform.”
One blogger agreed that feminism should be abolished — “feminism,” he wrote, “is yet another aspect of the Jewish long con against white men and women” — but was conflicted on why white nationalists were drawing inspiration from the “Islamic world.”
According to the SPLC, the originator of the white sharia meme is an ex-Marine named Sacco Vandal, who hosts podcasts write on his blog called VandalVoid. In a post titled “In Defense of White Sharia,” he stumped for the meme and applauded what he called the “rigidly codified patriarchy” of the Islamic world.
“We have to strip females of suffrage and most if not all political, legal, and economic power,” Vandal wrote.
Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
