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The Proud Boys leader is not a noble savage

Enrique Tarrio is no noble savage

February 1, 2021 - 8:00am

I recently wrote about Enrique Tarrio, the Cuban-American leader of the Proud Boys, making the case that racial ideas, as propagated by academic experts, fail to explain his behaviour. My explanation was quite simple: he’s a grifter unencumbered by ideas of race. This past week, Tarrio once again made the news, as Reuters reported that from 2014 to 2015, he served as a prolific FBI informant. This latest development in the ridiculous Tarrio saga surprised absolutely no one in Miami, nor non-Miamian people of colour, but the educated set was once again shocked.

In the eyes of the thinking class, Tarrio was guilty of “multiracial whiteness”, a termed coined by Cristina Beltran, a New York University professor, to explain his behaviour as a Cuban-American who aligns himself with white supremacists. In an op-ed for The Washington Post this month, she wrote:

Multiracial whiteness reflects an understanding of whiteness as a political color and not simply a racial identity—a discriminatory worldview in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanization of others.
- Cristina Beltran, Washington Post

The incongruency in the responses of people of colour (POC) and the “academic experts” like Beltran who claim to speak for them is instructive because the schism highlights the concept that seemingly drives all woke thinking when it relates to race— the noble savage. The noble savage is a literary stock character, a “brown” person who is innately good and has been corrupted by society, which is to say, white people.

Experts misunderstand Tarrio, and others like him, because they frame all POC as noble savages who don’t know any better and are often under the influence of “whiteness” or other such concepts. Stating that Tarrio is acting freely and not under the spell of esoteric racial concepts, is saying that he isn’t a noble savage, but instead a plain savage. The woke can’t say this for reasons of political correctness, but brown people who actually live among Tarrio types, have no problem stating the obvious and not attributing a petty schemer’s behaviour to “whiteness.”

The noble savage concept was also evident after the 2020 election, when a spate of articles appeared all at once stating that Trump’s improved performance among Hispanics could be heavily attributed to the fact that they’d been manipulated by “misinformation.” Even if memes and fake news did play a factor in Trump’s increases with Hispanics, the not-so-subtle subtext was clear: these poor, lowly — yet noble — brown people were simply misled.

This retainment of brown nobility is important to the woke expert class because their project isn’t about understanding POC motivations, but the inversion of the current order in which whiteness is the sickness that afflicts society and must be dismantled. If brown people are not noble, and whiteness has nothing to do with it, the woke worldview collapses.

The noble savage concept not only removes all agency from POC, but as a rhetorical device deployed by the woke, it annihilates the possibility for any honest racial discussion. Ultimately, treating POC like afflicted victims in need of saving is patronising. Until society can move beyond these reductive racial categories, it will not be able to understand figures like Enrique Tarrio for what he is: a grifting petty schemer.


Alex Perez is a Cuban-American writer based in Miami, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Perez_Writes

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Russ Littler
Russ Littler
3 years ago

I wonder if anyone can help. As a man who voted for Brexit, I have been looking to join a “white supremacist” club, but I can’t seem to find any such organizations. I’ve been all through the phone book, and looked on line, but they don’t seem to exist? The BBC and Sky tell me there are literally thousands of white supremacists, so I must be overlooking something. The nearest thing I can find to accommodate my desire for mindless violence and racial division, were ANTIFA and BLM. Can anyone steer me in the right direction?

Nigel Clarke
Nigel Clarke
3 years ago
Reply to  Russ Littler

I hear the WI might be getting a little more radical…give ’em a go, the worst that can happen is that you’ll get a nice cup of tea and bit of cake.

Russ Littler
Russ Littler
3 years ago
Reply to  Nigel Clarke

Ah, typical of those radical right-wing cult organizations. They try and lure you in with tea and cake.

Gerry Fruin
Gerry Fruin
3 years ago
Reply to  Russ Littler

Yes and have you noticed most are women? 🙂

Gerry Fruin
Gerry Fruin
3 years ago
Reply to  Russ Littler

You’ve got a phone book? Where the hell did you get it from? 🙂

LUKE LOZE
LUKE LOZE
3 years ago
Reply to  Russ Littler

“The nearest thing I can find to accommodate my desire for mindless violence and racial division, were ANTIFA and BLM”

I’m stealing that word for word.

Doug Pingel
Doug Pingel
3 years ago
Reply to  LUKE LOZE

Too late – its already been taken by at least 50%
of the subscribers to this site.

Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman
3 years ago
Reply to  Russ Littler

Not personally but I recon if you look up Stephen Yaxley-Lenon, AKA Tommy Robinson he will be able to point you in the right direction although now he is not in prison any more I would not know where to find him.

Dan Poynton
Dan Poynton
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul Goodman

If you think Robinson is “white supremacist” you have not seriously listened to him, but are simply parroting mainstream media soundbites. No doubt one could criticise him for all sorts of things, but if one is to do it one should know Thy enemy.

Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman
3 years ago
Reply to  Dan Poynton

My post clearly says that I believe he knows where to find them nothing more and I stick by it. Personally I believe S Y-P to be totally apolitical and that for him it is all about cash.

Dan Poynton
Dan Poynton
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul Goodman

Fair enough. Although to most reasonable people the implication is pretty clear. You are probably right though, as I know that Robinson personally threw out a lot of white supremacist/Nazi etc type figures from the EDL due to his hatred of racism.
Your accusations of him being only about cash aren’t reflected in his considerable knowledge about and passion (and yes, on the negative, his anger) for his cause, and his willingness to lose all opportunity to gain the foresaid cash as he fades away on one of his prison stays. However, you may have other evidence of his financial dealings that I am unaware of.

Russ Littler
Russ Littler
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul Goodman

You could not be more wrong if you tried.

Joseph McCord
Joseph McCord
3 years ago
Reply to  Russ Littler

Everything is white supremacist, unless otherwise notified.

If notified by the wrong person – then the person doing the notifying, is also a white supremacist.

Pretty much – just join anything that isn’t the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, or something comparable. Maybe a knitting club, or a bowling league (do you have bowling in the UK?) or something.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
3 years ago
Reply to  Russ Littler

They do exist, especially in the US, look up Richard Spencer.

But yes, the overwhelming cultural power is with the identity politics ‘woke’ Left, even now taking over the SNP. Whatever their other faults they used to just want Scotland to be independent rather than demanding its members sign up to ‘woke’ progressive dogma ‘transwomen ARE women’ etc.

In any case, no one is being taught white supremacism in our universities, unlike the woke stuff. You could add HR departments.

LUKE LOZE
LUKE LOZE
3 years ago

An excellent article, but I’d make a couple of observations.
Pointing out that the Woke class feel ownership of POC (and other choosen groups) and treat them like children is a well known truth. Pointing out that this is racist in itself is well known.

There’s 2 problems though, the Woke don’t and won’t ever acknowledge this, their entire set of ever changing believes are as mass of competing contridictions, lies and hilariously convoluted explainations. Their pronouncements are ‘the truth’ they have no use for logic or objective reality (I wish I was joking).

The other problem is that they have learnt like all belief or political groups to brash it out, never admit to being wrong – always go on the attack.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  LUKE LOZE

And they seem to be winning.

LUKE LOZE
LUKE LOZE
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

One thing is that their superficial aims are good. They want a world without racism, sexism, xenophobia, massive inequality, poverty etc. To my mind these are noble goals, to say you don’t want this makes you bad etc.

However it’s their analysis of the current state of the problems and their proposed solutions where most people become very worried about the Wokes aims.

But hey they’re the good guys, they’ve told us this, so to question them makes you the bad guy.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  LUKE LOZE

And they seem to be winning, whatever the condemnation from this site.

LUKE LOZE
LUKE LOZE
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

Yeap, it’s believed in by enough of the elites, and silences the rest – the vast majority of the population who oppose it don’t matter.

I suspect even those who know it’s complete BS are cynically very happy with it – it leaves the actual powerful alone and sets the plebs at each others throats.

Geoff Cooper
Geoff Cooper
3 years ago
Reply to  LUKE LOZE

Yes, big business and high finance have been on board for years. Global capital has borrowed all the left’s best lines and donned its outer garments, then sold itself back to them – and they’ve bought it, entirely – the idiots!

Joe Francis
Joe Francis
3 years ago

Weird. Just weird. I keep coming back to Karl Popper and his criterion of falsification, or more accurately, the propensity of the left to come up with increasingly convoluted excuses when their theories are falsified. Tarrio, is a grifter, Tarrio is a noble savage, Tarrio is an ignoble savage, Tarrio is a victim of white supremacy. The idea that Tarrio just thinks the left is full of you-know-what just does not enter their calculations, does it?

G H
G H
3 years ago

I believe the majority of society, certainly in the US and other western countries have moved beyond these reductive racial categories. It’s the regressive and culturally left ideology that seeks to pull society back into the divisive arguments over race. That’s the point. Division, segregation and the eventual destruction of western enlightenment.

Joseph McCord
Joseph McCord
3 years ago
Reply to  G H

No, you’re completely wrong. The system can no more provide freedom, justice, and equality, than a chicken can lay a duck egg. Africa and the African diaspora must be united, to create a true revolution – which is the only true solution to racism. There is no place for interracial solidarity, and a glimmer of hope for true transformation can only be found in the total collapse of the system. Read what Professor Kehinde Andrews has to say about it, in the utterly false article entitled “Why the West isn’t racist”, on this website.

Johnny Sutherland
Johnny Sutherland
3 years ago
Reply to  Joseph McCord

That’s either sarcasm gone massively wrong or written by someone who needs to go and lie down.

Joseph McCord
Joseph McCord
3 years ago

No, it’s not even sarcasm, really – it’s reporting. Look up the article, itself. There are people who are getting paid to teach the young, who are actually in the present claiming those things.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

Here’s an idea – stop taking racialists like Beltran seriously. This endless drumbeat about “white supremacy” is beyond tedious.

The noble savage concept not only removes all agency from POC, but as a rhetorical device deployed by the woke, it annihilates the possibility for any honest racial discussion.
Well, yes; that’s by design. If minorities have agency, they may realize that they don’t need white saviors speaking for them, they might actually look at self-inflicted wounds and address those. And the woke want nothing at all to do with “honest” discussion about most topics, not just race.

chris carr
chris carr
3 years ago

“Experts misunderstand Tarrio, and others like him, because they frame all POC as noble savages who don’t know any better . . .” Either they are not experts or you are misrepresenting them.

Sidney Falco
Sidney Falco
3 years ago

What an atrocious, jargon-strewn load of cobblers.
If the argument was that “POC” are often forced by the police into being an informer – something I’ll bet happens often – and therefore that Tarrio deserves some sympathy for an impossible situation then I might take it seriously.
As it is, it’s just crap.
Nevertheless, I will always cherish it for this pearler: “non-Miamian people of colour”

Nigel Clarke
Nigel Clarke
3 years ago

“…The Proud Boys leader is not a noble savage…”

And the author of this article is not a BLM/Antifa terrorist…

Vóreios Paratiritís
Vóreios Paratiritís
3 years ago

If governments don’t stand up to communist street agitators than citizens will self organize to do so. How can anyone condemn the symptom and not the cause?

Gerry Fruin
Gerry Fruin
3 years ago

Yawn! Just ignore them?
P.S. The ultimate death to a Politician is to be ignored. They, our MSM mad leaders will change their tune as soon as voters start to ignore them and the media as well. Meanwhile I’ll stay relaxed and enjoy my daily fix of Unheard comments, The actual article is almost irrelevant.

Joseph McCord
Joseph McCord
3 years ago

{bleep}ing hilarious.