Seinfeld, Morrissey, O'Brien

You know that implausible Seinfeld episode, the one where George and Jerry find themselves in the back of a private limo mistaken for Nazi organizers, esteemed white supremacists who, because of the shocking vileness of their teachings, must travel incognito, their faces known to none so that none can shame and/or imprison them?

O’Brien was the name. “The Limo” was the episode. Classic stuff. 1992. White supremacy and neo-Nazism were still comic premises, relics of a distant past we had conquered, no problemo. I came across a real-life O’Brien, my first ever, just the other day. His name is Greg Johnson (pictured above). He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America. His first teaching position was at Morehouse College, the historically, and predominantly, African-American liberal arts university, based in Atlanta. The whole time he was teaching at Morehouse, he was an avowed white nationalist who believed that all of the African-American students in his class, by birth and by blood, were, and always would remain, stupider than he was.

I know all of this not because I’ve been researching white nationalism and/or white supremacy. I know this because Greg Johnson, editor-in-chief of Counter-Currents, voice of the “North American New Right,” has become one of the most prolific, and openly racist, posters on Morrissey-solo.com, the Morrissey fan web site. Johnson, Morrissey’s personal O’Brien, lives in Seattle where he passes as just another clean-cut, craft-brew drinking, progressive. He does not allow photos to be taken of himself  (the one posted above is one of the few, from when Johnson was either a grad student or new prof, I'd imagine). I guess not when these are the things you’re publishing, under your own name:  

• “I’m an out-and-out transphobic. I just think transsexualism is a ghastly, insane phenomenon in America today, or in the white world today.”
• "If in the next national election, everybody who voted Republican dropped dead in the voting booth, the country would be finished. You can’t have a functioning society consisting of bureaucrats, academics, welfare parasites, Jews, coloreds, feminists, fruit juice drinkers, and assorted busybodies.”
• “America would be improved by fewer Blacks, Asians, and Mestizos, not more of them. America would be improved by fewer Muslims, not more of them. And of course this country would be vastly improved by fewer Jews. (I think America would be improved by fewer Christians too, but that's another essay.)…. White America is a mixture of people from all over Europe, slowly being submerged in a rising tide of mud.”  

 
I don’t know how you concert-attending Morrissey fans are able to rationalize it to yourselves. You show up at a Morrissey show somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, you’re singing along to “Will Never Marry” right beside a guy who looks like you, but who spends his days calling people like you “cucks,” “multi-culties” and “race-traitors.” This isn’t cancel culture. This isn’t about something Morrissey said in the 1990s. This is about Morrissey willfully, knowingly, intentionally, overtly, happily, repeatedly aligning himself with the policies of white supremacists who hope that all non-whites will be rounded up and deported, in their own lifetimes. You self-described "loyal", or "non-political", Morrissey fans are giving your money to a person who actively and aggressively uses his fame to advocate for white nationalism. Not really a grey area anymore, is it?