Neo-Nazi Patrick Little Faces Backlash After Announcing Plans for Nonviolent ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ Marches
Patrick Little — the neo-Nazi who ran and lost in this year’s California primary election for US Senate — is organizing a series of nonviolent marches based on the “It’s Okay To Be White” meme. While Little says he’s “trying to continue its spread,” others are afraid his association with the valuable meme will ultimately corrupt it.
The ongoing battle for the It’s Okay To Be White (IOTBW) meme first started on November 2, when Little published a call-to-action on his website titled “IOTBW Marches.” In it, he recalled his demonstration outside of Twitter’s headquarters last year where he held a sign that read: “It’s not okay to be white @Twitter.”
He wrote that in preparation for this one-man protest — which was over the suspension of his Twitter account—it apparently dawned on Little that putting duct tape over his mouth “knocked out multiple birds with one stone.” (Little apparently had duct tape on before the video linked above was taken.)
First, he wrote, it “allowed me to stand there with the sign… without worrying about straying off topic.” And second, the duct tape “allowed me to eliminate the need to worry about having to think up retorts to hecklers.” (But he did take off his duct tape to speak to the media “as I had hoped to attract.”)
Little also wrote that he “got the oppressors to expose themselves, rip their own masks off, and expose their tyranny.”
Little then mentioned the IOTBW meme and ironically wrote that anyone who has a problem with the phrase “It’s okay to be (insert race)” is “obviously a genocidal maniac.”
Keep in mind this is the same man who, on May 14 on Gab, shared an anti-Semitic image with this genocidal quote by George Lincoln Rockwall: “If I am unsuccessful, there will be Jews swinging from every lamppost in America.”
At the end of the article, Little wrote a list of do’s and don’ts for his planned IOTBW marches. What’s noteworthy are his instructions to abstain from violence if counterdemonstrators attack them and to present a “please leave” card to rogue protesters who fail to follow Little’s rules.
In a video update streamed on YouTube the same day, November 2, Little emphasized the importance of nonviolence and “self control” during the protests.
“Do not email me unless you’re willing to not fight back when you get hit. Do not email me if you don’t have the self-control to leave a piece of duct tape on your mouth the whole time you’re marching unless you need to call the police.”
However, not everyone was pleased with Little’s plan.
In the comments section of his article, people accused Little of appropriating and “fucking up the core message” of the IOTBW meme.
“It’s supposed to remain a non organized, faceless, anon and spontaneous movement,” wrote one user who claimed to be “one of the originators of the IOTBW movement on pol.”
“It’s about the message not Patrick Littles dwindling revelance (sic).”
Another user worried that the marches could “turn into another UTR [Unite the Right]” and would only “draw out the (((skinheads))).”
On /pol/, anonymous users voiced concerns about the practicality of Little’s marches, particularly the “please leave” rule.
“Some faggot will NOT stick to the plan,” warned one 4channer. “C-ville had assholes showing up and they weren’t put in check for fucking up. Unless you are willing to physically remove violators, then quietly ‘asking’ them to leave is pointless.”
Others called Little a Jewish person and even accused him of working for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
One user thought a little bit more about the implications of Little appropriating the IOTBW meme:
“They have screenshotted all of Patrick Littles worst posts of him being a nazi, say that you are a nazi because you participated in this shit that he asked you to do, then you’re life will be over. You will want to kill your self.”
If by “they,” you mean journalists and antiracist activists, then yes, we have taken screenshots of Little’s “worst posts.”
Like this one, where he threatens to “j-walk at the home addresses” of Jewish people. “If they live in open carry states, I will be packing openly,” he wrote on Gab.
And this one from July 16, where he pledges to destroy a Holocaust memorial within the next year.
“Either a holohoax memorial is revised in the next 12 months in the US or I will revise one,” he wrote, again, on Gab.
And let’s not forget the time Little offered to brainwash children being taught about the Holocaust in school.
“Email me… and i will intervene,” the predator said.
So, yeah, our eyes have been on Little for quite a while.
In his second video update on the planned marches, Little responded briefly to the “mixed criticism” he received:
“Some people dislike trying to do IRL, the ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ meme. But it is the perfect meme because anyone who counter signals it is essentially saying it’s not okay to be white…
I’m not trying to make the ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ meme my own. I’m trying to continue its spread… Don’t let someone tell you that I’m trying to take control of the meme. I’m trying to help it spread.”
He also listed the cities where his supporters would apparently be willing to come out and protest. Those cities are:
- Phoenix, AZ
- Tucson, AZ
- Fullerton, CA
- Washington, DC
- Chicago, IL
- Detroit, IL
- Boston, MA
- Philadelphia, PA
- Knoxville, TN
- Salt Lake City, UT
- Seattle, WA
- Tacoma, WA
- and “cities in Idaho.”
In a November 5 Gab post, Little also mentioned that “we have marchers for over 50 cities.” As for the days of the event, Little said in his update video that he’s aiming for November 16, 17, 23, or 24.
A quick side note: Below Little’s aforementioned Gab post, Juan Benitez Cadavid (aka Johnny Benitez), a violent far-rightist and former Proud Boy, expressed interest in a IOTBW protest in California.
Little says he wants to help spread IOTBW because it’s a “perfect” meme. But it is very likely that’s not his primary goal.
In that fateful call-to-action on his website, Little wrote that the “angle I was going for” with his stunt in front of Twitter HQ, the foundation of his grand plan, was not to help spread IOTBW, but to “expose” the perceived hypocrisy of his ideological enemies. Here’s the full quote:
“Eric Striker [of The Daily Stormer] understood the angle I was going for, his analysis was spot on: I got the oppressors to expose themselves, rip their own masks off, and expose their tyranny.”
Remember, he only talked about helping spread IOTBW after he received “mixed criticism.”
Little doesn’t seem to give a damn about the future of IOTBW as long as it helps him gain more power and relevancy. And keep in mind this is the guy who put a whole social media platform at risk and whose posts were shared by Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.
Now, people in the Bay Area are demanding that Little be removed from the UC Berkeley family student housing neighborhood where he currently resides.
In other words, he’s a liability to those around him.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d like the meme to “die,” or at least be corrupted enough to be widely known to everyday people as a meme explicitly linked to extremism and Nazism, but I do understand the concerns about Little appropriating it for his stunts.
As for the planned protests, if they do happen, it will be interesting to see whether Little’s marchers will be disciplined enough to refrain from violence. It’s a common concern for sacrificial nonviolent demonstrations but, then again, not every organizer of this type of protest is a neo-Nazi.
Which brings me to this question:
Do we really expect marches organized by a man who has profited off of provoking others and threatened to commit violence to be nonviolent?
