Matthew Heimbach, a student at Towson University, has been stirring up controversy over the last two years after he formed the White Student Union group at his university.  His group is known to plaster “White Power” slogans in chalk on the university grounds and most recently have decided to form a patrol squad in response to what he says is an unresolved problem of black-on-white crime, especially against white females, on Towson University grounds.

If blatant racial profiling is what is necessary to keep his campus safe, I’m all for it; but even as I applaud Heimbah’s complete disregard for political correctness, I still find something very, very wrong: the group’s name.

Judging from the posts on the White Student Union blog site, it is a conservative group, but Heimbach seems confused about what his group desires to accomplish – whether it serves to promote conservative principles like individualism and free-market capitalism or to promote white collectivism. In an interview with Thom Hartman, where Hartmann questions the legitimacy of his position that white males are an oppressed race despite white males “owning everything,” Heibmach’s response is:

“Even if it’s a white face [running everything], if you were Bill Gates or a governor, if you did anything where you are pro-white, then you’re ostracized from the community. Whites are in charge, but they are not allowed to advocate for the best interests of white people.”

Yet the desire to ‘advocate for the best interest’ of any racial group is not only a collectivist notion but inherently racist! We must first believe that all whites are the same in one or more respect based specifically on the colour of their skin to also believe that a certain government policy or economic system would benefit whites as a whole. The only kind of government and economic system that benefits whites is conservative and capitalistic – but that is because conservatism and capitalism benefits everyone as individuals, regardless of their skin colour.

Heimbach can be seen wearing a shirt that reads: “Keep Calm and Fight Socialism” while being interviewed about his new campus patrol on CBC Baltimore. So clearly, Heimbach is an anti-collectivist, in which case the desire to advocate for the interests of any particular group (be it blacks or whites) should be a non-issue for him. In fact, the correct response to such a problem as a pro-freedom, small-government individual is to want to end the system that allows for any group, racial or otherwise, to seek benefits or protection from the government altogether. It would not be to bleat about how they didn’t get their fair slice of the rotten, “diversity” apple.

Nevertheless, I do believe there is truth in Heimbach’s belief that white men face discrimination. Affirmative action is probably the best example of discrimination against whites, but it does not occur because whites are white, rather because affirmative action is based on secular, Marxist ideals of equality. It too relies on the belief that all whites are the same or all blacks are the same, and that the only way to get diversity is by shuffling us up like a deck of playing cards and substituting a couple aces for deuces in the name of fairness. Whites are the majority in the West, and so some might be substituted out for blacks or Hispanics, just like men are substituted out for women in developing parts of the world where countries are only just championing the rights of women.

NewAveyOwynsICONWhite student groups are  reactionary to the nonsensical leftist values like pluralism, multiculturalism and collectivism that diminish the importance of the individual among other things. I do not believe that Heimbach is racist, but it is wrong of Heimbach and other white student group leaders to conflate the best of European culture – Christianity, conservatism, and capitalism – with ‘white.’ Not to mention, it is the slander against the Republican party by the left.

Whites don’t need to unify under racial solidarity, but no one has to demonstrate a need to practice a freedom. I would simply implore future whites who are fed up with the skewed opinions of Europeanism being taught by their professors, that they’d think carefully as to why they need to identify as ‘white’ in the first place when the fundamental cause of white discrimination is not racism but Marxism and its horrible derivatives.  They should instead use the opportunity to counter the false belief about ideological qualities inherent in one’s race by forming groups that unite all races under one ideology.

Avey Owyns | University of Windsor (Ontario) | @AveyOwyns