Let's Talk About Those Tiki Torches

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I’ve been thinking about Tiki* torches quite a bit lately. It is summer, but I’m not thinking about driving away the bugs at an evening barbecue. Instead, I am thinking about the use of these glorified night-lights as instruments of terror by the white supremacists that terrorized the Charlottesville community this past weekend. I understand that they wanted to cut an imposing figure as frightening and intimidating, and that they thought that carrying torches would harken back to the glory days of the Ku Klux Klan, but Tiki torches? Really?

You can see them quite clearly in many of the pictures from the Friday night rally. Mostly youngish white men carrying torches alit, but when you look closely, you find that they are the same torches that you might buy to add a nice decorative touch while keeping away the bugs.

I mean, who tries to be intimidating with a Tiki torch? Did they buy so many because they had a 20 percent off coupon? Did they plan this out in bizarre online chatrooms that were a mix of racial animus and interior decor lighting advice? Could they not even search torch-making instructions so that they could be properly menacing? These people can’t even Nazi properly. Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels would be embarrassed by them. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so dangerous.

And then it hit me. These people are idiots. They are mostly young, clearly childish, and dumber than a sack of mackerel. That’s why they organized a torch-lit hate-rally with citronella torches stolen from their moms’ patios. This isn’t to say they aren’t dangerous, but they are not the best of the best of American society. They are outcasts.

I think that this realization may go a long way towards explaining their anger. They aren’t equipped to organize simple hate-rally, much less to function in a socially complex world. In our society, that can be painful. America has very little use for people with limited social and intellectual skills, and so we reject them. Maybe they can’t find a decent job. Maybe they don’t have healthy relationships. Maybe they are trapped in consumerism and debt. Maybe it is drugs and lust. Maybe they have been rejected by school or society or the church, and so those wounds turn to anger and hate and evil.

While this is not a flattering view, this understanding is the first step towards seeing this enemy with Christ’s eyes. Of seeing the true self, the wounded self, underneath the angry and dangerous person that lives at the surface. That is the first step of loving your enemy. When we see them, not just as angry miscreants or domestic terrorists, but as God’s beloved, it becomes much easier to see that our struggle is not against these Klansmen, but for them. Ironically, we seek the same thing for them that they seek; just like them, we want them to be loved and to be accepted. The only difference is that they think they need to change society in order to be welcomed and loved and whole, while we know that wholeness and love and acceptance comes not from society, but from God.

As Christians, we are called to resist evil, injustice, and oppression wherever we find them, but the Good News is that we are given not just the task, but the tools to complete it. We are called to resist evil through love. It should by now be clear that love is the only thing that can defeat evil, but in case it is not, think of the scale of the violence of World War II. From 1939 through 1945, the world slaughtered itself to defeat evil with violence, culminating in nuclear war. Consider that the recent rally in Virginia was because of the same evil. While a few particular strains of fascism were killed off, evil never left because it cannot be defeated with anger and hate.

But we have another chance. We can complete the work that Martin Luther King Jr. started and truly rid the country of racism, but our success will depend on the method we use. We can feel anger at the Tiki-carrying racists, and we may be able to use that anger to propel an election victory that will drive them back into the recesses of the internet. Or, we can see them with Christ’s eyes, as hurting, broken, beloved children of God, and we can respond with love and compassion. If we choose the former, we will confront the same hatred again and again. If we choose the later, God can transform the world through us.

*Editor’s note: The word “Tiki” is a brand name, and so it is capitalized throughout this article.

Brian Snyder is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Louisiana State University and layperson at First United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge, La.