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White nationalists dismayed by results of genetic-ancestry tests – Metro US

White nationalists dismayed by results of genetic-ancestry tests

White Nationalists Ancestry Tests

White nationalists are eagerly getting genetic ancestry tests — and what some are finding makes them want to pull the sheets over their head.

Members of white-supremacist groups are using mail-order genetic test kits such as 23andme to ascertain exactly how white they are. Many are finding that’s not so white after all. And instead of being discreet about these revelations, they’re flocking to the white-nationalist website Stormfront to dispute the tests’ validity.

That’s the conclusion of two sociologists who studied a year’s worth of posts on Stormfront, reports Stat News. It amazed the researchers, because “they will basically say if you want to be a member of Stormfront you have to be 100 percent white European, not Jewish,” said Aaron Panofsky, who presented the findings at a conference 48 hours after the domestic-terror attack in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Panofsky and fellow sociologist Joan Donovan studied more than 3,000 posts on Stormfront. They found that about a third of the posters were pleased with their results — “Pretty damn pure blood,” said a user with the username Sloth — but the vast majority were not, and the community twisted themselves into logical knots to help them feel better.

“They will talk about the mirror test,” said Panofsky, a sociologist at UCLA’s Institute for Society and Genetics. “They will say things like, ‘If you see a Jew in the mirror looking back at you, that’s a problem; if you don’t, you’re fine.’” Others dismissed undesirable genetic results by saying the tests didn’t matter if you’re truly committed to white nationalism. Others tried to discredit the genetic tests as a Jewish conspiracy “that is trying to confuse true white Americans about their ancestry,” said Panofsky. Still others tried entering different data to other sites to get a more “white” result.

And when all else failed, some decided to redefine “diversity” to mean the opposite of “diversity” — an argument “that allows them to say, ‘No, we’re really diverse and we don’t need non-white people to have a diverse society,’” said Panofsky.