I’m also re-posting Dr. Rebecca Kennedy’s comment on M.P.’s original post here, along with my reply (which has also been removed, presumably by M.P.):

Kennedy: “That may seem a pretty high bar, but that’s the bar that it seems appropriate to set in assessing the very ambitious claim that’s been made.”

This is how white supremacy reproduces itself — by making the bar so high to prove it and disregarding the very evidence of its existence so that it can never be proven to exist in the assessment of the people who benefit from it. Whiteness is such a fragile identity that it can only survive through the willful ignorance of its operations in everyday life.

Kierstead: Thanks, Dr. Kennedy, but I’m not sure ‘this is how white supremacy reproduces itself’ is a particularly productive way of engaging with the points I raised. I mean, I could just reply with something like ‘Well, this is how leftist extremism reproduces itself!’ but I don’t think that would help us get to the bottom of the important issues we’re talking about. For example, it doesn’t help us determine whether Classics as a field is complicit in white supremacism, as you’ve hypothesized.

A few further points about what you’ve written here:

‘by making the bar so high to prove it’: I don’t think I made the bar high — as I make very clear in the passage from my article that you quote. If you think your claim doesn’t set the bar as high as I think it does, you’ll need to explain why. But if you claim that the field is complicit in white supremacism, you need to present evidence that the field is complicit in white supremacism as those terms are commonly understood. Otherwise, the responsible thing to do would be either to moderate or drop your claim, or to make clear you’re using the term ‘white supremacism’ in an esoteric sense. Otherwise people will take you to mean the kind of thing people usually mean when they use the term ‘white supremacism’, i.e. a conscious belief in the racial superiority of white people.

‘so that it can never be proven to exist’: Actually, I’ve stated very clearly how such a claim could be demonstrated: e.g. evidence of classicists conspiring with white supremacist groups and so on. If you don’t have the evidence to demonstrate those claims, that’s not because I’ve set up an impossible game.

‘disregarding the very evidence of its existence’: Can you say when you think I’ve done this? That’s a pretty serious charge to make, so I’d like some evidence, please. Otherwise you should probably withdraw your accusation. Of course, I think on type of ‘evidence’ you’ve presented (that alt-right groups draw on classical themes) isn’t really evidence for your claim, but that’s different to me wilfully disregarding actual evidence.

‘of the people who benefit from it’: This looks like a gratuitous insinuation that I’ve benefited from white supremacism. Again, this is a pretty serious charge, and you might want to either back it up with evidence or withdraw it (or, at the very least, moderate it).

‘Whiteness is such a fragile identity that it can only survive through the willful ignorance of its operations in everyday life.’ This seems to involve several strong claims. Can you back any of them up with evidence? (The work of Robin DiAngelo, that you may be basing this on, has been criticized for a number of major methodological failings: see e.g. https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/21/the-epistemological-problem-of-white-fragility-theory/)

Thanks again for your comment!