You’ve seen them before. Maybe you dated one because you liked the way he called you “king” or “queen,” before he chastised you for wearing your skirt too short, putting lye in your hair or—and, no, I’m not kidding about this—getting so far away from your African roots that your body does unnatural, Eurocentric things like menstruate.
Perhaps one of them called you a “bed wench” for refusing to go to see The Birth of a Nation, or maybe you just know someone who spent all his lotion money on copper ankhs and donations to Umar Johnson’s mythical Hogwarts for black boys.
They are Hoteps.
Hoteps are people who have overdosed on “Pan-Afrikan” ideologies they obtained by reading badly designed websites, Hidden Colors DVDs (yes, Hoteps still play DVDs) and poor-quality YouTube videos explaining Illuminati symbology to scary background music. Hotepness is unshakable because Hoteps don’t read primary-sourced, peer-reviewed anything, and if you dispute any of their made-up dogma with actual facts, they can always dismiss it with, “That’s what they want you to believe.”
Although they can be annoying, Hoteps pose no real danger to society, unless you have a loved one or family member ensnared in the Hotep world and you have to sit next to them at Thanksgiving.
But there is a new breed of Hotep growing larger and more powerful every day. We have ignored them for far too long, and now their underground community has grown into a global community that dominates politics and threatens to take over the entire world.
The white Hoteps.
I call them TrumpPets.
Yes, when you take a closer look at the throng of the “alt-right,” frustrated white “silent majority,” that makes up the base of Donald Trump supporters, you begin to see the parallels between Hotepery and the people who want to “make America great again.” Let’s take a look at their most similar characteristics:
1. They love alternative facts.
If you sit down with Hoteps for a few minutes, they can explain Dr. Muyindè Asibe’s (or some other uncredentialed “Africanologist” who studied with some of the greatest Hotep thinkers of our time) book that explains how there were no homosexuals in Africa and how we subsisted on the herbs of the earth, which is why our kids can’t pay attention in school, and how we can cure herpes by burning sage and drinking a special herbal tea.
Did I mention the menstruation thing?
Meanwhile, the “racialists” who support Trump believe that immigrants are streaming over the border to simultaneously steal the white man’s jobs and drain the country by living off welfare. If you told them that more Mexicans have left the U.S. than have come here since 2009, they wouldn’t believe you. If you told them that young white males are the largest unseen terrorist group in America, they’d think you were a liar because they know in their hearts that Muslims are secretly planning to kill them and institute Shariah law.
A full 67 percent of Trump voters think that unemployment increased during the Obama years, and 84 percent of Republicans believe voter fraud regularly occurs—although there is no evidence to support it. They absolutely hate Obamacare, but they are cool with the Affordable Care Act.
2. They love their continent.
Most people love their homeland. German people love Germany, and the Irish love Ireland. But Hoteps love Africa. The entire continent. They don’t love the country or area from which their ancestors hail. They don’t even love their specific tribe. All their facts come from stuff they learned about ancient Egypt, but it’s all “African” to them (also, please don’t call it “Egypt” or “Africa”—it’s “Kemet” ... unless you meet a level 10 Hotep; then you have to take the vowels out and call it “KMT”). They love everything from Libya to Namibia—it’s all the same to them. If you tried to explain to them the logic of a Mexican loving Canada, they wouldn’t listen, and you know why:
Because that’s what they want you to think.
Likewise, neo-Nazis believe the same thing about European culture. If you dare visit any white supremacist website, you will learn that everything good that exists in the world comes from Western civilization. According to them, the entire world—especially people of color—owes white people a debt of gratitude for civilizing the world, and inventing societies and economies and every positive force in history.
Die-hard Trump supporter Rep. Steven King (R-Iowa) even said during an interview on live TV during the Republican National Convention:
Steve King: I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
MSNBC host Chris Hayes: Than white people?
SK: Than, than Western civilization itself. It’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That’s all of Western civilization.
3. They love their “queens.”
There are two steadfast rules in the commandments of Hotepery:
- You must end every conversation with “asé” (pronounced “ah-shay”).
- You must refer to all women as queens.
But the first course in Hotep community college is teaching their queens how to subjugate themselves. Queens don’t wear tight jeans. Queens should learn how to cook and how to speak to their kings in soft, hushed tones. Most importantly, like all things based in patriarchy, queens must allow their kings to control their vaginas. They don’t necessarily treat women like royalty, they just like the word. “Peace, Queen” just sounds better when a Hotep introduces himself after leaving his white girlfriend’s house.
White nationalists don’t have commandments. They just have the “14 words,” which are supposed to make up the most important sentence to all white people:
We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.
White nationalists are worried about “white genocide”—the conspiracy theory that race-mixing and diversity will eventually eliminate the white race. It’s one of the reasons this part of the conservative base is so anti-abortion. Its members believe they need to make as many white people as possible to keep up their population. And also Jesus. If you ask them why they are anti-birth control if they don’t want women having abortions, they will cite their Christian values, but—just like the Hoteps—it comes down to one thing: the patriarchal need to control vaginas.
4. They support their charlatans.
If you’re a charismatic public speaker but lack the comedic skills to do stand-up or poetry and don’t want to preach, you should consider a career in the lucrative field of Hotep teaching. There are men, like the aforementioned Dr. Umar Johnson, who travel around the world bilking thousands of dollars out of well-meaning black people. You can invent an academic résumé like he did, but it is not required. There are others on the Hotep speaking circuit who just “talk good.”
Similarly, Trump has no political experience. It turns out that his stellar academic record is made up, but he basically became president by going on a white Hotep tour—gathering naive wypipo at rallies around the country. Even though we think the country is worried about our peach-faced president, it is actually quite the opposite. Republicans (the party of the TrumpPets) approve of the job he’s doing by a whopping 83 percent.
So the next time you see someone in a “Make America Great Again” cap, you should know that that’s the TrumpPet version of an African head wrap. Unlike Hoteps, their elbows and ankles don’t get ashy, but like their bizarro-world cousins, they don’t trust the establishment, facts or women. There are sure to be people (probably in the comments section below) who will dismiss this as an attack on people who are in tune with their culture. They will say this article unfairly paints people who voted for Trump as racist and people who support the “Pan-Afrikan” movement as silly.
But that’s just what they want you to believe.
Asé.