Like many others, every so often I have a “moment of clarity”. Such was the case with the recent lecture by American national Ayo Kimathi. Although the Gazette’s report gave us a good idea of the disturbing words spoken, it’s Kimathi’s War On The Horizon website and his YouTube videos that make his agenda crystal clear.

Despite what some of us would have us believe, this isn’t some wise educator who believes in bringing people together. This is an ignorant separatist who has been busy promoting which groups of people need to be executed. We are actually dealing with an opportunistic bigot who has called Barack Obama a “mulatto f****t” who is a “filthy product of a European womb”.

About halfway through his Bermuda lecture, Kimathi heaped praise upon the Gambian President for his actions on homosexuality. Kimathi enthusiastically told the audience that he wanted to share “some good news” of how “there are people in the African world who get it, who are in power, who are fighting”. If there was any confusion about what he meant, Kimathi cleared that up by playing a clip of the Gambian President defending his treatment of homosexuals, including laws that permit the execution of persons who are found to be gay.

This is not the first time that Kimathi has promoted violence. In his 2010 opinion titled “Goodbye Uncle Tom”, he targets blacks he deems to be “traitors and turncoats” and concludes that, “we must become militant, hostile, violent and deadly to those individuals and groups in our community who don’t comply to black decency and race first standards”. He further wrote: “The 21st century will either mark the return of black resistance to white domination or global white-on-black genocide, leading to our complete extinction. Warfare is imminent, and in order for black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites — more than our Christian hearts can possibly count.”

In my view, principles of free speech should not extend to Kimathi because his calls for violence are, first, intended to suppress individual freedoms and independent thought. I therefore strongly believe that his praise of the Gambian President’s violent regime was sufficient reason alone to put him on Bermuda’s stop list. Take heed, though: this wasn’t the only bigoted aspect of his “lecture”. Kimathi also stated that:

• Hip-hop is a “homosexual expression”

• “Feminism is the intellectual expression of lesbianism”

• Increases in violent crime are due to “homosexuals and paedophiles raping children”

• Misogyny, rape, homosexuality, child molestation, bestiality, orgies, sadomasochism and interracial sex are all practices of “white sex”

I do have some sympathy for those persons who attended the lecture in hopes of learning more about African history. But what is perplexing is that when you watch the lecture video, you don’t hear anyone protesting Kimathi’s ideology, and you don’t see anyone getting up to leave. Instead, at times you hear people cheering. Even more troubling, certain members of the community have since defended Kimathi, even though they now know that his agenda is far more bigoted than expressed during the lecture.

Turning to politics, although the One Bermuda Alliance’s response to Kimathi was appropriately blunt, its follow-up commentary was clumsy. This was primarily because it has yet to communicate any kind of action plan for addressing racism. While I totally appreciate that the fragile state of our economy takes precedence over everything else, the OBA needs to do far more to assure the public that it will address the legacy of racism and the present state of racial inequality at the earliest opportunity possible. Stop-listing and condemning someone such as Kimathi isn’t enough.

Across the floor, we find the Progressive Labour Party refusing to comment on Kimathi’s views or the subsequent stop-listing. Its silence was regrettably predictable, given the leader’s highly homophobic views expressed in 2013. Also, the party has supported ambiguously violent statements such as “What would happen if we stopped shooting each other and started putting bullets in the heads of those who hate us and won’t hire us?” This year’s Founders Day speech also contains ambiguously violent statements aimed at the OBA’s black supporters: “The time is drawing near when you won’t be able to come out into the fields to complain about ‘Massa’ and then run back to the porch when he whistles for you to do his bidding.”

Whether we all like it or not, Bermuda’s laws recognise a very wide diversity of people as Bermudian. We are black, white and multiple colours in between.

We are heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual. We are Bermudian-born, foreign-born, recently Bermudian and multigenerational. We are spiritual, religious, agnostic and atheist. Regardless of the lines of separation that remain, Bermuda as a whole is diverse.

Let us therefore demonstrate zero tolerance for extremism. Despite our unfinished business, we simply should not be encouraged to settle our differences with violence. This kind of extremism needs to be rejected not only when promoted by foreigners such as Kimathi, but also when advocated by Bermudians who wish to narrowly define who we are for their own self-serving reasons.

Share your views with Bryant Trew at bryanttrew@mac.com