Tom
Kawczynski in the Jackman, Maine, town hall shortly before the select
board voted unanimously to dismiss him. (Jake Bleiberg/Bangor Daily
News/AP)
The manager of a tiny Maine town was fired Tuesday after his white separatist remarks sparked outrage.
Tom
Kawczynski, 37, put the town of Jackman on the map when media outlets
across the country began publishing stories about his seemingly
unequivocal views that Islam has no place in the Western world, and that
Americans would be better off if people of different races “voluntarily
separate,”
according to the Bangor Daily News. Kawczynski,
a transplant from Arizona, also told the Bangor paper that he opposes
bringing people from other countries and cultures to the United States
and that one can be “pro-white” without harboring hate against people of
other races.
The town manager’s comments caused a backlash over
the weekend: The Jackman-Moose River Region Chamber of Commerce in a
statement called Kawczynski’s remarks “
shocking and offensive.”
Officials in Jackman — a town of fewer than 1,000 people, where nearly
all residents are white — remained mostly quiet about the incident until
Tuesday morning, when, after a closed-door executive session
with Kawczynski, selectmen decided to terminate his employment.
James Henry Fetzer (born December 6, 1940) is a philosopher of science and conspiracy theorist. Since the late 1970s, Fetzer has worked on assessing and clarifying the forms and foundations of scientific explanation, probability in science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of cognitive science, especially artificial intelligence and computer science.
