Mainstream Racism, part 1 – the Bush/Obama/Hitler false-equivalency
July 19, 2010

 
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This past week, the NAACP passed a resolution demanding that leaders of the Tea Party denounce all the racists signs, statements and activity that appear at Tea-bagger events on a regular basis.

Not only have Tea Party leaders (and most Republicans) denied that there are any racists involved with the Tea Party movement, but the former chairman and current recently removed spokesperson for “Tea Party Express”, Mark Williams, followed up his absurd claim that it was “impossible” for “civil rights loving” Tea-baggers to be racists (attributing racist photos and video to anti-Tea Party saboteurs) with an entry on his personal blog of a mock letter from “Coloreds” to President Lincoln requesting he promptly “repeal their Emancipation” because it means they would now have to work for a living. Surprisingly, Williams doesn’t try to claim some Left-Wing saboteur logged into his blog with his secret password and posted the racist screed in his name, instead he PROUDLY defended his comments, arguing that his use of the word “Coloreds” shouldn’t be considered “offensive” by a group that calls itself “The National Association of Colored People”… founded 101 years ago when the phrase “colored people” had yet to be turned into a racial slur. If racist were sensitive enough to recognize racism, they probably wouldn’t be racists, don’tchathink?

As the late/great Richard Pryor once proved, just because black people use a word, doesn’t mean you can use it too:
 

“Word Association Test”, Saturday Night Live (1975)
[flv:http://mugsysrapsheet.com/4blog/video/Pryor-Word_Association.flv Pryor-Word_Association.jpg 240 180]

 

Anywho…

The most common defense of Tea Party racism is that “the Democrats did it too!” When CBS News did a report on the NAACP complaint last week, they included the now-infamous clip from MoveOn’s 2003 “Bush in 30 Seconds” ad contest from our archive entitled “Lies Fuel Fear”. CBS News did NOT note however that MoveOn themselves did not produce the ad, and it was quickly yanked when people reported it as improper, prompting me to go in and add an annotation to the frames in question, helping to ensure no one ever again uses the clip without the inclusion of its history:
 

Annotation added to “Lies Fuel Fear”
Lies Fuel Fear annotation
(click to enlarge)

 

So THAT is their best example of “Democrats do it too”? That ad was yanked from MoveOn SO quickly that 99.99% of people who’ve ever seen it, only saw it when the TV news replayed it as an example of “Democrats do it too”.

So I decided to hunt down some of those photos of Democratic protesters comparing Bush to Hitler. A simple Google Image Search on the words “Bush Hitler”, turns up quite a few graphics created by bloggers and such comparing Bush to Hitler, but when it comes to the signs actually being used in public protests, you find very few:

Below are nearly all of the examples (15) found in the first TEN pages of a Google Image Search for “Bush Hitler” signs appearing in public, comparing a man that “used lies to launch an unprovoked attack against another country” to George Bush (note how tame the imagery is, compared to the gun-toting “Don’t tread on me” demeanor of the Tea-baggers):
 

Bush Hitler photo 2

Again

#5
 

And a large anti-war protest in San Francisco in February of 2006 contained a number of Bush/Hitler signs:

SanFran1

#12

SanFran

SanFran

SanFran
 

After ten pages of Google images, that was nearly all I could find of Bush/Hitler signs actually being used in public protests in America. Among those images, I also found:

The Conservative website “Atlas Shrugs” has this photo on their website:
Atlas Shrugs
It is impossible to tell just by looking at the photo where it was taken. But I wouldn’t cite the two men in black turbans as your typical democratic voters.

CNN included this shot in a story, but again, there is no way to tell where it taken, nor IF the figure was even used, since it does not appear in context (this could, conceivably, have come from a story noting the float had been yanked.):

Float

This photo from 2004 even includes John Kerry in the equation:
Kerry Bush Hitler
 

Then there are all the photos taken in foreign countries:

From Ottawa, Canada:
Ottawa

Two from a massive anti-war protest in Brazil:

Brazil 1

Brazil 2

And no surprise, Cuba:

Cuba

You’ve probably seen this closely cropped image dozens of times:
Bush Hitler Same Shit

But when we back out, we can see that the photo was not taken in the U.S.:
Wide-Bush Hitler Same Shit

Note the Bus schedule above the photo. That’s not the U.S.. That’s Helsinki, Finland :
Bush Hitler Same Shit-Schedule
(click to enlarge)

 

Compare that to the almost ubiquitous Obama/Hitler/Nazi/Stalin/Marxist/Communist/Socialist signs found at nearly every Tea Party event (one person even editing the above-noted infamous Bush/Hitler banner to replace Bush with Obama.)

Number of Obama/Hitler photos taken in other countries: ZERO. Not even in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. “Democrats did it too”? Unlike anti-war protesters AROUND THE GLOBE, lunatic Obama/Hitler comparisons over health care and economic stimulus are a uniquely Right-Wing phenomena.

(Later this week, in Part 2 of our look at The sudden acceptability of racism on the American Right, I have a laundry list of links in just the past few months demonstrating an unashamedly growing willingness on the American Right to be openly racist since the election of the first African-American president.)
 


 

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July 19, 2010 · Admin Mugsy · One Comment - Add
Posted in: myth busting, Politics, Racism, Right-Wing Insanity

One Response

  1. World Wide News Flash - July 19, 2010

    Mainstream Racism, part 1 ? the Bush/Obama/Hitler false-equivalency…

    I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…

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