The sudden acceptability of racism on the American Right, part 2
July 20, 2010

 
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Back during the 2008 Presidential campaign, one couldn’t help but notice the sudden surge in racist attacks/jokes/slurs against presidential candidate Barack Obama without a hint of shame. It seemed I would receive about three racist emails a week over the last few months before the election. Suddenly, there was no shame in being a mouth-breathing racist pig, and forwarding racist cartoons was now acceptable behavior. The incidents were becoming SO ubiquitous and SO outrageous, I felt compelled to create a stand-alone page (archived copy here) documenting all the racist crap that was going around about Senator Obama… the Witchdoctor photo, the Watermelon patch on the WH lawn, a “presidential portrait” of a black canvas with just two white eyes and a smile, etc.

At what shade to we arrest? Last weeks Op/Ed regarding Arizona’s controversial immigration law SB1070 created a bit of a dust-up on my Facebook page, where I post a link for my friends most every week. Naturally, my Right-wing friends rejected the idea that there was anything even remotely racist about Arizona’s new SB1070 immigration law, and it was only after repeatedly hammering away at the idea that creating a new “anti-immigration” law while citing “drug crime” as your justification, is inherently racist… especially while both illegal-immigration AND drug crime are both down, did it finally seem to sink in. I explained, “if your goal is to fight drugs, pass a new drug law. Targeting immigrants to fight drugs is like targeting carpoolers to fight getaway cars.”

But a few other people inserted some angry racist slams that took me by surprise. Maybe it’s the “anonymity” of the Internet… despite the fact people post these things on their Facebook page next to their photo and email address. It reminds me of how aggressive some people can get behind the wheel, doing and saying things they’d never do face-to-face.

We’ve always known the Republican Party has become the preferred Party of racists. Decades ago it was the “Dixiecrats”. But LBJ pushing through the 1965 Civil Rights Act changed all that, to where today, “the Party of Lincoln” is whiter than New Hampshire in February.

For some inexplicable reason, the election of the first black president has made racism seem less abhorrent to them. They perceive the election of a black president to be such a huge lunge to the Left, that appearing to be a racist Cracker simply balances things out. Always terrified (as I wrote last week), frighted white Conservatives have declared war on anything that isn’t white middle-class America… ie: blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, Europeans (their health care mostly), gays in the military and the Poor. The blacks want to kill Whitey, the Mexicans want to live on the dole AND steal your job, the Europeans want to force their beloved (yet oppressive) Socialism upon the rest of the world, gays want to rape fellow soldiers in the shower, the Poor would rather live on $183/month unemployment than get a job, and the Muslims just want everyone dead so they can get their 72 virgins in the Afterlife.

Suddenly, I’m seeing stories nearly everyday of “mainstreamed” racism, so many in fact that I can fill an entire page with links from just the past few months:

First, Florida Tea Party To Host ‘Radical Islamophobe’ Who Said Muslims Shouldn’t Hold Political Office. Don’t go mixing government with your religion! That’s OUR job!

Read some of the comments to “Crazy Right Wing Reaction To Arizona Immigration Law” by TYT’s Cenk Uygur. Racist and Stupid is no way to go through life, son.

As noted in “Part 1”, Tea Party leader Mark Williams writes racist screed attacking NAACP on his Facebook page.
 

Think Progress compiles examples of Tea Party racists:

 

CNN’s Eric Erickson of “RedState.com” recommends the GOP Forget about African-American voters and start running new “Willie Horton” ads.

Rush Limbaugh, who has a history of racist remarks, has been pouring it on since the election of the first black president. Besides coming out as a “birther” and singing “Barack: The Magic Negro” during the 2008 campaign, his latest rants just this week: “If Obama weren’t black he’d be a tour guide in Honolulu” and saying the recently departed George Steinbrenner was “a Cracker that made a lot of African-American Millionaires!” Clearly, their skill & talent had nothing to do with it.

The “we’re not racists” Tea Party candidate Ryan J. Murdough is campaigning not on change so much as similarity. His message: Keep New Hampshire white. Seriously.

Always good for an unhealthy dose of BSC, MN Rep. Michele Bachmann called the U.S. a “Nation of Slaves” to that Socialist task master Barack Obama.

After some RW loon writes a story claiming the Obama Justice Department is refusing to prosecute “black-on-white” crime, Fox resurrected the tired “New Black Panthers voter intimidation” story from 2008… back when Bush was still President. Oh, and as Bill O’Reilley points out, the “New Black Panther Party” consists of a whopping EIGHT members.

Always good for a laugh, Senator David “Diaper” Vitter comes out as a Birther. You’d think someone who has been cited as wearing “diapers” might want to stay away from the term “Birther”.

The North Iowa Tea Party put up a billboard comparing President Obama to Hitler and Stalin. The caption at the bottom? “Radical Leaders Prey on the fearful and naive.” Could they BE any more clueless?

Back when Tony “I want my life back” Hayward was still in charge of the Gulf disaster, Glenn “Obama hates white people” Beck said Obama Hasn’t Met With BP’s Tony Hayward Because He’s ‘White’ after “apologizing” for claiming President Obama “has a deep seated hatred of white people and white culture“.

I don’t know why, but suddenly the Right seems less concerned about being seen as the racists we’ve long known them to be. They’ve “come out of the closet” of their racism. They’re here! They live in fear! Get used to it!

UPDATE (7/20): NAACP receives racist death threat: ‘The streets will run red with your blood.’

Washington Times Runs Another Picture Of Kagan In A Turban To Claim She Will Impose Shariah Law On America.


The Shirley Sherrod story broke just hours after this post went live. If you are unfamiliar, Andrew Breitbart, the same Fox hack that promoted a heavily edited and willfully deceptive hit-piece against ACORN to get them defunded, did it again, hyping a heavily edited clip of a USDA employee giving a speech on how she overcame prejudice by helping a white farmer (the first white farmer ever to come to her for help) save his farm back in 1986, to appear as if an Obama employee is currently denying help to whites in favor of aid to blacks. Breitbart needs to be sued for defamation.

 


 

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July 20, 2010 · Admin Mugsy · One Comment - Add
Posted in: Election, General, Politics, Racism, Right-wing Facism, Right-Wing Insanity

One Response

  1. Grant in Texas - July 20, 2010

    As a member of YAF in college, a floor worker for Barry Goldwater at the Republican National Convention, I felt compelled to leave the “Party of Lincoln” when Richard Nixon, with advice from strategists like Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips, decided the GOP could take over the Old South by actively inviting the racist Dixiecrats to switch parties after LBJ’s Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation passed. They had seen that only states that voted for Goldwater (LA, MS, AL, GA, SC, and AZ) liked Goldwater’s libertarian “state’s rights” platform. Never mind that BOTH Democrats and Republicans in Congress worked together to pass these laws. Goldwater revealed in later years he was pro-choice, pro gays in the military, pro legalization of Marijuana, and once said he wanted to kick Jerry Falwell “in the nuts” and saying the likes of Rev. Pat Robertson would be the ruin of the GOP!

    I was actually involved in 1964 in picketing the campaign of Gov. George Wallace when he ran for president as a Democrat. Among those in our protest group were college Democratic and Republican groups. We did not march then as partisans, only young Americans of all colors working together to eradicate racism and bigotry in our nation.

    I haven’t voted for a Republican in a presidential race since. I was at odds for many years with my “yellow dog” Republican family members but told them that I didn’t leave the GOP….it left me. Later, seeing the neocons and “Moral” Majority join the hijacking of the GOP, I never looked back. Thankfully, most in my Republican family are moderates (fiscal conservatives but social liberals) and are feeling squeezed out by the extreme right. Some admitted to me that they voted for Obama and some are even supporting Bill White for Texas governor. Nearly everyone in my family has a college degree. I fear the idiot wingnuts are driving out real thinking conservatives from the party. I grew up with all males in my family away from home for several years fighting fascism in WWII. I never thought that at my age, I would be seeing fascism trying to get a foothold in my country.

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