Showing posts with label Ku Klux Klan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ku Klux Klan. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Are You Ready for America's Civil War II

 

Once again Charles M Blow is on top of the latest in the war on democracy. We could have a civil war, he says, which looks like it already started on January 6, at the U.S. Capitol insurrection. He references Texas' violation of the Constitution and federal laws by passing legislation forbidding abortions. 

Then, SCOTUS let the law stand, but with a slight compromise, allowing abortion providers to sue. Here's the scenario...

Anyone who assists in providing an illegal abortion — from the provider down to the person who gives a woman a ride to the clinic — can still be sued. Roe v. Wade has essentially been overturned in the state, and soon that astonishing reality may not only become permanent there but may also spread to other states.

Ridiculous, but that is what we have come to expect from Texas' moron governor, Greg Abbott. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was furious in her dissent...

“This is a brazen challenge to our federal structure. It echoes the philosophy of John C. Calhoun, a virulent defender of the slaveholding South who insisted that States had the right to ‘veto’ or ‘nullif[y]’ any federal law with which they disagreed.”

And who is John C. Calhoun? The answer from Blow...

"I found the invocation of South Carolina’s Calhoun striking. Yes, he was a strong believer in nullification, the idea that states could nullify federal laws, but he was also a raging racist who went further than the slave owners who saw slavery as a 'necessary evil,' seeing it instead as a positive good."
THIS IS SCARY: Kim Iversen: Is CIVIL WAR Looming? Americans SUPPORT Red States, Blue States Seceding From US...


Having grown up in the South, and in the 40s and 50s when the Ku Klux Klan was running rampant, as a very young boy I once witnessed the lynching of a Black man. The experience was ghastly and tortuous as I knew the man had done nothing to deserve this. And I had no prejudice against Blacks since it just didn't make sense to me that I should hate somebody just because of their color. There were many incidents over the years where I disagreed with friends, even family.

That was then, but racism has once again reared its ugly head, somewhat due to Donald Trump's openness for white supremacy, strongly supported by advisers like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. This has not gone unnoticed by Charles Blow...
"I see too many uneasy parallels between what was happening nearly 200 years ago and what is happening now. I see this country on the verge of another civil war, as the Calhounian impulse is reborn."

As Blow surmises we won't see the number of deaths experienced in the Civil War starting in 1861, lasting to 1865, even though there has already been violence and some lives lost in the current turmoil. Contrary...

"this new war will be fought in courts, statehouses and ballot boxes, rather than in the fields."

And with this less people will die, but more of democracy will be lost...perhaps all of it forever. 



 

 

 

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Domestic terrorism is fomented by Republicans

 





Arizona's own Jacob Chansley, who's been dubbed the QAnon Shaman, is obviously a certified maniac parading as a human being. And his attire is being compared to the Ku Klux Klan...
"While most people recognize the infamous hood and white robes of the 1920s Klan, early Klan costumes were homemade, individualized and much more bizarre."

Well, I grew up in the South, witnessing several of these manifestations in the 40s and 50s, rife with the KKK and its demonstrations, and, I am not defending these men of white sheets and hoods, but I don't remember any member acting like a completely deranged individual. It was a serious thing in those days burning crosses, and for a completely different goal, to kill blacks. I guess it is only the goal that is different, although even that is questionable. Read more...


And here's another group of doubtful grey matter in the Boogaloo Bois, who claim they "have guns and military training. Now they want to overthrow the government." ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom says...
"The group is part of the Boogaloo movement — a decentralized, very online successor to the ­­militia movement of the '80s and '90s —­ whose adherents are fixated on attacking law enforcement and violently toppling the U.S. government."
The frightening part is that these maniacal groups keep popping up on a regular basis and we have to wonder when the sane population might be outnumbered. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post says, "Republican weakness enables domestic terrorism," adding...
"The Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged what most Republicans do not: Mobs of white supremacists who have aligned themselves with the MAGA party are a threat to national security."

Now that we know whose fault it is, the next move is to get rid of them. Read more...








Saturday, July 20, 2019

TRUMP DOWN: A dictator's coming out



July 20, 2019: WEEKEND NEWS BYTES   

All news is bad news

It is hard to know where to start these days if you are trying to report on the political scene, especially in the U.S. Here are a few of the headlines from a Raw Story email...

  • Trump catapulted a baseless smear about Omar’s marriage from the online fringes into the political mainstream
  • Trump Twitter-rages over media’s coverage of the racist ‘send her back’ chant he incited​​​​​​​
  • ‘What the hell, Pete!’ Geraldo blows up on Fox & Friends host for saying ‘send her back’ chants weren’t racist​​​​​​​
  • New revelation in Trump’s involvement in Stormy Daniels hush money payoff is an impeachable offense: CNN panel​​​​​​​
  • Trump snaps at NYT columnist who called him a racist: ‘Really Nasty to me in his average I.Q. Columns’​​​​​​​
  • Trump official melts down on MSNBC after refusing to admit Trump lied to America
  • Bill Barr may have killed probe of Trump’s payoff to Stormy Daniels: Florida prosecutor​​​​​​​
To begin with, it is near-impossible to comprehend how this country has stooped so low that headlines like the above could be written. Yet, it is easy to explain in only five words: Donald Trump and his supporters. Do you realize that without either, we would not have to suffer those headings, above, nor would this country be the laughingstock of the world? One man and his double-digit followers have created the mass chaos we live in today.

And what is worse is the fact that today we have no idea just how long we will have to tolerate the despot in the White House. Any ideas???

Republicans want to banish people of color from U.S.

Time magazine's Carol Anderson says that, "Republicans Want a White Republic. They'll Destroy America to Get It." That's both heavy and tragic, but considering Donald Trump's latest Twitter rants and his performance at last Wednesday's rally, they have definitely set the course for 2020 from the top down. With the GOP's 90% white membership, they obviously don't favor a "rights-based, religious, racial and ideologically diverse America."

And then Anderson gives us a 2012 quote from the currently mentally troubled Lindsey Graham...
“We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term."
If Carol Anderson is correct, we can expect a welcome return of the Ku Klux Klan in the near future - that is assuming Donald Trump stays in the White House, the GOP holds on to the Senate and retakes the House. I can't imagine what people of color are thinking today. Is T-rump's next move to repeal the Civil Rights Act with an executive order? Will schools be segregated once more, a special room in restaurants for non-whites, and separate water fountains again for white and colored?

This is not what I signed on for, and I do believe most Americans would agree.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Racism is here to stay


Racism hasn't really changed over the years

You can talk about the strides that have been taken since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but, in a nutshell, they haven't worked. I said in an earlier post that since 1964, radical racism has simply gone underground, with those who practice this vile lifestyle, playing in the shadows, putting on the good-guy front. Until Donald Trump. Until the White House loaded up with racists, white nationalists, and a bigotry that isn't disguised, rather, put right there in the open for all to see. Steve Bannon is proud of his white supremacist label, flaunting it regularly around Washington. And Donald Trump is quick to tell you, Steve Bannon is his man.

Donald Trump afraid to offend white nationalist supporters

After days of not repudiating white nationalists and the Ku Klux Klan after the murder in the Charlottesville demonstration, T-rump finally denounced the KKK and neo-nazis. This was his statement...
  • "Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups."

The media made me do it

Daily Progress reports that the only reason Trump changed his tone--it is widely known that he does not adhere to political correctness--is that the media made him do it. What a pathetic moment in history when it takes outcry from the media to make the President of the United States do a duty that should have been his top priority the moment that woman was killed by James Alex Fields' car. But that would have insulted Donald Trump's base of double-digit IQ bigots. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, "From the beginning, President Trump has sheltered and encouraged the forces of bigotry and discrimination." Why would we expect more just because of a death?

Sports personalities criticize Trump

LeBron James, basketball star, said, “Hate has always existed in America. Yes we know that but Donald Trump just made it fashionable again!” Steve Nash, another basketball great said...
  • “To defend white supremacists and then slang his [crappy] a— grape juice pretty much sums the man up.” Nash was referring to Trump’s remark that he knows “a lot about Charlottesville” because he owns “one of the largest wineries in the United States,” located there.
Seth Meyers on Trump Charlottesville news conference...


Even the Jews were included in Charlottesville protest

Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally was universal in its appeal with anti-Semitic lines like “Jews will not replace us”? Also heard, “This city is run by Jewish communists and criminal niggers,” one demonstrator told Vice News’ Elspeth Reeve during their march. The Atlantic reported, "As Jews prayed at a local synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, men dressed in fatigues carrying semi-automatic rifles stood across the street." There was more, "In the minds of white supremacists like David Duke, there is a straight line from anti-blackness to anti-Judaism." I learned from the deep South, when you learn to hate like these people do, there are no bounds.

T-rump again reverts to bad taste

Donald Trump created an analogy between his re-tweet that was eventually pulled, where the Trump train collides with a person from CNN News (logo across face) obviously killing them. He did this just three days after the white nationalist drove into the Charlottesville woman killing her. Trump literally sanctions violence; remember when he wanted to punch the Black Lives Matter protester in the face? He also recently told a group of Long Island police that they shouldn't be too nice with criminal suspects. That drew fire from people all across the country, including police departments. There is no end to the Oval Office lunatic's lunacy.

Why are people still racist? A terrifying answer

The Washington Post recently asked, "Why are people still racist?" They go on to answer using a scientific point of view. The answer...
  • “In some ways, it’s super simple. People learn to be whatever their society and culture teaches them. We often assume that it takes parents actively teaching their kids, for them to be racist. The truth is that unless parents actively teach kids not to be racists, they will be."
That is scary as hell, especially when you consider the fact that Donald Trump is President of the United States, espousing his rhetoric of bigotry.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Donald Trump-Jeff Sessions share history of racism


How many times has Donald Trump said, "[I'm] the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered?" However, history tells us that is not the case, an example of which is during Trumps' presidential campaign when he...
"...repeatedly made explicitly racist and otherwise bigoted remarks — from calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists to proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the US to suggesting that a judge should recuse himself from a case solely because of the judge’s Mexican heritage."
Vox tracks it back to the 1970s when Donald John was sued by the feds for racial discrimination because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African-Americans. It goes even further...
"It would be one thing if Trump simply misspoke one or two times. But when you take all of Trump’s actions and comments together, a clear pattern emerges — one that suggests that bigotry is not just political opportunism on Trump’s part but a real element of Trump’s personality, character, and career."
This white supremacist attitude has stayed with the man for all of his career, ushering in a spate of appointments in his administration that are racists and white nationalists. Like Steve Bannon, White House chief strategist and Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general. After the 1973 incident, it was in the 1980s when a black teenager accused the Trump Castle Casino of forcing him and other black employees off the floor when Donald John and Ivana visited. It was 1991 in a book written by a former employee quoting Trump on the handling of his money...
"Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control."


Here's a real loser, The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in 1992, paid a $200,000 fine for moving black and women dealers off a particular table to accommodate a gambler's prejudices. There's much more and you can see it here at Vox.

Jeff Sessions was the US attorney in Mobile, Alabama, in the 1980s, talking about a case with colleagues about a young black man who had been kidnapped and brutally murdered by two members of the Ku Klux Klan. His throat had been cut and they hung his body from a tree. This was Sessions reaction...
"As Sessions learned that some members of the Klan had smoked marijuana on the evening of the slaying, he said aloud that he thought the KKK was: 'OK until I found out they smoked pot.'"
That should say it all but there's more. David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, is a supporter of Sessions, as well as Trump. Sessions became infamous in Alabama for calling a black attorney, "boy," at the same time prosecuting three of Martin Luther King Jr.'s rights organizers for bogus voter fraud. It was done to, "...discourage voting rights for poor and elderly people in several "black belt" Alabama counties." After Sessions testimony Tuesday, the New York Times in an editorial...
"[Sessions'] defense against charges of racism that caused the Senate to reject him for a federal judgeship in 1986 was largely to say it hurt his feelings to be called a racist, but his two decades in the Senate provide little hope that he has changed."
Sessions calls the Voting Rights Act "intrusive," and is a strong supporter of voter ID laws that disenfranchise blacks, Hispanics and the poor. He has voted against every comprehensive immigration reform bill, and back in 2016 called Islam a "toxic ideology." A firm opponent of Roe v. Wade, Jeff Sessions also opposed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and hate crimes protections for LGBTQ people and he voted to ban same-sex marriage. You can read additional critique on this man who is now the attorney general for the United States.

It was the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. When Lyndon Johnson sighed this Act into law, he had no idea that the U.S. would still be this racist in 2017, fifty-four years later. It's almost as if the paper he signed was meaningless. To Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, it was.

Friday, March 3, 2017

Is Charlie Manson's "Helter Skelter" lurking in the White House?


Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's chief strategist and top adviser, has already established his credentials as a white nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic. As an avid reader, he espouses to "The Fourth Turning, a book by William Strauss and Neil Howe, that history unfolds in cycles of 80 to 100 years. At the end of the cycle, the old order is destroyed and replaced." It would appear that Stevo plans to be there at the end of the cycle and implant the Trump/Bannon, perhaps the other way around, vision of common national purpose Trump announced in his first address to Congress on Monday.

As far as the speech goes, it was well received by Republicans as one would suspect but Sen. Chuck Schumer's comment was that, "Trump's speeches and the realities are very, very far apart. Until his reality catches up with his speeches, he's got big trouble," Others said he even looked a bit presidential, hoping he might maintain that and not revert to the crude behavior he has exhibited on Twitter and otherwise since entering office. But these hopes were born and played out before and it only took one news cycle to send Donald John romping down the crass road to vulgarity again.

Here are some comments by Lacy MacAuley, an activist and member of the Washington DC Antifascist Coalition...
"I absolutely think Steve Bannon is connected to a network of white nationalists. Just in the last few years there have been contractual obligations between white supremacist James O’Keefe at Project Veritas and Breitbart."
"Mr O'Keefe was known, she said, for taking down institutions and organisations via fake news."
"I would say that Steve Bannon is the advocate for white nationalism in the White House and there’s no doubt in my mind on that. It’s not just through Breitbart, it’s through his entire line of work."
There is the indication that Steve Bannon, when recruiting to fill out the National Security Council position, added himself to the NSC without Donald John knowing. Grounds for dismissal by most anyone, except someone with a hidden agenda. He was able to do this since he was the one writing the Executive Order, not Trump. The President was pissed but the fact that Bannon stays put is evidence of just how powerful the man is. Daryle Lamont Jenkins, executive director of the anti-racist organisation One People's Project exclaims...
"We've been dealing with a cluster of white supremacists within the beltway of the Washington DC area who do just that (using theories and academia to justify their racism): they try to back up their racism and justify why they should have a separation of the races, and justify a more strident attack on African Americans in the name of 'fighting crime'."
That's about as scary as it gets. Beginning to sound like Charlie Manson's Helter Skelter, starting a war between blacks and whites. Charlie was a confirmed white supremacist who went to the extreme of carving a swastika into his forehead with a knife. He had a following he mesmerized by convincing them that he was Jesus Christ, turning them into killers that would do his bidding. I'm not saying Steve Bannon is another Charlie Manson, but I am saying that Donald Trump, normally a man who seems to need no one, is definitely enthralled by Stevo's philosophies. That's what's scary.



The UK Independent reports that last July Breitbart had "...become the 'platform for the alt-right'. Now his platform has become the government." Well, that's even scarier. Donald John has been guilty of racially insensitive remarks in the past, and during his campaign refused to condemn the white supremacists who advocated for him, like David Duke and Richard Spencer. Here are some examples during his drive for the presidency...
  • He attacked Muslim Gold Star parents
  • He claimed a judge was biased because “he’s a Mexican”
  • He questioned whether President Obama was born in the United States
  • He even trashed Native Americans
  • He stereotyped Jews and shared an anti-Semitic image created by white supremacists
Just a few, but you can see more here. Huff Post says in a blazing headline, "President Trump’s VOICE Is About Justifying White Supremacy." VOICE means, Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. So far it sounds like... 
"...the program will be limited simply to undocumented immigrants, but will also include crimes committed by legitimate VISA holders, Green Card holders and possibly even permanent residents who are not naturalized citizens.
But then HP blasts, "Let’s call this what it is: VOICE is racist government propaganda." And isn't it interesting that Steve Bannon, formerly of Breitbart, had a section called Black Crime, which documented the crimes of immigrant communities, when it is known that immigrants are actually less likely to commit a crime than non-immigrants. Brian Stone of Huff Post adds...
"Creating this hate-list will do nothing except provide official government sanction to the opinions of white supremacist groups and the alt-right."
Remember Pat Buchanan, a presidential wanna-be from 1992, 1996 and 2000, who ran on a platform of right-wing populism and who also was a white supremacist? As far back as 2015, he was backing Trump along with other white supremacists, including David Duke. Buchanan regretted what he called the end of white America "...due to immigration and increasing rights for people of color." This is a statement that is hard to believe coming from someone who is supposedly educated and worldly. It can only be attributed to someone who is a true racist and white supremacist.

Most of this crowd doesn't believe in violence, a fact that is not true of Trump’s rank-and-file supporters. One such Donald John follower was Dionisio Garza III, 25, also a Muslim hater, who went on a shooting spree back in early 2016 in Houston, leaving one dead and six injured. In another instance...
"Jim Sherota, 53, [who]works for a landscaping company and attended Trump’s rally in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, [August 2015] told The New York Times before Trump’s arrival that he hoped Trump would announce a plan to issue licenses for hunting undocumented immigrants and offer $50 for 'every confirmed kill.'”
Couldn't stand the heat
A bounty? Now that's interesting because back in 2015 just escaped El Chapo placed a $100 million
bounty on Donald Trump's head when the then candidate accused the Mexican government of letting him go tweeting...
"El Chapo and the Mexican drug cartels use the border unimpeded like it was a vacuum cleaner, sucking drugs and death right into the U.S."
Jake Tapper of CNN pushed Trump to disavow David Duke and rebuke any vote from him or any other white supremacists. It was a typical brainless meandering by the candidate...
"Trump claimed that he didn’t know anything about white supremacists or about Duke himself. When Tapper pressed him twice more, Trump said he couldn’t condemn a group he hadn’t yet researched."
A Virginia leader of the Ku Klux Klan told a TV reporter, “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in.” And that's the scariest yet. In closing, here is a list of his "white supremacist fan club" compiled by Huff Post reporters...
"The Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site; Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which aims to promote the “heritage, identity, and future of European people”; Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine; Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group; and Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace."

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Political Satire: 3 Musketeers replace KKK


Yiannopoulos, Spencer and Bannon
Not that we were ever free of the Ku Klux Klan, but now we have a new version of white supremacy going by the initials YSB which stands for Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon. You know who Bannon is but the other two are less well known but just as articulate. And I guess I just don't get it because I have never understood why a white Caucasian thinks the color of their skin makes them a better human being than another person of color, particularly blacks. I read the book, "Race and Reason" over 50 years ago, convinced these people were fruitcakes then.

According to the Additive Color Theory, white is a color and black is the absence of color, scientifically speaking. That could play several ways to mean what you want, but any way you cut it, it's laughable. Look at it this way...for some reason the sun gets hung up on earth and there is no darkness for six months. All us superior whites get sun tans that make us look almost black. All the blacks out in the sun non-stop are bleached out to mulatto. Yiannopoulos, Spencer and Bannon look at each other and are horrified that no one can tell the difference anymore. Peace.

The real story...

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Political Satire: Steve Bannon becomes President by Executive Order


Steve Bannonn
Donald Trump was sitting in the Oval Office looking at reruns of "The Apprentice" reality show when his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, walked in with papers in his hand. "I have something here that needs your signature oh great one."

"Don't bother me now, Stevo, can't you see I am tied up with something of grave importance to the future of this great country?"

"I realize the gravity of your most presidential effort, our sultan, but this too is something that will benefit our country, beyond what you might ever imagine."

"Okay, Stevo, if you insist, but just wait for this scene, here it comes, 'Your're fired,'" God, can't get enough of it. Put the paper down here (which he signs still looking at his image on TV). There, it's signed." Steve Bannon leaves the Oval Office with a huge grin on his face.

The Washington Post puts out an extra edition the next morning:
Donald Trump signs Executive Order making Steve Bannon President of the United States. No one has seen Donald John since, but three men dressed in white robes with hoods were seen leaving the White House late last evening in a pickup truck with Louisiana plates and something wrapped in a Confederate flag. No comment from the Oval Office.
Read more... 

Friday, February 3, 2017

Political Satire: Legal Godfather gives his blessings


Jeff Sessions
Jeff Sessions had just been confirmed as Attorney General of the United States under the new American Sultan Donald Trump. He was about to take his place at the conference table in his new office at Justice. But first he went to the medicine cabinet in his private bathroom and took out two cotton balls and stuffed one in each side of his mouth. Then he went back to the conference table where several of his new deputies were assembled. Sessions sat down and said, "We'll make those Muslims an offer they can't refuse." Everyone raised their hands in triumph and waited for the next great utterance. That is, all but one.

It was a black woman left over from the Obama administration. She was in Alabama when the Ku Klux Klan slit the throat of a black man and hung him from a tree. She questioned Sessions about how he felt about this. Sessions said, 'I thought the KKK was OK until I found out they smoked pot.' Soon after he became attorney general of Alabama. But now the other deputies were crowded around the new AG, kissing his hand and sucking up hoping to become his consigliere.

The black woman, still in her chair, asked Sessions one more question, "Doesn't what the KKK did bother you?"

To which the great new legal head replied, "Forgive. Forget. Life is full of misfortunes." With that he stood up, took the two cotton balls from his mouth, and threw them on the table for his deputy minions to fight over.

Read more...

Thursday, December 8, 2016

How about concentration camps for racists?


Okay, too severe. Besides, you wouldn't want to collect that much lowlife together in one place, the smell would be horrendous. Think what it would do to insurance rates in nearby communities and the depreciation of homes.  Perhaps to harsh, or maybe not harsh enough for these mutants from humanity. It is impossible to describe these dregs of the earth without the use of words this bad. And it all stems from an organization originating from the South, where I was raised, the Ku Klux Klan.

This all comes from an article I read on CNN by Rob Crilly, who went to a KKK rally in Roxboro, NC, where the Klan was staging a rally that almost no one went to. They called it a kalvacade, organized by the group's Imperial Kommander, Amanda Barker, designed as a victory for the election of Donald Trump. Remember that basket of deplorables, apparently it overflows in North Carolina? Crilly commented that in Roxboro, he had seen "...the future of the alt-right."

And yes, come January 20, of 2017, the alt-right will reside in the Donald Trump White House in the form of Steve Bannon, former head of Breitbart News, a known racist, woman hater and anti-semitic. Bannon will be at the top of the totem pole in the Trump administration as the chief strategist, no doubt guiding policy in the alt-right direction which is to establish white nationalism in the United States. And Donald Trump regularly spewed during the election he would represent all people.

It is unimaginable to me how the American public made it possible for a man like Donald Trump to become President. I realize that concentration camps for these uneducated rednecks is a stretch, but I wonder how many out there today would relish the opportunity to get as far away from these lunatics




Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Donald Trump revives white supremacists movement




Donald Trump has made so many bizarre statements in his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination that one should not be surprised that now he has sparked a revival in the white supremacists movement. Instead of walking up to a group of people in their robes, the Ku Klux Klan now dons their civvies and approaches the same individuals with a newspaper clearly displaying a Donald Trump article. It has become the perfect conversation starter, says Rachel Pendergraft, the national organizer for the Knights Party.

It is downright pathetic that the leading contender for the nomination to represent the GOP in November 2016, is, among numerous other derogatory names, a racist, and the man seems perfectly comfortable with all the monikers. Republicans are scared shitless that Trump will somehow receive the nomination, which of course would be a disaster against either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. Where's the master of digging up dirt, Karl Rove, when they need him?

You know he's stepped way over the line when Trump draws praises from former Louisiana politician and KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. 
Duke told The Post that while he has not officially endorsed Trump, he considers the candidate to be the “best of the lot” at the moment. “I think a lot of what he says resonates with me,” Duke said. Now, just think of the recent incidents where the Confederate Flag was brought down because it represents the worst kind of racism. Multiply that by 100 and you have the Ku Klux Klan. This is who supports Donald Trump, the kind of people we thought we had left behind years ago.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

South just cannot give up racism


The Citadel is known for its traditions in the South and the South is know for its tradition of racism. And, it hasn't been able to shake off this custom of demeaning African-Americans, in spite of a War plus the Civil Rights Act of  1968. I grew up in the South and experienced all this prejudice before leaving in the 1950s, only returning periodically to visit my family. Now it's fairly obvious that these Citadel cadets knew what the Ku Klux Klan garb meant before donning the dress and, if not, perhaps the level of learning at this institution is not as high as professed.

And don't these goons pay attention to the media? I Googled "Recent incidents of racism" and got 832,000 results. At the very least this school does not teach learning by example. The hierarchy immediately suspended those involved but it remains to be seen what and if there will be any real punishment. The time has come to start prosecuting these crimes for the seriousness they are and the grief and pain they cause the African American community.

Friday, June 6, 2014

SOUTH RISES AGAIN...WITH MORE RACISM

Not just the old South anymore
Jim Crow days are back again...in Memphis, Tennessee. I spent several years there going to college and working in television, in fact, the very TV station that reported this story, WREG-TV. I left the South as fast as I could because in those days, the 1960s, racism was rampant all over that part of the country. I know that because I traveled six southeastern states with a publishing company. And one of my neighbors was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, something I found out after leaving Memphis. By reading and through friends still there who share my views on racism, the stigma has never left the South; it just became somewhat subdued.

But not like the supervisor at the Memphis cotton company who told a black employee, you can't drink from the "white" water fountain and if you do we'll hang you. He was fired but the damage was already done. You just wonder how much more of this is going on in the South, or the North, or the Midwest, or the Southwest, or the West or the Northwest.


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

ARIZONA…where the hate groups flock

J.T. Ready and his U.S. Border Guard group are just the latest hate group to pop up in the news in Arizona after he shot and killed his girlfriend, her daughter and her boyfriend and the girlfriend’s granddaughter, only 15 months old.  We still have the neo-Nazi skinheads, the National Socialist Movement led by Harry Hughes, the Ku Klux Klan, the Vinlanders Social Club, another racist skinhead group and Minutemen American Defense.

Shawna Forde, founder of MAD and two of her henchmen were convicted of first-degree murder in 2009 for the deaths of two, one a 9-year-old girl.  Dennis Mahon, a White supremacist from Illinois, even came all the way to Arizona in 2004 to send a mail bomb to Don Logan who was black and working for the city of Scottsdale.  Jeffrey Harbin from the Nat’l Socialist Movement in Apache Junction was convicted of making explosive devices in 2011.

A USA Today article chronicles how easy it is for the hate groups to get started and flourish in the great state of Arizona.  Bill Straus, Arizona regional dir. of the Anti-Defamation League said, "Immigration is pretty much unarguably the No. 1 recruiting element in the White supremacist world."  Having lived in the state for over 20 years, I can vouch for the fact that there is little temperance here for minorities, particularly undocumented immigrants.


Hate in the South

Arizona’s anti-immigration law, SB-1070, sponsored by former state senator Russell Pearce, a known racist, and signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer, also known for being one of the worst governors ever to lead a state, was the impetus for these hate groups to raise their ugly heads and send Arizona into a tailspin that has made it the laughing stock of the country.  Not to be outdone, the boneheaded state legislature passed its share of stupid laws in its support.

Brian Levin, dir. of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Calif. State U.-San Bernardino, claims that he knows of neo-Nazis who “…want to make pilgrimages to Arizona.”  Levin continues, "They believe that there are a lot of people in the state who are sympathetic to them."

The above is a fact that should be troubling to Gov. Brewer and the legislature but both are clueless in the matter.  The key factor here is that Arizona would have to tighten its gun laws—the loosest in the nation—to do anything about the extremism, and the state’s gun bubbas would never allow that.  They, along with the Tea Party, have Arizona so tightly controlled at the moment that it has become near impossible to even raise progressive ideas.  But it is happening.

FAIR and hate groups video:

USA Today says that Ready’s death, “…has pulled back the curtain on the shadowy world of extremism in Arizona that seems to teeter on the edge of violence.”  So add to the cross-country ridicule of Arizona the fact that it is now the leader in “Hate-States.”  Pathetic!  Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center says there were a total of 17 hate groups in Arizona as of 2011.  And it can all be traced back to the proliferation of guns to create this hate and violence.

James Turgal, special agent in charge of the FBI's Phoenix division believes that domestic terrorism is “very active” in Arizona, giving credit to the Nat’l Socialist Movement, neo-Nazis and something he called the “anti-government sovereign citizen” movement.  And Mark Potok of the SPLC was quoted as saying, "There are a lot of really thuggish individuals associated with the nativist movement in Arizona."  That’s a term no state should want associated with its citizenry. 

If the dethroned Russell Pearce gets his way, he will be back in Arizona’s senate by the end of the November elections; he is running for a seat in another state district from where he was booted recently.  In all likelihood the lame-brained legislature would probably elect him president again, and the great state of Arizona would return to business as usual.

UNLESS…progressives continue to do their thing and start a conservative cleansing that will rid us of these un-patriots.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Gun rights fanatics and some moderates say gun control is racist

Ladd Everitt Director of Communications for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has written an article on racism as a concept to explain gun control.  You might laugh at the thought that the gun nuts would come up with this ridiculous hypothesis, but in his piece, Ladd quotes author Adam Winkler, who is a UCLA Law Professor, as declaring that “gun control is racist” in his new book, Gunfight. 

According to Everitt, Winkler implies that gun control is defined by extremists who want to take away all guns from owners and establish a system much like the United Kingdom.  I have been writing on gun control for over seven years now and know this is not true as Ladd Everitt confirms.  He even cites others who concur like Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D-NY) and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns. 

See Ladd Everitt question Adam Winkler over racism and gun control below:



There are others that add to this misconception like historian and author, Clayton E. Cramer, who says, “The historical record provides compelling evidence that racism underlies gun control laws -- and not in any subtle way.”  He underlines that with, “Throughout much of American history, gun control was openly stated as a method for keeping blacks and Hispanics "in their place," and to quiet the racial fears of whites.”  Shades of Mississippi and Arizona.

Cramer continues in his article with examples like the French Black Code that required Louisiana colonists to stop and if necessary beat blacks carrying any weapon, even a walking cane.  He also talks about the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, the fear of the first North American English colonies slave revolts, and the 1834 change to the Tennessee Constitution that allowed only “white” men to bear arms in their defense. 

The author sums up the article with the statement, “…gun control has historically been a tool of racism, and associated with racist attitudes about black violence.”  Interesting, but still not proving a real connection between gun control and racism other than the fact that the days of slavery in this country were violent ones.

Everitt says that Winkler “…even acknowledges that an overwhelming majority of African-Americans today support strong, strict gun laws.”  And he adds that “Winkler can cite no example of the contemporary gun control movement being racist.  This is a modern day comparison unlike the historical one by Cramer. 

And growing up in the South in Mississippi and Tennessee, I was well aware of the killings of the Ku Klux Klan. 


KKK hanging

Once, after I was old enough to drink I said to my father when we were having a beer together in a local Tennessee tavern, that I thought the KKK was a bunch of illiterate barbarian murderers.  He quietly let me know that this wasn’t something you said in this part of the country, particularly in a saloon where everyone had been drinking.  Actually, I grew up in this West Tennessee small town thinking I was the one that was crazy because of my beliefs, but I never gave them up.  I was for gun control then and not once experienced anything racist about it.

If you are interested, I would suggest that you Google “gun control is racist” to see a multitude of sites on the subject.  The gun rights extremists will go to any length to try and prove their point that everyone should be able to own a gun, no matter what their status, and be allowed to take their firearms anywhere in the USA—perhaps even the world—they want to.  But connecting gun control to racism is just wrong.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

If blacks don’t back Occupy Movement will they back Democrats in November?

We can thank the Tea Party for repeated accusations of racism that once again reminded us of Southern bigotry and the Ku Klux Klan.  The media accused it of being “racially exclusionary, if not…racist,” according to The Washington Examiner.  Well-known African American congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, said tea partiers can “go straight to hell.”  While perhaps not quite so contentious, progressives would like to see them just gone.


Tea Party parade

The Tea Party is predominantly white but 6 percent of its supporters are black compared to only 1.6 percent for Occupy Wall Street and a total in the U.S. population of 12.6 percent.  Further, blacks represent 25 percent of New York residents.  So where were they on the first Occupy Wall Street demonstration on September 17, and thereafter across the country?  One opinion was that blacks did not participate because they have been through this before and think it’s hopeless.

I did a post back in December, “Immigrants want a part of the Occupy Movement,” including the agreement that no one is more likely to be in the Occupy “99%” than Hispanics.  Of course, wouldn’t blacks fit the same criteria?  Currently 60.7 percent of black incomes are under $50,000, compared to 40.3 for whites.  Median income for whites is $63,404 compared to that of blacks which is $38,835.  U.S. median income is $58,924.

Although 3 years old, the video below is an good example of black voting history:



The Washington Post also wonders about black inactivity in the Occupy Movement, commenting that some well known blacks like Cornel West,
Russell Simmons, Kanye West and Rep. John Lewis, (D-GA) have participated but nothing like Latino moves to join in as a group.  There was an “Occupy the Hood” faction that attempted to get more people involved that has apparently made some inroads but nothing significant.

Based on a 2011 Washington Post survey, the conclusion was made, that, in spite of their economic standing, blacks feel more optimistic than whites.  This is hard to understand when black unemployment is at 16 percent, teenagers 50 percent, compared to 8.6 percent for whites.  The survey concluded that 24 percent of blacks were “very” or “somewhat satisfied” with the economy compared to only 12 percent of whites.  Go figure.  

And here we go again.  In a recent NBC poll a huge 73 percent of Americans considered the country to be on the wrong track compared to 19 percent who thought it was.  49 percent of blacks thought the U. S. was on the right track compared to 38 percent who didn’t.  Some say there is the Obama factor.  The figures show that 86 percent of blacks approve of the President compared to 57 percent overall.

Still unanswered is why blacks have not joined the Occupy Movement with more enthusiasm.  Larry Elder, author of The Washington Examiner article thinks that if they support Occupy it might appear that blacks don’t think Obama has done his job in Washington.  But since the substance of the Occupy Movement is inequality, along with the fact that blacks have been fighting this for years with limited results, I find their detachment confusing, even alarming.

In the end, Elder says it really isn’t why so few blacks are participating in the Occupy Movement; rather, “why so many blacks still belong to the Democratic party.”  I personally believe they still understand that the Dems., no matter how many mistakes they have made and will make re. minorities, that the least they do will be gargantuan over what the GOP would offer.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

AZ State Sen. Russell Pearce’s version of the Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan was a far-right extremist organization that advocated white supremacy and anti-immigration.  I grew up in the South of the 1940s and 1950s where the Klan was in full bloom and remember the attempts to scare Blacks into complete servitude in order to keep them in line.  It wasn’t a pretty picture, and I wondered then as a young man, just what had these people done to deserve this? 

Although the KKK movement wasn’t designed to run the Blacks out of the South like State Sen. Russell Pearce’s actions to force illegal Hispanic immigrants out of Arizona, it did succeed in a relocation of many Blacks to the North and West.  Southern racists actually preferred to keep the Blacks where they were and maintain an atmosphere of slavery and bondage even though it was illegal.  It would go on like this for years, and still does to some extent today.

Dee Dee Garcia, a conservative Latina activist wrotea letter to the Mormon Church re. the persecution of illegal immigrants in Arizona and how State Sen. Candidate Jerry Lewis is more in tune with the church’s Prophet, Thomas S. Monson, than his opponent Russell Pearce.  She quoted a Mormon canon of scripture as a reference to the humanism of this issue, Pearce in particular:

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”  §121:39.

Garcia draws a parallel between Arizona’s anti-immigration fight with the Extermination Order signed by the Missouri Governor of 1838 to drive the Mormons out of his state or be exterminated.  In this case, Joseph Smith, LDS Prophet at the time, surrendered to the Missouri militia, which resulted in the forcible removal from Missouri of virtually all members of the Church.  Precisely what State Sen. Russell Pearce had in mind for Hispanics when passing SB-1070.

The Ku Klux Klan has no stronghold in Arizona but with Pearce’s past association with J.T. Ready, confirmed racist and former neo-Nazi, and the State Senator’s relentless efforts to run all Hispanics from Arizona, he has created his own modern-day version.

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