The Ku Klux Klan is rightfully despised by the overwhelming majority of Americans.
So it’s illuminating that its ideology found vigorous support at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. in mid-March, 2013.
Ku Klux Klan
K. Carl Smith, a black discussion leader, was a member of the Frederick Douglas Republicans. He was speaking about the role of race in the Republican Party when he was suddenly interrupted.
Scott Terry, a 30-year-old attendee from North Carolina, claimed that “young, white Southern males like myself” were being disenfranchised by Republicans.
Terry blamed the growth of diversity in the party and its outreach to black conservatives.
Smith then told how abolitionist leader Frederick Douglas wrote a letter to his former slaveowner forgiving him for having held him in bondage.
“For giving him shelter and food?” asked Terry, a member of the White Students Union at Towson University in Maryland.
Several members of the audience gasped and others laughed.
Terry later told the liberal blog, Think Progress, that he would “be fine” with an America where blacks were subservient to whites.
African-Americans, he said, should vote in Africa. He claimed the Tea Party agrees with him.
And, no doubt, many of its members privately do.
Terry claimed to be a descendent of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861-1865).
As a result, he didn’t totally disagree with slavery: “I can’t make one broad statement that categorically it was evil all the time because that’s not true.”
Another attendee, White Student Union “founder and commander” Matthew Heimbach, called civil rights activist Martin Luther King “a Marxist.”
Later, he said of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which investigates extremist, racist groups: “You look at the SPLC, as fake as they are, they talk about how patriot groups are increasing in the Obama era. With a black face in charge of the White House, of the federal government, we know it’s foreign. We know something isn’t right.”
According to the Atlantic Wire, 23 members of the White Student Union attended CPAC.
Racism is no stranger to high-ranking memers of the Republican party–and its right-wing allies.
In 2012, Inge Marler, a Tea Party leader in northern Arkansas, kicked off a rally with a joke implying that black Americans were all on welfare:
“A black kid asks his mom, ‘Mama, what’s a democracy?’
“‘Well, son, that be when white folks work every day so us po’ folks can get all our benefits.’
“‘But mama, don’t the white folk get mad about that?’
“‘They sho do, son. They sho do. And that’s called racism.’”
Inge Marler
The joke was followed by laughter and clapping from the Tea Party audience.
Only after Marler’s remarks came to the attention of the media did the Tea Party oust her from her position.
Since November 6, Republicans have been vigorously debating about why their candidate, Mitt Romney, lost the 2012 Presidential election.
Generally, their “findings” have boiled down to: We didn’t get our message out clearly enough.
On the contrary: There was no mistaking the message that Republicans were sending. Targeting a wide range of groups, this boiled down to: “America is for us–not you”:
- Republicans enraged and alienated Latinos by their constant anti-immigrant rhetoric–such as their nominee Mitt Romney’s comment that illegal aliens should “self-deport.”
- Republicans enraged and alienated blacks by their constant hate-filled and often racist attacks on President Barack Obama. Clint Eastwood’s empty chair “comedy” act at the Republican convention pleased his right-wing audience. But it outraged a great many others–especially blacks.
- Republicans enraged and alienated voters generally and minorities in particular by their blatant efforts to suppress the voting rights of their fellow citizens–especially those of non-whites. Republicans falsely claimed widespread voter fraud in areas where there was no evidence of it. When voter fraud was found, the culprit was a get-out-the-vote consulting firm hired by Republicans.
- Republicans allowed their party to be represented by Donald Trump, the infamous oligarch. When he repeatedly claimed that Obama wasn’t an American citizen, Romney refused to dump him as the hate-filled racist he was.
- Republicans refused to distance themselves from their “de facto” leader, right-wing pundit Rush Limbaugh. Romney refused to condemn Limbaugh for calling Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she told Congress that insurance companies should cover contraceptives.
- Republicans angered and alienated women by constantly talking about: Gutting Planned Parenthood; outlawing abortion; “legitimate rape” and banning birth control.
- Republicans alienated gays by their blatantly anti-gay sentiments and steadfast opposition to same-sex marriage.
Ultimately, Republicans came to depend for their success on a voting group that’s constantly shrinking–-aging white males. Having alienated blacks, gays, women, Latinos and youths, the Republicans found themselves with no other sources of support.
CPAC’s website claimed the event would showcase “America’s Future: The Next Generation of Conservatives. New Challenges, Timeless Principles.”
For many of the attending delegates, one of those “timeless principles” turned out to be old-fashioned racism.
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BLACK IS AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 24, 2013 at 1:50 amOn May 7, 2012, GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney attended a town-hall meeting in Euclid, Ohio.
“We have a president right now who is operating outside the construction of our Constitution,” a female attendee told Romney.
As the audience applauded, she continued: “And I do agree he should be tried for treason.
“But I wanna know what you are going to be able to do to help restore balance between the three branches of government and what you’re going to be able to do to restore our Constitution in this country?”
Unlike John McCain, who in 2008 memorably corrected a woman who declared Obama was “an Arab,” Romney didn’t issue such a correction. Instead, he chose to simply address the question.
Since the end of World War 11, Republicans have regularly hurled the charge of “treason” against anyone who dared to run against them for office or think other than Republican-sponsored thoughts.
Republicans had been locked out of the White House from 1933 to 1952, during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
Determined to regain the Presidency by any means, they found that attacking the integrity of their fellow Americans a highly effective tactic.
During the 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy rode a wave of paranoia to national prominence. On February 9, 1950, he claimed:
“The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
Joseph McCarthy
After four years of such frenzied attacks on Congress, the State Department and respected journalists such as Edward R. Murrow, McCarthy finally overstepped himself. He accused the United States Army of being an active hotbed for Communists.
At the Army-McCarthy hearings, McCarthy’s credibility was forever destroyed. He was finally censured by his fellow Senators and disappeared into anonymity, alcoholism and death in 1957.
The fact that McCarthy never uncovered one actual case of treason was conveniently overlooked during his lifetime.
And today, right-wing columnists like Ann Coulter try to rehabilitate his memory–just as right-wingers in Russia still try to rehabilitate the memory of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Nevertheless, the success of McCarthy’s treason-charged rhetoric proved too alluring for other Republicans to resist. Among those who have greatly profited from hurling similar charges are:
The election of Barack Obama pushed the “treason chorus” to new heights of infamy. With no political scandal (such as Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky) to fasten on, the bureaucracy of the Republican Party deliberately promoted the slander that Obama was not an American citizen.
From this there could be only one conclusion: That he was an illegitimate President, and should be removed from office.
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Republicans charged that Obama was really a Muslim non-citizen who intended to sell out America’s security to his Muslim “masters.”
And this smear campaign continued throughout his Presidency.
To the dismay of his enemies, Obama–in the course of a single week–dramatically proved the falsity of both charges.
On April 27, 2011, he released the long-form of his Hawaii birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” said Obama at a press conference, speaking as a father might to a roomful of spiteful children. “We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve.
“We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other…if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers.”
And on May 1, he announced the solving of one of those “big problems”: Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, had been tracked down and shot dead by elite U.S. Navy SEALS in Pakistan.
Of course, Obama was only the latest Democratic President to be attacked as “unpatriotic.”
For more than a half-century, Republicans have accused their Democratic opponents of treason to gain and retain political power in America.
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