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Steve Scalise, 'David Duke Without the Baggage,' Drops Out of House Speaker Race
"I will vote for Leader Jeffries and continue my work building bridges between marginalized communities to dismantle the systems of white supremacy enabling violence against our communities," said Rep. Summer Lee.
Oct 12, 2023
Louisiana GOP Congressman Steve Scalise—infamously accused of once calling himself "David Duke without the baggage," referring to a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard—on Thursday night dropped his bid to become the next speaker of the U.S House of Representatives.
"It's been quite a journey and there's still a long way to go. I just shared with my colleagues that I'm withdrawing my name as a candidate for the speaker designee," Scalise told reporters, acknowledging divisions within his conference.
"This country is counting on us to come back together," he added. "This House of Representatives needs a speaker and we need to open up the House again. But clearly, not everybody is there. And there's still schisms that have to get resolved."
Republicans narrowly selected Scalise, the House majority leader, as the fractured party's nominee during a closed-door, secret-ballot election on Wednesday, but he still lacked the 217 votes needed to be elected speaker.
Some House Republicans prefer Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is backed by 2024 GOP front-runner former President Donald Trump but reportedly offered to give a nominating speech for Scalise after losing his party's contest.
Throughout the week, House progressives have spoken out against Scalise, with Congresswoman Summer Lee (D-Pa.) saying earlier Thursday:
I'm sickened to learn that years before he was caught calling himself David Duke without the baggage, Scalise spoke at the 2002 international white supremacist convention sponsored by a group whose website said that "Jews will attack us for wanting to restore white America and are responsible for the 'browning' of America" and peddled the same white supremacist and antisemitic replacement theory that motivated the murders of 11 beloved members of my community in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, 10 Black grocery shoppers in Buffalo, 23 Hispanic community members in El Paso, and 51 Muslim worshipers in Christchurch. Every Republican who votes for his speakership will vote in support of rising antisemitism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) similarly wrote on social media: "Republicans have chosen a candidate for speaker who has pushed white supremacist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, calling himself 'David Duke without the baggage.' We must be focused on dismantling white supremacy and violence, not allowing them into our leadership."
Reps. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have also highlighted the controversial Duke comment, which has haunted the key House Republican for nearly a decade.
Journalist Stephanie Grace wrote for Louisiana's The Advocate in December 2014, "This is what I remember about the first time I met Steve Scalise nearly 20 years ago: He told me he was like David Duke without the baggage."
"The 'baggage,' of course, was Duke's past, his racist and antisemitic views and his former role as a KKK grand wizard," Grace continued. "Scalise disavowed Duke then, as he did once again this week, when blogger Lamar White Jr. revealed that Scalise had spoken in 2002 at a meeting hosted by a Duke-founded white nationalist group."
The Washington Post reported that same week in 2014 that Scalise "confirmed through an adviser that he once appeared at a convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, or EURO. But the adviser said the congressman didn't know at the time about the group's affiliation with racists and neo-Nazi activists."
However, Slate noted at the time that "Scalise may have just ineptly admitted to speaking at a white supremacist event that eyewitnesses say he never attended." Duke associate Kenny Knight claimed he invited Scalise, then his neighbor and a Louisiana state representative, to address the Jefferson Heights Civic Association in a room of the hotel booked for the conference—a version of events confirmed by Barbara Noble, Knight's ex-girlfriend.
Given Scalise's messy baggage—and solidly right-wing voting record—some Democrats, who last week joined with a small group of far-right Republicans to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as speaker, are advocating for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Lee said Thursday that "I will vote for Leader Jeffries and continue my work building bridges between marginalized communities to dismantle the systems of white supremacy enabling violence against our communities."
Rather than directly pitching himself, Jeffries, in a television appearance, called for restructuring the House "in a bipartisan way designed to allow for commonsense things to come to the floor, receive an up-or-down vote, for us to be able to actually move legislation that emerges from the Senate that is bipartisan in nature."
Jeffries stressed that "we just need traditional Republicans to break from their extremist wing and join us in a bipartisan coalition."
The speaker fight comes about a month away from a potential government shutdown and as some House progressives face allegations of antisemitism for speaking out against the Israeli military assault and full blockade of Gaza in retaliation for Hamas' weekend attack—a common tactic supporters of Israel employ to try to discredit criticism of the Israeli government and military's mistreatment of Palestinians, from apartheid to war crimes.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the first Palestinian American elected to Congress, faces a motion to censure spearheaded by Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.) because she said that "I grieve the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost" while also asserting that "the path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance."
Fellow "Squad" members including Bush and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) have also endured attacks from fellow Democrats for condemning the killing of civilians on both sides and U.S. support for Israeli military occupation and apartheid.
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'A Toxic Presence in the Party': Ocasio-Cortez Joins Calls for Jay Jacobs to Resign
"India Walton is the Democratic nominee for mayor of Buffalo. No amount of racist misogyny from the old boys' club is going to change that."
Oct 19, 2021
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday joined progressive colleagues and activists in calling for the resignation or removal of New York Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs after he compared India Walton--a Black woman running for mayor of Buffalo--to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
"India Walton is the Democratic nominee for mayor of Buffalo. No amount of racist misogyny from the old boys' club is going to change that," Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted.
"This is just his latest incident," she added. "Jacobs is a toxic presence in the party and his continued post as chair is shameful."
Jacobs had sparked outrage Monday after offering a perplexing explanation of why he has not endorsed Walton, a democratic socialist and community activist.
"Let's take a scenario, very different, where David Duke--you remember him, the grand wizard of the KKK--he moves to New York, he becomes a Democrat, he runs for mayor in the city of Rochester, which is a low primary turnout, and he wins the Democratic line," he said. "I have to endorse David Duke? I don't think so."
Although Jacobs later apologized for the comparison and acknowledged that Walton and Duke were "not in the same category," condemnation was swift and strong.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called Jacobs' analogy "outrageous and beyond absurd," while U.S. Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones--both New York Democrats--joined progressive activists in demanding his ouster, with Jones lambasting his continued chairmanship a "shame to the party."
Rana Abdelhamid, a democratic socialist running for the 12th Congressional District seat currently held by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), said in a statement Monday that "from repeatedly attacking young women of color running for office, to protecting disgraced former [Democratic] Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Jay Jacobs is part of the problem."
"It's clear," added Abdelhamid, "that Jacobs has no respect for the will of the voters, and that he does not speak for New York Democrats."
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Liz Cheney and Right-Wing Outrage Machine Lie About Rashida Tlaib's Comments. Corporate Media--and Trump--Do the Rest
"This is another transparent attempt to sow division between minority communities and distract from your own criminal behavior by smearing a Muslim woman."
May 13, 2019
A measured and nuanced discussion of the Holocaust, Israel, and Palestinians was intentionally mischaracterized by right-wing media and politicians Sunday, leading to corporate media and the president amplifying dishonest attacks on one of the nation's only two Muslim Congresswomen.
"I will never allow you to take my words out of context to push your racist and hateful agenda" -- Rep. Rashida Tlaib
The controversy comes from remarks made by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on the Yahoo News podcast "Skullduggery" published Saturday. During the discussion with podcast co-hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, Tlaib referred to her Palestinian ancestry and reflected on the complicated modern history of her homeland.
"There's, you know, there's a kind of a calming feeling, I always tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors--Palestinians--who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence, in many ways, had been wiped out," said Tlaib. "I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time."
Tlaib also mused as to whether there had been a better way forward for both people that didn't continue the cycle of persecution and expressed her support for a one-state solution in Israel and Palestine.
"I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, in many ways," said Tlaib "But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, right? And it was forced on them. And so, when I think about one-state, I think about the fact that, why couldn't we do it in a better way?"
The comments were seized upon, and then twisted, by Philip Klein, a reporter for the right-wing Washington Examiner. Klein said that Tlaib's comments were "shocking and historically ignorant" and stated--taking the phrase wholly out of context--that Tlaib said the Holocaust left her with a "calming feeling."
Klein's piece was picked up by extreme right-wing figures like Twitter personality David Wohl and Fox News personality Dan Bongino before receiving the endorsement of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the third most powerful Republican in the House.
Referencing Klein's dishonest framing of Tlaib's "calming feeling" comment, Cheney called on House Democratic leadership to take action against the Michigan representative.
"Surely now @SpeakerPelosi & @LeaderHoyer will finally take action against vile anti-Semitism in their ranks," Cheney tweeted. "This must cross the line, even for them."
Cheney's tweet was called out on Twitter Sunday evening by James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, who called the Congresswoman's obsession with Tlaib "disgraceful."
"Your party's been playing this game for a decade," said Zogby. "Shame."
Cheney's tweet was followed by a statement from Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who once referred to himself as "David Duke without the baggage," decrying what he described as anti-Semitism.
"All of us, regardless of party, must stand as Americans against the evil of anti-Semitism," said Scalise. "If the Democratic leadership continues to stand by in silence, they are enabling the spread of evil."
Corporate media jumped into the fray, using headlines to frame the controversy in ways that lent credence to the original piece by Klein and its dishonest framing, irrespective of the reporting in the story.
- " House Republicans criticize Rep. Tlaib over remarks on Holocaust, Israel" (The Washington Post)
- "Rashida Tlaib stands by Israel and Holocaust comments amid criticism" (CNN)
- "Rashida Tlaib slammed by House GOP over comments on Holocaust, Palestinians" (Fox News)
President Donald Trump chimed in on Twitter late Monday morning, less than twenty-four hours since the echo-chamber process began, saying Tlaib was being "slammed for her horrible and highly insensitive statement on the Holocaust."
"She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people," said Trump. "Can you imagine what would happen if I ever said what she said, and says?"
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the only other Muslim woman in Congress and herself a frequent target of the president, replied with a withering attack on the president.
"This is another transparent attempt to sow division between minority communities and distract from your own criminal behavior by smearing a Muslim woman," said Omar. "No one should fall for it this time."
Tlaib's comments were "a nuanced, compassionate way to think about a deeply personal and difficult topic," wrote Splinter's Sophie Weiner. "So, of course, Republicans leapt to take the quotes out of context."
In a statement, Justice Democrats executive director Alexandra Rojas called for House Democratic leadership to support Tlaib.
"We call on Democratic Party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer to stand with Rashida Tlaib and call on Republican leaders to condemn Representative Cheney and Donald Trump's bad faith attacks," said Rojas.
Tlaib took a firm line against her critics, dismissing their dishonest attacks and making clear that attempts to silence her would "fail miserably."
"I will never allow you to take my words out of context to push your racist and hateful agenda," said Tlaib. "The truth will always win."
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Trump Condemned for Sharing Video Calling Ilhan Omar 'Dangerous Anti-Semite,' As Jewish Allies Come to Her Defense
"It's rather uncontroversial to suggest that Stephen Miller has white nationalist politics. But when Ilhan Omar says it, it's somehow anti-Semitic?"
Apr 09, 2019
Days after reports surfaced that Rep. Ilhan Omar had been receiving Islamophobic death threats, President Donald Trump provoked outrage when he shared on social media a video in which Omar was compared to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
On his official Twitter account, Trump retweeted a video of Republican strategist and pro-Israel lobbyist Jeff Ballabon saying Omar's recent statement that Trump adviser Stephen Miller is a white nationalist makes her "the most dangerous anti-Semite we've ever seen."
"Let's be clear, Jews can absolutely be white nationalists. It's not antisemitic to call these people out. They NEED to be called out. Otherwise, they'll keep claiming that they represent Jews because they fight for unconditional support for Israel." --IfNotNowIn the video, Ballabon dodged a question about Miller's anti-immigrant agenda and quickly redirected the interview to Omar's perceived "attack" on Jewish people.
"What's completely unacceptable is for Ilhan Omar to yet again target Jews. In this case it's not just Stephen Miller, what she's doing is by declaring a Jew, someone who's known to be Jewish, a white nationalist, is she's saying, 'Jews, you're not minorities,'" asserted Ballabon.
"She is the most dangerous anti-Semite we've ever seen," he continued. "She's more dangerous than David Duke and Louis Farrakhan combined, because she sits where she sits and no one is stopping her, and she keeps on assaulting Jews."
Omar had tweeted her statement about Miller on Monday, along with a link to a story about Miller pushing for "tougher" immigration policies in the Trump administration.
Many found Omar's statement decidedly uncontroversial, considering Miller's support for family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border and his open association with Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser and Breitbart News executive who has publicly called for "nationalist patriots" to emerge as Europe's "new elite."
Trump's retweet came three days after a man identified as a supporter of the president was arrested for threatening to kill Omar in a call to her office.
A woman also called a hotel where Omar was staying in Los Angeles last week, threatening to bomb the building, and the freshman congresswoman's name was included on a list of targets created by U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant Christopher Hasson, who the FBI arrested in February.
Ahead of the threats, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro had suggested on air that Omar may adhere to "Sharia law" and the Washington Free Beacon claimed in a report that Omar was holding "secret fundraisers with Islamic groups tied to terror."
On Tuesday, Trump drew condemnation for fanning the hatred that's been directed at Omar.
Jewish critics including at least one rabbi were among those who came to Omar's defense, saying that--despite their shared faith with Miller--they took no exception to the Trump adviser being labeled a white nationalist.
The Jewish American progressive group IfNotNow called the "double standard" that Ballabon and other conservatives have applied to Omar "unacceptable and clearly Islamophobic."
"Let's be clear, Jews can absolutely be white nationalists," the group tweeted.
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White Nationalism, Born in the USA, Is Now a Global Terror Threat
Mar 20, 2019
The recent massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand is the latest confirmation that white supremacy is a danger to democratic societies across the globe.
Despite President Donald Trump's suggestion that white nationalist terrorism is not a major problem, recent data from the United Nations, University of Chicago and other sources show the opposite.
As more people embrace a xenophobic and anti-immigrant worldview, it is fueling hostility and violence toward those deemed "outsiders" - whether because of their religion, skin color or national origin.
Transnational violence
Most of the Western world - from Switzerland and Germany to the United States, Scandinavia and New Zealand - has witnessed a potent nationalist strain infecting society in recent years.
Driven by fear over the loss of white primacy, white nationalists believe that white identity should be the organizing principle of Western society.
"Every people in the world can have their own country except white people," the American Freedom Party's William Daniel Johnson told the Chicago Sun Times after the New Zealand attack. "We should have white ethno-states."
In researching our upcoming book on extremism - our joint area of academic expertise - we found that hate crimes have risen alongside the global spread of white nationalism. Racist attacks on refugees, immigrants, Muslims and Jews are increasing worldwide at an alarming rate.
Scholars studying the internationalization of hate crimes call this dangerous phenomenon "violent transnationalism."
In Europe, white violence appears to have been triggered by the sudden increase, in 2015, of refugees fleeing war in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Ultra-nationalists across the continent - including politicians at the highest rungs of power - used the influx as evidence of the imminent "cultural genocide" of white people.
White nationalism is a US export
This disturbing international trend, in its modern incarnation, was born in the United States.
Since the 1970s, a small, vocal cadre of American white supremacists have sought to export their ideology of hate. Avowed racists like Ku Klux Klan wizard David Duke, Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler and extremist author William Pierce believe the white race is under attack worldwide by a cultural invasion of immigrants and people of color.
The United States is diversifying, but it remains 77 percent white. White supremacists, however, have long contended that the country's demographic changes will lead to an extermination of the white race and culture.
The "alt-right" - an umbrella term describing modern online white supremacist movement - uses the same language. And it has expanded this 20th-century xenophobic worldview to portray refugees, Muslims and progressives as a threat, too.
Alt-right leaders like Richard Spencer, extremist Jared Taylor and the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer editor Andrew Anglin also use social media to share their ideology and recruit members across borders.
They have found a global audience of white supremacists who, in turn, have also used the internet to share their ideas, encourage violence and broadcast their hate crimes worldwide.
"The hatred that led to violence in Pittsburgh and Charlottesville is finding new adherents around the world," Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, a civil liberties watchdog, told USA Today after the New Zealand attack.
"Indeed, it appears that this attack was not just focused on New Zealand; it was intended to have a global impact."
Rising racist violence
We know the alleged New Zealand mosque shooter's hatred of Muslims was inspired by American white nationalism - he said so on Twitter.
His online "manifesto" includes references to cultural conflicts that the author believed would eventually lead the United States to separate along ethnic, political and racial lines.
The alleged attacker also wrote that he supports President Donald Trump "as a symbol of renewed white identity."
Trump and other right-wing politicians like French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and Dutch opposition leader Geert Wilders have blamed the very real problems of modern life - growing economic instability, rising inequality and industrial decay - on immigrants and people of color.
That narrative has added further hostility into the existing undercurrent of intolerance in increasingly multicultural societies like the United States.
Hate crimes against Muslims, immigrants and people of color have been on the rise in the U.S. since 2014.
In 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 892 hate crimes. The next year, it counted 917 hate crimes. In 2017 - the year Trump took office stoking nationalist sentiment with promises to build walls, deport Mexicans and ban Muslims - the U.S. saw 954 white supremacist attacks.
One of them was a violent clash between counterprotesters and white nationalists over the removal of a confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia. The 2017 "Unite the Right" rally, which killed one person and injured dozens, amplified the ideas of modern white nationalists nationally and worldwide.
Last year, white nationalists killed at least 50 people in the United States. Their victims included 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, two elderly black shoppers in a Kroger parking lot in Kentucky and two women practicing yoga in Florida.
The years 2015, 2016 and 2018 were the United States' deadliest years for extremist violence since 1970, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
All perpetrators of deadly extremist violence in the U.S. in 2018 had links to white nationalist groups. That made 2018 "a particularly active year for right-wing extremist murders," the Anti-Defamation League says.
Nationalist terror is a danger to the domestic security of the United States and, evidence shows, a global terror threat that endangers the very nature of global democratic society.
Correction: This piece was initially re-posted without co-author Paul J. Becker listed in byline.
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Why Isn't Tucker Carlson's Hate Speech a Deal-Breaker?
In Trump’s America morality has been distorted and hate continues to have a place on television and in the White House—until the nation chooses another way
Mar 15, 2019
The recently revealed audio recordings of Fox News host Tucker Carlson spewing racist and misogynist rhetoric on a radio show years ago offers new evidence of the media outlet's tilt toward hate. In clips originating from 2006 to 2011 available here and here, obtained by the watchdog group Media Matters for America, Carlson is heard ranting against women, Iraqis, blacks, immigrants and others, using the same language heard from white supremacists, male chauvinists, homophobes and old-fashioned racists.
For example, during a discussion of the U.S. war in Iraq, Carlson is heard saying, "Iraq is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semiliterate primitive monkeys." When asked how the war could be salvaged, his answer was, "It's beyond our control. I mean if, somehow, the Iraqis decided to behave like human beings or something." He also envisioned a president who would say, "It's these lunatic Muslims who are behaving like animals, and I'm going to kill as many of them as I can if you elect me." Those are only three instances of many, each one as appalling as the next.
So far, the Fox News host has refused to apologize. Instead he has characterized his words on Twitter as "naughty" and dug in his heels. Fox News has refused to take action, simply re-releasing a statement from several months ago, saying, "We cannot and will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts." The White House has ignored the recordings altogether. Staying with the examples cited above, if one were to replace the words "Iraqis" and "Muslims" with "Israelis" and "Jews," the double standard becomes imminently clear.
As a nation, we rightfully no longer tolerate anti-Semitism. Even Trump, the Republicans and Fox News executives would have immediately distanced themselves from a person spewing hatred against Jews. But when it comes to Muslims in particular, why is there is no howl of protest at the use of dehumanizing language by a public figure? Carlson's corresponding misogyny, anti-black racism and homophobia are also apparently not deal-breakers for his employers.
Incidentally, days before the Carlson recordings became public another Fox News host, Jeanine Pirro, came under fire for blaming Rep. Ilhan Omar's critique of Israel on Omar's Muslim faith. Although Fox repudiated Pirro's comments, she remains on the network.
Carlson offered a challenge in his Twitter non-apology: "I'm on television every weeknight live for an hour. If you want to know what I think you can watch." Matt Gertz of Media Matters explained to me in an interview that although the specifics of Carlson's contemporary political expressions may be less extreme than his unfiltered speech on the radio years ago, the views he routinely expresses on his Fox News show currently embody the same type of racist and misogynist sentiments heard on the recordings from 2006 to 2011. "Some of Tucker's biggest fans are white nationalists. David Duke is a big supporter. Lots of other 'alt-right' figures ... they all love him," Gertz said. "They think he's doing a great job bringing their messages about the dangers of immigration, the perils of somehow diluting the national culture by bringing in more people who aren't white."
Carlson, Fox News and Trump are central institutions within the ugly conservative universe of women-hating, racist white supremacist dinosaurs who desperately fight the empowerment of women and minorities, seeing them as threats to their fragile white male egos.
Carlson, Fox News and Trump are central institutions within the ugly conservative universe of women-hating, racist white supremacist dinosaurs who desperately fight the empowerment of women and minorities, seeing them as threats to their fragile white male egos. Gertz calls Fox News "a propaganda arm of the Trump White House at this point. It's entirely in the White House's interest to stick with them come hell or high water." In short, Carlson is an intimate part of the political complex alongside Trump, who has made no secret of the fact that Fox News is the only outlet he trusts.
The backdrop for the Carlson revelations is striking. House Democrats have been desperately trying to paper over internal differences on the issue of Israel by passing a broad resolution denouncing hate last week. What leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have really rather done is single Omar out, but they were stopped by other Democrats who saw it as hypocritical to censure a young hijab-wearing Muslim woman while giving a pass to Trump and his fellow Republicans who have made overtly racist remarks. To a lesser extent, the disease of Islamophobia and misogyny also infects liberal sectors of society.
In Trump's universe, Omar is anti-Semitic, and by extension, so is her entire party. Since the outspoken, hijab-wearing, black Muslim immigrant symbolizes everything that his rabid base fears and despises, he has unsurprisingly decided to cast himself as a staunch defender of Jews, accusing the Democratic Party of becoming "an anti-Jewish party." It appears to be one of Trump and the GOP's latest tactics to manufacture a new reality that "Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party."
On Monday CNN's Jim Acosta reminded press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during a White House press briefing that Trump in 2017 said of the marchers in Charlottesville, Va., which included neo-Nazi and white supremacists, that there were "very fine people on both sides." To that, Sanders had the same sort of reality-defying reply Trump and Fox News have echoed: "That's not at all what the president was stating, not then, not at any point." She added, "The president has been incredibly clear and consistently and repeatedly condemned hatred, bigotry, racism in all of its forms whether in America or anywhere else and to say otherwise is simply untrue."
There is a pattern to these things. First the racists (Trump, Carlson, Sanders, Pirro) spew their hatred aloud. When confronted with their own words, they deny that reality, as in the case of Trump and Sanders, or they downplay the facts using innocuous words like "naughty," as Carlson has done. Finally, the racists declare that those making accusations of racism are themselves the real racists. In other words they are "gaslighting" the nation.
As the Urban Dictionary explains, "The classic example of gaslighting is to switch something around on someone that you know they're sure to notice, but then deny knowing anything about it, and to explain that they 'must be imagining things,' when they challenge these changes." It is a form of "psychological abuse."
The only bright spot from the past three years of Trump's gaslighting (and the many decades of Fox News's propaganda and racism) is that the anti-racist backlash against Trump and Trumpism has put racists on the defensive. Conservative haters are at least trying to proclaim they are not racist rather than digging in their heels, criticizing "political correctness" and maintaining their right to be hateful as they have often done in the past.
But more is needed. Trump and Fox News have brainwashed many Americans into believing that white nationalists are plotting mass domestic terrorist attacks--as was the case of Coast Guard Officer Christopher Hasson. Their words literally inspire violence.
A tactic that has worked well in the face of hateful rhetoric in the media is a pressure campaign against advertisers. This is exactly what a March 13 protest called "Drop Fox" was designed to do. Even in the lead-up to the protest, more than a dozen advertisers had already dropped their sponsorship. Gertz shared that "This is all happening at a very dangerous time for Fox News," and that Fox organized the meeting in March rather than in May--the more traditional time for ad buys--because of a "series of advertiser boycotts against their major hosts over a series of months." In their call to "Drop Fox," Media Matters and other organizations and activists are demanding cutting ties with the worst elements in American society.
That is not a big ask, but in Trump's America morality has been distorted and hate continues to have a place on television and in the White House--until the nation chooses another way.
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The Slandering of Ilhan Omar
"As if her words have anything to do with the rising white supremacy that actually endangers Jews."
Mar 05, 2019
Even though there is an actual member of Congress who has called himself "David Duke without the baggage" and the president peddles racist bigotry of all stripes, The Washington Post somehow found it journalistically appropriate on Monday to compare Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, to Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. Omar, a Democrat who has criticized the relationship between Israel and the United States, spoke out recently about "ending oppression, or the freeing of every human life and wanting dignity" in light of Israel's human rights abuses against Palestinians.
The piece was written by Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the far-right, Koch-funded Ethics and Public Policy Center, a think tank once led by Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump's Venezuela envoy. Omar questioned Abrams last month over his role in human rights abuses and his conviction for lying to Congress. As House Democrats prepare to take floor action Wednesday, supposedly to condemn anti-Semitism, it seems worth revisiting the details of the statement in question.
Last week, in a talk at a Washington, D.C., bookstore, Omar discussed her concern about Palestinians' human rights as well as the close U.S.-Israel relationship:
"I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country. I want to ask why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of the fossil fuel industries, of big pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobbying group that is influencing policy?"
Her statement was condemned by many to her right. Nathan Goldman wrote at The Baffler that "The claim that the statement was anti-Semitic rests upon the word 'allegiance,' which pundits have spent the past week torturing with dim-witted hermeneutics."
The other key word in Omar's phrase is "people." Those who are outraged seem confident that Omar was discussing Jews. Given the second sentence, though, it seems likely that she was discussing pro-Israel lobbyists and politicians, who often are not Jewish: none of the top five recipients of pro-Israel money during the 2018 election cycle are. New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez is Catholic; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is a Baptist; Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown is Lutheran; South Dakota Sen. Tammy Baldwin does not have a religious affiliation and Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke is Catholic. Juan Vargas, a Democratic congressman from California who tweeted that "questioning support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is unacceptable," is Catholic. There is a strong faction of evangelical Christians who believe that they, not Jews, hold claim to Jerusalem because of a religious prophecy about the apocalypse.
At the bookstore, Omar also discussed her experience as one of the first two Muslim members of Congress, along with Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib. "We get to be called names and we get to be labeled as hateful? No, we know what hate looks like. We experience it every single day."
No one can deny that Omar has endured a great deal of hateful Islamophobia. The FBI is investigating an event where someone wrote "Assassinate Ilhan Omar" in a gas station bathroom in Minnesota. A poster at the State Capitol in West Virginia falsely associated Omar with the 9/11 attacks.
At the same time, no one should deny the very palpable anti-Semitism that exists in the U.S. As Mehdi Hassan points out at The Intercept, Trump and members of the Republican Party have pushed conspiracy theories that Jews are power hungry and money obsessed. One man who bought into Trump's "globalist" hoax shot and killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and other House Democrats' resolution condemning anti-Semitism--offered in response to Omar's comments--mentions the massacre, which begs a question of intention that Goldman articulates at The Baffler:
After all, if concern with rising anti-Semitism was the true impetus for this House resolution, why wasn't it introduced much earlier? The resolution's brief history of American anti-Semitism culminates with the October 2018 attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue that left eleven Jews dead by the hand of a white supremacist. But why was the moment of this tragedy, which the text admits was "the deadliest attack on Jewish people in the United States," not the time to unite against anti-Semitism? It's particularly craven to allow this incident to sit side-by-side with an analysis of the dual loyalty canard in a condemnation of Omar, as if her words have anything to do with the rising white supremacy that actually endangers Jews.
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Public Rebuke of Ilhan Omar for Substantive Critique of Israeli Policy a 'Disgrace,' Say Progressives
"Instead of throwing her under the bus, Democratic leadership should have Rep. Omar's back in pushing back against increasingly dangerous attacks and threats from the far right."
Mar 04, 2019
A growing chorus of criticism from progressives across the country is targeting House Democrats who plan to publicly rebuke one of their own on Wednesday for talking about the influence of a powerful D.C. lobbying group.
On Wednesday, House leadership will introduce a resolution (pdf) to the floor calling out anti-Semitism in American life and politics. Though the resolution does not name Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the Congresswoman's recent comments questioning the ongoing influence and power of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) on U.S. politics were the impetus for the resolution, POLITICO reported on Monday.
Staffers for Pelosi and top Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), began drafting the resolution over the weekend as the confrontation between Omar and her colleagues unfolded on Twitter.
Progressive advocacy group CREDO expressed dissatisfaction with House leadership in a statement.
"Speaker Pelosi and Democratic leaders in the House need to stop attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar," wrote CREDO Action co-director Heidi Hess. "Rep. Omar's willingness to voice badly needed and substantive critiques about Israeli government policies and disturbing trends in American foreign policy has earned her public condemnation, slander, and even threats of physical violence."
"Instead of throwing her under the bus," Hess added, "Democratic leadership should have Rep. Omar's back in pushing back against increasingly dangerous attacks and threats from the far right."
Members of the House GOP, meanwhile, are pushing to strip Omar of her committee assignments and may introduce a resolution to that effect on Wednesday. Prominent House Republicans made the case for the move on Twitter.
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who once referred to himself as "David Duke without the baggage," expressed outrage over what he saw as Omar's continued "reward" of being on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The number three Republican in the House, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.), took to Twitter as well, calling a magazine cover featuring Omar alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) "disgraceful and immoral."
Omar's comments have been directed primarily at the power of AIPAC and subverting the longstanding conventional wisdom in Washington that it's career suicide to cross the lobbying group.
Both Republicans and Democrats have condemned the remarks by alleging Omar implied that American Jews have dual loyalty issues, an anti-Semitic trope. However, as journalist Glenn Greenwald and others pointed out, Omar said nothing of the sort, and criticisms of Israel and AIPAC are not inherently anti-Semitic.
Even moderates like The Atlantic writer Peter Beinart took issue with the attacks against the Congresswoman. Beinart pointed to the hypocrisy involved in pillorying Omar for criticizing AIPAC influence on U.S. politics while excusing Israel's ongoing lurch to the extreme right.
For its part, AIPAC is leaning into Omar's point about career suicide with veiled threats against the Minnesota representative. In an article Tuesday from The New York Times, AIPAC activist Stephen Fiske said that Omar and fellow freshman Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) "are three people who, in my opinion, will not be around in several years."
Those comments come in direct contradiction to AIPAC's earlier claims that the group doesn't have outsized power or influence, a point that was wryly noted on Twitter by Isaiah Breen, communications director for Jewish Community Action Minnesota.
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Steve King Stands for Everything MLK Fought Against
On this 90th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, let’s recommit to the eradication of racism and bigotry
Jan 16, 2019
If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive, he would have turned 90 years old on Tuesday. Instead, he was felled by an assassin's bullet that terrible day, April 4, 1968. After a long-fought struggle, his birthday was finally celebrated as a national holiday in 1986. Many states, from New Hampshire to South Carolina to Arizona and beyond, delayed implementing the holiday, exposing the intractability of institutional racism.
Another King was in the news on MLK Jr.'s birthday this week: Steve King, a racist Republican congressman from Iowa. This King added to his extensive record of racist comments by telling The New York Times last week, "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization - how did that language become offensive?" Commenting on the diversity of the new 116th Congress, he added, "You could look over there and think the Democratic Party is no country for white men." His remarks have sparked a backlash from his own party, which stripped him of his committee assignments. Some Republican members of Congress, along with many Democratic members, are calling on him to resign, as are the editorial boards of prominent Iowa newspapers.
The House of Representatives, under Democratic control, passed a resolution -- on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday -- rejecting "White nationalism and White supremacy as hateful expressions of intolerance." It mentioned Steve King's comments to The New York Times, but did not expressly condemn him or his words. The resolution passed by a vote of 424-1. Steve King himself voted for the resolution.
That sole "no" vote was from Illinois Democrat Bobby Rush, one of the most senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Rush was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil-rights struggles in the 1960s, and co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers in 1968. "This resolution just restates the obvious. It does not address Steve King's violent, vitriolic and rabid racism," Rush said. "This Democratic resolution is an insult to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. as we recognize his birthday," Rush continued. "We must proceed with a vote to censure him ... to punish him for his bigotry and racism."
As Steve King's political career is collapsing under the weight of his racism, President Donald Trump's silence about the Iowa congressman is deafening. When asked about Congressman King on the White House lawn this weekend, Trump, who is a notoriously voracious consumer of cable news, claimed: "I haven't been following it. I really haven't been following it." Trump's answer was reminiscent of his presidential campaign, when he disavowed knowledge of one of his endorsers, David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. "Just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, OK?" Trump told CNN's Jake Tapper. "I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists."
Trump has long supported Steve King. At a rally for King in West Des Moines in 2014, Trump described King as "a special guy, a smart person with really the right views on almost everything." In 2013, speaking about the immigrant youth known as Dreamers, King said, "For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another hundred out there who weigh a hundred and thirty pounds -- and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling seventy-five pounds of marijuana across the desert." When endorsing the candidacy of Geert Wilders, a white nationalist politician in the Netherlands, King tweeted, "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."
The racist words and deeds of Steve King, like those of one of his most powerful supporters, Donald Trump, stand in stark juxtaposition to the vision for which Martin Luther King Jr. struggled and died. On Nov. 11, 1959, Reverend King gave a speech at Iowa State University. "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable, he said. "Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward that goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."
On this 90th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, let's recommit to the eradication of racism and bigotry, whether in Iowa or in the White House.
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Who's Running John Bolton to Start a War With Iran? He Worried Even Mad Dog Mattis
Bolton has been agitating for a war on Iran for two decades
Jan 13, 2019
National Security Adviser John Bolton lied his face off when he told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on his recent Mideast junket that he was sure Iran's leaders are dedicated to acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons. Nuclear security expert Joe Cirincione shredded Bolton over his false assertion, which is contradicted by UN inspectors and US intelligence.
Bolton made sure to tell Netanyahu this so that Netanyahu could quote Bolton in his own fantasy-filled and inflammatory speeches urging an attack on Iran.
Some 8 years ago Netanyahu tried to attack Iran himself, but was stopped by his own intelligence officials and officer corps, who saw the step as a catastrophe. Former head of Mossad Meir Dagan publicly questioned Netanyahu's competency to govern in light of his looney fixation on attacking Iran, and I think by "competency" he meant 'sanity.'
Axios is reporting that former secretary of defense Jim Mattis was disturbed last September when N Bolton asked the Department of Defense for a contingent plan for an airstrike inside Iran.
The Wall Street Journal had reported that Bolton asked for the plan after a pro-Iran Shiite militia fired mortars into Baghdad's Green Zone, where the US embassy is located. The blast walls around the Green Zone have now been removed, but since the US invasion in 2003, it has been one of the few parts of the capital safe from car bombings. It has occasionally taken mortar fire. The mortars last September did not cause any deaths or destruction.
Mattis reportedly felt it would have been legitimate to strike back against the Iraqi militia inside Iraq, but unwise to initiate a cross-border conflict involving a state.
When Mattis first met Bolton, he joked that he had heard that he was "the Devil."
Ironically, when Mattis first met Bolton, he joked that he had heard that he was "the Devil." He appears to have been making fun of normal people concerned about Bolton's excesses. So then toward the end of his tenure Mattis found out that we weren't wrong about Bolton, and he had been foolish to be so insouciant.
American policy-makers' stalking of Iran is not because the country is powerful but because it is weak. They can't do anything about powerful countries like China or Russia, so they don't tangle with them militarily. Iran is an annoyance but is weak, and so a career might be made in DC as an Iran hawk. The whole policy fixation is bizarre. Iran does not have an air force worth mentioning and its military budget is on the same order as that of Singapore or Norway. It is not a militarily aggressive state, though it has taken advantage of the chaos caused by the US in Iraq and Syria and by Israel in Lebanon to extend its influence in the Fertile Crescent. But Iran's help was invited by Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut, not imposed from Tehran.
Americans are always complaining about Hizbullah, but it is a small self-defense force for Lebanese Shiites from Israeli aggression (the Israelis occupied Shiite territory in south Lebanon for two decades and are not known for giving things back without a fight after occupying them). Lebanon's citizen population is about 4 million and there are probably only 1.3 million Shiites in the country, and I doubt the community can field more that about 25,000 Hizbullah volunteer fighters. Iran does back Hizbullah, but to the extent that it has stopped any further Israeli attempts to annex parts of Lebanon, and has bolstered the beleaguered government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, it should be seen as a status quo rather than a radical force. Its major paramilitary engagements since 2013 have been against al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria. (Whether the rotten status quo should have been upheld is a different argument; but overturning it, as Hillary Clinton wanted to, would have been the radical act, not upholding it).
Trump may as well have appointed David Duke his national security adviser.
Trump picked up Bolton for the post of national security adviser from the Gatestone Institute, a known hate group dedicated to spreading disinformation about Muslims and Islam, which he chaired. Trump may as well have appointed David Duke his national security adviser.
Bolton has been agitating for a war on Iran for two decades. He is an attorney who helped George W. Bush steal the Florida election in 2000, and was rewarded by being made undersecretary of state Arms Control and International Security.
He used his office to help lie the US into the $6 trillion boondoggle of an Iraq War that destabilized the Middle East and led to the rise of ISIL.
While he served in that capacity he made up ridiculous stories like a Cuban-Iranian joint biological weapons program (Communists just love them some Anthrax Ayatollahs). He also managed to withdraw the US from having anything to do with the International Criminal Court. Bolton hates the international rule of law the way the devil hates holy water.
Bolton pioneered some of the typical Trump techniques of making stuff up and then trying to push policy on the basis of his dark fantasies.
Bush tried to shoehorn him in as ambassador to the United Nations but Congress would not confirm him because he is a horrible, angry person who viciously mistreated his aides and tries to fume at people around him until he can intimidate them into taking orders from him on the basis of his crackpot theories. He is another example of psychopathocracy.
Bolton has strong ties to and has taken a lot of money from the People's Jihadis or (MEK), an Iranian cult-like organization founded in the 1970s that mixes Marxism with Shiite Muslim fundamentalism. The group has at times been on the US State Department list of terrorist organizations and it certainly has engaged extensively in terrorism, i.e. has killed civilians for political purposes. It more deserves the appellation than does Lebanon's Hizbullah, which mainly had fought in self-defense or against al-Qaeda.
Bolton seems to be a disturbed person who, if he hadn't gotten into Yale, might well have ended up an inwardly seething lower middle class white guy, and who would have been open to the blandishments of white supremacist hate groups such as the Neo-Nazis.
The People's Jihadis are enormously well-funded but it is not clear where the group, which has no support inside Iran and mostly flourishes in the hothouse of expatriate coffeeshop plots in Paris and Los Angeles, gets its funding.
NBC at one point reported that US officials told it that Israeli intelligence, Mossad, funded the MEK.
More recently there have been allegations of Saudi funding for the People's Jihadis.
It is a measure of how putridly corrupt US politics is that politicians such as Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton have more or less been on the MEK payroll and therefore potentially in the back pocket of Israel's Likud Party and Saudi Arabia.
No wonder so few care that Trump might be a Russian mole. Apparently it is par for the course for our political leaders to be foreign moles.
Bolton seems to be a disturbed person who, if he hadn't gotten into Yale, might well have ended up an inwardly seething lower middle class white guy, and who would have been open to the blandishments of white supremacist hate groups such as the Neo-Nazis. As it is, he has the credentials and connections to parade as a normal person despite having actually run a hate group and having mysterious and deep links to a violent Iranian cult.
I'm not sure exactly what the Democratic House can do to forestall Bolton's peculiar Iranomania from plunging us into another generation of war and instability and bankruptcy. But they should do what they can to get the madman out of office.
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