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GOP Talking Heads Try to Score Political Points by Stoking Resentment About Accusations of Racism
Biden condemned white supremacy, so why are some Republicans disingenuously describing it as an attack on the entire GOP? I would like to assume that most Americans in both parties oppose hate groups and violence.
Jan 29, 2021
President Biden recently became the first president to condemn white supremacy by name in an inaugural address. Then some Republicans got mad because, they say, it's an attack on them.
He's "calling us racists," Rand Paul complained. "According to the left, supporting border security and celebrating July 4 could make you a white supremacist," Tucker Carlson claimed. "I was offended" by "the racism thing," Karl Rove added.
These complaints are disingenuous.
First, consider President Biden's exact words. After alluding to the racial justice protests over the summer, Biden turned to warn of "a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat."
It seems clear that Biden was referring to the people who recently attempted a coup at the U.S. Capitol, where the presence of white supremacists has been well documented.
"Members of Several Well-Known Hate Groups Identified at Capitol Riot," read a ProPublica headline. A New York Times headline offered help "Decoding the Hate Symbols Seen at the Capitol Insurrection."
Biden was not talking about rank-and-file Republicans who voted for Trump but are not members of hate groups. That's not at all consistent with his message of unity. These talking heads are just stoking outrage among Republicans to gain cheap political points.
However, I think this issue is worth breaking down a little more.
Historically, racists almost never see themselves as racists. And actual racists often hide their racism to attract more followers to their cause.
For example, former Klan leader David Duke once explicitly said that he was moving from a message of hating non-white people to a message of love and pride for white heritage in order to attract more followers. He combined this tactic with accusations of "reverse racism" to anyone who disagreed with him.
Racism rebranded to sound less racist in order to recruit more racists is still racism.
In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon introduced the "Southern strategy" to bring white Southerners and others upset by Democrats embracing civil rights legislation over to the Republican Party. However, because it was no longer publicly acceptable to openly espouse racism, they employed "racial dog whistles."
"By 1968 you can't say [the N-word]--that hurts you, backfires," Republican strategist Lee Atwater later explained. "So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff.... Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a by-product of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites."
Today, alt-right personality Jordan Peterson takes an even trickier approach. He says he is in favor of individual autonomy. Where's the bigotry in that?
"The collective doesn't suffer," he says. "Individuals suffer." Therefore the only type of injustice that is wrong is injustice perpetrated against individuals, not entire groups. Peterson is essentially arguing that the very thing Atwater described--policies that benefit white people over other groups, or hurt people of color disproportionately--is fine.
Republicans' response to Biden appears to be a newer tactic: stoking resentment about the mere accusation of racism.
Paul, Rove, and Carlson all know the difference between a Trump voter who opposes abortion and wants tax cuts and coup plotters with white supremacist tattoos. But they're telling Republicans that Biden's condemnation of the latter group meant the entire Republican Party.
Meanwhile, someone put two pipe bombs in the U.S. Capitol. I would like to assume that most Americans in both parties oppose hate groups and violence. Working against both could be an easy bipartisan win when we agree on little else.
To do that, we'll need a lot less resentment theater.
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Corporate Media Turns to Warhawks, Including Former Bush Officials, to Beat Drums of War on Iran
"Nothing's been learned from 2003. Nothing."
Jan 02, 2020
Trump critics and peace advocates watched in horror Thursday night and Friday morning as some of the top architects of the Iraq War took to the corporate media to spin a narrative aimed at retroactively convincing Americans that the killing of Iranian military official Qasem Soleimani was essential to the safety of the U.S.--a replica of the run-up to the Iraq War nearly two decades ago.
Following reports that President Donald Trump ordered the airstrike that killed Soleimani, the major general of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, former George W. Bush administration officials were among those who media outlets called on to make a case for the act.
"CNN is allowing a parade of Republican lawmakers to go on air and cheerlead for war with Iran, and barely bothering to ask any of them how the U.S. keeps the region safe or what the plan is. We've learned much less since 2003 than we should have."
--Matthew Chapman, Raw StoryFormer White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer suggested, as conservatives did in 2003 regarding Iraqi civilians, that Iranians would likely celebrate the killing of Soleimani--presuming to speak for demonstrators who have decried economic hardships in the face of U.S. sanctions and government mismanagement in recent weeks.
"The Iranian people have been leading a revolution, a rebellion against their government, knowing what a dictatorship it is," Fleischer told Fox News. "So I think it is entirely possible this is going to be a catalyst inside Iran where the people celebrate the killing of Soleimani."
Journalist Judd Legum wrote that Fox is "getting the band back together" as right-wingers rework their 2003 claims to apply to Iran, joined by Trump administration officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo appeared on CNN Friday to claim that Iranian civilians "will view the American action last night as giving them freedom"--even as thousands of people took to the streets in Tehran and other cities in Iran to protest the Trump administration's actions.
A number of observers denounced cable news networks for offering a platform to pro-war extremists while ignoring the voices of peace advocates and critics.
"Former Bush appointees who thought the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a good idea?" tweeted journalism professor and Guardian columnist Christian Christensen. "Maybe not be the most objective commentators on US interests in the region."
\u201cWhat international news consumers do NOT need right now are guys who ran the US neo-colonial disaster in Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands being interviewed as \u201cexperts\u201d on the region. #Iran #Iraq\u201d— Christian Christensen (@Christian Christensen) 1578023049
\u201cCNN is allowing a parade of Republican lawmakers to go on air and cheerlead for war with Iran, and barely bothering to ask any of them how the U.S. keeps the region safe or what the plan is.\n\nWe've learned much less since 2003 than we should have.\u201d— Matthew Chapman (@Matthew Chapman) 1578062544
\u201cI don\u2019t mean to be alarming and I haven\u2019t been briefed but Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove are on TV and that alone makes me think no one has thought this through.\u201d— Brian Schatz (@Brian Schatz) 1578021908
"It's War Inc. all over again," wrote Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation. "No voices calling for peace. No voices critical of empire. Just establishment media and current and former Pentagon officials who feed off the trillion-dollar war machine."
\u201cThe MSM is failing the test of this moment at warp speed. Nothing\u2019s been learned from 2003. Nothing.\u201d— Dave Zirin (@Dave Zirin) 1578022989
News networks demonstrated their eagerness to present an uncritical view of the Trump administration's reasoning for the airstrike, which came days after the president, without evidence, accused Iran of orchestrating an attack at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
CNBC's declaration that the U.S. had "just [taken] out the world's number one bad guy" was condemned as "journalistic malpractice" by writer Kelsey Atherton.
\u201cThis is journalistic malpractice, a naked and unquestioning endorsement of military escalation that obliterates context or understanding. It would make more sense in a Verhoeven satire than the real world, but here we are, in hell.\u201d— Kelsey D. Atherton (@Kelsey D. Atherton) 1578029385
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch wrote about the contrast between the Trump administration's sudden escalation in Iran and the run-up to George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of iraq--prior to which the president, his top advisers, and other conservative commentators spent more than a year insisting the U.S. military should defeat Saddam Hussein.
Trump ordered the airstrike that killed Soleimani before "99 percent" of Americans had even heard of the official, wrote Bunch.
"Within minutes, the same people who brought us the endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere suddenly showed up on TV to declare [Soleimani] was the worst person in the world," he tweeted.
\u201c3. I can't tell you how many times I've read in the last 10 hours that "Suleimani is behind the deaths of hundreds of Americans." Not once has anyone, at least on TV, said any specifics of who or how, let alone explain how either the U.S. and the world is safer with him gone.\u201d— Will Bunch (@Will Bunch) 1578054851
"Where is the speech to the American people that lays out to the everyday citizen 1) who was Soleimani 2) what are his crimes against the U.S. 3) how does killing him make us safer 4) what is our plan for the messy aftermath?" Bunch asked, calling the administration's unilateral move without lawmakers' knowledge--much less congressional approval--"imperialistic and authoritarian."
\u201c8. That's not democracy. It's not what the United States of America was supposed to be. It's imperialistic and authoritarian -- an autocratic ruler quite possibly starting a regional war without the informed consent of the people\u201d— Will Bunch (@Will Bunch) 1578054851
Filmmaker and activist Michael Moore added that with a steady stream of commentary from Fleischer, Rove, Pompeo, and other conservatives clamoring to move ahead with war in Iran, Americans will be "trained to hate" Soleimani by the end of the week--even if they had never heard of him before Thursday night.
\u201cHello fellow Americans. Do you know this man? Did you know he was your enemy? What? Never heard of him? By the end of today you will be trained to hate him. You will be glad Trump had him assassinated. You will do as you are told. Get ready to send your sons &daughters off 2 war\u201d— Michael Moore (@Michael Moore) 1578056888
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With Supreme Court Decision on Dark Money "We're About to Know a Lot More About Who Is Funding Our Elections"
"We are about to drive a lot of dark money donors into the light—it's gonna look like the climax of a Harry Potter movie where the creatures shrivel in the sun."
Sep 19, 2018
In a win for increased transparency and those demanding an end to the so-called "dark money" eating away at U.S. democracy, the Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a previous stay on a lower court ruling by rejecting the argument by right-wing advocacy groups who said they should not have to reveal the identity of big-dollar donors who fund their issue-based campaign ads.
Crucially, the ruling means that groups that in the past have been able to hide the source of their funding before, during, and after campaigns will have now have to make that information available before voters go to the polls--in this case, that means before the upcoming mid-term elections. Effective immediately, any group or individual making more than $250 in express advocacy ads -- ads that tell viewers who to vote for or against -- must now disclose the identities of all contributors who gave more than $200 in a year.
As the Huffington Post reports:
The decision came about after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group, fought for the past six years to get the Federal Election Commission to enforce campaign finance laws against Crossroads GPS, a conservative nonprofit group founded by Karl Rove, a senior adviser to George W. Bush when he was president. CREW finally won its battle on Tuesday.
As of Sept. 18, any group that runs an independent expenditure -- election ads that expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate -- in excess of $250 will have to disclose all political donors above $200.
Norm Eisen, the chairperson of CREW, celebrated the decision on Twitter: "We are about to drive a lot of dark money donors into the light--it's gonna look like the climax of a Harry Potter movie where the creatures shrivel in the sun."
Writing for the Center for Public Integrity, Dave Levinthal and Sarah Kleiner report that "secret money in politics will soon be a lot less secret."
And while Levinthal and Kleiner quoted Federal Election Commission Vice Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, who said it won't be surprising to see some groups "come up with clever ways of getting around the rules," champions of disclosure said the ruling is a major crack in the armor of the forces of those using shadowing groups and their vast fortunes to undermine democracy.
"This is a great day for transparency and democracy," said Noah Bookbinder, CREW's executive director. "Three courts, including the Supreme Court, have now rejected Crossroads' arguments for a stay, meaning we're about to know a lot more about who is funding our elections."
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