It's time to close shop on the clown car metaphor for Republican Presidential candidates. I've enjoyed the joke as much as anyone, but the humor no longer works after the racist atrocity in Charleston. One of America's major political parties is stuffed full of moral cowards who give cover to the hard-core racists in their midst and it's no longer funny, no matter how extreme the freudian slip (Rick Perry calling it “an accident”), how twisted the comparison (Santorum and Jindal: an attack on Christians), or how absurd the conclusions (Huckabee wants even more guns).
Republicans have long used coded racism to gin up their voters, and by the time Barack Obama became our first black President, the foundation for the Republican strategy against him had already been laid: all Mitch McConnell and the rest had to do was deny his legitimacy and refuse to work with him. He was a secret Muslim. He wasn't born in America. He hated America. He wasn't a “real American”, he was a socialist. This last revived a 1960s right-wing political meme that blamed civil rights on communism. My Facebook Page filled up all kinds of coded hate aimed at President Obama during the 2012 election year, including a revival of that communist meme.
This political poster is only one example of what I got. Notice how it knits together communism, racism and fear of zombies. After a while I couldn't take it anymore and de-friended a whole bunch of former high-school classmates – I had already learned the hard way that arguing with bullies was a waste of time.
Come below the fold for a brief history of Republican racism and a breakdown of their reaction to the Charleston killings. Can you guess which three Republican Presidential candidates actually labeled it a racist act? Also, some reaction from America's hard-core white supremacists and why it matters what they think.
The racism of Dylann Storm Roof was borrowed from others. It is a virulent racism with roots deep into our history, a racism that motivates an indeterminate number of well armed white extremists of all types, folks who swim at the bottom of a big sea of ordinary racists, the sort who may join the Tea Party, belong to the Sons of Confederate Veterans or post Facebook hate messages about Barack Obama but aren't actually going to shoot anyone themselves. Republicans target this larger group of ordinary racists because they want their votes.
It was Richard Nixon that made the original deal with the devil that brought hard-core racists into his party. His Southern Strategy turned unreconstructed segregationists into Republicans. While directed at the South, it appealed to racists everywhere. Ronald Reagan sealed the pact with a 1980 speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi – my home State – praising States Rights in the very place where the Klan used states rights to justify the killing of three young Civil Rights workers. Reagan went on to win with the help of his “Welfare Queen” stories about lazy blacks. George H.W. Bush got the Presidency with the help of Lee Atwater and his dog whistle politics, speaking in codes that racists could hear but the press and general public didn't. Atwater later apologized for it on his deathbed, and even explained how it was done:
You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
I tracked Republican reaction in the immediate aftermath of the Dylann Storm Roof terrorist attack. It was a true eye of the storm moment. A horrific event had just occurred, but Republican strategists didn't yet know that Roof left a paper trail leading to their doorstep, identifying with the Confederate flag and Southern nationalism, and thanking the Council of Conservative Citizens for bringing his mad hatred to life. The CCC is a little known racist group with some direct ties to the Republican Party. They also descended from the White Citizens Councils that turned much of the South into apartheid police states during the 50s and 60s.
It was obvious to anyone with both brain cells and empathy that what happened in that church was both racist AND a terrorist attack. The clue? The assailant saying as he shot everyone, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go.” Perhaps it was a political crime as well since one of the victims, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was also a South Carolina State Senator. So why the denial from so many Republicans? It says something that most of them couldn't call it racism. It says something about the kind of voters they didn't want to offend, and it speaks to their lack of moral courage. So let's look at the reactions of some of the most prominent Republicans before the FBI uncovered Roof's blog and established his motive beyond any doubt.
Scott Walker and Marco Rubio joined the do as little as possible crowd, tweeting a prayer for victims and their families and that was that. I could find no reaction at all from Carly Fiorini, although perhaps she did courageously speak out and the press simply forgot to cover it.
The next level of denial was Jeb Bush throwing his hands in the air and saying we will never know what the killer was thinking:
I don't know what was on the mind or the heart of the man who committed these atrocious crimes.
This was the
same strategy used by the Governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley,:
We do know that we'll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another.
Bush later walked his comment back after being pressed by reporters (seems to be a pattern with him):
It's clear it was an act of raw hatred, for sure. Nine people lost their lives, and they were African-American. You can judge what it is.
Then there were those who pleaded insanity. Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and Bobby Jindal all chalked it up to a sick and deranged person. Rick Perry helpfully added that the killer was a drug user.
Fox News and Rick Santorum took a different tack, claiming it was violence against Christians. Santorum said this on Joe Piscopo's radio show in New York:
You just can't think that things like this could happen in America. It's obviously a crime of hate, we don't know the rationale, but what other rationale could there be? You're sort of lost that someone would walk into a Bible Study at a Church and indiscriminately kill people, other than its a crime of horrible hate and there's someone deeply wrong with this individual . . . we're now seeing assaults on religious liberty that we've never seen before. Its a time for deeper reflection, even beyond this terrible situation.
Mike Huckabee thought it was a great opportunity to sell more guns for the NRA and blamed the victims for not being armed.
This is what he told Fox News:
It sounds crass, but frankly the best way to stop a bad person with a gun is to have a good person with a weapon that is equal or superior to the one that he’s using.
Speaking to the Faith & Freedom Coalition, Chris Christie preached leadership and love while disagreeing with President Obama's call for Congressional action on guns.
This type of conduct is something that only our display of our own love and good faith that’s in our heart can change. Laws can't change this, only the good will and love of the American people can let those folks know that act is unacceptable, disgraceful, and we need to do more to show them we love each other. Open our chests, open our hearts, show love to each other. That’s what leadership is about, too.
So in Christie-world Dylann Roof suffered a lack of love. Probably true, but its still a bizarre point. I don't remember him offering that solution for ISIS and other Islamic terrorists, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Rand Paul
elaborated on the crazy man kills Christians theme while agreeing with Christie that government had no role to play in stopping this particular type of slaughter.
What kind of person goes in a church and shoots nine people? There’s a sickness in our country. There’s something terribly wrong. But it isn’t going to be fixed by your government. It’s people straying away, it’s people not understanding where salvation comes from.
Bobby Jindal and Donald Trump both attacked the President's call for gun control, while pretending to be uniters, not dividers.
In Bobby Jindal's words:
I think it was completely shameful, that within 24 hours of this awful tragedy, nine people killed at a bible study at a church, we have the president trying to score cheap political points. Let him have this debate next week. His job as commander in chief is to help the country begin the healing process. For whatever reason, he always tries to divide us.
Donald Trump playing statesman:
The tragic events that occurred on Wednesday evening should be our nation's primary focus for the foreseeable future. This is a time for healing, not politics.
When the Donald recently announced for President, he
hit a slightly different note:
Mexico is sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Rick Perry in contrast to Trump thought it was the time for politics. After the President said “this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries”, Perry
attacked:
This is the M.O. of this administration anytime there is a accident like this. You know, the president's clear. He doesn't like for Americans to have guns, and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message.
Charles Cotton, NRA Board Member, went even further,
blaming the murdered preacher & State Senator, for the deaths of his parishioners:
He voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.
South Carolina does have a concealed carry law, you just aren't allowed to carry hidden guns into a church without permission of the minister. Cotton – and Huckabee – apparently miss the irony of advocating a Christian gun & bible study, given that Jesus himself was against armed self-defense. He did say “those who live by the sword shall die by the sword”.
No wonder John Stewart is retiring, it's no longer possible to satirize these people.
There were three Republican candidates who had normal, human responses. Here's the exchange between John Kasich and a reporter:
Reporter: “Was the Charleston shooting racially motivated?”
Kasich: "You read what they said about the guy. It sure appears that way."
Kasich said this before the Dylann Storm Roof blog came out, so he apparently reads the news. George Pataki
was also direct:
There are no words to express our sadness and horror at the shooting in Charleston last night. While we are still learning the details of this senseless act, if early reports prove accurate, this hate crime is a particularly heinous form of violence. Hate crimes do more than threaten the safety and welfare of all citizens, they disrupt entire communities and cannot be tolerated by a civilized society.
Of course Kasich and Pataki together poll under 3% in the Republican Presidential primary, but still its nice to know there are some adults left in that party. Ben Carson, to my great surprise, said something significant and it was this:
. . .racial based hate is still very much alive as last night so violently reminded us. But I worry about a new hate that is growing in our great nation. I fear our intolerance of one another is the new battle ground of evil. ... The America I know and love has fought evil all over the world to protect evil's victims. At home we must dedicate ourselves to not hating anyone based on their politics. Our leaders have walked our country down this path and it is up to us to change course.
Best response of them all. Too bad he is the same guy who said Obamacare was the worst evil since slavery, which plays to the Obama is a communist/fascist memes of the far-right. Here's another anti-Obama poster I collected during the 2012 election.
When someone like Ben Carson says things like “Obamacare = slavery”, this poster represents the image that is created in the mind of an extreme right person. Add guns, paranoia and mental illness to the mix and you have a person that can kill.
In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security warned about what happened last week in Charleston. In a report on right wing extremism designed to alert law enforcement to the growing danger, DHS said, “the economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for right wing radicalization and recruitment. The report – called Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment – was attacked by many Republicans, claiming it was about them. Newt Gingrich tweeted:
The person who drafted the outrageous homeland security memo smearing veterans and conservatives should be fired.
Right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin
went ballistic, calling it an Obama DHS hit job on conservatives.
The “report” was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real . . . In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs . . and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.
These are only two examples. As a result of the Republican outrage, the report never got the national attention it should have. The real question we should be asking after Charleston is why are Republicans so hell bent on defending dangerous terrorists?
According to a count by Mother Jones in 2013 , right-wing terrorists have killed more Americans since 911 than have been killed by islamic terrorists. Their count had it at 17 dead at the hands of Islamic fanatics, 29 killed by right-wing fanatics. Of course the right-wing count is much higher now. So why were Breitbart News and conservatives upset by this? In my book, if you defend something, you own it. Republicans have been giving cover to right-wing extremists for years. They do it by quibbling over definitions (he wasn't right-wing, he was crazy) and attacking anyone who calls attention to the danger.
Its time to make Republicans own the problem. They are impeding law enforcement by attacking efforts to track and investigate right-wing terror.
We have a lot of armed and dangerous hate groups in America now. There are Nazis, white nationalists, racist skinheads, Ku Klux Klan, “sovereign citizen” anti-government fanatics, southern nationalists, Neo-secessionists, anti-immigration conspiracy nuts, and 2nd Amendment lunatics. And then there are the “lone wolfs” – like Dylann Roof – who may not be an actual member of a particular group, but thanks to the internet read their vile hatred and act on it. The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks them all and have tallied 784 different hate groups, scattered all across the country. I've been following right-wing terror for a long time (I grew up with it in Mississippi in the 60s) and sometimes I wish I knew less than I do.
But I think its crucial to stay informed about these things. Otherwise you don't think its such a big deal that Steve Scalise spoke to an international group of white supremacists back in 2002. Scalise is the third ranking Republican in the House and when news of his white supremacist connection recently broke, he was allowed to keep his job by fellow Republicans.
So I'm going to end this post by giving you some Stormfront reaction to the Charleston shooting. Stormfront is a website for nazis and white supremacists, both in the U.S. and world-wide. And these were the kind of people with whom Republican Steve Scalise found common cause. I refer to them by their posting handles.
Huginn ok Muninn represents a common thread on Stormfront, looking at how such an attack will reflect on the extreme-right. (Reminds me of Michelle Malkin). But he at least feels bad about the murders:
Condolences to the families of the dead. A church full of christian black people is most likely NOT our enemy. This was not only senseless, it can and will be used as propaganda fodder. All the "evil racist" whiteys and the second amendment will be under full bore attack.
Race war is a constant theme within white supremacist circles. WhiteisRight88 wrote this before Dylann Roof was caught. He was still hoping the shooter was black, but was hedging his bets:
If this does turn out to be a white person, there is most certainly going to be a race war in this country.
Geboren Weiss thinks he is the victim:
One White person goes around shooting Blacks and suddenly all the talk about White privilege and supremacy come out of the woodwork. Reverse the rolls [sic] and this story wouldn't even be a thing.
silent pride says out loud what most of them are thinking:
This could be viewed as a distasteful act but it could be part of the recent White resistance taking place. Of course shooting up a church isn't the way what i mean is more and more Whites are speaking up and fighting back. There are more young White grounds and more videos showing young Whites fighting back. While i wouldn't support this i would like to point that out. Whites will continue to show their anger more and more, things aren't going to be pretty.
And when you read this by MattwhiteAmerica, remember what Dylann Roof said about blacks raping whites before he murdered nine gentle souls:
But, hey, Blacks can kill, rape and destroy and somehow it supposedly brings up nothing about them. It is true that blacks rape our woman and kill twice as many whites every year. ** like this and black violence is what whites see as hypocrisy that makes us very angry.
Right wing extremist terror isn't going away in America, not without concerted effort by both of our major political parties. It's up to the Republicans to clean their house. And its up to the rest of us to make sure they do.