Yesterday I had the temerity, the gall, the (dare I say it?) chutzpah to point out that for the past five months, every single elected Republican in Congress was a white Christian.
The Nazis are not pleased. Frankly, I have never been a favorite of theirs, but now they are really pissed off.
The “white nationalists” congregate at an online watering hole called Stormfront.org. The home page, in Fraktur font (look it up), proudly boast that “Every Month is White History Month”. Stormfront.org is famous for, among other things, trying to dictate the results of a Fox News online poll on racial segregation, because it takes one to know one, or something like that.
Lest you think that this is a non-serious matter, please be advised that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Stormfront members have murdered almost 100 people during the past five years alone. No Members of Congress yet, though.
So yesterday at Stormfront, under the heading “News,” subheading “Politics & Continuing Crises,” there popped up a report called “Jew revealed: Florida Rep. Alan Grayson attacks GOP as the party of white Christians.”
The writer explained his sad tale: “I tried to unsubscribe before[,] yet this Jew keeps sending me his lunatic Europhobic and anti-Christian rant that reeks of atavistic hatred.” [Note to neo-Nazis: Punctuation has a purpose. Use it properly.]
Talk about “atavistic hatred.” He didn’t call me a schweinhund. But he wanted to. I could tell.
The author’s signature line asserts that the “U.S. was founded as an exclusive Anglo-Saxon nation, according to Founding Fathers’ preference.” He overlooks more than 600,000 slaves, who made up 42% of the population of South Carolina, 39% of the population of Virginia, 35% of the population of Georgia and 32% of the population of … Maryland. Not to mention leftover colonists from France, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden. And the “Injuns,” too.
Someone else posted my missive as a picture file, with the file name “jew white hate.”
I feel constrained to mention that I did not actually “attack” the GOP for being the party of White Christians. I simply observed that for the past five months, every single elected GOP Member of Congress (all 250+ of them) has been a White Christian. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Let’s see: 27% of all Americans are black, mixed race or Asian. 24% do not identify themselves as Christians. Let’s suppose that half of all Americans are white, self-identified Christians, and half are not. What are the chances that 250 of the white Christians just randomly would end up as the Republicans in Congress, and 0 of the others?
Answer: 0.28 percent. There is a 0.28% chance that it’s all just a terrible misunderstanding. And a 99.72% chance that it’s not.
Listen, Nazis: Achtung! The leitmotif of the GOP is not simply that when it comes to choosing GOP kommandants, all others are told Raus! It’s that the GOP says ja! – nein,Wonderbar! – to every bigoted policy that comes down the autobahn. Blocking immigration reform: Ja! Gutting affirmative action: Ja! Suppressing the vote: Ja! Denying a woman’s right to choose: Ja! Denying the pink triangles the right to get married: Ja!
Am I attacking the GOP tribe for all of that? Ja. Because that creates a weltschmerz that I loathe.
There are two planks in the GOP’s platform today. One is hatred. The other is fear. As I listen to their “debate” on the Floor of the House each day, I think of Rodney King’s very pertinent question: “Can we all get along?”
Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson
“When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.”
- Martin Niemoller (1946).