An intriguing historical presentation by Ian Haney López | January 13, 2014
Demos' new Senior Fellow Ian Haney López offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests.
Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and aggressively curtail social services.
White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives.
The tactic continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care reform.
On related news and topics:
@ minute 9:30
”..coded racial appeal could convince people to vote against the New Deal “liberalism“ “
What is incredibly incongruous — the way it hit me — is that the people of the Southern states once loved the New Deal and all it did to lift many from poverty into the middle class until the massive mind poisoning by the “conservative” became foundational to the plutocrats. Nothing but the outer dressing has changed since, and not all that much except for the worse
The good new is…
by Katrina vanden Heuvel | September 24, 2014 |full article @ WaPo
Don’t despair that a stalwart New Deal liberal is retiring; celebrate the arrival of a new generation of populist movements and the ascendant wing of the Democratic Party.
by Katrina vanden Heuvel | January 26, 2016 | full article @ WaPo
Sanders’s message is clear: Trust yourself. Come together, take back the country and make this nation better.
— [w/ Senator Bernie Sanders video @ link]
After reading Katrina Vanden Heuval’s take on it and listening to the account by Ian Haney López it became crystal clear that nothing I’ve posted here is new, especially to DK folk, and that is what’s got me puzzled. How can a tiny minority of enormously wealthy plutocrats pull this off? For decade after decade. The same gambit(s). The same con job.
What is not a mystery is that all these decades, trying the same thing to combat this worsening trend, with the wealth gap widening and income disparity off the charts; civil rights weakening for women, voting rights under constant attack and diminishing; racial divisions widening; Climate change denialism upon us; rising poverty; austerity; war; Citizens United undoing campaign finance laws opening the floodgates for plutocrats to dominate democracy and on and on..; iow’s most everything the Lewis Powell memorandum/ blueprint spelled out to undo the New Deal and democracy as we know it remains intact.
Every bad outcome, every malignant trend, every degradation whether it is of the environment, civil rights, or just something as simple yet profoundly important as the “general welfare” of the people in this nation which is under attack, is a part of that plutocratic “blueprint” labeled”conservatism”
Something has got to change — Thanks for hearing me out. Hope that Ian Haney López video made as much of an impact as it did for me and was 18 minutes of time well spent