Posted on 04/29/2014 10:27:36 AM PDT by DanMiller
Politicians and the media lead the way in yelling "RACISM" to help discredit positions to which no racial matters are pertinent.
The United States of Obama and "racism"
"Racist" has become an all-purpose word for damning any viewpoint with which libruls disagree. Perhaps some yell "racism" merely to purify their souls of their own sins of racism by casting stones at lesser beings. However, they often do so, as urged by Saul Alinsky, because they cannot successfully attack a position factually or otherwise substantively. It matters little, if at all, that the characterization is disingenuous through omission.
Alinsky asserts that in charging that so-and-so is a racist bastard and then diluting this with qualifying remarks such as He is a good churchgoing man, generous to charity, and a good husband, one convicts oneself of political idiocy (134). The winning strategy is to pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. [Emphasis added.]
Since few enjoy being characterized as "racist," this tactic can be very effective and force the victim to try to prove a negative and to be politically correct thereafter. No matter what he may say or do, the characterization tarnishes the victim.
That Alinsky tactic was used against George Zimmerman during a pre-trial media assault dedicated to showing that Mr. Zimmerman was a racist. This recorded conversation between Mr. Zimmerman and a police dispatcher was edited and widely broadcast to delete the words shown below in bold face type:
"Zimmerman: This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.Dispatcher: OK and this guy - is he white, black or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black." [Emphasis added.]
Here's how it was broadcast to make Mr. Zimmerman seem to be a racist:
"Zimmerman: There is a real suspicious guy. Ah, this guy looks like he is up to no good or he is on drugs or something. He looks black."
In similar fashion, Cliven Bundy's remarks were made to appear racist by editing them to delete words suggesting that he is not racist. Might the reason have been, as I think it was, to divert attention from the heavy-handed actions of the Bureau of Land Management and Senator Reid's involvement in the mess?
Here's the best summary of the problem and its ramifications I have seen thus far.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stbf9GcVQ3E]
After all the lapdog media attention about Bundy the racist and that 3 minute video that the excuse for a news media cherry picked to pull out what they felt were racist comments, things seem to have quieted downfor now. Rest assured its not all over. I just have one question for the media. Seeing that the video they pulled comments from was only a little over 3 minutes long, if they really wanted to give us the full news, why couldnt they just have aired the entire video so people would really have known what Mr. Bundy said and the context in which he said it. You all know the answer to that one as well as I do. There would have been no racist angle for them to play off if they did that, and, after all, I guess they were just doing what they are paid to domake the establishments opponents look bad. I just wish people would quit calling them the news media because they arent anymore about real news than the Easter Bunny. [Emphasis added.]
Few seem to be aware of the unexpurgated text posted at The Last Refuge on April 24th because the "legitimate" media have not addressed his unedited remarks significantly. I have found no librul analysis of his comments discussing the deleted portions and attempting to explain why, in context, the previously reported portions must (or must not) still be considered racist and even outrageously so. Here's the unexpurgated video from the same source as the text showing Mr. Bundy making his remarks.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agXns-W60MI]
This week, everyone went bonkers about Cliven Bundy, calling him a racist. Let me be very clear, I found much of what he said offensive and to a degree, rather ignorant. Is he a racist? Heck, I dont know. I dont know the man and Im not going to castigate him based on a single statement regardless of how poorly expressed it was.
Were Mr. Bundy's remarks ignorantly expressed, old fashioned and therefore not politically correct? Certainly. However, haven't Black conservatives -- for example Allen West and Benjamin Carson -- said substantially the same things as did Mr. Bundy, just more artfully?
Did Mr. Bundy's remarks about the Democrat dependency plantation demonstrate that he considers Blacks inferior, or that he hates them? Do these by Allen West?
They no longer wear hoods and carry torches, but instead don designer clothing and attend swanky cocktail parties.
The objective is still the same: fear, intimidation, and coercion to punish those who have escaped or seek to escape the Democrat plantation. Years ago it was physical, now it is metaphysical and more so emotional, yet the desired end state is the same: personal destruction and character assassination, which is a different form of death. The plantation today is an economic one and the crop yielded is not agricultural but electoral votes and political power. [Emphasis added.]
Mr. Bundy's comments, like those of Allen west, show concern for the treatment of Blacks by a society which, for political gain, diminishes their freedom through dependency.
I am a few years older than Mr. Bundy and once knew actual racists. They deemed all Blacks to be inferior to members of other races; some hated Blacks. Mr. Bundy did not say anything even approaching the evident librul belief that Blacks are inferior, and on that basis, that it racist not to want to dole out welfare as if they were less capable of taking care of themselves than are members of other races. Is the librul position the "bigotry of low expectations?"
Here's a video of remarks by Judge Jeanie, who characterized Mr. Bundy's comments as "outrageous" before moving -- unlike most in the media -- on to matters of substance concerning Senator Reid and the dispute with the Bureau of Land Management:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trjJg_Up8xM]
Perhaps Judge Jeanie was not aware of the unexpurgated text or video posted at The Last Refuge on April 24th.
Victor Davis Hanson did much the same as Judge Jeanie in characterizing Mr. Bundy's remarks as "racist rantings." A rant is "a bombastic extravagant speech." Mr. Bundy's comments were not a rant. Here's an actual rant by Senator Obama's long term spiritual adviser until shortly after He sought to become the President "of all the people:"
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix-AMYos0Js]
Perhaps The Reverend Mr. Wright's racist rant can be excused as reflecting views from a different and best forgotten era -- just as Mr. Bundy's non-racist, non-rant cannot be. Different standards for different people? Why does President Lyndon Johnson generally escape librul criticism for his racist remarks?
According to Allen West,
I give no homage to President Lyndon Johnson because his ulterior motive was to establish a dependency, a welfare nanny-state mentality within the black community. As I have said, that is a form of insidious slavery that destroys the will, determination, and drive of the individual, and we see the results in the inner cities, especially the black community.
To his credit, Victor Davis Hanson, like Judge Jeanie, moved on from silliness to the substance of Mr. Bundy's dispute with the Bureau of Land Management. VDH also dealt briefly with actual racists.
[W]hat is disappointing are Bundys former supporters who now feel betrayed and shocked by Bundys racist rantings, and thus also quickly seek to distance themselves from the issues he raised without recognition that the matter was never the sayings of Cliven Bundy, but a disappearing cowboys dispute over grazing rights against a federal government intent on destroying his livelihood over the pretense of a tortoise in a way not commensurate with its other applications of law enforcement. [Emphasis added.]
And his critics? Most make the usual necessary ideological adjustments. Al Sharpton former FBI informant, provocateur of lethal rioting, homophobe, anti-Semite, character assassin, deadbeat tax delinquent is not shunned, although his bigotry is central to his career, but rather embraced by Hillary Clinton and given his own MSNBC show. The NAACP is slated in May to recognize Sharpton with a Person of the Year award and had planned to give Donald Sterling a Lifetime Achievement Award. When public servants in positions of vast power like the attorney general reference blacks as my people or a Supreme Court justice spouts off neo-eugenicist riffs, they must be contextualized and explained as off-the-cuff musings not comparable to the felonious biases of an obscure private cowboy on the Nevada range. [Emphasis added.]
Spare us the bottled piety. [Emphasis added.]
It seems as though libruls believe that all Blacks should support librul causes by being Democrats.
As a black man active in Republican politics, I find it noteworthy that I never feel excluded or stigmatized by other Republicans on account of my race. Race never comes up at a Tea Party meeting, or a Republican political convention, or when socializing with my conservative and libertarian cohort. On the contrary, all my encounters with race-obsessed individuals have been with self-professed liberals who treat me like a freak show exhibit. [Emphasis added.]
Leftists demand an explanation for my politics. How is it possible that a black man could be a Tea Partier? How is it possible that a black man could vote Republican? Whats wrong? Whats the angle? What secret deficiency or corruption explains this oddity? The curiosity is racist in and of itself, because it proceeds from an assumption about how people like me ought to think.
Then I see the vile treatment of personages like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In the wake of the courts recent verdict upholding Michigan voters choice to ban state-mandated racial discrimination (euphemistically called affirmative action), Thomas became the target of viciously racist comments from supporters of progressive policy.
Libruls also appear to believe that all poor Blacks should be good, perpetually poor little Democrats and remain on the Democrat plantation. Perceptions that all Blacks are, or at least should be and do, the same are not considered racist when held by libruls.
Britain, the European Union and "racism"
The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and its leader Nigel Farage have got themselves in a spot of bother over the past few days over some WAYCIST campaign posters.You see, UKIP is fielding candidates in next months elections for the European Parliament. Based on the latest polling results, Mr. Farage and his party can expect to do extremely well in those elections. The Powers That Be are alarmed at that possibility, and have reacted accordingly: Nigel Farage is a racist! I mean, anyone who thinks the job of Her Majestys government is to act in the interests of the British people must be a racist, mustnt he?
In the following media interview, Mr. Farage is frequently characterized as "racist" and asked to explain in what respects he is not.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd5zP_-P8EE]
The tactic seems not to be working very well. Despite such efforts to defame it, the Anti EU party is first place in the UK heading into the EU parliamentary elections to be held on May 22nd.
"Racism," Islam and freedom of speech in Britain.
Paul Weston, a Liberty GB candidate, was recently arrested for a Racially Aggravated Crime when he read, in public, from a tract by Winston Churchill on the perils of Islam facing western society. This is the Churchill statement that Mr. Weston read in public:
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property either as a child, a wife, or a concubine must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.
Politically incorrect and old fashioned but substantially accurate? Yes; not unlike Mr. Bundy's comments.
spent several hours in a cell at Winchester Police Station, after which the original charge of breaching a Section 27 Dispersal Notice was dropped and Mr Weston was "re-arrested" for a Racially Aggravated Crime, under Section 4 of the Public Order Act, which carries a potential prison sentence of 2 years. [Emphasis added.]
I had not been aware that Islam is a race; it is a political religion to which there are adherents of many races.
Racism is vile and should be called out for what it is, not for what it isn't. Disparaging speech as "racist" for no better reasons than that the speaker is uppity in opposing governmental actions that hurt him and his family, or that his remarks may be politically incorrect, old fashioned or even seen by some as offensive or condescending, diverts attention from actual racism elsewhere. It also seeks to impose increasingly politically correct ideas about the wickedness of free of speech. As that happens with ever greater frequency, our rights, willingness and abilities to speak freely are diminished.
whatever happened to GZ’s lawsuit against the media?
Racism. Why does it really matter? Who really cares?? The US is going down the tubes and it seems that the country is worrying about what a private citizen said in a private conversation.
We’re having a “fiesta” of baseless charges.
It hasn’t been emphasized enough that this racist guy nonetheless owned a team in a sport in which blacks dominate, and he even hired a black coach. So - and this is NOT to make excuses for the guy - is America such a horribly racist place when even a bigot hires black people?
When did this become the most important thing in American life?
There was a reason why the NYTimes edited Cliven Bundy’s words in the first place. There was no real there, there.
Then some folks say they read the unedited version later, and claimed it was still racist. But these folks had already formed their opinion after their initial knee-jerk reaction. It was simply too late for them to be open minded at that point (assuming they were ever open minded in the first place).
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