All Things American Xenophobia & White Supremacy

[pnwguy]

For those who haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend the latest Ken Burns film on PBS’s website. You will understand the current relevance. I have watched the first two episodes and will watch the last one this weekend. They flesh out a lot of history I knew of but not in such detail. Burn's documentaries are always superbly done.

[LFC]

Tommy Tuberville is a racist piece of shit. He's also the bonehead who couldn't name the 3 branches of government but thought he was qualified to be a U.S. Senator. This is WAY past dog whistles. All he needs is a burning cross.

[LFC]

I wonder what their reaction would have been if their kids were the subjects of racist slurs. I'm sure they'd melt down.

Two members of the Los Angeles City Council and a union leader released apology statements Sunday after a report published by the Los Angeles Times included transcribed leaked audio of offensive and racist remarks that were made during a private meeting. A third council member claimed to have no recollection of the conversation.

In the leaked audio, which was summarized by the Times but was originally posted to Reddit and remains readily available on social media, Council President Nury Martinez can be heard making derisive and racist comments about the child of Mike Bonin, the council member representing the 11th District.

Bonin, who is white, has an adopted son who is Black. In the leaked audio, Martinez can be heard describing Bonin’s son as “ese changuito,” or that little monkey, according to the Times. At one point, Martinez also refers to Bonin as a “little bitch.”

The comments were made during a discussion regarding Bonin and his son participating in a Martin Luther King Jr. parade several years ago. Bonin and his son were on a float with other members of the Los Angeles political scene, and Martinez apparently was dissatisfied with the boy’s behavior, saying he nearly tipped the float over. She can also be heard accusing Bonin of raising the child like a “little white kid.”

[goldenvalley]

Oct 10, 2022 18:51:33 GMT LFC said:

I wonder what their reaction would have been if their kids were the subjects of racist slurs. I'm sure they'd melt down.

Two members of the Los Angeles City Council and a union leader released apology statements Sunday after a report published by the Los Angeles Times included transcribed leaked audio of offensive and racist remarks that were made during a private meeting. A third council member claimed to have no recollection of the conversation.

In the leaked audio, which was summarized by the Times but was originally posted to Reddit and remains readily available on social media, Council President Nury Martinez can be heard making derisive and racist comments about the child of Mike Bonin, the council member representing the 11th District.

Bonin, who is white, has an adopted son who is Black. In the leaked audio, Martinez can be heard describing Bonin’s son as “ese changuito,” or that little monkey, according to the Times. At one point, Martinez also refers to Bonin as a “little bitch.”

The comments were made during a discussion regarding Bonin and his son participating in a Martin Luther King Jr. parade several years ago. Bonin and his son were on a float with other members of the Los Angeles political scene, and Martinez apparently was dissatisfied with the boy’s behavior, saying he nearly tipped the float over. She can also be heard accusing Bonin of raising the child like a “little white kid.”

Really stunning...and incidentally, a good reason why the city council should not be drawing its own district lines. But that's separate from the racism exhibited here.  

[pnwguy]

A summary of the authoritarian movements here and in Hungary.  No surprise that Rod Dreher is interviewed, around the 16 minute mark.

[AnBr]

I could only make it through about 40 seconds of his interview before I had to kill it. What a sleaze bag he has become.

[indy]

It's interesting that the people who are totally against doing anything with government that is practical to help other people also seem to be the ones who are all for using it to do something to stop the cultural shifts that are basically impossible to do. It's no wonder they see government as useless...it literally can't do what they want while doing things it can but that they don't.

[LFC]

Oct 11, 2022 15:15:08 GMT pnwguy said:

A summary of the authoritarian movements here and in Hungary.  No surprise that Rod Dreher is interviewed, around the 16 minute mark.

This is just scary. Not shocking, but it puts just how dedicated the anti-democracy movement is in this country and the Republican Party has embraced it with all fours.

[pnwguy]

Oct 12, 2022 14:50:13 GMT LFC said:

Oct 11, 2022 15:15:08 GMT pnwguy said:

A summary of the authoritarian movements here and in Hungary.  No surprise that Rod Dreher is interviewed, around the 16 minute mark.

This is just scary. Not shocking, but it puts just how dedicated the anti-democracy movement is in this country and the Republican Party has embraced it with all fours.

To go along with that theme, listen to The Lincoln Project's latest podcast with some of their senior leadership.

lincolnproject.libsyn.com/28-more-days-of-insanity

These folks are at the top of their game, and they aren't shrinking from the fight.  But most of them are incredulous at how so much of the GOP voter base has become unreachable zombies, solely focused on how to find more brains to eat.

[LFC]

"Too diverse" "from a marketing standpoint." Uh, huh. How quickly they go from "color blind", even when minorities are still being discriminated against, to "we have to protect white people" as they get out-competed. It's also an admission that many of the white people that might be attracted to the university are snowflakes.

A member of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents has asked if the university system’s Morris campus has become “too diverse.”

Steve Sviggum, a former GOP Speaker of the House, asked the school’s acting Chancellor Janet Schrunk if the school, which had 58% white enrollment pre-pandemic and 54% now, had become too diverse “from a marketing standpoint.”

Sviggum told Schrunk that he’d gotten letters from friends whose children chose not to go to the Morris campus because they found it “too diverse … they just didn’t feel comfortable there.”

The predominant non-white ethnic group at the campus is Native Americans, who make up roughly a third of the student population. The campus includes buildings that were once part of a Native American boarding school and qualified Native American students attend tuition free.

Black, Hispanic and Asian-American students combined make up roughly 10% of the school’s population.

[LFC]

Yes, Republican campaigns are still darkening the skin of black opponents and enlarging the noses of Jewish opponents. If anybody believes that racism and bigotry aren't core to the GOP at this point they are either staggeringly ignorant or embedded in a fictional bubble of denial.

Back during the 2020 Senate election in Georgia, the campaigns of the two soon-to-be-defeated GOP senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, were both accused of digitally altering images of their Democratic opponents in negative campaign ads in racist and antisemitic ways.

Loeffler’s campaign was criticized for seemingly darkening the skin tone of Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in her attack ads. Perdue’s campaign pulled an ad from circulation that appeared to have been doctored to enlarge the appearance of Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-GA) nose. At the time, the campaign blamed the edit on an outside vendor, but Ossoff didn’t buy any of it.

“Senator, literally no one believes your excuses,” he tweeted at the time. “This is the oldest, most obvious, least original anti-Semitic trope in history.”

The two are hardly the first to be accused of such a practice in American politics, especially during the closing days and weeks of a competitive campaign season. The darkening of Black candidates’ skin has been going on since long before John McCain’s campaign was accused of altering images to make President Obama’s skin look darker in 2008.

And, predictably, the racist tactic appears to have returned this midterms cycle, with both the Brian Kemp gubernatorial campaign and Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) accused of darkening the complexion of their Democratic challengers, both of whom are Black. The Bulwark has a deep-dive into this year’s examples here. But Kemp has made the accusations almost too easy — he tweeted out a clearly darkened image of Stacey Abrams himself:

The summary from the original piece:

Clearly, we have entered a different era when it comes to casual expressions of racism in the political sphere. Crude appeals to bigotry may or not get candidates elected, but they will no longer get them in hot water. That’s not progress.

[LFC]

Incredible how many Republicans just can't help but add caveats to "Nazis were bad."  Lots of interesting links to follow.

Yes This Is Working Out Very Well 4 U

Matt Keefer, a school board candidate in Indiana who prides himself on being anti-“wokeness” and “indoctrination,” recently responded with this when a Facebook commenter asked him if he considered teaching kids that all Nazis are bad to be “indoctrination”: “All Nazis weren’t ‘bad’ as you specify. They did horrible things. They were in a group frenzy.”

• And no, he won’t apologize because “haters gotta hate!”

• Keefer doubled down on Facebook yesterday by insisting he was “correct.” But hey, “To be clear: I never was, am not now, and never will be a Nazi sympathizer.”

• Weird how this keeps happening!

[LFC]

Stealing money from racists with a scam pitching a racist project? I approve.

An attempt to make a right-wing superhero movie has ended in disaster, with $1 million missing in China and a participant facing a federal indictment.

“I wouldn’t count on us getting the money back,” Theodore Beale, a far-right blogger known as “Vox Day,” admitted to his fans and investors in a video last week.

This isn’t how Beale’s followers thought their investments would go in 2019 when they started contributing to fund a film based on a Confederacy-themed superhero comic book character created by Beale. A trailer promoting the proposed movie, Rebel’s Run, featured the character Rebel fighting a global police force hunting down freethinking conservatives.

Frequent Tucker Carlson collaborator Scooter Downey signed on to direct. Beale’s supporters rapidly blew past an initial $750,000 funding goal, ultimately raising more than $1 million.

That money was supposed to be held in escrow to secure several million more dollars in funding. Three years later, though, the cash is gone, and with it Beale’s hopes for a movie.

[Bact PhD]

Cheeses effing cripes, even The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party isn’t safe from predation from these assholes.

www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/34910291/jaguars-florida-georgia-condemn-antisemitic-message-game

The Jaguars, University of Florida and University of Georgia strongly condemned an antisemitic message projected onto one of the giant videoboards at TIAA Bank Field on Saturday as well as antisemitic banners displayed on a Jacksonville overpass on Friday.

The message at the stadium appeared after Florida and Georgia played their annual game at TIAA Bank Field on Saturday. The message displayed on the backside of one of the TIAA Bank Field videoboards read, "Kanye was right about the Jews." That was in reference to recent tweets and antisemitic comments made recently by musician/producer/designer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.

According to WJXT TV-4 in Jacksonville, there also were two banners displayed on an overpass near Interstate 10 on Friday that read "End Jewish Supremacy in America" and "Honk if you know it's the Jews."

So far, no individual or organization has claimed responsibility.

[LFC]

Oct 30, 2022 17:08:58 GMT Bact PhD said:

Cheeses effing cripes, even The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party isn’t safe from predation from these assholes.

Trump gave them permission so they're no longer holding back.

[pnwguy]

Oct 30, 2022 20:55:31 GMT LFC said:

Oct 30, 2022 17:08:58 GMT Bact PhD said:

Cheeses effing cripes, even The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party isn’t safe from predation from these assholes.

Trump gave them praise permission so they're no longer holding back.

FIFY

[LFC]

FFS, why does it always seem to come back at the Jews? WHY?

[LFC]

Yep, this is GOP mainstream now.

Police are on the hunt for a blond-haired woman seen hanging stuffed animals in nooses near campaign signs for a Black congressional candidate in New Jersey this week.

A photo of the disturbing display was reported to police in Middle Township, in southern New Jersey, on Election Day, a statement posted to the police department’s Facebook page said. Nearby was a political ad for Tim Alexander, running to represent New Jersey in the House of Representatives.

It's a little scary to think that I was literally just a few miles from there on Tuesday with my black wife. Her safety from random shitbags is something I've been more worried about in the last half decade plus.

[LFC]

FFS, lady! How screwed up ARE you?

An angry New Jersey mother fired off a heated speech on racism during a local board meeting last week after she says her Black daughter was racially profiled by a former council member, who freaked out simply because she was killing invasive insects.

Now, the family has demanded the town of Caldwell have a conversation about racial equity to ensure other children of color will feel safe when they step outside their homes.

“I am not here to label anyone, only to share my point of view as a Black woman, a Black mother, and a Black resident in this town,” Monique Joseph said as she stepped up to the dais during the public comments portion of a Caldwell Borough Council meeting on Nov. 1. “To bring awareness on racism and implicit bias that we experienced on the very street that we live on.”

Joseph described how her neighbor, Gordon Lawshe, called the police on her 9-year-old daughter Bobbi Wilson on Oct. 22 while Bobbi was outside trying to kill spotted lanternflies. The insect is known to be a danger to trees and other plants—so much so that scientists have recommended a myriad of ways for the public to kill them.

Joseph said she received a recording of Lawshe’s 911 call from the Caldwell Police Department.

“‘There’s a little Black woman walking, spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing; it scares me though,’” Lawshe told police, according to Joseph.

“And [he] included that she’s wearing a hoodie,” she told the board meeting. “My 9-year-old daughter Bobbi had a hoodie on her person but did not have this hoodie on her head. … It is sickening and scary to hear my neighbor use triggering words that have resulted in the death of too many Black and brown children and adults at the hands of the police: Black, hoodie, ‘I’m scared.’ Those are triggered words.”

While she called unintentional racism “still racism,” she said Lawshe’s “ability to do something like this was not a mistake. It was intentional, and I’m here to talk about Mr. Lawshe’s intentionality. My neighbor’s words put my daughter in harm’s way. His words and actions were unconscionable, and the impact of the aftermath of this incident will not be kept secret. My 9-year-old daughter was afraid to go outside her front door the next day. She was afraid that her neighbor that she knows has a reason, unknown to her, to call the police on her.”

Lawshe is a former Caldwell councilman, Patch.com reported. According to local outlet The Progress, he served as chair of the Caldwell Republican Party at least until 2021.

Well, that last sentence is no shocker.

[pnwguy]

Nov 10, 2022 17:39:44 GMT LFC said:

FFS, lady! How screwed up ARE you?

According to local outlet The Progress, he served as chair of the Caldwell Republican Party at least until 2021.

Well, that last sentence is no shocker.

It's an unstated job requirement. 

[andydp]

This article showed up in our Sunday paper today talking about the Klan 100 years ago.

100 YEARS AGO

Stay away from the Klan

The back-and-forth over whether the Ku Klux Klan was conducting activities locally swung to one side again when ministers of Protestant denominations in Green Island, Watervliet and Troy said they’d received invitations to an alleged Klan meeting in Green Island the following Saturday, while also publicly denouncing the group and promising not to attend. The Rev. Henry Hamlin of the North Reformed Church in Watervliet, said the Klan was “afraid of the light of day” and was ashamed of its accomplishments, proven by its operating in secrecy.



Hamlin warned all members of his congregation to stay away from the meeting and to do whatever they could to combat the increase in the Klan’s activities.


digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/odn/albanytimesunion/default.aspx

[LFC]

So let me get this straight. "Wokeness", a.k.a. things that make Republicans butthurt, is the real problem?

A white middle school teacher in Texas has been placed on leave after claiming to his students that he thinks the white race is superior.

In a video that went viral on social media last week, a Bohls Middle School teacher in Pflugerville explained to his class—with a heavy demographic of Black students—that, essentially, white is right, Fox 7 Austin reported.

A mashup video of the incident was initially shared by one of the students, @babysizzle808, on Instagram Saturday.

The student who asked to use the restroom forewarns the teacher about his dad’s notoriety on social media, and says the footage will get posted online.

“You guys do what you need to do,” the teacher responds. “You guys don’t think that I’ve made peace with all this stuff? You think I’m still walking around prejudiced against people?”

“Deep down in my heart,” the teacher is filmed saying in a fourth clip, “I’m ethnocentric, which means I think my race is the superior race.”

Kids in the classroom immediately explode in laughter. One student asks the teacher if he felt as if the white race was better than others.

“I think everybody thinks that,” the teacher says. “They’re just not honest about it.”

[LFC]

I was going to put this in humor but realized it's simply factual.

[goldenvalley]

I had forgotten how young this guy was.

The man charged with killing 10 people in a racially motivated rampage at a Buffalo grocery store in May pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the attack.

Payton Gendron, 19, had been indicted on 25 counts, including domestic terrorism and murder as a hate crime, in late May. He faced a maximum possible sentence of life in prison without parole, because New York state does not have the death penalty. But a separate federal hate crimes case, which could bring the death penalty if Gendron is convicted, is pending.

Lest we forget why he did this:

Gendron allegedly published a 180-page racist screed online before the attack and live-streamed the shooting. He surrendered to police afterward.

[LFC]

A police captain in Buffalo has been suspended for launching into a racist rant. WTF is her damage? Why did she think she could spew shit like this without any consequences? Maybe her white victimhood and fragility was just too much for her to control. Clearly she now views herself as the victim of "wokeness."

Three Black officers who worked directly under Beyer on the Behavioral Health Team filed a lawsuit on Nov. 21, alleging that Beyer turned up the racist rhetoric even after her rant during the training session was reported. Officers Brandon Hawkins and Katelynn Bolden and clinician Erica Seymore claim their rights were violated when they were subjected to racially discriminatory remarks in the workplace, and, in exchange, they’re seeking monetary damages and attorney fees.

“As a direct and proximate cause of the unlawful employment discrimination practices of Defendants City of Buffalo and Buffalo Police Department, [plaintiffs] have have suffered the indignity of race discrimination and great humiliation,” the filing states.

According to the lawsuit, Officer Jason Wagstaff shared a video with the team on May 2 that showed white officers targeting and harassing a Black officer in uniform. Beyer allegedly said she could see “both sides” of the situation, and Bolden and Wagstaff attempted to explain to her the racist implications involved.

Then, for 20 minutes, Beyer allegedly made a series of racist comments, including trying to justify why white people are racist against Black people. She allegedly claimed that Black men cheat on their wives more than white men, insisted that all Black police officers were unfaithful, and said she would be suspicious of a Black person in her majority-white neighborhood. The lawsuit also alleges that Beyer said white officers suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome when they patrol Black neighborhoods—but Black officers don’t because they’re used to crime.

After the incident, officers whispered about the “awkward” exchange, according to the lawsuit, but one person eventually reported it to senior officials at the department, which led to an internal affairs report on May 11.

Beyer was allegedly irate about the ensuing investigation. The lawsuit claims that on May 11, she screamed about the probe to the rest of the Behavioral Health Team, calling Bolden and Wagstaff “liars.”

Then there's this. Good f***ing lord.

Beyer allegedly upped the ante on Sept. 29 when she dramatically—and repeatedly—said the N-word while reading a Facebook post to the rest of her team. Co-workers asked Beyer to censor the word, but she refused.

Instead, she said she was “just reading the post,” according to the lawsuit.