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White riot

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Just to follow up on John’s piece about the man being mistaken for a Muslim and nearly assaulted at Pam Geller’s today’s Pam Geller-inspired hate-fest, the guy who filmed the video spoke with this man and reports “He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero.” Based on the necklace he is wearing — which looks the Puerto Rican flag — I would guess that he is Puerto Rican, but that’s neither here not there: some guy going to work was nearly assaulted because he was mistaken for a Muslim.

Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss writes that the video “shows a bit of what that pogrom might look like”. That might be going too far, but there’s a certainly a hate there that easily be directed against any group that is seen as other.

The video reminded me a bit of what I’ve heard of the Hard Hat Riots, a violent act that many conservatives are strangely proud of. Except that in this case, instead of attacking protesting hippies, conservatives are attacking a Puerto Rican guy on his way to work.

Reader Interactions

103Comments

  4. 4.

    Der BlindSchtiller

    The angry mob in the Holy Grail was more dignified.

    At least they didn’t try to build a bridge out of him.

  5. 5.

    BR

    @Alwhite:

    You know, I’m sad to say that that’s what I thought of too.

    Is it just me, or has it been a really long time since we’ve seen this sort of ugliness? (Was the last time in the 60s?)

  9. 9.

    asdf

    Does anyone remember the South after the end of Jim
    Crow?

    Looks like nothing has changed.

    We could be in Louisville, KY in 1976. Nothing has changed.

  12. 12.

    cathyx

    Americaneocon wrote:

    Pam Geller wasn’t not involved with today’s protest, not a bit.

    He’s right. That double negative means she was involved.

  13. 13.

    Alwhite

    @Americaneocon:

    Dear moran – would that Riyadh connection be the same one that owns a $3B share of Mr. Murdock’s FAUX news Network?

    You want to find a real terrorist organization funded by the Saudis start there. Every day those bastards terrorize Americans, disrupt the healthy operation of the country, demoralize the populace and aid our enemies. And they do that with the financial support of the House of Saud.

  14. 14.

    BeccaM

    The last time I queued up ‘The Gangs of New York’ on the DVD player, it dawned on me I was seeing something eerily familiar…

    Butcher Bill and his Nativists are alive and well, here in the 21st century.

  15. 15.

    freelancer

    @Americaneocon:

    Indeed, I have a major report up that you might want to take a look at: ‘Imam Rauf’s Hush-Hush Taxpayer-Subsidized Middle East Tour — Plus, Inside the Victory Mosque’s Shady Washington-Riyadh Finance Trail’.

    This shocking report also links Riyadh and the Saudi Royal Family to a group that may surprise you.

    ETA:
    @Alwhite:

    SHHHHHH!

  17. 17.

    Anne Laurie

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    I’d guess ‘70s forced busing, but that’s just me.

    Yep. ‘Forced busing’ in the 1970s was the Nixon-era Republican Party’s way of punishing white working-class “ethnics” in Northern cities like Boston for the Eisenhower-to-LBJ-era civil-rights desegregation (“punishing”) of the Deep South. The Repubs, of course, had the full cooperation of a lot of well-meaning Northern liberal Democrats who didn’t understand the extent to which their perfectly worthy good-government impulses were being subverted for ReThug ends. (Sound familar, firebaggers?) And it worked — a lot of Archie Bunker ‘Reagan Democrats’ joined their Dixiecrat brethren jumping ship for the Republican party. Which allowed the Republican CREEPsters to spend the next 40 years implementing their plans to hollow out the ‘middle class’ and turn America into another banana republic.

    It worked so well — they came so close! — that the very same people (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) and their offspring hope to finish the job using Muslims as a replacement for the Urban Underclass (n******s). They’re fighting 40 years of multicultural assimilation, but on the other hand, there’s so little left of America’s proud ‘middle class’ security that we’re all a lot more fearful and angry.

  18. 18.

    Ed Marshall

    @BR:

    No, that’s Donalde Douglas! A blight on the good name of Community College professors everywhere!

  22. 22.

    Ed Marshall

    @beltane:

    He’s a pet troll of Lawyers, Guns, and Money…well, a pet in the sense that he’s stalked all of them and tried to get them fired.

  26. 26.

    KG

    In the troll’s defense, he’s right, this isn’t Gellar’s thing this week. This one was put on by The Coalition to Honor Ground Zero (website here. Which, with a little bit of internet ninjitsu I found out that they are a front for the Center for Security Policy (which is a Frank Gaffney outfit)

    Same tiger, different rider, same result.

  27. 27.

    PaulW

    Also watching MAD MEN. I don’t know who’s more embarrassed about the girl’s discovery of how cute David McCallum was back in the 60s: Betty, or David McCallum (who’s still alive! what did HE think watching that little girl watching him?!)

  29. 29.

    PaulW

    Oh:

    Dear Americaneocon:

    A riot is a riot is a riot no matter the skin color of the mob throwing it. And while you claim Ms. Geller wasn’t involved with that mob on the video, Ms. Geller and all the other Rage Merchants railing against the Muslim Community Pool Hall and Prayer Room ARE *completely involved* in getting those mob members riled up into ATTACKING ANYONE THEY DON’T LIKE. So there. Neener neener.

  30. 30.

    That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal

    The video reminded me a bit of what I’ve heard of the Hard Hat Riots, a violent act that many conservatives are strangely proud of.

    Jesus, that link was disturbing. Tribalism laid out and justified with clinical dispassion. “I am inconsistent, because I believe that it is a good thing to kick the shit out of my political opponents for no reason other than they act just like us, but are different.”

    Fascism with a Blank Face.

  31. 31.

    Nick

    @KG:

    The Coalition to Honor Ground Zero

    They missed it by two blocks…unless they want to join The Coalition to honor great outerwear at affordable prices.

  32. 32.

    Honus

    Slightly O/T, but this interview with the local tea party chair was just too unbelievable:

    “After years in theater, Carole Thorpe has taken many roles, but perhaps her biggest began on Tax Day 2009, when she carried a sign that read, “Greed, arrogance, ineptitude are bipartisan offenses.”
    That April 15, Thorpe had no plan to become the chair of the Jefferson Area Tea Party within 11 months. She’d never even been to a protest before. Yet something sparked that day.
    “You’re always hearing what a liberal town Charlottesville is,” says Thorpe. “I was surprised that many people showed up.”
    Thorpe says she already was disillusioned with government during the second term of President George Bush. “I didn’t like the Patriot Act and didn’t like the spending,” she says.
    Ironically, conservative icon Ronald Reagan and his student loan spending cuts cut short Thorpe’s college education. “Life happens,” muses Thorpe. “I can name one or two things that were disappointing or defining, but everyone has something.”
    She’s remarkably upbeat— and philosophical about life. “Tough is my son’s autism,” she says. “I don’t sweat the small stuff.”
    Her son is 13 and Thorpe raves about the programs available through Albemarle County schools. She and her husband, an engineer at Northrop Grumman, plan to have their son living in a group home with some sort of low-skill job by the time post-high school programs end when he’s 22″

    So Reagan cut her college loans, and she loves the programs for her autistic son in the local public schools, for which funding has already been cut by local teabaggers on the Board of Supervisors. And her husband works for a government contractor. I don’t have the words. the whole article is here:

    http://www.readthehook.com/stories/2010/08/19/HOTSEAT-THORPE-b.aspx

  33. 33.

    Kiril

    @Anne Laurie: I don’t know. I lived in St. Louis during judge-enforced desegregation of the public schools there. We used to actually joke that you could tell what white students went to deseg schools and which didn’t, because of the ridiculous racist shit they said. Not that white and black students at deseg schools didn’t say anything racist, just that it was based on actual experience.

  34. 34.

    DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective

    The rest of the world is watching this shit and wondering what the fuck is the matter with us.

  36. 36.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Kiril: @Anne Laurie:
    I actually have first-hand experience in this, since the school district I was in was forced by a fed. judge to desegregate – in deep southeast Texas. This was well past the time when they were originally ordered – like 1979. Literally, parents were screaming as numbers were pulled out of a ping-pong ball lottery system. Really fucked up.

    I was in the first desegregated class in my high school. It was *bad* where I was. I don’t know about northeastern areas. I never personally got caught up in it, but I know there were a lot of people who fled the area, put their kids in questionable private schools, etc. as a result.

  37. 37.

    DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective

    @Kiril:

    No, don’t agree. Some of us are like this but most of us are not.

    Right now we are letting the tail wag the dog. We’re the dog.

  39. 39.

    P.D.Obvious, Esq.

    IIRC, Ms.Shaidle (from DougJ’s unfortunate link) suffered from lupus back in the day. It’s probably useless to wonder if the Canadian healthcare system made a difference in her life, but I for one am disappointed that the experience didn’t turn her into a decent human being.

  42. 42.

    El Cid

    You asshole libruls seem to forget the heroic role Burlington Coat Factory played in forging the Constushun.

  43. 43.

    That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal

    @DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: The rest of the world is looking at us, and a significant minority in pretty much every country wants to do the same thing. Geert Wilders, anyone? And the Netherlands is probably the most liberal country on the planet.

  46. 46.

    Violet

    @DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
    But if we let the tail wag the dog, what difference does it make? The media idiots are mesmerized by this crap. The teabaggers and other neofascists get all the press and the rest of us aren’t getting noticed or changing things.

  48. 48.

    SBJules

    That some seem to celebrate & be “proud” of the Hard Hat riots is beyond astonishing to me. What a sad day that was.

  49. 49.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    I would guess that he is Puerto Rican, but that’s neither here not there: some guy going to work was nearly assaulted because he was mistaken for a Muslim.

    Yep. Not sure why people are even looking down the “What was he then?” road. (And I used to have a Union Jack t-shirt. You have to go a looong way down my family tree to find Brits.)

    He’s a fucking human being walking down the God damned street in the United States of America. You do not need a fucking hall pass.

    “shows a bit of what that pogrom might look like”. That might be going too far

    Why too far? Those people were .2 seconds away from physical violence because the guy was sporting an Under Armour beanie. They were looking for someone to take their hate out on and he caused all the tumblers to fall into place. I think it should be required viewing for people who do crowd control.

  51. 51.

    Cacti

    @kommrade reproductive vigor:

    Why too far? Those people were .2 seconds away from physical violence because the guy was sporting an Under Armour beanie

    And these are the people whose fee fees Howard Dean and Harry Reid say we need to respect.

  52. 52.

    Linda Featheringill

    @kommrade reproductive vigor:

    Those people were .2 seconds away from physical violence

    The people in the video actually were about a second and a half from forming a mob. Very, very close.

    I got the impression that the apologies offered were becauase of mistaken identity. You cannot tell a person’s religion by looking unless they wear some sort of a badge [like the habits nuns used to wear]. Maybe we could force Muslims to wear a yellow “M” on their outer closing or something. Then mobs wouldn’t have to go through the embarrassment of apologizing to victims or potential victims.

  53. 53.

    PanAmerican

    That crowd was small and old. Like Americaneocon’s dick.

    I’ll be here all night folks.

  54. 54.

    Cliff

    well, I thought the highlight was at the end ..

    3:28 – Hey Nigger … (seconds later) Mohamed is a pig

  55. 55.

    BrklynLibrul

    Um, where was the mayor — that great paragon of religious tolerance — today? The Hamptons? His estate in Bermuda? If memory serves, he arrested scores of bike protesters during the Republican convention in ’04 and held some of them for up to a day before he released them.

  56. 56.

    Matt

    The article linked for the Hard Hat Riots might be the most jaw-droppingly ignorant screed I’ve seen in some time. When your primary thesis is, “I haven’t thought things through enough to make sense, but damn it I’m passionate about these things I can’t figure out” you’re in for a rough go. If people like that took half the energy they used being outraged to actually figure out what was going on; oh why bother asking, that’s never going to happen. Wolverines!

  58. 58.

    El Cid

    Whenever three or more TeaTards are gathered together, the Founding Fathers will be with them.

  59. 59.

    Cacti

    @Cliff:

    well, I thought the highlight was at the end ..

    My favorite part was from the victim at 0:21

    What the fuck you yelling at me for? Ya’ll dumb motherfuckers don’t even know my opinion on shit!

  61. 61.

    PaulW

    What the fuck you yelling at me for? Ya’ll dumb motherfuckers don’t even know my opinion on shit!

    Gosh, Clay, he doesn’t sound Mooslim. Maybe he’s one of them, you know, edjumated types from Harvard for using such purty words.

  62. 62.

    ksmiami

    Dear Fascist Morons posing as American patriots:

    For your information, the fact that you all like to go mudding and watch Nascar and drive giant SUVs means that oil is sort of important to running the country. Right now, the majority of the oil we get is from the Middle East, Nigeria and Indonesia. By and by, these, plus a few other countries are home to nearly 2 billion muslims who basically want to earn a living, drink coffee and go about their days.

    We also happen to have thousands of American troops spread across these and other sundry nations like Afghanistan (where we have troops), Pakistan (where we are quietly trying to ensure that advanced nuclear weapons remain the providence of moderate democratic muslims), Turkey (convenient flyover area to launch such escapades), and of course our 51st state in Iraq. If you care about the safety of said American troops, you should be advised to tamp down your bigoted and hateful clamor over a moderate islamic rec center blocks away from the hole that is ground zero and that has been ginned up as a controversy to distract you from the fact that the Republicans have no ideas that will help you mongrels or anyone earning less than half a million dollars per year. You are also careening dangerously close to proving the extremists such as Bin Laden and his merry bunch of psycho goat herders correct – that America is out to destroy Islam and must be stopped at all costs. So to phrase this another way… Shut the F*** up, you are putting American interests at risk and world war III would not be a very fun picnic, not at all.

    Please go back to your lazy-boys, your weekend beer fests and whatever it is you do and get the hell out of New York and stop claiming the title of American Patriot. You are not by any stretch deserving of the title.

  63. 63.

    Linda Featheringill

    @El Cid:

    Whenever three or more TeaTards are gathered together, the Founding Fathers will be with them.

    Well! Your mamma took you to Sunday School, didn’t she?

    You’re really very bad. You know that don’t you?

    [snickers behind hand on mouth]

  65. 65.

    jl

    @Americaneocon: Just an FYI: the original post by Cole has an update stating that Pam Geller said she was not involved with this particular protest. I think that update also succinctly puts her statement in appropriate context.

  66. 66.

    Linda Featheringill

    @ksmiami:

    Yes. These idiots aren’t helping, are they?

    The fact that there was a counter-demonstration today might have been difficult on the police but it was important to show that not everyone is a complete jerk.

  67. 67.

    Cacti

    Okay, so Pam Geller didn’t organize this.

    She merely wants to prohibit the free exercise of religion by a disfavored group, rather than say, mobbing random people of color for looking Muslim.

    Does that make her worthy of a medal or something?

  68. 68.

    ksmiami

    @Linda Featheringill: And weak leadership that is a by-product of life in America in 2010 is not going to cut it. These people have been enraged for a long time and the Cordoba center is a convenient target for their deep-seeded insecurities and feelings of worthlessness. The Republicans have been playing with fire and we are all going to get burned if no one stands up and tells them to STFU.

  70. 70.

    d0n camillo

    @kommrade reproductive vigor:

    He’s a fucking human being walking down the God damned street in the United States of America. You do not need a fucking hall pass.

    Someone should forward this video to Dr. Laura so she can see what having your 1st Amendment rights violated really looks like.

  71. 71.

    LikeableInMyOwnWay

    @Violet:

    I don’t care what the media focuses on.

    At this point in the last election cycle they had Hillary Clinton as the sure Dem nominee, and Rudy Giuliani as the likely opponent. They are notoriously wrong about everything important.

    Let them do whatever they do. What we need to do is get our voters to the polls. We outnumber them, and we can outvote them. Then we win, and we move ahead, in fits and starts. That’s the way it works.

    The tail wags, but the dog has the legs, if you don’t mind going a little further with the metaphor.

    I can’t speak for the rest of the world

    What kind of blogger are you?

    Heh.

  72. 72.

    Cliff

    @Cacti:

    well, yea, that was the highlight of common sense, but mine was the most audible hateful thing I heard.

    so yea, highlights of sanity and insanity respectively.

  73. 73.

    freelancer (itouch)

    @Americaneocon:

    Yes, but judging by simplistic right wing logic the if there was no Islam, there would be no Ground Zero, then is should simply be said that since Pam Geller has been the primary figure in ginning up this nontroversy, though she wasn’t involved with this particular protest, if she hadn’t existed, it might not have occurred at all.

    Btw, the crowd chanting “No Mosque Here!”, makes me laugh because it contains a fundamental misunderstanding of reality, but “No Community Center with a prayer space Two Blocks from here!” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

  74. 74.

    LikeableInMyOwnWay

    Around 500 opponents of the mosque stood in a cordoned-off area, singing patriotic songs and speaking of a hijacked Constitution, while about 200 supporters held a counterprotest nearby.

    NYT

    700 total people in a city of over 8 million?

    Why the hell are we even paying attention to this?

    Bleh.

  75. 75.

    Anne Laurie

    @Honus:

    So Reagan cut her college loans, and she loves the programs for her autistic son in the local public schools, for which funding has already been cut by local teabaggers on the Board of Supervisors. And her husband works for a government contractor. I don’t have the words.

    I do, but they would be cruel and unhelpful. And illegal to send through the interstate mail service.

  76. 76.

    Anne Laurie

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    I was in the first desegregated class in my high school. It was bad where I was. I don’t know about northeastern areas. I never personally got caught up in it, but I know there were a lot of people who fled the area, put their kids in questionable private schools, etc. as a result.

    Oh, I know it was bad. It was supposed to be bad, because the CREEPsters wanted you (and your parents, and your eventual kids) to vote Republican for life, as retaliation. The fact that you’ve been able to separate “I had a bad time in a desegrated school” from “All Democrats are n-word-lovers who deliberately ruined my high school experience, and therefore I will always vote against those Democrats” proves that you are smarter than the Republicans ever imagined!

  78. 78.

    JP Stormcrow

    Via Digby, this is similar to something that happened way back on June 7th.

    At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.

    “Go home,” several shouted from the crowd.

    “Get out,” others shouted.

    In fact, the two men – Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry — were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called “The Way.” Both said they had come to protest the mosque.

    “I’m a Christian,” Nassralla shouted to the crowd, his eyes bulging and beads of sweat rolling down his face.

    But it was no use. The protesters had become so angry at what they thought were Muslims that New York City police officers had to rush in and pull Nassralla and El Masry to safety.

  79. 79.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Honus:

    So Reagan cut her college loans, and she loves the programs for her autistic son in the local public schools, for which funding has already been cut by local teabaggers on the Board of Supervisors. And her husband works for a government contractor. I don’t have the words

    No, you see, she works hard for everything she has, not like those other people always looking for a handout. Like Craig T. Nelson said, he was on food stamps and welfare but did anyone help him out? No. No.

  81. 81.

    Anne Laurie

    @Cacti:

    And these are the people whose fee fees Howard Dean and Harry Reid say we need to respect.

    I feel it’s a wise thing to “respect” a large, snarling dog with its hackles up that’s threatening to bite. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna re-arrange my life to accomodate its fears, but “challenging” the beast by walking straight at it ain’t gonna end well for either party.

  86. 86.

    The Moar You Know

    I’ve rebutted your post, with links: ‘Pamela Geller Was Not Involved in the August 22 Ground Zero Mosque Protest’.

    @Americaneocon: You seem as though you’re lacking a little intellectually, so let me clue you in on something; the salient issue here is not who sponsored the lynching protest.

    Carry on.

  87. 87.

    PanurgeATL

    @Mike in NC:

    Yep. I’ve always maintained that it was no coincidence that Reagan got elected right after the Left started punching hippies, too.

  88. 88.

    Anne Laurie

    Now all we need to cap off this crappy week is a full-on hate-fest between the new troll and Matoko-chan…

  92. 92.

    SRW1

    @Americaneocon:

    What’s your point, Americaneocon? Pam Geller might have had a big hand in whipping up this shit storm, but she wants you to know that you should do your hating in peace and quiet?

    There is a song called ‘Kristallnach’ by the German Rock group BAP which has the verse:

    In der Ruhe vor dem Sturm – was ist das?
    Ganz klammheimlich verläßt wer die Stadt.
    Honoratioren inkognito hasten vorbei
    – offiziell sind die nicht gerne dabei,

    Translates as:
    In the calm before the storm – what’s this?
    Somebody is leaving town on the quiet.
    Dignitaries, incognito, hasten by
    – officially, they don’ want to be linked to this.

    A bit too late for Pam and her fans to distance themselves from this stuff.

  93. 93.

    bob h

    Keep it up, assholes, and you will probably be looking at another smoking rubble pile at Ground Zero in time, in which case the building of anything there will be perfectly academic.

  94. 94.

    drkrick

    @Kiril:

    The rest of the world is watching this shit and thinking they knew we were always like this but pretended otherwise.

    A fair part of the rest of the world has had us pegged for idiots since we reelected Reagan (once was understandable, but going in for a second helping in bigger numbers?). Most of the remainder caught on when we did the same thing with Bush II. This spectacle is sad, but it isn’t teaching anybody anything.

  96. 96.

    Frank

    @DougJ:

    I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but Europe is looking at us and saying “you’re no better than we are”

    Heck, Saudi Arabia is looking at us and saying “you’re no better than we are”. We can’t build churches there and they can’t build mosques here apparently. And we used be the envy of the world when it came to religious freedom. Sad!

  98. 98.

    chopper

    lol, “i posted my own five-part rebuttal to your post, john cole, taking you to task over one single detail in the overall story!”

    why am i imagining the dude looks like tucker carlson and speaks with a lateral lisp.

  99. 99.

    Mumphrey

    The video reminded me a bit of what I’ve heard of the Hard Hat Riots, a violent act that many conservatives are strangely proud of.

    I read 5 Brain Cells of Fury piece, and I saw at the end she said she was “libertarian for me and conservative for everybody else”, which I guess translates as, “I have rights; the rest of you scumbags don’t.” And she thinks that’s something to be proud of…

  100. 100.

    thelonegunman

    the ‘Hard Hat Riot’ was paid for by Nixon’s plumbing crew in order to gin-up the idea that ‘real ‘working’ american’s’ were against the war…

    it was a domestic false flag operation…

  101. 101.

    MNPundit

    Again and again the right uses violence to achieve its goals and we sit and say how sad it is, how dangerous.

    If they want violence let’s give them violence. Don’t start anything! Let the rightists do that.

    But finish it.

  102. 102.

    Redshirt

    If we could somehow gets these moranic wingnuts to turn on Newscorp as a terrorist organization, it would just be so delicious. Fat chance the dissonance will allow that, however.

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