It looks like the race to the bottom among the folks in the Republican Confederate Party is moving faster than events in Egypt.
John noted the other day that after attacks on Rape Victims and Veterans he expected somebody to introduce the “Kick an Orphan and Beat a Puppy Act of 2011” any day now. And while that may be in the works there seems to be a lot of other other idiotic and despicable ideas–from child labor to Repeal of the Reconstruction Era Amendments and more–that windnutopia is promoting in their ongoing effort to restore their collective fantasy of 19th Century perfection.
And so it should come as no surprise that support for Ethnic Cleansing is seen as a winning issue for 2012 Republican Confederate Party candidates for President. And yesterday, professional candidate Mike Huckabee came out in favor of Ethnic Cleansing as a virtue. At a ground breaking for a new settlement on ‘liberated/appropriated’ land in East Jerusalem he called for the removal and relocation of Palestinians in Palestine to some new place carved out of “vast amounts of territory that are in the hands of Muslims, in the hands of Arabs.”
Huck then went on to declare the idea of seeking peace in the region to be a waste of time, but it was some other things he said that illustrated perfectly the dedication to white supremacy and American Confederate Exceptionalism that has become the dark heart of the so-called ‘Conservative’ movement in America.
Now because Huckabee made his full-throated defense of Ethnic Cleansing in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict it would be easy to lose the significance of his ideas in the all too predictable auto-comment back and forth that follows any post mentioning the I/P issue. And if you must go there automatically, who can stop you. Mazel Tov and have fun with that.
But, the focus of this post is not the I/P conflict, rather it is looking at Huck’s additional comments which revealed a lot more about himself and the white supremacist world view that he–and the modern so-called ‘Conservative’ movement–defends and promotes. That world view makes Huck’s call for erasing Palestinians predictable as it is a movement dedicated to cleansing people from the narrative, denying their humanity and erasing them from history. On issue after issue, it is what the modern Republican Confederate Party is all about.
Expanding on his support for the removal of Palestinians from the West Bank and colonization of the ‘liberated’ land, Huckabee told Jerusalem Post:
“I cannot imagine as an American being told that I could not live in certain places in America because I was Christian, or because I was white, or because I spoke English. I would be outraged if someone told me that in my country, I would be prohibited and forbidden to live in a part of that country, for any reason.”
Huckabee added that the “essence of freedom, the very heart of it,” is self-determination and self-direction.
It was high-minded rhetoric to support the denial of those rights to Palestinians because they are not white and they are not Christians (or important plot points in the Rapture fantasy). Huckabee can not imagine a white man being denied anything even as he actively supports cleansing others of the Rights that he holds sacred for himself and those HE chooses to share some of his rights with.
And ALL of the rights Huckabee can not imagine being denied because of his race, gender, language or faith are rights that he and his movement actively seek to deny people in America and around the world because their race, gender, language and/or faith are not the same as Mike’s.
This is the essence of white privileged laid bared: all rights are mine and I get to decide who is a ‘lessor’ group of people and what portfolio of rights I will allow those groups to have.
For Huckabee, the Palestinians are not human and they have very little rights. They exist to be demonized and are easily erased from the narrative of humanity. In fact, their erasure is promoted as a virtue.
The same is true for women in the wingnut view on abortion–they are not human, they are containers holding zygots and can be easily erased from the narrative. The same is true with immigrants–they are easily erased as human and denying them rights can be promoted as virture. Workers, Veterans, liberals, the poor, students, city dwellers, Native Americans, African American, GLBT, whatever–you only have the rights and your place in the American Confederate narrative of history that Huck and his ilk are willing to grant you. And if you do not fit in to that narrative you will be erased from that history. And if you challenge that narrative you must be destroyed.
Huckabee has added a call for ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from Palestine to the growing list of people the Right seeks to erase from history. Expect others in his party to follow his call and try to outbid him. In the fight for the white supremacist vote that drives the Right these days you will never loose ground by calling for the erasure of this or that group from the narrative and you will never be faulted for advocating for American Confederate White Exceptionalism.
Cheers
Mnemosyne
Er, Mike? That’s because the disputed territory does not belong to Israel. If you expect to be able to illegally cross the border into Canada and set up shop there, prepare to be outraged when they throw you out because you’re not Canadian and don’t have permission to be there.
General Stuck
Sadly true. Poignant post.
dmsilev
The folks at The Onion have proposed a more plausible scenario:
dms
gene108
I was commenting on another forum on a discussion of how the ACA is not unconstitutional, when it hit me that there are probably right-wingers who walk up handicap ramps and take medical leave for family sickness, because of two laws passed 20 years ago: the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family Medical Leave Act.
I wonder, if right-wingers will deny themselves the benefits of these “socialist” laws, which “abuse” the power Congress has under the Commerce Clause to regulate interstate commerce and protest this by not taking leave to care for sick relatives and even if their knees are killing the, take the stairs because the ubiquitous presence of handicap ramps is due to the ADA, which represents so much of social engineering, legal theory and expanse of federal power that conservatives loath.
Pooh
Normally, I find Dennis’s posts to be a little overheated for my taste, but holy fuck, the balls on Huckabee to couch this in terms of self determination and freedom.
My freedoms tell your freedoms to go fuck themselves, apparently.
Pancake
One supposes that this post is supposed to be oh, so clever in it’s false sarcasm and “wit.” It more closely resembles the near random thoughts of an alcoholic or someone hooked on the stronger stuff. Mere piffle.
Chris
Far, far more than any other Republican candidate, I fucking hated Huckabee’s racist, theocratic guts during the 2008 primaries. I still hate them now, and this is most of the reason why.
Well summarized; indeed, the GOP ethic is still that of an all-white country club, where the highest principles known to man can be passionately argued and promoted, but only as they apply to members of the club. People outside the club, well, they’re not even relevant. To anything.
liberal
For once, this isn’t really fair to Republicans. Both parties have a problem here, at least on the more general issue if not this particularity.
Kryptik
@Mnemosyne:
Notice how he tends to ignore the total inverse either. He doesn’t exactly recognize the issues Arab Israelis have. Especially since both Huck’s hypothetical and the parallel he’s trying to draw are painfully rarer than their inverses.
Captain Haddock
For Huckabee, the Palestinians are not human and they have very little rights.
I think most of our elected officials in both parties, either believe that themselves, or think it politically practical to claim to believe it.
Zam
Ok, I’m not sure if I’m getting this, but is he saying that It is a terrible tragedy that Israeli’s cannot live in certain places that aren’t even their country?
Michael
Why is it that the vision of Conservatopia has so many features in common with South American thugocracies of the 40s and 50s? There’s tiny plutocracy on top, a tiny middle class to serve the plutocrats, a venal and corrupt set of government functionaries doing the bidding of the plutocrats, a subservient media dominated by status quo shouting pundits, a heavily militarized and violent security apparatus in support of the system at large, and a peasantry which is constantly in a state of manipulation of their ethnic and religious tensions?
ppcli
All right Mike! Speak truth to power:
What, you mean that isn’t the analogy he was getting at? Surely nobody could be such a maroon as to see how obviously apt the point is. Right? Guys? Why are you smirking and rolling your eyes like that?…
General Stuck
@Zam:
Rapturists don’t see any part of greater Palestine as not belonging to Israel.
Kryptik
@ppcli:
Huck, sympathize with brown folk? Hah! Good joke…oh wait, not a joke. Oh dear. :(
But yeah, like I said above, interesting how he takes a hypothetical to make a parallel with the plight of the settlers, when the inverse of each is so much more prevalent.
Chris
@Michael:
You left out the essential paramilitary apparatus, e.g. the vigilantes (or as they’re more straightforwardly known on the left, death squads) who operate outside the system and serve as union-busters, competitor-busters and reform-busters. The AUC fulfilled that role for big corporations and wealthy landowners in Colombia rather nicely.
Jay C
Let’s do just a little editing on Mr. Huckabee’s remarks, shall we?
While his statement:
certainly does have a quite-understandable air of outrage about it: but let’s just make a few changes:
Does anyone think this version would raise Mike Huckabee’s ire so much? Especially as version 2 was the reality of life in this country for a couple of centuries? White privilege, indeed…
@Pancake:
You have some substantive objections to Dennis’s post? Or are you just being an assclown troll?
(rhetorical question)
asiangrrlMN
Wow. Ethnic-cleansing, indeed.
Fixed the whole damn thing for you, Huckster. Fucker. Rusty pitchfork and all.
The amount of sheer privilege and rank ignorance combined in those two short paragraphs is breathtaking.
jacy
I have always said that Huckabee creeps me out big time. Under just the right circumstance I can see him loading non-Christians onto cattle cars. And that’s not exaggeration for effect.
I don’t think of him so much as “racist” as religionist. I think that deep down inside, he thinks if you’re not Christian, you’re not really human. (And Jews are OK, because they’re useful in an evangelical sense) He’s got the ingrown, crazy, fundamentalist air, but I think he’s just smart enough to not let it show so much that it scares the normal people.
But if you believe fervently enough that god is on your side and you get the right opportunity, you’re apt to do some pretty unthinkable shit
Michael
Great accomplishments of Conservatism:
1. The ruin of late stage Rome and the following centuries of Dark Ages by the imposition of state-sanctioned Christianity.
2. The Vice and Virtue cops that were inspired and led by Girolamo Savonarola in their crusade to eliminate art, entertainment and culture in Florence.
3. John Calvin’s inspirations on material wealth and dealing with those bitchy witches.
4. Oliver Cromwell and his Vice and Virtue cops, all of who made sure that England and Ireland would be more holy places in which to live.
5. The Salem Witch Trials.
6. Secession and the War Agin’ that thar librulcommiemarxist Yankee Agression.
7. Jim Crow laws.
8. “Separate but Equal”.
9. The Gilded Age.
10. The Depression, in which folks who didn’t know their station in life got their comeuppance.
11. The Third Reich.
12. Opposition to the uppityness of those big mouthed slick talkin’ you-know-whats that were agitating for civil rights. We was a gonna git around to it, y’know.
13. Bunches of brushfire conflicts in support of the corporatocracy.
gene108
@Captain Haddock: I do agree. You can find pro-Israel Democrats, who would have the same sentiments as Huckabee, though they would state their opinions, maybe, a bit more diplomatically.
Sloegin
The word Huckabee was looking for is diaspora.
Chris
@jacy:
This is basically how I feel about it, you articulated it better.
No, I’m all too aware that it’s not. I could see it too, which is why I say he scared me more than any other GOP candidate.
Jasper
The parallels with our treatment of native Americans seem obvious. Sure, they can have their own land, just not here, where the white people want to have houses!
Also, too, “separate but equal.”
kindness
The Fox wunderkids really should be more careful of how they say what they want to express. I mean, granted, the reichtwingnutz are more predisposed to do harm to those they feel are working against them (at least when viewed by those that have actually acted out their illness in recent times) but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few on the other side of the tracks with screws loose enough to have them do the same. There either aren’t as many crazy paranoid lefties as there are righties or possibly the crazy lefties aren’t as crazy as the crazy righties. 6 of one, half dozen of the other.
Anyway, Huck has been on a tear lately. He should be more careful.
Chris
@Jasper:
I’ve seen this argument before: “well the Arabs have so much land, and the Jews have so little, that surely it’s up to the Arabs to give up a little room for the Palestinians!”
And I absolutely love it, because I’ve heard it so many times before, and so have they. Except back then it was called “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
Throw out the crap about class and replace it with nation, religion or race, and it’s amazing how quickly the bastards go all-out Marxist.
jayjaybear
@Jay C: Pancake is an Arab-hater from way back. He was in his glory around the time the Mavi Marmara happened and Helen Thomas spouted off. His username is a way of making fun of Rachel Corrie’s death, if that tells you where he comes down on the I/P issue.
Tom Hilton
Given that they are the Confederate party, shouldn’t their annual response to the State of the Union Address be called the State of the Confederacy Address?
Svensker
@kindness:
Why? He’s saying stuff that huge swaths of the MSM and establishment agree with. Do you see anyone on Fox disagreeing (maybe Shep Smith)? Wolf Blitzer? The Wash Post? Chuck Schumer? Joe Lieberman? Eric Cantor?
He will pay no price for saying this.
Bob
I am fine with these comments, but for selfish polical gain.
They don’t help Repubs with the Jewish votes they don’t already have and it drives all the Arab American votes straight to the Dems. It wasn’t that long ago that Arab Americans were considered Republican.
Nicework Huck.
Mike in NC
Excellent. That needs to go into the BJ lexicon.
David Brooks (not that one)
The idea that Palestinians should leave the plots of land that have been theirs for generations, and it’s OK because there is other land available and all Muslims are the same, is so breathtakingly offensive that it invites a simple Godwin-risking analogy:
Belgium is basically German. They should all leave their farms and homes and move to France, where there’s more room. They’re all basically French anyway (yes, I know half of them are basically German, which helps underscore the point).
But then I’m biased: my wife, a mature (50) undergraduate, did her senior thesis during an “ethnic cleansing” history class on the Palestian expulsions and the methodical way they were planned with British collusion, and 11 years later she has calmed down from white-hot with rage to red-hot.
Chris
@David Brooks (not that one):
Breathtakingly offensive, and breathtakingly hypocritical considering their absolute obsession with property rights and their repeated red-faced tantrums about how it’s a violation of the Constitution if one single cent of their tax money goes to benefit someone else.
But naturally, it’s okay to take an Arab’s house and land and give it to a Jew, just because.
I’m hope she didn’t pay a price for it.
One of the friends I made studying abroad in Cairo had wanted to do his senior thesis on either Hamas or the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (he was studying Islamic political movements). His advisor eventually talked him out of doing Hamas, on the grounds that anything remotely objective or academically honest that touches on the Israel/Palestine question would have gotten enough doors slammed in his face to end a lot of his career options before they even began.
rm
Michael @12 and Chris @16:
Yes, look at how Jesse Helms and his ilk (like, say, Reagan, and Helms’s former staffers at State during W.’s administration) didn’t just support the right-wing terror in Latin America, they had a personal rapport with the leaders and an enthusiasm for those societies. Oligarchic terror was Jesse’s ideal society that he’d have like to see come true at home.
kindness
@Svensker: Huck won’t pay a price with the Fox News crowd, true. My insinuation was that some one from some other crowd (ie- crazy liberal or crazy religious group person) will off the guy and I don’t want to see an America where our public officials have to fear for their lives because of what they say. Truly. I find Huck deplorable. He’s an idiot as well as a lying sack of shit but I don’t want to hear the right say it’s liberals fault Huck up and got himself murdered.
rm
I must admit to being disappointed that Huckabee says such evil, genocidal things. I have a dim memory of him saying something decent in contradiction to the daily talking points of his party (maybe it was about the death penalty? It was the same kind of thing as Jeb Bush recently suggesting that Hispanic and Latino Americans are people too), and I hoped he was principled (don’t laugh). Turns out he is principled in the wrong way — he is willing to sacrifice millions of lives to a screwed-up ideological vision of reality.
He’s never stopped being a Suthen Babtis preacher. When the preacher says these crazy things about politics or foreigners, informed congregants shake their heads and say “well, he’s just a preacher, he don’t need to know all about that stuff. He’s good at heart.” Then the preacher runs for Governor and President and this is what comes out.
ppcli
@rm: That’s for sure. I remember once reading something by Jeane Kirkpatrick on the generals of the pre-Falklands Argentine junta and the tone bordered on the erotic. (And at one point, when she spoke of their sharp, disciplined appearance – those uniforms and boots! – it careened right over that border. Yuck.)
LGRooney
@Pooh:
Nothing truer than that in their mindset.
Upper West
Devil’s Advocate Post: (Note – Huckabee’s proposal about ethnic cleansing is disgusting and reprehensible, and I favor dismantling the settlements.)
However, (and at the risk of igniting an I-P flame war), is Huckabee reacting (in the statement about limiting where one can live, not in the expulsion statement) to the Palestinian demand that Jews not be permitted to live on the West Bank at all? Even if you believe, as I do, that the Palestinians should have a state on the West Bank, and that the settlements should be given up, isn’t it also ethnic cleansing to say that no Jew would be able to live in (the future) Palestine?
Svensker
@kindness:
Why would this get him murdered? Zionists have been saying this stuff for years. It’s not likely that Huck’s in any more danger than Gingrich, Eliot Abrams, Eric Cantor, Joe Lieberman, et al, have been.
batgirl
@ppcli:
I find it interesting that he uses “Christian,” “white,” and speaking “English” as his qualifiers because historically by law and still currently by practice, there are quite a few places that non-white (African-American, Asian, Latino, Arab, etc.) and non-Christian (Jews, Catholics, Muslims, etc.) Americans have been “prohibited and forbidden” to live.
I think his construction is telling. The definition of an American to Huckabee is a white, Christian, and English-speaking.
Fuck him.
Svensker
@Upper West:
At this point, that’s a bit like worrying about whether the Cherokees would let any white folks live in the Oklahoma reservations.
Or perhaps more apt, whether the Cherokee would let any white folk live in their ancestral lands.
There will be no peace. There will be no 2 state solution. There is only expulsion and genocide.
Pancake
@jayjaybear:
Another ignorant anti-Semite heard from. “Pancake,” has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the Ms. Corrie or her tragic death.
Dennis G.
@Upper West:
It might be if anybody was saying that, but they are not.
As things stand now, the Palestinians are completely without control as to these issues. Pretending that they might be in control of some of these issues some day and then to imagine that some of these future Palestinians will do to others what is happening to their people today is a silly argument at best. It just can not be taken as serious thinking.
Meanderthal
@Pancake:
Liar. We all know exactly what you’re referring to.
Persia
@ppcli: Wiki says that 4% of the West Bank population, less than 1% in Gaza, and nearly 10% of Israel’s Palestinian Arab population are Christian. Adding insult to racism.
Kirbster
Re: “Kick an Orphan and Beat a Puppy Act of 2011”
I have been sorely inconvenienced by having to write to my congressman almost every single day to request that he vote against this or that bill being introduced in John Boehner’s Tea House of Terror. Why can’t the Republicans combine all their loathing of modern life into an omnibus “Repeal the Entire 20th Century Act of 2011”?
David in NY
Thanks for calling this “ethnic cleansing.” The best Josh Marshall would do was “exclusion.” I wrote him and complained, to no avail.
Howlin Wolfe
@Pancake: I don’t know, Pancake, I see at least some coherence in the post. Quite a bit, actually. Seems the alcohol has been on your namesake foodstuff, of which you’ve consumed quite too much.
muzz al atesta
a clear majority of Palestinian civil society calls upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel, similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era, until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law.
worldwide, now more than ever let us unite & implement
Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) until there is freedom, dignity & justice for ALL in historic Palestine!
liberal
@Upper West:
It’s only ethnic cleansing if they already lived there, and that doesn’t include illegal settlements.
Major Mel Funkshun
SO HE WANTS TO MOVE THEM TO DETROIT?
Svensker
@Pancake:
I love the smell of predictability in the morning.
jayjaybear
@Pancake: I guess that’s why you had your username as “Pancake Rachel” at one point during the Marvi Marmara discussions?
Ruckus
@Jay C:
Pancake is not just being an assclown. That implies that it is trying to be an assclown. The truth is, that is it’s whole essence.
Jay C
@Pancake:
Nice try at deflection, dude/dudette: but it STILL doesn’t answer the question I posed in # 17 –
Leaving the assessments of “assclown” and/or “troll” aside, I repeat:
Ruckus
@Jay C:
I think you have your answer.
asiangrrlMN
@kindness: The fuck? Both sides DO NOT do it. Huckabee is in no danger of being murdered for this remark. Sheesh.
Brian
Dear Israelis and Palestinians,
All of you get the fuck out. We were here first.
Love,
The Canaanites.
P.S. I know the story, I’m making a point about the “we were here first” claim.
BobS
@liberal: Exactly. There has been little pushback against Israel throughout a dozen successive administrations-the lone exception was a Republican, Eisenhower, during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Johnson remained silent after the murder of several dozen American sailors on the USS Liberty in 1967, Carter didn’t champion the Palestinian cause until he was a couple decades safely removed from the presidency (and because of that enough of an embarrassment to the Democrats that they kept him away from primetime at the convention), and Obama was silent when Israel murdered an American citizen during a terrorist attack on the aid flotilla.
And those guys are profiles in courage compared to the collective moral fiber displayed in Knesset West, the US Congress, where there is less dissent on the Israel-Palestine issue than there is in the Israeli legislature.
Pancake
@jayjaybear: NOT TRUE>
Michael Bersin
“…Beat a Puppy Act of 2011”
It’s already in the pipeline. The testing phase started in Missouri:
It is right and just to defend the defenseless
brantl
@Pancake: Doesn’t stop you from being an asshole, though, does it?