Yes, he is… but that’s only a virtue when one is consistently correct.
The Washington Examiner is a right-wing propaganda sheet, but it’s a professional operation. So when it came time to start roughing up St. Sanders, they didn’t go for the low-hanging ‘he’s a commie’ fruit, they dug up some indefensible-to-good-progressives oppo:
Wow. They found 1970s interviews where Bernie praised segregationist George Wallace.
‘Sanders, then 31, said Wallace "advocates some outrageous approaches to our problems, but at least he is sensitive to what people feel they need."’ https://t.co/EIsLb42Ppw
— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) January 30, 2020
Turns out everything that Bernie surrogates said about Biden and segregationists, anti-busing, tough on crime rhetoric, and the crime bill actually applied to Bernie Sanders himself. The level of hypocrisy is absolutely unbelievable.
— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) January 30, 2020
Because I’m in a bad mood, I’ll argue that watching George Wallace’s ‘success’ in the early 1970s actually gave Sanders his inspiration — white working-class (straight, male) resentment, but from the left. Vote for me, if you agree that ‘those people’ are stealing what should be *your* working-class benefits! Let us dream of returning to the golden age where one might be a wage slave, but at least there was the satisfaction of knowing the browns and the women would never be permitted to enter *our* unions!
Sure, Sanders is no more racist than any other white male 1970s politician who fled New York City for the bucolic white hamlets of Verment, but that’s still… pretty racist, by today’s standards. And if he’s embedded his arguments in a ‘sensitive to bigots’ feelings’ model that got him a toehold in Vermont politics back then, shame on the Cosplay Socialists who currently find it appealing.
Hillary Clinton was 16 years old when she supported Barry Golderwater
Bernie Sanders was 31 years old when he supported George Wallace.
Lets see how these cult followers defend this.
— ?? Black Professor ?? (@Wonderbitch82) January 30, 2020
On Wallace:
"[He] advocates some outrageous approaches to our problems, but at least he is sensitive to what people feel they need." -Bernie Sanders ('72)
"Over my dead political body is George Wallace going to get [the Democratic nomination]" -Joe Biden ('74) https://t.co/7VRFt6p97g
— Mangy Jay (@magi_jay) January 30, 2020
The Bernie-George Wallace controversy shows us two things:
1. Bernie’s class over race stance goes back nearly 50 years, the Rogan issue is just the latest in a long line of similar choices.
2. Bernie has clearly not been vetted and who the hell knows what else is out there.— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) January 30, 2020
Four years of screeching about how Bernie hasn't changed his opinions ever in his entire life is not paying off right now.
— Reject Ophidiophobia (@agraybee) January 30, 2020
Context is good but it’s hard to get past that quote about his admiration for Wallace’s supporters anger at the political system. They were angry because the political system was defending black ppl’s rights! https://t.co/G89qcPEp8t
— Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) January 31, 2020
Wallace was tapping into racist resentment, not economic resentment. LBJ had an unprecedented anti poverty program! Wallace appealed to white ppl possessed at the CRM.
— Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) January 31, 2020
Every damn time:
1) Who should we woo and accommodate? White working class racists.
2) Who should we fight to the death with every ounce of righteous fury in our body? Hillary, Liz, Kamela, Nancy, Barack.
— South Bend is smaller than ASU (@86_RSK) January 30, 2020
I think saying Wallace (or Trump!) was or is "sensitive to what people feel they need" understandably invites some questions as to which people and which needs. This isn't the time to say he's been unwaveringly focused on class only, if I were running interference for him. https://t.co/DWqkcuAYy9
— Gustavo Duderino (@davidabenner) January 30, 2020
Also, I know it’s just our usual sexist politics, but I don’t think Warren would have a flagship WaPo writer out here running defense for her if she’d had said the same.
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) January 30, 2020
Great point: You can’t pull the “economic anxiety” bs with the George Wallace praise, since America was in the economic golden age that many modern progressives admire today. Weaker corporations, less inequality, stronger unions. Just Black people who wanted rights. https://t.co/elzrIyDlmf
— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) January 31, 2020
I'd love to live in a world where the left has more respect for Kamala Harris's voters than Hitler's voters.
— Reject Ophidiophobia (@agraybee) January 31, 2020
Mnemosyne
I must admit, I have been enjoying this same kerfuffle all day long. The bad-faith defenses against things that people didn’t say are pretty delicious.
And a couple of people got schooled, like the guy who claimed that Bernie’s parents were Holocaust survivors when in actuality his mother was born in America and his father immigrated here as a child in the early 1920s.
Though you’d think these goons would have figured out that “descendant of Holocaust survivors” stopped being a valid moral defense when Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner joined the Trump administration.
who cares
There’s a lot of context missing to Sanders thoughts on Wallace. In my profile of Sanders in the 1970s I included an article he wrote on Wallace. He compares him to Hitler and calls him a demagogue
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1223019958390677504
Here’s the entire 1972 article on Wallace from Bernie Sanders my files. It ran in Liberty Union’s magazine Movement – third Vermont third party from which he was a member. He says Wallace traffics in racism and offers no real a solutions outside rhetoric.
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1223025286809374726
You know, if you want to get the information first-hand.
Raven Onthill
It was a quote out of context. The full article is available and in it Sanders compares Wallace to Hitler. From the article:
Sounds right on, doesn’t it? It just took longer than he expected, that is all. (He also didn’t expect the Islamophobia, or that the Jews and Communists of the Nazi experience would become the Jews and Communists of our experience.)
Now I agree he gives too much weight to the economic factors, but he does this for a particular reason: they were hugely important in 1930s Germany, the reference model for the most virulent fascism that any socialist would know. It was a much more brutal depression that the one which followed the 2008 crash. 1/3rd of the country was out of work. There was no social safety net. People literally starved. And the widespread poverty of the South could easily persuade a thinking person that economics was the motivation for the support of Wallace.
I did an extended piece on this, at https://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2020/01/fascism-poverty-racism-economics.html, you should read it ?, and I concluded that no, reactionary authoritarianism, fascism, can emerge without economic privation and also that if privation is present, it can be pressed into service by would-be authoritarian leaders. (I believe I am here echoing Polanyí, who I have not read.) And, the Republican leadership having sown the wind, cannot unsow it. Addressing the economics will not resolve the hatred that has been let lose.
Anyone with ideas? Because we need some.
Mnemosyne
@Raven Onthill:
What you’re quoting is actually a completely DIFFERENT article from a newsletter that Bernie published, not the newspaper article in question. Here’s a link to a scan of the actual newspaper article with the quote in question:
https://mobile.twitter.com/doctor_eon/status/1222983729905197056
We can’t have a conversation about apples if you guys keep shoving oranges in our face and insisting they’re the same fruit. Address the ACTUAL article, not a totally different newsletter essay that was published somewhere else.
Mnemosyne
@Raven Onthill:
Also, people love to talk about German fascism but somehow forget all about Spanish and Italian and Japanese fascism, probably because they don’t offer the same simplistic “Great Depression = Nazis” formula. Those versions of fascism developed during the roaring 20s when economic times were good — the American equivalent was the rise of the KKK and the series of racial pogroms in places like Florida and Oklahoma.
Nazi Germany was actually the TAIL END of the fascist movement and a latecomer to European fascism. Stop pretending that it was the prototype.
Mnemosyne
But I have to work tomorrow, so all y’all night owls and early risers will have to fight it out without me. Good night! ?
Mary G
Putin and the Republicans are probably furious with the Examiner for pulling the trigger on this. They are working hard to make Bernie the Democratic nominee and have all this stuff ready to go. After the primary, not now FFS!
Dan B
@Raven Onthill: Thanks for the context. The statements about Wallace seemed at odds with Bernie’s involvement with the Civil Rights Movement. But Bernie does seem stuck in the concepts of class warfare that were common in the 60’s.
Answers? Same old maybe: Define and live out a vision of culture. Appeal to people who can be swayed. (Determining who they are is an endless task.) Resist people and organizations that attack. Be strategic – take on what you have capacity to accomplish effectively. Be adaptable.
Which parts of these is Bernie focused on and which aspects is he missing… but nobody’s perfect, right?
Raven Onthill
@Mnemosyne: the Sanders piece I cited was his notes for that interview. More here: https://twitter.com/doctor_eon/status/1222983729905197056?s=20. He even talked about health care. And, yes, I agree that looking at Italian and Spanish fascism leads to different conclusions. (I am hesitant to draw on Japanese history; I do not know enough about it.) Conclusions can also be drawn current Indian fascism, and the current not-exactly-fascism but definitely authoritarianism of China. The problem is, almost everyone makes the mistake of assuming that the German experience was the prototype or at else the most advanced form: Hillary Clinton as well and, I regret to say, Warren, who I support.
And I wrote about about this at greater length. In that piece, I comment:
You should read the whole thing at https://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2020/01/fascism-poverty-racism-economics.html. ?
joel hanes
Ah, the first shoe.
I’ve been wondering when.
Raven Onthill
@Dan B: are you sure he is entirely wrong? He’s got the emphasis wrong and an incorrect (but common) historical analysis. Yet class warfare is also part of the Trump/Republican program. It is perhaps accurate to say that the rich are making class war and the less-rich are making race war.
Anne Laurie
@who cares: It’s the hypocrisy that matters. Sanders, and his busy worker bees, have been gleefully punishing every Not-Sanders candidate for Wrongspeak — having been a cradle Republican in the 1990s, or voting for bad bills in the 1970s.
Somebody — REPUBLICANS — digs up Sanders being ‘sensitive’ to the feelings of Wallace voters, and suddenly it’s Wait, my dudes, does nobody appreciate the exquisite *context* of Bernie’s sympathies for the resentful bigots?
Sanders’ boast, as celebrated all over social media, has been that BERNIE IS PURE & PERFECT & INCAPABLE OF ERROR. When it turns out he’s just another politician (and not a particularly effective one, at that), people who were not Bernistas are not gonna be impressed by your sudden affection for ‘nuance’.
We’re Democrats, we don’t need ‘independent’ grifters gnawing at our ankles while we’re trying to defeat the zombie GOP.
Dan B
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for this article. Statements like Bernie’s that “people” are your average middle class and working class, and presumed that black and brown people had the same issues as “average white people” were very common among white liberals and most white radicals in the 60’s and 70’s. It was the product of a very segregated society. It was what we might call toxic cluelessness. It worked heedlessly in tandem with prioritizing one movement over others. It made the left vulnerable to schizms. If being “left” meant you would prioritize economics over racism or sexism struggles then intersectionality only went in one direction. Solidarity meant follow our lead, we’ll get to you later.
Kathleen
@Anne Laurie: I love you Anne Laurie. That is all.
Dan B
@Raven Onthill: My recollection of 50’s and 60’s socialist thought believed that civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBT rights were noble but secondary, or distractions to, the class struggle. Some believed they were parallel but most seemed, like Bernie, to feel that socialism could fix everything. I believe they must all be addressed and we’ve got additional issues due to the scale of impacts of globalization, threats to privacy, and climate change. Class struggle is not the only sure, or necessarily the key, strategic approach.
Getting tired even for a night owl so maybe this addresses your question.
JPL
I wonder if Bernie appreciates the support he’s receiving from republicans.
rikyrah
The ‘context’ about George Wallace.
Really?
Seriously????
Anya
@who cares: I understand the context and no one should claim he was actually siding with Wallace but my issue with Sanders is his long standing shallow understanding of income equality and his utter lack of interest in including black people’s lived experience. I don’t think Bernie Sanders saying George Wallace was “sensitive” to what people felt they needed was him praising the segregationist leader. But it shows his utter shallowness and continued blind spot when it comes to including African Americans’ experience into his income equality message. How does he not understand a segregationist being sensitive to what people wanted meant he was sensitive to the wishes of people who wanted to subjugate black people and to continue to deny them full rights?
Spc
@Mnemosyne: with Japan it may be more complicated – some parallels to DE. Nascent democracy with weak institutions and factionalism and a sense of being slighted by Western powers – even at Versailles where they were ignored. Depression and cut off from Wall Street loans pushed the fascists over the top in DE but plenty of far right factionalism in play during Weimar. Depression was not a cause but rather more of an accelerant.
gene108
@Raven Onthill:
???????????????
Elections still happen. Ruling party lost some of those.
Not sure how that’s fascism.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Really surprised to see Bernie supported segregationist George Wallace.
Biff Baxter
I didn’t follow closely but how many questions, if any, did Wilmer submit to the bench the last two days? I know that Warren and Klobuchar submitted questions
glory b
I have a problem with how little he seems to care about the details. In 2016, in his big interview with the New York Times, when he was asked about how he was going to break up the big Banks, he said he didn’t know! He’s been in government for decades. He’s been pushing this plan all along. He never stopped to think about how it was going to work? He has a staff he could have had a research the issue, but no one seems to have done this.
He doesn’t know how he’s going to get rid of the insurance industry, he has no plan for the millions of people who work there, and his people are upset that he gets resistance on this.
I think this is right, the Republicans planned on holding this until after the primaries. Someone, I think it was David farenthold, said the Republicans had stacks of Oppo research on him and were keeping it until they could use it most effectively.
sanjeevs
@Mary G: I’m seeing lots of evidence of troll farm support for Bernie. Just like in 2016.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Biff Baxter: Wilmer only submitted one question.
He asked: “I once had a leather jacket that got ruined in the rain. Why does moisture ruin leather? Aren’t cows outside a lot of the time?”
sanjeevs
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: “In our state, guns are used for hunting. In Chicago, they’re used for kids in gangs killing other kids or people shooting at police officers, shooting down innocent people.”
Bernie Sanders.
Villago Delenda Est
Wilmer continues to be a sack of shit, wound up in his own ego at the expense of accomplishing things for his constituents.
The bros might as well be MAGAts. Fuck them.
Buckeye
I have a friend who’s a Sanders supporter. He’s a 55 year black male, and he’s not a Berner at all. Some of his friends on FB, OTOH, write this crap:
ONLY Bernie actually has the agenda of the American People in his heart…All the rest are opportunistic GOP Lites…The DEM Party was overtaken by center right pols whose only claim to fame is..they call themselves DEM and are supposedly not Racist!!! However, Biden has proved that he is RACIST..and so too Elizabeth. Because anyone who LIED about their ethnicity like she did..should be ashamed to say she’s Native American!!! Horrible. I support you Ed*.100%!! Except on NFL issues! LOLOLOL IMO NFL is a disgusting Right Wing Racist org..but that’s for another day!
I resemble that Remark…and Proud of it. If you think staying quiet and letting the DNC run amok like it did in 2016, giving us the worst candidate in History..I’m not your guy. It’s truly time we, the PEOPLE, took America back from the Centrist RIGHT WING DEMS and Buffoon GOP. In 2016..We let Trump own, Make America Great again, by giving in to Hillary and her war mongering. It’s time we truly rise up and do what’s good for the people…Like it or not…This isn’t a time to stay silent or quiet in the corner. Too many times the DEM Establishment have said..not now..not just yet..while bowing down to their Big Money Donors…NOT This time..and NOT NOW
He’s a white guy from Mass. (I’m presuming he didn’t vote for Warren for Sen).
And this type of Sanders supporters is only going to get worse.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, nobody but Saint Bernie.
Villago Delenda Est
@Buckeye: No better than MAGAts.
PST
@Spc: Another special consideration for Japan was the rise of extreme right-wing nationalism in the military under a constitution that effectively left the army and navy outside civilian control.
Matt
I mean, you *could* read the whole piece and see the context – but those rats aren’t gonna fuck themselves!
Dennis
“Bernie is the Real Racist!” is right up there with Bush’s “Kerry is the Real Vietnam Coward!”
You should be embarrassed.
Anya
I actually think anyone making simplistic argument about how we should disregard Bernie’s record because of the source who found the article should be in embarrassed. Bernie’s words and his constant blind spot when it comes to the African Americans experience are fair points.
chopper
i don’t think a campaign that attacked biden with an out-of-context quote (attacking paul ryan) implying he wants to cut social security gets to fucking complain about fucking context, man.
Richard Guhl
@glory b: I get the zeal to reform the unquestionably messy kludge that is our health insurance system. What I don’t get is the almost callous willingness to bulldoze people’s livelihoods as if they’re yesterday’s trash being disposed of in a landfill.
Richard Guhl
@glory b: I should add that your observation about Bernie’s ‘plan’ for the big banks also applies to M4A.
The biggest problem with M4A is the transition. Bernie says he’ll get it done in four years.
What’s the trouble with that?
Aside from the questionable timeline, how will the million+ people who work in the health insurance industry and their counterparts filing claims on behalf of providers react?
The best of them will immediately head for the door seeking other employment. Those left behind will face a huge increase in their workload with no incentive to work harder. Morale will be in the toilet.
Inevitably, claims will get lost, delayed or routinely denied, because no one is around to handle them.
What follows this loss of regular revenues for providers will be layoffs of personnel, declining health care, and perhaps the collapse of the system.
One crucial lesson we should have gained from the 2008 financial crisis is that complex systems are fragile and prone to shock.
Hortense
@Anne Laurie: Rhank you for this. Bernie’s proud of the fact that he is “the longest-serving independent in Congress” and why the Democrats give him a platform or any credence is a mystery to me.
Richard Guhl
@Anya: A couple of years ago, The Grio shared a telling quote from Bernie that encapsulates his problem.
“Yes, we must defend women’s rights and civil rights, BUT ordinary people don’t care about those things.”
Two things—
First, the word “but” negates what comes before it.
Two, when you subtract out women, people of color, and LGBT people, who are the “ordinary people” Bernie evinces so much concern for?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Dan B: only thing I disagree with in your analysis is using the past tense…
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
I want Bernie to be grilled about his votes on not restoring money for gun violence research for the CDC in 1996 and his vote for the 2005 law that protects gun manufacturers from lawsuits. He voted with the Republicans on some pretty important things yet he seems to always skate out of having to explain himself…
Dupe1970
@who cares: Understood but the quote is still terrible even in context. Bernie constantly centers his polticis and policy in whiteness. “Wallace knows what people wants,” is not accurate because people should include black people and they sure as heck did not want Wallace. It happens over and over where Bernie deflects away from issues of race and pretends everything is a class issue. Also, in the late 60s and early 70s the economy was still pretty darn good.
glory b
@Richard Guhl: I’ve mentioned this before, A LOT of people of all colors in Pittsburgh work in the health insurance industry. These aren’t like the union jobs of the past (cough, steel industry cough), but lots of them with HS diplomas or a year or two of college do well enough to afford housing, childcare, a roof over their heads, etc.
What will they do? He doesn’t know and doesn’t seem to care.
Searcher
@Hortense:
Empirically, most people don’t. But a lot of people treat the Democratic Party like the Presidential Semi-finals instead of, you know, an organization of people working together to achieve common policy goals, which are constantly renegotiated at multiple levels among the individuals participating.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Someone wants context about George Wallace? I’ve got their context right here: Seymore, you know why I lost that governor’s race? … I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I’ll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again.
I think that covers it.
Raven Onthill
@gene108: ethnic cleansing of Muslims in India, fairly obviously modeled on the Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany.
The Nazis were, indeed, not the prototype of fascism, but they seem to have been the prototype of something new and darker.
Mnemosyne
@Richard Guhl:
This right here. The reason Bernie’s fans are freaking the fuck out about this quote and desperately seeking other sources with Wallace’s name in them is that this quote highlights a way in which Bernie has not changed in 50 years: he centers the feelings and experiences of white people (specifically straight white men) as being more important than anyone else. Straight white men are “people”; everyone else has a qualifier. When Bernie says “people” or “us,” he means “white people.”
This. Is. A. Problem.
Raven Onthill
@Anya: “utter lack of interest in including black people’s lived experience.”
I think the man who got arrested by Richard J. Daley’s brutal police force protesting racist housing policy knew something about black people’s lived experience. That took guts.
The child of refugees who grew up surrounded by survivors of one of the great racist atrocities of history knows something about racism. It is unfair to say he does not.
Mnemosyne
@Raven Onthill:
Bernie was NOT the child of refugees, FFS. His mother was born in America. His father came here as a child in the early 1920s, long before the Nazis rose to power.
Yes, he had relatives who died in the Holocaust. Many American Jews did. But he did not have a direct connection and his parents were NOT refugees.
Raven Onthill
@Mnemosyne: You are erasing Sanders’s Jewish background and you don’t even notice or care.
This is, by the way, one reason why I think Sanders is going to have a hard time winning the general election, should he become the nominee. The election of Trump and the triumph of the Republicans uncovered the continuing racism of US society. There is also continuing antisemitism, and should Sanders become the nominee, it will be a factor in the election. One the one hand, Sanders is blamed for sympathy with white voters. On the other hand, he is blamed for not acting and thinking like a white US Protestant.
Mnemosyne
@Matt:
I’m sorry, but the rules you guys set up say that context can never be an excuse for saying something bad. Are you saying that the rules Bernie demanded that other people adhere to should only apply to other people and not apply to Bernie?
Mnemosyne
@Raven Onthill:
See my comment just above yours about Bernie’s ancestry. Now it’s anti-Semitic to point out that his mother was born in America and his father left Germany at least 10 years before the Nazis rose to power?
Richard Guhl
@Raven Onthill: Hitler made reference to the Turks genocide of the Armenians, saying,”Nobody remembers the Armenians.”
Raven Onthill
@Mnemosyne: almost any Jew who came to America when Sanders parents and grandparents left was a refugee. Why do you think Jews left Europe in such huge numbers? It wasn’t the American dream, hell, no. It was because of deep-rooted antisemitism in Europe.
Sanders father was from Galicia in central Europe. His mother’s ancestors were Russian and Polish Jews. These were – still are – intensely antisemitic places.
Now, as someone with a serious interest in history, you likely know about antisemitism in central and eastern Europe, and you likely know that Jews left for the USA because of it. But you didn’t put these facts together with the reality of Sanders’ life. This is exactly what you are accusing Sanders of: not attending to lived experience of an oppressed group.
Mo MacArbie
@Raven Onthill: My ancestors left Galicia then too. They weren’t Jewish. Lots of people left Galicia then, economic backwater that it was.
Mnemosyne
@Raven Onthill:
Refugee =/= Holocaust survivor. Why is this difficult for you?
People react in different ways to the same trauma. Jared Kushner’s grandparents were actual Holocaust survivors — you can watch his grandmother’s testimony online thanks to the Shoah Project. Does that mean that everything Jared and his father did is A-OK, because of that generational trauma? Or is this more special pleading on Bernie’s behalf that should only apply to him?
But you’re right about the anti-Semitic attacks that Bernie would be subjected to. They used them against Hillary even though she’s not Jewish, so they won’t have any compunction about using them against Bernie.
glory b
What does Sanders Jewish background have to do with the subject? How does that excuse his statements or his supporters hypocrisy?
There’s one picture of him getting arrested during a protest. What did he do after that?
Also, how are Protestants supposed to act?
What bothers me more about him is that he has hired so many people who smugly and happily voted for Jill Stein. That so many of his campaign leaders didn’t se the threat to our democracy is troubling.
Princess
@Raven Onthill: As someone who actually *is* the child of a Jewish refugee of the Holocaust, Mnemosyne is erasing nothing. Bernie was not the child of refugees. He is not a Holocaust survivor. The Holocaust is of more moment than something that can be used to pander for Bernie votes. Same with the Civil Rights movement.
Raven Onthill
@Mnemosyne: Sanders grew up in Brooklyn, the child of refugees. He was surrounded by Holocaust survivors in that Jewish neighborhood, though his immediate family emigrated earlier. Most of his paternal aunts, uncles, and cousins died in the death camps in Poland. Many of his somewhat more distant maternal relatives also likely died there.
He had actual experience of the consequences of European antisemitism, even if his immediate family escaped the worst of it.
@Mo MacArbie: but they were killing Jews there. It wasn’t just grinding poverty that persuaded Jews to leave. No matter how poor a Galician christian was, they could always look down on, and perhaps beat up, Galician Jews.
Princess
@Raven Onthill: This is gross and it devalues the experience of actual refugees and survivors. Bernie doesn’t have to be at the head of every parade, you know.
Mo MacArbie
@Raven Onthill: You do know that Galicia was the Austro-Hungarian portion of erstwhile Poland, yes? And that Polish emigres at the time were effectively stateless, because there was no such thing as Poland then? But Bernie’s all totally refugeer, not like that in crowd.
Bill Arnold
@Raven Onthill:
[Serious answer]
Teach meta-cognition[1]. Basically, teach people how to be aware of their own thought processes, and importantly, realtime aware both of how they’re being manipulated emotionally and of their conceptual biases. Short-term, focus on influencers like the press and educators. Done right and broadly enough, marketing breaks, including political marketing. Basically, we humans need to fix humans/human minds to be less easily and less reliably hackable. It’s going to get a lot worse with targeted AI-driven manipulation.
[1] Some people say self-awareness; that term is rather overloaded for me. (Though TBH so is “meta-cognition” in the academic literature, with a few competing meanings.) And metacognition can get rather more complicated; think flexible “topologies of mind”.
J R in WV
@Raven Onthill:
Advice Unasked Indeed.
Someone calling Senator Sanders “subtle” — hmmm.
Mnemosyne
@Raven Onthill:
Everything you said equally applies to Bill Kristol and his parents, and yet they chose to use their newly bestowed whiteness to ally themselves with right-wing assholes like Nixon and Reagan in the conservative movement that culminated in Trump.
It’s almost like Jewish Americans are individuals who have individual experiences and different reactions to the same trauma, so we need to judge them by their actual actions and not make assumptions based on a shared background. ?
lumpkin
Wallace and the southern Democrats were promoting a herrenvolk democracy. When Sanders said “but at least he is sensitive to what people feel they need” that is what he was agreeing with.
Mnemosyne
@lumpkin:
Yep. And his supporters are freaking out about it because he still sympathizes with that, as shown by his identification with people like Joe Rogan as the (white) voters who are REALLY important.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for that quote. It seems so familiar to me, yet couldn’t call it up… And such good timing!
J R in WV
@Raven Onthill:
Now I hear the goalposts moving again !! Look! there they go, over there!!!
anarchoRex
Dang, this is a shitty thing for Bernie to have said.
Too bad absolutely no one wanted to admit that Biden was fucked up for supporting segregationists, so good luck getting anyone who wasn’t already against Bernie to give a shit about this.
chopper
@Raven Onthill:
so sanders’ mom, who was born in the US, was a refugee? a refugee from where, new jersey?
Mo MacArbie
@anarchoRex: Actually, no. We’re admiring the loft Bernie got on his out-of-context petard.
Though since the general election will be fought on the playground, I cannot forbear from offering the following (solely for the purpose of toughening the candidate up, you understand):
Bernie and Wallace, sittin’ in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes wind, then comes weather
Then comes “Segregation forever”
anarchoRex
@anarchoRex: and before y’all dogpile me: I’ve never given a crap, or said one word, about the people that the current candidates used to be. I’ve never said anything about Kamala’s, Biden’s, Warren’s, etc, history, because I don’t care.
I support candidates based on what they would do for me now, because it’s no surprise that most politicians have something in their past that’s less than savory.
Richard Guhl
@anarchoRex: Actually, stuff like this is targeted at two groups especially: African American and suburban women, aiming to depress their turnout. As the last election showed, that only needs to work a bit in Philly and its suburbs, and there goes Pennsylvania again.
Mnemosyne
@anarchoRex:
Hey, I’ll give you points for being willing to admit it was a shitty thing for Sanders to say even though I think the whole “Biden was palling around with racists!” thing is ridiculous and overblown.
The problem is that most of Sanders’ supporters are trying to make a special pleading that his words need to be read in context while everyone else’s can be cherry-picked to attack them. They’re now finding out the hard way that it ain’t how it works and Bernie doesn’t get special protection anymore. Live by the cherry-picking, die by the cherry-picking.
anarchoRex
@Mnemosyne: I can see that, but the mirror is that people who are already against Bernie will have a field day shitting all over him for stuff like this or Rogan, but when it comes to your avg moderate Dem, they’re perfectly happy to gloss over it or even find a way to make it sound good. At the very worst, both sides are guilty of what they accuse the other side of doing
And yeah, I think Bernie’s comment here about Wallace is cringe af, even with the other context.
Sherparick
@who cares: As I posted on Lawyers, Guns, and Money and twitter earlier today, this is just the first small stones in the avalanche RW media and PACs will be unleashing on Bernie as they go through 60 years of writings, interviews, and speeches. Democrats, even the hated Nerra Tanden and Hillary and her bots simply never went to DEFCON 1 on dirt that could be dug up on Bernie.
However, just like I hate it when Bernie Bros adopted right-wing memes to hurt Biden, Warren, Harris, O’Rourke, et al, I hate it when us outside the Bernie cult in the non-DSA left do it to Bernie. Clearly, this was not Bernie supporting George Wallace in 1972. It was wrong headed, and goes to Bernie’s and the DSA’s stubborn allegiance Marx’s argument that race and nationalism are “false consciousness” despite evidence of 120 years of the dynamic popularity of fascist movements based on tribe and religion, but he was not “supporting” Wallace. But it does give MSM a pointed question for Bernie to explain, which is why RW Washington Beacon injected it into the media jetstream. And Bernie and his folks should start expecting one or more of these blasts from the past about every 48 to 72 hours.
Raven Onthill
@chopper: Sanders mother was the child of refugees; her parents were from Russia and Poland. Sanders is a child and grandchild of refugees.
Please. Look up old-world antisemitism. Look up the word “pogrom.”
Raven Onthill
For the record, again, I said that Sanders was the child and grandchild of refugees from European antisemitism. His father’s relatives died, in Poland, at the hands of the Nazis. Sanders grew up surrounded by Holocaust refugees.
@Mnemosyne: Sanders choose to interpret his history as a reason to fight for social justice. Jared Kushner chose to become corrupt. Bill Kristol, as you say, chose to attempt to integrate himself into a power structure which will never fully accept him.
Which choice was the most moral?
Saying that the Holocaust had no impact on Sanders and his family because his immediate family did not die in it is like saying that slavery has no effect on African-American lives because few living African-Americans are the direct children of slaves. It is exactly the excuse that white people give to reject reparations or, indeed, any attempt to rectify anti-black racism.
Antisemitism lives.
Raven Onthill
@Bill Arnold: @Dan B: when I asked “Any ideas?” I was thinking that we likely are in for more violence. In the conclusion of the piece which no one read, I wrote: “Women, African-Americans, and other marginalized groups are not willingly ceding the civil rights gained in the 1960s and 1970s. ”
African-Americans did not willingly give up the rights they gained at the end of the Civil War. It took terrorism to take those rights and that is what I think we are facing. I do not think we can reason with the opposition here; 40 years of reason has failed. Which means we need to do … what?
VFX Lurker
So. Many. Pies in this thread. Thank you, pie filter. ❤️
chopper
@Raven Onthill:
hey thanks for cluing me in to what pogroms and anti-semitism are. as a jew i would never have fucking known otherwise.