Balloon Juice - Organizing & Resistance Archives

Prayin’ for the Confederate revolution…

by Dennis G.| August 7, 201012:49 am| 121 Comments

This post is in: Fables Of The Reconstruction, Flash Mob of Hate, Good News For Conservatives, Teabagger Stupidity

It is easy to downplay the extreme rhetoric of Wingnutopia as crazy stuff that will never catch on and yet it is becoming the mainstream rhetoric in the conservative movement. One doesn’t need to look far to see examples.

It is also not a surprise that most of the extreme ideas and rhetoric is rooted in the treason of the Confederacy. From Birtherism to calls to end birthright citizenship to nullification of Federal laws to states rights to calls for secession and more it seems the only flag Wingnuts respect is the old Confederate battle flag. And weaving these ideas together–just as it wove the Confederacy together–is racism, fear and deep, deep ignorance.

Case in point is the growing call for armed rebellion if voters and policy makers fail to place teabagger neo-Confederates in control of our Nation. From Palin to the lowliest wingnut blogger in his stars and bars boxers–and everywhere in-between–the threat of violence is repeatedly mentioned with varying degrees of subtlety.

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The unsurprisingly named blog “Confederate Yankee” is a small–but typical–hub for the barely concealed racism of the Right. And naturally the site advises its readers to prepare for the ‘rebellion’:

I’ll lay it out bluntly for you; either the American people—not extremists, but good and decent patriots like your neighbors and yourselves—will revolt and destroy the ruling class and reform our government based upon first principles, or the United States we know as our forefather conceived it is dead.

I do not state this as hyperbole. I do not state this to incite violence. I state this as nothing more or less than an observation of both history and current events. [snip]
Revolution is a brutish, nasty business. Innocents will fall along with patriots and the corrupt, and success is not assured. [snip]
The question for you, my fellow Americans, is simple.

Will you fight, or will you surrender your liberties?

I pray for peace.

But I prepare for war.

Reading the CY is a bit like wading in a verbal sewer, not as vile as Stormfront but that may only be because the site still wants to pretend that their careful wording of some statements provides them a cloak deniability when it comes to their hatemongering. And I’m sure that like teabaggers Williams and Breitbart they will use their word parsing to cry reverse racism and white victimhood whenever somebody points out their racist neo-Confederate bile.

These folks would be jokes, except that their ilk has killed before and their fellow travelers will kill again. Therefore, the violence they advocate should be taken seriously as the rhetoric of nascent domestic terrorist cell groups–because that is what it is. And while I know that we are suppose to be understanding of their feelings, it really is time to call these neo-Confederate assholes what they are: traitors.

Instead, these American Confederate traitors are treated as a serious group of folks in our political discourse who need to be catered to by a lazy media and politicians lacking the integrity and courage to call out these thugs (see McCain, John; Graham, Lindsey; Gingrich, Newt; etc for examples).

It is very clear that these Confederates wankers do not believe in America, Our Constitution, Our Elections, Our Laws or anything that might be in the way of restoring the grand Confederacy of their fevered imaginations.

I noticed the other day that Jesus’ General has called for a special way to ‘honor’ all these wingnuts on Glenn Beck’s magic day of September 12 with a call for Burn The Confederate Flag Day. He offers some ways to get involved:

Ways to get involved:

Host a flag-burning party on Sept. 12.

Tell us where and when you’re holding it, and we’ll publish a list of events.

Send us photos of the event. We’ll post them here.

Upload a video of the event onto YouTube. We’ll embed it or link to it.

Let them know we’re watching. Dress up like a clown and take a partially burned flag to a local tea party event (Don’t burn a flag at the event unless local laws allow it.)

Spread the word via Facebook (here’s our Facebook group), Twitter, and other social media.

Submit your own ideas, below in the comments. We’ll use them to update this list.

Place a banner on your blog, website, or social media profile.

This sounds like a fine idea to me. It is way past time for the Confederacy and all it represents to be turn to ashes.

Cheers

Prayin’ for the Confederate revolution…Post + Comments (121)

When they came for Ishmael, Abe grabbed a rope…

by Dennis G.| August 3, 201011:35 pm| 104 Comments

This post is in: Fables Of The Reconstruction, Flash Mob of Hate, General Stupidity, Good News For Conservatives

I know John touched on this earlier, but I am amazed at how low the ADL has sunk. There was a time in my lifetime when this was an organization to look up to. Like the ACLU and the NAACP, the ADL was an organization committed to justice and protecting core ideals and beliefs regardless of the political winds of the moment. All three groups were born in response to mobs of hate attacking minority groups in America.

The NAACP was a response to the Jim Crow backlash to Reconstruction and the open terrorist campaign of neo-Confederate white extremists in America. The ACLU was founded in the wake of the Palmer Raids and a Conservative effort to piss on the Bill of Rights. The ADL was founded in response to the Confederate campaign of hate spilling past blacks and extending to immigrants–especially immigrants with weird religions like Catholicism and Judaism.

In 1913 a Jewish worker in Atlanta was accused of raping a Southern girl. He was lynched by the same kind of hate fueled mob that inspired (and still inspires) the NAACP to call out racism. Out of that lynching, the Anti-Defamation League was born.

For most of the last 100 years these three groups have been true to their core missions, but that is no longer the case. While the NAACP and the ACLU continue the fight for justice, the ADL has quit the field.

Once the ADL was an organization of heroes. No more. Now when bigots call for a lynch mob to form out of fear and religious intolerance, the ADL no longer stands in the way. Now they call on their members to grab a rope and join the rampage.

Peter Beinart has a post up that helps to explain how the ADL went down the hate spiral of Wingnutopia. He makes a good case for how an important organization destroyed its credibility in an effort to appease the powerful and the extremists in their network.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, but it took less than a century for Abe Foxman’s ADL to find common cause with the spirit of bigotry that lynched Leo Frank.

When the flash mobs of hate came for mosques and followers of Islam–Abe Foxman’s ADL decided that silence was insufficient approval. In a through-the-looking-glass bootleg move, the ADL now celebrates religious intolerance. More than that, they encourage their followers to join the old school American pastime of hate/fear fueled mob action. I can hardly wait to hear Foxman justify a lynching because the mere existence of the mooslim victim had hurt someone’s feelings.

Foxman’s re-branding of the ADL may be complete, but it is is the worst re-branding effort since New Coke.

Cheers

When they came for Ishmael, Abe grabbed a rope…Post + Comments (104)

The magic of cinema and how we got here

by Dennis G.| August 2, 201010:26 pm| 60 Comments

This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, Fables Of The Reconstruction, Post-racial America, Good News For Conservatives, Teabagger Stupidity

Racism may be as old as our species, but the dominant language and imagery of racism in our current America is relatively new–less than 100 years old. To understand the dog whistles of the teabaggers, conservatives, Republicans and wingnuts (four groups with almost zero distinction between them) one must pay attention to the movies and especially to the film that created the vocabulary, memes, frames and talking points that are the building blocks of these racist dog whistles. Of course I’m talking about The Birth of a Nation:

Racism is alive and well in America. The Republican Party and the Tea Party movement are using dog whistles to racism as an effective organizing tool in this election cycle. They are, of course, outraged if anybody notices and insulted if anybody who notices is so rude as to mention it and call them out. Hence the shit-spitting attacks at the NAACP in recent weeks. The overt racism of teabaggers Mark Williams and Andrew Breitbart are just the most well known examples. It is not surprising that both of these racists use the internets, twitter, social media and the latest technology to mobilize folks around their dog whistles and to push out to a gullible media a selective cut of information as facts that must be taken seriously.

Racism has always been an early adapter of new technologies–from the printing press to movies to radio to TV to the web to smart phones (racist may even be faster than pornographers)–the racists are quick to use new tools of manipulation. And so it is not a surprise that Williams, Breitbart and their camp followers are using all of the most modern technologies to deliver racist dog whistles to help Republicans win this November. And yes–I know–they will be outraged that I notice and indignant that I pointed it out, but that does not change what they are doing at all.

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Racism is smoothly mixed with American pop culture. And in many ways we have D.W. Griffiths’ The Birth of a Nation to thank for that. One could do quite a few entries on this topic (and I expect that I will).

Consider the villain of the film. His name is Silas Lynch. He is a man of mixed race. In 2007 Time Magazine named Silas Lynch as number one villain in the history of cinema. Silas beat out everybody from Peter Lorrre’s pedophile in “M” to Hannibal Lecter to the Wicked Witch of the West. Silas Lynch was a bad mother fuc…[shut yer mouth].

And when it come to the Tea Party and the Republican Party, Barack Hussein Obama is Silas Lynch. If you understand this pop culture reference then so much of the rhetoric, dog whistles, talking points and memes of wingnutopia make ‘sense’ in the context of their batshit crazy view of the world.

There is a lot to explore in the Obama is Silas Lynch wingnut meme, but film history blogger Paul J. Marasa at his site The Constant Viewer pretty much nailed the core wingnut belief when he wrote about The Birth of a Nation. Marasa writes about film as a daily diary dated from the start of cinema. His description of Lynch could be used by any average teabagger to describe their core problem with President Obama:

Lynch is portrayed as the ultimate villain because of his mixed race, presumably possessing the supposed superior intellect of the white man and the supposed cunning deceit of the black man. He is seen as the symbol of all that is morally wrong with Reconstruction. He lusts for power and will betray the trust of his white benefactors as soon as it suits him.

Obama is a race traitor and his supporters are fools. It is a simple message and it comes through loud and clear in the dog whistles of 2010.

I know that pointing this out is rude, but so it goes.

Still, everything that your average teabagger/conservative/Republican/wingnut knows to be true they learned from the movies–especially The Birth of A Nation.

Cheers

The magic of cinema and how we got herePost + Comments (60)

Lindsay Graham: Let Terrorists Have Guns, Not Miranda Rights

by Anne Laurie| May 6, 20109:11 am| 128 Comments

This post is in: Enhanced Protest Techniques, Assholes, Green Balloons

Sometimes it’s a choice between mockery, and climbing the UT clock tower. Gail Collins chooses the less violent alternative:

Yes, if you are on the terrorist watch list, the authorities can keep you from getting on a plane but not from purchasing an AK-47. This makes sense to Congress because, as Graham accurately pointed out, “when the founders sat down and wrote the Constitution, they didn’t consider flying.”
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The subject of guns turns Congress into a twilight zone. People who are perfectly happy to let the government wiretap phones go nuts when the government wants to keep track of weapons permits. A guy who stands up in the House and defends the torture of terror suspects will nearly faint with horror at the prospect of depriving someone on the watch list of the right to purchase a pistol…
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Graham wanted to make it clear that just because he doesn’t want to stop gun purchases by possible terrorists, that doesn’t mean he’s not tough on terror.
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“I am all into national security. … I want to stop reading these guys their Miranda rights,” he said.
[…] __
The Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on “Terrorists and Guns: The Nature of the Threat and Proposed Reforms,” concerned a modest bill sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. It would allow the government to stop gun sales to people on the F.B.I. terror watch list the same way it does people who have felony convictions. Because Congress has repeatedly rejected this idea, 1,119 people on the watch list have been able to purchase weapons over the last six years. One of them bought 50 pounds of military grade explosives.
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Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, dutifully trekked down to Washington to plead for the bill on behalf of the nation’s cities. The only thing they got for their trouble was praise for getting the city through the Times Square incident in one piece. And almost everyone had a good word for the T-shirt vendor who first noticed the suspicious car and raised an alert. Really, if someone had introduced a bill calling for additional T-shirt vendors, it would have sailed through in a heartbeat.
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Gun legislation, not so popular.
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Lautenberg’s bill has been moldering in committee, and that is not going to change.
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“Let me emphasize that none of us wants a terrorist to be able to purchase a gun,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who nevertheless went on to argue against allowing the government to use the terrorist watch list to keep anyone from being able to purchase, um, a gun.
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“Some of the people pushing this idea are also pushing the idea of banning handguns,” said Graham, darkly. “I don’t think banning handguns makes me safer.”

Lindsay Graham: Let Terrorists Have Guns, Not Miranda RightsPost + Comments (128)

Kucinich Will Pay

by Anne Laurie| April 30, 20103:08 pm| 49 Comments

This post is in: Enhanced Protest Techniques, Assholes, Clown Shoes

Gawker has posted the guest list for tomorrow’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I would call the gathering, to use a fine British slang phrase, a dog’s dinner, but then we BJers are all responsible pet owners who feed our dogs a well-balanced diet.

Those sensible progressives who’ve been less than entranced by certain of Dennis Kucinich’s “more ~~emo~~ leftist than thou” political gambits can now enjoy the schadenfreude of the Washington Times table:

Dan Snyder
Donovan McNabb
Mike Shanahan
Bruce Allen
Rick Perry
Ben Nelson
Dennis Kucinich
Thad McCotter
Jack Evans
Robert McDowell
Andrew Breitbart

I’m guessing they invited Donovan McNabb expressly to keep Perry from eating Cleveland’s second most notorious ecological disaster as an hors d’ouevre, or possibly to fish His Elfishness out of the pool of Breitbart’s spittle.

Alas, it is almost certain that Jack Evans is not the professional wrestler…

Kucinich Will PayPost + Comments (49)

Whistling Dixie

by DougJ| April 27, 201011:50 pm| 108 Comments

This post is in: Enhanced Protest Techniques, Good News For Conservatives

This picture was taken in Portland, Maine.

I like the conclusion to the article accompanying the picture:

Jeremy Haskell was out walking his black Labrador retriever, Jeter, when he encountered the rally.

He said he is a lifelong Mainer and hunter but doesn’t have a need to flaunt a gun in public.

“I just don’t get it,” said Haskell.

It’s not about the right to bear arms, is it?

Update. Another article about this:

The flying of a large Confederate flag at a gun rights rally at Back Cove startled onlookers Sunday, even causing an African-American teenager to refuse to leave his vehicle out of fear, witnesses said.

Thank God we now live in a post-racial world.

Whistling DixiePost + Comments (108)

Death trip

by DougJ| April 26, 201010:02 pm| 48 Comments

This post is in: Enhanced Protest Techniques, Good News For Conservatives

I didn’t do a very good job yesterday of explaining why I think the South Park Mohammed/death threats/censorship thing is similar to lots of things that have been caused by good, Jesus-fearing Americans. Glenn Greenwald lays it out much better, citing this:

A Fort Worth theater that had agreed to show a student-directed play with a gay Jesus character has withdrawn its offer. The board of directors of Artes de la Rosa, which runs The Rose Marine Theater on North Main Street, decided Thursday against offering the venue for the production of Corpus Christi, just one day after saying it would. A March performance set for a directing class at Tarleton State University in Stephenville was abruptly canceled after the school received threatening emails.

And recalling:

The Dixie Chicks were deluged with death threats for daring to criticize the Leader, forcing them to apologize out of fear for their lives.

I’d add that when George Tiller was murdered, the same people treating SouthParkGate as the worst thing ever were openly blaming the murder, not on the murderer or his associates, but on supporters of reproductive rights.

The Taliban wing of American Christianity just isn’t that different from the actual Taliban. The main difference I suppose is that there are no actual Taliban apologists writing for the New York Times.

Death tripPost + Comments (48)

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Second rate reporter says what?

This blog will pay for itself.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Infrastructure week. at last.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

The willow is too close to the house.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Prayin’ for the Confederate revolution…

When they came for Ishmael, Abe grabbed a rope…

The magic of cinema and how we got here

Lindsay Graham: Let Terrorists Have Guns, Not Miranda Rights

Kucinich Will Pay

Whistling Dixie

Death trip