The question of character

Remember how, when George W. Bush was running against Al Gore back in 2000, we kept hearing about his superior "character" -- emphasized constantly by references to his supposed religiosity -- as such a refreshing contrast from the Bill Clinton years?

Well, now the worm has turned:

In a new poll comparing President Bush's job performance with that of his predecessor, a strong majority of respondents said President Clinton outperformed Bush on a host of issues.

... Respondents favored Clinton by greater than 2-to-1 margins when asked who did a better job at handling the economy (63 percent Clinton, 26 percent Bush) and solving the problems of ordinary Americans (62 percent Clinton, 25 percent Bush).

On foreign affairs, the margin was 56 percent to 32 percent in Clinton's favor; on taxes, it was 51 percent to 35 percent for Clinton; and on handling natural disasters, it was 51 percent to 30 percent, also favoring Clinton.

Moreover, 59 percent said Bush has done more to divide the country, while only 27 percent said Clinton had.

When asked which man was more honest as president, poll respondents were more evenly divided, with the numbers -- 46 percent Clinton to 41 percent Bush -- falling within the poll's margin of error.

It's too bad it's cost us the well-being of the nation and a growing mountain of bodies to discover that, perhaps, Bush's character wasn't all it was quacked up to be.

Especially since that was clear even before he was elected. And it has been manifest since the day he assumed office.

Back then, Gail Sheehy provided an insight that seems rather prophetic:

Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says [Doug] Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off.... It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that."

The chief problem, as I observed at the time, is that no one in the press was willing to point out that the emperor had no character:

What has become painfully clear is that for no one in the Washington press corps do George W. Bush's absolute ruthlessness and his unwillingness to win or lose by the rules of the game raise a character question. Instead, they look at the guy, Al Gore, who has made abundantly clear his willingness to abide by the rules, to play fairly and squarely at every turn, and deride him for his wimpiness in comparison.

Then there was the "trifecta" joke, in which all of Bush's character flaws came rushing to the fore:

Most economists peg the source of these nagging deficits on Bush's tax-cut plan, the deepest portions of which loom ahead. The administration sternly denies this. Yet it's clear that while Sept. 11 may have deepened and broadened the budget-deficit problem, the administration was faced with chronic budget deficits no matter what.

And that gets to the heart of the "trifecta" joke, whose entire purpose clearly is to blame the deficit on Sept. 11 and its aftermath. Thus it lets Bush escape any serious questions about either his failure to balance the budget or, particularly, his campaign pledge to use the Social Security Trust Fund to pay down the national debt. The national tragedy gave him unparalleled political cover for his administration's failures -- and Bush, to no one's surprise, has displayed no hesitation whatsoever about using it. Indeed, it has become his favorite joke.

Never mind that it is perhaps the most tasteless and insensitive joke in the annals of the presidency, nor that it is ultimately a falsehood. What's really noteworthy about Tale of the Trifecta is that the in-your-face political opportunism it represents is not out of the ordinary for this administration.

Since Sept. 11, Bush and his Republican colleagues have at every turn used the threat of terrorist attacks as cover for the administration's difficulties:

-- Attorney General John Ashcroft attacked critics of his anti-terrorism measures in December by telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that opponents of the administration "only aid terrorists" and "give ammunition to America’s enemies."

-- When Democratic leaders in the Senate -- particularly Majority Leader Tom Daschle -- questioned Bush’s handling of the war on terrorism, they drew accusations of "aiding and abetting the enemy" and dark suggestions about the critics' patriotism.

-- When questions emerged in early May about what Bush and his advisers knew about terrorist threats before Sept. 11 and Democrats began pushing for an independent investigation, a series of warnings of yet more imminent terrorist attacks were issued from the administration. The criticism largely subsided.

-- Four days after proposing, amid skepticism, a Cabinet-level Homeland Security department, the administration announced the arrest of a man suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda agents to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in an American city. As it happens, the actual arrest had occurred a month before.

There have been other, less clear incidents suggesting a willingness to use Sept. 11 and its aftermath as not just a political shield, but a weapon. This probably should not be a surprise: after all, one need only recall Karl Rove’s instructions to the Republican National Committee last January to make the war on terrorism a political issue.

And, lest we forget, the question of Bush's character came clearly to the surface with his military-records questions, which raised red flags about his character both as a young man and as president:

[T]he gross character flaw that the AWOL matter reveals is also very much part of what we have gotten from this presidency. There is no sense of accountability to the public anywhere in this administration; if something goes wrong [Can you say, "Weapons of mass destruction?" I knew you could.] it places the blame elsewhere. It falsifies budget figures and misleads the public about the grotesque debt load its deficits are placing on future generations. And it distorts intelligence estimates so that it can convince the public to participate in a war it had planned even before winning election. It bullies its opponents, and traffics in the most transparent way in keeping the public in line by fanning its fears of terrorist attack.

This is a presidency sold to the public on the phony image of Bush as a man of superior character -- a straight shooter, a veteran, a man who understands and respects duty and honor. (This was meant to contrast with Bill Clinton and, by extension, Al Gore.) But as we have explored at length previously, Bush's family connections are not any source of superior character; and as the AWOL episode demonstrates rather starkly, his personal history gives no evidence of having developed it either.

This personal character of Bush's has been a cornerstone of his entire governing style. Should we go to war? Trust Bush -- he's a "good man." Economy's in the dumpster? "He's working hard to make things better." Wrecking the environment? "How can you impugn our motives?" Valerie Plame? "That's just politics."

This style gives way to the kind of arrogance that can dress Bush up in a flight suit and send him jetting out to the deck of an aircraft carrier, in way specifically designed to emphasize his own phonied-up service record, for the sake of a photo op prematurely announcing "Mission Accomplished." It's what lets Bush get away with posing for all the world as a veteran "war president" with a real respect for the suffering of average soldiers. And it's what lets him and his minions get away with impugning the motives and patriotism of the people who question his leadership.

In the intervening months years, the same flaw comes up time and again: Fumbling the Katrina disaster; flouting both the Geneva Conventions and American law by claiming the power to ignore them both at will; allowing oil and energy companies to run roughshod over consumers; handing out huge tax breaks to the wealthy while the budget deficits pile up; and most of all, invading a nation on false pretenses and then incompetently failing to either conceive or carry out an adequate occupation or withdrawal.

So it should be clear that character does indeed count. But it should also be clear that neither the mavens of the media nor the movement-conservative propagandists who sold the nation on Mr. Bush are any judges of it.

Deciderata

Go smugly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in stonewalling.
As far as possible, leave no chance of surrender
and be on superior terms to all other persons.
Speak your truthiness loudly and garbled;
and never listen to others,
especially not the wise and the well-informed;
they can all just go to hell.

Seek out loud and aggressive persons,
they are a vexation to your critics.
Constantly compare yourself with others,
so that you remain vain and bitter;
for you always must be assured there are lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements, even if they only consist of catching large perch, as well as your plans, even if they go to shit.

Keep covering the tracks of your own failed and calamitous career;
because if anyone ever clues in to your incompetence, your fortunes will change in time.
Abandon caution in your business and political affairs;
for the world is full of trickery, but no one is better than you.
But let this not blind you to what use in virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of suckers.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign intelligence.
Always be cynical about war;
for in the face of all effeminite sensitivity
it is as eternal as blood.

Take blindly the counsel of the years,
grasping desperately the things of youth.
Nurture the strength of your liquid spirits to cushion you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings; they are for wealkings.
Many fears are born of care and thoughtfulness, which is beyond your ken.
In your weekly discipline session,
tell her to be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the Bizarro Universe,
no more brains than God gave a rock;
you have no business being what you are.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is crumbling around you as it should.

Therefore be at war with the Enemy,
whatever you conceive him to be,
and use those labors and aspirations
to justify warrantless surveillance on your nation.

With all its Hannities, Drudges, and Fox Networks,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be oblivious.
Strive to be happy.
29 percent approval ratings notwitshtanding.

With apologies to Max Ehrman. Sorta.

Coulter and the onset of fascism

Did you notice how everyone on the right tut-tutted when Ann Coulter called for retaliation against "ragheads" -- but still, she continues to appear on college campuses and cable-TV programs apace. So much for that phony right-wing "outrage" over "extremists in their own ranks."

In reality, Coulter has long been leading the race of right-wing nutcases to move the demarcation line for "beyond the pale," and this week she demonstrated again that there are really no such limits for the right. Every week, they move the line farther to the right, until before you know it, you're staring outright fascism in the face.

Media Matters directs us to the latest Coulter emission, wherein she shrieks like a harpy about conservatives' lack of "manliness":

Democrats have declared war against Republicans, and Republicans are wandering around like a bunch of ninny Neville Chamberlains, congratulating themselves on their excellent behavior. They'll have some terrific stories about their Gandhi-like passivity to share while sitting in cells at Guantanamo after Hillary is elected.

[...]

Patriotic Americans don't have to become dangerous psychotics like liberals, but they could at least act like men.

Why hasn't the former spokesman for the Taliban matriculating at Yale been beaten even more senseless than he already is? According to Hollywood, this nation is a cauldron of ethnic hatreds positively brimming with violent skinheads. Where are the skinheads when you need them? What does a girl have to do to get an angry, club- and torch-wielding mob on its feet?

Let's be clear here: Coulter is not "joking." She is seriously calling for "manly" conservatives to inflict violence on a college student who is in the United States legally. Moreover, she is calling for a similar kind of violence as an appropriate response to "unhinged" and "violent" liberals.

This is, of course, the logical outcome of this whole argument, gaining greater circulation even among ostensible liberals, that the left is becoming dangerously unstable -- because, naturally, the "sensible" response calls for even greater doses of "manly" violence.

Coulter first tested this new variation on an old meme during a college-campus appearance last month in Chicago, as Lauren Patrizi reported:

Ann addressed her supporters in the crowd with this statement. "You're men. You're heterosexuals. Take 'em out." She chided them further when they did not rise. Before you knew it there was about 25 students marching to the balcony to supposedly "take out" the protestors above. I saw a priest holding students back and deans and security warning the students to go back to their seats. Chaos erupted. Ann left after taking one question.

Coulter's vaguely jocular reference in her column to employing skinheads on the right's behalf is also significant, because it is a nod and a wink -- and, combined with insults about one's manhood, a nudge -- in the direction of a historical reality regarding fascists: street thugs, in the early stages of fascism, were an essential element of their rise to power. The SA Brownshirts -- as well, in Italy, of Mussolini's black-shirted squadristi -- were used by supposedly mainstream conservatives as shock troops who could intimidate socialists, communists, and Jews; this was the key factor in the Thyssen-Nazi alliance. Similarly, right-wing thugs like the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s served to intimidate labor organizers and various leftists. (This was also an important subtext of Coulter's quip that her "only regret with Tim McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.")

The tide of right-wing eliminationism has been rising steadily in recent years, led in large part by Coulter and her sycophants. It has now topped the brim and is on the verge of bubbling over into action.

I warned a little while back that one of the real differences between movement conservatism and fascism is that the former "does not yet rely on physical violence and campaigns of gross intimidation to obtain power and suppress opposition."

If Ann Coulter -- who has a predilection for seeing her "outrageous" remarks become standard right-wing talking points -- has her way, that difference will soon disappear. All that will be necessary is for those young, heterosexual, "manly" conservatives to start following her advice, and proving their "manhood" in the only way they know how.

But then, that's what those fellows down in Jamul were doing, isn't it?

Don't worry, though: Coulter could sing the Horst Wessel Song in English and call for a Final Solution to liberalsim, and her friends on the right would smirk and assure us that she's just joking. Oh, and get a sense of humor too, you unhinged, violent moonbats, wouldja?

Then they'd book her for another round of cable talk shows.

Let's empower extremists

That rocket scientist Hindrocket has some advice for President Bush:

So, discussion about long-term approaches to immigration will continue. But in the meantime, your priority will be securing the borders and enforcing the laws currently on the books. Which means that the crackdown on employers of illegals will be expanded. Announce some specific measures to begin securing the Mexican border, preferably including some kind of fence.

This simple act will cause your approval ratings to begin rebounding, re-energize Republicans, and assure that the party keeps its Congressional majorities in November. If you really want to get the conservative base back in your corner, go and meet with the Minutemen--on camera--and tell them you appreciate what they're doing.

Sure, that sounds like a swell idea. Let the president shake hands with right-wing extremists whose chief mission in life entails demonizing Latino immigrants and dreaming up bizarre conspiracy theories.

For the latest version of the latter, see Ed Cone:

[Minuteman founder Jim] Gilchrist "said he believes there is a criminal conspiracy involving President Bush, his father, and political strategist Karl Rove to open America's borders to cheap labor for big business."

Perhaps next time out, Hindrocket will suggest that Bush meet with Fred Phelps to help secure the conservative-Christian vote.

After all, what harm can it do? It's not as if extremists don't already have enough power in this administration.

[Hat tip to Jane.]

Signs of the times

Down in Jamul, California, a restaurant is set ablaze...

Lailanie Ontiveros looked in disbelief at the smoke-covered broken glass, the charred wood and the profane ethnic insult spray-painted on the door to her restaurant.

Sheriff's officials said the fire and anti-Mexican graffiti at Mariachi's Mexican Bar and Grill late Monday was arson and a hate crime, but Ontiveros couldn't understand why anyone would hate her family.

... The fire caused about $10,000 in damage to the restaurant, on Campo Road near Aurora Vista Drive. The obscenities were spray-painted in red on the front door, on a poster advertising NASCAR events and on the side wall of the restaurant.

Ontiveros, her mother and brother have owned the Jamul restaurant for two years. A mural depicting her mother's hometown of Durango, Mexico, fills one wall. The ceiling, painted with puffy clouds, is now darkened by smoke.

The fire came a day after a massive march in downtown San Diego seeking rights for Latino immigrants, but sheriff's officials and Ontiveros didn't cite any connection between the protest rally and the arson.

Of course not. It's just another minor crime. Add it to the list.

Likewise, no one connects little acts like these to rhetoric like this, this, or this.

It's just much easier that way.

Channeling the Minutemen

There's always been a kind of Bizarro World quality to Fox News -- you know, up is down, right is wrong, true is false -- which no doubt contributes to its role as a font of Newspeak.

But on a recent Fox News Watch broadcast, James Pinkerton raised the art to a new zenith as he painted a picture of poor, put-upon Minutemen being negatively portrayed by the media:

PINKERTON: The media like brown people, but they like black people more. And so, therefore, the -- when Jesse Jackson and his -- some of these people are starting to worry about immigrants cutting away jobs from African Americans, that's one thing. But what they really dislike, of course, is white people. And so --

HALL: Oh, Jim. Oh, please. Please.

PINKERTON: -- in that sense, the -- the racial typology -- brown, black, white -- was visible there, and I think --

[crosstalk]

PINKERTON: I stand by it completely, in terms of the way the Minutemen were covered on this coverage. And anybody can watch --

GABLER: The Minutemen got a favorable article on the front page of The New York Times.

PINKERTON: The Minutemen get slammed --

[crosstalk]

Well, it's hard to tell what Pinkerton meant by "this coverage" exactly. But if he was talking about Fox News' coverage of the Minutemen, then he appears to be ingesting powering hallucinogens before watching. Maybe Ibogaine, or something like that.

Because really, Fox News' handling of the Minutemen has been so pronouncedly biased in their favor that it's nearly impossible to find any negative coverage there.

The most obvious case in this regard is the coverage provided by Sean Hannity, including a recent segment touting their fence-building project. Past coverage included a fawning interview with Minuteman leader Chris Simcox and a visit from Hannity on the "front lines" in Arizona.

Then there's Bill O'Reilly, who likewise promotes the Minutemen as a group of sincere citizens. And in general, the coverage on Fox uniformly is indistinguishable from Minuteman propaganda.

It's not, however, simply on Fox that this is the case. CNN, particularly under the leadership of Lou Dobbs -- who openly avowed his explicit support -- has done perhaps as much as Fox to promote the notion of Minutemen.

Then there's MSNBC, which has been not quite so ardent but certainly as largely favorable in their coverage of the Minutemen. Tucker Carlson has been their most fervent defender, calling them people "who have taken up arms for the land they love," and had a softball interview with cofounder Jim Gilchrist. Joe Scarborough hosted Simcox for an interview that did bring up the issues of extremism and racism in the Minutemen's ranks, but largely took Simcox's denials at face value. And on Hardball with Norah O'Donnell, a Minuteman spokesman appeared as a "conservative" talking head and was never asked about anything in the way of extremism.

And that's just on cable TV. Likewise, the general coverage of the Minutemen in the press has been neutral to positive, with warm write-ups in various organs.

In contrast, it seems that the only coverage of the Minutemen's footsie games with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and their infiltration by same, as well as the proliferation of bigots with violent attitudes within their ranks, can be found at the SPLC Intelligence Report or in a handful of obscure news accounts. Certainly, you heard or saw little about it on Fox.

Maybe he was watching Bizarro Fox.

Righteous anger

Richard Cohen, via Atrios, waxing wankeriffic like the Nobel Prize winner he is:

But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations.

Oh please. Just take me out and shoot me. We've been hearing this whine, incessantly, for the past four years, and it's enough.

These morons -- the conservatives who can dish it out but can't take it, and their Beltway liberal enablers who can neither dish it out nor take it -- had barely finished their eight-year spree trashing the country and the presidency in order to prove their moral superiority (and, along the way, pave the way for a complete right-wing takeover) before they began mewling this gibbering pap. Now they've swallowed the Michelle Malkin "unhinged liberal moonbat" meme whole.

No doubt some of Cohen's mail was vile, though before I take his word for it, I'd rather look at the evidence (which he of course cannot provide), particularly regarding the extent of it. And note how weirdly inconsistent the tone of the column is; at some points he seems to be suggesting that nearly all of it was awful, though he admits he didn't even come close to reading it all; at others, he admits that some of it was respectful and even supportive. It's just flat-out incoherent.

The underlying incoherency, though, is in Cohen's pearl-clutching claim that what poured out of his screen was unadulterated "hatred." Considering the life-and-death issues at stake here, and the blitheness of pundits like himself in treating these issues as mild embarrassments or inconveniences, it's clear that what Cohen is actually having to face is people's anger -- their righteous, well-tended anger.

As I wrote two years ago:

All of the hand-wringing currently circulating among the pundit class about the rising tide of "Bush hatred" misunderstands the nature of what really is happening. They mistake anger for hatred -- though in the case of conservatives, it's fair to say that the confusion is intentional.

Anger, for the most part, is a righteous and largely rational thing -- it arises from genuine grievances, and is typically a response to outrages of some form or another. Hatred, on the other hand, is an irrational thing; it comes from deep in the soul, and is usually an expression of some deep-seated imbalance on the part of the hater. Naturally, if anger is allowed to fester unaddressed long enough, it can easily mutate into hatred. But they are distinctive in nature.

We can all recall the Clinton hatred of the 1990s: wild accusations that he planned to enslave America in a "New World Order," that he'd had Vince Foster murdered, that he ran drugs out of the Mena airport, that he had fathered a black "love child," and on and on and on. As Bob Somerby recently observed on the topic, this wasn't just emanating from the fringe elements of the right, though it certainly had a significant audience there; this was coming from supposedly mainstream conservatives inside the Beltway, and it was broadcast throughout mainstream media. This hatred was grotesquely irrational, especially considering that Clinton was a political moderate by any lights whose policies on many fronts (international trade, welfare reform, balancing the budget) presented victories for conservative ideals.

Of course, the same conservatives who engaged in this lunacy -- projectionists that they are -- have a habit of accusing liberals of the very behavior in which they themselves avidly participate and foment. Thus they have now invented the "Bush hatred" meme, suggesting that liberals who attack Bush are the moral equivalents of themselves. ("I know you are, but what am I?" is the essence of these charges.)

But, as I have argued at length previously, the majority of this "hatred" is predicated on real policies and real actions by both Bush and his administration. This is not hatred: it is anger -- real, righteous and well-grounded anger.

Anger can be a healthy thing, especially if it is based on solid reasons and real grievances. Anger over real injustices motivated the American Revolution, the anti-slavery and civil-rights movements, and women's suffrage. History is replete with righteous anger.

Anger only becomes unhealthy hatred if it festers. And one of the ways it can fester is if the grievances underlying them are dismissed out of hand as irrational -- not just by the perpetrators of the injustices, but by the supposed allies of the victims.

Oh, but Cohen even recognizes that perhaps there might be some good reason for the anger:

I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America -- the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that's going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice -- once because they couldn't stop it and once more at the polls.

Only if people like Richard Cohen and the similarly execrable Joe Klein are allowed to pose as "liberals." Because the reality that is consistently overlooked by these "voices of moderation" is that the vast majority of Americans are now "Iraq war critics."

Cohen has a long history of this kind of crap. His claims notwithstanding, I'm not sorry to look elsewhere for someone who is a "friend" of liberal causes. With "friends" like that, who needs enemies?

The real Minutemen

Reporters who bother to spend time with the Minutemen and dig a little deeper are finding that the organization isn't as forthright as it seems.

In Washington state, for instance, Minuteman organizers insist they're only concerned about border security. But that doesn't explain why one of their supporters is running an initiative that would strip illegal immigrants of the ability to obtain government benefits, including welfare and health care.

Down in Phoenix, an investigative TV crew from KPHO went undercover and discovered that, when the cameras go off, the Minutemen are talking a much different ball game than their preferred public image of upstanding, concerned citizens:

These are anti-immigration vigilantes, taking action, mobilizing in the Arizona desert, driven by a conviction.

Pineapple 6 says, "These f___ing Mexicans. They will kill you. They don't give a f__k."

That Mexican immigrants are public enemy number one.

Fred Puckett says, "And once you shoot a couple of these son of a b@#$%es, they'll think twice."

Even worse are the spinoff groups that piggyback off the Minuteman propaganda and then draw the more radical actors into their ranks:

Another vigilante group - expelled from this operation - was operating nearby.

Pineapple 6 says, "They're carrying automatic weapons and they're chasing guys down and tracking them.. then they tie them up."

The next day, we set out to find the so-called "Rogue Minutemen."

Fred Puckett says, "Hi guys. I'm Fred Puckett.. Minuteman of One."

Puckett calls his group "Minuteman of One."

Puckett says, "We don't have no by-laws.. we don't have nothin'. We go out in two-man teams and we hit them like we did 40-years ago in Vietnam."

Members of Minuteman of One have a controversial M-O. They carry assault rifles when they're out on patrol, they don't hesitate to follow migrants or smugglers and they've been known to "confiscate" food, water and the luggage they come across.

Puckett says, "We believe our country is being destroyed from the inside. Anything south of I-10 is a third world nation."

The KPHO team last year did the same thing and found similar results.

Of course, this is standard M.O. for all of the far right's attemps to mainstream itself. In the 1990s, when I attended militia-organizing meetings, the leaders were adamant that all they were interested in was civic-minded protection of citizens' rights, and that they were nothing more than a neighborhood watch group.

Two years later, I watched in a federal courtroom as those same men were revealed on FBI videotape building pipe bombs and talking about blowing up various targets, including a local railroad tunnel and the home of a local reporter.

Fortunately, not every TV reporter these days is content to just let them blow smoke, though most are (see, e.g., Lou Dobbs). They're fewer and farther between, but the KPHO team deserves a big round of applause.

Global hate

Well, if it will make you feel any better, the United States isn't the only place seeing a resurgence of right-wing extremism and white supremacism under the banner of anti-immigrant sentiment.

In fact, if you include Australia, you could say it's becoming largely a global phenomenon.

This weekend brought us the news that the proto-fascist British National Party made some noteworthy gains in the just-finished elections:

The British National Party, which wants non-white immigrants to leave the U.K., made its biggest gains to date in local elections, capitalizing on economic pressures and ethnic tension in some of England's poorest districts.

The BNP won 11 of the 13 seats it contested in the east London borough of Barking and Dagenham, as well as adding seats on other councils mainly in eastern England and the Midlands, according to tallies compiled by the British Broadcasting Corp.

The gains more than doubled the number of municipal lawmakers the party has to 46 across England. Lawmakers from mainstream parties have expressed concern about the rise of the BNP. Parties with an anti-immigration agenda have failed to build national support in Britain in the past, in contrast to other European countries such as France.

Even before the election, as many as 25 percent of British voters indicated they might consider voting for the BNP. Not a good sign.

A statement from Searchlight explored this further, and added a caveat:

Any BNP victory should be a cause of concern. Its presence raises tensions and divides communities, and its lies, which are central to its campaigning tactics, incite fear and racial violence.

While the media focused on the success in East London, BNP fortunes elsewhere were more mixed. Although the BNP took three seats in Stoke-on-Trent, Epping Forest and Sandwell, there were other areas where it failed to make its expected breakthrough. There were no BNP successes in Oldham, Dudley, Blackburn and Thurrock. The BNP fell back in Calderdale, where it was defending two seats but only succeeded in one. Kirklees was another top target and the two councillors elected there were fewer than expected.

Meanwhile, in Italy, the leading anti-immigrant party began handing out cudgels as vote-winning gadgets:

The leader of the 'Stop Immigration' political group running in upcoming local elections in Turin will be distributing clubs as an electoral gadget in the multi-ethnic San Salvario neighbourhood of the northern city. Turin-daily La Stampa reported on Friday that Max Loda will hand out for free some 1,000 clubs -- with 'Stop immigration' engraved on them -- to win support for the party's candidate for mayor Denis Martucci at the 28 May election.

Martucci, who is backed by a number of lists including a 'Forza Toro' group of fans of the Torino soccer team, is one of nine candidates for Turin mayor.

Loda said the initiative will be promoted in the neighbourhood with the highest number of immigrant residents as well as in the rest of the city because "Turin risks to become a stronghold of illegald immigrants from over the world."

He claimed the clubs "only represent a cry of alarm, to say: dear citizens of Turin, dear Italians, we must defend ourselves from criminal ethnic gangs."

An estimated 2.8 million of Italy's 60 million inhabitants are non-EU foreigners, according to a survey by Catholic relief agency Caritas. Immigrants in Turin mainly live in the San Salvario and Porta Palazzo neighbourhoods.

Loda, previously unknown on the national political scene, made headlines in Turin in 2000 with a member of the anti-immigration Northern League Party, European MP Mario Borghezio, when a bridge in Turin was set on fire at the end of a demonstration against foreigners he was co-sponsoring.

Meanwhile, in Poland, a fellow named Roman Giertych, who heads up an extreme-right party called the League of Polish Families, was just named the nation's Minister of Education.

This would be akin to having Fred Phelps named Education Secretary. Giertych, whose grandfather was a notorious anti-Semite who advocated, in the 1930s, expelling all of Poland's Jews, made a name for himself primarily by advocating for laws against homosexuals, including "a bill in parliament that would penalize, through fine or even imprisonment, those who publicly promote the change of the 'traditional' definition of marriage".

He also thinks highly of the press:

"They call themselves moral authorities, but in fact they're just scum."

The Polish anti-fascist group Never Again spoke out against Giertych's rise:

Roman Giertych, the leader of the extreme-right political party League of Polish Families (LPR) and of the nationalist youth organisation All-Polish Youth (MW), was nominated to the post of Minister of Education today.
 
"It is a disgrace! Our worst worries are coming true" -- comments Marcin Kornak, the chairman of the anti-fascist 'Never Again' Association. "The lack of reaction from the politicians to the growing wave of chauvinism in Poland has led to an extreme nationalist being nominated to the ministry of education post. We protest against it!"
 
The newly appointed minister of education is the leader of the All-Polish Youth and he is going to promote its educational patterns in Polish schools. The All-Polish Youth draws from the darkest traditions tainted with extreme nationalism and antisemitism. For years it has recruited its members from among skinheads. It promotes xenophobia and a violent rejection of everything that does not match its criteria of "true Polishness". The All-Polish Youth has been repeatedly accused of being fascist and the media have published photos of its members (today MPs for the LPR) raising hands in the Hitler-salute.

Meanwhile, back in the USA ....

... at the University of Texas-Arlington, the renowned white supremacist Jared Taylor was recently presented as the "conservative" side in a debate sponsored by College Republicans.

Taylor said Mexican immigration is bad for the United States and cited statistics detailing high crime and school dropout rates among Hispanics. Gutierrez said those statistics are an ugly reality because whites have been in charge and have discriminated so harshly against Hispanics.

Taylor said even though Hispanics are in charge of everything south of America's borders, residents are fleeing those failed societies. He said he hopes a wall is built along the border to keep illegal Hispanic immigrants out.

Gutierrez said walls separating people have always failed. He argued that Mexicans have a right to move throughout the Americas because they were here before white settlers and because much of their land was "stolen" from them in the Mexican-American war.

Taylor pointed to that sentiment as deep disloyalty to the United States.

"Mexicans in particular are the worst candidates for U.S. citizenship," he said. "They don't respect our sovereignty."

You see? Sure they may be racist, but they come off so reasonable, so patriotic, so ... authoritative.

Round and round and round it goes, and where it stops ...

Mainstreaming hate

The primary reason organizations like the Minutemen pose a threat to our national well-being is not that they pose an immediate prospect of vigilante violence.

It's that they represent the mainstreaming of far-right appeals to anti-immigrant sentiments, especially the demonization of Latinos as the problem. The more people like the Minutemen are beating this drum, the more it will be picked up as legitimate by people in the mainstream, including those in positions of authority and influence.

So, meet Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, who recently posted a screed against illegal immigrants on his Web site that sounded like a David Duke speech circa 1982:

What would that May 1st look like without illegal immigration? There would be no one to smuggle across our southern border the heroin, marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines that plague the United States, reducing the U.S. supply of meth that day by 80%. The lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day. Another 13 Americans would survive who are otherwise killed each day by uninsured drunk driving illegals. Our hospital emergency rooms would not be flooded with everything from gunshot wounds, to anchor babies, to imported diseases to hangnails, giving American citizens the day off from standing in line behind illegals. Eight American children would not suffer the horror as a victim of a sex crime.

As Rev. David Ostendorf of the Center for New Community put it in his response, this kind of hateful disinformation is "unconscionable":

For a Member of Congress to engage in the repetition of sweeping, offensive, and unfounded generalizations about "illegal" immigrants as "drug smugglers," "murderers," "drunk drivers" and "disease carriers" is pandering of the worst kind. Such statements serve only to contribute to the level of hatred growing at the hands of extreme anti-immigrant forces in the country, and do nothing to add to public debate and discourse on one of the most critical domestic issues facing the nation today.

That this is happening should not be a surprise. After all, ugly nativists like Steve King are increasingly the face of the conservative movement in America.

And when they claim they're abandoning the fast-sinking George W. Bush because he isn't a "true conservative," this is largely what they're talking about.

Their own facts

One of the reasons the nativists keep resorting to cockamamie nonsense like the Reconquista theory is that, well, it's about the best they've got. Their arguments regarding immigrants and immigration are so poorly grounded that they're forced to just make shit up.

A lot of times, this disinformation circulates through e-mail mass mailings of dubious authorship, the kind your Dittohead brother-in-law likes to send around to everyone on the planet. One recent version of this was the video game that let you take potshots at Mexican border crossers.

Another is the list of supposed costs to American taxpayers inflicted by illegal immigrants, reproduced in all its gullible glory by those geniuses at ChronWatch:

1. 40% of all workers in Los Angeles County (Los Angeles County has 10 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.

2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.

4. Over 2/3's of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal
alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.

5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.

7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.

8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.

9. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.

10. In L.A.County 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak Spanish (10.2 million people in Los Angeles County).

(All 10 of the above facts are from the Los Angeles Times)

Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops but 29% are on welfare. http://www.cis.org

Over 70% of the United States annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration.

The cost of immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was a NET
(after subtracting taxes immigrants pay) $70 BILLION a year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University].

The lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is NEGATIVE.

29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.

Fortunately, the folks at Snopes.com are good at sifting through this kind of crap:

The various figures quoted above were not taken from a 2002 Los Angeles Times article. They appear to have been gleaned from a variety of sources and vary in accuracy ...

The piece goes on to examine the claims and determines that only one -- regarding the number of Spanish-language radio stations in L.A. -- was factually accurate. Some are made up out of whole cloth; others have a grain of truth to them but are otherwise distortions.

Those that aren't just made-up shit have been debunked. A Professor Donald Huddle did write something similar to the claim in the list. On the other hand, his work has been rather publicly torn apart, as Michael Fix and Jeffrey Passel of the Urban Institute have done with aplomb; their work on immigrants and welfare reaches similar conclusions. (See this report from Migration News for an overview.) The most important finding of the Fix/Passel study:

Overall, annual taxes paid by immigrants to all levels of governments more than offset the costs of services received, generating a net annual surplus of $25 billion to $30 billion.

Of course, facts don't matter much to the nativists. What matters is spreading their message: Latinos are the problem. And we won't solve it until we send them back.

So, even though this disinformation has been debunked, it takes on a life of its own through those regurgitated e-mails from your forgotten uncle. Then it makes its way into letters to the editor. And, bit by ignorant bit, the bullshit grows deeper.

UPDATE: The L.A. Times does its own fact-checking. Key point:

As Readers' Representative Jamie Gold has pointed out, this list, which is being forwarded around the world at lightning speed, is a hoax.

We combed our archives to see whether the paper has indeed written anything like these facts, and found just one Op-ed column -- by leading anti-immigration figure Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Col.) -- that comes close to stating what the e-mail hoax claims.

Reconquista! redux

Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
-- Gen. Jack D. Ripper

You know, a conspiracy theory like Mexican 'Reconquista' is just too good to give up on easily, I guess -- especially when your whole enterprise is all about busily grasping at whatever straws might float your way.

So Gen. Michelle D. Ripper decides to swing away again, claiming she has proof, dammit, that "Reconquista!" is real:

On the Sean Hannity radio show Monday, I debated (or rather listened to five minutes of screeching by) a young member of the radical group MeCha. A student at the University of San Francisco, she denied that her group still subscribed to 1960s identity politics, then promptly delivered a full-throated rant about Mexico's right to reclaim American territory: "We believe that we have the right to be in this land…Aztlan is California! Aztlan is this country! This country was ours ... We didn't cross the borders. The borders crossed us ... This country is based on exploitation!"

On NPR's "All Things Considered," Gloria Ramirez Vargas, a politician in Baja, Calif., rallied her constituents with a similar cry: " Many Mexicans are nourishing the ground in the U.S. , but those lands were once ours. Those same lands, which now with intelligence, with love and with a lot of work, we are re-conquering again for our Mexico."

On leading conservative talk show station KFI in Los Angeles, hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou interviewed Tony Valdez, who also invoked "manifest destiny" as a rationale for supporting the sabotage of our immigration laws. He pontificated about 1846, recycled the "We didn't cross the borders" nonsense, inveighed against the war in Iraq, and exclaimed: "You took this country. You killed people in order to take this country for yourselves."

Valdez is a FOX News 11 reporter at KTTV in L.A.

OK, so let's review:

-- Malkin presents us with the usual parade of fringe signs from the marches, ignoring of course the prevalence of American flags and pro-American signs. None of the signs are about Mexico retaking U.S. lands -- though there are many that advocate the notion that the Southwest is part of Latinos' indigenous homeland.

-- She gives us three live examples that are supposed to represent people advocating that the Southwest be returned to Mexico. Who are they? A student. An obscure local politician. And a TV reporter.

But note that only one of them (Ramirez Vargas) seems to actually advocate that. The reporter is talking about past injustices. The MEChA member is advocating the concept of Aztlan, which essentially holds that the Southwest is part of her people's indigenous homeland. She says nothing about "Mexico's right to reclaim American territory." Malkin's putting words in her mouth.

And note: None of them -- not one -- uses the phrase "Reconquista." Nor do any of the signs she cites.

Let's revisit Malkin's original claim:

Aztlan is a long-held notion among Mexico's intellectual elite and political class, which asserts that the American southwest rightly belongs to Mexico. Advocates believe the reclamation (or reconquista) of Aztlan will occur through sheer demographic force. If the rallies across the country are any indication, reconquista is already complete.

Are any of the people Malkin cites "among Mexico's intellectual elite and political class"?

Er, no.

Can she cite any examples of those "elite" -- or hey, even some shoot-from-the-hip right-wing pundit -- advocating "Reconquista"?

Er, no.

As for MEChA, there is no instance of "Reconquista!" advocacy on its record. The phrase does not appear in either El Plan de Santa Barbara or El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, two of the 1969-era documents that get the "MEChA is racist" crowd all worked up. Nor can you find it in the more comprehensive, and current, "Philosophy of MEChA". None of them talk about returning Southwest territory to Mexico.

Indeed, as I pointed out way back when, the actual record of MEChA's activism is largely one of all-American advocacy. As one commenter I cited put it:

MeCHA has been an integral part of student life for decades; many, if not most, of my Chicano friends and acquaintances were involved with it; it was then and probably is now an advocacy organization which worked to bring Chicanos (now Latinos) into the educational institutions, to feed and clothe underprivileged children in the community, including those of the migrant farmworkers, was involved with Caesar Chavez in advocating for better working conditions for the migrant workers, and provided tutoring, mentoring, and fellowship for students, as do many other student organizations.

I don't think the Minutemen can say the same.

Perhaps more to the point, as I explored in detail then as well as more recently, where did the idea of "Reconquista!" originate?

Gen. Malkin won't tell you, Mandrake.

That's because it originated on the extremist right. It appears to have been coined, as a term applied to the current immigration wave from Mexico (the original Reconquista involved Spain's reacquisition of formerly Muslim lands), by Glenn Spencer, who runs the white-supremacist American Patrol organization. You know: the fellow who helped originate the concept of anti-Latino border patrols.

The kind of fellow who says things like:

"If the Border Patrol had done its job, using the technology that is available to us, we could stop these people," Spencer said in November, when he was a guest on the Donahue show. "This is an invasion of the United States!"

The kind of fellow who hands out videotapes of his conspiracy theory in Congress -- with a notable courier:

Spencer sent every member of Congress a copy of his videotape — "Bonds of Our Nation" — that purports to prove the Mexican government and Mexican-Americans are plotting to take over the American Southwest and create the nation of Aztlán. Hand-delivering the videos was Betina McCann, the fiancé of neo-Nazi Steven Barry.

The kind of fellow who fires shots into his neighbor's garage door:

After a neighbor reported hearing two shots fired and a weapon cocked outside her home, local officers drove out and found that bullets had been fired into the woman's garage door. Spencer, claiming that he opened fire after hearing suspicious noises outside, was arrested on three felony counts of disorderly conduct with a weapon, one felony count of endangerment and one count of misdemeanor criminal damage. A few days earlier, following a series of death threats against Spencer, his home headquarters had been burglarized, Spencer claimed.

Ah, yes ...

I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love...Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I-I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake ... but I do deny them my essence.

Secrecy, corruption, and gas

Where there's secrecy, there's corruption. And when there's corruption, the rest of us wind up paying for it.

These simple facts of life are the reason we have open-government laws, many of them passed in the 1970s in response to the corruption of the Nixon regime. But the Bush administration, as I pointed out long ago, has been operating on the basis of expanding executive powers since the get-go:

Certainly in many other areas -- particularly the aggressive assertion of executive powers in setting up military tribunals and designating citizens "enemy combatants," as well as various surveillance powers under the so-called Patriot Acts -- the Bush White House has displayed all the signs of attempting to reacquire powers lost to the executive branch in the 1970s ... a belated "Nixon's revenge," as it were.

As John Dean (who would know) pointed out to Joel Connelly, this was the case even before 9/11:

"They moved in, pulled the shades and closed the doors," Dean said. "I can't find another presidency so positioned from the start to expanding the powers of the presidency."

The chief way it has done so is by lowering a veil of secrecy over everything it does. And secrecy, as always, has begotten corruption.

Likewise, we are all now paying for it. The tip of the iceberg: Gas prices.

The Bushian veil of secrecy is finally starting to falter. Glenn Greenwald (whose forthcoming book will be required reading) has been all over this, of course, particularly the recent Boston Globe stories revealing that "Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office."

Nearly as valuable, I thought, were the stories this weekend in the Chicago Tribune detailing how Dick Cheney has played such a significant role in this:

A standing executive order, strengthened by President Bush in 2003, requires all agencies and "any other entity within the executive branch" to provide an annual accounting of their classification of documents. More than 80 agencies have collectively reported to the National Archives that they made 15.6 million decisions in 2004 to classify information, nearly double the number in 2001, but Cheney continues to insist he is exempt.

Explaining why the vice president has withheld even a tally of his office's secrecy when such offices as the National Security Council routinely report theirs, a spokeswoman said Cheney is "not under any duty" to provide it.

The most significant episode came early:

The White House has resisted efforts by Congress to gain information, starting with a White House energy task force headed by Cheney and continuing with the president's secret authorization of warrantless surveillance of people inside the United States suspected of communicating with terrorists abroad. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) recently threatened to withhold funding for the surveillance program unless the White House starts providing information.

... Bush has a partner -- some say mentor -- in Cheney, who from the start resisted efforts to disclose the inner workings of a task force devising administration energy policy. He defeated an unprecedented lawsuit by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, to unveil that task force and carried his fight successfully to the Supreme Court.

The resulting "energy plan" was entirely predictable. As the Natural Resources Defense Council put it in its subsequent study of the plan:

President Bush's energy plan offers a smorgasbord of incentives for the energy industry, emphasizing the need to increase domestic fossil fuel supplies and renewing a commitment to nuclear power. The administration's proposal -- prepared by Vice President Cheney's energy task force -- also includes modest proposals related to energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. However, it is clear that, as Mr. Cheney stressed in a recent speech, the Bush administration views conservation as perhaps a "sign of personal virtue," but "not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

... The Bush plan would provide no short-term relief for Americans struggling to pay their gasoline and electric bills this summer. And, over the long-term, it would increase pollution, despoil the environment, threaten public health and accelerate global warming. Moreover, it would have no impact on energy prices, and no practical effect on U.S. dependence on foreign sources of oil. Who would benefit? The oil, coal and nuclear industries that shoveled millions of dollars into Bush campaign coffers.

What's happened? Voila! Record profits for oil companies, and record prices at the pump!

The Bush energy policy is only part of the much larger web of corruption that has enfolded the Republican Party, especially when you factor in Enron's role in the task force's findings. After all, Enron was also a major player in the DeLay/Abramoff money machine that is now caving in around the GOP like a rotten mineshaft.

In all the reportage on gas prices, though, you won't find anyone making this connection.

That's because the right is, if nothing else, still good at blowing up a smokescreen. Going back to the Chicago Tribune piece, there was this bit of rationalization for the closed style of government now practiced by the right:

"I really think they think of it in terms of good governance," said James Carafano, senior fellow for national security and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "It's a very corporate style of leadership."

Well, yeah ... if your corporation is Enron: secretive, corrupt, and a massive rip-off.

Not in Spanish!

Now, this should drive the nativists completely nuts:

"Yo prometo lealtad a la bandera
de los estados Unidos de America,
y a la Republica que representa,
una Nacion bajo Dios,
entera,
con libertad y justicia para todos."

-- source

The end of the end of racism

The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past.

-- William Faulkner

If you turn on your cable tonight, and you happen to have Turner Classic Movies, you'll be able to watch, for one of the first times in broadcast, D.W. Griffith's classic silent, The Birth of a Nation.

It's an instructive film, in part because Griffith introduced so many innovations that we now take for granted. One of these, of course, is the wealth of racial stereotypes that run throughout it.

It's also instructive that it's happening now, because there seems to be a fresh wave of thinking out there that sees this whole ugly racism thing now as a thing of the past. We can sift through its bones and quaintly examine them, tut-tutting the primitives of a century before, smug in our certainty that of course it lives no more.

One of these is Shelby Steele, who wants to argue that "white guilt" over the depredations of white supremacy keeps us whites from doing what we need to do in places like Iraq and on our southern border:

To maintain their legitimacy, they practice the minimalism that makes problems linger. What but minimalism is left when you are running from stigmatization as a "unilateralist cowboy"? And where is the will to truly regulate the southern border when those who ask for this are slimed as bigots? This is how white guilt defines what is possible in America. You go at a problem until you meet stigmatization, then you retreat into minimalism.

Possibly white guilt's worst effect is that it does not permit whites--and nonwhites--to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation. One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant. If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities.

The notion that racism is dead has been a favorite theme of the right for awhile now. It began, probably, with the Thernstroms' America in Black and White, and continued with Dinesh D'Souza's The End of Racism. In a similar vein, the new White House Press Secretary, Tony Snow, suggested awhile back that he thinks racism a dead issue:

"Here's the unmentionable secret: Racism isn't that big a deal any more. No sensible person supports it. Nobody of importance preaches it. It's rapidly becoming an ugly memory."
-- Tony Snow, on an October 2003 edition of Fox News Sunday

What Snow is really doing, of course, is defining racism away. This is only true if "racism" is largely just the purview of the Ku Klux Klans and Silver Shirts, the David Dukes and Hal Turners and the National Socialist Movements of the world. It's also only true if you believe that the only racism of possible significance is that which might be condoned by public officials -- that racist acts by ordinary citizens are of no consequence.

The stark reality, however, is that racism not only continues to thrive in America both in less obvious, institutional ways, but also through the auspices of the conservative movement and its official wing, the Republican Party. The 21st-century American right has proven remarkably content not merely to let the embers of racism smolder away at the roots of our society, but to fan them in ways both subtle and unsubtle.

There is a long history of this: the long-running collaboration with neo-Confederates in the South, courtesy of the Southern Strategy and its transformative effects on the GOP, is only the best-known instance. The transmission of appeals from the far right in the 1990s, though less remarked upon, is certainly a piece of the picture.

Then there are the increasing numbers of overt white supremacists, clothed in seemingly normal personas, stepping up and running for public office as Republicans. The nice young man running for the Mosquito Control Board in Florida is also an avid member of the National Alliance. Out in Montana, another neo-Nazi announced his plans to run for the state Legislature.

And even though Republican officials there, appropriately, condemned the man's candidacy, it does little to drown out the consistent drumbeat we hear from conservative quarters these days. The more common refrain from rank and file conservatives, especially when it comes to the immigration debate, sounds a lot more like Michael Savage when he calls pro-immigrant marchers "vermin."

Let's take the most recent variant: the bizarre overreaction to the new Spanish-language version of "The Star Spangled Banner."

John Chuckman noted the weirdness of the reaction -- and the underlying cause:

"This is evoking spirited revulsion on the part of fair-minded Americans," offered John Teeley, representative of one of innumerable private propaganda mills in Washington commonly dignified as think-tanks. Mr. Teeley continued, "You are talking about something sacred and iconic in the American culture. Just as we wouldn't expect people to change the colors of the national flag, we wouldn't expect people to fundamentally change the anthem and rewrite it in a foreign language."

A foreign language? There are roughly thirty-million Spanish speakers in the United States. The analysis here is interesting: an immigrant singing an anthem in his own language resembles someone changing the national flag. This argument does, perhaps unintentionally, reveal the real concern: Hispanics are changing our country, and we don't like it.

As No More Mister Nice Blog points out, there have been previous renditions of the "Star Spangled Banner" in German, French, Polish, and Tagalog. According to the Wikipedia entry on the song:

The Star-Spangled Banner was translated into Spanish in 1919 by the US Bureau of Education. It has also been translated into a number of other languages. In 1861, it was translated into German (and is also on that page in Latin). It has been translated into Yiddish by Jewish immigrants and into French by Acadians of Louisiana.

It has also been translated into Samoan:

O Roketi mumu fa'aafi, o pomu ma fana ma aloi afi
E fa'amaonia i le po atoa, le fu'a o lo'o tu maninoa
Aue! ia tumau le fe'ilafi mai, ma agiagia pea
I eleele o Sa'olotoga, ma Nofoaga o le au totoa

The whole uproar reminds me a bit of the outrage that followed Jimi Hendrix's performance of the national anthem at Woodstock:

The creation of these effects was groundbreaking in its own right, far expanding the traditional techniques of the electric guitar. The rendition has been described by some as a generation's statement on the unrest in US society, and others as an anti-American mockery, oddly symbolic of the beauty, spontaneity, and tragedy that was endemic to Hendrix's life. It was an unforgettable rendition remembered by generations. When asked on the Dick Cavett Show if he was aware of all the outrage he had caused by the performance, Hendrix replied: 'I thought it was beautiful.'

Jimi was so cool.

Unfortunately, the harpies of the nativist right are not.

You see, to them, it doesn't matter that there have been other renditions of the National Anthem in other languages. For them, it's the same thing as those dirty Mexicans who were waving Mexican flags: they polluting our culture. They're taking away our lily-white, English-speaking past and replacing it with a multilingual, multiracial present.

Some of this is plain old ignorant provincialism. Americans are the only people I know who are positively insulted when someone tries to speak to them in another language. And some of it, frankly, is latent white supremacism: the belief that "traditional" white culture is innately superior, and any dilution of it is a bad thing.

The overarching narrative, though, is fairly clear: Latinos are the problem, and they should be sent back to Mexico.

The reality is that much of the demographic change fueling this anger is occurring in places that, previously, have been homogeneous white communities: rural and suburban communities in the West and Midwest and South. The kinds of places where, only fifty years ago, it was not uncommon to encounter signs on the city borders reading: "Nigger, Don't Let the Sun Set on You Here."


These signs were particularly common in the Midwest, but also could be found out West and in the East as well. They were less common in the South, which dealt with its black population differently, through Jim Crow laws and segregation; the rest of the country simply ran blacks out of their communities and forced them into urban black neighborhoods. As James Loewen documents in his book Sundown Towns [more about which I'll soon be writing] the direct effects of these policies have given us a legacy of racial separation that is still with us. And most of these privileged white communities, despite the changes in modern racial sensibilities, still continue to resist any demographic change.

One of the ways this resistance manifests itself is in the form of hate crimes, which as I've explained previously, are known to occur not in correlation with economic downturns, but rather with dramatic demographic shifts. (I go into this in some detail in Death on the Fourth of July.) Particularly in formerly homogeneous communities facing an influx of easily identifiable Others.

So it should not surprise us that, as the ADL recently reported, the levels of threats and actual violence directed against Latinos is rapidly rising in these precincts around the country. A sampling:

January 2006, California. Ryan Nicholas Newsome, a member of the Another Order white supremacist gang, pleaded no contest on January 20, 2006, to assault charges in Yuba County. He pleaded no contest to assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury with a criminal street gang enhancement as a result of an August 2005 incident, in which he and an associate allegedly assaulted a Hispanic man.

December 2005, Tennessee. A Blount County judge on December 1, 2005, sentenced Jacob Allen Reynolds and Thomas Matthew Lovett to four years in prison and six months in prison (and two and a half on probation) respectively after they pleaded guilty to vandalizing a Mexican food store in Maryville on May 7, 2005, causing over $17,000 in damages. The men allegedly broke windows and a refrigerator, vandalized a car, and spray-painted Nazi symbols on the store. Three others charged still await trial.

November 2005, Texas. Christopher Chubasco Wilkins, a prison escapee, was recaptured on November 5 and charged with murdering three men in the Fort Worth area during his month-long escape. Wilkins, who is according to police a self-proclaimed white separatist heavily tattooed with a variety of white supremacist tattoos, including a portrait of Adolf Hitler, is alleged to have killed two Hispanic men and one African-American man by gunshots to the head. Police are examining a possible racial motive. Wilkins had been living at a halfway house in Houston, after being released from federal prison, and left the house without permission.

November 2005, Tennessee. A federal judge sentenced former Klansman Daniel James Schertz to 14 years in prison for selling pipe bombs to a person he thought would use them to kill Mexican and Haitian immigrants. The person turned out to be an undercover informant. Schertz, a former corrections officer and member of the North Georgia White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, pleaded guilty to making five pipe bombs to be used to blow up a bus carrying Mexican workers. Later, Schertz expressed gratitude that the government had stopped him, but said, "We should have people here who know how to speak English. They are over here illegally and nothing gets done to them."

October 2005, California. A Sacramento man and two other suspects who allegedly attacked and injured six people in a hate-crime spree at two local parties were arrested in the early morning of October 16, 2005. Ryan Marino, 22, posted bail from El Dorado County Jail later Sunday after being charged on four counts of assault with a deadly weapon with an extenuating circumstance of a hate crime. He allegedly used brass knuckles after shouting epithets against Hispanics and proclaiming "white pride" at a home Sunday evening. Party attendees later identified Marino, who police said crashed the parties with the intent of "beating up Mexicans."

September 2005, Utah. A federal judge on September 27, 2005, sentenced Lance Vanderstappen to 20 years in prison for trying to kill a Hispanic man while in a holding cell in July 2005 awaiting sentencing for a racketeering charge. The victim had stab wounds to his neck, throat and chest. In court, Vanderstappen, a member of the notorious Soldiers of Aryan Culture white supremacist prison gang, admitted that he targeted the victim because he was Hispanic, saying "I intentionally tried to kill him." Vanderstappen pleaded guilty to attempted murder.

September 2005, New Jersey. Joseph Schmidt of Little Egg Harbor received a sentence of three years' probation in September 2005 after pleading guilty in June to two counts of bias intimidation, two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of criminal mischief, two counts of possessing weapons for an unlawful purpose, and simple assault. The charges were related to a string of attacks on minorities, primarily Hispanics, in Ocean County in 2003. Schmidt, a member of the white supremacist skinhead group East Coast Hate Crew, received a light sentence because he had cooperated with authorities in prosecuting other members of the group. Three others involved in the incident pleaded guilty and one was acquitted. Others have yet to go to trial.

July 2005, California. Four people, three men and one woman, were arrested in Riverside, California, on July 11-12, 2005, charged with making terrorist threats with a hate crime enhancement. Some of the people arrested had "white pride" tattoos, according to authorities, who also seized a variety of white supremacist items. According to police, the suspects drove to a home and challenged several Hispanics there to a fight, threatening them and using racial slurs. A similar episode occurred the next night. According to police, the people arrested claimed no particular group affiliation but said they were proud to be "members of the Aryan race."

May 2005, Arizona. White supremacist Steve Boggs was sentenced to death on May 13, 2005, for murdering three fast-food workers in Mesa, Arizona, in 2002 during a robbery. He had been convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and various robbery, burglary and kidnapping charges. Boggs shot the victims, a Native American and two Hispanics, then stuffed their bodies into a freezer at the store. Boggs wrote to a Mesa police detective that he had wanted to "rid the world of a few needless illegals. I don't feel sorry." Another defendant still awaits trial. According to prosecutors, the two men were members of a small hate group they called the Imperial Royal Guard.

May 2005, Texas. Two racist skinheads pleaded guilty on May 5, 2005, to a racially motivated beating of a Hispanic man in January 2003. Douglas Brannan of Hockley and Mark Fletcher Smith of Spring, both sporting many white supremacist tattoos, were convicted of civil rights violations. The two men, and a teenager, had attacked a Hispanic customer at a gas station, beating him and kicking him with steel-toed boots until he was unconscious while shouting "border jumper," "spic," and "we kill people like you." Brannan received a five year sentence and Smith a three year sentence.

December 2004, California. Ten racist skinheads from Redlands and Riverside attacked three Hispanics in the parking lot of a topless bar on December 29, 2004. According to police, they assaulted the men while yelling racial slurs at them and identifying themselves as members of skinhead groups. No arrests have yet been made.

November 2004, Wisconsin. Mark Lentz of Sheldon, Wisconsin, received a three-month sentence and two years of probation, as well as 40 hours of community service, after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor hate crime. Lentz was the last of four racist skinheads to be sentenced for luring a Hispanic man outside a bar in Waukesha, then hitting him on the head with a bottle and repeatedly kicking him. Mark Davis II of Watertown earlier received a 3 ½ year sentence and two years of extended supervision, Kasey Bieri received an 18-month jail term and three years of probation, and Jeffrey Gerloski received four months in jail and two years probation.

June 2004, Texas. Ranch Rescue member Casey Nethercott was convicted by a Texas jury of felony firearm possession in connection with an attack on two illegal immigrants from El Salvador outside of Hebbronville, Texas, in 2003. He was sentenced to five years in prison. The two immigrants (now in the U.S. legally) successfully sued Nethercott and others involved in the incident for a total judgment of $1,450,000.

November 2003, Idaho. Aryan Nations member Zachary Beck was arrested for felony malicious harassment as a hate crime for attacking a Hispanic male in the parking lot of a supermarket after asking if the victim was Mexican. While awaiting trial on that charge, he was later re-arrested after allegedly shooting at a police officer in Longview, Washington, during a standoff. He still awaits trial on the alleged crimes.

June 2003, California. Two racist skinheads, Waylon Kennell and James Grlicky, were convicted in separate trials for the brutal beating of a Mexican migrant worker in San Diego in the fall of 2003. Grlicky was convicted of attempted murder, conspiracy, robbery, assault and battery, with a hate crime enhancement. Kennell was convicted of assault causing great bodily injury and battery with serious bodily injury. According to the prosecutor in the case, the two went hunting for a "beaner" to beat and rob. They kicked the victim in the head around a dozen times, including "curbstomping" him—kicking down on the back of the head when the victim's open mouth is placed against a concrete curb (emulating a scene in the movie "American History X"). The victim suffered brain damage as a result of the attack.

May 2003, New Hampshire. Aryan Nations member Russell Seace, Jr., of Hampton Beach, pleaded guilty on May 27 to being a felon in possession of a firearm as part of a plea bargain with the federal government. In exchange for money, Seace had agreed to kill a Hispanic inmate after he was released, in retaliation for an alleged attack by the Hispanic man on a white prison inmate.

February 2003, Oregon. A Mexican landscaper in Beaverton was beaten with a baseball bat, robbed, and told to "go back home," by a man with a shaved head and a coat with "KKK" on it. Baseball bats are one of the weapons preferred by racist skinheads. Authorities posted a reward but were unable to make an arrest in the crime.

The most recent, and horrifying, such case occurred recently in Texas, where two shaved-headed young men with a history of racial epithets and brawling attacked a 16-year-old Hispanic youth, sodomized him with a broomstick, carved him with a knife, poured bleach over him, and left him near death. (Somewhat predictably, prosecutors are declining to file hate-crime charges at this time.)

And, as the San Francisco Chronicle recently reported, there has been a regular onslaught of racist, clearly white supremacist ugliness floating around the anti-immigration forces recently, almost certainly whipped up by the pro-immigrant marches. This includes death threats against public officials.

There's no reason to be surprised by this, though. Anyone watching the anti-immigration agitation carefully -- particularly the semi-official celebration of violent viglantism known as the Minutemen -- can hear for themselves the old embers of racial hate crackling back to life.

So while Minuteman founder Chris Simcox works steadily to deny the presence of any kind of white-supremacist element in his ranks, you can hear one of his early fellow border patrollers expounding:

No, we ought to be able to shoot the Mexicans on sight, and that would end the problem. After two or three Mexicans are shot, they'll stop crossing the border and they'll take their cows home, too.

At an anti-immgrant rally in Tennessee four days before the marches, this proposal drew applause:

On Apr. 27 -- four days before a mass movement that includes undocumented workers, legal immigrants and U.S. citizens refused to go to work or school in observation of the "Great American Boycott" -- more than 1,000 people attended an anti-immigrant meeting called "Demagnetise America" in Franklin, Tennessee.

Those in attendance heard Nashville radio talk show host Phil Valentine say that he thought that U.S. Border Patrol Agents should consider shooting undocumented immigrants as they come across the border.

According to the news story posted at the website of the Centre for New Community's Building Democracy Initiative, Susan Tully, the national field director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) -- present at the event -- "chuckled at the idea, while the large crowd erupted into applause".

At the immigration marches themselves, pro-Minuteman agitators showed up and shouted racial hatred:

The Minutemen were doing their best to incite the Mexican protesters to violence, with shouts of "you motherfuckers" (from the black woman pictured above) and "go home, Mexicans", not to mention the skinny guy (pictured above, middle finger extended) who kept flipping them off and grabbing his crotch (really!). There were several people who did a wonderful job keeping the marchers away from the line of cops and the Minutemen, telling them that there was no need to sink to that level and that "we're better than that". There was never a point where I thought violence was imminent, to the credit of the police and the rally organizers.

You see, everyone knows that being a racist is bad. That's why no one ever admits to being a racist, even when they're rather nakedly so.

But that doesn't mean that people actually stop being racist. It just means that it goes on under the surface, when people think they aren't looking.

So the Minutemen loudly proclaim that they're weeding out any white supremacists and neo-Nazis. But then former organizers come forward and tell quite a different tale:

Neo-Nazis volunteered for Jim Gilchrist's recent congressional campaign and distributed racist propaganda at Gilchrist rallies with the full knowledge of the Minuteman Project co-founder and his campaign managers, according to a former Gilchrist campaign volunteer whose account is supported by photographs, video footage and postings on the white supremacist Web site Stormfront.

"They were basically allowing Skinheads and white nationalists to work the phone banks and do IT [computer work] and distribute National Alliance fliers targeting non-whites," Cliff May, a dance instructor in Orange County, Calif., told the Intelligence Report. "When I told Mary [Gilchrist's finance manager] and Eldon [Gilchrist's grassroots coordinator] that I didn't want to work for a campaign that was tainted by white supremacy in any way, they told me not to cause a stir.

"When I kept bringing it up, they kicked me out."

Photographs taken at an Oct. 29 Gilchrist rally in Sacramento show a man outfitted like a Nazi Skinhead distributing propaganda from the neo-Nazi National Alliance. "I talked with Gilchrist about it and he said they'd decided to, in his words, 'let it go,'" May said. Three weeks later, May says he spotted two neo-Nazis among a crowd of Gilchrist campaign volunteers at a City Council meeting in Lake Forest, Calif. May recognized the young man and woman from photographs of neo-Nazis giving seig-heil salutes in front of swastika banners at an anti-immigration protest in Laguna Beach four months earlier, in July. May said he videotaped the neo-Nazis at the November meeting in Lake Forest and immediately afterward played the footage on a big screen television at Gilchrist's campaign headquarters.

"I identified the couple on the tape as white supremacists and started asking everyone if they'd actually been working the office, and the front desk person and other volunteers said they had," said May. "Gilchrist was there and stated that he didn't want to deal with it and he left." May said he later learned from Gilchrist's campaign managers that some neo-Nazis were told they could work for the campaign as long as they kept their ideology quiet. "Gilchrist had assured the media several times he had a zero tolerance policy toward white supremacists. But from what I saw from the inside, it was more like, 'Don't ask, don't tell,'" May said.

At Thursday night's hearing where Simcox spoke, the Minutemen were treated to a long series of harangues against them, including some that entered the realm of inaccurate hyperbole.

But the real prize came from Simcox:

Also, I take great pride in being part of the Civil Rights Movement -- Martin Luther King. And of course I admire the original border Minuteman, Cesar Chavez, who warned us about illegal immigration 25 years ago and actually marched to the border to protest illegal immigration and predicted the problems we have today.

It's factually true, but distorted; Chavez would never have condoned an operation so clearly aimed at demonizing Latinos as the Minutemen. Nonetheless, some of the Minutemen's supporters sounded similar notes. One in particular chastised the crowd for exhibiting its "prejudice" against the Minutemen, and wondered aloud, at numerous points, "What would Martin Luther King say?"

Human Rights commissioner Ellis Casson, a Seattle pastor who actually knew King, piped up at the end in response.

"I knew Dr. King," he said. "I know what he would say:

"'Here we go again.'"

Yes indeedy.



[Photo courtesy of Sasha Magee.]
[Hat tip to Gene Lyons for the Steele piece.]