White supremacy has always served the rich

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

I am working my way through the brilliant PBS documentary on Reconstruction Dr. Henry Louis Gates.

It is not news that white supremacy was and remains America's original terrorism. But it's interesting how social issues and economic issues, often treated as separate, are usually inter-connected.

What I did not know is that after the Civil War, poor whites and poor blacks worked together to wrest some degree of political and economic control from the plantation class. Hundreds of black men were elected to various offices throughout the south, until disenfranchisement in the 1890s. Aggressive promotion of white supremacy and racial caricaturing was a way to drive a wedge into that alliance and thus for the rich to preserve economic and political power.

Lynchings, which were inevitably triggered by fabricated accusations of the rape of white women, were not random. They specifically targeted black men who ran businesses or who were otherwise economically successful.

White supremacy was way to divide and conquer poorer people. It still is.

 

'Violent counter-jihadism' and its threat to western democracies

Foreign Affairs has a good article on "counter-jihadism," a violent ideology in itself, as exemplified by the Christian terrorist who committed mass murder in Norway last week.

Christian Jihadists

So reading this piece on the terrorist attack in Norway committed by a white, blond-haired Norwegian, could someone please remind me why violent, conservative Muslim theocratic extremists are so much more dangerous to safety, democracy and civilized western values than violent conservative Christian theocratic extremists?

For once, the far right is silent on terrorism

For some reason, this link is not able to be posted on Facebook because supposedly it's been flagged as "offensive" by some users, dish-it-out-but-can't-take-it crybabies do doubt, but NCPR's Brian Mann has good piece calling out deafening conservative and Republican silence on terrorism.

An American-hating terrorist

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -Theodore Roosevelt

The Associated Press did an article about a Brattleboro, VT town petition making President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney subject to arrest for crimes and the reaction to it. It will be put to a town-wide vote on March 4.

The petition has no legal standing, since the town attorney has no authority to write an indictment and the police have no authority to arrest Bush or Cheney if either visits Brattleboro.

As such, the vote is nothing more than a symbolic repudiation of Bush and Cheney. Bush has refused to visit Vermont during his presidency anyway and Cheney has only been once, for a fundraiser of course.

But as is so often the case in this country, pure symbolism has a way of firing people in a way substance does not. There was a lot of vitriolic responses shortly after this made news, though many more favorable responses later on.

It seemed like an ordinary wire service story until I read a disgusting response came from a nutjob in Rosemount, Minnesota.

A mentally deranged person named Brent Caflisch said, "Maybe the terrorists will do us all a favor and attack your town next, our country would be much safer with several thousand dead wackjobs in Vermont."

He suggested that terrorists should kidnap the town's selectmen (councilmen) who allowed the question on the ballot, "cut their heads off, video tape it and put it on the internet."

Call for legislators to be killed simply because they allowed the citizens to vote on a question. American democracy and freedom in action!

The town referendum is irrelevant. The scandal here is that this guy is openly calling for Americans to be brutally murdered because he disagrees with their political opinions.

How exactly is this guy not a terrorist?