It is possible that Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman is totally insane. But, if he wasn’t writing this stuff, someone else would have to do it because it is an integral and necessary component of the conservative strategy. First, let’s look at what Klayman is saying. He’s arguing that President Obama wants to turn conservatives into “the new niggers.” He says that the president’s effort to add revenue to the government’s coffers is his way of seeking reparations for slavery. He says that Obama’s reelection was fraudulent. He says that Obama hates white people despite being half-white himself. He says that the president has “provoked [a] burgeoning race war.” And then there is this:
Put Obama’s Muslim identification, his anti-Semitism and his pounding of rich whites together and you have a certified, and highly dangerous Black Muslim in The White House – ala (pun intended) Malcolm X, Elijah Mohammed and Louis Farrakhan.
Most of this kind of crazy talk has died down now that the election is over. This is because these ideas were disseminated to maximize the racial polarization of the country so that the Republicans could increase their share of the white vote rather than compete for votes among non-whites.
Keep this in mind when you see Newt Gingrich say, “No Republican pollster thought you could get 87 percent turnout in Milwaukee.”
Keep it in mind whenever you hear a Republican admit that they didn’t think blacks would vote in the same numbers they did in 2008. Their strategy depended first on decreased black participation and, second, on a greater share of the white vote, with both working in concert to overcome McCain’s deficit. They succeeded in the latter but failed in the former because the racial polarization they stoked riled up the blacks just as much as the whites. It didn’t help that the courts struck down one voter suppression scheme after another.
So, why is Larry Klayman writing crazy paranoid racist shit? Maybe it’s because he crazy and paranoid and racist. Maybe it’s just his role in this strategy.
They thought the country would reward them for all their talk about birth certificates and Islam and the president hating whitey. Instead, the country treated them like wannabe Donald Trumps. And that’s when they woke up and freaked out and realized that the old America where being a racist asshole was a winning game had passed them by.
But, they’ll keep trying. The alternative is unthinkable.
The Southern Strategy is all they know. Worse, being dominated by Southerners now, it’s all they want to know.
Setting aside party politics for the moment, it seems increasingly clear to me that the South is once again headed back to its former place as a national pariah. The rest of the country is grappling with life in the 21st century, while the South keeps trying to roll back the 1860s. If Southerners maintain control of the GOP, its life as a national party really is over.
America is now in the hands of women, African-Americans, Latinos, immigrants, people who are gay, liberals, young people, the open-minded, and everyone who sides with these groups. The government hasn’t quite caught up with the reality, but it’s only a matter of time. For the bigots, the world really did end in 2012.
Say what you want, but the “conservative” movement really can gin up the blind hatred and spittle-flecked rage. They are all about uncontrolled lizard-brain emotion.
Reading the ravings of a monster like KKKlayman makes one wonder whether a serious increase in domestic rightwing terror isn’t in the offing…
He does sound like Charlie Manson.
well, cowardice is part of it. could be taking it out on wives and gfs though
Most of this kind of crazy talk has died down now that the election is over.
Obviously you and I aren’t reading the same blogs/message boards/tweets.
I guess not.
However, it is no longer is being echoed by too many lawmakers or covered in the major media outlets.
I had to unfriend some childhood friends because I couldn’t take it. It is incredible the racist, hateful things they say and if you call them on it they fall back on the usual “oh you liberals always play the race card when you are challenged”.
It has been really nasty since November. The conspiracy theories are also flying lately too.
BTW I blame Sarah Palin for the also too thing. I can’t stop.
It is incredibly bad. I also had to unfriend some people because I just could not stand the posters that they were putting up. “I know this is wrong, but it’s still funny as heck”.
We are going to a really bad place. My guess is 20% of the population is totally deranged.
.
I’ll give them this about that though. We spent all eight years of Bush comparing him to Hitler and a Monkey and making fun of his big years. Only to howl with blind rage when they did the same to Obama and say they couldn’t because he was black. That is absurd and we are very much in the wrong there. Either it’s OK to slander people like that or it’s not.
Sure they have racists, but there is enough of the above bullshit on our side I’ll let the racism and other stuff slide. Simply because I feel that in this area, both sides do need to stop comparing people to Hitler and various animals. It’s just ridiculous.
And in a way, I can understand the right here. A good friend of mine who is a Republican, but not a crazy one said something when Obama got elected. “I don’t dislike him personally, but I’m looking forward to treating your president the same way you treated mine”.
And honestly, when thinking about it, I have to say I can’t blame him one bit for having that attitude.
I hated the references to “chimp” too, but let’s be honest. That kind of repugnant behavior was coming from a strikingly small minority of “liberals”. It’s nowhere near the party mainstream.
On the other hand…
Depends where you live honestly. I live around and work in DC, it’s blue as hell, and we get a lot of protestors. So to an extent, my view of it is probably a bit more raw. But to a large extent the only thing that changed was the person, the vitrol and sheer hate remained unchanged.
Most of these people aren’t fringe at all, and it doesn’t seem like a minority. People I worked with hated Bush and made those comparisons all the time. Yet now that Obama is in office all of a sudden “comparing the president to Hitler is wrong” has become the mantra.
I think it speaks more to polarization and sticking it to the other guy. There’s a certain amount of maliciousness in it. I often feel it’s less about thinking the president is an actual animal or Hitler, and more about pissing off their supporters and insulting them through a round about way.
Regardless I just don’t think it’s productive to go around doing this sort of thing.
Except Bush and Rove and their conservative allies did deploy tactics inspired by fascism. They eroded the constitutional and human rights of Americans (Obama has continued to do this too but we’re discussing Bush now) and people in general. They pushed our own brand of corporatism closer to those used in Fascist Italy. They continued the process of merging religion with their politics for purposes of power and control. Remember the “Let’s Roll” ethos? How anyone who didn’t want to attack Iraq was a cowardly un-American?
Explicitly calling Bush Hitler might have gone to far, though in regards to Cheney those comparisons are justified. But they did and the conservatives HAVE continued to fall back on fascist tactics again and again. Calling them on it, is a very different thing.
The Republican party we have today is a consequence of the Bush years as much as anything else.
I do think that stuff was coming from a small group of people on the left. It isn’t only the anti-Obama stuff. People went nuts with the Sandy Hook conspiracies posting videos and crazy photos of guns–guns on everything including baby strollers. There is just this very ugly mindset on a whole range of issues and non of it is based in reality. I had to unfriend someone for really vile anti-Muslim posts. Strangely she also posted some really anti-Semitic things even though one of her big beefs with President Obama has to do with inadequately “standing beside Israel”.
And what do you say to the people who are convinced that the September 2008 stock market crashed happened during President Obama’s watch? I tried to persuade him with a calendar–unsuccessfully. I should tell you that I did not grow up in some backwater. I grew up in the summer playground of the Bush family.
It does sound contradictory, yet I know you are right. I think they agree with the Great Satan – Little Satan paradigm. They love Israel, the anti-Arab state, but they deplore the fact that the Israelis are “filthy Jews”.
If only Israel had been settled by Scotch-Irish…
I heard the same thing!
Another false and too-easy equivalency. The anti-BushCo rhetoric was just that, rhetoric.
We weren’t inciting people to do this kind of stuff:
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/03/05/1675441/splc-patriot-groups-all-time-high/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/25/1164628/–President-Barack-Obama-Is-the-Most-Threatened-Pre
sident-In-History
We didn’t even start groups like the OathKeepers under the Shrub and Cheney. And no one – liberal or otherwise – were demanding the Shrub’s birth certificate or referring to Barbara and their daughters as beasts or beast-like.
This is the trouble with obsession; it blinds you to yesterday and not what’s coming at you. There’s a whole world of change happening and if he is comforted by the delusion that minorities will fade into the shadows his compass is pointing towards Atlantis.
Klayman is a grifter/scam artist. Before the election he raised $25,000 in donations from Birthers to file a “ballot challenge” and never bothered with actually filing anything.
He’s a scam artist, sure, but he convinced me with this screed that he’s also a white supremeacist. Not surprising, since both personality traits reflect a poor character.
I certainly knew of Klayman’s “work”, as it were, but I concede to having missed how thorough his personal racism is until today.
It is a very revelatory and awfully big funny to read Klayman thoroughly conflate “rich” and “white” in providing support for his theories. Oh hell, he just turns the last part into “whitey”, in case his readers wanted more useless inflammation. The only thing missing was an accusation that Obama is helping black millionnaires avoid taxation.
Hey, there’s the seed of his next column!
I can tell you this, stuff like Klayman’s plays very well in the aggrieved white community that surrounds me. I actually do feel like an outcast, at times, around much of my family and people I have known all my life. It is quite disconcerting that I have reached middle age, and now find that almost everything in the historical foundation of my life has gone nuts with hatred and rage. I feel like I have to walk on eggshells just to try and hold together some semblance of normalcy when I am around these people. I still love them, but they are not the same people I have known for all my life. Or maybe they are, and it has just taken this cultural lurch of the last generation to bring all this stuff bubbling to the surface.
Either way, I guess it doesn’t matter. This yawning chasm that has developed will probably never be bridged. And I just find that so sad and depressing.
I know what you mean. I was visiting some formerly apolitical sister and brother-in-law at Christmas who now that they’ve retired have FoxNews on in the background all day long. My brother-in-law pretended to be muttering to himself that “Obama is so stupid. He’s stupid, stupid, stupid.” He said it for my benefit though. He was so angry it made me uncomfortable.
The hatred has begun to affect their personal lives. Their daughter-in-law works for the EPA and they were incensed that she had the day after Christmas off. They brought it up, she answered and they sneered. They were looking for an argument from a Liberal family member.
correction some formerly apolitical = my formerly apolitical
My wife and I talk often about the fact that there just seems to always be a seething rage just below the surface of all these people. It just makes things so uncomfortable because it seem that it takes little to nothing to set it off. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, gets wrapped up in that anger. I am constantly on edge and am relieved when a get together goes without comments or incident. It is like I’m carrying a 1000lb weight around all the time. It is mentally and emotionally exhausting. But it is the new normal.
I have a #1 brother who, when I talk about my work in the labor movement, he responds by falling back on
a) personal experiences he had in the 1970’s (!) where he felt Union actions did not serve greater goods, and
b) his curent view that business owners are the ones who REALLY place themselves at risk, and if workers don’t like their compensation and conditions, they should just leave.
It’s hard to understand how an MBA graduate could lack understanding of basic labor market principles. He’s not a wingnut on every subject. Just the subject which directly confronts my value system and profession.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised about his intransigence, given that when I told him last year that I didn’t want to fight with him constantly and asked how we might improve our relationship, he said, “Well, you’ll just have to change your actions.” Constructive!
Of course, you have to protect yourself, even from family. But if you can, don’t forget that most of what they do is out of fear. Imagine what it must be like to actually believe the filth that spews from Fox News.
My father was an old-school Republican. He believed in the government doing only what it must and keeping out of our lives. But when he retired, he started spending most of his time in from of Fox. Our debates, which I had enjoyed my entire life, had to stop, because there was no rational way to counter that insanity, and I didn’t want it to come between us. He would try to bait me and I would do my best to ignore it. A few months ago he stopped cold. No facebook posts, no comments when we were together. I was too relieved to ask why.
He died last week. I now think that he knew his time was ending, and didn’t want to spend his last days arguing with those he loved. I’m grateful for that.
It’s hard to not want to fight back when people say such absurd, untrue things. It’s always good to offer truth to those who might be able to hear it. And to avoid those who are full of hate. But for the ones who are lost in their fear, compassion is the best answer. I know what we are debating is important, but it’s not worth losing people you love.
Of course, I was very lucky. My dad truly meant well and wanted the best for all of us. I can only hope that your family does as well.
We got Supreme Court Justices that believe 15% or more of what these conservative wackos want to foster. How could they think otherwise if there bed and pillows aren’t made of these crazy horse feathers!
Well, I think they are wearing their bedsheets under those robes.
The best part:
Fox News folks and Woodward. Oh the humanity. But shouldn’t that be formerly well respected liberal(?) investigative journalist Bob Woodward?
After all, we have a case before the Supreme Court right now about the Voting Rights Act, and whether or not its still necessary in our new, post-racist age where nobody sees any colors. Based on the questioning at oral argument, Chief Justice Roberts is operating on bad information about the current state of voting in Massachusetts. We also have Justice Scalia personally convinced (based on his infallible feelings) that the VRA is no longer necessary because it keeps getting re-authorized on overwhelming votes in Congress. Votes that are cast because racists are too frightened to let their bigot flag fly like they could in the old days. That whole “majority rules” thing is subordinate to a Supreme Court’s Justice’s intuition, and his ability to discern hidden motives! Who knew?
NOW who’s talking crazy?
Barack Obama put a stake in the heart of the Southern Strategy.
he won the Presidency without needins ONE SOUTHERN STATE.
Willard won 61% of the White vote – and got his ass handed to him.
that voter suppression shyt? people took it seriously and PERSONALLY. they STILL don’t get how viceral it was to Black folk.
TBogg: