Tag: white supremacy

Kris Kobach releases racist video to disprove racism allegations

The Republican Kansas senate hopeful was flagged

Kansan Kris Kobach, the Republican former secretary of state who lost the 2018 gubernatorial election by five points to Democratic nominee Laura Kelly in a state that President Donald Trump carried by more than 20 points two years earlier, is back and running for U.S. Senate. In a new kickoff video, he suggests that if Kansas Republicans give him another chance, he will be better prepared for the “propaganda” attacks on him for his racist and white supremacist views.

In the same video, he demonstrates exactly why even Trump’s presidential transition vetting team flagged him for “white supremacy” concerns.

While waving a coffee mug around in front of a black screen, Kobach began his ad quoting the late climate-science denier Michael Crichton about the threat of fantasy propaganda winning out over truth.

View the complete July 31k article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.

FBI’s Wray says most domestic terrorism arrests this year involve white supremacy

The Hill logoFBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday that the agency has made about 100 domestic terrorism-related arrests since October, and the majority were tied to white supremacy.

”I will say that a majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence, but it does include other things as well,” Wray said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, referring to cases in fiscal 2019, which began Oct. 1.

The FBI is “aggressively” investigating domestic terrorism and hate crimes, Wray said, noting that the bureau is focused on investigating the violence, not the ideology motivating the attacks.

View the complete July 23 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

White identity politics drives Trump, and the Republican Party under him

Washington Post logoWith a tweeted attack on four minority congresswomen this week, President Trump made clear that his reelection campaign will feature the same explosive mix of white grievance and anti-immigrant nativism that helped elect him.

Trump’s combustible formula of white identity politics already has reshaped the Republican Party, sidelining, silencing or converting nearly anyone who dares to challenge the racial insensitivity of his utterances. It also has pushed Democratic presidential candidates sharply to the left on issues such as immigration and civil rights, as they respond to the liberal backlash against him.

Left unknown is whether the president is now on the verge of more permanently reshaping the nation’s political landscape — at least until long-term demographic changes take hold to make nonwhite residents a majority of the country around 2050.

View the complete July 16 article by Michael Scherer on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Sees an Obstacle to Getting His Way on Immigration: His Own Officials

WASHINGTON — Stephen Miller was furious — again.

The architect of President Trump’s immigration agenda, Mr. Miller was presiding last month over a meeting in the White House Situation Room when he demanded to know why the administration officials gathered there were taking so long to carry out his plans.

A regulation to deny welfare benefits to legal immigrants — a change Mr. Miller repeatedly predicted would be “transformative” — was still plodding through the approval process after more than two years, he complained. So were the new rules that would overturn court-ordered protections for migrant children. They were still not finished, he added, berating Ronald D. Vitiello, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

View the complete April 14 article by Eileen Sullivan and Michael D. Shear on The New York Times website here.

US Coast Guard employee removed for ‘white power sign’ on air

The US Coast Guard has removed a team member from duty after he was accused of making a “white power” sign on air.

The unidentified employee was seen glancing at the camera during an MSNBC interview on Friday night before briefly making the hand gesture.

He was at a desk in the background as the cable channel spoke to Coast Guard Commanding Officer Capt John Reed in Charleston, South Carolina.

The agency responded swiftly to the ensuing social media backlash.

View the complete September 15 article on the BBC.com website here.

Here’s Why Republicans’ Disturbing Romance with the Racist Confederacy Is So Troubling

The following article by W. Fitzhugh Brundage of the Independent Media Institute was posted on the AlterNet.org website August 17, 2018:

The road to the violence around statues is paved with hate, lies, and political gamesmanship.

Lee Park, Charlottesville, VA by Cville dog, via Wikimedia.org

Among the historical ironies of our current era is the defense of Confederate monuments and southern white “heritage” by Republicans. The curious path that the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln has followed to its present stance is an example of expediency and ideology subverting principle.

For more than a century after the Civil War, the defense of white southern “heritage” was the preoccupation of white Democrats. Until the 1970s, Republicans in the South were a long suffering minority who had to battle against all manner of Democratic machinations to enfeeble their opponents. The party recruited African Americans—who remained loyal to the party of Lincoln and hostile to the white segregationists who still presided over the Democratic Party in the region—and whites who favored Republican policies and were less enchanted by white supremacy than their Democratic rivals. Southern Republicans were often vocal opponents of the poll tax and other Democratic schemes that suppressed voter turnout and impeded equal representation in state houses. Nationally, Republican ranks included moderates and liberals whose commitment to racial equality was crucial for the expansion of civil rights from the Civil War until the election of Ronald Reagan.

Continue reading “Here’s Why Republicans’ Disturbing Romance with the Racist Confederacy Is So Troubling”

Trump’s Mainstreaming of ‘Chain Migration’: A White Supremacist’s Dream

The following commentary by Dean Obeidallah was posted on the Daily Beast website February 1, 2018:

It began life as a neutral sociological term. Then white supremacists started using ‘chain migration’ in a polemical way. Now the president of the United States uses it, too.

Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast

Donald Trump may have historically low approval ratings with Americans at large but there’s one group that loves him bigly: white supremacists. Trump truly is the great white supremacist hope. Just look at how they praised Trump after Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, in which the man who unilaterally ended DACA last fall spoke the line, “Americans are dreamers too.” (Trump uttered a similar racist dog whistle during the campaign with his remark, “We’re always talking about ‘DREAMers’ for other people.” Adding, “I want the children that are growing up in the United States to be dreamers also.”)

Sure enough Trump’s real message about “Americans are dreamers too” was heard loud and clear by white supremacists with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and white nationalist Richard Spencer both taking to Twitter to praise that specific line of the SOTU. Continue reading “Trump’s Mainstreaming of ‘Chain Migration’: A White Supremacist’s Dream”

What black Americans are most worried about in the Trump era

The following article by Eugene Scott was posted on the Washington Post website September 29, 2017:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated his pitch to minority voters in Ohio on Aug. 22, asking them “What do you have to lose?” and promising to “straighten it out” in inner cities. (The Washington Post)

President Trump won only 8 percent of the black vote in 2016 after pleading his case this way throughout the campaign:

“And I ask you this, I ask you this — crime, all of the problems — to the African Americans, who I employ so many, so many people, to the Hispanics, tremendous people: What the hell do you have to lose?” he asked in August 2016. “Give me a chance. I’ll straighten it out. I’ll straighten it out.” Continue reading “What black Americans are most worried about in the Trump era”

Warning signs of mass violence – in the US?

The following article by Max Pensky, Co-Director of the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Binghamton University, State University, of New York and Nadia Rubaii, Co-Director, Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, and Associate Profession of Public Administration, Binghamton University, State University of New York was posted on the Conversation website August 21, 2017:

Protesters with opposing views face off at a ‘Free Speech’ rally in Boston. AP Photo/Michael Dwyer

There are those who say that comparing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler is alarmist, unfair and counterproductive.

And yet, there has been no dearth of such comparisons since the 2016 presidential election. Many commentators have also drawn parallels between the conduct of Trump supporters and Holocaust-era Nazis.

The comparisons continue today, and Trump’s comments in the wake of the Charlottesville attack show why. The president’s reference to violence on “both sides” implies moral equivalence, which is a familiar rhetorical strategy for signaling support to violent groups. His comments give white supremacists and neo-Nazis the implied approval of the president of the United States. Continue reading “Warning signs of mass violence – in the US?”