The Messenger of Hate, Faux News…Blinks

I think when even Roger Ailes realizes the Assassination attempt on Giffords and murder of 6 people, including a 9 year old girl has set off a reaction by the American public that is both visceral and a potential tidal wave against the hate games these guys have been using to control the electorate…

Fox News Prez Orders Staff: Tone It Down

Fox News President Roger Ailes has warned his staff to tone down right-wing rhetoric as America debates whether political vitriol played a role in the violent attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. “I told all of our guys, ‘Shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast,’” Ailes said in an interview with Global Grind. “I hope the other side does that as well,” he added. That’s not to say Ailes is buying the argument that harsh political attacks or Sarah Palin’s map marking Giffords’ district with crosshairs had anything to do with the deadly attack by suspected gunman Jared Lee Loughner.

To get a feel for what it is like on the groound in Arizona – one of the local papers:

Arizona’s enemy: The Collective Consciousness of Hate

This Graphic ties some of the bits and pieces of what is going on in Arizona together. Like a lot of places, you have a cozy relationship between the Republican Party, Republican Candidates, and the Tea Party with fringe hate groups including the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the splinter racist Minuteman Militias.

What has happened in Arizona is that these groups – sometimes directly in the statehouse as legislative aides and in writing laws have managed to get a voice in the legislature and Governors Mansion, working directly for Republican legislators. This is a little different than in the South where Republican Legislators sneak out to a Council of Conservative Citizens Barbeque or confab every year to press the flesh with part of the base – but otherwise try and keep the white sheets away from the state house.

Here is an article about one of the leading right-wing hate-talk radio personalities in Arizona – John Justice –  NY Times reports on Jon Justice and hate radio in Tucson

Come on out and shoot a machine gun to “target” Gabrielle Giffords? Flashback: Giffords Opponent Had M16 Shooting Event, ‘Help Remove Gabrielle Giffords From Office’

And lastly this -

Hate Speech, the Right’s Magic Bullet

…The fact is, it has been the right’s goal to poison our political discourse for years. Remember the notorious “GOPAC Memo” back in the 1990s, created for the Republicans’ leadership training institute and endorsed by Newt Gingrich? Titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” in it, candidates are instructed in what words to use when defining their opponents (i.e., liberals). “These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contract,” the memo said. “Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals, and their party” (in other words, demonize them).

Among them: intolerant … lie … pathetic … radical … sick … steal … traitors. Gingrich and his allies deliberately set out to employ toxic language against their opponents, and are still doing it. They will say anything to get a vote, especially now that the angriest and most irrational so often make up a majority of those who bother to go to the polls. This kind of talk is part and parcel of their strategy, and no matter what motivated the Tucson killings, it needs to stop.

Their lock-and-load rhetoric is reinforced by the rambling ranks of those who go on the Internet to spout any conspiracy theory, distortion of history or outright lie that helps them make it through the night. Add, too, the men and women of radio and television, the Limbaugh’s, Beck’s, and their ilk who use the airwaves as a cudgel, battering viewers and listeners with the certainty of their illogic, their thinly veiled messages of bigotry and meretricious embrace of Constitution, religion, flag and family.

All of them will huff and puff that this is an isolated incident by a madman that cannot be blamed on their bombast and bluster. But let’s call it out for what it is; let’s debate what in our gut we know to be true: even if it was not their intent, it’s likely the words of the right on radio and TV and in the books they publish spurred on the man who killed two and wounded six in a Knoxville, Kentucky, church in July 2008, and the murderer of George Tiller, one of the few doctors in America who still performed late-term abortions for women with problem pregnancies whose health was at stake from life-threatening complications, or whose infants would be born dead or dying. Their invective, whether inadvertently or not, has encouraged the vandalism and threats faced by so many of our candidates and elected officials, including the now desperately wounded Congresswoman Giffords. Her shooting, and the death and wounding of so many who came to meet with her, are just the latest example of ideologically-motivated bloodshed.

First Prosecution Under New Hate Crimes Law

A New Mexico town is the honorary home of 3 men who will be the first prosecuted under the new Hate Crimes Legislation. The town is trying to get past a bloody history of Hate Crimes. Perhaps this prosecution, like the first successful prosecution of KKK criminals during the Civil Rights era will serve notice to the scumbags …

Swastika case another race issue for NM town

Three friends had just finished their shifts at a McDonald’s when prosecutors say they carried out a gruesome attack on a customer: They allegedly shaped a coat hanger into a swastika, placed it on a heated stove and branded the symbol on the arm of the mentally disabled Navajo man.

Authorities say they then shaved a swastika on the back of the 22-year-old victim’s head and used markers to scrawl messages and images on his body, including “KKK,” ”White Power,” a pentagram and a graphic image of a penis.

The men have become the first in the nation to be charged under a new law that makes it easier for the federal government to prosecute people for hate crimes.

The case also marked the latest troubling race-related attack in this New Mexico community, prompting a renewed focus among local leaders on improving relations between Navajos and whites.

The defendants are accused of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and could face 10 years in prison if convicted. The sentences could be extended to life if the government proves kidnapping occurred.

Federal prosecutors say they were able to bring the case because the 2009 law eliminated a requirement that a victim must be engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting or attending school, for hate crime charges to be leveled.

The law also expanded civil rights protections to include violence that is based on gender, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.

The swastika branding has also put the spotlight back on Farmington, a predominantly white community of about 45,000 residents near the Navajo Nation.

Farmington leaders signed a historic agreement earlier this month with the Navajo Nation in which both sides pledged to work toward improving race relations.

The signing ceremony was held at City Hall and included a blessing by a Navajo medicine man who prayed for a strong, stable and long-running agreement. City officials sat cross-legged on the floor alongside Navajos during the service.

“Mistreatment of fellow humans is a learned behavior. The only thing that will address that directly is education,” said Duane “Chili” Yazzie, chairman of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission and a participant in the signing ceremony.

The signing was significant because it put into writing what both sides have long expressed. Negotiations took almost a year as the parties discussed wording and language.

Navajo and city leaders agree race relations have improved dramatically since May 1974, when the beaten and burned bodies of three Navajo men were found north of town. Three white high school students were linked to the crime and sent to reform school, outraging the Navajo community.

More recently there were other events.

There was the 2006 kidnapping and beating of a Navajo man by three young white men. Six days later, a Navajo man was shot to death in a Walmart parking lot by a Farmington police officer responding to a domestic violence call.

The shooting was ruled justified by sheriff’s investigators and the Justice Department determined there was no basis for a civil rights investigation. Still, the incident touched off a round of protests by angry Navajos.

When a New Mexico advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights visited Farmington in 2004 to assess the city’s progress 30 years after the canyon murders, several speakers at a forum complained that harassment of Indians by white youth continues.

In the current case, defendants William Hatch of Fruitland and Paul Beebe and Jesse Sanford, both of Farmington, have pleaded not guilty. Their court-appointed lawyers have declined comment. They have also been charged with state crimes.

Yazzie and Mayor Tommy Roberts said despite the history of problems, there is evidence of substantial progress in Farmington, including the recent agreement between city and tribal leaders.

 

The Racism in Russia – Ultra-Nationalist White Supremacists Gangs

Racism has been a historical issue in Russia. Stalin murdered near as many Jews as Hitler, and even before the Communists took control, anti-minority sentiment caused any number of pogroms. Even under communism, it was extremely rare to see a USSR athlete in the Olympics or International competitions who wasn’t white, despite the fact that the USSR was a very diverse nation.

Racism in Russia took a decidedly neo-Nazi slant before the fall of communism when Russian special forces troops, every bit as proud and patriotic as their American counterparts,  first were bogged down in Angola, and later in Afghanistan getting their heads handed to them by the locals. After the fall of communism, these groups began to form para-military uber-nationalist organizations on the lines of the Hitler era SS and Skinheads. These gangs have wreaked violence all over the country – typically attacking Asian and other minority students and people in and around the major cities. Some of these groups – are now apparently attacking the government…

Slain Moscow Judge is a Lesson for Russian Gov’t

Moscow City Judge Eduard Chuvashov, famous for presiding over a series of high-profile murder cases blamed on skinhead groups, was shot dead in his apartment building earlier this week. His death is only the latest in a wave of ultranationalist and neo-Nazi violence that has been steadily growing in Russia over the past decade. The hate crime watchdog Sova estimates that 71 people were murdered and more than 300 were wounded in such crimes in Russia last year alone.

The surge in Russian nationalism has been endorsed in no small part by a variety of government representatives. At the same time, Russian rights activists and oppositionists have been repeatedly targeted by ultranationalist groups, and accuse the government for turning a blind eye. The editorial team at Gazeta.ru points out that with Chuvashov’s murder, they’re going to have to either start make some changes or start watching their backs.

Attempts by the Russian authorities to use nationalist organizations to further their own goals, in particular the battle against the democratic opposition that exists outside of the political system, are dangerous to the authorities themselves.

Racism, the Right – and Hate Crimes

Found this garbage over at the DC Examiner. Since they are very unlikely to let my response to Mr Kane go though – I’ll post it here.

Ex Baltimore Sun Columnist Gregory Kane

First, Mr. Kane’s Uncle Tommery diatribe:

Gregory Kane: Hate crime laws attempt to criminalize thoughts
By: Gregory Kane
Examiner Staff Writer
December 7, 2009

This story comes to us from Broward County, Fla. Teah Wimberly, 16, is charged with murdering Amanda Coll, a friend and classmate at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale. Both girls were 15 at the time of the shooting.

According to police, Ms. Wimberly wanted more than just a friendship with Collette, whom she’d known since childhood. Wimberly wanted a lesbian relationship with Collette, who rebuffed the idea, news reports indicate. On Nov. 12 of last year, police say, Wimberly took a .22-caliber handgun to school and fatally shot Collette.

Wimberly’s trial started last week and is expected to continue this week. This may be the first time you’ve read about the case, unlike when Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming or when James Byrd was dragged to death in Jasper, Texas.

President Obama Signs Matthew Sheppard/James Byrd Hate Crimes Law

Bad day for conservatives!

Debating Hate Crimes, Rep. Gohmert (R-TX) Conflates Bestiality, Sex With Corpses, and Voting for a Black Man

Bestiality and voting for a black man…

Proving once again there are no minimum qualifications to be a Congressman in the United States, unlike most other professions. You don’t even have to be of the “sound mind” needed to write a will or get married in many states…

Or smarter than a 5th grader.

Which gets us to the issue of how in Gohmert’s picayune little mind are Hate Crimes Legislation, bestiality, necrophilia, and voting for a black man (Alan Keyes) related?

I mean Keyes may be crazy as a loon, but (as far as I know) he isn’t crazy enough to desire amorous relationships with Elsie the Cow.

This dude is another Republican Sick Puppy.

more about “Debating Hate Crimes, Rep. Gohmert (R…“, posted with vodpod

Joan Walsh and Kweisi Mfume Discuss Beck’s Racism

Joan Walsh lays out racism as a tool of  conservatives fighting against progress for the past 230 years.