Alabama Students File Protest Against White Wing Indoctrination in Class

Now they want to teach hate and racism in public schools –

Alabama students confront school board over right-wing teacher who compares Obama to Hitler

Students are revolting at one Alabama high school over the right-wing lesson plan pushed by a government teacher.

Baldwin County School Board members heard complaints Thursday from students about Spanish Fort High instructor Gene Ponder, who assigned at least five books by right-wing talk radio host Michael Savage and compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler in one lesson, reported AL.com.

The students complained Ponder relied on outdated published materials and blog posts to back up his political claims the in the AP class and used unscientific reasoning on issues such as gun control.

“This is not a small group of students misinterpreting or challenging a viewpoint,” said student Julia Coccaro, who also raised concerns about Ponder’s summer reading list last year.

The school system pulled that assignment in June, after students complained the reading materials promoted one viewpoint without offering a challenging contrast.

“The taxpayers of Baldwin County are not paying for their children to be indoctrinated,” said Coccaro, who chairs the Alabama High School Democrats. “They are paying to be educated, and we are not being educated in that classroom.”

Parents, local residents and former teachers spoke out against Ponder, who declined to comment.

“The lesson plans I examined appear to be totally extracurricular,” said Cynthia McMeans, a retired teacher. “No teaching materials based on a legitimate course of study in the social sciences would rely on and include information from websites, blogs, articles and interviews found on conspiracy theories and logical fallacies. None of the lesson plans come from reputable sources.”

Another former teacher was more succinct.

“We are teaching hate in our school systems,” said retired teacher Sandra Page.

Superintendent Eddie Tyler said the board would consider some of the suggestions offered, such as having an academic supervisor examine the lessons, but he said some speakers “engaged in character assassination” against the teacher.

One local man defended Ponder, saying he had attended one of the government teacher’s classes.

“I was looking for something to tell me that this teacher was bias (sic) and I didn’t hear it or see it,” Eugene Maye of Fairhope. “We want to believe our kids. But my take from that class is that I didn’t see anything wrong.”

 

Fighting Fascism – How the Nazis Tailored Discriminated Against Jews Based on American Jim Crow

Fantastic bit of history here. The neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and alt-right of today aren’t any different than Hitler’s Nazis.

Tuskeegee Airmen

761st Tank Batallion

 

A brief history of black Americans fighting fascism — from WWII to Charlottesville

In July 1943, one month after a race riot shook Detroit, Vice President Henry Wallace spoke to a crowd of union workers and civic groups:

“We cannot fight to crush Nazi brutality abroad and condone race riots at home. Those who fan the fires of racial clashes for the purpose of making political capital here at home are taking the first step toward Nazism.”

The Pittsburgh Courier, a leading African-American newspaper at the time, praised Wallace for endorsing what they called the “Double V” campaign. The Double Victory campaign, launched by the Courier in 1942, became a rallying cry for black journalists, activists and citizens to secure both victory over fascism abroad during World War II and victory over racism at home.

There is a historical relationship between Nazism and white supremacy in the United States. Yet the recent resurgence of explicit racism, including the attack in Charlottesville, has been greeted by many with surprise. Just look at the #thisisnotwhoweare hashtag.

As a scholar of African-American history, I am troubled by the collective amnesia in U.S. politics and media around racism. It permeates daily interactions in communities across the country. This ignorance has consequences. When Americans celebrate the country’s victory in WWII, but forget that the U.S. armed forces were segregated, that the Red Cross segregated blood donors or that many black WWII veterans returned to the country only to be denied jobs or housing, it becomes all the more difficult to talk honestly about racism today.

Nazis and Jim Crow

As Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime rose to power in the 1930s, black-run newspapers quickly recognized that the Third Reich saw the American system of race law as a model. Describing a plan to segregate Jews on German railways, the New York Amsterdam News wrote that Nazis were “taking a leaf from United States Jim Crow practices.”

The Chicago Defender noted that “the practice of jim-crowism has already been adopted by the Nazis.” A quote from the official newspaper of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary organization, on the origins of the railway ban stated:

“In the freest country in the world, where even the president rages against racial discrimination, no citizen of dark color is permitted to travel next to a white person, even if the white is employed as a sewer digger and the Negro is a world boxing champion or otherwise a national hero…[this] example shows us all how we have to solve the problem of traveling foreign Jews.”

In making connections between Germany and the United States, black journalists and activists cautioned that Nazi racial ideology was not solely a foreign problem. A New York Amsterdam News editorial argued in 1935:

“If the Swastika is an emblem of racial oppression, the Stars and Stripes are equally so. This country has consistently refused to recognize one-tenth of its population as an essential part of humanity…It has systematically encouraged the mass murder of these people through bestial mobs, through denial of economic opportunity, through terrorization.”

Victory at home

When the United States entered WWII, African-Americans joined the fight to defeat fascism abroad. Meanwhile, the decades-long fight on the home front for equal access to employment, housing, education and voting rights continued.

These concerns prompted James G. Thompson, a 26-year-old from Wichita, Kansas, to write to the editors of the Pittsburgh Courier. His letter sparked the Double Victory campaign. Considering his service in the U.S. Army, which was racially segregated during WWII, Thompson wrote:

“Being an American of dark complexion and some 26 years, these questions flash through my mind: ‘Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?’ ‘Will things be better for the next generation in the peace to follow?’…‘Is the kind of America I know worth defending?’”

For Thompson and other African-Americans, defeating Nazi Germany and the Axis powers was only half the battle. Winning the war would be only a partial victory if the United States did not also overturn racial discrimination at home.

These ideals seemed particularly far away in the summer of 1943, when racial violence raged across the country. In addition to the riot in Detroit, there were more than 240 reports of interracial battles in cities and at military bases, including in Harlem, Los Angeles, Mobile, Philadelphia and Beaumont, Texas.

These events inspired Langston Hughes’ poem, “Beaumont to Detroit: 1943”:

“Looky here, America / What you done done / Let things drift / Until the riots come […] You tell me that hitler / Is a mighty bad man / I guess he took lessons from the ku klux klan […] I ask you this question / Cause I want to know / How long I got to fight / BOTH HITLER — AND JIM CROW.”

The end of Hughes’ poem calls to mind the swastikas and Confederate flags that were prominently displayed in Charlottesville and at other white supremacist rallies. These symbols and ideologies have long and intertwined histories in the U.S.

Advocates of the Double Victory campaign understood that Nazism would not be completely vanquished until white supremacy was defeated everywhere. In linking fascism abroad and racism at home, the Double Victory campaign issued a challenge to America that remains unanswered.

 

Republicans Cut Loose on Chumph Racism…The Party Wall Protecting Trump From Impeachment is Cracking

Mitt Romney

Arnold Schwarzenegger –

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee

Senator Jeff Flake –

James Murdoch – President of 21st Century Fox and son of Rupert Murdoch –

Sen. John McCain, whom Trump called out at the news conference for not voting for the GOP health care bill, tweeted, “There’s no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate& bigotry. The President of the United States should say so”

 Follow

John McCain ✔@SenJohnMcCain

There’s no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate& bigotry. The President of the United States should say so

9:02 PM – Aug 15, 2017

Sen. Cory Gardner also used Trump’s name to say he was wrong at a town hall in Colorado.

“The President was wrong,” Gardner said when asked about Trump’s comments blaming the left, according to Fox31 Denver, a CNN affiliate.

Sen. Jerry Moran also called out Trump by name, writing in a tweet: “White supremacy, bigotry & racism have absolutely no place in our society & no one – especially POTUS – should ever tolerate it”

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Jerry Moran 

✔@JerryMoran

White supremacy, bigotry & racism have absolutely no place in our society & no one – especially POTUS – should ever tolerate it. Full STMT:

7:21 PM – Aug 15, 2017

•  1,1611,161 Replies

•  2,3702,370 Retweets

•  6,6576,657 likes

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Ohio Gov. John Kasich didn’t tweet but instead told NBC’s “Today Show” on Wednesday that Trump’s remarks were “pathetic.”

“This is terrible. The President of the United States needs to condemn these kinds of hate groups,” said Kasich, who ran against Trump in the Republican presidential primary. “The President has to totally condemn this. It’s not about winning an argument.”

Rep. Ed Royce tweeted, “The President needs to clearly and categorically reject white supremacists. No excuses. No ambiguity.”

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Ed Royce 

✔@RepEdRoyce

The President needs to clearly and categorically reject white supremacists. No excuses. No ambiguity.

10:50 PM – Aug 15, 2017

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And Rep. Leonard Lance tweeted, “Mr. President, there is only one side: AGAINST white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites & the KKK. They have no place in America or GOP.”

 Follow

Rep. Leonard Lance 

✔@RepLanceNJ7

Mr. President, there is only one side: AGAINST white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites & the KKK. They have no place in America or GOP.

8:08 PM – Aug 15, 2017

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who also ran against Trump in the GOP primary, tweeted in a thread denouncing racism: “I urge @POTUS to unite the country, not parse the assignment of blame for the events in Charlottesville.”

 Follow

Jeb Bush 

✔@JebBush

I urge @POTUS to unite the country, not parse the assignment of blame for the events in Charlottesville. 2/3

8:09 PM – Aug 15, 2017

 

Faux News, Tucker Caarlson – Advice on Car Terrorist Attacks Against the Left

No different than ISIS, here is a video shown on Faux News Tucker Carlson show advocating car ramming attacks against liberals and progressive demonstrators…It is not just a “Nazi” problem.

 

The Chumph’s Sig Howl

National magazines are leaving no question of what they think of the Chump’s neo-Nazi and KKK cheering.

 

!940’s Movie Warning of Nazis – “Don’t Be a Sucker!” (Chumph)

This old news clip released by the US Government in the 1940’s talks about Nazi and how the spread hatred to rise to power…

Not much different today with the Chumph.

 

Family Disowns Nazi Son

The wrath of the people continues to rain down on the haters and bigots…Would the is be called “Putting it in an unwanted ad?”

‘You will have to shovel our bodies into the oven, too’: Father of Charlottesville neo-Nazi disowns him

One father of a marcher in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend is denouncing his own son after the young man was seen on national news spouting hate.

In a letter to Fargo, North Dakota’s Inforum, father Pearce Tefft wrote that his family wasn’t sure where his son Peter picked up his racist beliefs.

“I, along with all of his siblings and his entire family, wish to loudly repudiate my son’s vile, hateful, and racist rhetoric and actions,” Tefft wrote, clarifying that he certainly didn’t learn such values at home.

“I have shared my home and hearth with friends and acquaintances of every race, gender, and creed. I have taught all of my children that all men and women are created equal. That we must love each other all the same,” he continued. However, he acknowledged, that Peter chose another path.

The family has remained largely silent, but Tefft said these recent events pushed them over the edge. Remaining silent, he believed, would be a mistake.

“It was the silence of good people that allowed the Nazis to flourish the first time around, and it is the silence of good people that is allowing them to flourish now,” he wrote.

He went on to say that his son is no longer welcome in their home or at family gatherings until he renounces the hate. The beliefs of the younger Tefft has also brought hate targeted at his relatives, who are being considered guilty by association.

His father recalled a time when his son joked, “The thing about us fascists is, it’s not that we don’t believe in freedom of speech. You can say whatever you want. We’ll just throw you in an oven,” Tefft recalled.

“Peter, you will have to shovel our bodies into the oven, too. Please son, renounce the hate, accept and love all,” the father closed.

Peter’s nephew also denounced him, according to local news outlet WDAY 6.

“In brief, we reject him wholly – both him personally as a vile person who has HIMSELF made violent threats against our family, and also his hideous ideology, which we abhor,” his nephew Jacob Scott said. “We are all bleeding-heart liberals who believe in the fundamental equality of all human beings.”

“Peter is a maniac, who has turned away from all of us and gone down some insane internet rabbit-hole, and turned into a crazy nazi. He scares us all, we don’t feel safe around him, and we don’t know how he came to be this way. My grandfather feels especially grieved, as though he has failed as a father.”

The younger Tefft posted a photo of himself prior to the rally at the base of the statue in Charlottesville.

 

Attempted Rise of the Third Klan Aided By the Chumph, Bannon…And Sessions

If the make the movie…It will be called “The Second Birth of a Nation”

A real sequel.

If the hot air in DC winds up with Sessions getting fired – I will jump for joy. Not the least of which reason being that the Chumph won’t get another pick at AG until the Mueller Report is out.

Alt-right activists say Trump and Bannon are giving them “space to destroy” by keeping FBI away

Top alt-right podcasters say the Trump administration is deliberately backing off investigating domestic extremists

While the neo-fascist alt-right is not entirely happy with President Donald Trump’s first few months in office, one thing for which they are grateful is that the new administration is giving them free reign to engage in building their movement, completely unencumbered by any law enforcement scrutiny of their activities.

“He’s going to give us space to destroy,” Michael Peinovich, the creator of The Right Stuff, an alt-right podcast network said during a Sunday guest appearance on “Fash the Nation,” the movement’s most popular web radio show.

Peinovich, who also goes by the pen name “Mike Enoch,” was referencing a 2015 remark by Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, then the mayor of Baltimore, which some people interpreted as giving support to rioters who committed numerous acts of violence in the city following the acquittal of several police officers who had been on trial for the death of a black resident.

“He’s going to give us space to operate, and frankly, it is space to destroy,” Peinovich continued.

“Now is the time that we have to make hay while the sun shines . . . while these investigations of ‘domestic terrorist groups’ are not being funded by the government, they’re not being pushed by the Department of Homeland Security” argued one of the co-hosts of the program, an anonymous former Republican political staffer who calls himself Jazzhands McFeels.

“We’d probably be facing fucking [racketeering] charges or some shit like that,” Peinovich said, discussing what he believed might have happened if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election.

“We have to use these four years to grow into something that can’t be defeated,” Peinovich said, referring to possible future investigations of neo-fascist groups.

Some parts of the Trump administration actively want to encourage the growth of the alt-right, the former Hill staffer “Jazzhands McFeels” said, claiming that Trump’s top strategist Steve Bannon secretly was trying to enable the fringe movement.

“They kind of expect us to be doing this. I’m not saying he’s our guy, but they want — at least Bannon, I would think — wants us to be able to operate in that space. So we should and we are,” he said.

Both podcasters’ statements were met with agreement by guest Richard Spencer, an alt-right editor who operates a series of niche web publications and conferences catering to self-styled racist intellectuals who has since tried to rebrand himself as more of an activist.

In 2016, Bannon told Mother Jones writer Sarah Posner that Breitbart News, the website he oversaw before going to work for Trump, was “the platform for the alt-right.” Subsequently, the White House strategist claimed that he was referring to the anti-Washington ethos that permeates the larger Republican base.

As a matter of policy, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation do not publicize ongoing investigations but presumably, given how tightly knit the small alt-right movement is, the two podcasters likely have some knowledge about the lack of law enforcement oversight.

One government policy area which does appear to have changed under Trump is that federal grants to non-profit groups seeking to combat domestic extremism appear to have been frozen by the new administration.

Those funds were to be disbursed under a program called Countering Violent Extremism which was approved by the GOP Congress and former president Barack Obama in January of this year.

In February, Reuters reported that the Trump administration had decided to take the $10 million budget of the program, which was supposed to be given to private-sector groups trying to discourage extremism of all types, and redirect it toward counteracting Islamist influence only. The program itself would be renamed the “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism” initiative, according to the wire service. Since that time, several nonprofit groups which had been approved for funding allocations have publicly stated that they have not received any information from the federal government, despite the fact that the money was supposed to be disbursed within 30 days of approval.

“I hope the way that he [Trump] is looked back on in history is that he was the vehicle that moved the alt-right movement, the white identity movement in the United States, back into the forefront of the political scene,” Peinovich said on the podcast.

While he is not as widely covered in the political press as some other alt-right activists, Peinovich’s “The Right Stuff” podcast network currently hosts over a dozen neofascist web radio shows that in total have hundreds of thousands of downloads every week, far in excess of the audience of the some nationally syndicated radio hosts’ podcasts.

The Right Stuff has begun recovering some of its audience after Peinovich was exposed in January as having a Jewish wife. His business partner claimed after he was “doxxed” that Peinovich was “separating” from her but neither activist has ever offered any proof of the assertion.

 

White Supremacists Turn Out in Charlottesville, Va to Protest confederate Statue Takedown

Let the whimpering go on. The usual white nationalist and KKK suspects turned up yesterday in Virginia, including white nationalist and Momma’s Boy Richard Spencer to parade holding torches…

I guess they couldn’t afford a cross with wood prices being what they are.

Dozens of Torch-Wielding White Supremacists Protest Removal of Confederate Statue

Klavern in the Park…

Several dozen protesters gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday to express support for a Robert E. Lee statue that is set to be removed. The group made its point by lighting torchers and chanting Nazi rhetoric as well as “Russia is our friend.” Richard Spencer, the self-proclaimed white nationalist, was at the protest and also led an earlier rally against the removal of the statue that has become a centerpiece of Corey Stewart’s campaign in his bid to be elected Virginia governor this year. “What brings us together is that we are white, we are a people, we will not be replaced,” Spencer said at the first rally.

Some protesters at the afternoon Jackson Park rally spoke to the press and denied they were white supremacists. “We are simply just white people that love our heritage, our culture, our European identity,” one protester said.

Later that night, dozens gathered in Lee Park and surrounded a statue of the Confederate general that the City Council has voted to remove and replace with a new memorial dedicated to slaves. The protesters chanted, “You will not replace us” and “Blood and soil.” Yes, they were chanting a phrase that was popularized in Nazi Germany.

The protest didn’t last long as the white supremacists extinguished their torches when police surrounded the park. But they had made their point. “This event involving torches at night in Lee Park was either profoundly ignorant or was designed to instill fear in our minority populations in a way that hearkens back to the days of the KKK,” Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer said in a statement.

There was no sign that Stewart, who is taking part in the June 13 GOP primary, was in any way involved in the protest, which was condemned by several of the other candidates for governor. A group that is suing to keep the statue in place denied any involvement in the protest Saturday night. “We remain committed to preserving the Robert E. Lee Monument in its park through the legal process in the courts because of its historic and artistic value,” the group said in a Facebook post. “We soundly and completely reject racism, white supremacy, and any other identity based groups that preach division and hate no matter which side of the issue they happen to support.”

 

The Facade Crumbles to Reveal the Chumph Fascists

Laughing at Hitler…

The US Department of Justice is literally prosecuting a woman for laughing at Jeff Sessions

As attorney general, Jeff Sessions now heads the Justice Department.

It is hard to believe this is happening, but it’s real: The US Department of Justice is literally prosecuting a woman for laughing at now–Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year.

According to Ryan Reilly at HuffPost, Code Pink activist Desiree Fairooz was arrested in January after she laughed at a claim from Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) that Sessions’s history of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.”

Sessions, in fact, has a long history of opposing the equal treatment of all Americans under the law. He has repeatedly criticized the historic Voting Rights Act. He voted against hate crime legislation that protected LGBTQ people, arguing, “Today, I’m not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face that kind of discrimination. I just don’t see it.” And his nomination for a position as a federal judge was rejected in the 1980s after he was accused of making racist remarks, including a supposed joke that he thought the Ku Klux Klan “was okay until I found out they smoked pot.”

Given this history, Fairooz laughed at Shelby’s claim.

But federal prosecutors have pushed forward with the case against Fairooz. As Reilly reported, prosecutors argue that “the laugh amounted to willful ‘disorderly and disruptive conduct’ intended to ‘impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct’ of congressional proceedings.” In court, they have tried to emphasize that the laugh was extraordinarily disruptive, with a US Capitol Police officer claiming that Fairooz laughed “very loudly” and people in the hearings turned around when they heard it.

Fairooz’s defense, meanwhile, has argued that her laughter was a reflex and not meant to disrupt the hearings. Fairooz was also in the back of the room, and her laughter had no noticeable impact, based on video of the hearings, on Shelby’s introductory speech for Sessions.

The trial will continue at the Superior Court in DC this week. If convicted, Fairooz faces a fine up to $500 and up to six months’ imprisonment for the laugh-related charge. She is also charged with another misdemeanor for “allegedly parading, demonstrating or picketing within a Capitol, evidently for her actions after she was being escorted from the room,” Reilly reported.

 

Auschwitz Survivor Damns Chumph Administration and ICE

Here is a survivor of not only the Auschwitz Death Camp, but Dachau.

Powerful words.

 

Another of Trump’s White’s Only House Cabal is a Nazi

The old adage about knowing someone by who they surround themselves with as friends certainly applies here. The racist, neo-Nazi Trump surround himself in the Whites Only House with fellow racists and neo-Nazis.

Another Trump sucker…Another Nazi

Top Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka is a ‘sworn member’ of Nazi-linked group: report

Controversial Trump counter-terrorism aide Sebastian Gorka is facing fresh scrutiny for his ties to far-right political organizations in Hungary.

Forward.com reports that Hungarian group Vitézi Rend, a far-right organization that the United States State Department claims was “under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany” during World War II, is claiming that Gorka is one of its “sworn members” who took a “life-long oath of loyalty.”

What makes this particularly interesting, notes Forward, is that Gorka’s immigration status in the United States could be jeopardized if he failed to disclose his relationship with the group.

“The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual specifies that members of the Vitézi Rend ‘are presumed to be inadmissible’ to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the website writes.

Gorka’s ties to Vitézi Rend were first revealed earlier this year when a photograph emerged of him wearing one of the group’s medals.

Gorka, who is of Hungarian descent and was born in the United Kingdom, did not respond to Forward’s request for comment, although he has denied in the past that he has any ties to neo-Nazis or anti-Semitic organizations.

 

Private Prison Industry Gets Payback from the Chumph As Republicans Pass Laws Criminalizing Dissent

Slouching towards a Nazi state, Republican Lawmakers in ten states have proposed laws criminalizing civil protest.

While at the same time, the Chumph readies private prisons to handle the masses of prisoners.

The Chumph and Republicans making America a fascist state.

 

Justice Department reverses directive to phase out private prisons

Trumpminister Sessions prepares for the Reich

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Thursday the Justice Department would “rescind” the department’s previous directive to scale back the use of private prisons.

“I hereby rescind the memorandum dated August 18, 2016, sent to you by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, entitled ‘Reducing our Use of Private Prisons.’” Sessions wrote in a directive sent to the acting Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Thomas Kane.

“The memorandum changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system,” Sessions added.

The new directive withdraws Yates’ memo, which had asked the prisons bureau to “substantially reduce” its use of private prisons “in a manner consistent with law and the overall decline of the Bureau’s inmate population.”

“Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities,” Yates wrote in her memo.

She highlighted that private prisons no longer “provide the same level of correctional services, programs and resources.”

“They do not save substantially on costs, and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,” she added.

A Justice Department spokesman explained Sessions’ action by saying the new instructions would give the prisons bureau greater “flexibility.”

“This will restore BOP’s flexibility to manage the federal prison inmate population based on capacity needs,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Under President Barack Obama, the Department of Homeland Security made a similar move to wind down the use of private detention facilities. The actions adversely affected the stock prices of leading companies in the private prison industry.

 

Texas Prison Bans Books By Langston Hughes… But Hitler and David Duke Are OK

Yeah…The Aryan Nations Criminal Gang is just fine…Because they are white.

Texas prisons ban books by Shakespeare and Langston Hughes — but Hitler and David Duke are OK

When a prisoner is behind bars, he or she typically has access to a library of donated books to pass the time. There are stories about incarcerated people getting their GED or even taking college classes, others learned enough law to fight for appeals. Then some just read the classics available on the shelves. That is, unless you’re in jail in Texas.

According to the Houston Press, the type of books available are growing smaller and smaller each year. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has consistently been working to rid jails of specific titles for decades, but after banning Wolf Boys due to finding a single page to be offensive, they’re finally drawing public outrage.

The new Dan Slater book is about two Mexican-American teenagers in Texas. They get drawn into a life of crime by the drug cartels and a Mexican-born Texas detective is tasked with finding them. According to reviews, the tale is a little violent and the outlook isn’t great, but according to The Guardian, it serves as a “thoughtful look at American society and the war on drugs.”

Before the book was even published, it was banned due to two sentences that described the way someone smuggled illegal drugs.

“The system is so aggressive and arbitrary,” the author said. “If you asked me to name 100 sentences that might have gotten my book banned those would not have made the list.”

But Slater’s book isn’t the only strange choice. Books by Langston Hughes, Gore Vidal, Flannery O’Connor, Sinclair Lewis and Thomas More have all been banned.

The guidelines for Texas are so loose that realistically anyone could ban any book for any reason. They were supposed to be banned if there is any mention of how to make weapons, drugs or explosives and if there is anything in the book that would “incite a prison riot” or has “sexually explicit images.” By that same logic, The Bible depicts murder, rape, sex and one of it’s leading characters encourages breaking laws and revolts against the King.

Strangely enough, books The Color Purple, which won a Pulitzer Prize, has been banned. A book of Shakespeare’s Sonnets was banned because of a nude painting on the cover. Dante’s Inferno and Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights are also on the blocked list. A collection of Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketches was also banned for nudity, but a kinky sex book titled The Pleasure’s All Mine passed through. To make matters worse, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and David Duke’s My Awakening also get the Texas Corrections sign of approval. As does Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare, proving the book ban is not only arbitrary but ridiculous.

A 2011 investigation from the Texas Civil Rights Project found about 11,800 titles on the banned list. In just five years that’s grown to over 15,000.

While the issue is a national problem, Michelle Dillon, program coordinator of the Seattle-based non-profit Books to Prisoners, told The Guardian, “Texas is less rational than other states.”

To make matters worse, the decision of whether to ban is essentially left up to a mail clerk, who decides when books come in if they’ll be passed through to the inmate or not.

“There is no accountability,” Dillon says. She also noted there’s no consistency because one clerk will let a book go to the inmate while another will ban the same book because he or she is having a bad day or even because he or she has conservative values.

 

Even Conservatives Call Trump a “Nazi”

Here is Charles Koch, one of the infamous Koch Brothers. Not sure what happened but over the last year the brothers have tried to distance themselves from the very wild-eyed reactionaries they helped create in the Tea Party, and have begun to work at least a bit on Social Justice platforms. Perhaps part of it is that they recognized the Koch name was being dragged through the mud. In this interview, Charles Koch damns not only the two Republican front runners, but leaves the door open to supporting Hillary!