Joe Biden, de nieuwe VS president heeft een 'grote' racistische geschiedenis

Jammer dat het hieronder opgenomen artikel van CounterPunch niet al voor de Democratische voorverkiezingen werd gepubliceerd, grote kans dat oorlogsmisdadiger Joe Biden dan niet door de Democratische Partij zou zijn gekozen als kandidaat voor het presidentschap Hoewel de grote opzet was om Bernie Sanders de gang naar het Witte Huis te belemmeren, daar hij te links was en wel eens werkelijke verandering had kunnen brengen (in tegenstelling tot de meer dan valse belofte van Barack Obama)........

Jack Delaney heeft een uitgebreid artikel geschreven waarin hij Joe Biden neerzet als een racist en dat al meer dan 40 jaar lang......

Zo was Biden tegen het federale schoolbusproject waarmee men de integratie van zwarte en anders gekleurde kinderen op witte scholen wilde bevorderen...... Uiteraard was dit niet de enige manier waarop Biden zich inzette om integratie van gekleurde kinderen op witte scholen te voorkomen, op alle mogelijke (politieke) manieren heeft Biden zich daartegen verzet......

Biden heeft zich onder de administratie van oorlogsmisdadiger Bill Clinton ingezet voor de 'three strikes out' wetgeving, waarmee zelfs met kleine vergrijpen, je na drie van die vergrijpen 'levenslang' gevangen kon worden gezet en uiteraard waren het vooral de gekleurden die hier in verhouding het hardst onder hebben geleden..... Zo werd het gebruik van crack (cocaïne) t.o.v. gewone cocaïne (een heel stuk duurder) veel zwaarder gestraft en je raadt het al: vooral de gekleurden gebruikten crack, daar ze altijd tot het armste deel van de VS behoorden en behoren.......

Overigens was het 'three strikes out' het gevolg van de inzet van Biden al onder de totale mafketel en oorlogsmisdadiger (en C-acteur) Ronald Reagan, de neoliberale republikeinse president in de 80er jaren van de vorige eeuw..... (die begon met het opschroeven van de VS schulden tot onaanvaardbaar grote hoogte) Het is zelfs zo dat Biden Reagan heeft gepord om hardere straffen te zetten op drugsovertredingen. Het uiteindelijke gevolg van de inzet die Biden liet zien was dat in veel staten 90% van de veroordeelden door drugsgebruik en andere drugsgerelateerde zaken gekleurd waren.......

Onder Clinton was Biden één van de hoofdverantwoordelijken voor het verhogen van straffen en hij was er trots op dat de Democraten verantwoordelijk waren voor 60 meer doodstraffen en de verhoging van straffen. Verder was de Democratische administratie van Clinton verantwoordelijk voor het aannemen van 100.000 meer politieagenten en het bouwen van 125.000 extra gevangeniscellen...... Gevolg was dat tegen het jaar 2000 de VS met 5% van de wereldbevolking, de VS een gevangenispopulatie had die 25% vertegenwoordigde van het totale aantal gevangenen over de wereld....... Gekleurden liepen 5 keer meer kans in de gevangenis te belanden dan hun witte medeburgers.........

Biden heeft zich van 1984 tot 2018 ingezet voor het snijden in de sociale bijstand, terwijl juist de gekleurde bevolking daar het meest op was aangewezen...... Voorts was Biden verantwoordelijk voor het opschroeven van schulden voor studeren en zoals je kan uittekenen, ook hier waren m.n. de gekleurden het slachtoffer van (hoewel deze schuldenlast nu zo groot is dat dezelfde schoft nu heeft beloofd daar wat aan te gaan doen, echter denk daarbij aan de beloften van Obama, die voor het grootste deel in het 'grote archief' verdwenen......)

Over Obama's beloften gesproken: ondanks een gekleurde president en een aantal gekleurden op sleutelposities, is het zijn administratie niet gelukt om de positie van gekleurden te verbeteren en ook hiervoor was Biden deels verantwoordelijk...... Sterker nog Black Lives Matter (BLM) ontstond onder de Obama/Biden administratie.....

Ook de buitenlandpolitiek van de VS onder Obama en vicepresident Biden was het 'business as usual...' De Obama/Biden administratie was verantwoordelijk voor het destabiliseren van landen als Jemen, Honduras (een door de CIA en Hillary Clinton georganiseerde coup), Syrië, Somalië en Libië (het eens rijkste land van Afrika werd 60 jaar terug in de tijd gebombardeerd en behoort nu tot de armste landen van dat continent, terwijl er nog steeds oorlog wordt gevoerd....). Intussen vervolgde deze administratie het bloedige beleid die de erfenis vormde van het Bush tijdperk: de illegale oorlogsoperaties in Afghanistan, Pakistan en Irak......

Het moorden middels drones kreeg ook al een extra duw in de rug van de Obama/Biden administratie, terwijl zo'n 90% van de vermoorde slachtoffers niet eens werden verdacht, dus veelal vrouwen en kinderen....... Biden was ook voor die moorden de tweede hoofdverantwoordelijke.......

Wat betreft vluchtelingen uit Latijns-Amerika (o.a. door de coup van 2009 in Honduras) heeft de Obama administratie meer dan 2,5 miljoen vluchtelingen gedeporteerd en werd er geen onderzoek gedaan naar massagraven met vluchtelingen uit dat deel van de 3 Amerika's.......

Tijdens zijn verkiezingscampagne heeft Biden herhaaldelijk gelogen dat hij Nelson Mandela ontmoette in Zuid-Afrika en dat hij daarvoor werd gearresteerd..... Terwijl hij zoals eerder gemeld ronduit een racist was en eigenlijk nog is (en dan ben je m.i. niets anders dat een fascist)..... Deze fascist ging zelfs zover om het volk voor te houden dat wanneer ze een probleem hadden om op hem te stemmen, deze kiezers niet zwart waren, waarvoor hij later dan wel zijn excuus aanbood.......

Met Biden zal er niets ten goede veranderen voor de gekleurde bevolking van de VS en ook het imperialistische buitenlandbeleid van de VS zal niet veranderen, sterker nog: de kans is groot dat de VS weer nieuwe oorlogen zal aangaan, zeker als je in gedachten neemt dat Biden al heeft gesteld dat dit beleid onder Trump slap was als het gaat om de landen Iran en Venezuela....... Ook de agressieve buitenlandpolitiek t.a.v. China zal niet veranderen, zo heeft Bidens vicepresident Kamala Harris laten weten....... Door de sancties van Trump alleen al tegen Venezuela, zijn meer dan 50.000 mensen om het leven gekomen, als je dat slap vindt kan er maar één stap straffer zijn: weer een (illegale) oorlog....... (overigens ook in Iran moeten grote aantallen mensen, inclusief veel kinderen, zijn overleden als gevolg van de illegale VS sancties......)

December 6, 2020

Jim Crow Joe

Biden’s Record On Race

by Jack Delaney

Photograph Source: Chuck Kennedy – CC BY 2.0

It was the days of purple haze and the post-civil rights movement that President-elect Joe Biden cemented his political legacy, yet he was rarely on the right side of history. The era was marked by assassinations of political leaders, spurred a coalition opposing the Vietnam war, and produced police violence carried out on demonstrators. The unrest set the stage for Richard Nixon and advisor Lee Atwater’s southern strategy.

Nixon’s ‘68 campaign strategy relied on polished racist dog whistles and rhetoric promising law and order, which delivered the southern vote along with the White House. With a political realignment — where segregationist southern Democrats found refuge within the GOP — political newcomer, Joe Biden found opportunity.

Delaware’s Dixiecrat

Before the 1972 elections, then a city government official, Biden launched a bid for the U.S. Senate. In his campaign against Delaware’s Republican incumbent, J. Caleb Boggs, Biden set himself apart from his opponent and supported the integration of schools through federally mandated busing. Yet in a few years following his first Senatorial win, he would reverse his stance and sharpen his words.

After a deciding vote that nixed a 1974 anti-busing amendment, the freshman Senator faced backlash and pressure from constituents. Biden’s vote against the ‘74 amendment would stand as his sole exception of supporting school desegregation through federally mandated busing. After his controversial vote, constituent outrage ensued. Parents began to heckle the Senator at a town hall meeting and he would promptly change his position to match his base’s sentiments.

Through 1972 until the end of federally mandated busing, Biden would join staunch segregationists — Senators Strom Thurmond, James O. Eastland, Herman E. Talmadge, and others — backing bills that would prevent the federal government from enforcing school integration.

After the 1975 white anti-busing riots in Boston, Biden joined with former Dixiecrat — North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms — to introduce an anti-busing amendment a year later. The proposal’s aim was to handcuff the enforcement of school desegregation by limiting the federal government from collecting data on integration. As reported by NPR, Biden later said in a 1975 interview he supported a Constitutional amendment to end the busing mandate.

In support of Helms’s amendment, Biden would rise on the Senate floor stating, “I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept.” Helms’s measure failed but Biden introduced a similar and more bipartisan amendment that barred funding for local governments assigning teachers to schools based on race. Later that year, Biden issued a statement on busing in an interview, calling the policy, “[an] asinine concept, the utility of which has never been proven to me.”

The New York Times notes that Biden proposed a 1976 measure that would block the Department of Justice (DOJ) from treating busing as a form of desegregation. A year later the Senator cosponsored an amendment that limited federal funding from busing oversight while leading legislation that would limit court-ordered busing enforcement.

A year later, in 1977, Biden remarked that some federal desegregation policies would “cause his children to grow up in a racialized jungle.” Biden continued with rhetoric that echoed Congress’s segregationists, haranguing against “forced busing” and arguing for states’ rights.

By 1982, Biden joined former Dixiecrats to vote for a DOJ appropriations amendment that included a section labeled “the toughest anti-busing rider ever approved by either chamber of Congress.” He then voted in favor of an amendment that granted DOJ the ability “to remove or reduce the requirement of busing in existing court decrees or judgments.”

A 1991 Supreme Court decision would lead to a series of cases that would ultimately end federally mandated busing. Almost 30 years later, a 2019 report released by Penn State and UCLA showed that classrooms are overly segregated today.

New Jim Crow Joe

From the early 1980s up until present day, racialized mass incarceration took hold — sponsored by the war on drugs, heightened sentencing, and through the empowerment of prosecutors and law enforcement. The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander writes, “Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate. The New Jim Crow was born.”

Biden’s role in the genesis of the New Jim Crow began during the Reagan years. As reported by The Intercept, Biden lobbied the Reagan administration to beef up law enforcement and adopt harsher sentences. While courting Reagan, the Senator reached across the aisle to find common ground with an old friend.

Biden teamed up with Strom Thurmond to introduce the Comprehensive Control Act of 1984. The bill expanded penalties for marijuana production and trafficking, permitted punitive legal strategies, and included a civil asset forfeiture clause. By 1986 and 1988 he would support and partly author two Anti-Drug Abuse Acts that imposed stricter sentencing on crack compared to powder cocaine and bolstered prison sentences for drug offenders.

During Biden’s first bid for the White House, a 1987 Philadelphia Inquirer piece reports that he gloated about receiving an award from Alabama’s former segregationist governor George Wallace in 1973. Shortly thereafter, Biden delivered a stump speech in Alabama, stating, “we [Delawareans] were on the south’s side in the Civil War.” Continuing on the campaign trail, he further remarked that he participated as a civil rights activist in the 60s, yet the claim was unfounded.

After the Reagan-era, a 1991 peak in national crime escalated calls for law and order and was followed by a media frenzy. In the ‘92 Presidential campaign, Bill Clinton rebranded the Democratic Party as tough on crime, which paid off and delivered the White House. Shortly after the Clinton victory, Biden introduced The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, also known as the ‘94 crime bill.

Biden was a substantial contributor to the legislation and shepherded it through, rising on the Senate floor boasting that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party was responsible for 60 new death penalties, 70 enhanced penalties, 100,000 more cops, and 125,000 new prison cells. The Senator continued the next year, standing in support of the bill, “We have predators on our streets who are beyond the pale….We have no other choice but to take them out of society.”

The bill passed and was signed into law by Clinton, imposing mandatory minimum sentences, the “three strikes you’re out rule”, and increased federal spending for newly militarized law enforcement and prisons nationwide.

As the policies took shape, the war on drugs and mass incarceration exploded, delivering the U.S. the world’s largest prison population. No secret — by the 2000s, with only 5 percent of the globe’s population, the U.S. had 25 percent of the world’s prison population. Data from the U.S. Census shows that black people are five times more likely to face incarceration than white people, while a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showed police murders skew excessively towards people of color.

Late Senate and Obama Years

Towards the twilight of Biden’s Senate career, he pursued neoliberal economic reforms and championed financial deregulations. For over 40 years — from 1984 until 2018 — Biden would support proposed freezes and cuts to Social Security spending, while people of color are disproportionately served by Social Security income benefits.

He continued with deregulation through the ‘90s and ‘00s. In 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was introduced and proposed to eliminate Great Depression-era financial regulations formed through the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The sweeping deregulatory bill paved the way and further incentivized finance capital to pursue predatory lending, redlining, and fiscal trickery which disproportionately disadvantaged people of color. Biden supported and voted for the bill.

Following the erasure of Glass-Steagall, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), known as the bankruptcy bill, was introduced. Through BAPCPA’s time in the legislative process, Biden would offer three amendments that hallowed existing statutes. The law would unequally impact people of color, and down the road, exacerbated the student debt crisis, impacting people of color at more costly levels.

During the Obama-Biden years, videos and reports of police murders of black people would surface. Ferguson and Baltimore became centers of the uprisings that ensued in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and were precursors to the current Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Yet the two-term administration didn’t deliver the change that was promised in the ‘08 campaign.

Abroad it was also business as usual for the Obama-Biden White House. The foreign policy apparatus during the administration actively destabilized regions, causing crises in Yemen, Honduras, Syria, Somalia, and Libya, while continuing W. Bush-era operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

The drone program would also surge under Biden’s White House years. Since the drone warfare-era, the administration amassed the highest number of civilian drone strike casualties. As reported by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, at least 380 to 801 civilians in the Middle East and Africa were killed by drone strikes during Obama and Biden’s tenure.

For Latin Americans, the White House also managed one of the largest deportation efforts in U.S. history, while mass graves of Latin American migrants went unchecked by the administration. Over two and half million migrants were deported and the infrastructure was left for Trump to inherit and bolster.

A May 2020 CNN interview with Harvard professor, Dr. Cornel West, succinctly summed up the Obama-Biden years. “The system cannot reform itself. We’ve tried black faces in high places. Too often our black politicians, professional class, middle class become too accommodated to the capitalist economy.” West continued, “The Black Lives Matter movement emerged under a black President, a black Attorney General, and a black Homeland Security, and they couldn’t deliver.”

On The Campaign Trail

Biden didn’t launch his campaign with much backing from the Democratic base, bundlers, or much of a vision. The core of Biden’s messaging appealed to white suburbanites, offering nothing more than a return to normalcy and an alternative to Trump. Top Democrats, much like the base and donors, were also initially skeptical of Biden’s path to victory.

According to Politico, Biden’s former running mate Barack Obama allegedly remarked, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” Obama then supposedly told one Democratic candidate in Iowa, “And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.”

Before Biden was thrusted into the Democratic front runner spotlight, the former Vice President clashed with future running mate, Kamala Harris, regarding his record on busing during the debates. While Vice President-elect Harris has her own controversial record on criminal justice, the Biden camp deflected and muddied the waters.

During the campaign, Biden would falsely and repeatedly claim that he was arrested after meeting with Nelson Mandela while protesting apartheid in South Africa. He would also state in an interview, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” which he later apologized for.

Peculiar phrases and malarkey aside, it didn’t matter for the Biden coalition. The centrist candidates dropped out and consolidated to crush an insurgent Bernie Sanders challenge, delivering Biden key wins and the nomination.

Surrounding his primary victory were potentially the largest uprisings and movement in U.S. history. Following the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, mass rebellions stormed nationwide — continuing ever since. The majority of Americans support the BLM movement and the rebellions against U.S. institutions.

With popular support behind BLM, Biden didn’t seize the moment like during the post-civil rights political realignment. Nonetheless, the black vote turned out to deliver him the White House. With that said, recent indications show a Biden administration will take the black vote and the energy around BLM for granted.

Following the police murder of Walter Wallace Jr. — a young black man experiencing a mental health episode in Philadelphia — the then Presidential nominee condemned the uprisings. Biden would then appear for remarks on the campaign trail to address the hopelessly frustrated crowds, “There is no excuse whatsoever for the looting and the violence. None whatsoever.” The campaign also issued a written statement in response, adding in a qualifying “but at the same.”

The President-elect previously denounced demonstrators in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere. Prior to issuing statements, Biden has also called for police to “shoot ‘em in the leg” and doubled down on that remark during a town hall when asked about police de-escalation techniques.

The Biden transition team was also considering former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for a top cabinet slot but walked his appointment back after criticism. In 2014, Emanuel attempted to cover up the police killing of black Chicagoan, Laquan McDonald, along with gutting the city’s social infrastructure for vulnerable communities.

Biden’s “Tranquilizing Drug Of Gradualism”

Two years before Malcolm X was assassinated, he delivered a speech skewering white liberals, “The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political “football game” that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives.”

Martin Luther King Jr. would share similar sentiments on white centrists in his letter from the Birmingham jailhouse, writing, “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

The warnings issued by X and King ring true today.

Opposing full school integration and using rhetorical pitches reminiscent of Atwater’s southern strategy gave Biden the political capital he needed to rise through the ranks and develop bipartisan favor. The racist war on drugs, mass incarceration, rampant disenfranchisement, the prison industrial complex, exploited labor, and militarized police forces didn’t magically appear.

Austerity and financial deregulation further empowered conservatives and incentivized debt profiteers to prey on vulnerable people. The continuation of endless wars and coup d’états, building a mass deportation system, and failing to leverage power to yield change had someone behind those policies and inactions.

The policy failures that have perpetuated a white supremacist society weren’t just lazily passed and implemented — they were championed and safe-guarded. Biden’s career has been built on working for white supremacy.

While securing the election by placating voters of color and appealing to comfortable white suburbanites — like his strategy in the early throes of his career — has proven he will not build long-overdue and necessary systematic justice. Rather than championing a popular and righteous cause, he has countlessly gone out of his way to support and pay homage to white supremacist notions and institutions, twisting his record to the public. Though Biden’s record and words are clear, “nothing will fundamentally change.”

Like Biden, the U.S. has yet to repent for its past and present. For any significant change to occur in the Biden years and beyond, it will take a sustained mass movement constantly agitating institutions. During the Biden years and throughout Democratic strongholds, there will still be brutality, police murders, and white supremacy. The only possible way for meaningful change to occur — not symbolic victories — is for all decent people to continuously take to the streets and, by any means necessary, demand justice and freedom.

As put by Martin Luther King Jr., “this is no time to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

Jack Delaney is a former policy analyst. He worked on issues relating to health care, disability, and labor policy, and is a member of the National Writers Union.

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Zie ook: 'Nepnieuws en nep media? Hoe de VS echte journalistiek het zwijgen oplegt..........'

Schietpartijen VS gevolg van witte overheersing die is 'gefundeerd' in de grondwet

John McEvoy van The Canary schreef het verslag van een interview met Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, een historicus die is gespecialiseerd in het tweede amendement van de grondwet in de VS. Het interview o.a. naar aanleiding van de laatste meervoudige moord door een neonazi in El Paso (deze neonazi werd gepord door het 666 beest Trump, die latino's uitmaakte voor moordenaars, verkrachters, drugsdealers en dieven).

Dunbar-Ortiz betoogt in het interview dat witte overheersing is ingebakken in de grondwet van de VS. Veelal wordt het tweede amendement gezien als bescherming van burgers tegen een autoritaire overheid, die schijt heeft aan de rechten van de burgers. Ter verdediging tegen zo'n overheid zou het volk recht hebben op wapenbezit (en in een aantal staten mogen deze zelfs openlijk worden gedragen)......

Dunbar-Ortiz betoogt dat het tweede amendement veel meer was bedoeld voor witte milities die zich moesten kunnen verdedigen tegen de oorspronkelijke volkeren van de VS >> lees: het verjagen van de oorspronkelijke volkeren, gepaard gaande met het uitroeien van hele stammen van die oorspronkelijke volkeren in de VS...... Anders gezegd: de witte immigranten voerden een genocide uit op de oorspronkelijke bevolking, samen met de genocide in Latijns-Amerika, de grootste genocide ooit........ Deze genocide ging verder gepaard met martelingen, verkrachtingen en de gruwelijkste vormen van moord.......

Deze milities werden later ook ingezet om weggelopen slaven op te pakken of opstanden onder slaven uiterst gewelddadig te onderdrukken..... Het zal je niet verbazen dat deze milities later opgingen in de Ku Klux Klan (KKK).........

Dunbar-Ortiz zegt niet te geloven dat Hollywood films en tv series bijdragen aan geweld, het zal je niet verbazen dat ik het daar volkomen mee oneens ben. Dagelijks wordt men in de VS gehersenspoeld met leugens als zouden 'Amerikanen' (VS burgers) de goede partij zijn en alles wat van buiten de VS komt of een andere religie dan het christendom aanhangt, is fout..... Opvallend ook dat de VS bevolking veelal als slachtoffer van buitenlandse agressie wordt neergezet, terwijl de praktijk het volkomen tegenovergestelde laat zien......* Tevens wordt de geschiedenis van de VS vervalst middels die films en series....... (hetzelfde gebeurt overigens in de rest van wat men het westen noemt, voorbeelden te over, ook op de Nederlandse tv.....)

Lees het verder uitstekende artikel van Dunbar-Ortiz, waarin zij de zaak veel uitvoeriger beschrijft (heb het artikel overgenomen van TheCanary):

Amid mass shootings, leading historian says ‘white supremacy is baked into the US constitution’

John McEvoy   
6th August 2019

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution becomes the focus of intense and polarised debate in the wake of each mass shooting. It is a debate pierced by economic interest groups and fierce emotional impulses; yet history rarely enters the conversation at the exact moment that it’s most needed.

After the recent white supremacist mass shooting in El Paso (the eighth worst in recent US history), The Canary spoke with leading historian on the Second Amendment, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. She is the author of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, which illustrates how the white supremacy of the country’s settler colonialists lives on in the country – not least through gun legislation.

After each mass shooting in the US, we hear a range of arguments across the media calling for greater gun control. What are the biggest misunderstandings and lies told about the Second Amendment, and how should we really understand it?

Any conversation about dealing with gun violence in the United States has to begin with the second amendment and its true function from its establishment, throughout the 19th-century brutal conquest of the continent, and its ideological function propping up white nationalism today.

The US constitution is unique among nations in mandating a general individual right to bear arms… A problem with discussing the US constitutional provision is the regard US people have for the constitution itself, as a kind of god-given covenant, whereas other nations’ constitutions are easily amended or replaced entirely and do not carry a sacredness given to the US constitution, with the authors, ‘founding fathers,’ near demigods.

Adding the right to bear arms to the constitution as one of the initial ten amendments was not the creation of a new right, rather a validation of an already existing practice of Anglo settlers forming their own militias to burn and loot Indigenous towns, burning their fields, killing and raping, torturing, and seizing of the already Indigenous-developed farms and fisheries of the Atlantic Coast, colony by colony, to push Native peoples to the peripheries. Those militias arrived with the first invaders, led by the mercenary John Smith at Jamestown and mercenary John Mason in the Massachusetts colony. When racial slavery—the slave codes–became established by the late 1600s, these militias became slave patrols. The second amendment contains colonial violence in a nutshell, and neither liberals or conservatives want to acknowledge that reality.

Many people have observed that the El Paso shooter’s ‘manifesto’ echoes how Donald Trump speaks about immigrants, and accused Trump of ‘stochastic terrorism‘. Is the white supremacist rhetoric coming out of the White House a departure from normal US politics, or does Trump reflect the soul of the US in ways that people would rather not confront?

The United States was founded as a white republic and white supremacy is baked into the constitution and institutions that exist today. For instance, the slave patrols, citizens’ militias, that were tasked with controlling slave populations in the slave states, continued to function during the Civil War that ended in outlawing slavery. But these slave patrollers simply put on hoods and robes and continued to play the same role in terrorizing and controlling the freed Black population. Although illegal during the US military occupation of the South, they were so many and so widespread that they could not be stopped. When the Army pulled out, they took off their hoods and robes and became the local sheriffs controlling the Black population under Jim Crow. With the Black diaspora escaping the South to northern and later west-coast cities, southern whites also migrated, forming all-white police forces in cities. In 1950, the US was a locked-down white male republic, African-Americans living segregated, Native peoples on tiny portions of their original territories, Mexicans as indentured agribusiness workers, women with few rights, especially if they were married…

With the humiliating loss of the US war in Vietnam in the mid-1970s, and with nearly 700,000 combat veterans back in civil society, armed white nationalist groups multiplied. Ronald Reagan’s presidency was openly, although coded, white nationalist, with the US covert counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Central America employing many of the disgruntled, out-of-work vets as mercenaries and domestic terrorist groups appearing, particularly in eastern Washington and Oregon, Montana, Colorado, and in the 1990s spreading to the entire continent. War fever, with the invasions of Panama, the Gulf war, and the post-9/11 wars produced more armed white nationalists.

The election of a liberal Black Democrat to the presidency in 2008 was a blow to increasingly normalized white nationalism, with Muslims as a new Brown enemy. Immediately, the Tea Party movement began, and Donald Trump – reality TV star and real-estate developer – began his campaign to prove that Obama was not US-born, a great boon to white nationalists who then carried him to the presidency.

Trump abandoned the ‘dog whistle’ white supremacy that the Republican Party embraced with its ‘Southern strategy’ under Richard Nixon, and has gotten by with outspoken white supremacy with no damage to his solid 40% base. Clearly, the El Paso mall shooter was empowered to act based on Trump’s characterization of Central American refugees as invaders.

How is the relationship between white supremacy and gun culture reinforced through popular culture – films, action figures and toy guns, the stories Americans tell about their country – in the US?

I don’t believe that popular culture, in terms of films, video gaming, toys, etc. have that much of an effect in reinforcing white supremacy and gun culture. I do think the reality, not so much the representation, of US militarism and endless wars against non-European peoples, which are a continuation of the centuries of militarism and warfare in seizing the continent, with Native American peoples and Mexicans being the enemy, form a permanent culture of violence.

With the second amendment permission for unlimited gun ownership, that violence goes beyond words and fist fights. The NRA [National Rifle Association] and Republican Party talking points about gun violence attempt to construe popular culture as the cause, particularly ‘Hollywood’ and video gaming, but dozens of studies and simple observation nullify the argument. The US origin and historical narratives glorify what are actually acts of genocide in the establishment of the original colonies and the expansion to the Pacific.

Rather than having a reckoning with that past at the end of the Vietnam War and honoring the anti-war movement and the disobedient soldiers, the ruling class turned the US into a victim, enabling and encouraging the myth of US soldiers missing in action in Vietnam. During the 1980s, the continued US wars had to operate clandestinely, covertly, because the majority of the population was anti-war. But by 1989, the Marines could invade and occupy Panama and change the regime there without notable protests; two years later, the US could amass a half million troops to invade and occupy Iraq. The shadow wars of white nationalist militias grew domestically, nourished by war fever and violence. It only got worse after 9/11.

Yes, John Wayne killing Mexicans and Indians and Rambo killing Asians have been wildly popular, but they never come near the real thing in instilling violence and gun fetishism.

Congressman Steve Cohen tweeted after the El Paso shooting: “You want to shoot an assault weapon? Go to Afghanistan or Iraq.Enlist!” (He later deleted the tweet.) How was the US military apparatus forged through the white supremacist genocide of Native Americans, and how does US foreign intervention reify gun culture at home today?

The US military was forged in the hundred years war to take the continent. The first 70 years, from founding to the Civil War, the goal was to ethnically cleanse all the territory east of the Mississippi, generating dozens of wars of aggression and expulsion against the southern Indigenous nations, marked by three declared wars against the Seminole nation in Florida, where they gave refuge to enslaved Africans who escaped. With the Indigenous survivors forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the US invaded and occupied Mexico, taking the northern half, thereby US territory reached its Pacific Coast limit…

The same officers who led those two decades of genocidal war headed the troops that were sent to conquer Spanish-held territories in the Pacific and Caribbean. Genocidal tendency is baked into the US armed forces, particularly the Army and Marines.

US foreign interventions into non-European countries throughout the 20th century and continuing in the 21st are essentially ‘Indian wars,’ wars of erasure and chaos, dismantling local and national institutions, creating dependency, particularly food.

Active duty lifers and veterans of these foreign interventions are prominently represented among white nationalists and gun hoarders. There is is close correlation between multiple gun ownership and military service.

An overwhelming response to the latest shootings is to demand greater ‘protection’ from the US state (more funding for an increasingly militarised security and surveillance state). But if US gun legislation is inseparable from a legacy of violent state-sanctioned terror, how can this be a satisfactory response, and how can US society resolve its unhealthy relationship with guns?

Yes, the solution is said to be ‘more good guys with guns,’ more militarized police forces, further developing fortress America. However, the mass shootings are used opportunistically for that agenda. Tragic as mass shootings are, the deaths incurred make up only 1% of US gun deaths each year, while 3/4 of gun deaths are suicides. The easy availability of guns makes what might otherwise be an attempted suicide a certain death. Likewise, deaths that result from domestic violence and road rage are soaring with guns in cars and homes.

One place to begin resolving the problem is for leaders and professionals of good will to acknowledge that mental illness is not the cause of gun violence; rather ‘the need’ to possess firearms, many of them, is itself a form of mental illness, paranoia. The late historian Richard Hofstadter wrote of ‘the paranoid style in American politics’ (1964).

He had his finger on the pulse of the rising white paranoiac response to the Black freedom movement. The majority of the white younger generation embraced the anti-racist struggle, but a significant minority of white men in particular panicked and reproduced their paranoia in the following generations, fused with virulent anti-communism and homophobia, often couched in Christian evangelism, coming to dominate national politics.

In fact, this white minority owns the US origin story and carries it forward. As long as the measure of civic patriotism is based on the founding narrative and militaristic fetishism, guns will play a central role in US society, and no laws will be enacted to any effect.

Cleansing history

A key facet of ethnic cleansing is to cleanse the historical record of the act itself. An honest account of the white supremacy that runs throughout US history, then, could offer a real solution to the country’s broken relationship with guns.

For all those who find ‘thoughts’ and ‘prayers’ an insufficient solution to US mass shootings, Dunbar-Ortiz’s work is essential reading.

Featured image via WikiMedia – Gregory Varnum

Get involved

• Check out and buy Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’ book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.
• See her other work here.

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* Alleen deze eeuw heeft de VS al meer dan 2,5 miljoen mensen vermoord, veelal met hulp van de NAVO, een terreurorganisatie die altijd onder militair opperbevel van de VS staat......

Zie ook: 'VS geweldcultuur gevaar voor iedereen'

Voor meer berichten over het wapenbezit in de VS, klik op dat label, direct onder dit bericht.

Charlottesville: wat er fout ging voor de verzamelde gewelddadige en bewapende fascisten..........

Het hieronder opgenomen artikel verscheen eerder op Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) en werd gisteren op Anti-Media gepubliceerd. De schrijver, Jeffrey Tucker, stelt: 'sociale en politieke bewegingen kunnen niet volledig de gevolgen bepalen van door hen gedane inspanningen. Acties worden gevolgd door tegenacties, die niet verwacht noch bedoeld zijn. Dit omdat geen beweging of groep, hoe groot en machtig ook de menselijke geest kan beheersen van anderen die geen deelgenoot zijn van hun zaak'.



Het doel van de KKK, neonazi's en andere extreem rechtse, fascistische bewegingen, was de gelederen te sluiten, het protest tegen het voornemen om het standbeeld van Robert E. Lee te verwijderen, was een excuus om dit doel te bereiken: 'Unite the Right...' Het beest Trump en anderen, zoals een fiks aantal 'journalisten en intellectuelen' in ons land, stellen dat er veel 'goedwillende mensen' onder deze fascisten waren te vinden en wijzen 'alt-left' (ofwel: 'Antifa') aan als mede verantwoordelijkenvoor de ontstane ellende...... Alsof deze mensen, net als de fascisten in de VS, de ene na de andere moord begaan......... Tucker betoogt dat de deelnemers aan dit 'Unite the Right' evenement, alle verschillen die men had met de neonazi's en KKK leden, opzij wilden zetten en zich zo als een politieke eenheid te tonen.......


Deze foto heb ik op 23 december 2017 geplaatst toen ik zag dat een eerdere foto door Google is verwijderd, hier de tekst bij die eerdere foto, die ik niet terug kan vinden: Zie de eerste vrouw in uniform, rechts naast de gekleurde man, op haar bedrukte shirt, kan je nog net een swastika zien........ Volgens velen, zelfs intellectuelen in Nederland, moet je dat geteisem de vrijheid geven hun mening te uiten........ Walgelijk! 

Lees dit uitstekende artikel van Jeffrey Tucker, waarin hij betoogt, dat 'alt-right' haar doel heeft gemist, voorts stelt hij dat het standbeeld van Lee meer symboliseert, dan de persoon zelf (opgenomen een video, die ik al eerder in een bericht heb opgenomen, Tucker adviseert die eerst te zien, voor zijn artikel te lezen):

Charlottesville Effect: 5 Ways the ‘Unite the Right’ Marches Totally Backfired

August 18, 2017 at 8:11 am

Written by Anti-Media News Desk

(FEE) — It’s a rule of social and political movements that they cannot fully control the outcome of their efforts. Actions cause reactions, many of them unanticipated and certainly unintended. This is because no group, no matter how powerful, can control the human minds of others not part of their cause.

This is why so many movements driven by a revolt ethos and revolutionary intentions have created so many unforeseen messes that are often the opposite of their stated aims.

So it is with the “Unite the Right” (alt-right, fascist, white supremacist, revanchist, Nazi, and so on) marchers who descended on the peaceful Virginia town of Charlottesville in August. Before you read on, I would strongly suggest that you watch this video on the march. It is truth telling, and it provides the context you need.

Donald Trump and many others like to say that there were “good people” marching too, but this ignores the entire title of the rally. The “Unite the Right” theme meant that anyone participating was necessarily putting aside differences with the Nazis and the Klan in order to achieve the goal of becoming a national political presence (the controversy over the statue of Robert E. Lee was only the excuse).

The aftermath of the march has been a fallout very different from what they expected.

Statues Torn Down

Only a few years ago, the idea of toppling the statues of Confederate generals strewn throughout the South would have been unthinkable. Charlottesville was a test case: perhaps this Lee statue should go, simply because it seems to be a distraction from the progress the citizens want and an unnecessary reminder of a painful past. The city council voted to remove it. This precipitated the rally.

To be sure, there are defensible arguments for recognizing the Confederate dead. But the protesters were not drawn from a heritage society like the Sons of Confederate Veterans (my great-grandfather was a medic in a Southern troop, and I’m named after Jefferson Davis), but rather the hardest and most bitter among the hard-right, anti-liberal ideologues. That association has further fueled the anti-statue movement among activists, and today none are safe. They are being torn down in the dead of night, all over the country, stricken down by city councils all over the South, and condemned as never before. None will likely survive this.

Should the statues stay or not? These statues have a complex history. They were not erected to honor the Confederate dead following the war or even at the end of Reconstruction. Most appeared in the early 1920s to send a message that the race-relation liberalization that happened between 1880 and 1900 would not return. The progress and normalcy would be replaced by a racist/statist/”progressive” movement rallying around new eugenic laws, zoning, white supremacy, forced exclusion, state segregation and so on – policies supported not by the people but by white elites infected with demographic fear and pseudo-science. This is when a movement started putting up these statues, not to honor history but as a symbol of intimidation and state control of association.

The statue in Charlottesville statue went up the same year that immigration restrictions went into place for explicit eugenic reasons, and Jim Crow laws were tight and an entire population group faced what amounted to an attempted extermination (that is not an exaggeration but a description of a well-documented reality).

In other words, Lee (a tragic figure in many ways) was then being drafted by a wicked movement he would likely have never supported, despite all his failings. So the controversy over whether it should stay or go is not really about the war that occurred a half-century before the statue went up but a symbol of racial control. This is the memory we are dealing with here. It’s very similar to how the Neo-Nazis today are abusing his tragic legacy in service of their dangerous agenda.

Public Revulsion

During the presidential campaign in 2015, Hillary Clinton famous attacked the “deplorables” who were supporting Trump, including hard racists and fascists. The result was outrage: it seemed that she was calling all Trump supporters these names. In fact, Trump supporters – so many were just people disgusted by the policies of his predecessor and wanted fundamental change in government – took on the name “deplorable.”

Most people in those days – never forget that most regular people do not follow 4chan or Twitter – had no idea of the burgeoning movement of hard-right ideologues that was gathering at the time, using Trump for their own purposes.

The Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march changed everything. What we saw from online videos and news reports was what looked like a dangerous paramilitary force, none from the city, with optics from the interwar period, carrying torches, Nazi-style insignias, flags, and screaming anti-Semitic and racist slogans. This was not anything like a Tea Party protest. It was something completely different and truly terrifying for the residents of this idyllic town.

In other words, it looked deplorable. It was the breakout of this movement into the mainstream. But instead of fueling some kind of white revolution, the results have been the exact opposite. This movement seems anti-American, filled with hate, unchecked by normal civil engagement, truly dangerous to public order, and of strange foreign origin. This did not look like free speech; it looked like a threat. It was not about demanding freedom but rather demanding power.

This is what accounts for the shock and disorientation among conservative and Republican commentators who want nothing to do with these people and the ideas behind it. From my point of view, this is a very good. From the point of view of this movement, it is presumably not what they were going for.

What’s fascinating to me is how these people got to this point of no return, forgetting to check themselves with observations such as: “do you think it is wise that we parade around like the very people the US went to war to defeat only 70 years ago?”

To understand that requires we plunge into the kind of group psychology that leads to such fanatic movements – too much to take on here.

Government Crackdown

The marchers used Virginia’s open-carry laws and protections for free speech and association to their advantage. They also used the plea for tolerating their ideas in order to get a hearing. The ACLU, I believe, was right in fighting for the speech rights of the marchers.

That said, this was not a march about human rights; it was a march about threats to others and a demand for power. It has prompted Justice Department investigations, a resignation from the board of the ACLU, and a widespread questioning of how this fiasco that resulted in so much mayhem was ever tolerated to begin with.

We are nearly guaranteed to see an increase in government surveillance of hate groups, of monitoring of our online communications, of restrictions on political organizing – all in reaction and response and to the cheers of a terrified public.

It is precisely events like this that cause people to lose freedoms, not gain them. If any participants in the “Unite the Right” really believed they were fighting for freedom, they have achieved the opposite. But there is also this: groups like this thrive in persecution. They never go away, especially this one because so much of its ethos is about how they have been suppressed and oppressed. Make them victims and they thrive ever more.

Boost to the Left

The true tragedy of many responses to the march was the false choice it set up: that the only alternative to the alt-right is the leftist antifa. Or conversely, if you hate the leftist antifa, you have no choice but to back the alt-right. This is sheer nonsense. Most of the people resisting what had all the appearances of a Nazi invasion were regular citizens, not antifa. There is nothing “leftist” about resenting the vision of Nazis taking over public spaces.

It was a true inspiration to see the response from the merchant class, condemning racism and fascism in no uncertain terms. Business loves peace and friendship, not hate and civil unrest.

However, politically, it is unclear whether this response will find a voice. The people most in opposition to the rise of the Nazi movement in America has been the left, and the fallout could actually boost the prospects of the Bernie Sanders movement, as revulsion leads to an embrace of its seeming opposite.

Incidentally, this is precisely why it is so important for libertarians to speak out with truth and courageous conviction. We simply cannot allow the left to be the only ideological voice of oppositional.

Trump’s Legacy

It is probably too early to say what will define Trump’s legacy in office, but his defense of the marchers, and the equation of their bad elements with the other bad elements that opposed them, might be it. It was the very statement that the most indefensible aspects of the alt-right truly wanted. And it was thus no surprise that even some of Trump’s previous defenders bailed on him in the days following.

You cannot give up your credibility on basic issues like human rights and the dignity of every human life and expect to maintain political support over the long run. We are too far down the path toward peace and universal emancipation to go there. The future is bright and not grim and bloody, as these marchers and their backers imagine.

Many people have predicted the end of the Trump approach before, but something does seem different this time. It’s very sad because Trump has many good ideas – ideas that are evidently not that important to him – and represents too many good causes (for which he has done very little) for this to happen. But when you choose to die on a hill of bigotry and intolerance, there is not enough credibility remaining for anything else.

No movement based on the aspiration to rule and oppress others can fully anticipate how their activities will play out over time. In this respect, the alt-right has done a terrible disservice to itself and perhaps to everyone else as well.

The question is: what are people who love human rights and liberty for all going to do about it? In the end, the only really effective resistance comes in the what we believe and how we live our lives. We have seen what we do not love. The real issue is whether we can find and then build what it is we truly do love.

By Jeffrey A. Tucker / Creative Commons / FEE.org / Report a typo

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Zie ook: 
'Before Trump, Clinton Democrats Invoked the Term ‘Alt-Left’ to Demonize Critics'

'Among the Racists' (met mogelijkheid tot vertaling)

'Neonazi terreuraanslag in VS, westerse media spreken 'op hun best' over 'een daad van agressie......''

'Charlottesville: Trump haalt antifascisten toch onderuit.........'

'Charlottesville: twee schuldigen? Of is het de taak van eenieder te vechten tegen fascisme?' 

'De evolutie van politiestaat VS o.a. te zien in het buitenspel zetten van burgerrechten in steden als Boston en Charlottesville'