I begin to believe that the “tea partiers” and the new right bears less resemblance to the Ross Perot era of citizen anger than to the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
Klan ‘carpetbagger’ cartoon 1868
A little history. Technically, the first coming of the Klan came in the post war South of the late 1860s and early 1870s. Now, because of the ‘swift-boating’ of President Grant, it is little known that Grant squashed the Klan. He also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was ruled unconstitutional in 1883, in yet another shameful Supreme Court decision*.
[* The Supreme Court, alas, has known more disrepute than repute, in its long and checkered history. Our current SCOTUS is more the rule than the exception.]
The racism in the South was allowed to fester after the stolen election of 1876 and becomes another issue that I won’t get into here.
1925 Klan Document
The Second Coming of the Klan was far more ‘catholic‘ in its hatred, and included not merely Blacks, but immigrants — especially “papists” — and on the West Coast, Chinese and Asians. It was free-form hatred, spread from coast to coast:
… supplementing its original anti-black ideology with a new anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, prohibitionist and antisemitic agenda.
It was a “nativist” movement, noted for its twisted rallying cry of “Americanism.” In other words, White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant ‘Americanism.’ And it became huge in several states not normally associated with Southern racial bigotry. One good example is Oregon, where I live. Wikipedia:
Klan March in Ashland, Oregon, 1920s
In 1921, the Klan arrived in Oregon from central California and established the state’s first klavern in Medford. In a state with one of the country’s highest percentages of white residents, the Klan attracted up to 14,000 members and established 58 klaverns by the end of 1922. Given the small population of non-white minorities outside Portland, the Oregon Klan directed attention almost exclusively against Catholics, who numbered about 8% of the population. In 1922, the Masonic Grand Lodge of Oregon sponsored a bill to require all school-age children to attend public schools. With support of the Klan and Democratic Governor Walter M. Pierce, endorsed by the Klan, the Compulsory Education Law was passed with a majority of votes. Its primary purpose was to shut down Catholic schools in Oregon, but it also affected other private and military schools. A number of states passed Blaine Amendments, which forbid direct government aid to religious schools. [emphasis added]
Ironically, the same bigots today support the use of “vouchers” as a means of destroying public schools and funding the “private” and “religious” schools that have been used to create greater segregation in American schools than existed before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, DEsegregating American public schools:
… old patterns of segregation persist. A survey of enrollment statistics reveals that, in several important ways, the school segregation Brown was enacted to end more than two generations ago remains a fact of life today, in some parts of the country worse now than it was at the time of the decisions.
This second Klan made common cause with prohibitionists, whose legacy, Prohibition, created the virulent organized crime that has remained an American institution to this very day.
The second Klan was about intolerance: religious intolerance, racial intolerance, ethnic intolerance, and even intolerance of things, like alcohol.
[See the excellent Indiana Historical Research Foundation website for much, much more.]
Listen to the top “news stories” of today, Jesus’ day off, the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday:
Kathy Shaidle / five feet of fury.:
Toronto Muslim: ‘We need another Holocaust!’ (UPDATED) — Today Arnie and I attended that protest outside (tax payer funded) Palestine House, where a genocidal Muslim VIP will be speaking tomorrow night. — Speaking of genocide: we have video of one Muslim guy in the Palestine House parking lot …–Discussion:
Josephine / Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy: Today’s protest against Palestine House – Pics – 3
» All Related Discussion
RELATED:
Josephine / Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy:
“We love jihad. We love killing you… We love killing dogs.” — Video taken at today’s protest against government funding of Palestine House. — Partial transcript — JDL Guy: “No more jihad.” — Palestine House Guy: “We love jihad. We love killing you.” — JDL Guy: “Peace, education, not jihad.
–Discussion:
Carl / Israel Matzav: The ‘Palestinians’ show their true face
Blazing Cat Fur: Bumped – Our MSM at Work: Racist Jews Protest Against Palestine …
Donald Douglas / American Power: Racist Jews? …
Blazing Cat Fur:
Palestine House Thugs Screams “You need another Holocaust”
–Discussion:
Mark Steyn / The Corner on National Review Online: Genocidal Welfare Queens — By: Mark Steyn
Josephine / Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy: “You monkeys!” — One Palestine House guy acts like a monkey …
Jim Hoft / Gateway Pundit: Toronto Muslims Scream “We Want Another Holocaust” at Jewish Protesters (Video)
Robert / Jihad Watch: Canada Muslims: “We love jihad. …
ZIP / Weasel Zippers: Canada: Palestine House Thugs Tell Jewish Protesters “You Need Another Holocaust”…
Donald Douglas / American Power: Jihadi Thugs at Palestine House — ‘You Need Another Holocaust’
Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs: “We Need Another Holocaust”
Paul / Power Line: More proof that Canada is slipping over the edge
You’ll have to go to the Memeorandum page to click on the links. But one thing is crystal clear, all these blogs are right wing, virulently hate-filled blogs. And, of course, there’s nothing like masking YOUR bigotry by screaming about somebody else’s.
Yeah, a speaker probably went over the line.
(If you were a Palestinian, given their treatment since 1948, you might be pissed off and over the line, too. In fact, if you’re a good American, you probably have very little idea of what the Palestinian side is, because it is almost never presented in American media.)
They hate these kids, evidently
If you try to save the ‘five feet of fury’ page you get the title:
- five feet of fury. (‘we need another crusade.’).htm
Er, how is that better than “we love jihad”?
It’s about the hate. Mark Steyn (who, seemingly, left Canada to lecture Americans on “Americanism”) preaches on Irrational, er, National Review Online:
Genocidal Welfare Queens [Mark Steyn]
The Jewish Defence League held a demonstration today in Toronto at Palestine House, one of the many jihadist front organizations without which no sophisticated multicultural western city is complete….
Do I really need to ANALYZE all the hatespeak encapsulated in those thirty-two words? It’s bigotry, pure and simple, hatred of Muslims, hatred of “welfare queens,” hatred of tolerance and those who do not agree with the ever disagreeable Steyn.
Let’s be frank about Steyn: he’s a monster. Any society NOT as liberal and tolerant as ours would squash him like a bug as a potential threat to public order and with good cause. But Steyns are the price we pay for free speech, and that’s a good thing. Ironic that he uses free speech to inveigh against it with the implicit message that these “jihadists” OUGHT to be put down.
Never understanding that, were we to adopt that kind of hate and paranoia, he’d be in the queue to the gallows right behind them.
But that doesn’t excuse these Klannish haters and their little festival of universalizing the statements of a few rash statements to ALL Muslims and ALL Palestinians. (And, finally, anyone with whom they disagree.)
Which is the technique that the haters love to use. (See Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic yesterday).
What we are talking about is Klannish intolerance and hatred, all “justified” by the unsupportable comments of a few legitimately angry Palestinians. Racism is merely a part of their poisonous bigotry.
And we have seen this over and over again this past year: rage at the slaves for slavery (see “Confessions of a Second Class Citizen” for more), open hatred of the Muslim religion, all Arabs, all Democrats, all “liberals” and its new, toxic formulation, “leftists” — a term formerly reserved for “communist guerillas” like, say, Ché Guevara, or Shining Path in Columbia.
Or the hatred of gays. Or the hatred of athiests.
It’s about the hate.
So, as we listen to the bigotry — against undocumented workers that WASP businesses hire, against American and Canadian Muslims, against Arab-American immigrants –don’t you doubt that the second Klan would have been right there with the teabaggers and the reichties.
Foremost among the matters of moment which concern our national welfare is a laxity in devotion to the Godly ideals which once coursed vigorously through our national endeavor. If civilization is to continue to progress; if America is to continue to be a nation purposed by Almighty God to hold aloft the beacon light of truth and liberty, men and women of America must know that the fundamental thing is to recognize divine authority and human responsibility thereto for every action. We would return to the simple but sublime principles instituted by Christ for guidance of man’s relation to his God, his country, his neighbor and himself.
… We have been a homogeneous people in the main, thinking and acting alike, obeying constitutional authority in the interests of the common welfare.
Today, our unity is threatened by hordes of immigrants who have sought shelter under our flag. They bring foreign ideas and ideals into our land threatening our unity through a foreign propaganda that is pouring into the hard fibers of our national character. This must be counteracted if we are to remain a united nation of Americans rather than a polyglot mob.
– Dr. Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, c. 1930
And THAT was the hallmark of the second Klan.
KKK March in Washington 1925
It’s no coincidence that tea party crowds and rightie blogosmearing are overwhelmingly white. Even when they trot out a lone ‘token’ to “prove” that it’s not, as O’Reilly did on Faux Nooz (note the unintended irony of the date):
- Black Tea Partier Refutes Racism Claims
April 01, 2010
Well, there were BLACK Klansmen, too:
… Even more strangely, the Klan tried to organize an order of Black Protestants, a Klan “Colored division” in Indiana and other states. Despite promises that the new order would have “all the rights of membership” of the White Klan, much preparation went into ensuring that the values of white supremacy would be preserved as the Klan expanded its racial base …
It’s about the hate.
And they couldn’t even take a break between Good Friday and Easter.
Because bigotry never sleeps.
Courage.
===============
UPDATE 3 PM, PDT: It gets WORSE.
UPDATE Easter Morning: It gets even WORSE
I follow a blog called Pensito Review. The PR had the results of a Quinnipac and Bloomberg poll on the tea party groups last week. They really seem to be a confused group of individuals. They say they want government out of their lives, and at the same time they expect the government to be responsible for taking care of certain things. Many of the people attending tea party events don’t know why they are there. They believe the deficit exploded on January 20, 2009, that their taxes have increased, and that President Obama is a Muslim. The polls showed that the only thing that they all have in common is their hatred for President Obama. They have no idea that all of their emotions and actions have been carefully planned and orchestrated by a very wealthy group of individuals, and that they have been recruited to preserve and increase the wealth of Beck, Armey, Murdoch, Ailes, The Koch Bros., Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Michelle Bachmann, John Kyl, John McCain, Rush Limbaugh, Liz Cheney, Sarah Palin, and many, many others. They also don’t know that these wealthy individuals have as much disdain for them as they have for progressives and anyone who is not a member of their socio-economic group. The tea partiers will never be invited to the cotillion as guests, but they can work as waiters, waitresses, and servers.
The Republican Party is also a major player in manipulating the tea party contingent, yet it refuses to acknowledge that it has welcomed a whole host of racists into its ranks. The recent incident involving the racist words and actions toward some members of the Congressional Black Caucus was stringently denied by all of the players on the right, from members of Congress to Fuchs Noose and the rw radio entertainers. The only time any attack on a member of Congress was accepted by the right as actually being important was when Eric Cantor received a threat from some deranged individual who had sent the same threats, via YouTube, to the president, the Speaker of the House, and other politicians. It is a disgrace when one political party foments open rebellion because it lost a few elections. What is worse is the fact that millions of people believe them enough to join with them to bring down a nation. These people aren’t patriots because patriots love their country too much to tear it apart only because they don’t like the person in the White House or the majority party in Congress. I blame the conservative members of Congress more than I blame right-leaning media because they were elected to lead this country and are supposed to work on behalf of all of us. The solution as I see it is for progressives to turn out to vote in 2010 the way we did in 2008 and further reduce the number of conservatives in Congress, state government, and local government.
**sorry about the name change. It’s my wandering fingers**
I heartily agree, Margie. The two main Tea Party “groups” in the news, the Tea Party Express and the Tea Party Patriots are both funded from mainstream GOP sources, the California GOP in the former, and the Koch-financed FreedomWorks in the latter, but there’s no coverage of these fake grass roots groups, which increasingly says to me that even brain-dead reporters could report it, UNLESS it was intentionally being kept quiet.
Ever since Barack Obama entered the presidential race, they’ve shot off their smear campaigns too early, and I think they’ve done it here again. They could have kept their powder dry and done their smear on Reverend Wright during the campaign, but it had already lost its power. I think the “Tea Party” movement — which only seems to agree that these 87% whites HATE the president — was too much too soon, and while “they” have pushed this “November is going to be a slaughter for Democrats” phony meme, they did it too early for it to be effective.
In other words, I think they’ve shot themselves in the foot. Anger doesn’t have a long shelf life, and has a tendency to move like water, taking the course of least resistance, and I think the anger may well be directed at those who have tried to stop all government assistance, to stop stimulus, to stop regulation of the greedy bankers.
In the final analysis, the puppet masters aren’t nearly as smart as they seem to think they are.
The November elections MIGHT just be the final act of the Republican party, like the Whigs back in the 1840s.
After all, if you’ll notice, suddenly everybody claims to be a “libertarian.”