Trump Fights Racism yet the Leftists Lie and Cry Racism

And speaking of anti-semitism:

Trump recently sent out this ad about Clinton:

(The second one was a change from the first, after he was called on the obvious reference to Jews and money)

Even fellow right-winger Gary Johnson called it racist.

Trump comments ‘clearly’ racist, says Gary Johnson amid antisemitism furor

The Libertarian candidate for president, Gary Johnson, said on Sunday Donald Trump’s recent comments were “clearly” racist, a day after the presumptive Republican nominee faced accusations of antisemitism and in the same week that he said he would consider firing government employees who wear hijabs.

“He has said 100 things that would disqualify anyone else from running for president but it doesn’t seem to affect him,” Johnson told CNN’s State of the Union. “The stuff he’s saying is just incendiary. It’s racist.”

Earlier this week, a New Hampshire woman asked Trump at one of his rallies whether, as president, he would replace Transportation Security Administration workers who wear “heebeejabbies” – apparently a reference to Muslim headscarves called hijabs.

“We are looking at that,” Trump replied. “We’re looking at a lot of things.”

At the same rally, Trump pointed to a plane flying overhead and declared: “That could be a Mexican plane up there. They’re getting ready to attack.”

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Billy_T.

Also this: “…the American Left was on-record supporting slavery, segregation, lynching and, as noted by historians…”

Linking the so-called ‘left’ to slavery and lynching is kinda meaningless because it lacks any context. I mean in the 1850’s you had all kinds of mainstream people supporting slavery. It wasn’t a ‘left vs right’ thing. And in the 1910’s and 20’s you had plenty of Dems and plenty of Reps supporting lynching of minorities. It wasn’t a ‘left vs right’ thing. It was an American thing.

w
v

True. Again, and I’m guessing you see this, but perhaps don’t think it’s all that important . . . The author is conflating the Dems with the left. That’s something I bump into whenever I get into discussions with conservatives about things like racism, Jim Crow, the KKK, etc. They immediately jump for “Democrats are Leftists; Leftists are Democrats” card. They want to use the terms interchangeably.

Really good book, btw, about Lincoln and slavery: The Fiery Trial, by Eric Foner. Lincoln, while being against slavery, and a part of a movement against slavery, was like most in that movement. He wanted to “free the slaves” and then deport them. Most in that movement believed whites were superior, including Lincoln, which makes them “racists.” Few felt otherwise in the 1850s. Abolitionists and other “radicals” were generally the exceptions.

Foner does say that Lincoln appears to have changed his mind about blacks in the last two years of his life. Mostly due to seeing them fight in the Civil War and getting to know them. He then stopped wanting to deport them, and wanted them to stay in America instead. It was a minority position in America at the time. Fewer still wanted complete and total emancipation plus full rights — and, again, that was generally the preserve of full on abolitionists and other kinds of radicals. Quakers were often in that category as well.

Billy_T wrote:

But that’s not “the left.” Will you at least admit that Jeffrey Lord is wildly mistaken in asserting that the KKK was a “leftist” organization, and that the Nazis were?

Exactly. That kind of stuff right there qualifies the writer as a know-little partisan muck stirrer and little else.

No one can go around in the company of genuinely informed people and call the KKK and the Nazi’s “leftists” without producing embarassed silence.

What can you say, it’s american spectator.

Oh, for chrissakes. He has said that the Mexicans coming here are the worst society has to offer. “When Mexico sends you its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

Never mind that Mexico isn’t “sending” anybody, that statement is appalling, and there is no way to get out of the fact that it is racist. And inflammatory.

What he said above should have been enough to disqualify him. All by itself. But he’s added to that pile of excrement since then. Just today, he was still saying we can’t let any Syrians in the country, because we don’t know where they come from — more Palinesque word salad — and that people were flooding over the border. They aren’t. It wasn’t that long ago that he insisted that “thousands of Muslims cheered in New Jersey on 9/11.” That, also, all by itself, should have been enough to sink his candidacy. But he’s the ultimate teflon racist and xenophobe, and his supporters continue to make endless excuses for his dangerous and incendiary behavior.

It’s not an accident that he has a large white supremacist following, or that he seems to retweet things from their websites all too often.

Though, really, when all is said and done, it doesn’t matter if Trump himself is a racist or not: He is obviously trying his best to appeal to them, to stoke the fires of racism and bigotry and xenophobia in America, to gin up white fears of black and brown people and bring out the ugliest side this country can present to the world. And remaining silent about this is obviously wrong as well. To play nice with Trump and his supporters is playing nice with racism, bigotry and xenophobia.

Why should we? Seriously? What should anyone feel the necessity to treat Trump as anything other than a con-artist and a dangerous bigot?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Billy_T.

Mexico IS sending people across the border. The Mexican government wants the US$$$$ sent back to Mexico to prop up their economy.

When the FBI states that they can’t vet these people then a timeout is justified until they can. Trump also asks why doesn’t the countries in that part of the world take in these refugees?

Keep up with the racism stuff because it doesn’t work any more.

No. Mexico isn’t “sending people across the border.” And net immigration from Mexico is less than zero and has been for years.

And, no. The FBI has never said they can’t “vet these people.” Our refugee process takes nearly two years. Yes, they’re “vetted.” Trump is lying once again, which is what he does endlessly. He is a serial liar, in fact. It’s also a lie that other nations don’t take in refugees. America takes in the least of any developed nation right now, and we should be ashamed about that. Instead, Trump wants to cut it all off.

As for calling out Trump’s racism, xenophobia and bigotry — and his constant exploitation of white fears of brown and black people. Of course it doesn’t “work” with his supporters. It never did. They’re in deep denial about it all, and have made up their minds to close their eyes, ears and hearts to what he’s doing. And for what? If Trump actually offered people anything of value, he wouldn’t need to stoke white rage and resentment. He could just win folks over with his actual policies. But he can’t. All he has is white identity politics to fall back on.

bnw wrote:

Zooey wrote:

bnw wrote:

================

Trump has been out front in promoting women and minorities yet he’s constantly called a racist. Thats why.

Oh, for chrissakes. He has said that the Mexicans coming here are the worst society has to offer. “When Mexico sends you its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

Never mind that Mexico isn’t “sending” anybody, that statement is appalling, and there is no way to get out of the fact that it is racist. And inflammatory.

He wants to ban ALL Muslims from coming to the US. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, and estimates are that 70,000 – 100,000 of them support ISIS. That is racist.

So he employs some Latinos.

That’s supposed to exonerate him from charges of racism?

Hell, plenty of plantation owners employed black people after the Civil War.

Mexico IS sending people across the border. The Mexican government wants the US$$$$ sent back to Mexico to prop up their economy.

When the FBI states that they can’t vet these people then a timeout is justified until they can. Trump also asks why doesn’t the countries in that part of the world take in these refugees?

Keep up with the racism stuff because it doesn’t work any more.

You are not arguing that he isn’t racist.

You are arguing that his racism is justifiable.

Corporate Media Fail to Hold Trump’s Feet to Fire on Ongoing Bigotry Once Again

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/corporate-media-fails-to-hold-trump-s-feet-to-fire-on-ongoing-bigotry-once-again

On Saturday, Donald Trump tweeted an image of a red Star of David next to a picture of Hillary Clinton with hundred dollar bills in the background, with the caption “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever” superimposed on the Star of David. A few hours later, amid strong condemnation from social media respondents, Trump deleted the image and reposted the same image except with a circle replacing the original Star of David. Unequivocally, the message is that Clinton is in the pocket of rich Jews, a stereotypical image that was harnessed by Hitler himself to build a “justification” for sending millions of Jews to their slaughter. So where was the media in covering the story? Unfortunately, the great corporate watchdog has sanitized the story, having failed to learn from history.

During the ascent of Adolf Hitler to power, the U.S. media helped to paint a positive image of this demagogue. Not unlike corporate media’s soft pedaling of Trump, coverage of Hitler’s campaign played up the support he had from the German people, based on the numbers attending his campaign speeches, while playing down his hateful demagoguery. Shortly after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, an article appeared in the New York Times stating, “There is at least one official voice in Europe that expresses understanding of the methods and motives of President Roosevelt — the voice of Germany, as represented by Chancellor Adolf Hitler.” The Christian Monitor even touted the virtues of Nazism, proclaiming that it had a “capacity for organization unequaled in our times by any except the Bolshevik leaders.”

So, it is ironic to learn that the mainstream corporate media, including the New York Times, along with its network news brethren, have once again fallen down on the job. This time it is not in the coverage of a deranged foreign demagogue but, instead, in coverage of a domestic one the likes of Donald Trump.

The New York Times’ response to Trump’s Tweet was a toothless article titled “Donald Trump Deletes Tweet Showing Hillary Clinton and Star of David Shape.” Was the real story that Trump deleted the anti-Semitic tweet or that he posted it in the first place? The article states, “Mr. Trump apparently realized the problem with the original Twitter post because he rarely apologizes for his remarks or deletes his posts. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.” He “apparently realized the problem”? “Realizing the problem” implies lack of intention, as though it only occurred to him that the post was Anti-Semitic after the public outcry. To put to rest the rationalization that the image was a sheriffs star mysteriously imposed upon a pile of money, Mic reported that the same image was posted about one week or so earlier on a white supremacist internet message board, and produced the link to the website. Instead of condemning what was obviously aimed at maligning Clinton in a manner that would likely resonate with the anti-Semitic faction of his base, the Times has given Trump yet another free pass to espouse hatred.

Unfortunately, the lack of clear unequivocal condemnation was deafeningly absent from the network media nine hours after the story broke. ABC, NBC, CNN, and NBC all soft pedaled it on their websites; Fox did not even mention it, but instead focused on the FBI investigation of Hilary Clinton. Subsequently, when the independent media began to buzz with the story, the network media began to address the story, in a sanitized manner. The issue now was whether a renegade staffer posted the offensive image unbeknownst to Trump. However, on Monday, July 4, Trump tweeted, “Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!” The “dishonest media” is “trying its absolute best”? To the contrary, the networks followed Trump’s red herring, raising the question of whether it was a sheriff’s star, and brought in his surrogates on the issue to dignify the claim (including the infamous, former Trump Campaign advisor, now CNN commentator, Corey Lewandowki). A sheriff’s star without circles highlighting each of its points? A plain star taken from a white supremacist website? Could it be, the networks queried, that Trump “innocently” appropriated the image from someone else’s tweet? But, Trump defended the tweet, even though it originated from a white supremacist website.

Trump’s persistent pattern of racism threatens to undermine the progress made in the past several decades in the United States on civil liberties, and to spawn a new era of Nazism, this time in America. The corporate mainstream media needs to beware. When Hitler came to power, he immediately seized the press and turned it into a Nazi propaganda machine. Trump has already taken away the press credentials from the Washington Post, among other news organizations, barring them from attending his press conferences; proclaiming that “journalists are among the worst people I know”; and lashing out at particular journalists, calling them “sleaze”; he has already made abundantly clear that he will not tolerate journalists who challenge him. Is it not also clear, therefore, what a Trump presidency would portend for the media?

It is not acceptable to dismiss a blatant case of anti-Semitism (no less than attacks on Mexicans, Muslims, and the handicapped) espoused by someone who may well become the next President of the United States. Perhaps the media is banking on a President Trump who abandons his hateful rhetoric and assumes a “presidential” posture. This is, indeed, the hope of the GOP, which seems to think that the real Trump is not the Trump on the campaign trail. This same mistake was made by the American press in covering Hitler. Thus, a January 30, 1933 editorial in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin stated, “there have been indications of moderation” on Hitler’s part; and on January 31, 1933, the Cleveland Press said, “appointment of Hitler as German chancellor may not be such a threat to world peace as it appears at first blush.”

Of course, the rest is history!

Btw, when you say rich people create jobs? Um, no. Consumer demand for products and services create them. Rich people don’t want to hire any workers at all. They only hire them when they have to to meet demand.

Nick Hanauer “Rich people don’t create jobs”

Also: Trump calls for massive tax cuts for the rich. This will result in massive job losses — unless the government just puts the ginormous lost revenues on our national credit card. His tax cut plan will add an additional 10 trillion in debt over the course of his presidency, if he wins. That’s in addition to any debt that would be accrued without those tax cuts.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Billy_T.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Billy_T.

bnw wrote:

Billy,

What is really funny is that you of all people are concerned about the national debt!

(Tried to respond multiple times over a half hour but keep getting 403 Forbidden message when quoting your post.)

Unlike most people on the right, I actually favor paying for the government we use, as we use it. Most on the right prefer steep tax cuts, which create massive deficits and debt.

I’d rather raise tax rates on the wealthy so we can balance the budget. Of course, that’s under our current system. I’ve also put forward ways to make it so we don’t need any taxation at all, and there is no debt.

Money is a fiction. It’s an agreed upon fiction. Like capitalism, nation-states and religion. We could very easily agree to a different kind of fiction, one that benefits 100% of us, instead of just the 1%.

But if we remain in our current fiction, yeah. I’d prefer we have no debt. Though it’s economic suicide to try to pay it down during a recession or a weak recovery. The time to do that is when the economy is doing well. The CBO, for instance, told Bush back in 2000/2001 that if he just left tax rates alone, we could pay off the entire debt by 2009. He cut rates for the rich twice — 2001 and 2003 — and doubled the debt instead.

And I’m still waiting for you to tell us how Trump would bring back jobs.

;>)

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Billy_T.