Mark My Words: For Islam and Whiteness, This Too Shall Pass

Uncategorized

Decades from now, Islam will integrate into the realm of “respectable American religions” for White Americans (Lindsay Lohan?) to join.

The hysteria of today will fade, and “Judeo-Christian” social conservatism will be replaced by “Abrahamic” social conservatism. Some of the most media-savvy conservative ideologues and hucksters of tomorrow will be wealthy, White paragons of family/free-market values who just happen to be Muslim.

This happened to Catholics, Mormons and Jews, who only integrated after the ruling class of this country found that these hated groups could be exploited for their wedge usefulness against some other existential enemy.

Eventually, White-enough American Muslims will become useful to our ruling class against America’s next great existential enemy. And those who engage in cultural warfare and nativism against Muslims will either look pretty stupid or just disappear under the rug of ugly-American provincialism, as do Judeophobes, anti-Catholics and anti-Mormons.

Rinse and repeat….

Terrible Person Gets Canned from CPAC, Simon & Schuster, Breitbart

Uncategorized, , ,

Some racist pro-Trump fop from the UK has had a bad 48 hours.

First, The Reagan Battalion, a #NeverTrump conservative blog with interesting origins, posted clips from his interviews in different venues:

This ended up with voices from left and right calling for him to be disinvited from a speaking role at this year’s CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. The CEO of CPAC, Matt Schlapp, tried to run cover for him on Twitter, but eventually acceded to this demand:

But then the hits kept coming.

And finally, after this:

the final shoe dropped:

NOTE:

In the end, feminist writer Roxane Gay was vindicated in pulling her book from Simon & Schuster in protest against Hanrahan’s book deal:

But of course, he then held a press conference announcing another media venture, just like he did at least three times before becoming the “tech editor” for Breitbart, where he ran a group of 44 interns to write his articles.

He’s a lazy writer, and also a lazy, vindictive, harassing, petty publication editor who prefers to rage against both perceived rivals to his business interests as well as perceived enemies of Western civilization. But his antics reached so many lows with which the likes of Steve Bannon and his successor were OK until he lost the support of 6 of his coworkers at Breitbart over his off-color statements and jokes on pedophilia.

Pedophilia/child abuse – not racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, immigrant-bashing, Muslim-bashing, Jew-bashing, ableism, and support for fascist behavior by governments – was the deal-breaker for the far-right.

And ironically, his rhetoric will provide more fodder for those who unjustly believe that LGBT people – even those on the far-right – are uniformly lecherous child abusers. This lie is as disgusting and inhumane as the act of child abuse.

This grifter cynically helped traffic this garbage, and he has temporarily fallen on the sword of the far-right’s literalism which he gleefully helped craft since joining Breitbart.

I hope he keeps losing until he learns humility, honesty and empathy.

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization – and therefore force – is already a sick civilization, a civilization that is morally diseased, that irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one repudiation to another, calls for its [Trump], I mean its punishment.”

From “Discourse on Colonialism” by #AiméCésaire (with a swapping out of “Hitler” for “Trump”)

Fighting Nazis

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

There was this one tweet saying something to the effect of “you ever wish that you were back in the Nazi era trying to fight the Nazis? Well, this is your time.”

No.

No I don’t.

Why would I be interested in fighting Nazis? Why would African-Americans be interested in fighting Nazis?

We’ve fought plantation owners and White supremacists alike for over 3 centuries. Right now, we’re fatigued, in pain (some of which is self-inflicted) and at the mercy of a White majority which is experiencing an angry contraction of the social contract.

I find it unacceptable that we have to be in this fight at all.

The Afrocentric Education Crisis

Uncategorized, ,

I was looking for Afrocentric education in charter and private schools and found this article:

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but those working within the field say African-centered schools peaked at around 400 in 1999, and have been on the decline ever since. When charter schools first emerged in the 1990s, some private school leaders decided to convert their African-centered institutions into charters, sacrificing their independent status in exchange for the increased financial stability that comes from receiving state and federal dollars.

Today, however, many Afrocentric charter schools are being shut down for poor academic performance and financial mismanagement.“The [charter] rules and regulations get worse and worse every year,” says Thompson, who opened up an Afrocentric charter in 1999—Roots Public Charter School—but didn’t close down her private school, as many others did. “First they lead you on and tell you can just do your thing. But that was a come-on, and every year they’ve got more bureaucratic red tape.”

Source: The Afrocentric Education Crisis

Executive Orders as Shock and Awe

Politics, Uncategorized

Through his EOs, Trump is using shock and awe to overwhelm the resolve of progressives and liberals.

But saying “don’t get distracted by what he says” isn’t enough. Saying “he’s trying to bring attention to himself” isn’t enough.

Ask yourself: why are his press conferences and media events being covered on live TV? Why are his EO signatures being covered? Why are he and his sycophants being interviewed on live TV?

If Hannah Arendt is right about how authoritarians use big lies and media events to draw attention to themselves and issue “declarations of intent”, why not “starve the beast” of that attention?

Get in the way of the most accessible news media when Trump is sucking up attention. Suck that attention right back in your direction. Hold more press conferences. Hold more media events. Hold more marches. Issue more lawsuits. Compete for that attention. Do it in the places and times which most matter.

Get. In. The. Way.

#DNCforum

America was founded by people who ran away. From religious persecution, from famine, from genocide, from bad economies, from cramped living conditions, from war, from dictatorship, from discrimination, from a lack of business opportunities, from prison, from sheer boredom.

All good reasons to run away. All the reasons why the the settler colonies of the United States of America, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Brazil, apartheid South Africa, Australia and New Zealand exist.

But Syrian war refugees will now not be allowed to run away to this settler colony, nor will refugees in 6 other countries.