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The Truth About America: Why We Are Not a Racist Nation – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 12, 2020

What the black community needs at this time is not more protests, money or government programs. What it needs is a moral rebirth and a return to the values of personal responsibility, conscientiousness, studiousness, discipline and honest work. This is where the real problem lies and unless it is addressed and faced squarely, the black community will never escape the pathologies and difficulties it is presently struggling with.

As far back as 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that the destruction of the black nuclear family would have ruinous economic and social consequences for the black community. When Moynihan was writing his famous report the black illegitimacy rate was 25 percent. Today it is three times higher.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/06/vasko-kohlmayer/truth-about-america-why-we-are-not-a-racist-nation/

By

“Racism in America is not the exception – it’s the norm,” read a headline from the British Guardian the other day.

“2 viruses — COVID and racism — devastate the black community and threaten America’s stability, declares an ABC News piece.

“Not just George Floyd: Police departments have 400-year history of racism,” headlines an USA Today article.

“We need to tackle racism, and we’ve never really dealt with it,” asserted a protester at one of the many rallies that have taken place in recent weeks.

A great deal, indeed, has been recently said from many quarters about the alleged oppressiveness and racism of American society. Even though these denunciations have been delivered in impassioned voices and accompanied by much violence, there is one problem with such claims: They are not true. The opposite is actually the case.

The fact is that there is no institutional or systemic discrimination against black people in American society. Contrary to the assertions we hear today, in the last half a century America has gone into untold lengths to support and assist its black community. During this time, American society has launched countless programs and initiatives and spent hundreds of billions of dollars aimed specifically at uplifting the African American demographic. The support that the black community receives from American society comes in every form conceivable: legislative, financial, educational, commercial, human, material.

To ensure that there is no systemic or institutional discrimination, America went so far as to implement affirmative action and racial quotas in education, employment, government contracts, housing and other areas of life. This means that our laws and codes of conduct grant more protection, privileges and guarantees to colored people than they do to their white counterparts. So eager and willing has America been to elevate its black minority that it actually subjected the majority to reverse discrimination. To redeem itself and correct a legacy of past discrimination, the United Sates has bent backwards to advance its black population. The amount of resources, protection and goodwill that America’s black minority receives from our society is completely unprecedented in the annals of world history.

Nowhere in the world do black people enjoy more freedom and greater financial, employment and educational opportunities than they do in the United States. This is the reason why so many black people from all over the globe seek to come and live in this country. Such great are their numbers that we can only accept a tiny fraction of those who wish to live here. If America was such a racist and oppressive nation, why would they want to come so badly?

The reason they want to come is because they know that America treats black people well and that nowhere else in the world black people have it as good as they have it here. When black people whose vision has not been distorted by the demagoguery of the so-called civil rights leaders look at America they see freedom and opportunity. They look at America and they see a society that displays immense generosity and good will toward its black population. They look at America and see a country that has recently awarded the most coveted, powerful and prestigious job in the world – the presidency of the United States – to a black man. And this not once, but two times. Would a racist nation ever do something like that?

Conversely, we do not hear stories of African Americans leaving this “racist” “oppressive” country and then returning with tales of lands where black people lead better lives of more freedom, affluence and dignity. Have you ever heard such a testimony? Let us see one country in the world that is more generous and caring towards black people than this one. Let us find one nation where black people receive more freedom and protection than in the United States of America. Tellingly, we cannot find a single predominantly black country where its citizens enjoy more rights and affluence than the black people in the United States. Isn’t it paradoxical that the United States treats its black people better than black nations treat their own? The immense lengths – involving both effort and treasure – into which this society has gone to help and accommodate black Americans are surely worth pondering. In a healthy society, this would draw at least sporadic expressions of gratitude and appreciation.

If truth be told, African Americans are the most favored and legally privileged demographic in American society. Enjoying the benefits of a host of protective measures and mechanisms incorporated into the fabric of our societal existence, African Americans are neither systemically oppressed nor are they institutionally discriminated against. An eye-opening expression of this took place last week during the “anti-racism” protests in Washington, DC. There a local black woman by the named Nestride Yumga confronted a group of protesters promulgating their stock racist slogans against this country (watch here). In the course of the exchange, the woman chastizes a white protestor:

“You say blacks are oppressed. I am black and I am not oppressed. I am free!… Stop forcing on people to accept that they are oppressed… You are forcing a rhetoric into their minds which is not true… Shame on you, I am free!”

Standing in front of them with outstretched arms, Nestride’s words have a stunning effect that leaves the startled demonstrators groping for a reply. The impact of her utterance is so powerful, because what she says is so obviously and undeniably true. Unlike rioters and protestors we see shouting untruths from our screens, this young black woman truly speaks truth to power. And what a power hers is. Turning toward the black members of the crowd, she excoriates them, “You guys are not oppressed. You are lazy, that’s all it is. Go get jobs, work!”

Blindsided by this unexpected petard of stark truth, the dazed demonstrators weakly attempt a couple of hollow clichés and some heckling by way of response. Hit with such a healthy dose of reality, they are unable to mount any kind of coherent answer. The black woman’s reproof rips off the cloak of righteous falsehood from their faux cause and they stand there exposed, clutching pitiably to the shreds of their specious lies. Befuddled and confused, they pack up their protest paraphernalia and decamp. As they retreat, the intrepid lady sends them on their way with her last salvo “you guys have been cowards.”

But what about the issue of the systemic police brutality against black Americans, the latest example of which we just witnessed in the lamentable death of George Floyd? It has been repeatedly demonstrated, however, that such incidents are actually very rare and not a manifestation of pervasive racism in our law enforcement. As Tucker Carlson notes, in 2019 ten unarmed African Americans were shot dead by police officers in the United States. Nine of them had serious criminal records. On the other hand, less than two weeks ago on May 31, 18 black people were murdered in the city of Chicago by mostly black criminals. More black people are thus shot and killed by black people in one day in one city than they are killed by the police across the United States in one whole year. The talk that we sometimes hear of the police committing “black genocide” is absurd beyond belief. As Theodore Dalrymple points out a “policeman is about fifteen times more likely to be killed by a black man than to kill a black man.” And most of the small number of black men killed annually by the police are dangerous felons who are killed in the process of committing a crime.

Moreover, more white people are shot by the police than black people, and likewise more white people die in arrest-related incidents than black people. The narrative that the police routinely rounds up innocent peaceful black men in the streets is a complete myth that no one in their right mind can believe, not least black people themselves. According to Pew research, more than half of black Americans have “a lot” or at least “some” confidence in the police. As a point of comparison, less than one third of the American population approve of the way Congress is handling its job. In other words, far more black people have confidence in their local cops that we have in our elected representatives in Washington, DC. Most upright black Americans want our law enforcement and government officials take a strong stance against lawlessness no matter by whom it is perpetrated. The latest evidence of this is Donald Trump’s record approval rating among likely black voters in the wake of the riots. Tellingly, Donald Trump has been one of the few government figures who has not pandered to the looting mobs.

***

The question, then, is: Given all the financial, legislative, educational and human resources that have been poured into the black community over the decades, why is the black community not thriving? Why, after all these years of immense effort and investment, is the black community still plagued with so many troubles and difficulties?

The answer is not racism, police brutality or discrimination. The reason why the black community is so troubled is the moral breakdown that has corroded its large portions, especially those of the inner cities.

Data shows that more than seventy five percent of black babies are born to single mothers. And from those 25 percent who are born to parents who are married fewer still grow up to adulthood with both of their biological parents present. This means that the majority of young black people grow up in broken or dysfunctional homes. In any racial demographic that by itself would be a problem with catastrophic consequences. And the statistics are, indeed, devastating. Consider some of the following facts. Children from fatherless families are five times more likely to grow up in poverty and commit crime. Children from father-absent homes are nearly three times more likely to carry guns and deal drugs than those living with their fathers. They are also nine times more likely to drop out of school. Worse yet, young people from broken families are 20 times more likely to go to prison.

As far back as 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that the destruction of the black nuclear family would have ruinous economic and social consequences for the black community. When Moynihan was writing his famous report the black illegitimacy rate was 25 percent. Today it is three times higher.

Sadly, the destruction of the black nuclear family has been to a great degree effected and facilitated by government which creates incentives for this by providing cash payments and an array of benefits to single mothers. “The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States,” wrote Moynihan in the conclusion to his paper.

The black writer and thinker Larry Elder recalls a story of some years ago when he interviewed Kweisi Mfume who was at the time president of the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People (NAACP). In the course of the interview, Elder posed this question: “Between the presence of white racism and the absence of black fathers which poses the bigger threat to the black community?” Without any hesitation, Mfume replied, “the absence of black fathers.”

Bad as it is, for so many black children growing up in broken, dysfunctional families – a situation which greatly diminishes their prospects in life – is not the end of it. Most of them also live immersed in a culture and mindset that makes it virtually impossible to pursue happy and meaningful existence. It is truly regrettable that black street culture promotes and celebrates the grosses of human traits and forms of conduct. Sexual promiscuity, illegitimacy, violence, instant gratification, drug abuse, indolence and crime are celebrated and held up as if they were some virtues. On other hand, those who by studiousness, uprightness and work ethic try to escape the bleak and hopeless existence that such a view of life inevitably engenders are accused of “acting white” and derided as Uncle Toms and Aunt Annas. How absurd. Those who make such derisory statements seem to imply that living an upright, diligent and conscientious life is a racial trait that should only be displayed by white people.

What hope can there be for young people growing up in broken homes – which are often negligent and abusive – while being submerged in such a toxic culture? We see the tragic result of it in the looting mobs that are vandalizing and burning American cities today. The pandemonium they have unleashed is not the consequence of white racism or police brutality. It is the inevitable outcome of the illegitimacy, broken culture and moral decline that has unraveled the moral fiber of large swathes of the black demographic.

What the black community needs at this time is not more protests, money or government programs. What it needs is a moral rebirth and a return to the values of personal responsibility, conscientiousness, studiousness, discipline and honest work. This is where the real problem lies and unless it is addressed and faced squarely, the black community will never escape the pathologies and difficulties it is presently struggling with.

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Health Professionals Show What Matters. Hint: It’s Not Health – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on June 11, 2020

But here’s the dirty little secret. The violence with which police enforced
the lockdown was directed disproportionately against black people. Take a look
at this New York policeman putting his knee on his black victim’s neck back in early
May. Does that look at least a little like something that happened in Minneapolis
to a guy named George Floyd? If these health professionals spoke out against
this, I certainly didn’t notice.

https://original.antiwar.com/henderson/2020/06/10/health-professionals-show-what-matters-hint-its-not-health/

Last week, over 1,000 health professionals signed an open letter about the recent protests over the murder of George Floyd. Here’s the first paragraph:

On April 30, heavily armed and predominantly white protesters entered the State Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, protesting stay-home orders and calls for widespread public masking to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Infectious disease physicians and public health officials publicly condemned these actions and privately mourned the widening rift between leaders in science and a subset of the communities that they serve. As of May 30, we are witnessing continuing demonstrations in response to ongoing, pervasive, and lethal institutional racism set off by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among many other Black lives taken by police. A public health response to these demonstrations is also warranted, but this message must be wholly different from the response to white protesters resisting stay-home orders. Infectious disease and public health narratives adjacent to demonstrations against racism must be consciously anti-racist, and infectious disease experts must be clear and consistent in prioritizing an anti-racist message.

Are the signers unaware of their double standard? Their statement above shows that they are quite aware. The standard is not health, which is supposed to be their area of expertise. No. They distinguish between the April 30 anti-lockdown protest of people in Michigan and the late May protests of people about the treatment of black people based on three things: (1) the race of the anti-lockdown protesters, (2) the fact that some of the anti-lockdown protesters in Michigan were carrying guns, and (3) the issue being protested. My own view, by the way, is that both kinds of protests are justified and important.

For about 6 weeks before the Michigan protest, we were told that we should stay home because it was so crucial for defeating the coronavirus. That actually made some sense. So when the Michigan protesters came along, most of the public health community opposed their being near each other and unmasked because that could spread the virus. That made some sense too, which is why, for the May 1 anti-lockdown protest in Monterey that Lawrence Samuels and I organized, we encouraged people to wear masks and/or socially distance. (Sadly, only about half of the protesters did wear masks, although the social distancing was relatively successful.) To their credit, in the rest of the open letter, the health professionals advocate that protesters do so safely, either wearing masks or keeping their distance. But then why didn’t they say the same about the anti-lockdown protests? Why didn’t they just encourage them to protest safely? The answer is obvious. The health professionals sympathized with one cause and not with the other. Which means it’s not about the health; it’s about the cause.

You might think, based on the open letter, that the Michiganers’ guns were a factor in the signers’ thinking. (Personally, if I had been at the Michigan protest, the protesters’ guns would have been ample incentive for me to socially distance.) And they were a factor. But here’s what’s interesting. While many of the Michiganers carried loaded guns, none of them used them on anyone. By contrast, some of the protesters against police brutality were violent, attacking people and property. They were a small percent of the protesters, but a small percent of a big number can do a lot of damage. Here’s what else is interesting. If the letter signers followed the Michigan protests at all, they knew that the protests were peaceful. And if the letter signers paid any attention to the George Floyd protests, they knew some of the protests were violent. Yet do they even mention the violence? Not a word.

What’s the letter signers’ argument for thinking positively about the protests against police brutality? The fact that black people’s health is so much worse already and that they are at greater risk from police. They’re absolutely right.

But here’s the dirty little secret. The violence with which police enforced the lockdown was directed disproportionately against black people. Take a look at this New York policeman putting his knee on his black victim’s neck back in early May. Does that look at least a little like something that happened in Minneapolis to a guy named George Floyd? If these health professionals spoke out against this, I certainly didn’t notice.

Now that’s only one incident and doesn’t establish that the lockdown and social distancing measures were disproportionately against black people. But this article by Phil Magness suggests that it was. Magness writes:

According to new data released by the Brooklyn, New York, District Attorney’s office, police have arrested 40 people in the borough since mid-March for various lockdown violations. Although the charges were later dropped, the arrests showed clear racial disparities. 35 of the 40 arrested persons were African-American, 4 were Hispanic, and only one was white.

Did the letter signers ever complain about the disproportionate targeting of black people? No, they didn’t.

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said that we should judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. In judging causes by the skin color of those who join them, the letter signers are moving the country in the wrong direction.

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Can We Survive Our Collective Stupidity? – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2020

As kids we used to say, “sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  Today for the woke weaklings the wrong word is like a nuclear weapon. They collapse in tears and recriminations. NY Times Staffers claimed that by publishing Sen. Cotton’s article, the opinion editor had put their lives in danger by not validating looting and rioting as a valid exercise of free speech.  Somehow it did not occur to Sulzberger that the protesters must not be so innocent if NY Times staffers are in fear of their lives because of a few words from a US Senator.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/06/09/can-we-survive-our-collective-stupidity/

Paul Craig Roberts

I have come to the conclusion that collectively Americans are mentally and emotionally stupid.  On any given day there is endless evidence that this is the case.  Just a few selections from news of the last couple of days should suffice to establish the point.

Instead of reforming police training as a rational response to George Floyd’s death from an aggressive restraint technique, the Minneapolis city council voted to disband the Minneapolis police. Council woman Lisa Bender responded to a citizen’s question what she is supposed to do if she faces a threat in her home and there are no police to call:  “Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.”

In other words, the Minneapolis citizen’s concern is not legitimate and merely reflects her privileged assumption that she is entitled to protection by police. The valid concern is to protect blacks from the police by disbanding the police.

Kristina Roth of Amnesty International wrote to me in a fundraiser that “Police must stop killing black people.”  What about white people, Kristina?  White lives matter, too. The police shoot to death far more white people every year than black people— https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/06/03/all-races-suffer-from-police-violence/ .  Shouldn’t Kristina be demanding that “police must stop killing people?”  Why does Kristina blame racism instead of police training? Kristina needs to read and reflect upon this:  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/06/08/the-sociology-of-police-violence-racism-isnt-the-real-problem/ .

The top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer had to resign because of the headline on a reporter’s article. The article was very sympathic to the black rioters but didn’t quite see the point of blacks destroying historic buildings in Philadelphia because of what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis.  The editor was done in by the article’s headline: “Buildings Matter, Too.”  This incensed the woke morons, and despite his groveling apology the editor was removed— https://www.rt.com/usa/491122-philadelphia-editor-resigns-headline/ . So much for “white privilege.”  White newspaper editors cannot even exercise freedom of speech in the choice of headlines.

Not even editors at the New York Times, which grovels at the feet of blacks and self-righteous woke, can survive their exercise of freedom of the press—https://www.rt.com/usa/491143-nytimes-oped-editor-resigns-cotton/ . The opinion editor and his deputy had to resign for publishing Senator Tom Cotton’s call to deploy the military to protect people and property from the rioters and looters. I am confident that the NY Times published Sen. Cotton’s article with the intention of damning Cotton for not being more sympathetic to black looters. But the woke creatures and the NY Times publisher A.G.Sulzberger removed the editors because of “the pain they inflicted.”

Pain inflicted on who?  The pain inflicted on owners of businesses, buildings, and cars destroyed by rioters using violence to express their disapproval of violence? No. As Lisa Bender put it, these concerns don’t matter as they come “from a place of privilege.” Only  the pain of those privileged to riot and loot counts.

As kids we used to say, “sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  Today for the woke weaklings the wrong word is like a nuclear weapon. They collapse in tears and recriminations. NY Times Staffers claimed that by publishing Sen. Cotton’s article, the opinion editor had put their lives in danger by not validating looting and rioting as a valid exercise of free speech.  Somehow it did not occur to Sulzberger that the protesters must not be so innocent if NY Times staffers are in fear of their lives because of a few words from a US Senator.

JK Rowling is in trouble again from the transgender freaks who reject the word “woman” as transphobic. Rowling took exception to the term “people who menstruate.” and caused “unimaginable pain” by remarking that there used to be a word for “people who menstruate”—women. https://www.rt.com/news/491077-rowling-trans-women-row/

A professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina has been denounced by the university administration for “vile and inexcusable comments,” such as “Don’t shut down the universities; shut down non-essential majors like women’s studies” —https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/us/professor-controversy-tweet-university-north-carolina-wilmington-adams/index.html . The UNC administration says “we are very carefully and assertively reviewing our options in terms of how to proceed.”  The hypocritical administration went on to say “Hateful, hurtful language aimed at degrading others is contrary to our university values and our commitment to an environment of respect and dignity. Its appearance on any platform, including the personal platforms of anyone affiliated with UNCW, is absolutely reprehensible.” What nonsense!  Everyday on the UNC campus black studies professors teach students that white people are racists and slavers, and women’s studies professors demonize men as misogynists and rapists.  The hypocrites that comprise university administrations never do anything about this “reprehensible, hateful, and hurtful language” aimed at white people and at men.

A retired US Navy captain had to resign from the US Naval Academy Alumni Association board after a private conversation with his wife was accidentally streamed on Facebook. The captain used the n-word and said that white men “can’t say anything.” His wife complained of Chinese who “steal all of our intellectual property.”  The couple are mortified and deeply sorry to have spoken in derogatory terms “about our fellow man,” a regret that black rioters and intellectual property thiefs do not reciprocate.  The alunmi association said that these private comments are “not consistent with our leadership mission.”  The couple have committed themselves to “using this experience as an opportunity to grow, listen, learn, and reflect . . . and being better people”—https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/us/navy-captain-racial-slurs-facebook/index.html.

The groveling of Sulzberger at the NY Times, the groveling at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the groveling by the Minneapolis city council and by submissive police officers will only encourage the black violence that decades of being taught to hate white people has unleashed. As I have said so many times, a diverse, multicultural society cannot be built on hatred.  If blacks today had a real leader like Martin Luther King, Jr., that leader would be protesting police violence against people irrespective of race. Such a protest would be a unifying act instead of a divisive one.  People such as myself could again see hope for American society.

Perhaps women could also find a leader, and men and women could get back together in loving, mutually supportive relationships.  When I read that feminists have created men who prefer plastic “sex dolls” to a flesh and blood woman with emotions and a brain, I put “#Me/Too” in the catagory of bioweapons—https://www.rt.com/sport/484358-kazakh-bodybuilder-sex-doll-marriage-coronavirus/.  The body builder who is marrying a sex doll might be on a public relations trip to boost his following, but his “marriage” to a piece of plastic is credible only because relations between men and women have been so badly damaged by feminists that it is believable that he prefers a sex doll to a real woman. According to beastiality advocates, some women prefer their dog to a man.

Western civilization is collapsing because allegations from the least credible sources carry more weight than facts.  Emotions have displaced facts as the basis for understanding.  Emotion routinely shouts down facts.  It has become commonplace in universities for distinguished authorities to be shut down because the facts are unacceptable to the ignorant woke students, backed up by a roster of administrative thought police.

Universities have abandoned their mission of searching for truth. They have become propaganda ministries that spew the acids that eat away foundations of civilization.

In Western Civilization today, the best way to destroy yourself is to stand up for truth. I am getting tired of it as support for the defense of truth is declining away.

There is a lesson for the warmonger neoconservatives in the extraordinary weakness that is now the core of Western Civilization, a civilization that is a discredited concept in every American university and is being damned again by the NY Times’ 1619 Project. It is hilarious that neoconservatives proclaimed a people as divided as the US, with the majority white population on the defensive, to be an exceptional and indispensable people.

The US armed forces are a hodgepod of men, women, lesbians, homosexuals, a racial medley, and every element in it has been instructed by Identity Politics to hate and distrust the other.  Armies devoid of the homogeneity that gives unity are useless.  Only a fool would put an American or any European army against Russia and China. What will be our fate if the aggressive bombast that the neoconservatives and fellow travelers such as Liz Cheney —https://www.newsmax.com/politics/liz-cheney-germany-troops-withdrawal/2020/06/06/id/970894/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=mixi&utm_campaign=newsmax —keep pumping out of Washington results in concerted Russian/Chinese action against the threat that the West is determined to portray itself to be?

The hope for humanity is that the Russians and Chinese remain patient as the West continues its collapse under the weight of its own self-hate.

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America’s Forever Wars Have Come Home – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on June 8, 2020

But let me be clear: my dad knew how to put out fires, but once a house was “fully involved,” he used to tell me, there’s little you can do but stand back and watch it burn while keeping the fire from spreading.

America’s forever wars in distant lands have now come home big time. Our house is lit up and on fire. Alarms are being sounded over and over again. If we fail to come together to fight the fire until our house is fully involved, we will find ourselves – and what’s left of our democracy – burning with it.

https://original.antiwar.com/William_Astore/2020/06/07/americas-forever-wars-have-come-home/

Originally posted at TomDispatch.

Here’s a little portrait of the United States in June 2020, a passage from a New York Times report on the National Guard’s treatment of a recent protest march of people chanting “We can’t breathe!” in Washington, D.C.:

“A Black Hawk helicopter, followed by a smaller medical evacuation helicopter, dropped to rooftop level with its searchlights aimed at the crowd. Tree limbs snapped, nearly hitting several people. Signs were torn from the sides of buildings. Some protesters looked up, while others ran into doorways. The downward force of air from the rotors was deafening. The helicopters were performing a ‘show of force’ – a standard tactic used by military aircraft in combat zones to scatter insurgents.”

Talk about America’s wars coming home! George Floyd’s recent killing is both a long way, and yet not far at all, from the police shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Many Americans felt shocked then on seeing that city’s police force respond to the ensuing protests togged out in Pentagon-supplied gear of every sort, including sniper rifles and Humvees, often directly off the battlefields of this country’s ongoing wars. As Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver put it then, referring to an Iraqi city largely destroyed by the U.S. military in 2004, “Ferguson resembles Fallujah.”

The question is: What does the US resemble six years later? You know, I’m talking about the place that Secretary of Defense Mark Esper recently referred to as a “battle space” (as in “dominate the battle space”) in a contentious discussion he and President Trump had with the nation’s governors. I’m talking about the country where that same president has been threatening to call out the troops as police forces. (When retired military brass screamed bloody murder, Esper began backing down.) I’m talking about the land into which Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton has the urge to send the 101st Airborne Division, or Screaming Eagles, whose assault troops have previously seen action in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. (“If local politicians will not do their most basic job to protect our citizens, let’s see how these anarchists respond when the 101st Airborne is on the other side of the street.”)

Could you ever doubt that America’s wars would sooner or later come home in a big way? I suspect retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore didn’t. After all, he’s been writing for years at TomDispatch about how our former citizens’ military has, in those very wars, become the equivalent of a foreign legion. Fully militarizing the police and bringing the legionnaires home, a subject he explores today, seems like just the next obvious step in this country’s precipitous decline. ~ Tom


‘Light ’em Up’: Warrior-Cops Are the Law – and Above the Law – As Violence Grips America

By William J. Astore

From their front porches, regular citizens watched a cordon of cops sweep down their peaceful street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Rankled at being filmed, the cops exceeded their authority and demanded that people go inside their houses. When some of them didn’t obey quickly enough, the order – one heard so many times in the streets of Iraqi cities and in the villages of Afghanistan – was issued: “Light ’em up.” And so “disobedient” Americans found themselves on the receiving end of non-lethal rounds for the “crime” of watching the police from those porches.

It’s taken years from Ferguson to this moment, but America’s cops have now officially joined the military as “professional” warriors. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder on May 25th, those warrior-cops have taken to the streets across the country wearing combat gear and with attitudes to match. They see protesters, as well as the reporters covering them, as the enemy and themselves as the “thin blue line” of law and order.

The police take to bashing heads and thrashing bodies, using weaponry so generously funded by the American taxpayer: rubber bullets, pepper spray (as Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio experienced at a protest), tear gas (as Episcopal clergy experienced at a demonstration in Washington, DC), paint canisters, and similar “non-lethal” munitions, together with flash-bang grenades, standard-issue batons, and Tasers, even as they drive military-surplus equipment like Humvees and MRAPs. (Note that such munitions blinded an eye of one photo-journalist.) A Predator drone even hovered over at least one protest.

Who needs a military parade, President Trump? Americans are witnessing militarized “parades” across the U.S.A. Their theme: violent force. The result: plenty of wounded and otherwise damaged Americans left in their wake. The detritus of America’s foreign wars has finally well and truly found its place on Main Street, USA

Cops are to blame for much of this mayhem. Video clips show them wildly out of control, inciting violence and inflicting it, instead of defusing and preventing it. Far too often, “to serve and protect” has become “to shoot and smack down.” It suggests the character of Eric Cartman from the cartoon South Park, a boy inflamed by a badge and a chance to inflict physical violence without accountability. “Respect my authoritah!” cries Cartman as he beats an innocent man for no reason….

And so on

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Ideas Have Consequences – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on June 8, 2020

I should have said, “the external cost of American police training is very high.”  US police are trained in Israeli practices that view protesters as enemies justifying very aggressive restraint techniques. The training produces such a high level of police anxiety that police feel compelled to handcuff 5-year olds before putting them in a squad car.

The New York Times’ 1619 Project is spreading this genocide of white history to all of North America.  Northern cities are in flames, and Canada won’t escape.  Nor will Europe. The idiot Northern liberals who think they can use black anger against the despised American South are going to find themselves flayed with the same whip.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/06/07/ideas-have-consequences/

Paul Craig Roberts

The Saker writes that “the systemic collapse of the US Society has begun.”  Actually, US societal collapse has been underway for a long time.  What The Saker means is that now it is obvious.

Organized violence and looting in many American cities with pre-deliveries of bricks as weapons of destruction.  Police and government officials kneeling in submission to the rioters, thus encouraging the rioters in their actions. The police unsupported and standing down. Destroyed businesses. Looters emptying even the big box stores. Enormous economic loss.  As I wrote, “the external cost of one Minnesota cop is very high.”

I should have said, “the external cost of American police training is very high.”  US police are trained in Israeli practices that view protesters as enemies justifying very aggressive restraint techniques. The training produces such a high level of police anxiety that police feel compelled to handcuff 5-year olds before putting them in a squad car. I doubt the Minneapolis police officer meant to kill George Floyd by employing a restraint technique that is taught to the police.  The Minneapolis cop was  a catalyst, not the cause of consequences set in motion with the second round of Reconstruction imposed on the South.

The first Reconstruction had to be closed down because its excesses were giving rise to a guerrilla movement in the invaded and occupied South.  The second Reconstruction was the  integration of neighborhood schools by force rather than by persuasion.  Force required denunciation, and the white liberals enjoyed their self-righteousness as they sowed the seeds of racial hatred. In the South I grew up in there was no hate. People don’t employ people they hate to look after their children, cook their meals, run their households, and people who hate don’t perform these tasks for those they hate.

As Richard Weaver said, “ideas have consequences.”  We are now experiencing the consequences of decades of teaching black Americans to hate white Americans and of teaching white Americans to accept guilt for the black slave trade that originated in the black Kingdom of Dahomey in 1600.  A black labor force was inherited by the United States and by the Confederate States of America. It was the gift of history.  But in the history that is mistaught, the inherited institution of slavery was imposed on black people by white supremacy.

These lies that have been institutionalized in American education are inconsistent with a diverse multicultural society and are now visibly at work unraveling it.

The Saker thinks that there is no going back from George Floyd. Blacks have gotten away with massive looting. Antifa is not being held accountable for massive violence and property damage. The Democrat and media establishments are using the events against President Trump and all other public officials who tried to protect private property. Leftists have gone beyond justifying violence to glorifying in it.

The Camp of the Saints is playing out before our eyes.  We are living the novel. It is impermissible to put down violent protests of “stigmatized and marginalized” black Americans.  But who is more stigmatized than white people, written off as “Trump deplorables” and “racist white supremacists”?  It is white people, not blacks who have to be careful in their language, to be careful about what parts of what cities they can safely enter. It is white people who are fired, sanctioned, evicted from social media for offending a black person, not the other way around. A white player for the professional soccer team, Los Angeles Galaxy, was let go not because of anything he did, but because his wife posted an Instagram of a black looter holding a shoebox with the caption, “Black Nikes Matter.”

It is perfectly acceptable to offend white people.  All is permissible. The governor of Virginia has ordered the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from Richmond, the Virginia capital that Robert E. Lee honorably defended for three years from being looted and burned by Union invaders. Thanks to Lee, Richmond escaped Atlanta’s fate, but Lee’s statue is being taken down. It was racist of Lee to defend his state and the property and lives of those in Virginia. The truth of the matter is that it is not blacks that have been genocided, it is Southern people and their history.

The New York Times’ 1619 Project is spreading this genocide of white history to all of North America.  Northern cities are in flames, and Canada won’t escape.  Nor will Europe. The idiot Northern liberals who think they can use black anger against the despised American South are going to find themselves flayed with the same whip.

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Those Pesky Statistics – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on June 8, 2020

https://www.takimag.com/article/those-pesky-statistics/

I once gave a talk in New Zealand in which I said that, thanks to the inefficiency of the police and the leniency of the courts in Britain, a burglar spent on average three days in prison; in which case the question was not why there were so many burglars, but why there were so few.

To this question a clever lawyer in the audience immediately said, “They’re not very good at arithmetic.”

Neither, I suppose, are the rioters in the United States. It is true, of course, that the death of George Floyd at the hands, or rather the knee, of the policeman called Chauvin was horrible, and perhaps even worse (for it implied something more than mere individual psychopathy) was the fact that three of Chauvin’s colleagues were watching. The picture of the policeman with his knee on the victim’s neck, his hand in his pocket and the look of a triumphant big-game hunter on his face, is not easily forgotten. Chauvin’s defense attorney, I imagine, will not find it easy to say much in extenuation.

But proportion is necessary in all things, especially in anger and outrage. It is easy to indulge in these emotions for their own sake, because they are pleasurable and soon cease to be sincere.

To the citizens of most Western countries, the numbers of people killed by the American police are rather surprising, to say the least, but so are the numbers of police killed.

“I do not think that the rioters are much interested in philosophical subtleties.”

Roughly speaking, a policeman in the United States is about fifty times more likely to be killed than to kill, and this is without taking into consideration that the majority of the killings by the police are at least prima facie justified by self-defense or the interruption or prevention of a serious crime. Let us exclude only half of those killings on these grounds (probably a gross underestimate): This means that a policeman is 100 times more likely to be killed than to kill.

Let us also suppose that the police are killed by black and white in the same proportion as blacks and whites commit homicide in general (again, a generous, that is to say a conservative, assumption). This means that a policeman is about fifteen times more likely to be killed by a black man than to kill a black man, and again this is not to take into account the fact that many of the police killings would be at least prima facie justified.

A black man is about thirty times more likely to be killed by another black man than to be killed by a policeman (and some of the police are themselves black, of course). A white man is only fifteen times more likely to be killed by someone of any race than to be killed by a policeman. Are the police biased against whites?

These figures should not be taken as being accurate to the seventeenth decimal point. They are worked out from official figures but taken from somewhat different dates, varying by a year or two; but this would not alter their rough or fundamental accuracy.

Of course, most people do not bother to look up the statistics, but in some inchoate way they know them to be true. This is shown by the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s famous (or infamous) but honest remark, which he may now regret having made, that when walking down a dark street at night he felt relief that the man walking behind him was white and not black.

None of this alters the individual responsibility of the policeman who must surely have caused the death of George Floyd. (Would the latter have died anyway, even if not under arrest and treated in the way he was treated?) Nor does it alter the responsibility of the accessories before the fact. But it does cast a strange light on the rioters, and even on the peaceful demonstrators, most of whom seem to have expressed little concern, much less moral outrage, at the much more frequent murder of blacks by other blacks, or at the comparatively high rate of the murder of policemen. (The general homicide rate in the U.S. is about five per 100,000, that of policemen fifteen per 100,000.)

Now, it might be argued that an unjustified killing by an agent of the state is far worse than any other kind of killing, so raw statistics do not apply. I can see that this argument has a certain force. On the other hand, the killing of an agent of law and order also has a special seriousness, for it undermines law and order itself. And egalitarians who uphold the sanctity of (or at least the inalienable right to) human life are ill-placed to claim that one killing is worse than another.

I do not think that the rioters were or are much interested in philosophical subtleties, however. But, for the sake of argument, let us exclude those who riot for pleasure and profit, those who merely like the tinkling sound of smashed plate glass and the cheery crackling of flames in department stores while also indulging in a little light looting.

Let us, rather, take those who demonstrated peacefully within the law; surely they were acting in bad faith while preening themselves on their own moral grandeur? They demand “justice” but pronounce guilt before it has been established by a court of law. They have over and over again proved themselves indifferent to killings by the thousands, simply because they were of no political value to them. Their indifference to facts that they must know, at least in outline, is a symptom, I would suggest, of a guilty conscience. They want at all costs to preserve their Manichaean world outlook—we good, they bad—rather than face ambiguous, disconcerting, and intractable reality. Of course, we all have this desire or tendency, but it is one that we should seek to control rather than indulge.

I could not help but recall the famous words written by Alphonse Karr in 1849, Abolissons la peine de mort, mais que messieurs les assassins commencent—“Let us abolish the death penalty, but let Messrs. the murderers begin”—that is to say to go, and kill no more.

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Police Militarization Has Fostered a Culture that Sees Protesters as ‘The Enemy’ – Defense One

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2020

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/06/police-militarization-has-fostered-culture-sees-protesters-enemy/165834/

I served 27 years as a police officer, I have observed this militarization firsthand, and studied how it affects confrontations.

The unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd after being pinned to the ground by the knee of a Minneapolis police officer has left parts of U.S. cities looking like a battle zone.

Night after night, angry protesters have taken to the street. So too have police officers dressed in full riot gear and backed by an arsenal that any small military force would be proud of: armored vehicles, military-grade aircraft, rubber and wooden bullets, stun grenades, sound cannons and tear gas canisters.

The militarization of police departments has been a feature of U.S. domestic law enforcement since the 9/11 attacks. What is clear from the latest round of protest and response, is that despite efforts to promote de-escalation as a policy, police culture appears to be stuck in an “us vs. them” mentality.

As a former police officer of 27 years and a scholar who has written on the policing of marginalized communities, I have observed the militarization of the police firsthand, especially in times of confrontation.

I have seen, throughout my decades in law enforcement, that police culture tends to privilege the use of violent tactics and non-negotiable force over compromise, mediation, and peaceful conflict resolution. It reinforces a general acceptance among officers of the use of any and all means of force available when confronted with real or perceived threats to officers.

We have seen this play out during the first week of protests following Floyd’s death in cities from Seattle to Flint to Washington, D.C.

The police have deployed a militarized response to what they accurately or inaccurately believe to be a threat to public order, private property, and their own safety. It is in part due to a policing culture in which protesters are often perceived as the “enemy.” Indeed teaching cops to think like soldiers and learn how to kill has been part of a training program popular among some police officers.

Police militarization, the process in which law enforcement agencies have increased their arsenal of weapons and equipment to be deployed in an array of situations, began in earnest in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

In the years that followed, domestic law enforcement in the United States began a strategic shift toward tactics and practices that employed militarized responses to even routine police activities.

Much of this was aided by the federal government, through the Defense Logistics Agency’s 1033 Program, which allows the transfer of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, and the Homeland Security Grant Program, which gives police departments funding to buy military-grade weapons and vehicles.

Critics of this process have suggested that the message sent to police through equipping them with military equipment is that they are in fact at war. This to me implies that there needs to be an “enemy.” In cities and, increasingly, suburban and rural areas, the enemy is often those “others” who are perceived to be criminally inclined.

The consequences of this militarized police mentality can be deadly, especially for black Americans.

A study of police-involved deaths between 2012 and 2018 found that on average, police kill 2.8 men every day in the U.S. The risk of death at the hands of an officer was found to be between 3.2 and 3.5 times higher for black men compared to white men.

And there appears to be a correlation between militarization and police violence. A 2017 study analyzed spending by police departments against police-involved fatalities. Summarizing their results in The Washington Post, the authors of the study wrote: “Even controlling for other possible factors in police violence (such as household income, overall and black population, violent-crime levels and drug use), more-militarized law enforcement agencies were associated with more civilians killed each year by police. When a county goes from receiving no military equipment to $2,539,767 worth (the largest figure that went to one agency in our data), more than twice as many civilians are likely to die in that county the following year.”

And it isn’t just individuals who suffer. Behavioral scientist Denise Herd has studied the community effect of police violence. Writing in the Boston University Law Review earlier this year, she concluded that “violent encounters with police produce a strong ripple effect of diminishing the health and well-being of residents who simply live in areas where their neighbors are killed, hurt, or psychologically traumatized.”

The trauma from the video of George Floyd in clear distress while a uniformed officer knelt on his neck is evident in the reaction it has provoked.

The need to address the escalation of police confrontations – both during protests and in individual encounters – was a focus of the last big push for police reform, after the killing of a unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. As with the case of George Floyd, it led to violent scenes in which protesters confronted militarized officers.

Just months after the Ferguson unrest, President Obama set up his Task Force on 21st Century Policing. It recommended the implementation of training and policies that “emphasize de-escalation.” It also called on police to employ tactics during protests “designed to minimize the appearance of a military operation and avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust.”

By the evidence of the last few days, a number of police departments have failed to heed the message.

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Guess What — It’s a Hustle – Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2020

No, this is a hustle, all right, perhaps the most obvious hustle in US history. It’s the Democratic Party’s last stratagem to get the monster of its own creation, Donald Trump, out of the White House.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/guess-what-its-a-hustle/

James Howard Kinstler

Of course, George Floyd didn’t deserve to die with a cop’s knee on his neck and his face mashed into the pavement, but after yesterday’s first of what will be several funerals for the now revered former armed robber and convict, you’d think he was the second coming (and going) of George Washington. Uh, check that… Washington was a slave-owner and, by definition, a racist. Make that Julius Caesar — based on the way that the Rev. Al Sharpton was bellowing at funeral No.1 Thursday in Minneapolis. Say, what? Julius Caesar owned slaves too? How about Abe Lincoln then? Naw, just another white man? And a secret racist (so they say).

Racist, racist racist! America is racist! Racism is systemic! Racism flows in the hallowed blood of the American system, going back all the way to 1619! All white people are racist. Get down on your bellies and crawl like a snake and beg forgiveness for your natural-born, inalienable racism! Anyway, that’s reality according to The New York Times, America’s premier journal of racism studies.

To prove that America is hopelessly racist, the nation has been treated to, what — ? — seven, or is it now eight nights of looting and burning by young black people acting out every racist stereotype from the Ku Klux Klan official manual of racism. The rest of the news media bent over backwards to avoid deploring the mayhem in the streets, rather, to invert the very looting, burning, and rioting as proof positive that America is racist to the bone. Look what you made us do! Steal sneakers and Rolex watches! Shoot cops, including an old retired black cop (uh, my bad) and run over several more cops with cars! Destroy businesses large and small that have been shut down for three months by corona virus to make sure they won’t ever dare to resume their racist trade in things that white people like!

Has anyone detected a hustle in the past week’s dire proceedings? Well, how would you define a hustle? How about: an attempt to gain advantage by deceitful means. What! Are you saying there was something dishonest about the reaction from sea to shining sea to George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis? I am. For example, the massive protest marches. Who exactly was disputing that the death of George Floyd was a miscarriage of justice? Nobody. Did the cops get away with it? No, they’re all getting indicted for murder or being accessories to a murder by standing around watching it and doing nothing to stop it.

No, this is a hustle, all right, perhaps the most obvious hustle in US history. It’s the Democratic Party’s last stratagem to get the monster of its own creation, Donald Trump, out of the White House. RussiaGate didn’t do it (in fact, it’s backfiring rather horribly now), ImpeachmentGate was a dud. Welcome to GeorgeFloydGate! I know it’s hard to imagine at this moment of maximum televised sanctimony, but this gambit is going to flop, too. A lot of voters have probably noticed that the wholesale looting and burning of US cities is not in the national interest. And that the people who do it don’t deserve special favors.

Of course, this is also a moment of maximum collective acute psychosis in America. The nation is pretty badly shook-up after three months of corona virus lockdown.  Millions watched their careers, incomes, businesses, and futures wash down the drain. Upsetting as the killing of George Floyd was, these losses are monumental in comparison. 99 percent of the people in America are scared shitless about where all this economic damage is taking the nation — even as they watch the stock markets go up and up and up. By the way, the past week of looting, burning, and rioting was especially fruitful for Wall Street. D’ya think that might eventually tick off a few taxpayers who understand that the stock-pumping is being accomplished by the Federal Reserve brokering more national debt in their name?

Joe Biden’s campaign has announced that he will headline the next funeral in George Floyd’s hometown of Houston, the place where Mr. Floyd accomplished the home invasion and aggravated robbery of a woman in 2009 that sent him to state prison for five years. (He was turning his life around in Minneapolis where, ten days ago, he suffered a lapse of judgment while high on fentanyl and passed a counterfeit $20 bill in a corner store, leading to his arrest and unjust death.) I’m counting on Joe Biden to raise America’s awareness about systemic racism at that event — if he can remember where he is and what’s going on.

Also on Thursday this week, the Rev. Al Sharpton announced plans for a march on Washington in August, perhaps just before the Democratic convention in Milwaukee for maximum effect. You may be aware that Joe Biden has obliged himself (sort of) to put a woman-of-color on the ticket for vice-president. Though Stacey Abrams, the real governor of Georgia, seems like the inevitable choice, I have a better idea. Wouldn’t it be perfect to bring back Tawana Brawley for this historic role? She figured so decisively in establishing the Rev. Mr. Sharpton’s cred as leader in the long quest for social justice. She’s all growed-up now and ready to rock! Tawana Brawley, America turns its lonely eyes to you! #Tawana Brawley for veep! Spread the news far and wide!

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On Racism – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on June 5, 2020

For decades the FBI has had a department that monitors white supremacists.  The scarcity of white supremacists has encouraged the FBI to create, or to encourage the creation of, such groups, just as the FBI was organizing “terrorist plots” that they could break up in the aftermath of 9/11.  A budget needs a reason.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/06/04/on-racism/

Paul Craig Roberts

If white people are racist, how was Obama twice elected president of the United States?  That such questions do not occur to those shouting “white racism” indicates weak minds, the presence of anti-whites out to make mischief, and people who speak on the basis of an unexamined assumption that has been drilled into their heads.

The unexamined question is: Are white people racist by nature?  Those who say whites are racist by nature simultaneously claim that hundreds of thousands of Lincoln’s soldiers died in order to free black people from slavery and that white people in the North carried on a relentless long war against white people in the South for the benefit of black people.

It is these same racist white people who passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act 56 years ago and permitted the establishment of racial quotas and contract set-asides for blacks that gave blacks rights and privileges that white people do not have.

If white people are so racist, how can it be that many of them are upset about George Floyd’s death from police violence and some joined the protests? Either white people are racist by nature or they aren’t racist by nature.  If whites are not racist by nature, how can it be that the New York Times is leading the rewriting of American history with its 1619 Project that explains the United States as a country founded on the racism of white people?

Such questions do not occur to Anthony DiMaggio who writes for CounterPunch —Revolution, Not Riots—https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/03/revolution-not-riots-prospects-for-radical-transformation-in-the-covid-19-era/ .

DiMaggio repeats the propagandistic mantra that Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis—thank God not Southern—police is another sign of the structural violence against people of color.  So what is police violence against white people?  Are white people murdered and brutalized by police because of their skin color? Is this structural violence against white people?

You think police don’t use violence against white people? How uninformed you are!  In 2017 police shot to death more than twice as many white people as black people. In 2018 police shot to death almost twice as many white people as black people. In 2019 57% more white people than black people were shot to death.   So far in 2020, 35% more white people than black people have been shot to death by police. https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

Neither black nor white people know this for reasons I explain here—https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/06/03/all-races-suffer-from-police-violence/

A multicultural racially diverse society, which the United States has become as a result of illegal immigration and the change in immigration law in 1965, cannot survive if race hatred is a feature of the society.  In the US, white liberals have been teaching black Americans to hate white Americans for decades.  Black people have been indoctrinated into believing that every unpleasant feature of their existance is due to white racism. In many white people, this indoctrination has engendered guilt that causes them to excuse and make excuses for black violence. The effect over time is to make blacks more angry and whites less willing to resist violent acts of anger and to blame themselves instead. The survival of such a society is problematical. Watching Washingon foment conflict with more unified societies, such as Russia and China, is scary.

None of those screaming racism are interested in stopping police violence. Police violence against members of the public is a product of police training, not of racism.  Those screaming racism don’t want the violence corrected by reforming the way police are trained. They want the violence to continue as it is useful for their agenda of using white racism to create white guilt and black anger. This is the way to revolution. In Marxism, there was only class warfare between workers and capitalist—the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie—but in Cultural Marxism or Identity Politics there is racial oppresson, gender oppression, homosexual oppression, and oppression against the disabled and elderly.  All of these oppressed people become alienated from society and potential supporters for revolution.

However, Cultural Marxism could also brew counterrevolution. Some whites might see where this is heading and the realization could create opposition to the attack on white people. Some regard Trump’s election as president as an indication that white Americans realize that they have been abandoned by the Democrat Party. Unless you are a well-to-do white liberal on the east or west coasts, the Democrat Party has written you off.  White people, including the working class that formerly was represented by the Democrat Party, have been defined by Hillary Clinton as  “the Trump deplorables.” Whites are already second-class citizens, especially if they are straight males, and they are being set up for worse to come. Politicians, except for Trump, are too scared of media attacks to confront the propaganda with the truth.

Of course there are racists, but the assumption that these animosities exist only between skin colors is problematic. In modern times the most extreme manifestitions of racial violence are tribal between blacks themselves, such as the Rwandan genocide, the mass slaughter of Tutsi by the Hutu.

Indeed, the black slave trade is the product of blacks themselves and has its origin in 1600 in the slave wars fought by the black Kingdom of Dahomey.  Dahomey’s use of black slaves for economic production predates the cotton planations in the US south. One would think that these well known and totally documented facts would be a part of black studies in universities, but such facts are unacceptable to the ruling ideology. Karl Polanyi’s history of Dahomey and the Slave Trade has simply disappeared. It is as if it never was written.  It has gone down Big Brother’s Memory Hole even before the digital revolution created Big Brother.

Whites, of course, have committed far more violence against one another than they have against people of color. Think of the war of the American north against the South, of all the wars between Europeans, the two wars between the US and Great Britain, capped off by World War I and World War II. White people have killed far more white people than people of color.

Even white language is said to be racist. The banned n-word is said to be symbolic of white racism. But every white ethnicity has been called names that are slurs— dago, polack, frog, limey. The Irish are bog-trotters.There is a range of slurs for Germans—kraut, boche, hun. Blacks have plenty of pejorative names for whites. For example, “Miss Ann” or “Ann” is a derisive reference to white women and to any black woman who is regarded as acting as if she is white. Blacks also use pejoratives for blacks. An oreo is a black person who is regarded as acting like a white person.  Aunt Jemima is a black woman who is friendly to, or kisses up to, white people. A black man who does the same is Uncle Tom. American whites have pejoratives for one another—cracker, hillbilly, redneck.  People in the south of England call those in the north northern monkeys. There are pejoratives for every ethnicity.  Jews call gentiles goy. Latin Americans call North Americans gringo. Ukrainians call Russians moskals. If slurs are an indication of racism, then the entire population of the world is racist.

For decades the FBI has had a department that monitors white supremacists.  The scarcity of white supremacists has encouraged the FBI to create, or to encourage the creation of, such groups, just as the FBI was organizing “terrorist plots” that they could break up in the aftermath of 9/11.  A budget needs a reason.

Where do we see evidence of white supremacists? Are statues of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan being pulled down? Is the Lincoln Memorial covered in graffiti?  Are white supremacists rewriting American history in the universities and at the New York Times? Where are their magazines and newspapers? Who are their representatives in government and media? What is the power of such an invisible group?

In contrast, Antifa is a terrorist organization associated with organized violence. Yet it is white supremacists who are being blamed for the pre-delivery of convenient stockpiles of bricks in the protest areas of the cities where blacks are protesting George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police. How did white supremacists know which cities and which locations in the cities protests would take place?  When the point is to blame white people such questions do not matter to those doing the blaming.

But the questions do matter to a racially diverse multicultural society.  Such a society cannot survive the cultivation of racial enmity. When the goal is revolution, not reform, racial enmity is the weapon.

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Ann Coulter: On the Other Hand, There’s Rodney King…

Posted by M. C. on June 4, 2020

It turns out, for example, Floyd didn’t die of asphyxiation according to the medical examiner. According to the Hennepin County medical examiner’s report cited in the criminal complaint charging Officer Derek Chauvin with murder, he died of a heart attack. The autopsy also found Floyd had fentanyl in his system, had recently used methamphetamine, had coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease.

Maybe…but who does the medical examiner work for?

When chunks of video are missing it should make one wonder. Will they magically show up later?

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/03/ann-coulter-on-the-other-hand-theres-rodney-king/

Why is this case the one inciting mass protests? Ninety-nine percent of the country is denouncing the Minneapolis police in the most damnable terms possible over the death of George Floyd. The 99 percent are demanding that the 1 percent “hear their voices”?

The arrest certainly looks awful. Everything is going along relatively peacefully as Floyd is walked to a police van, then there’s some commotion out of sight of the camera –- and suddenly you see Floyd pinned to the ground, an officer’s knee on his neck. How did that happen?

One reason some of us are waiting for all the facts is that we suspect the media may not be extra scrupulous in cases that give them the opportunity to wail about “systemic racism.”

It turns out, for example, Floyd didn’t die of asphyxiation according to the medical examiner. According to the Hennepin County medical examiner’s report cited in the criminal complaint charging Officer Derek Chauvin with murder, he died of a heart attack. The autopsy also found Floyd had fentanyl in his system, had recently used methamphetamine, had coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease.

According to Nexis, these official autopsy findings have not been reported at all on MSNBC and only briefly — to be explained away — on CNN. (The family’s private autopsy concluding Floyd’s death was caused by strangulation has been widely reported.)

There also hasn’t been loads of reporting on Floyd’s five years in prison for armed robbery. I know the guy has just died, and he seemed to have turned his life around, but the media isn’t holding a memorial service. They’re supposed to be reporting news. How about an interview with Floyd’s victims? Wouldn’t that be a newsy segment?

Again, according to Nexis, Floyd’s armed robbery conviction has been fleetingly mentioned only once on ABC News and once on Fox News.

The other reason some of us are waiting for all the facts can be summed up with two words: Rodney King.

That arrest looked pretty bad, too. The jury forewoman on the first trial said that when she saw the King video on television, “I was revulsed. … I thought they were hitting that poor man too hard and too long.”

But at the trial a year later, she got to see the 13 seconds of video that had been deliberately edited out by the media: the 6-foot-4, 240-pound King rising like a phoenix and charging at one of the officers.

The video that played on an endless loop on TV showed only the tail end of the encounter, when officers were whacking King with their batons.

In fact, however, the beating was the officers’ last resort for subduing King, who’d just led them on a high-speed car chase, at times reaching speeds of up to 115 mph, drawing several police cars and a police helicopter.

Once stopped, King’s two (black) passengers exited the car and got on the ground, as instructed. They went home without a scratch that night.

But King leapt out and began dancing and babbling, crouching, kneeling, laughing and waving to the police helicopter overhead. Both the officers and King’s passengers believed he was high on angel dust.

The senior officer, Sgt. Stacey Koon, ordered the officers to back away and holster their guns. He didn’t want to risk a fatal encounter.

Four officers tried swarming King — he threw them off his back like rag dolls. A dart from a Taser gun did nothing. Then another — also nothing. King lunged at an officer and got hit with a baton, but kept on raging. The police were running out of options that would allow everyone to stay alive.

That’s when three officers began hitting King with their metal batons, under the supervision of Sgt. Koon. If King moved, they whacked him. Finally, they managed to double-cuff him — the procedure for suspects on PCP — and put him in an ambulance to the hospital.

When Sgt. Koon first heard that the arrest had been captured on video, he was ecstatic. “This is great!” he said. “They got it on tape! Now we’ll have a live, in-the-field film to show police recruits. It can be a real-life example of how to use escalating force properly.”

Not only the jurors, but nearly everyone who saw the first trial ended up supporting the acquittal, including Roger Parloff, a liberal legal reporter who sat through most of the trial for the American Lawyer, and Lou Cannon, who covered it for the Washington Post. The renowned (black) economist Walter Williams was shocked by “the news media’s dereliction and deception” in their editing of the tape.

All this is detailed in my book Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama, but at the time, the public knew none of it, thanks to our activist media.

The endlessly played Rodney King video hid the same part of Floyd’s arrest that’s being withheld today. Doesn’t anyone else wonder how Floyd ended up on the ground? Where are those videos?

Nah, it’s much easier — and cost-free! — to Speak Truth to the 1 percent.

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