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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December
6, 2020

Jim
Crow Joe

Biden’s Record
On Race

by Jack
Delaney

Photograph
Source: Chuck Kennedy – CC
BY 2.0

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

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

Delaware’s Dixiecrat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Jim Crow Joe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Late Senate and Obama Years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On The Campaign Trail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biden’s “Tranquilizing
Drug Of Gradualism”

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

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

The warnings issued by X and King
ring true today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John
McEvoy
   
6th
August 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cleansing
history

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

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

Featured image
via 
WikiMedia
– Gregory Varnum

Get
involved

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

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

Zie ook: ‘VS geweldcultuur gevaar voor iedereen

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

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

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

Schermafbeelding 2017-08-16 om 07.37.16

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

Afbeeldingsresultaat voor photos of the riots in charlottesville

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

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

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

August
18, 2017 at 8:11 am

Written
by 
Anti-Media
News Desk

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

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

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

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

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

Statues
Torn Down

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

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

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

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

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

Public
Revulsion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Government
Crackdown

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

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

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

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

Boost
to the Left

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

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

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

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

Trump’s
Legacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zie
ook: 

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

Among
the Racists

(met mogelijkheid tot vertaling)

Neonazi
terreuraanslag in VS, westerse media spreken ‘op hun best’ over ‘een
daad van agressie……’

Charlottesville:
Trump haalt antifascisten toch onderuit………

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


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