Tag Archives: white supremacy

national news

Ignorance is no excuse

Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to feign ignorance about notorious and infamous political characters offends anyone with half a noodle in their noggin who knows a blatant lie when they hear it.

Trump is lying once again, I believe with all my soul, when he professes to “not know Nick Fuentes” — the avowed white supremacist, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier.

It reminds me of how Trump claimed to “not know a thing” about David Duke, the nationally known Ku Klux Klan grand dragon who endorsed Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2016.

He lied then, too.

Or when he equated Klansmen and Nazis with counterprotester in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. Remember when he told of “good people, on both sides” of that bloody riot? There are no “good” Klansmen or Nazis — period!

Fuentes broke bread with Trump and Kanye West, the rapper who’s also spoken ill of Jewish people, the other day in Mar-a-Lago, Fla. This latest example of Trump playing only to his racist base of supporters provides without question a hideous example of this individual’s unfitness for public office.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Silence is instructive

A gunman opened fire in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket, killing 10 people and injuring three others.

The condemnation of the shooter’s actions has come almost exclusively, or so it appears, from the left, from the liberal side of the political divide.

I am waiting — with decreasing patience — to hear something from the right wing, from the conservative wing of the great divide. It’s not coming. At least not within my earshot.

What the … ?

I am at this moment shuddering at the thought that thoughtful, conservative Americans have elected politicians who — for whatever reason — are afraid to speak out against the hateful actions of the individual who drove to Buffalo, staked out the supermarket and then opened fire. A white guy shot 10 Black people to death in a fit of rage over something called “replacement theory.”

Someone will have to assure me that these pols’ silence doesn’t equate tacit or even overt support of what took place.

I am waiting.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

U.N. envoy tells the hard, depressing truth

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield had the temerity to tell a truth that few of us want to hear, but which we all need to hear.

CBS News put this out on Twitter: Amb. Thomas-Greenfield said this week “the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents.” She tells @margbrennan “Our country is not perfect, but we continue to perfect it. Those imperfections are part of our history, we have to talk about them.”

Let’s understand a couple of things.

Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield is an African-American with extensive diplomatic experience. She’s not flaming fanatic, a novice.

The second point is this: The founders did not get rid of slavery. Many of them were slave owners themselves. They kept black Americans as property. The Constitution did not even recognize specifically that black Americans were entitled to the full rights of citizenship, even though they wrote that “all men are created equal.”

Dichotomy, anyone?

By almost any objective analysis you can use, you can determine that the founders implied that white men — the only Americans who could vote at the founding of the republic — were, uh, superior to anyone else.

Yet the U.N. envoy is getting plenty of blowback. I ask … why? She spoke — to borrow a phrase — an “inconvenient truth.”

national news

GOP primary voters finally exhibit some sanity

Just about the time I am ready to give up on the Republican Party, believing it has gone totally bananas, berserk and bonkers, voters in a rural western Iowa congressional district tell me there’s reason to hope for sanity within the once-great political party.

U.S. Rep. Steve King, the GOP lunatic who has been stripped of his committee assignments over his blatantly racist rhetoric, had his head handed to him Tuesday in the state’s Republican primary.

He won’t be returning to Congress next January … to which I say “hooray!”

I shouldn’t as a rule be concerned about a wacky congressman from Iowa, except that he votes on laws that affect the entire country. So when Iowa sends a nincompoop such as King to Congress, it becomes all Americans’ concern.

This is the idiot who said that he cannot understand why the term “white supremacist” has derived a negative connotation. Huh? Eh? Yep. He said it.

He also has talked about illegal immigrants hauling drugs across the border from Mexico with such frequency that they develop “thighs the size of cantaloupes.”

King has been a proud member of the Birther Brigade, questioning whether former Barack Obama — the nation’s first black president — was constitutionally qualified to run for president, alleging he was born in Kenya and not in Hawaii, the nation’s 50th state.

So, Steve King — who lost his congressional committee assignments when he made the “white supremacy” crack — is now a lame duck.

If only he could be silenced. He cannot. The Constitution grants even wackos the right to speak freely. At least, though, he soon will be stripped of his authority to enact federal law.

Good riddance, Mr. White Supremacist.

Donald Trump

Trump ‘is not a white supremacist’

1 Comment

Donald Trump deserves criticism for his tepid response to incidents involving white racists, bigots, nationalists, supremacists.

I am going to agree with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, though, when he defends the president by saying he “is not a white supremacist.”

Mulvaney made a talk-show appearance Sunday in which he defended the president’s speeches calling for religious liberty and individual liberty. He said also that Trump does not subscribe to the white supremacy doctrine.

I believe Mulvaney.

My wish is for the president to declare categorically, unequivocally and without an ounce of reservation that acts such as the horrific massacre in New Zealand the other day must be condemned with full-throated passion.

Trump doesn’t do that. He is unable or perhaps unwilling to speak to Americans about the evil of such acts. The president hasn’t yet found it within himself to declare open warfare against those who hate other human beings on racial, ethnic or religious grounds.

I want the president to say those things. He needs to speak to us candidly, frankly and with passion.

I do not believe he is a white supremacist, as Mulvaney has declared. However, he needs to demonstrate his willingness to condemn the actions of those groups that have cheered his election as president of the United States.

national news, political news

‘Alt-right’ becomes part of the political lexicon

trump-alt-right-supporter

What we used to call “white nationalism” now has a new name.

It’s called “alt-right.”

We all began hearing this term kicked around a few weeks ago. Its use is most commonly heard among progressive politicians, journalists, online news services. It’s being used to define the politics being championed these days by Republican Party presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

I sincerely doubt we’ll hear right-wing pols and pundits toss this term around.

The term jarred me when I first heard it. It sounded oddly foreign — which is a bit of an ironic feeling, when you think about it.

I’m not yet sure if I’m going to adopt the term for regular use on this blog.

The bit of research of I’ve done on this term has revealed that it doesn’t define an ideology per se. It’s become something of a euphemism to describe those who adhere to white nationalism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, nativism.

It’s an umbrella term meant to include a multitude of, um, ideas … I reckon.

I’ll likely stick with the real deal.

If I hear someone utter an anti-Semitic epithet, or suggest that immigrants are spoiling the “American culture,” or that white folks are superior to people of other races, I’ll call it what it is.

I’m wondering, though, if those on the right are going to come up with a name for the more progressive politicians and pundits out there.

Does “alt-left” do anything for you?

If so, what principles or policy statements do you suppose it would include?

national news, political news, Uncategorized

David Duke enters Senate contest

Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and former neo-Nazi David Duke, who is running for governor in Louisiana, is shown, Oct. 25, 1991. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

David Duke occupies a unique place in contemporary political culture.

He’s a fringe candidate for public office who somehow seems to garner publicity he doesn’t deserve.

So … here goes.

The former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard is going to run for a U.S. Senate seat from Louisiana. He’s been on people’s political radar for a long time, dating back to when he served in the Louisiana state legislature. I remember covering his unsuccessful campaign for governor back in the early 1990s.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/07/22/former-kkk-leader-david-duke-citing-trump-announces-senate-bid/

But here’s the kicker: He has emerged as a strong backer of Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who he says is speaking to the very issues that Duke has raised for years.

Duke is a champion of what he calls “European rights,” which is code for white people’s rights … as if white folks have been denied any rights since the founding of the republic.

As for his Klan affiliation, well, I have no compelling need to revisit the Klan’s bloody and disgraceful history. You know what it means.

Let’s remember too that Trump was remarkably slow to disavow Duke’s “endorsement” of his candidacy earlier this year. Trump said something about not knowing anything about white supremacist groups and didn’t even know who David Duke is — which likely makes him the only human being in America who is ignorant of Duke’s history.

To this very day, Trump has yet to issue anything close to a condemnation of the Ku Klux Klan, or its membership — be they current or former.

Will the ex-Klansman make it to the U.S. Senate? Well, he’s one of several candidates running for the seat that’s being vacated by Republican David Vitter.

My guess is that Duke won’t make the cut.

But he’ll continue to have people talking about him.