THE UNITED STATES IN CRISIS: THE POLITICS OF RACISM AND THE COMING STORM

Friday, 26 June 2020

THE UNITED STATES IN CRISIS: THE POLITICS OF RACISM AND THE COMING STORM

Written by Cato exclusively for SouthFront

After reading The Saker’s post “The systematic collapse of the US society has begun”, and watching the accelerating social and political disintegration of the United States, I decided to take a look at the origins of this current phenomenon, differentiate between the two opposing factions that have been slowly metastasizing before our eyes over the past two decades and to gauge the likely outcomes of the inevitable conflict that is coming. The mainstream media would have us all believe that the violence and lawlessness that we are seeing on the streets of U.S. cities is due to a popular uprising against systemic, institutionalized racism that permeates every aspect of U.S. life.

The Democratic party and every pop culture figure, athlete, and entertainer that can be put in front of the camera has parroted this idea. Huge corporations have voiced support for “social justice” organizations like of Black Lives Matter. More importantly, they have “donated” hundreds of millions of dollars to such organizations. Seemingly, all of these forces spontaneously allied themselves in response to the police brutality that resulted in the death of yet another innocent, angelic black man on the streets of Minneapolis. This is what you call crafting a narrative.

On the other side of the social, cultural and political divide are those that do not accept the argument that the United States is systemically racist, and do not accept that physical violence, vandalism and theft is an appropriate answer to the perceived injustices put forward by the other side. This side not only rejects the notion that racism is a massive problem that is still the glue that holds together our social and political lives, but also rejects the identity politics that are increasingly peddled by the left. They also see law and order as essential to maintaining a just and functional society. Largely reactionary to the growing political power and social impact of the racism-is-everywhere crowd, they do not enjoy the economic, political and media power wielded by their opponents. They lack the bully pulpit and the war chest of the left. Although lacking the media coverage, this represents the majority of the population.

The Democratic Party’s Old Strategy: Identity Politics

The Democratic Party has always used identity politics to advance the aims of the party. They are masters at it and have engaged in it for over 150 years. A short history lesson would reveal that it was the Democratic Party that supported the institution of slavery in the United States, supported segregation and the Jim Crow laws that ensured that African Americans were second class citizens in a nation that had lost over a half a million lives in a war that resulted in slavery’s demise (at least in the United States).

The Klu Klux Klan was established by Democrats to aid it in enforcing the party’s racist policies, by terrorizing and brutalizing blacks and their white allies for decades. At the height of the party’s policies of racism and segregation, the KKK membership in the country stood at approximately 4 million. Let it not be forgotten that many U.S. Senators and Representatives were former high-ranking members of the KKK. They were all Democrats. Abraham Lincoln; however, who emancipated the slaves, was a Republican. Woodrow Wilson, the supposed “progressive” Democrat, re-segregated the U.S. Armed Forces during his administration. Franklin Roosevelt, another Democrat, interned Japanese Americans in concentration camps during the Second World War.

How does the Democratic Party hide this history of leveraging racism to advance their aims and to maintain their hold on power? By creating the great myth of the “strategic flip”. They have peddled the myth that the Republican party decided to steal their mantel of racism to win support in the southern states. So, we are to believe that the Democrat and Republican parties decided to do a mutual 180 degree turn on racism and segregation just before the height of the civil rights movement in the country?

If this were true, how come most of the politicians who fought against the civil rights movement in the south and resisted the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 were Democrats? The governors and mayors using fire hoses, police dogs and batons on black and white civil rights protesters were largely not Republicans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a strategic political play by the Democrats. Realizing that the majority of the nation would no longer tolerate their racist policies of the past, the Democrats decided that they would not only go with the turning political tide, but would actually take credit for it. President Lyndon Banes Johnson famously stated that, “I’ll have these n*ggers voting Democrat for the next two hundred years.” It is forgotten that a higher percentage of Republicans (81.8%) voted in support of the bill than did Democrats (68.6%). Two of the Democrat senators that fought against the bill and voted “Nay” were Robert Byrd and Al Gore Sr. Yes, the same Robert Byrd who was a former KKK Grand Wizard and who was glowingly eulogized by the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama upon his death in 2010. And yes, Vice President Al Gore’s father voted in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Academia and the left-aligned media have propagated the strategic flip lie for decades, and most U.S. citizens are too lazy or occupied to investigate their own nation’s history. Apparently, playing video games, watching Tik Tok videos and looting Nike shoes while “protesting” is more important that educated yourself about U.S. history.

Is it any surprise that now that they have no policy initiative other than defeat Trump at all costs, that the Democratic party would align itself with the most radical voices decrying that racism is the underlying cause for all of the challenges we face as a nation? They are embracing the tried and true strategy of identity politics once again. Why? Because it works.

Out with the KKK, In with BLM and Antifa

Perhaps one of the most telling signs of the abandonment of anti-black racism in the U.S. is the current state of the old thugs of the Democrat party. The membership of the KKK in America is estimated today at approximately 3,000 members. The population of the nation stands at roughly 325 million people. It would be a gross understatement to say that the KKK holds any relevance at all today, yet its meteoric fall can be extrapolated to illustrate the equally dramatic fall in support for the racist ideas it espoused.

Now that the political left in the U.S. have put forward and fully invested in the same old racism ploy, what identity will now be labeled as the cause of all our ills? Who will be the new scapegoat, the new pariah, the new Juden? Apparently, now it is the “white” peoples turn, and any institution that can be perceived as aiding the white race in its hold on power of course, namely the police. Not just the handful of bad cops on any department. No half-measures this time. All cops are evil supporters of the white power structure we are told.

It is apparently irrelevant to the left that all of the major cities that have experienced high rates of violent crime (mostly committed by young black males against young black male victims) have all been controlled by Democrats for decades. Minneapolis for example has a Democrat mayor. The chief of police is black. The Attorney General of the state is a black man, Keith Ellison. Yes, the same guy that was once in the running to head the DNC and was caught up in a domestic abuse scandal. The same Keith Ellison who espoused the radical racist idea that African Americans should take over a few U.S. states by force and create a separate country only for blacks. He wrote many of his radical ideas in a student newspaper column while attending Minnesota Law School. Minneapolis is just one example. Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis all have political and police leadership that are either Democrats, African Americans, or both. But I thought that white people, especially conservative or Republican voting white people, were the problem?

The political left has decided that all those of the Caucasian race will now fill the void of the once vilified Negro. But who will be the force out on the streets terrorizing neighborhoods, ambushing police, assaulting people, destroying property, vandalizing government buildings and historical landmarks? The KKK just won’t do these days. Americans in an overwhelming majority rejected them and their racist beliefs long ago. Their membership is almost irrelevant as far as boots on the ground are concerned, not to mention they do not possess a war-chest of hundreds of millions of dollars. Who do the Democrats use to leverage their political aims with violence, coercion, and intimidation?

The answer to this question should be quite clear. All you have to do is follow the money and the positive media coverage. The media has been falling all over themselves to exalt the virtuous ranks on Antifa since this openly communist organization first started its “resistance” to Trump’s administration. They have even been compared to the brave American soldiers that stormed the beaches of Normandy to hep liberate Europe from Fascism. Millions of dollars have been funneled to Antifa groups via NGOs over the past three years. U.S. Antifa groups have even travelled to conflict zones in the Middle East to acquire military training with paramilitary groups that espouse socialist or communist ideologies. The symbolism of burning a black church to the ground in the 1960s has been replaced by that of a police station or a corporate retail store being burned to the ground in 2020.

A lot of Americans have rejected the positive spin afforded to Antifa and are aware of the Marxist ideology and violent tactics embraced by the movement. They may even know that Antifa’s origins as the street thugs of the Communist Party of Germany in the Weimar Republic are well documented by history. For this reason, Antifa alone cannot advance the aims of the Democratic party (and more importantly the Deep State) in its quest to regain control of every aspect of political and social life in the United States. Another, more palatable, yet no less radical organization needed to be brought to bear. Blacks Lives Matter fits this bill perfectly.

The mythology behind Black Lives Matter (BLM) is that it was created at the grass roots level, as the result of a spontaneous tide in public opinion that rose in opposition to the illegitimate, indefensible murder by white police or white citizens of unarmed African American children. The killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson Missouri and the killing of Travon Martin by an armed citizen are two examples of such incidents that supposed lead to the establishment of BLM. It is always a tragedy for family and friends that lose loved ones, and this is true in the case of both of these young men; however, a massive amount of disinformation was pushed by the mainstream media that tried to portray the black “children” as totally innocent, angelic figures. This was demonstrably false in retrospect. Michael brown never put his hands up and implore “don’t shoot”. He in fact assaulted a police officer and tried to wrestle his firearm away from him when shot. Travon Martin was shot when he physically assaulted a citizen who happened to be armed. Michael Brown was a 6’4”, 292 lb., 18-year-old adult upon his death, while Travon Martin was one year away from legal adulthood at 17 and was just under 6ft. tall. Neither remotely resembled the cherubic photos presented at nauseum by the media.

Enter BLM. The “trained Marxist” founders of this “civil rights” organization (those are the admissions of co-founder Patrisse Cullors not my words) appeared on the scene in the wake of a small number of propagandized incidents of young black males being shot and killed by non-blacks. Almost immediately, leftist NGOs, celebrities and corporations donated millions of dollars to promote social justice as envisioned by BLM. A quick read of the BLM mission statement reads as if it was written by the DNC in regard to a host of other political and social justice issues. Maybe this is why BLM supports Democratic candidates in elections and donations to BLM are handled through ActBlue, which also handles donations to the DNC and its candidates. It would be interesting to see a financial audit of BLM in light of these obvious connections. A number of conservative and libertarian media outlets jumped at the ActBlue connection yet miss the deeper connection between BLM and the Democracy Alliance.

Politico (surprisingly) reported in November of 2016, that the Democracy Alliance (DA) had been involved in secretive meetings with BLM and a number of other similar minded activist groups. The Democracy Alliance aims to start another “Color Revolution”, but this time in the United States. A cabal of super wealthy leftists including George Soros, Tom Steyer, Paul Egerman, and Rob McKay amongst many others, the DA aims to support and encourage a leftist political and cultural revolution. The article goes on to state:

“The DA, as the club is known in Democratic circles, is recommending its donors step up check writing to a handful of endorsed groups that have supported the Black Lives Matter movement. And the club and some of its members also are considering ways to funnel support directly to scrappier local groups that have utilized confrontational tactics to inject their grievances into the political debate.

Movements that are challenging the status quo and that do so to some extent by using direct action or disruptive tactics are meant to make people uncomfortable, so I’m sure we have partners who would be made uncomfortable by it or think that that’s not a good tactic,” said DA President Gara LaMarche. “But we have a wide range of human beings and different temperaments and approaches in the DA, so it’s quite possible that there are people who are a little concerned, as well as people who are curious or are supportive. This is a chance for them to meet some of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, and understand the movement better, and then we’ll take stock of that and see where it might lead.”

As BLM gains in power and influence it has become more like a political party or political power broker, and one that does not shy away from encouraging acts of violence and lawlessness, nor efforts to destroy anyone that voices any disagreement with their views. These views are almost always in line with the official DNC platform. As recently as June 19^th, co-founder Patrisse Cullors also voiced the intention of the group to “get Trump out of office” during an interview on CNN. Anyone that challenges BLM is labeled a racist or white supremacist and is publicly shamed.

Corporations like Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group, and Comcast gave donations of $100 million each to social justice organizations like BLM just this month. I mean, we all know how underrepresented blacks are in the music industry. Apparently, the U.S. music industry had decided that promoting gangster culture, violence, drug use, and objectification of women for decades in rap music hasn’t been quite destructive enough in perverting black culture in America. They needed to do more by donating millions to organizations that literally burn, pillage and loot in poor black communities as well.

To summarize, what we are hearing from the mainstream media, Hollywood celebrities, Antifa and BLM who both admittedly embrace and espouse Marxist political ideology, are the same views put forward by the Democratic Party. They are all doing their part to remove Donald Trump from office by any means necessary. To them, the end justifies the means. This is literally the ideology embraced by modern terrorism. Regrettably, the left in the U.S. seems to have only the unifying principles that aim to destroy or dismantle. The DNC is running on the platform “Remove Trump”. That is, it. They will use any allies that share this aim, even leveraging racial division, violence and lawlessness in their pursuit to remove a duly elected president and to regain a monopoly on power.

The Disorganized Opposition

I have to state that I have never been a fan or supporter of Donald Trump. No one should be surprised that he is a loudmouth, a narcissistic egomaniac, and a self-promoter. He always has been. I did not vote for him, although I do believe that his presidency has been immensely transformative. How? Because it has removed the veil of legitimacy from the entire U.S. political system, and the democratic processes that are supposed to secure our constitutional republic. The Deep State and all its political, corporate and media allies were forced to unmask themselves. All Americans should now realize that they have been lied to for decades by every major institution that they are supposed to trust. Let’s face it, we have little to no influence over the political process at all. Trump’s election was an outlier, not the norm.

I truly believe that the overwhelming majority of all Americans want nothing to do with the progressive left agenda, nor do they believe that the country is irredeemably racist. Most Americans of all races get along with one another just fine on a daily basis, and do not harbor any animosity against other racial groups based on a belief in the inferiority of any other race. Most also understand that there have been instances of police brutality over the past two decades, yet they also understand that such instances are uncommon, and the statistics do not support the assertions that blacks are disproportionately represented in these cases. Assertions to the contrary are simply not factual and are only used to advance an agenda of division.

Regrettably, the silent majority is being silent once again. So, who has decided to step up and voice a dissenting opinion to counterbalance the leftist narrative and the acts of wanton destruction? Although very disjointed and disorganized, many dissenting voices have appeared, and many have been silenced and destroyed by the leftist mob and their allies in big tech and the media. If you so much as question the validity of any aspect of the narrative, you are labeled a racist, a white supremacist, or an Uncle Tom (if you happen to be black). People are losing their ability to speak, as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube electronically gag them. They are losing their good reputations, and their peaceful lives by the woke mob that destroys them on social media. And they are increasingly also losing their jobs and livelihoods for the crime of dissenting from a delusory and untrue narrative. Who has stepped forward to stand up for these people?

Alternative or non-mainstream media is on the frontlines of speaking out against the false narrative and calling for law and order to be restored in so many of the cities that have been racked by riots, violence and looting. As far as mass media is concerned, only Fox News seems to have broken from the establishment media that is totally committed to peddling the narrative; however, it must be noted that only host Tucker Carlson is really putting himself out there and honestly and candidly speaking his mind. God only knows how long the establishment, including Fox News, will tolerate this. I can see Fox jettisoning Tucker as soon as the outcry from the left becomes too uncomfortable for them to bear.

Some members of the Republican party have voiced opposition to the looting, violence and vandalism that have taken place over the past few weeks, but when push came to shove, most acquiesced to the mob by not calling out as the false the very foundation of their narrative, that the country is permeated and built upon systemic, all-encompassing racism at every level. This fantasy can be easily disproven by any reasoning, logically thinking person. So why have they “taken the knee”? The answer is pretty obvious to any critically thinking person from any generation not completely brainwashed by an academia totally saturated with leftist ideology. The Republican party is largely just a foil for the Democrats to provide the illusion of choice. At the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of Republicans in high office are as corrupt as their political “opponents” in the Democrat party. The days of principled Republicans standing up for constitutional law, limited government, civil rights and desegregation are long gone. Those men and women are long dead and buried and any monuments to them are due to be defaced and removed in short order.

The more voices that question the narrative being pushed, the greater the censorship. It has gotten to the point that big tech’s excuses and explanations for canceling people on their platforms have become utterly meaningless. Their blatant hypocrisy and obvious leftist politics are now staring us all in the face. They are now, digitally burning books and movies, and chastising and shaming dissenters in the public square. This is not limited to those with conservative or right-wing views. All of these labels are quite meaningless anyway, as the left took over the terminology years ago. Any student of Noam Chomsky could tell you that first, totalitarians manipulate language to advance their goals and to label their enemies.

A Rising Tide of Discontent

I happen to believe that my friend The Saker holds out hope that the people of the United States will resist the lunacy and not succumb to the call to violence that would mean a civil war in this country. I am very much on the fence as to whether or not a second civil war is inevitable at this point. History reveals a very powerful country that became an empire, and in doing so, lost its way and its national identity. Corruption has permeated every political institution in this nation and has resulted in a welfare state dependent upon war, debt and theft. Only a tiny minority of oligarchs and their henchmen benefit at the expense of the majority. This is always the case with empires, which leads to their inevitable collapse. History presents us with no exceptions.

Only when this nation’s government returns to a path of non-intervention (both international and domestic in scope) will it be able to reclaim the better aspects of its heritage. Only when a government that abides by the Constitution as it was written, can it hope to ever aspire to be a government of the people, for the people and by the people. This can never be accomplished by giving government greater power (nationalism, socialism, communism), but only by taking power away from the government and distributing it to the people at a local level. The framers of the U.S. Constitution wrestled with this very understanding for over two years (1787-1789) in attempting to form a government.

The Saker surmises that the U.S. has two likely roads ahead, either balkanization or a general collapse akin to that of the Soviet Union. I happen to believe that balkanization is inevitable at this point, and that an eventual rebuilding and complete unification after a Soviet style collapse is highly unlikely. There are numerous historic and cultural ties that bound the Soviet Union together and continue to bind the various republics of the Russian Federation together. Almost a thousand years of shared experience make all the difference. The United States by contrast was born of shared classical liberal ideals. The American Revolutionary War was actually more akin to a civil war between the colonies and the British Empire and was a very close-run thing. The Continental Army was close to defeat a number of times. It spanned eight years, and only approximately 3% of the population actively fought for the cause of independence. It is true that ideals are powerful, but what happens when a sizeable portion of the people no longer embrace these ideals, but when they actually despise them? Such a state of being is untenable for very long.

To be continued in Part II…