By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
Many Republicans and conservatives do not seem to know, or appear to not have the faintest clue, as to what is a racially insulting and dehumanizing image. At least they feign ignorance. It is the same ignorance that was used to claim that there was nothing wrong with usage of the “Black Sambo” or “Chinaman” images of a generation ago. It is the same ignorance that was used to claim there was nothing wrong with using a Mexican bandit — the “Frito Bandito” — to sell Frito Lay’s corn chips. And then came the 1960s.

These people that feign ignorance nowadays always seem to work for political campaigns. Unless the topic is sports mascots. For example, the 1960s bypassed the Washington Redskins and Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians. The dehumanization of American Indians, particularly in the sports universe, has been normalized.

That aside, the rest of these operatives seem to work on political campaigns. But they are not ignorant; they know precisely how to tap into deep-seeded fears and how to stir up profound hate.

The 1988 Willie Horton ad by the Bush I campaign is always cited as a prime example of what campaigns are willing to do to scare the electorate: associate Blacks with crimes. Fast forward to 2010 and fear [and hate] of brown people has also become acceptable and normalized. Nevada Senate hopeful Sharron Angle’s campaign has exploited images of Mexicans coming across the border. However, her explanation is that they actually may be Asian. She made that explanation in front of little children, mostly Mexican, telling them that they too looked Asian.

Across the country, “illegal aliens” have become this year’s election year political piñatas, particularly for those on, though not limited to, the extreme political right wing. This year, a campaign is not complete without an ad of invading brown hordes. Fear [and hate] works in any part of the country.

If one were to substitute the words illegal aliens for say Blacks or Jews, etc — all that is said about so-called “illegal aliens” — would be deemed shocking and socially unacceptable. And yet the use of the dehumanizing terms “illegal aliens” and “wetbacks” are but code words for Mexicans… regardless of where they were born. Thus politicians venomously speak of illegal aliens and even wetbacks, lest they be accused of being racists. The use of such terms, as opposed to “Mexicans,” permits them to believe that they have been granted a racism exemption card.

In Arizona, this is a canard. Here, political operatives have resurrected an image right out of the 1960s. The unflattering image is that of an unsmiling Mexican man, with a massive, oversized moustache. It was produced (photoshopped) and paid for not by Tea Party types or minutemen or vigilantes, but by none other than the Arizona Republican Party (ARP). The image is that of Congressman Raul Grijalva. It is not a generic hit piece; it is a campaign flier mailed out on behalf of his opponent.

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The ARP denies that the flier is racist (surprise). Their rationale is that Grijalva has a moustache and he uses it as his campaign logo. A look at the two images will not create confusion. His own image is not offensive. However, the Republican version unleashes a blatant Mexican stereotype made to elicit fear, hate and revulsion. The truth is, conservatives have targeted Grijalva — head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — for his stand against SB 1070, the racial profiling measure that has been temporarily struck down by the courts, and also been denounced by UN Rapporteurs.

Of course, his opponents have a right to boycott Grijalva all they want and they have the right to make any [distorted] claim they wish. That does not mean the rest of us have lost the ability to see a blatant stereotype in the ARP fliers. In reality, the flier projects a stereotype even more vile and sinister than the Frito Bandito.

That in 2010 such stereotypes can be created and defended tells us something about our nation’s state of affairs. It can be dismissed as just an extension of Arizona’s extremist politics, including Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s call for an army of vigilantes to prevent “illegals” from “stealing” the 2010 election. It’s even more insidious than that. It is proof that the anti-illegal immigrant hate is actually good old-fashioned anti-Mexican hate, regardless of place of birth.

It is easy to see why Chief Wahoo has survived into the 21st century; apparently, Grijalva too is being honored by his opponents.

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Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: Hidden Email Address For archived columns, go to: http://drcintli.blogspot.com/
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   By: John Avlon
With its mix of patriotism, fear, self-help, and conspiracy theory, the TV personality’s new novel, The Overton Window, is essential reading to understand the mind of the Wingnuts says John Avlon.

It turns out that the beach-read potboiler just might be the perfect medium for Glenn Beck’s patented mix of paranoia, patriotism, conspiracy theories, and self-help philosophy. Liberated from the obligations of literal truth, Beck is free to mix fact and faction into a genre he calls “faction”–appropriate because it is designed to divide the country into “us” against “them,” pitting heroic Beck-ian true believers in a life-or-death struggle against evil elitists and the sheeple who follow them.

The newly released The Overton Window is not just a bad book; it is an instructively bad book because it offers a complete color-by-numbers picture of the contemporary Wingnut psyche. It also answers the question of whether Beck fully appreciates the forces he’s playing with and the audiences he is catering to–the book is essentially a love letter to any group that might have seen themselves as implicated in the Department of Homeland Security’s report about the rise of extremism from the far-right in the age of Obama.

“The public has lost their courage to believe. They have given up on their ability to think. They can no longer even form opinions.”

In fact, a recasting of that document is a featured irritant in the introduction, portraying the government as targeting otherwise peaceful citizens who they characterize as “militant anti-abortion or pro-life organizers,” “home schoolers,” “Minutemen,” “Tea Partiers,” “militia organizations,” “tax resisters,” “patriot movement” members, “gun rights activists,” and “9/11 Truthers”–to name just a few of the groups unjustly clustered under the term “Constitutionalists.” The specter of FEMA concentration camps, martial law, gun seizures, and even vaccination conspiracies make unapologetic appearances as well.

The heroic resistance group in the book is called “the Founders’ Keepers,” an echo of the Hatriot group “the Oath Keepers.” But in a Beckian bob and weave, the first time the reader meets them is amid a diverse crowd in a Tribeca bar containing every creed and color, complete with pot smoking and echoes of 60s rebellion rekindled in a new direction. Their communal bookshelf combines the John Birch Society with Saul Alinsky, but their rhetoric is pure militia: “We’ve done everything that could be done to avoid the storm that’s coming. Our voices have not been heard. Time for simply hoping for change and praying for peace is gone. If our government won’t answer our appeals and do what’s right, if they’ve forsaken their oath to defend the constitution then an appeal to arms and the grace to God almighty is all they’ve left us?If not now, when!…Will we be stronger when they’ve taken our guns away when a cop or a paid government thug is standing on every corner enforcing the curfew? No! I say if war is inevitable then let it come on our terms.” And that’s a hero’s battle cry.

The title of the book–The Overton Window–is itself a metaphor for the “slippery slope”, the animating idea behind much of the paranoid style in American politics–namely that any ground given from the far-right to the center represents a subtle but intentional subversion of our constitutional republic. This is the logic Beck uses to preach about the “cancer of progressivism” beginning with Woodrow Wilson and the pointy-headed elites who advised him–a rant which is woven throughout the narrative, complete with quotes from the semi-obscure books which currently interest him. But now in fictional form, he gets to illustrate the ultimate danger of elitist progressive plans for America–in this case, false flag operations and nuclear weapons designed to destroy individual liberty from within and replace it with tyranny.

The book is an earnest call to arms for what is portrayed as the heroic resistance to a corrupt American government. Beck is careful to avoid any direct mention of Obama, making his case that our country is suffering from bi-partisan rot, but its hard not to miss ripped-from-the-headlines references, from bailouts and bankruptcy to head nods toward Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and adulterous Senator John Ensign–even a sleazy cameo by former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. One of the recurring riffs is an implicit dig at the Obama campaign comment about “transforming the United States”–as one character notes, “transformation is simply a nice way of saying that you don’t like something,” i.e., the President is hostile to the founding principles of the United States. Nonetheless, the fundamentally transformative idea advocated by Tom Paine–”we have it in our power to begin the world over again”–is the book’s mantra, along with the benign Ben Franklin litany of “Faith, Hope, and Charity,” which is somehow transformed into an underground partisan appeal. The book’s online advertising uses the same bait, promising a life of purpose for the self-selecting (and paying) few: “Click here to change the world.”

The book is either an irony free zone or deeply self-revealing, with digs at unlawful interrogations and media manipulation (“Politics and war, it’s all social psychology and maybe it always has been. Look at the PR push that got the American people behind going back to war with Iraq in 2003″). Beck acknowledges the source of his political influence when he has one character say, “Fear has been a swing factor in party politics for as long as I can remember.”

But perhaps the most revealing rant comes from the mouth of the book’s arch villain, a nightmarish PR guru who might as well be speaking on Beck’s behalf: “The public has lost their courage to believe. They have given up on their ability to think. They can no longer even form opinions. They absorb opinions sitting slack jawed in front of their televisions. Their thoughts are manufactured by people like me?We leverage their hopes and feed their fears. Once they believe, they are ours forever.”

Glenn Beck has transformed himself into a multi-media empire, and–like it or not–he is a real thought leader among conservative populists in the United States today. The apex of his influence might be over–his ratings slipped almost 30% from January to April 2010 alone–but he is betting that his hardcore of support will not desert him. The book is left primed for future installments that the faithful will no doubt buy in bulk. Beck has created an army of true-believers and dwindling but dedicated consumers, but even he may be coming concerned with the ambitions of the crazies among them. Before an alter-ego guru goes up in smoke, he frightfully faces the lunatic fringe he has inspired, marveling at “the seamless transition each managed to place between the sane and the insane thing that they have said.” With a deep breath, he reflects with more than a hint of regret, “If guys like these can agree with anything I say, then I’ve been saying something wrong.” Exactly.

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   Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
Republicans, who continue to be rejected by the U.S. electorate at the polls, have decided that the party of Lincoln needs an extreme makeover. Yet Republicans seem to think that the GOP simply needs to change its image, as opposed to fundamentally changing the party itself.

Some Republicans believe that the GOP must broaden its tent, and change its mantra of “Guns, Gays and God.” Others seem to think the party should strengthen its conservative base, and that the new message should include: “Go home!”

Enter the National Council for a New America (NCNA), a series of town hall meetings launched on May 2 in a suburb of Washington, D.C. Its primary objective seems to be to determine what direction the party should take — and to question those in the party who would like to see it become a European-style anti-immigrant party. Leading the effort of this council are Jeb Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Eric Cantor.

This council appears to be cognizant that a shift in that ultra-nationalistic direction has the potential to change not simply the GOP’s narrative, but the national narrative itself.

They are up against the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Dick Cheney and other extreme right-wing forces who fear that the nation — not simply the GOP — is in danger of losing its national narrative, the myths and legends that have been part of the national psyche and character since its founding.

Arguably, the more conservative wing of the American political spectrum is correct: the old America they cling to no longer exists. And yet, the narrative that the more moderate council longs for — one that views America as the beacon of the world, as the land of truth, freedom and liberty and justice for all — is also a myth.

That narrative has always downplayed genocide, land theft and removal, slavery, segregation and legalized discrimination. Nowadays, it downplays border walls, racial profiling and an ever-expanding racialized prison system. The narrative has also downplayed the notion of empire and militarism, instead converting these imperial projects with the notion of a God-given right to “civilize” or dominate the world. This is the idea of Manifest Destiny. It is what drove our recent president, George W. Bush in his war against the Arab and Islamic world; he was on a mission from God. This is why U.S. and international laws were easily ignored or discarded; he was answering to a higher authority.

In this sense, both wings of the Republican Party are similar; both want to promote great American mythologies. Ingrained into the national psyche is that this is a “nation of immigrants.” With the browning of America, some within the GOP rightly fear that a Dobbs-immigration obsessed nation — which clamors for 2,000 miles of militarized walls along the U.S.-Mexico border — will drive moderates away from the Republican Party. This is where the struggle over image takes place, though it is difficult to discern a difference. The Dobbs wing is brazenly anti-immigrant, though it is always insistent that they are only anti-illegal immigrant — not anti-immigrant.

Yet Romney’s views are very similar to Dobbs. Even McCain, always touted as a moderate on immigration, buckled under extreme right-wing pressure during his 2008 presidential bid.

Whether they are conservative or moderate, Republicans seem to agree that the United States has the inherent right to wage war on the world. The only difference is that some believe that this right comes directly from God, whereas the others believe it is simply a cultural or even genetic right — due to American exceptionalism.

The real question is whether Democrats present different views on this topic. Some observers are quick to note that on the issue of the national narrative, there is little or no difference between the parties. These same observers are quick to note that President Barack Obama is but the latest steward for the military-imperial interests that control the nation.

While it is true that change does not occur overnight, there is little doubt that whoever is at the helm does make a difference. Yet, we know that positive change generally comes from the bottom. Whether one president can change the national narrative is another matter.

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Recommended Reading: Republicans on Immigration: The War Within – The claim of some Republican apologists that the party is “against illegal immigration, but for legal immigration” does not accurately represent the whole party. There are at least four identifiable factions within the GOP. They are, in the order of permissiveness to immigration — [ READ MORE ]
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   Confederate (Republican) “Lynching” Murderers — Brandon Piekarsky (left) & Derrick Donchak

POTTSVILLE, Pennsylvania – Last week Friday, an ALL-WHITE jury acquitted two Pennsylvania teenagers of ALL serious charges against them stemming from the fatal beating of an “illegal” Mexican immigrant last summer.

Jurors acquitted 17-year-old Brandon Piekarsky of third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation. The jury cleared 19-year-old Derrick Donchak of aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation. Both were convicted of simple assault.

   Does This Look Like Simple Assault?

Prosecutors cast Ramirez as the victim of a gang of drunken white teens motivated by their dislike of their small coal town’s burgeoning Hispanic population. Defense attorneys called Ramirez the aggressor and bitterly accused the district attorney’s office of twisting the facts out of a desperate need to cast blame. [ READ MORE ]

A month before the killing of Ramirez, two incidents in Long Island and Brooklyn, New York, BARBARIC WHITE REPUBLICAN HOODLUMS attacked and LYNCHED Hispanic immigrants.

Latino immigrants are prime targets for White Racists emboldened by the now four year old Republican campaign of HATE and XENOPHOBIA.

Immigrants have become MUTE PREY for criminals — due to the constant harping of fat-mouth bigots like Lou Dobbs of CNN, and the diseased Neo-NAZI criminals at Fox News and right-wing Talk-Radio — like the despicable one-legged baboon — Michael Savage — who work tirelessly to pour fuel into the hateful minds of the most intolerant imbeciles in America. Their contention — is that an “illegal alien” is the POISON responsible for all that is evil in America, and that immigrants are responsible for the current economic mess and more recently — the SWINE VIRUS.

Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News

Swine FLU: The Republican HATE Machine Incites Racism

To the hate-mongers on radio and TV, and their listeners, being an undocumented immigrant is a “stain that can never be erased,” with no path to atonement. To them (Republicans), immigrants are INHUMAN and HAVE NO RIGHTS! They are VERMIN that MUST BE CRUSHED!

This is unacceptable — and Obama better do something about it. Confiscate the confederate guns, legislate more stringent hate-crime laws, and last but most powerful — pass a comprehensive immigration bill, allowing millions to flock to the Democratic Party, pushing the criminal Republican party further into the fringes of the south. They can then all be herded into Texas and allowed to secede if they want to. Treasonous Governor Rick Perry, would welcome them with open arms!

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Notes: Some satisfied, others outraged with verdict for immigrant’s death

CNN: Friends and relatives of two teens accused in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant struggled to contain their relief as not-guilty verdicts were announced on the most serious charges against the former high school football stars Friday.

Gasps filled the courtroom and some had to be restrained by sheriff’s deputies as they tried to rush the defense table after Derrick Donchak, 19, and Brandon Piekarsky, 17, were acquitted of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and ethnic intimidation for the death of Luis Ramirez.

Piekarsky was also found not guilty of third-degree murder for the death of Ramirez, who died of blunt force injuries after an encounter with the teens last summer. Read full article

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Anti-Immigrant and RACIST Xenophobe, Chris Simcox, who founded the border-patrolling Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, plans to challenge former Republican presidential nominee and current Arizona senator John McCain in the Republican primary in 2010.

On his website, the filthy BIGOT notes: Immigrants new to this country need to learn what freedom is and how you go about keeping it. They need to learn to speak our language to be a productive part of our work force. For American citizenship to have real, lasting meaning, we must reject the amnesty that causes even more to come here illegally, we must secure our borders and create a legal immigration system built on a rubric of national security and economics with the welfare and job security of the American citizen first and foremost in the design.

Everywhere This BIGOT Goes — He Is Met With Protests

Chris Simcox is a thief. He stole millions of dollars in donations that was to be used to build a barrier along the border with Mexico. He built and completed 10 miles of 5 strand barbed wire cow-fence and called it a success, then refused to show the public where the money went!

McCain, long known as a moderate on immigration, gave up on his immigration reform legislation during the Republican primary campaign.

Reference: The two faces of the anti-immigrant bigots in the Republican Party — NICOLE COLSON looks at the ties between anti-immigrant groups, the far right and the Republican Party.

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