Xeni Jardin over at Boing Boing has an important post analyzing the dragging death murder of Brandon McClelland, 24, last month in Paris, Texas, an area of our country haunted by a legacy of lynchings going back over a hundred years. Please read it.
In light of the McCain campaign’s stinking “idiotwind” gusting over America’s racist dead enders, I also thought that a boing boing commenter’s insight was spot on:
This [murder of McClelland] must be viewed in light of the Ashley Todd incident this week. Todd made up a false story that a black man attacked her and carved a “B” in her face, ostensibly because she supports John McCain. In Paris, Texas, a hundred years ago, a charge like that would get a black man burned alive. Today it doesn’t go quite that far but you could see the shadow of the lynch mob forming in the darker corners of the right-wing blogosphere when the Todd story first circulated. — JWB
Nowadays I’m less concerned with these clowns than with last minute dirty tricks to scare Philadelphia seniors that a vote for Obama is a vote for a second Holocaust. Good grief. Their strategies are just so disgusting.
I’ve been in email conversation with a friend from Louisiana, a philosemite and born again Catholic who believes Obama is a “Muslem” [sic]. He’s a former Huckabee supporter, and I’m concerned for him and all of his like minded fellows who are so overwhelmed with rumours to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt, that they’ve abandoned all trust in the media. Here’s the summary in his own words, after several lengthy exchanges of commentary and links sent in refutation of slander he’s heard:
That is the main problem: lies. Â You don’t know who to believe. Â Both parties have a degree in spreading them and there is not enough penality for telling them. Â The media can be bought to spread their lie of choice, or conceal thereof. Â That is the whole reason we had this banking/wall street debockle. Politics breeds them like flies.
For him it’s as if the long feared gnostic world of darkness has finally eclipsed the world of light. Obama may preach the need for change but oh my god, these folk are deathly afraid and distrutsful, and then also, dangerously manipulatable. It is so essential to reach out to them with love rather than with hate or condescension. I am confident we will win today, but if in my exuberance I am blinded to the enduring need to engage with these folks with respect, then it will all have been for nought. The seething domestic insurgents vying for their hate might eventually win it.
So far there is no indication that the recent nearfatal beating of KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly in Little Rock, Arkansas, might be politically motivated other than the fact that Pressly is a member of the media and appeared briefly in Oliver Stone’s just opened critical biopic ‘W.’ But given that the daily vitriol heaped upon liberals by McCain surrogates, advertisements, and right wing radio blowhards has already unhinged some to feel they have license for violence against the “enemy among us,” I wouldn’t be surprised if her attack was related somehow.
It was only three months ago, July 27th, that Jim Adkisson barged into a Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian-Universalist Church with the intent to kill some liberals (and tragically killed two churchgoers). With the election only two weeks away, and supporters of McCain/Palin already beginning to wear the veil of victimhood and martyrdom, I will admit to some fear that the more militant among them will be inspired towards insurgency. It’s not as if the south doesn’t have a long history of fighting insurgent warfare. Normally, I’d consider this sort of associative thinking paranoid… but I guess that recent nearby expressions of hate, like Mike Lunsford’s antisemitic Halloween effigy of Obama, have me concerned.
I pray that Pressly recovers fully I pray for Pressly’s grieving family and that her attacker is caught and that our country soon turns a page for the better. Courage.
(In 1986, a deranged man attacked Dan Rather demanding of the CBS anchorman, “What’s the frequency!? Kenneth, what’s the frequency??!”)
“Is that a kippah on that anti-Obama effigy?” I couldn’t help but wonder while reading this article and watching this story that local Cincinnati station WKRC (Channel 12) aired yesterday about Fairfield, Ohio’s Mike Lunsford as reported on by Shawn Ley. (For those from out of town, Fairfield is a northern exurb of Cincinnati just north of the Hamilton County line.)
Lunsford adorned the tree in front of his house with an effigy of a ghost hung with a noose, (a presumably stolen) Obama sign hung upside down pinned to its chest with “Hussain” [sic] incorrectly spelled above, and a Star of David drawn on its head. Close observers will also note that the two “S”s in “Hussain” are written out in the style of the Schutzstaffel Nazi paramilitary force insignia popular among today’s suburban neo-Nazis. Considering this, I’m kind of surprised that nowhere in the report is this display described as anti-Jewish.
That unapologetic self-described racists like Mike Lunsford are now seeping out of the woodwork doesn’t surprise me. After all, there are consequences to McCain’s campaign stirring fears of Obama as a secret Muslim, pedophile, and terrorist abettor. McCain’s surrogate Rep. Michelle Bachmann call for an investigation of her fellow congressmen’s “pro-Americanism”, Palin’s careless (or calculated) reference to rural America as “real America,” and John McCain’s brother Joe’s description of North Virginia as a Communist Country: these are all statements that cast their opponents as a demonized Other, and embolden the right wing to further explore their most paranoid and primitive instincts under the guise of patriotism.
That Lunsford’s effigy has sparked outrage and is reported on with an air of concern is good, but I am still disappointed to read it described merely as an “anti-Obama display.” According to the report, neighbors describe it as “racist and offensive” and Vicki Crowe now knows that her neighbor is “anti-black.” Lunsford and his ilk might be disappointed that no one reported that his effigy is also antisemitic. I guess that’s where I step in to translate the hate.<groan>
Besides revealing Obama’s hidden secret Muslim identity with his scrawl of “Hussain,” the Star of David on the ghost’s head broadcasts the common trope of antisemitic white supremacist conspiracy theorists. Not familiar with it? Variations of it have circulated among hate groups for decades. The conspiracy has it that Jews will use blacks to overthrow white America in order to install their one world communist government. For these racists, Obama’s presidency is thus the realization of their long held fantasy. And by choosing a ghost to caricature Obama, Lunsford might also be trying to demean him with the racist epithet of “Spook.” By smearing Obama as Muslim AND Jewish AND black, Lunsford’s effigy of Obama scores something of a trifecta of hate.
From Shawn Ley’s article, “Racist Anti-Obama Display Hung From Tree in Fairfield”:
Mike Lunsford hung the ghost in his yard. He spoke to us off-camera, saying his views could hurt his employers business … but he says make no mistake: He doesn’t want an African American running the country.
Lunsford says he believes Barack Obama is not a “full blooded American.” And he says the United States is a white, Christian nation – and only with white Christians should be in power. With Lunsford not willing to share his views on-camera:
“It’s like whoa. He’s definitely anti-black.”
Vickie Crowe lives next door. She’s an Obama supporter.
“What did you think when you first saw that?” Vickie Crowe/neighbor: “Well actually my 5 year old son says Obama’s hanging upside down. He’s what? He’s hanging upside down. It’s the neighbor’s ghost. I took it as a little bit of a racist statement because my grandson’s mixed and it hurt a little bit.”
Mike Lunsford says he got the idea after an Obama supporter in New York put up this display of a Obama mannequin being chased by a figure of John McCain wearing Ku Klux Klan robes.
Another neighbor, Megan Sory says this symbol makes her more than uneasy it scares her. Megan Story/neighbor: “He’s been a really nice neighbor but it’s one of those you question and wonder, you know, if he’s that forward about something will he be forward enough to do something else, too. it is scary at times but we live in a scary world.”
