It’s getting harder and harder to feel shocked at the extremism emanating from right-wing groups in American politics. But a bizarre, ham-handed and paranoid press release today from a Houston-based group called Patriot PAC should be shocking.
The press release touts “Operation Black Storm,” which supports the candidacy of 15 African-American Republicans for Congress. (Seriously? That’s the name they chose for such a project?) It quotes a leader from one of a coalition of far-right groups supporting the project:
“Today marks the beginning of the end of playing the race card to silence conservative voices and keep blacks voting opposite their core values.”
“Voting opposite their core values”? We aren’t told what “core values” African Americans have been voting against. The spokesman goes on:
“It’s finally time for our nation to get past racial barriers in politics, and with Operation Black Storm we intend to send a message to Washington that–above all–Americans of all backgrounds, colors, and decent faiths want their God-given right for SELF-RULE.”
“Decent faiths”? Are there other kinds? We’re not told which “faiths” qualify here — but you probably know. [Hint, hint. Wink, wink.]
But the most corrosive bile comes when you click on the press release’s link to the Operation Black Storm website. Viewers find a video identifying the worst of the murderous dictators of the 20th century, including Hitler, Stalin and Mao. (They throw in Saddam Hussein and Hugo Chavez for good measure.) We’re told of freedom extinguished and millions slaughtered under those regimes. True enough. But then the video descends into lunacy, comparing the policies of those dictators to those of certain American presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and — surprise! — Barack Obama. Accompanied by martial background music and the red label “Progressive” stamped on the screen, the video darkly notes:
“Theodore Roosevelt supported eugenics.”
“Woodrow Wilson brought us the Federal Reserve System.”
“FDR’s ‘New Deal’ saw income taxes rise as high as 94%.”
“[Lyndon] Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty was a war on success.”
Then the video shifts to President Obama: “And the ‘progression’ continues.” “Tyranny is forced upon us,” the video declares, linking the policies of “progressive presidents” to the loss of freedom (and mass murder, apparently) under Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
Let’s be clear here. All Americans have the right to express their political points of view. But such freedom also extends to those of us who believe that political rhetoric from the right today has become so divorced from reality and so extreme that it appears almost to justify unchecked and even violent rage among deranged members of our society.
Is paranoid extremism the basis of those “core values” African Americans should be voting for? That the people behind Patriot PAC and Operation Black Storm are irresponsibly promoting this kind of bizarre and dangerous rhetoric discredits almost entirely anything else they might have to say on public policy. Of course, you can bet that they will take such criticism as an example of “playing the race card” and “trying to silence conservative voices.” Just watch.
Just when you think things can’t get any weirder, they do.
It sounds like this group – if indeed it is legitimate (which is highly questionable) – may be calling for a Black Separatism. After all, the text above does cite SELF RULE. To me, that sounds like code for separatism. (But what do I know?)
As for the Black Storm website, any techie can create a website and add videos. And again, it could be any unemployed techie who needs to make some bucks and gets hired by Patriot PAC to create a website. No big surprise there.
As for the legitimacy of this group, they could really be unemployed African-Americans hired to pose as some kind of legitimate political group, hired by Patriot PAC for that very purpose. I can certainly understand if one has been unemployed for months – maybe years – living on the street with a family to feed and clothe, one could be talked into doing just about ANYTHING for the money.
Haven’t we seen that Philadelphia actors were hired to pose as West Virginians in an anti-Gov. Manchin TV commercial, and their lines were scripted? Why not pay unemployed African Americans to do same?
As for the name “Operation Black Storm,” why not? To the best of my knowledge the Black Panthers named themselves the Black Panthers. I’ve never heard it alleged that that name was assigned to them by a white.
Lastly, we see the Right Wingnuts shoot themselves in the foot ALL THE TIME. For example, Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican. OOPS! And what’s with the remark about the Federal Reserve System? Seems to me that system has benefitted the banks most of all, and bankers are typically Republican. So what’s the beef? I’m so confused. But typical of conservatives, they never offer any evidence to support their wild and crazy ideas. We’re all supposed to be “sheeple,” accepting whatever they say at face value.
I see this as a desperate attempt to gain the support of black voters, most of whom vote Democratic. The question is why are the radcons feeling so desperate that they have to go to such lengths to get some more black votes? All the polls are in the GOP’s favor, and most of them by leaps and bounds. Could it be that in reality the polls are not looking so good for the Republicans as they seem? Hard to believe…..
I think this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg: there’s WAYYYY more behind this story than what can be seen.
Ever seen the movie Idiocracy?
@ Ben: Yes, I’ve seen it. I have it. Great movie, and totally appropos of this situation.
Sounds like anarchy to me. Time to bring back the sedition act.
The storm and fury of Tea Partyism, Black Storm, et al is manufactured, not spontaneous. While some BS analysts look for consistency of BS to ascertain the presence of plots, it is the expert BS artist whose craftsmanship creates a storm of mutually antagonistic themes as if seamless.
The Nazi propaganda against the Jews was steeped in lore that tie both High Finance/Capitalism and Communism as a seamless Jewish plot. As proof of the inferiority of the Jew, Jews were credited with having the ability to cloud men’s minds and control both ends of the political spectrum. And wind up with all the good jobs requiring brains.
The Tea Party Catechism is one recited by the faithful without interference from cognitive dissonance. This catechism is a well designed package.
“FDR, Obama = Hitler/Stalin.”
Uh, these folks STILL don’t know the difference between communism and fascism. Are these people terminally stupid? I have YET to hear an explanation how one person can be a communist and a fascist at the same time.
DUH and double DUH.
Please separate many of the views of this group from the Tea Party. Although they support the same candidates, the reasoning for this is drastically different.
The essential differences between Nazism and (Soviet) Communism are obvious:
The Communist goose step is considerably higher than the Nazi goose step.
Nazi’s were national socialists who stressed the international character of thier fight against Communism. The Soviets were International Socialists who stressed the nationalism of the various nations within the Soviet Union particularly during “the Great Patriotic War” aka WW2.
The Nazi’s confiscated the property of Capitalists, expecially that which belonged to Jews, in addition to the Jews being Bosheviks in cahoots with Jewish Capitalists. The Soviets confiscated everyone’s property and reallocated it to the faithful in the party. In the Russian Soviet Union citizens got a passport saying they were Russians, and the Jews got thiers saying they were Jews. It was not possible for a Jew to be a Russian.
The Nasi “Brown Shirt; SA was sold down the river on the Night of the Long Knives in a deal with the Army for Army support, and the SS watcjed pver both. In the Soviet Union, the Red Army was purged for their exposure to German secret training and armaments programs in Russia, and the NKVD watched everything.
I hope this makes it clear that Nazism and Commnism are totally different.
Thanks, Gordon. The difference is clear to me. Your explanation PLUS the fact that…uh….Hitler and Stalin went to war against each other. Hitler put trade unionists, socialists, and commies in concentration camps and hanged, shot, and gassed them. So I see no love lost there between the two.
It is the conservatives, Tea Partiers, Republickins, etc who can’t seem to figure out the difference. They keep insisting Obama is a Fascist. No, he’s a Communist. It’s like that old TV ad: “Certs is breath freshener. No, Certs is a….”
I got fed up with the arguing so I posted a question on my Facebook page. I said that I had read the article someone else had posted on FB titled “7 Reasons Obama is a Communist And Implimenting Communist Policies.” Or something like that. Then I said that others insist Obama is a Fascist. I then posed the question: Would someone kindly explain to me how one person can be a communist and a fascist at the same time? I got lots of answers. LOTS. Most were interesting. Some of them infuriating. None of them really answered the question although a couple valiantly tried, saying fascists and communists govern in similar ways. How they govern similarly, my guess is the fact that they’re both bullies, intolerant, and allow no opposing political parties or the presence of different ethnicities in their midst. The writer didn’t expand but that’s my guess as to what makes them similar.
Back to the Certs analogy, the ad goes on to say: “Stop. You’re both right….”
People and politics are far more complex than Certs. I still maintain you can bully, be intolerant, allow no opposing political parties or ethnic varieties. But you can’t be both a Fascist and a Communist at the same time.
The Soviet Union and Germany (Wiemar and Third Reich) had some secret mlitary deals by which German soldiers trained Soviet troops, and jointly experimented with aircraft and tanks which were forbidden to Germany under the Versailles Treaty. Given the both the Soviet Union and Germany were outcasts on the world stage, they managed a number of covert activities to develop military technical and tactical knowhow. Much of the grondwork for this effort was underscored in the Soviet-German Treaty of Rappalo on Augst 16, 1922. Sondergrippe R, of the Richeswehr Ministry to coordinate these arrangements.
The first Luftwaffe pilots were trained in 1925 at Vkivupal near Lipetsk, in 1926 tank training and experiementation took place at Kazan and a chemical school in Samara Oblast. The Germans also trained the Soviet military in staff coordination and in setting up a more professional Red Army staff.
Raw materials were traded well into the thirties, last shipment on the even of Operation Barbarossa.
This secret relationship began to wither given the strong anti-Communist stance of Hitler, but it did not dry up entirely. Statlin became so suspicious of his own German trained officer corps, that he eliminated three quarters of them in the purges of 1937.
Nevertheless, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between Germany and the Soviet Union on August 23, 1939 put aside the ideological differences (at least long for Stalin to rebuild his purged military) and divided the Baltic states and Poland between them. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and the Soviets invaded on Septrember 17, 1939.
The sudden cooperation between former bitter enemies caught many of the party faithful flat footed, but bowing to Stalin’s gentle persuaison, entered a peri0d of time when the Comintern announced the end of anti-Nazi propaganda citing that they were now in a death struggle against the Capitalist nations of the West. This included sabotage and subversion in the USA and Britain including strikes in defense plans and on the docks to prevent military supplies to be sent to Allied forces.
Stalin was so convinced that he understood Hitler that he refused to accept intelligence from his own staff as to the imminence of the German invasion which stared on June 22, 1941. He was also warned by the British. He executed a number of his own officers who, he believed were agent s o f the British. After the invasion started and it became obvious that those who had warned him were tight, so he executed them as well. The period of Nazi-Soviet formal alliance lasted between August 19, 1939 to June 22, 1941.
It was the invasion of the Soviet Union that permitted the Communists and those who leaned in that direction to put full force into defeating Nazism, and that included the full weight of Hollywood.
During the period prior to Hitler’s election and selection as Chancelloer, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda earned his reputation by recruiting the bulk of the Communist “Red Front” of Berlin to join the Storm Troopers (SA). From that time forward, the Nazis called the Berlin Nazis “Beef steak Nazis, brown on the outside, red on the inside”. The red revolutionary streak in the SA (Brown Shirts) was so virulent and became a threat to Hitler, that he wiped out the leadership of the SA in the Night of the Long Knives betwen June 30 and July 2 of 1934. Thereafter Nazi muscle was invested in the SS (Black Shirts).
After the war, the Soviets recruited former SS and SA into the East German police and paramilitary. That and the addition of Field Marshall von Paulus who had surrendered at Stalingrad the day after his promoition, and became a Field Marshal in the East German Army.
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Communism (=the one in the real world not the utopian): The state takes over the means of production. All income of these fall to the state who decides what they are used for.
Fascism: The state strikes a deal with the owners of (essential parts of) the means of production for mutual support. The state may direct the production to a degree but the profits stay mostly with the owners. Competitors of favored companies get suppressed. Success requires the favor of the rulers.
Both systems suppress freedom and liberty, especially of the workers. Both tend to develop massive corruption and cronyism.
In communism the state fully takes over the education system and the media. Fascist systems occasionally do but often outsource it to e.g. the churches and to media companies that are privately onwed but on a similar ideological wavelength.
In general(oversimplified): communism = the state tries to do everything and thus asserts control; fascism=the state outsources to private entities that are ideologically in line. Control is mainly asserted by threat of ‘favor withdrawal’.