Thursday, May 23, 2013
Too Big To Jail
As the Financial Services Forum gathered recently at the White House, Tom Burghardt runs down the ongoing criminal enterprise of President Obama's friends like JP Morgan Chase.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
False Victimhood
The Far-Right in the US has long relied on false victimhood to fuel indignation and mobilize resentment into electoral support. With the emergence of the Tea Party, the sense of rage based on false victimhood went steroidal. As Devin Burghart at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights reports, false victimhood promoted by the Tea Party Patriots is a standard political organizing tactic.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Indigenous Diplomatic Traditions
Politics based on justice, diplomacy based on love is the subject of a
recent article by Mississauga Nishnaabeg author Leanne Simpson in
briarpatch magazine. "Even in a modern context," says Simpson, "treaties
are a storied political relationship, consolidating sacred bonds
between peoples. They are not about the cession of land or the surrender
of Aboriginal title, nor do they assimilate Indigenous law into
Canadian law. They are not a bill of sale. They are not a policy
discussion. Whether the treaty-making process is historic or
contemporary, treaties are not termination agreements."
Thursday, May 09, 2013
Anti-Democratic Movement in Washington State
In my recent article White Power on the Salish Sea,
I take a look at the Wall Street/Tea Party convergence against treaty
rights in Washington state. As a lethal threat to both endangered
species and human rights, this bipartisan, anti-democratic movement
targeting Indian tribes should be roundly opposed by moral authorities
and organizations devoted to defending democracy.
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
Survival in the American Southwest
Writing at Censored News, Gary Witherspoon recounts the history of Water and Energy in the American Southwest, and the politics of mining on the Navajo and Hopi nations.
Monday, May 06, 2013
Many Will Suffer
As Ray A. Youngbear wrote in Black Eagle Child, "So that a few of us will celebrate and walk the full course of this gift called life, many will suffer." This NBC video on the indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon -- whose destiny is wrapped up in our murderous demand for endless supplies of oil -- is heartbreaking.
Sunday, May 05, 2013
White Supremacy Factions
There are two major threads to white supremacy: revolutionary and
mainstream. The skinheads, neonazis and Klan are revolutionaries. That
is the smallest faction. The mainstreamers are far more numerous and
their rhetoric is strongly reflected in the Minutemen (anti-immigrant
groups) and Tea Parties. The main difference between the two factions
is their approach to electoral politics.
The revolutionaries reject electoral politics and the mainstreamers embrace it.
Zeskind's book, Blood and Politics is framed around an analysis of the revolutionary/mainstreamer factions.
There is a third faction, the separatist anti-government survivalists known as the Christian Patriots. They propose withdrawal from society and creation of isolated areas under their own law and authority. These were the groups behind the militia violence of the 1990s. They draw on a mixture of revolutionary and mainstream propaganda and ideology. The hard core of the Christian Patriots are racist Christian Identity believers who rejected the overtly revolutionary approach of Aryan Nations under Richard Butler. John Trochmann of Montana, now a fairly obscure character, was the paradigmatic leader of Christian Patriot militias in the 1990s. Pat Buchanan's political persona was a fusion of mainstreamer and Christian Patriot influences.
All three groups have adopted a core ideology of white racialist nationalism. The core to this is an idea of distinct racial classes to citizenship and the separation of races by both law and custom.
The sunlight v shunning debate is an old one. Every time there has been a crisis, the sunlight approach wins. The key to defeating reactionary racist politics is education and exposure. They work mostly by deception, infiltration and subversion and these tactics are impossible when they are subject to scrutiny and exposure leading to confrontation and rejection. Shunning them actually give them additional cover.
The worst setbacks to the Tea Party have been due to exposure, not people trying to ignore them.
--Paul de Armond, MetaFilter, October 1, 2010
The revolutionaries reject electoral politics and the mainstreamers embrace it.
Zeskind's book, Blood and Politics is framed around an analysis of the revolutionary/mainstreamer factions.
There is a third faction, the separatist anti-government survivalists known as the Christian Patriots. They propose withdrawal from society and creation of isolated areas under their own law and authority. These were the groups behind the militia violence of the 1990s. They draw on a mixture of revolutionary and mainstream propaganda and ideology. The hard core of the Christian Patriots are racist Christian Identity believers who rejected the overtly revolutionary approach of Aryan Nations under Richard Butler. John Trochmann of Montana, now a fairly obscure character, was the paradigmatic leader of Christian Patriot militias in the 1990s. Pat Buchanan's political persona was a fusion of mainstreamer and Christian Patriot influences.
All three groups have adopted a core ideology of white racialist nationalism. The core to this is an idea of distinct racial classes to citizenship and the separation of races by both law and custom.
The sunlight v shunning debate is an old one. Every time there has been a crisis, the sunlight approach wins. The key to defeating reactionary racist politics is education and exposure. They work mostly by deception, infiltration and subversion and these tactics are impossible when they are subject to scrutiny and exposure leading to confrontation and rejection. Shunning them actually give them additional cover.
The worst setbacks to the Tea Party have been due to exposure, not people trying to ignore them.
--Paul de Armond, MetaFilter, October 1, 2010
Friday, May 03, 2013
A Crumbling Social Contract
The collapse of the modern state in terms of providing adequate social structure to meet basic human needs creates in turn numerous psychoses: economic panic, religious hysteria, and various dissociative symptoms. Within this scenario of a crumbling social contract, fear and anger -- mobilized into hate and revenge -- are perhaps most disconcerting, but communities living in denial about the waxing political power of such moral aberrations as the Tea Party, anti-Indian movement and Christian Patriots cannot long continue breathing their own exhaust if they want to avoid normalizing hate. Responses in the form of moral theatrics are fine for careers in political theatre, but they do not affect the political change that can only come about by contesting political power as exercised through research, education and organizing. Watching the anti-democratic movement -- exemplified by the Tea Party -- conduct candidate trainings and activist workshops on a daily basis, while horrified liberals merely sign petitions protesting the latest outrage, is not encouraging.
