September 28, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
Conservatives, Racism
and the Merchants of Hate
Friends,
The
professional “hate-monitoring” organization, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
of B’nai B’rith, has come out with its latest list of “35
hate” symbols and hand signs which must be banned from public use.
Ostensibly founded as a “watch-dog” organization to surveil against anti-semitism
and anti-semitic behavior, the ADL has become, like the Southern Poverty Law
Center (SPLC), little more than a strident, far Left voice for
suppression and limitation of free speech.
But even
its latest list, rather what is included on
the list, caught many observers off guard. In addition to the expected
enumeration of pro-Nazi and “white supremacist” symbols, tattoos, and hand
signs, the ADL includes the “okay” hand sign as racist and, thus, verboten.
That is,
the traditional “okay” sign, usually made with the thumb and index finger, is
dangerously racist, a diabolical signal by one racist to other racists expressing
agreement and unity, possibly implying terrible violence against innocent
minorities, specifically black folk and perhaps Jews, as well. Oh, the horror
of it all!
Think I’m
unserious? The Washington Post (September
26) published
a long article on the subject, with a straight journalistic face.
And the seriousness of this latest advance of the fanatical left—the lunatic
hysteria associated with its advancing agenda—is completely apparent. In
addition, the ADL added what it called the “Dylann Roof bowl haircut” and “men
with moon shaped heads” to their hate monitored list.
Got that?
You see, according to the Post, the “okay” sign apparently is used by Trump supporters who “use
the gesture primarily to ‘trigger’ liberals who believe the hand sign serves as
a decoder ring to detect secret Nazis.” [I’m not making this up.]
“That was what the OK symbol was literally
invented to do: Both serve as a white supremacist symbol and also one that is
just ordinary-enough looking that when liberals expressed outrage, the white
supremacist could play the victim of liberal hysteria,” Amanda Marcotte, a
politics writer for Salon, wrote on Twitter in
September 2018.
But it
gets worse, as the Post relates:
Prominent figures and private citizens
alike have made headlines for making the “okay” gesture in public. Critics
accused Republican operative Zina Bash of making the symbol for white power last
year when she made the ‘okay’ sign at Brett M. Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court
confirmation hearing. A spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee said at
the time that Bash was aiming the sign at a staffer who fulfilled a request for
the judge — an explanation that aligned with video of the hearing in which Bash
is visible.
The same month, a Coast Guard member was removed from
Hurricane Florence relief efforts after he flashed the ‘okay’ sign during a
televised media briefing. A Chicago Cubs fan in May was banned from Wrigley Field when
he made the gesture behind an NBC Sports Chicago analyst during a TV segment.
Longtime Republican political consultant
Roger Stone and several members of the far-right group [sic!] the Proud Boys
flashed the ‘okay’ sign last year in a photo taken at a bar. Stone denied the
symbol was associated with white supremacy. He told Salon they
made the gesture because Trump often uses it, and it has come to signify
support for him.
Not too
long ago in this country such accusations would have been seen as exactly what they
are: sheer madness, lunacy on public parade. But, no longer; now they pass for solemn
mainstream warnings, dire exclamations, very grave and serious charges hurled
with furrowed brow against anyone who in any manner should stand in the way of the
onrushing wild-eyed progressivist agenda.
And that
agenda must not be opposed, for if you do, even in the slightest…and if you
make the “okay” sign…why, then, you are positively evil, probably a Nazi, maybe
just like Dylann Roof with the bowl haircut. You may call yourself a
“conservative” and register Republican, but never fear, the ADL (and SPLC) and The Washington Post (and other
mainstream media) have got you all
figured out. Unless you recant and
recant publicly and profusely like most public figures who forty years ago may
have told a non-PC joke or uttered a non-PC word and then are “found out” by
the zealous Leftie fanatics who research their high school Yearbooks or quiz an
old girlfriend they may have had back in 1970 for incriminating information—unless
you do this, the media and the establishment will come down on you, shame you,
cause you to lose your job, in short, expel you from what passes for “civilized
society.”
And what
is perhaps most egregious in all this is the radical perversion and degradation
of our language, the devaluation of our words and phrases and how we
communicate with each other…in the name of an agenda that uses accusations of
“racism” and “hate” as weapons to gain total power over us.
Most
establishment “conservatives” remain clueless when it comes to such issues and
such accusations about race and racism.
Most readily and fearfully accept the template and narrative put forward
by the fanatics. Establishment “conservatives” are consistently on the
defensive, always in a disadvantageous response mode to the ever-advancing
post-Marxist Left, always beginning any conversation by first fully embracing the goalposts and talking points advanced by
it. And that starting point can only lead to surrender and additional conquests
by the Left and by the so-called “conservatives” normalizing and legitimizing
that latest conquest.
One-hundred
and thirty years ago the great Southern author, essayist and acute observer,
Robert Lewis Dabney, saw clearly the fatal flaw in the kind of “conservatism”
which has dominated in this country since the end of War for Southern
Independence. In the debate over women’s suffrage (which Dabney ably and
staunchly opposed), he penned words which I have cited previously, but which
are entirely apposite in this context:
"It may
be inferred again that the present movement for women's rights, will certainly
prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This is a
party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to
each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a
respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the
innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the
accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting
to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its
timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and
then adopted in its turn.
“American
conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward
towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always
advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor:
wherewith shall it he salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It
is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of
sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious, for the sake of the
truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom.
“It
always—when about to enter a protest—very blandly informs the wild beast whose
path it essays to stop, that its "bark is worse than its bite," and
that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent rôle of
resistance.
“The only
practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough
exercise to Radicalism to keep it "in wind," and to prevent its
becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few
years, when women's suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact,
conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume
itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of
baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard
declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the
refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its
final position."
[from Dabney, “Womens’ Rights
Women,” Discussions, vol. IV, Secular Discussions]
Today’s
“conservative movement” has learned nothing since Dabney wrote those words, has
learned nothing from voices like those of the late Mel Bradford, Russell Kirk, Sam
Francis, Patrick Buchanan, and Paul Gottfried. Too often, like Dabney, these
men are as Cassandra at Troy, “destined to prophesy, but not to be believed
until too late.” Or, simply ignored, or worse, cast out, even silenced by the
so-called “responsible” establishment Neoconservative gate-keepers of movement
conservatism.
If there
is ever to be a return to sanity, sensibility and rationality in this country,
that template will have to be reversed and overthrown, and those gate-keepers
displaced. Not an easy task, but one that must be attempted. Our future depends
upon it.
*************
Author
Christopher DeGroot writes for TAKIMAG.com, and this past Friday he published
an excellent essay on the topic: “Conservatism’s Cluelessness About Race.” I
include the Web access link below and urge you to read it:
Conservatism’s Cluelessness About Race
Last month Splinter
published an article that exposed the leaked
emails of some conservatives who between them had worked for the Institute for
Humane Studies, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Daily Caller. A
week later, Timothy Carney, the commentary editor at the Washington Examiner and a
visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,
published an article that is representative of the general conservative
cluelessness with respect to matters of race. The leaked emails contained some
racist remarks, but though they’re the work of only a few people, Carney thinks
there is a racism epidemic on the right. According to Carney,
What’s needed is not mere
“outreach” to black, Hispanic, or Jewish voters. Conservatives ought to make
elevation of African Americans, immigrants, and religious minorities so central
to conservatism that all dedicated racists will be thoroughly repelled. If we
can’t make them stop calling themselves the “alt-right,” because they won’t
want to be associated with us, we can at least disgust them with such a focus.
Elevation? And yet I’d
thought there’s already enough worship of “victim” groups in this country! [….]
PLEASE CONTINUE
READING AT:
No comments:
Post a Comment