There was little doubt that as the media voices clamored louder and louder about the Trayvon Martin case, that the cognitive dissonance under which most conservatives survive would be grasping for something—anything—at wouldn't make them feel icky about the realization that they would have done the exact same thing George Zimmerman did (and be responsible for the death of an innocent child, guilty only of Walking While Black). So quickly, conservative sites like Malkin's and media outlets like Fox started looking for ways to cast doubt on the story. Suddenly, George Zimmerman had a broken nose that wasn't in the original police report. Pictures of the baby-faced Trayvon were darkened to make him more menacing. And if that wasn't enough, now they're resorting to using pictures of other African American kids with threatening postures and 'thug' clothing.
And then Business Insider uses those pictures—pictures from Stormfront, fer cryin' out loud—to ask if all these conservatives weren't right all along to be skeptical of Trayvon Martin. After being rightfully called out for it, they took the photos down (initially, they kept them on the main page as shown above, but relocated the non-Trayvon picture from just below the headline to the bottom of the article with the update admitting that the picture was not of Trayvon). But they weren't done being racist yet.
UPDATES: There are images circulating online that are supposedly other pictures of Trayvon Martin. We saw one on Stormfront a racist message board.
Need I ask why the reporter was trolling friggin' Stormfront (which he admits is a racist site) for pictures of Trayvon Martin?
It was embedded with another picture purporting to be Trayvon that the Miami News Times points out is NOT Trayvon Martin. One conservative website has already apologized for publishing it. (We originally published the entire image found on Stormfront, which included two photos, but we took the second down after finding out it wasn't Trayvon Martin). And now there is also question as to whether the other image is of Trayvon. We have now removed both.)
Excellent fact-checking and attribution work, Michael Brenden Dougherty of Business Insider. And yet, no apology from you, your Managing Editor or your publisher. Even Michelle "boo-fricking-hoo" Malkin had enough integrity to apologize for it. And you? Nada.
Rachel Maddow pointed out last night that a right winger and teabagger who's running for secretary of state in Kansas is claiming responsibility for "helping" Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce write the state's controversial new immigration law. (He has since removed the claim from his website.) Wingnut lawyer Kris Kobach, a constitutional law professor, is counsel for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and he says the reason he's running for secretary of state is to keep "criminal enterprise" ACORN from stealing elections. (He refers to Al Franken's "pseudo-election".)
Even though in 2007, as chair of the Kansas GOP, he openly bragged about the party "caging" voters - an illegal practice. Hey, it's okay if you're a Republican!
As disturbing as the prospect is of a nativist extremist lawyer like Kris Kobach training all 881 of Sheriff Joe's beigeshirts in immigration law, I have to wonder if it's a sign that Arpaio's throwing in the towel on the big Melendres vs. Arpaio racial-profiling lawsuit now underway in federal court.
What, was Stormfront's Don Black not available? Maybe Tom Metzger could take a break from running his white nationalist Web site The Insurgent to come down and offer some words of supremacist wisdom to Joe's benighted deputy dawgs. And don't forget David Duke, that cat's always lookin' for a gig.
I kid, of course. Being an attorney, Kobach's ties to anti-immigrant and extremist nativist organizations are far more white collar, with the emphasis on white. The controversial University of Missouri law prof acts as counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal arm of FAIR, the notorious Federation for American Immigration Reform.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has tagged FAIR as a hate organization, and FAIR's earned the title. Last April, when Kobach was announced as a minority witness before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee during the committee's hearing into the 287(g) program and Joe Arpaio, the SPLC hit the committee with a letter objecting to Kobach's presence because of his ties to FAIR.
Regarding FAIR, the SPLC's Mark Potok had this to say:
FAIR is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes annual listings of such organizations. Among the reasons are its acceptance of $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, a group founded to promote the genes of white colonials that funds studies of race, intelligence and genetics. FAIR has hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has board members who write regularly for hate publications. It promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latino immigrants. It has produced television programming featuring white nationalists.
And John Tanton, the man who founded the group in 1979, has a long personal history of associating with white nationalists. In a 1993 letter to Garret Hardin, a committed eugenicist who promoted pseudo-scientific ideas of racial purity, Tanton wrote candidly: "I've come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that."
The committee ultimately allowed Kobach to speak, but the stigma Kobach carries with him both precedes and hounds him. In 2004, he ran as a Republican against Democratic Congressman Dennis Moore, and was spanked hard, losing by 11 percent to Moore in Kansas' largely Republican 3rd District. One reason he lost, according to The Road to Congress 2004 was because, "in general, Kobach was accused of taking money from a white supremacist organization, and the charge stuck." Currently, Kobach is vying to be Kansas' Secretary of State.
Kobach also served under Attorney General John Ashcroft during the Bush administration. There he developed a controversial program to profile Muslim men from certain countries and track them while in the U.S.
Kobach is also the proponent of a near-mystical nativist legal concept: that local cops have the inherent authority to enforce all federal statutes. Most legal scholars find this idea laughable, but folks like Arpaio and Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce cling to it like a life preserver in choppy waters.
Oh, this is gonna be interesting. Here's something I found about Kobach's congressional run:
Kris Kobach ran an absolutely vicious primary campaign, worse than any of the previous primary campaigns, and remarkably one-sided. He called Adam Taff "ultra-liberal", he had Kansans for Life send out a letter saying that people who vote for Taff have the bloody water of abortionists on their hands, even though Taff supported restrictions on abortion. Kobach called the President's immigration plan a "liberal amnesty plan", Kobach sent out a letter from his wife that said Adam Taff made her think of her miscarried baby when he criticized Kobach, Kobach basically insulted everyone who was even a little less conservative than he was. That made a lot of people angry. I don't think most Republicans expect to be compared to Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, or told that their views are ultra-liberal, they tend to take offense to that kind of thing and they don't tend to forget it.
He's a soldier of God, and don't you ever forget it.
[Derek Black, right, and his dad Don Black, January 10, 2007, "Values Voters" Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.]
White supremacists have been trying to reinsert themselves back into the mainstream (where once upon a time they were common) for a long time now. One of the chief avenues for this effort has for years been the Republican Party in the South, particularly in places like Louisiana, where David Duke operates, and Mississippi, where the Council of Conservative Citizens has a friend in Gov. Haley Barbour. It's all part of the legacy of the Southern Strategy.
In Florida, Republicans are now being confronted with the legacy of the Southern Strategy in the person of Derek Black:
Derek Black says "of course" he will attend a meeting Wednesday for new members of Palm Beach County's Republican Executive Committee. Never mind that the party chairman says Black's "white supremacist" associations are not welcome and he will not be seated.
"I was elected," Black, 19, says.
Sporting a black hat, the son of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Don Black was seated last week in a restaurant off Southern Boulevard. Sitting next to him was one of his supporters: David Duke, former Louisiana state legislator and another former KKK grand wizard.
"We're going to fight," Duke said. "I know Derek Black is going to fight for his constitutional liberties. That's why I'm here, because I want to assist Derek."
Sorry, says county GOP Chairman Sid Dinerstein. In the qualifying period in June, Black didn't sign a loyalty oath pledging he would not do anything injurious to the party. And that's not the only problem.
"He participates in white supremacist activities," Dinerstein said. "We're the party of Lincoln. We're the party that says we don't judge anybody by the color of their skin."
There's a familial connection between David Duke and Derek Black: Derek's mother, Chloe Black, was previously married to Duke, and their son is Derek's half-brother. But there's also a strategic connection, in that Duke did the same thing himself in the 1980's and '90s in Louisiana, largely taking advantage of the Republicans' Southern Strategy.
In his book on the Southern Strategy, Joseph Aistrup describes this (cited here):
FireDogLake alerted me to this, "So Wrong": can anyone explain how listing biographies of Martin Luther King, Jack Johnson and Dorothy Dandridge under the "similar products" category with Planet of the Apes looks anything but awful?...read on
Continuing their fine tradition of bringing products together to make your shopping experience easier, Walmart's "Planet of the Apes" The Complete TV series, has a few recommendations that they feel are very similar to what you should associate Planet of the Apes with. How about Martin Luther King or Tina Turner? I 'm wondering if the folks at Stormfront are secretly the webmasters of this site.
Wouldn't similar items like "V" the Original Miniseries, or Battlestar Gallactica be better choices? Not for the good people running Walmart. We hope you enjoy your shopping experience at Walmart where the prices are always low.
"Bob Whitaker and I were interviewed in the Fox video clip that you can view at the link below. We got a chance to point out to the viewers that Stormfront has 65,000 Members, 2,000,000 posts, and is dedicated only to the survival of the White race. Bob was interviewed on camera in Columbia, S.C. and I was interviewed by phone in Florida. I like the story that was done, what do you think after viewing it?"
(FOX pulled the video off the page.)
Read the rest of the thread if you want to get sick: "It's a web site with everything from dating advice and homemaking threads, to discussion boards that focus on news that white activists want to know. Stormfront.org is a web site founded on the belief that the white race is a dying race...read on"
From Blair Watch: "Thanks to all for the positive assessments of this Stormfront.org interview with Fox TV. The Fox TV Carolina staff was very professional and made it easy for Bob and me. One detail that I forgot (until just yesterday) was to unmoderate our new Stormfront Member, FOXSC, so that Fox could post more easily on Stormfront. We've also got Fox5News and Fox-News as Stormfront Members."
Thanks to Jesus General for posting about this the other day.
(Check out the annotation by Stormfront) Think Progress has more on Tami Birckner, the Fox Carolina reporter who ran the segment. She is found to be an active participant in the website's chat forums.
POSTER BOY: Chris Bowler (left, with his parents) says Hudson (Mass.) High School took down posters for his conservative club and altered a yearbook photo so the group's Web address wouldn't show (right). The website links to footage of beheadings by Islamic extremists. The Rutherford Institute is suing the school.
You have to read all the way to paragraph 22 to learn exactly what's being repressed here (emphasis mine):
The posters, hung by senior Chris Bowler, were provocative. They touted the clubs' website, which links to footage of beheadings at the hands of Islamic extremists. The site says the images show "the true doctrines of Islam put into action."
OK, let's discuss this. We're talking about advertising for a Web site that says a particular religion is inherently evil. It's entirely possible that (peaceful, responsible) members of this religious group attend the school. Does the school have no right to limit such speech on its own walls, or in a school-sponsored yearbook?
I believe in a very right to free speech, especially when we're talking about political speech. But there are always limits on venue -- you can't hold a demonstration in my living room without my permission, speech in your office cubicle may be limited by your boss, and a municipality can say you have to demonstrate in this place and not that one, or that you can march down the sidewalk but not in the street.
As long as high school kids can put this stuff out somewhere, it seems to me a school can say it doesn't belong on the school walls. And if it's permitted on the school walls, then links to sites reproducing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ought to be allowed on the walls, too. For that matter, recruiting posters for the Klan or the Nazi Party or Stormfront ought to be permitted.
Maybe that would be fine. I can see an argument for a genuinely hardcore "democracy wall" in a high school -- one where anything goes. But I think it's reasonable to say that -- in the interests of maintaining an atmosphere in which all law-abiding students and parents feel welcome -- this stuff belongs elsewhere. Here's the site, by the way. Scroll down for the material in question: Read on...
