Comment To A Racist Right Wingnut:

I may be a masochist. Today I went to Laurence Auster’s website, A View From The Right. I know that I really should know better, but I am just a glutton for punishment. What kept me on the site was his feelings towards Glenn Beck. It seems Mr. Auster could, quite possibly, dislike Glenn Beck more than I do.

Anyway, I was reading his entries, and he had one that was entitled, “Black woman throws acid in face of white woman.”  (Do we italicize online articles or put them in quotes?  I don’t know the protocol.)  I really wanted to respond to his entry, but he only accepts email comments and selectively adds comments at his discretion.  I figured, since he has already tried to dismiss me as a “knee-jerk liberal blogger,” that I would be better suited addressing my concerns here.

So, there’s an article on MSNBC.com about the “Acid attacker,” in which a woman in Oregon had acid thrown on her face.  It was an especially heinous crime because the girl who received the acid was particularly pretty.

Mr. Auster only added this as a preface to the article on his site:

The assailant was a stranger and the attack was unprovoked. MSNBC does not mention the race of the assailant until the last sentence of the article.

When you read the article, this is indeed correct.  The last line of the article states:

Police said the assailant was described as a black woman between 25 and 35, who wore a green shirt and khaki shorts, The Columbian reported. She had medium-length black hair that was pulled back.

[If you are wondering, The Columbian is the newspaper name.  It is not an olive skinned man with an impeccable suit and shoes that sits at the end of the bar with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip and manages to observe, through his Latin mistique, all types of things that other people tend to miss.]

They described her race as part of her physical description.  Where is the problem with this?  Well, my problem with this is simple:  The same people who claim minorities are always “pulling the race card” tend to have the same things to say in these situations.  How can we win?  Do you want us to judge people as individuals, or be predisposed of racial judgments?

Mr. Auster contends that he is not a racist.  He was rather upset that I compared him to Stormfront.  (The Nazi website.)  But, my comment to Mr. Auster is this:

Mr. Auster,
Why are you bothered that MSNBC did not mention the woman’s race until the end of the article and why do you feel the need to headline race in the topic?  Is it not possible that the acid attacker was just a mentally deranged person?  Do you really want a world without preferences to race?  Or do you just want people to stop challenging white preference?

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Tags: America, black, Glenn Beck, Islam, lawrence auster, Muslim, racism, White
Category Racism |

Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.

It is quite often claimed that Black Americans or Chicano Americans are more prone to be criminals in the United States.  Usually this claim is accompanied by statistics.  I often wonder if people really just pick and choose statistics to support what they “want” to prove, or if they look at statistics and make a conclusion from gathering the evidence.  I think we all know that the prior is much more common than the latter.

First, Let us look at the statistics.

From the US Census Bureau (2008):
The American population is 304,059,724.
257,116,111 people are not Hispanic or Latino.
199,491,458 people are White.
37,171,750 people are Black Americans/African Americans/Negro (was on the 2010 Census)
2,328,982 people are Native American
13,237,698 people are Asian
434,561 people are Hawaiian
4,451,662 people are “two or more races”
46,943,613 are Latino or Hispanic (and are broken up among various other races)

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics:  “In 2008, over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end — 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 31 adults.” and “In 1997, 9% of the black population in the U.S. was under some form of correctional supervision compared to 2% of the white population and over 1% of other races. “

What does this say?  Well, it does say that Black Americans are disproportionally arrested in the United States. It doesn’t quite clearly say much else.  You can infer that it means that Black people are criminals.  You can also infer that it means a racist society will tend to prosecute those at the receiving end of the racism.

After a few hours of combing through statistics at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, I remembered again why I hate numbers.  They give me a headache.  I can reprint a ton of information, but I really don’t want to.  A bunch of it can be found here:  http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1743
It basically says that Whites are more often the victims of crimes, overwhelmingly.  What does that say?  Well, for once, it says that crimes are reported by whites much more frequently than by anyone else.  Does that mean they aren’t more often the victims of crimes?  Not at all.  Does it mean they are?  Not at all.  There are a lot of things you can infer from statistics, but it doesn’t always make them legitimate until you can correlate them and provide farther evidence.

So, yeah, I got really tired of those pages and pages of charts and numbers.  Then I found the National Crime Victimization Survey that was started under President Nixon.  “A key finding of the survey was the realization that many crimes were not reported to the police.”

The survey also found that ‘in the period 1992-2000, significantly less than half (43%) of all criminal acts reported through victimization surveys were also reported to police.‘  Hart & Rennison (2003:3)

So, when you look at the DOJ statistics, it states that 4,176,440 Whites were the victims of crimes in 2007 and 794,220 Blacks were the victims of crimes in the same year.  With a “rate per 1,000 persons age 12 and over” of 20.5 for Whites and 26.1 for Blacks.

Again, what do we conclude by this?  When 43% of crimes are not even reported, does this give an accurate picture?  The Uniform Crime Report has numbers very similar to the National Crime Victimization Survey, but the UCR is only reported by police.

I’m getting tired, so I’m just going to rip this line from Wikipedia, but it is a summary of the FBI Expanded Homicide Data – Crime in the United States 2008. Link here.

African Americans were arrested more than any other race for murder in 2008, making up 36% of all arrests. African Americans, constituting approximately 12% of the general population, were significantly overrepresented in the total arrests made. African Americans were also significantly overrepresented in victimization, representing 47% of all murder victims. White Americans and individuals of Other race were significantly underrepresented in cases of murder and non-negligible homicide in 2008. Murder in White American and African American populations were overwhelmingly intraracial, with 83% of all White victims and 90% of all Black victims having been murdered by individuals of the same race. The same was true, though to a lesser degree, for individuals of Other race, with 52% having been murdered by individuals also of Other race.

So, what did we learn? So far we learned that our prisons are filling up with Blacks more than Whites, that half of all crimes go unreported, and that most people are murdered by people with the same skin color as themselves.

Finally, I want to turn to a non-government source of information.  If you have never heard of the Innocence Project, it is a noble organization that does wonderful things.  Anyone who talks bad about them is an asshole.  And this is why: 254 EXONERATED

Here is information from the Innocence Project:

• Seventeen people had been sentenced to death before DNA proved their innocence and led to their release.
• The average sentence served by DNA exonerees has been 13 years.
• About 70 percent of those exonerated by DNA testing are members of minority groups.
• In almost 40 percent of the cases profiled here, the actual perpetrator has been identified by DNA testing.
• Exonerations have been won in 34 states and Washington, D.C.

HERE IS A BIG FAT LINK TO THE INNOCENCE PROJECT.

70 PERCENT OF THOSE EXONERATED BY DNA TESTING ARE MEMBERS OF MINORITY GROUPS!

Surprise!

Anyway.  This could really go on for quite a while.  There are so many moderating and intervening variables that need to be examined.  Even IF there was concrete evidence that Black Americans were 90 times more likely to commit a violent crime, you need to isolate that to provide proof that it is due to them being Black Americans and not the social environment, class situation, environment, nutrition, prenatal care, neonatal care, et cetera.  (There is a lot of evidence that people from low-income communities were more prone to violence in the past due to children ingesting large amounts of lead paint. We DO know that lead causes violent behavior.)  I still see no evidence at all that links skin color to violence or criminal behavior.  These tendencies  have not been proven to be clustered, or linked, to skin color in any way.

Oh, nevermind.  There are several books written about it.  Like America behind bars: trends in imprisonment, 1950 to 2000  by Rick Ruddell. (You can look it up on Google Books for free, or you can come back when I update this page and click on the link to buy it from Amazon and give me a percentage of the sale.)

I really don’t like maths.

And I really get tired of using statistics to prove a point in such detail.

I guess we could all just go to Lawrence Auster’s website and read the selected incidents and news articles that he has cherry picked to prove his point and avoid doing ANY actual research.  Hell, if Sarah Palin’s research involves having someone else write her biography and give a speech about the notes on her hand, and make $12 million a year, who needs to actually look up statistical data and analyze studies?  Compiling data?  Isn’t that for the Elite?  “We don’t need no book learnin’ and ‘rithmatic!”

Especially when 99% of all statistics are wrong.

“Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.” – Homer Simpson

Tags: african-american, anti, black, Constitution, Department of Justice, discrimination, equal rights, incarceration, Innocence Project, latino, lawrence auster, parole, population, prison, race, racist, sarah palin, statistics, United States, US Census Bureau, White, white dominance
Category Definitions, Racism |

The Fascist New Right

There are a lot of terms flying around today, especially in the political sphere.  They include, but are not limited to:  Socialist, Communist, Racist, Nazi, Fascist, Lib, Liberal, Teabagger, and Thug.  These terms are seemingly used by any, and everyone, with reckless abandon.  The problem is, that when you actually have a reason to use one of these terms, it gets dismissed.  I have noticed a lot of attention on Goodwin’s Law.  The concept that, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.“  This is quite humorous.  At the same time, this does not mean the comparisons are not valid.  I find a strong correlation between Fascism and the New Right. (The Conservatives of today, be they Tea Party, Tories, or National Front.)

Sometimes the Left does propose Socialist ideals, or at least borderline socialist ideals.  “Universal healthcare” could be considered more Socialist than Capitalist.  There is no secret that I think they should stop pretending.  I personally think they should say, “We aren’t concerned with who developed this idea.  We are concerned with something that works.  This isn’t a new concept, and the countries that use it are doing quite well with it.”  Farther, they should point out, “As Americans, we should be trying to do it better than other nations, not avoiding it.”  On the same hand, while I am not a big fan of Fascism, I do not contend to use “Fascist” in this entry as an epithet.  The New Right has Fascist ideology and Fascist goals. Fascism is also not democratic.  So, in some way, I am claiming the New Right are anti-democratic.

I want to reiterate, that I am not claiming the New Right are Fascist to drive a farther wedge.  The goal here is to really examine what is going on.

There are a few things that strike me as odd with the rise of the New Right in the past year or so.  When Barack Obama was elected President, a new wave of protest swept through the nation.  There are tangible threads that weave through this new tapestry that seriously concern me.  Especially as the numbers are growing.  Just last night, the Tories in England got back a large portion of British Parliament.  So, let’s look at Fascism and see how it relates to American Conservativism.  (Fascism is quite complex as an ideology.  This is not an academic journal, so I am just using Wikipedia as my reference for any information on Fascism that are listed here.  I do not believe that Wikipedia is the absolute authority on the subject, or even the best authority, but I’m trying to keep this as short as possible, so… I accept that flaw for the time being.)

First we have the basic ideology of Fascism:

• Fascism is a “radical and authoritarian, nationalist political ideology.  Fascists seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives, values, and systems such as a political system and the economy.“

If you were to go to a Tea Party website, such as the Tea Party Patroits‘ website, you would see, their “Core values” are “Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets.”  – “organize the nation on corporatist perspectives, values and systems such as political system and the economy.”

Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong. . . . They claim that culture is created by collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus rejects individualism.  In viewing the nation as an integrated collective community, they claim that pluralism is a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety.  They advocate the creation of a single-party state. . . . Fascists reject and resist autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered part of the fascists’ nation and who refuse to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated. They consider attempts to create such autonomy as an affront and threat to the nation.

That’s a long block, I know.  I felt it was spelled out better than I could reword it.
The Tea Party and their cohorts have been extolling the virtues of “What makes America great” and that the “Liberal Elite” want to destroy them and make the US culture a multi-cultural, pluralist society that will lead the nation into ruin.  Arizona just passed a law that will fundamentally restrict autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups that are not considered part of the nation.  It will also penalize anyone who refuses to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated.  They definitely find immigrants with foreign customs to be an “affront and threat to the nation.“

“Fascism is strongly opposed to core aspects of the Enlightenment and is an opponent of liberalism, Marxism, and mainstream socialism  for being associated with failures that fascists claim are inherent in the Enlightenment.”
I was just looking at Al-Sonja Schmidt (who I have much to say about in a future time) and there were a lot of references to Marx, Socialism, Black Nationalism and such.  To get the whole trifecta, she said that President Obama was influenced by Marx and is a tyrant.  (He has a foreign sounding name, is pluralistic, and a product of the Enlightenment.)

I don’t think it is really worth spending much time on how the New Right feels everyone should stay in the Cold War and we need to start the Red Scare back up.  I have spent enough time on this ridiculous garbage.

THE CORE TENANTS OF FASCISM:

Nationalism is probably one of the most obvious core tenants of Fascism.  I also highly doubt any Conservative would decry that Nationalism is not a massive “core value” of their ideology.  Is it even worth examining farther?  The real question is if people truly understand the true meaning of Nationalism.

Fascists saw the struggle of nation and race as fundamental in society, in opposition to communism’s perception of class struggle.  The fascist view of nation is as a single organic entity which binds people together by their ancestry and is a natural unifying force of people.  Fascism seeks to solve economic, political, and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the nation or race above all else, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity.

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Tags: AFA, Al-Sonja Schmidt, American Family Association, anti, apartheid, Arizona, brown shirts, Burning Fence, Central Valley Tea Party, chicano, Christian Right, conservative, Constitution, economy, equal rights, fascism, fascist, gay marriage, Glenn Beck, illegal immigrant, immigration, labels, lawrence auster, Left, liberals, mexican american, musolini, Neo-Conservative, Neo-Fascism, neocon, neoconservative, New Right, racism, racist, right, sarah palin, status, Tea Party, Teabagger, Tory, UK, United States, white dominance, zombies
Category New Right |

Response from “A knee-jerk liberal blogger”

So, today Larry Auster calls me “a knee-jerk liberal blogger.” The full entry can be found here. I think it is interesting, that there was not one link to my site, or my page. Not one mention of me. (update: there is a link to my entry, but it is on the word “finds,” so I don’t know how intuitive that is.) Yet, he disliked being called out as a racist so much he commented on it. So, today’s entry is in response to Larry and his post about me. I will ignore the fact that he is afraid to link to me as to have a proper display of information.
(In all sense of fairness, I did edit the entry today.  There were problematic sentences and spelling errors, but I honestly did my best to not change any meanings or specific terminology that was originally used.  I simply tried to make it flow better and convey my points more succinctly.

Specifically he states:

A knee-jerk liberal blogger, the type who takes the Southern Poverty Law Center as his authority, came upon View from the Right, this entry in particular, and finds it indistinguishable from the neo-Nazi Stormfront.

So… I’m not a liberal, but I don’t even want to get into that. I’m probably more liberal than Conservative, though. But, let’s just place our own labels on people and that way we can dismiss them without actually using talking points, definitions, discussion and debate.  For instance, Lawrence Auster is a racist. Farther, I did not use the SPLC as my authority.  Larry, I found quite a few interesting tidbits of information about you from all over.  Even your Wikipedia entry is a bit interesting (and brief).  I just said the SPLC classified you as a racist before I did.  But, yes, I did say your site felt like Stormfront.  (I did not say I found it indistinguishable from Stormfront, just that it has the same “feel.”)  Majority of all of your bitches are about non-whites, Larry.  That is the same thing as the Stormfront website.  The biggest difference is that Stormfront complains about “Jews” as much as every other “non-white” in their classification.

Mr. Auster, I will attempt to answer your questions.

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Tags: conservative, labels, lawrence auster, liberals, Martin Luthar King Jr, neocon, neoconservative, racism, racist, response, southern poverty law center, white dominance
Category Racism |

View From The Right?

Ughs.  Sorry, nothing lighthearted today, again.

**I stated in the original entry that I would edit and update this entry when I had some time.  Since, it has already received comments, I felt I should make time, to truly represent myself and this site.**

I saw Carl Hancock Rux stated that he was looking for the entymology of the term “post-racial.”  (Spell check recognizes Entomology but not Entymology.)  I was curious myself, and started a simply search query.  I ended up on this blog entry, on  “A View From The Right.” The tagline for the site is “The passing scene and what it’s about viewed from the traditionalist politically incorrect Right.”  The blog is authored by Lawrence Auster.  So, if this is a “View from the Right,” this is why I don’t consider myself either “Left” or “Right.”  I had to look up Lawrence Auster, after a few pages of reading.  I admit that I did not know who this man was prior to finding this site.  Once again, the Southern Poverty Law Center beat me to classifying this man’s persona as it should be classified.

The entry that led me to this site was on a blog entry entitled “What is Post Racial America?“   I thought, “this might be interesting, I’m curious myself.”  Well, Auster goes on a rant about minorities, specifically non-whites, and blames them for all of the racial issues in America.  He states that post-racial is not here because of minorities refusal to accept white supremacy.  (That is what I took away from it.)  There was not one mention of any racist acts or issues perpetrated by whites in his entire entry.  I would be remiss if I were to do the opposite, and simply blame White America for all of America’s racial issues.  Still, who was it that classified “race” in America?  Who drew the lines?  Who set up the levels of privilege based on “racial” classifications?  Anyway, the whole point of this long boring story is the few interesting points it raises.

I perused a large amount of the site.  Let me say that the front page of the site appeared very similar to Stormfront.  Everything is slanted against everyone and anyone who is browner than Anglo, but especially those of African diaspora.  Almost every story is one regarding Blacks and/or Muslims (in a negative light).  This is not just “politically incorrect.”  It’s racist propaganda.  (It is politically incorrect, because it isolates such a large voting base, there is no way you can achieve any level of success in this representative government.)  Sorry, Larry, you are just a racist.  You can hide under any umbrella you wish, like “traditionally conservative.”  (That would make you a Democrat, wouldn’t it?  Since the Republican party was traditionally the part of equal rights.)  You can even hide under the guise of being an idiot.  I am being a bit brash, but it is because I’m just tired of this racist rhetoric hiding under the guise of being an “unpopular truth” or a “conservative opinion.”

So, Mr. Auster, do you mean Conservative as a supporter of an aristocratic monarchy with subjugated peasants and surfs?  Then, yes, you are a Conservative.  So is Kim Jong Il, apparently.

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Tags: anti, commentator, conservative, labels, lawrence auster, liberals, neocon, neoconservative, racism, racist, southern poverty law center, white dominance
Category Racism |