Tracking Hate during the Trump Administration

Goya Por una navaja (For a clasp knife). A garroted priest
grasps a crucifix in his hands. Pinned to his chest is a
description of the crime for which he was
killed—possession of a knife (Disasters of War;
Plate 34, Wikiwand).

Post-election analyses have attempted to discern the meaning of the Donald Trump election.

It's indisputable: Trump's relentless invectives against blacks, Latinos, women, Muslims, and LGBTQ Americans, (actually running a campaign on an open platform of hate), did not disqualify this lunatic who has created a disturbing 21st-century alliance with Russia, domestic white supremacists, the 'Christian' right, the rightist elements of the FBI and totalitarian movements around the globe.

Most Americans recognize Trump as a pathological liar and a malignant sociopath, but nevertheless some 25 percent of the electorate still voted for him. But the votes do not support coherent policies beyond transferring money and power to billionaires and diminishing civil liberties.

The fact is that most Trump voters do not care about public policy, do not know public policy, macro-economics, fiscal policy, monetary policy and federalism, for example. Trump voters are not too keen on Constitutional democracy as a system of governance, period.

Trump is a visceral embodiment of resentment and angst, a figure that says 'fuck you' to blacks, Latinos, immigrants, liberal Jews, Hillary Clinton, multi-national corporations and others while Trump promises to erect an America-first edifice—a vague, nonsensical construct hazy in the "post-truth, post-fact, post-everything Trump fog," (Schwarz, The Intercept). Trump is the strutting reenactment of the American myth.

Much of the corporate press—refusing to jettison the ridiculous journalistic conventions of neutrality and nihilism—has come to the realization that pretending that Trump is not a fascist and burying its collective head in the sand is no longer a tenable approach to reporting the news.

Now comes a corrective action from the New York Times, an editorial column entitled This Week in Hate that tracks hate crimes and harassment around the country since the election of Donald Trump.

Begun last year and now in full operation one day after the inauguration, the Times has decided to chronicle what is happening in the faith that knowledge begets action. The Times' publishing decision is an important step.

From This Week in Hate:

This Week in Hate highlights hate crimes and harassment around the country since the election of Donald Trump.
Reliable data on hate crimes is hard to come by. As reports of racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic harassment and attacks poured in after the election of Donald Trump, many Americans wondered whether they represented a nationwide increase in hate crime. While the Southern Poverty Law Center saw a dramatic increase in reports after the election, it’s not yet clear whether this indicates a nationwide trend.

That’s one reason This Week in Hate is joining with ProPublica and a coalition of other organizations to work on, a project that aims to gather data on hate crimes and incidents of bias around the country. Documenting Hate will analyze information from law enforcement, news reports, nonprofit groups and individuals in order to investigate topics like how many hate crimes occur annually, which parts of the country have the highest prevalence and whether the frequency or severity of hate crimes has changed since the election of Mr. Trump. This Week in Hate and several news organizations will publish results from those investigations. Here are some reports of hate crimes and harassment that have drawn public attention in recent days.

• As many as 16 Jewish community facilities in the Eastern United States received bomb threats last Monday. At a community center in Rockville, Md., more than 300 people, including 200 preschoolers, were evacuated. No bombs were found at the facilities, but the F.B.I. is investigating the threats.
• A swastika and the word “bomb” were found on a bathroom wall at a Jewish community center on Staten Island last Wednesday. Police investigated and did not find a bomb.
 • Last Monday, a woman in Nampa, Idaho, discovered that her car had been vandalized with the words “go back”; paint was poured over the car, its windows were smashed and its radio and air conditioner were damaged. The car’s owner was born in Nigeria but is not a recent immigrant. Police are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.
• A former Republican Party county chairman in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, discovered last Monday that his van had been vandalized with an anti-Trump message.
• The garage of a family in Sylvania Township, a suburb of Toledo, Ohio, was vandalized last Tuesday with a swastika and a racist message aimed at Arabs. Police are investigating the incident. One of the family members, 21-year-old Malak Ayache, has painted over the vandalism with the message “Toledo [heart]s Arabs” to mark the support her family has received from neighbors since the incident. “I honestly want everyone to know that this negative, hateful act is not going to affect this family,” she said.

Documenting Hate has developed a form to help people report hate crimes or incidents of bias for inclusion in the data analysis. If you have experienced, witnessed or read about a hate crime or incident of bias or harassment, you can use the form to send information about the incident to the Documenting Hate partners, including This Week in Hate.

The form is not a report to law enforcement or any government agency. You can access the form here
If you have experienced harassment, these resources may be helpful. If you witness harassment, here are some tips for responding. You can contact This Week in Hate at weekinhate@nytimes.com #

Why Obama Matters in History

They took your lives; they could not take your pride

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

- RFK
Day of Affirmation Address, 6/6/66,
University of Capetown, Capetown, South Africa

City of Blinding Lights
(Paul Hewson; Dave Evans; Adam Clayton; Larry Mullen)


.

Racism in the Fox Valley

A police officer from Fond du Lac told me last year those distributing racist fliers are "cowards" who never show their faces because they are afraid to stand behind their anonymous words.

Two Wisconsin colleges in the Fox Valley are looking for the idiots who distributed racist fliers on their campuses yesterday. They can check the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Hate Map that shows eight racist groups operating in Wisconsin, likely some of the same white supremacist groups operating in the Fox Valley that hit UW-Oshkosh and St. Norbert College (De Pere).

And likely they're the same geniuses who left anti-Obama, racist fliers around Fond du Lac in 2008, and dropped white pride lit on car windows at a Latino pride gathering at the Fond du Lac Public Library last January.

Quit hiding, show your faces.

Hate in America

Update II: See the big hate.
- Paul Krugman

Update: Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder? Two terror events in two weeks makes me wonder if media extremists might turn down the ugly rhetoric for a bit. - Joan Walsh

Another hate crime. This act a white supremacist murdering a man at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

This is why we need the Southern Poverty Law Center. Why we need to become vigilant against racial profiling and all acts of racism and hate.

Why we need to constantly confront the ignorant among us.

The appeal to racism, bigotry and hate is a staple of the Republican Party, and not just isolated American whacks. You can bet this murderer is not a big fan of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the civil rights movement, and likely not a voice against racial profiling.

Since the inception of Nixon’s Southern Strategy in 1968, continuing through Reagan’s 1980 campaign kick-off in Philadelphia, Mississippi [the site of the murder of civil rights workers, Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, 16 years earlier], right on up to Bush and McCain, playing on the bigotries in America has been standard GOP fare.

Instead of the ignorant and hateful being politically marginalized, the GOP sees a political opportunity that they have never stopped using. The results are plain and ugly.

Here in Wisconsin, for most Wisconsin GOP writers, Milwaukee talk radio, and the Republican Party, the Civil Rights movement never happened.

So it's no stretch for them to obstruct black voters, disenfranchise gays, and play on the fears and prejudices of the ignorant who comprise the base of today's Republican Party.

As always the civil rights movement will stand tall against the ignorant masses of the GOP; it's just too bad that these haters find so much comfort in a major American political party.

Don't Monitor Political Thought

Update: Intelligence analysts at the Homeland Security Department ignored objections by civil-liberties officials before sending out a controversial report on the resurgence of domestic right-wing extremism, a department official confirmed Friday.

Last week's release of the publication Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment (7 April 2009 ) by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is ludicrous.

I love anti-hate groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center because of their humanism and abiding exposure of and rebuttals to rightwing whack jobs.

But monitoring the political thought and activity of Americans ought not be the business of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or any other governmental agency.

From the DHS report:

This product is one of a series of intelligence assessments published by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the United States. The information is provided to federal, state, local, and tribal counterterrorism and law enforcement officials so they may effectively deter, prevent, preempt, or respond to terrorist attacks against the United States.

Look, if American citizens wish to hold and develop crackpot ideas and conceptions, that's their right and their business. In other words: The DHS should butt the hell out.

I never thought that I would agree with much that Michelle Malkin says, but she is right on in writing, "The 'report' (PDF file here) was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real."

This report could just as easily been written by J. Edgar Hoover or John Mitchell in the 1960s-70s by inserting blackpower, civil rights and peace for "antigovernment," "white supremacist," and "rightwing extremist" groups.

SPLC: Extremist/Racist Threat to Obama

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is expressing concern over a rise of hate activity that they link to the presidency of Barack Obama.

Writes the SPLC: "President Obama's election and the deepening economic crisis are creating the perfect storm for white supremacists intent on swelling their ranks."

Also reported by the SPLC:

Racist Extremists in the Military
SPLC urges enforcement of zero-tolerance policy
A recent search of a U.S. Marine's barracks turned up a journal containing white supremacist material and a plan to kill President Obama. The incident is the latest disturbing account that suggests extremists are infiltrating the military — even as officials deny there's a problem. SPLC President Richard Cohen recently urged the Department of Defense to uphold a zero-tolerance policy against white supremacist activity.