{"id":13670,"date":"2008-10-28T22:20:23","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T05:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/10\/28\/bringing-what-sits-under-rocks-into-the-light.html"},"modified":"2014-11-06T07:34:02","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T14:34:02","slug":"bringing_what_sits_under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/10\/28\/bringing_what_sits_under.html","title":{"rendered":"Bringing what sits under rocks into the light"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Interesting story on All Things Considered tonight about how the Obama candidacy and its impending success are dragging the real racists out of the rural backwaters and gangland obscurity<\/a>. Police are seeing an upswing in hate crimes, both trivial (defacing Obama posters) and not.<\/p>\n

\n

Part of the problem is that Obama is playing into the neo-Nazi and white supremacist narrative, said Brian Levin, who studies hate and extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. What the groups were saying \u2014 “Jews and blacks coming out of the urban areas are going to take over this white nation of ours” \u2014 has occurred, he said.<\/p>\n

You only have to look to the Internet to see how white supremacist leaders such as David Duke are using Obama to rally their troops. Duke has called Obama a “visual aid for hate groups.” He says an Obama presidency would provide indisputable proof that whites have lost control of America. “This is a cultural and racial battlefront,” said Levin. “Barack Obama is symbol No. 1 of the worst the future has to offer.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ironically, the white supremacists are actually divided on Obama’s candidacy. Some, for obvious reasons, refuse to vote for him. Others think that a vote for Obama is a positive step toward the impending “race war” due to wrack the country (cf. folks who support Israel as a step toward the End Times).<\/p>\n

Me? I think the churning and rising of this sort of overt racism is a positive thing. An Obama presidency forces America to face what remains of racism in our psyche, not just in the reprehensible form of the David Dukes of this world, but in more subtle ways. That can only be a good thing, and if the roaches and other slimy critter pour out from under the rocks in the face of Obama in the White House, that will help us deny that they still live among us, or how their hatred has subtle echoes in our own cultural hearts.<\/p>\n

The other thing it will do, directly opposite of riling up the racists, is demonstrate to the vast majority who might be a bit leery, a scosh apprehensive, even if they don’t even recognize where that anxiety is coming from, that a black man as President, once you’ve seen it, isn’t all that scary<\/em>. The best way to combat racism, overt and subtle, is, essentially, to integrate, to let the Other become part of your everyday world. Once you see that a black man on TV every night isn’t something to be scared of, all the rants of the David Dukes become all that much more ridiculous.<\/p>\n

(In parallel, I expect that as gays become more openly integrated into society — see California, of course, but also other states where civil unions and even gay marriage have been made legal, and, yet, the societal sky hasn’t fallen and civilization hasn’t turned into some great homosexual debauch — the fear of the unknown will, because it becomes known, diminish, and the doom-saying predictions of the Dobsons of the world<\/a> that things like California’s Amendment 8 are the Last Straight Hope to protect our Great Christian Nation will be seen as goofy as people worrying about the dire and apocalyptic effects of giving women the right to vote.)<\/p>\n

So even though the NPR story tends to get a bit scarifying at times, nearly blaming Obama for riling up all those racists, I think it’s a good <\/em>thing that the white-first KKK a and neo-Nazi types are creeping out of the woodwork again. Sometimes you just have to turn over some rocks to see what comes scurrying out. Wearing heavy-soled boots, and not being afraid to use them in the circumstance, is highly advised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting story on All Things Considered tonight about how the Obama candidacy and its impending success are dragging the real racists out of the rural backwaters and gangland obscurity….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[54,718,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-2008","category-marriage-equality","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":134205,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/13\/charlottesville-trumps-grotesque-failure-leadership.html","url_meta":{"origin":13670,"position":0},"title":"Charlottesville and Trump’s Grotesque Failure of Leadership","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 13-Aug-17 3:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So apparently while a lot of people (myself included) were having a fairly pleasant, otherwise engaging and distracting day ... a large gang of racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, \"alt-Rightists,\" Neo-Confederates, KKKers, open-carrying militia types, and other deplorables held a march in Charlottesville, Virginia. Their immediate cause was the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Civil Liberties"","block_context":{"text":"Civil Liberties","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/civil-liberties"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-white-supremacists-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-white-supremacists-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-white-supremacists-2.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-white-supremacists-2.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-white-supremacists-2.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/charlottesville-white-supremacists-2.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8531,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/10\/18\/intolerance_for.html","url_meta":{"origin":13670,"position":1},"title":"Intolerance for the Intolerant","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 18-Oct-05 9:05am","format":false,"excerpt":"I find it darkly ironic that protesters against a white supremacist march in Ohio ended up, well, being a hell of a lot more self-destructively violent than their targets. But...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25272,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/10\/none-dare-call-it-terror.html","url_meta":{"origin":13670,"position":2},"title":"None dare call it Terror?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 10-Jan-12 5:29pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm amazed that even TPM didn't use the \"T\" word here -- serial bombers who were \"sending a message\" about all those Hispanics and Blacks and Jews? If they were Muslims, most of the GOP contenders would be calling for every other Muslim in the country to be thrown in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23830,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/18\/nonsectarian-crazy.html","url_meta":{"origin":13670,"position":3},"title":"Nonsectarian Crazy","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 18-Nov-11 8:42am","format":false,"excerpt":"When a Muslim goes off the deep end, citing Bizarro World religious justifications for violent behavior, there seem to be plenty of folks who are quick to point out how this proves that all Muslims are in an evil conspiracy to wipe us out in the name of their violent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50005,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/06\/the-obama-numbers.html","url_meta":{"origin":13670,"position":4},"title":"The Obama Numbers","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 6-Apr-15 3:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A look at how various numbers have gone up and down since January 2009. For the most part, they look pretty darned good (as simple numbers; reality is often more nuanced, but political discussions rarely are). There are things I could ask for more of, or less, but that's always\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130223,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/18\/the-obama-muslim-conspiracy-is-really-a-jewish-conspiracy.html","url_meta":{"origin":13670,"position":5},"title":"The Obama Muslim Conspiracy Is Really a Jewish Conspiracy?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 18-Mar-16 4:34am","format":false,"excerpt":"Silly White Supremacists. Don't they know that Obama is out to advance the World Muslim Hegemony, not the World Jewish Hegemony? 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