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The white-Left Part 1: The two meanings of white

Thursday, August 18, 2016

How #JillStein Tweets for #Trump

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein knows that since she doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of being elected, the key to getting progressives to vote for her is to convince them that it really doesn't matter whether Clinton or Trump is our next president. The problem is, that while Hillary Clinton may be just another Democrat, Donald Trump is the leader of a while supremacist movement of birthers and more that has hijacked the Republican party. While it is true that Hillary Clinton, like Barack Obama, supports the fundamental policies that support the white supremacists system, Donald Trump represents a much more aggressive form of white supremacy and if he is elected, it will be almost exclusively by white voters who supported this campaign that is making white chauvinism its center piece. These are critical realities of election year 2016 in the United States that Jill Stein's campaign is seeking to obscure in its very dangerous claim that it really doesn't matter if Donald Trump becomes our next POTUS. Hillary Clinton may be a continuation of Barack Obama, but Donald Trump is not another Mitt Romney. Dr. Jill Stein thinks the campaign she ran in 2012 should be rerun in 2016. Once again the Left is in danger of applying an old strategy to a new situation without really thinking it through.

My key take away from this tweet is that Jill Stein is saying Trump is right. This came out on the day when Trump was insisting that Obama and Clinton were the founders of ISIS. He made clear he didn't mean metaphorically or "created the conditions for." He was being literal. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported:
In a separate interview, when asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt specifically whether he was referring to Obama's actions creating a power vacuum in Iraq, Trump said, "No, I mean he's the founder of ISIS."
Trump implied something very sinister was going on. He used Obama's middle name, Hussein. This was a nod to bigoted claims that Obama is Muslim and the whole episode reads like a coded message to his white supremacist followers, and Jill Stein endorses it by saying "Trump's right." Then she tries to clean it up a bit for Trump by paraphrasing him falsely "Clinton's wars created ISIS." But that's not what Trump said. He said Obama and Clinton created ISIS.

Jill Stein wants to lead us to believe she is presenting a balanced picture in this tweet, so she begins with "Clinton's right: Trump's rhetoric strengthens ISIS," which actually is true, before she endorses Trump's racist falsehood. Of course, the two roles are hardly equal as presented here by Stein. How can a terrorist rhetorical counter-point be equated with a terrorist group founder? Clearly Trump is the lesser of two evils in this tweet.
Here again Dr. Stein must obscure the question of racism to make a cute tweet. The Trump campaign is based on stoking white worker's fears of people of color, and voters who don't necessarily support Clinton's policies, are supporting her campaign because they fear voting for "the greater good" will put an open white supremacist in the White House. So yes, fear plays a role in both campaigns and Jill Stein has to leave it at that because to go into the substance of those fears would quickly reveal that the fears of those Trump supporters of blacks, Mexicans and Muslims is artificial and irrational, while the fears of Clinton voters that if they do something else an open racist could be our next president are quite rational and real.

While the Clintons certainly have played their part, the groundswell for Donald Trump was created by the economic misery, racial inequality and racist propaganda of American capitalism that goes back to long before the Civil War. The economic misery of which Jill Stein speaks are also polices that affect both black and white alike but the groundswell for Donald Trump must have another motivator, something the good doctor just doesn't see.
Trump reflects rise of new racism even more clearly, to some, than fascism. But given that she agrees Donald Trump is a fascist, how can she be so indifferent to who becomes our next president? Does she think Hillary Clinton equally fascist or is she just indifferent to the prospect of fascists in control of the executive branch of the United States government?

As to voting for revolution? With the advent of camcorders, cell phones and cameras everywhere. I now feel quite confident that the revolution will be televised. However, I still think it quite unlikely it will ever be voted in.

This makes it sound like we have nothing to fear from Trump, and apparently she does think Hillary Clinton is also a fascist, since she has said Trump is a fascist and, indeed, fascism is what we fear from Trump. So if we've already gotten that from Clinton, wouldn't that make her a fascist just like Trump? But she was only SecState, Obama was her boss. So was Obama also a fascist? Or did she mean Bill Clinton was a fascist? So is Jill Stein's point that we shouldn't fear a fascist administration from Donald Trump because it wouldn't be the first, if fact they've all been fascist administrations? Nothing new to see here, folks. Vote for Jill Stein.

It is probably even more important that she really down plays the fact that Donald Trump is building a consciously racist mass movement of white workers by equaling his hate speech with the racial indifference of imperialist wars. After all, Clinton wasn't targeting anyone because they were Muslim. We might as well equate Jews killed in Auschwitz with Jews killed by allied bombing and say "see both sides killed Jews in WWII." Cute logic!

Both may be unfit to serve but one of them will serve anyway. Our vote gives us some say in which one but, only if we vote strategically.

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1 comment:

  1. Andrew MoriartyAugust 19, 2016 at 12:23 PM

    Clay, have you ever considered that this whole election is a bunch of BS? Personally, I think Clinton is a far right Republican who will do everything she can to further the Fascist agenda. Trump, on the other hand, is a few goose steps to the right of her, and with McCarthyite apparatchiks like Roy Cohn giving him dirty secrets to mess with opponents. Oliver North is rubbing his greedy little hands together thinking about the amazing profits of supplying the uber-police state with weapons to put down "domestic terrorism," an inevitable outcome of his intolerant policies. Of course, this "d.t." may just be the revolution against our incredibly corrupt, bullshit fake democracy. If Assange is correct, and Clinton was actively encouraging arms sales to our sworn enemy, ISIS, then maybe Jill Stein was correct that the only way to end "terrorism" is to enforce a United States small and large arms embargo to affected areas. Meanwhile, Trump is there to make Clinton look halfway attractive in her blue pant suit. So, as the media is solidly on the side of Clinton, the fix, at least to me, is in. Since the only halfway legitimate candidate, Bernie, is out on his ear because the DNC and the media and the mystery puppet masters said so, to me the entire election is a fake. so what on earth is the solution to all of this bullshit? A boycott?

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