How support for genocide gave the election to Trump

Let me start up by saying that I don't see this as it is often discussed. I don't think that the US voters were sufficiently concerned about the genocide taking place in Gaza to swing the election against Harris/Biden. I don't think this was like 2016, when Trump was elected to his apprenticeship term. Then the white Left, as represented by the Green Party did actually have the power to swing the election towards Trump. In that election, the votes for Jill Stein in three critical states, PA, WI & MI, were enough to swing the election to Clinton had they chose to vote for her rather than use it as a "feel good" vote. In 2024, the white Left had no such clout. Even if the uncommitted movement gave MI to Trump, he would have done perfectly fine without their help. Nevertheless, those who used Israel's genocide in Gaza in a bid to defeat Harris will still own what Trump helps Israel do to Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon going forward.

In my telling of this tale, it is the corporate media, most notably MSNBC, that is most responsible for a white supremacist and fascist being elected president of the United States. While MSNBC was the most vocal of all the corporate media in voicing opposition the MAGA movements bid for power, it has also been the most silent about Israel's crimes in Gaza, and its massacres in the West Bank and Lebanon. CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS have similarly been engaged in a cover-up of Israel's war crimes. While Fox News did give more time to these stories, they did so from a racist  Christian-Zionist perspective, which is arguable worst than silence.

Those that know better what has been going on in Gaza from the daily news reports from Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, and other more truthful news source, have a much clearer idea of what is going on in Gaza. Those daily reports on the Israeli attacks and Palestinian deaths make it obvious why so many international organizations have branded it a genocide. But those well informed Americans are still a minority of US voters.

Most US voters live in an alternate reality carefully cultivated by the US corporate media, and its masters, with regards to what has been happening in Gaza in the last 13 months, or even the last 13 year times three. 

The problem for anyone running for president with the intention of actually winning state power and being able to affect US policy from that position, as opposed to someone running a performative campaign designed to seize the moral high ground and garner like minded votes, is that they have to win a majority of voters who see the conflict through the lens of this alternate reality. 

By representing this limited, and warped, view of what has been happening in Lebanon. Israel, the West Bank, and particularly Gaza, this supposedly liberal media undermined the fight against the Trump takeover in two fundamental ways:

1.) By forcing the whole discussion around Gaza to operate within their alternate reality, they also undermined the ability for a politician to take a position based of justice and still win a majority of US voters. This made the alienation of many voters that demanded justice from the Harris campaign inevitable.

2.) By revealing to those in the know that they were willing to countenance genocide, they undermined their own calls to defend democracy, as many saw it as a call to defend a social order where genocide is okay. And who would want to vote for that?

Based on this thinking, I have conclude that was most necessary from the pro-Palestinian community in the past year, and still most necessary going forward, is a sustained campaign that simply demands that the US corporate media tell US voters and tax payers the truth about what our government is supporting in Palestine.

Clay Claiborne

18 November 2024

The other side of the Trump Campaign's racist Puerto Rico comment

There has been a lot of very righteous criticism of the Trump comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's racist crack that:

"there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now, I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

While this obviously racist attack on Puerto Rico has been called out by everyone that's not a shameless Trump supporter, this comment has two edges, and it cuts both ways. Whereas the insult to Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican people has received a lot of attention, the insult to the Earth has received none that I've seen. 

That's why I'm writing this blog post. In all this discussion about the racist nature of the Trump comedian's comment, somebody needs to point out that there really is a floating island of garbage in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that is already twice the size of Texas—and that's no joke!

This other side of this racist attack, treating this massive attack on the Earth's oceans as a joke, is also a component part of white supremacy, as I noted in a blog post more than six years ago:

Why white supremacy is a danger to the Earth

While the skin color differences between the European colonizers, and the people of the southern hemisphere may have provided the original impetus for the white and black categorization, the adoption of the symbolism of white by Europeans at the beginning of the imperialist period has been used not only as a sign of their righteousness in dominating and raping the thereby newly created "non-white" people, it has been used as a sign of their righteousness in dominating and raping the entire planet. Therefore, we can conclude that the problems inherent in a group of people being called white is not merely a race problem. It would be a problem even if there were no other people. This attitude of whiteness has been invoked not just against the "black people of the Earth" but against the Earth itself.

The array of political forces around the climate change debate is but one example of how white supremacy isn't just an attack on the better part of humanity, but on nature itself. At first glance, the global warming question has nothing to do with race, and one would think that even the most extreme racist, that envisions an earthly future free of people of color, would still be fighting to see that the Earth did have a future, if only for white people, and yet there they all are, firmly on the denial side of climate change.

White chauvinism therefore is the practice of white supremacy, not just towards the excluded peoples, but towards the entire excluded natural world. It underlines and legitimizes the operations of capitalism not just in exploiting "people of color," but in ruthlessly exploiting the resources of the Earth as well.

Anyway, the Trump comedian's so-call joke so clearly illustrates this dual nature of white supremacy that I just thought someone should point this out is all.

Clay Claiborne

Halloween, 2024

Occupy LA, October 2011

 

  

The genius of "The Wire" shown again by the 2024 US Presidential election.

The Wire, is cop/criminal TV series located in Baltimore that played on HBO between 2002 and 2006. Some consider it the best series ever produced for TV, and I proudly count myself among them. This is the scene that opens the series. It runs before the title and song, and involves a conversation between Baltimore Det, Jimmy McNulty and an eyewitness to the the murder of Omar "Snot Boogie" Betts, a street hustler:

-So, your boy's name is what?
-Snot.

-You called the guy Snot?
-Snotboogie, yeah.

-"Snotboogie."
-He like the name?

-What?
-Snotboogie.

-This kid whose mama went to the trouble of christening him Omar lsaiah Betts? You know, he forgets his jacket...so his nose starts running, and some asshole, instead of giving him a Kleenex, he calls him "Snot." So, he's "Snot" forever. Doesn't seem fair.

-Life just be that way, I guess.
-So who shot Snot?

-I ain't going to no court. m*therf*cker ain't have to put no cap in him though.
-Definitely not.

-He could've just whipped his ass, like we always whip his ass.
-I agree with you. 

-He gonna kill Snot. Snot been doing the same shit since I don't know how long. Kill a man over some bullshit. I'm saying, every Friday night...in the alley behind the cut-rate, we rolling bones, you know? All the boys from around the way, we roll till late.

-Alley crap game, right?
-And like every time, Snot, he'd fade a few shoots. Play it out till the pot's deep. Then he'd snatch and run.

-Every time?
-Couldn't help himself.

-Let me understand you. Every Friday night, you and your boys would shoot crap, right? And every Friday night, your pal Snotboogie, he'd wait till there was cash on the ground, then grab the money and run away? You let him do that?
-We catch him and beat his ass. But ain't nobody ever go past that.

-I gotta ask you. If every time Snotboogie would grab the money and run away, why'd you even let him in the game?

-What?

-If Snotboogie always stole the money, why'd you let him play?

-Got to. This is America, man.

Crazy, right? When you hear it from a corner boy in Baltimore, it sounds crazy that they would continue to let Snotboogie play when they knew he would try to steal the pot. One of the most fundamental rules of any game is that all the participants agree to abide by the rules of the game, i.e. you can't just steal the money if you lose. One of the most fundamental rules of elections is that those participating in the election agree to abide by the outcome of the vote. Otherwise, what's the point?

Yet, here we are, about to hold a national  election with a Snotboogie as one of the major candidates. He lost the last election, tried to overthrow it, and still won't admit he lost it.. He has also announced loudly, and often, that he won't abide by this election if he loses. So, why is he even allowed in the game?

Got to, This is America, man.

Clay Claiborne

28 October 2024

Fox News advertises support for Hitler ahead of critical election

I first blogged about the white supremacist numerical symbol "1488" over 8 years ago in "Why Green Party's @DrJillStein should drop her presidential bid" when I said of Alt Right Trump supporters:

Dylann Roof was part of the 1488 movement

The most extreme elements of this alternative right are the 1488ers, the numbers stand for the 14 words in the Nazi slogan "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children," and the 8th letter of the alphabet twice to signify "Heil Hitler."  According to the Anti-Defamation League "the numbers form a general endorsement of white supremacy and its beliefs. As such, they are ubiquitous within the white supremacist movement - as graffiti, in graphics and tattoos, even in screen names and e-mail addresses, such as aryanprincess1488@hate.net. Some white supremacists will even price racist merchandise, such as t-shirts or compact discs, for $14.88."  1488 showed up in Dylann Roof's manifesto too, and he was suppose to be a lone, unconnected, racist killer. Now that you know what to look for, you will start to notice it.

And now you will notice in on Fox News with the My Pillow guy running a $14.88 special on his pillows. Don't let anyone gaslight you that they are clueless to this well known "hidden meaning." In the ad, Mike Lindell says "I can't believe I'm even saying this, only fourteen eighty-eight." By which he means that he can't believe that in a few short years this racist homage to Hitler has made it from backrooms of Discord chat rooms to the front page of a major cable news channel.

Well, we better believe it, and it's just a small sample of what's to come if Trump is elected the next president of the United States. They are promising a Civil War not a pillow fight. So, get out there and vote against him, and get everybody you know to vote against him This is a question of avoiding the next holocaust.

In Solidarity,

Clay Claiborne

16 October 2024

Trump's rants about Hannibal the cannibal show that his racist attack on the Springfield Haitians has been planned for some time

Donald Trump's wild debate claim that Haitian immigrants living Springfield, OH are eating the cats and dogs of the residents of Springfield shocked most viewers. As a matter of fact, it was debunked by everyone from Ohio's Republican governor on down. But for the white supremacist resurgence being led by Trump and Vance, it was never about facts, it was about mobilizing one of the oldest racist fantasies about people from Africa—that they are cannibals—in their bid to win a senate majority in this year's election.

In these stories, the people's pets, their cats and dogs, are avatars for the people themselves, and so their consumption represents a kind of cannibalism in the unconscious mind. In our country, vegetarians are a true minority group. Most of us have no problem eating meats of all kinds, whether from fish, or fowl, or pigs, goats, cows, etc. The list is almost endless. It stops at cats and dogs because we keep those as pets. Dogs are man's best friend, and cats give comfort and affection to childless people everywhere. So, we universally find the very idea of eating them abhorrent. Even horses, which may be considered more as work animals and companions, have only been allowed to be eaten in times of extreme deprivation, like the Nazis failing to take Stalingrad. And when you hear that they are reduced to eating cats and dogs anywhere, you know they are just one step away from cannibalism. Which is why the extreme claim that Haitians are eating their neighbors cats and dogs masks the even more extreme, but nonetheless deeply embedded in Western cultural, fantasy that all people originating from Africa are cannibals in their hearts.   

Looney Tunes - Jungle Jitter

In his discussion of racists fantasies, Joel Kovel, in his White Racism: A Psychohistory, 1970, spoke about the role of the fantasy of African cannibalism:

The fantasies express certain more or less distinct forbidden instinctual trends—not the trend in itself, but the trend as actualized in some form of historical reality. To choose an obscene example: scarcely anyone grows up without exposure to the myth of African cannibalism: grinning black devils with bones stuck through their nostrils dancing about the simmering pot containing the hapless missionary. What child has not contemplated this scene in one form or another? Now, we know that cannibalism is both a universal infantile wish arising in the oral sadistic phase of development (by virtue of which it becomes an element of the mass unconscious), and a well-defined cultural custom in some aboriginal groups. Both of these truths are being represented here, but are combined with a third one: that the culture of the West is representing by projection what it has done to the culture and peoples of Africa, namely eaten them up. 

Disney's Cannibal Capers, 1930

Donald Trump has been talking about Hannibal Lecter for more than four months now: 

The late great Hannibal Lecter. He would like to have you for dinner. 

That rant has become a regular, and predicable, part of his stump speech. This deviation has been highlighted by his opposition as a prime example of how he's losing it, and how his speeches go off the rails with obsessions that have nothing to do with winning the election. But in those same speeches Trump has responded to his critics by plainly stating his desire to associate cannibalism with immigrants of color:

They say "He mentions Hannibal Lecter. It doesn't make any sense." No, it makes a lot of sense. They're coming into our country.

We can now see that it was a measured prelude to a larger plan to marshal this ancient racist fantasy of the African cannibals in his re-election bid. It's no coincidence that this introduction of the unlikely subject of "cannibalism" into the 2024 US presidential election landscape is now followed with this racist accusation that legal Haitian immigrants are eating our pets. 

Trump is often portrayed as mentally deficient with no self-control. Here I think he shows an ability to mobilize our darkness fantasies from the deepest recesses of our psycho history in the service of his election bid in a way that would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

Clay Claiborne

15 September 2024

And BTW, the decision to do this in Ohio is strategic. They need to knock Sherrod Brown out of the senate if are to have any hope of winning a majority in that body, and their candidate, Bernie Moreno, is a real turd, ala George Santos. 

Also, can't Haiti ever catch a break? Why do they still have to pay for winning their freedom in the first place?

UPDATE 16 Sept 2024: In the darkest recesses of the Internet, they are already accusing Haitians of eating humans as well as cats, of cannibalism directly, as in this NewsMax report here:

Haiti's Voodoo Culture Consists Of Sacrificing Cats, "Eating Animals, And Humans," According To Reports