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