by Stack Kenny

I recently watched a chilling documentary on the dramatic growth of the white supremacy movement in the United States since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency last year. It was scary and it is real.

This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Throughout American history there have been people drawn to the belief that the United States should be a country for white-skinned Christians only. For decades there has been a thread of hate and fear throughout this loosely knit movement that includes racists, skinheads, neo-fascists, the radical Christian right wing, and many politicians, mostly from the southern and western states of the country.

Various groups have incorrectly directed their anger and violence at the melting pot of America: toward African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Muslims, and Asians, not to mention liberals, hippies, and politicians considered to the left of the white supremacy doctrine.

Many such groups have been festering since the 1960s, coming into public view every now and then in high-profile cases such as the 1992 Ruby Ridge massacre and Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Behind the scenes they have continued to hold meetings, organize rallies, and fly the swastika flag high. But these people have always been considered a fringe element, on the periphery of American life, a non-factor in American politics and culture.

The Power of Corporate Propaganda

But then something changed. As Fox News became mainstream media’s mouthpiece for white extremist views, rallying behind the instigating voices of Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly and others, American people began absorbing words of hate and questioning the direction of their country. Rush Limbaugh provoked them even further with his racism and fear-mongering statements, as did other voices supported by right-wing think tanks funded by corporations and wealthy families.

While international corporations based in the United States closed American factories and sent jobs overseas for lower wages, talking (and writing) heads financed by those same corporate interests helped misdirect the anger of unemployed workers toward the Mexican border and illegal immigration.

In response, small bands of self-styled, gun-toting militias began patrolling the border under the name The Minutemen, taking the law into their own hands. After the September 11th tragedy, these same people targeted Muslim communities, with assaults and hate crimes committed against American citizens of Middle Eastern descent doubling immediately after 2001.

Throughout this process, racism and hate continued to be hurled at the African American community, especially toward anyone speaking up for an honest look at the true picture of civil rights in America. Simultaneously, as the George W. Bush government dismantled social programs, began new wars around the globe, and bankrupted the economy, the pressures of day-to-day living fueled the process of scapegoating minorities as the cause for America’s problems.
Enter Barack Obama. Immediately the seething, internal fears of a confused, ignorant, and paranoid white population found its new enemy. Within a month of his election, Mr. Obama had received more death threats than all previous American presidents combined.

Over this past summer, the country seemed surprised at the rallies of tens of thousands of so-called tea-baggers showing up at town hall meetings with guns and racist signs depicting President Obama as a monkey and as Adolph Hitler. Their signs incredibly and absurdly claimed him to be both a socialist and fascist at the same time.
Many of these people had fallen prey to Fox News assertions that Obama was a racist himself and wanted to “socialize” all of America. Signs read, and protesters shouted, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” — completely oblivious that Medicare is, and always has been, a “socialized” program: government-run, tax-financed, available to all citizens over 65.

Many of these new revolutionaries claimed President Obama was not really an American at all: some claimed he had a Kenyan birth certificate, others — again showing phenomenal ignorance — asserted that his birth in Hawaii proved he was not a native-born citizen. Some claimed that he planned to give away “their” country to the blacks, Latinos and Muslims. This is what they were told, by hate radio, Fox television, and right-wing blogs. Lacking jobs, emotional security, and any sense of connection to the power of the status quo, they believed whatever they heard.

Many tea-baggers are merely confused, small-minded, or frightened individuals who want no part of such violence. But it only takes one Timothy McVeigh to wreak havoc. In their anger and frustration some have brought an edge of violence to the debate, as manifested to the extreme in images I viewed of neo-Nazi groups training for race war in the deserts of Arizona.

And as our country continues its descent into economic chaos, the power of paranoia becomes contagious and irrational, especially when fanned by opportunistic politicians. America truly has a huge problem of discontent boiling beneath the surface of her great experiment in democracy.

Divided We Stand

Thom Hartman is a leftist, a political and social writer and activist who bemoans the loss of past middle-class wealth to the new Gilded-Age thievery of rich corporations, bankers, and politicians. He maintains that while the FBI and Homeland Security spend all their resources fixated on infiltrating peace groups and other environmental and anti-corporate organizations, the tea-bagger movement has emerged to become far more of a threat to the United States status quo than a fragmented group of aging clergy and hippies.

Certainly the rightist fringe shows much more passion and angst than their left leaning counterparts. But Hartman argues that both sides actually want the same thing and don’t know it. Both sides are reacting to the take-over of America by the rich and powerful. Both sides are motivated by a desire to make the country look more like it was in the 1950s, when life seemed more simple and most people (except African Americans) survived comfortably on meager incomes from manufacturing jobs throughout America.

The real problem is that we have been divided — deliberately, some say — by the fear-mongering messages of the elite. Both the left and the right criticize Barack Obama, the right for being a socialist, the left as a tool of big business. While the right claims he favors people of color, the left sees that he hasn’t lifted a finger to help any poor people, much less African Americans. Meanwhile, bankers, Wall Street gamblers, military contractors, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and of course, our politicians, all multiply their access to unprecedented sums of money picked out of the pockets of working people.

Hartman points out that these are the true villains, not each other. Meanwhile, house foreclosures continue to skyrocket, medical bills soar out of control, and job recovery means more people are working and eating at McDonald’s. For many, the only jobs left, other than menial work in fast food service, are found by joining the military. Like Timothy McVeigh.

The Future In Our Hands

I agree with Mr. Hartman that we have allowed ourselves to be divided. My heart sank in despair and disbelief as I watched the documentary on white supremacy, showing my fellow Americans practice war-making, preparing to kill other Americans. This is not the America I know, or anyone should love.

Sadly, the filmmakers maintained that American politicians remain smug and unaffected by this rise in racist violence toward one another. Apparently they’re right: a report released last April by Janet Napolitano, Director of Homeland Security (one of a series of such reports begun during the Bush administration), that warned of a dramatic increase in neo-fascist and white supremacist groups in America, was actually dismissed by President Obama himself.

Yet each day, more and more people are affected by the continuing economic downslide and individual disenfranchisement in the new century. Something’s got to give, and something is bound to change. Will that change be for the better or the worse?

Is a civil war brewing? Will we have mass protests and killings here in our own country? No one knows for sure which direction our country will take; no one can predict whether or not we can bring together people with such fragmented and opposing points of view. One thing only is certain: nothing will change if Americans hide their heads in the sand and ignore today’s myriad problems. Some issues that must be addressed include:
•    unemployment among young black men is closer to 50 percent than the already dismal 18 percent for all Americans;
•    one percent of our population controls 90 percent of the country’s wealth;
•    more of our tax money goes to making war on other poor people around the globe than for all other purposes combined;
•    the security nets of Social Security, free public education, and Medicare — safety nets we have depended on for generations — are now under siege by corporate America and their political front-men;
•    our de-regulated “financial services” (financial gambling) economy has destroyed America’s historic, widely shared prosperity — a prosperity made possible by our manufacturing infrastructure, strong labor unions, and federal regulation of the financial industry.
Now, and most recently, the Supreme Court has unconstitutionally awarded corporations all the benefits, but none of the limitations, of human beings. If we don’t all come together and address these problems, who knows what might happen?