10 Conspiracy Theories Donald Trump Believes In
June 02, 2016
From vaccines causing autism to Antonin Scalia’s possible murder, Donald Trump is a big believer in conspiracy theories. Watch our video for all of them.
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Michigan Republican Official Fatally Shoots Self in Eye While Trying to Adjust Bra Gun Holster
February 19, 2015
It’s now official: a local elected Michigan Republican was accidentally killed while trying to adjust the gun in her bra holster. Though Christina Bond fatally shot herself in the eye on New Year’s Day, it wasn’t until Wednesday that a public safety investigation was able to confirm the details surrounding her death.
Bond, age 55, was a veteran of the U.S. Navy, and more recently, a Republican precinct delegate for Saint Joseph Charter Precinct 1.
According to St. Joseph public safety director Mark Clapp, who spoke with the Kalamazoo Gazette, Bond “was having trouble adjusting her bra holster, couldn't get it to fit the way she wanted it to. She was looking down at it and accidentally discharged the weapon.”
A look at Bond’s Facebook page indicates she was a fan of Fox News and several conservative organizations. She had recently posted a handful of updates expressing opposition to the Ferguson protests (including one in which she responded to a story about an SUV hitting protesters with, “Yep..... Don't stop...”). She also posted an update questioning whether Obama is American and one in which she asked, “Why hasn't this man been impeached!! He is an embarrassment to the USA.”
Bra holsters, like the one pictured below, are just one of several conceal-carry items aimed at women. To check out others, click here.
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10 Certifiably Insane Rants from the Right-Wing Fringe This Week: War on Santa Edition
December 14, 2013
1. Megyn Kelly: This is for all you kids out there: Santa is white! Hear me? He’s white!
One is only left to scratch one’s head and wonder why, why, why? Why was it so important to Fox host Megyn Kelly to repeatedly look into the camera and tell America’s children that Santa is “just white”?
It is laughable, yes—and Jon Stewart helped us laugh at it when he asked, “Who is Megyn Kelly talking to? Children who are sophisticated enough to watch the 10 o’clock news, yet naïve enough to believe in Santa, and racist enough to be upset that he might not be white?” That is, as he points out, a fairly narrow segment of viewers.
But what Kelly’s insane rant really shows is just how mean-spirited she really is, that her vaunted empathy extends only to white working women, or rather to white working right-wing women who think like her. Her empathy deficit is front and center in the repetition of the word, “kids,” and the use of the word “just.” When she says, Santa is “just white” to the “kids” out there, and they are just going to have to deal with it, it seems that she is also talking to non-white kids. Just deal with it, you non-white kids. Santa’s not for you.
In the ensuing kerfuffle, she accused her detractors of race-baiting — and claimed it was an off-handed remark, that she was just kidding — and again asserted that Santa is white. In response to a thoughtful article on Slate by Aisha Harris, who chronicles the genuine pain she felt reconciling Santa’s “whiteness” with her African-American family’s Christmas celebration, Kelly ratcheted up the jerkiness. “Just because it makes people uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change.”
Because you can’t change the facts of a made-up story about a jolly man who flies around and gives children toys. And made-up stories belong on the news, kids.
Kids!? Are you listening?
2. Pat Robertson: Letting lesbians into your house could turn your kids gay.
Patty Robertson slays us. He really does. His delusional view that gayness is a contagious germ was revealed this week when a viewer named Catherine wrote in for some advice. She had recently reconnected with an old best friend who, it turned out, was a lesbian. Catherine had invited her old friend to meet her children, but became concerned when her old friend wanted to bring her life partner along.
Big mistake, the 700 Club host told her. Having lesbian friends in her home could turn her children gay, and “you don’t want your children to grow up as lesbians.”
Exactly how this transmission of sexuality would occur, he did not explain. It, like the lord, works in mysterious ways, but suffice it to say, "Danger!"
While Catherine should not risk infecting her children with the acceptance-of-the-lesbian-lifestyle virus, Rev. Pat said nor should she shun her old friend. Because, who knows, maybe Catherine could infect her friend with the good Christian, heterosexual lifestyle, ummm, virus.
Failing that, he counseled: “It doesn’t hurt to tell somebody, ‘Look, I love you and we’re going to do what we can to be friends if we can, but I have my lifestyle, it’s Christian. And you have yours, it’s not. And so, I’m sorry, we can’t indulge in certain things together.’”
Like lesbian sex, we’re presuming. That’s out.
3. Trump rejoices at having his birther conspiracy confirmed.
Perhaps Trump’s obsession with the wide-ranging conspiracy to obscure President Obama’s real birthplace could be better sorted out by a psychiatrist, one who specializes in racist delusions. Know anybody?
Of course, the wonderful thing about conspiracies is that everything proves them. And so it was this week that a tragedy gave the real estate tycoon Spy magazine dubbed “the short-fingered vulgarian” further fodder for his ongoing crusade to prove the president is a “furriner.” (Note that we high-minded, progressive scribblers would never make fun of someone for physical attributes they can’t help, so we won’t repeat that short-fingered thing again. Vulgarian, maybe.)
Loretta Fuddy, the 65-year-old Hawaii state health director who authorized the release of Obama’s birth certificate was killed in a small plane crash over the coast of Hawaii. Nine other passengers survived. “How amazing, the state health director who verified copies of Obama’s 'birth certificate' died in plane crash today. All others lived,” the Donald tweeted.
The implication is clear. The president had his thugs kill her. How? you ask. Or, more to the point, why? Since the birth certificate is released, confirmed Obama’s Hawaii birth and the matter closed for everyone except the truly irrational.
Dunno.
Maybe the comb-over can explain.
4. Jim Garrow: Of course, Obama was in on that plane crash, and he also tried to nuke America (God stopped him!).
The Donald is not the only eminently reasonable man who thinks Obama arranged that plane crash. He enjoys the company of Conservative nutjob Jim Garrow, who also knows for a fact that Obama killed Andrew Breitbart, Michael Hastings and Tom Clancy. Oh, yes, and he tried to nuke America.
“There are no coincidences with this administration and with the thugs that have brought Chicago tactics to bear,” Garrow said. “We’re seeing murder.” No, never coincidences for conspiracy theorists. No such thing.
His theory: Fuddy was killed with neurotoxins before the plane crash.
Dastardly plan revealed. Mwah-ha-ha-ha, the president said in a statement.
5. Glenn Beck manages to make the strange story of the fraudulent sign language interpreter at Mandela’s funeral even stranger.
For many, truth can truly be stranger than fiction. Much of what is in the news would not be believable in a fictional universe. The revelations about the fraudulent, schizophrenic sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s funeral, who may have thought he was signing the voices inside his head, was one such story. It was all the responsible media could do to keep up with the bizarre and somewhat sad facts as they were revealed. But for Glenn Beck, mental illness and a history of violence were not enough. Something else, an even more sinister plot, had to be at work. He wants the man’s blood tested, he said on his radio show "to find out if anybody jacked him on anything." Why, you say?
"This is exactly the kind of guy," Beck said, "you hire to stand next to all of the world leaders at something like this hoping that he will do something. I believe it is not unreasonable to check his bloodstream to find out if anybody jacked him on anything to have him hallucinate ... It might have just been enough to say somebody cause some kind of problem at this, for whatever the reason. But something is really wrong here."
For the crazies, there are no simple or even massive screwups.
6. Todd Kincannon: The left likes school shootings.
The Twitter war launched by gun nuts in the immediate aftermath of the Arapahoe school shooting, which coincided with the anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting, reached new levels of viciousness.
“Allow law-abiding school employees who will go through weapons training to carry guns at school. Solved. But the Left likes school shootings,” Todd Kincannon, former executive of the South Carolina GOP tweeted.
Kincannon is not a nice man. Some of his earlier tweets include suggesting transgendered people be put in camps, and lamenting to an Iraqi veteran that the enemy did not have better aim. It should be mentioned that he was pushed out of his leadership role with the South Carolina GOP. Still, the gunnies love him, and he definitely has his followers.
“I bet gun-hating commies are just giddy that a bunch of children got shot in one of their 'gun free zones.' More propaganda for them,” he continued.
And still more:
“Obama started the day using Christmas to push socialized healthcare. Now he can use children killed by gun control to push gun control.” Guns don't kill people, gun control does?
One of his followers chimed in that since the left likes abortion so much, it only stands to reason that they like school shootings too.
See, this is just another example of how when it comes to fighting dirty, Democrats, progressives, the left, is totally, well, out-gunned.
7. Gun lobby uses Newtown anniversary to raise money.
While the parents and family members of the 20 children and six adults massacred in Newtown a year ago celebrated the sad anniversary of these horrific murders by urging others to perform acts of kindness for their fellow humans, the gun lobby celebrated in its own way: by using the anniversary as a way to raise money.
On the eve of the anniversary, Gun Owners of America, one of the most aggressive pro-gun lobbies, posted a message on its website celebrating all of its achievements in the past year. They failed to include that, by Mother Jones’ estimate, at least 194 children have been killed by guns in the year since Newtown, many of them at home, by family members, many by accident, simply because there was a gun around.
More guns is the solution. And more money for Gun Owners of America, in order that they may attain their goal of a fully armed America, and the defeat of this naïve notion that schools should be gun-free zones. A fully armed and cocked nation—that will cut down on the gun violence.
8. Eric Cantor calls Capitol police to bully singing children away.
Some children gathered outside GOP leader Eric Cantor’s office last week to sing Christmas carol tunes with immigration reform lyrics. They were pretty cute, and of course, their singing carried a poignant message about not tearing their families apart. Apparently, Cantor was unmoved. Instead of coming out and talking to them and the adults who were escorting them—or even giving them lip service like most politicians—he called the Capitol police to come and bully them away. That they did. Large men with booming voices came and told those kids to stop their caterwauling, comprende? Or else. They did stop singing—the littlest among them looking a bit frightened. Two minutes later, the big men reappeared and told them that arrests were going to start happening.
What was Cantor doing during all this? Speculation is that he might have been reading the GOP White Paper on how to talk to women without offending them, soon to be followed by the GOP White Paper on how to talk to children without scaring them.
9. Wait, did the head of the Virginia GOP just threaten Obama’s life?
What’s a little humor among friends? Well, if the friends are Virginia Republicans, it can be vaguely incoherent and a little menacing. Last weekend, Pat Mullins, chair of the state’s Republican Party joked to about 450 party members at a party retreat that President Barack Obama was “so close to death” that Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) needed to buy a life insurance policy.
You might have thought such a gathering would include some soul-searching about the drubbing Virginia Republicans recently received in all three statewide races, for the first time in 24 years.
You’d be wrong. It was the media’s fault Ken Cuccinelli lost, Mullins said, because they keep hammering away on that whole fictitious “war on women” thing when all Cuccinelli wanted to do was ban abortions and oral sex.
“This is false narrative by false prophets… Republicans do not win when we are mini-Democrats or Democrat-lite,” he said. Or even, reasonably modern people-lite.
But the certain failure—or should we say, fervently wished-for failure—of the healthcare law is the hook on which Republicans like Mullins will continue to pin their hopes. And that was when he made this creepy pronouncement.
“Obama’s so close to death that Terry McAuliffe is about to buy life insurance on him,” Mullins joked. “I’m looking forward to taking the gloves off!”
Oh those Republicans. Such cards.
10. Steve King: Don’t vote on immigration; keep fruitlessly fighting Obamacare.
Elsewhere in the country, similarly delusional Tea Partying fools continued to rally supporters despite the fact that there does not seem to be any more tea to dump into Boston Harbor.
Iowa right-winger, rabid anti-immigrationist Steve ("cantaloupe calves") King remains desperate not to let the nation or President Obama move on to immigration reform, which he fears will further divide the Republican Party. (On that he might be right.) “Only bad can come from passing anything in the House that has to do with immigration,” he portentously told the far-right birther site WorldNetDaily. The bad he fears the most? Those immigrants who will "erode the law" by voting Democratic.
Why this would be illegal, he does not say.
He would prefer just to keep debating Obamacare forever, refusing to acknowledge that that ship has sailed.
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Meet the Cory Booker Truthers
September 12, 2013
A handsome, young African American politician bursts onto the national scene. Buoyed by his compelling personal story, a talent for public speaking and Ivy League smarts, he rises quickly to become a nationally prominent figure and one of the brightest rising stars in the Democratic Party. Yet, as he awaits the most important election of his career, whispers of a conspiracy emerge from the conservative press. The candidate is hiding an important document from the American people — and this failure to disclose allegedly calls into question his fitness for the very job he seeks.
We’re speaking, of course, about Cory Booker.
To explain, one of the longstanding staples of Booker’s public speeches is a tale of a time when he was walking near his former home in Newark when he heard gunshots, ran in the direction of the sound, and discovered a young, recently shot man who fell into Booker’s arms and began to bleed to death. Here, for example, is a 2010 speech where Booker told this story. The conservative National Review, however, doubts the truth of this tale, and — like a birther demanding President Obama’s birth certificate — they would “like to see documents backing up Booker’s statements.” They claim that they have been “stonewalled and given the run-around by everyone we’ve asked for help in obtaining the relevant police records,” and they announced on Wednesday that they have “filed suit against the Newark Police Department, the City of Newark, and Mayor Booker to obtain the records in keeping with New Jersey law.”
In reality, it is not at all clear that the National Review is lawfully entitled to these records. When ThinkProgress Googled the phrase “newark public records,” the first link came up was this one, a Newark City website explaining the process for obtaining city records under the New Jersey Open Public Records Act. That website informs the reader that “The terms public record and government record in New Jersey do not include. . . Criminal investigatory records,” so the police records that National Review seeks appear to be beyond the scope of Newark’s legal duty to disclose.
That said, ThinkProgress has obtained the police record of the April 19, 2004 shooting that forms the basis of Mayor Booker’s story. The record confirms Booker’s story. Here is the relevant portion of the report:
It was learned that former Newark City Councilman Cory Booker had been in the area when the incident occurred and had rendered aid to the victim. The undersigned contacted Mr. Booker and conducted an interview with him. He advised me that he had been in the area when he heard the gunshots. He stated that he did not witness the shooting nor did he observe the suspect. After hearing the gunshots, he responded to the victim and rendered aid and assisted in securing the scene until the arrival of officers. He could not provide any further information at this time.
Later in the same report, the detective who authored it states that an off duty police officer also arrived at the scene of the shooting at about the same time Booker did. The officer “stated that he then rendered some aid to the victim along with former Newark City Councilman Cory Booker.” So Cory Booker’s story of the time he assisted a dying gunshot victim is true, just as surely as President Obama was born in Hawai’i.
The full police record (which has been redacted to protect the identities of witnesses) can be read here.
UPDATE
The Office Of The City Clerk has announced that it will release the police records to the National Review.
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Insane Birthers Try to Seem Bipartisan
March 28, 2013
Ted Cruz poses a dilemma for birthers: If they admit he's a natural-born citizen, they have to give up their precious Obama conspiracy—or possibly invent a new one I think Eliana Johnson of National Review intended this as an effort to wash the conservative movement's hands of birthers by labeling them as bipartisan, but it actually does a pretty good job of exactly the opposite:
Birthers, it turns out, can be bipartisan. They have a new target — the rapidly rising GOP senator Ted Cruz.Though he bears all the marks of a Texan — the swagger, the signature twang, and the ever-present cowboy boots — 42-year-old Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and a Cuban father. By dint of his mother’s citizenship, Cruz was an American citizen at birth. Whether he meets the Constitution’s requirement that the president of the United States be a “natural-born citizen,” a term the Framers didn’t define and for which the nation’s courts have yet to offer an interpretation, has become the subject of considerable speculation.
Despite initially saying that Calgary Cruz's eligibility is an open question, Johnson eventually makes it clear that every serious legal scholar thinks this speculation is idiotic. The reason for that is simple: U.S. law clearly defines Cruz as a citizen from birth thanks to his mother's citizenship and there's no chance a court or any other branch of government would interpret this as anything other than Cruz being a natural-born citizen who is eligible for the presidency.
Nonetheless, as Johnson documents, there are plenty of people who don't realize this, including Ann Coulter and Carl Cameron—both of whom have said Cruz is ineligible—and Donald Trump, who hasn't made up his mind. (Coulter later corrected herself.) Moreover, many of the same anti-Obama birther conspiracy sites refuse to accept that Cruz is a natural-born citizen.
Notice that there aren't any progressive or Democratic birthers on Johnson's list. True, Cruz is a Republican and President Barack Obama is a Democrat, but this doesn't mean that birthers are bipartisan. What it means is that some birthers are trying to be consistent, because if birthers were to accept Cruz as a natural-born citizen, they'd also have to accept Obama as one, because they both had American-born mothers.
For a birther to simultaneously say that Cruz is eligible but that Obama is not, saying the president was born in Kenya wouldn't be enough. They'd also have to say his mother wasn't his mother. I'm sure there's some of them who go that far, but for most birthers, the real problem with acknowledging that Cruz is eligible is that they'd also have to acknowledge Obama is eligible.
My first choice would be for this whole birther thing to just go away. It's clear as day that Ted Cruz is constitutionally eligible to be president and birthers are insane to suggest otherwise. But I have to admit, if birthers end up taking down Cruz just because it's the only way they can hang onto their Obama conspiracy theory, it would be pretty damn hilarious. So until they get a grip on reality, I'm going to happily keep on calling him Calgary Cruz.
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'Let’s Stay Together' -- Can Obama’s Charm Offensive Woo Back Disgruntled Progressives?
January 23, 2012
Progressives were furious at Barack Obama a few weeks ago. Between his signing of the National Defense Authorization Act and the horrible decision to overrule the FDA on emergency contraception availability, added to his pursuit of the “war on terror” using methods as questionably legal as Dick Cheney's, it felt like the last vestiges of hope and change from 2008 had finally burned out.
But on the internet these past few weeks, the disappointing President Obama ceded the spotlight once more to the beguiling Candidate Obama, reminding some of his former supporters how utterly entranced we were by the man we pulled the lever for three long years ago--and leading us to wonder how much it matters now.
The Man Vs. The Politician
To put this dichotomy another way, there's the political Obama who seems, maddeningly, to value compromise itself over what compromise actually achieves--who doesn’t come out swinging. And then there’s the cultural Obama, who is, like, totally swinging: comfortable being himself and also one of us. He's clever, attuned to social currents, a little bit dorky, accessible, with an image we love to see, admire and joke about -- and most importantly who refuses to be cowed by the racist tenor of attacks he receives. In his cultural existence, he can blend an attitude that's above the fray with that refusal to bow to his critics. It's a balance he has yet to achieve politically.
Before I dissect this duality, it's important to note that some liberals have been loyal to the president despite his betrayals and disappointments (and been dubbed Obama-bots), while others remain furious at President Obama for some of his more disastrous policy decisions -- and will be unmoved by his reemergence into the cultural space. There's also been a robust debate about the racial element of progressive disappointment at the President.
But I'm referring here to a broad swath of us who to some degree are in both categories -- who despair over the politician and delight in the man, who do sympathize with his position politically while still feeling he's failed to lead at key moments. How much will his personality, as it's showcased during election season, be able to reel that group back in?
Despite brilliant efforts from his campaign to begin that wooing -- selling his voice singing Al Green as a ringtone, or hawking a “birth certificate” mug poking fun at the birthers -- the rise of Occupy Wall Street indicates this: for many young Obama supporters, his first term demonstrated the utter failure of the political system at large, its inability to be transformed by one leader. Our journey has parallels to his own political journey, moving from a politician who truly believed in the concept of hand across the aisle to a politician, it seems, who has realized that in Washington, you need to fight.
Obama Rules The Internet
So in embracing "change we can believe in" perhaps we, the supporters, were as naive as he was. Still, Candidate Obama's reemergence reminds us there are some things that a leader can transform. So let's return to the Obama who has dominated the internet this past week with new viral memes starring his best self. Each one offers us insight into his appeal to progressives, even the most fed-up ones.
First, there’s the photo of him giving a fistbump to a maintenance man in a White House hallway, which I keep seeing on Facebook. Can you imagine Mitt Romney, or even notoriously germophobic George W. Bush having such a natural “man of the people” touch?
It's even become its own LOLCat:
see more Political Pictures
Another meme was born when people began to eagerly circulate the YouTube video of President Obama singing--on key--the tough opening bar of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” at a fundraiser at the Apollo Theater, with Al Green himself watching approvingly from the sidelines. It soon became a ringtone and garnered millions of views.
How symbolic that choice of tune is. One of the most memorably catchy and plaintive songs of its era, it's about a lover bemoaning the need of other couples to break up, pleading for longevity in his own relationship, perhaps even wooing his estranged partner back. Sound familiar? Sitting in our kitchen this past weekend, my spouse and I both confessed that we felt like the president was singing right to us, asking us for a second chance, asking us to stay together through 2016.
Hilarious, yes, and clever. But these Internet sensations aren’t just measures of how au courant our President is or how great his singing voice is. Rather, they're about a certain defiance he maintains against the vitriol coming his way. The fistbump and the Al Green, after all, are affirmations of Obama’s unflinching identification with black culture -- as well as a broader pop culture that is diverse and frankly, pleasurable. He’s our first hip-hop loving president, after all. He's the political version of a style icon: a trendsetter. A celebrity.
Culturally Defiant
The president's personal choices to have Jay-Z on his mp3 player and a fistbump at the ready, therefore, are important. They fly in the face of the increasingly racially-loaded attacks he’s been receiving from his opponents: accusations of being a “food stamp president” and a “Saul Alinksy radical.”
Because Obama has actually governed as a complete moderate, maybe even a conservative, these insane charges just don't stick in terms of policy. Instead, the accusations coming from the Right are aimed at very same personality that delights many progressives: proudly African American, urban, intellectual, and hip.
Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are desperately vying to reclaim a starched-shirt version of White America from the black president some voters still can’t believe we elected. So by singing Al Green, by having "date night" with Michelle, by inviting the hip-hop artist Common to the White House, or by hosting a Tim Burton-influenced Halloween party in the White House, Obama is quietly but firmly giving the kiss-off to those who hate him for these reasons.
Which brings us to our third viral meme: A photo that was circulating widely on Facebook depicting a fake, doctored Washington Post front page, juxtaposing a laughing President Obama with the headline of Newt Gingrich’s victory in the South Carolina primary. Even though the image was false, the message was clear, to use the language of another meme: look at how many fucks Obama gives about you, Newt. Zero.
This picture is a fantasy, though because the political Obama is more likely to take his GOP colleagues seriously than to laugh at them -- and maybe he feels he has no other choice. Certainly he would face a major backlash if he really did treat his opponents with the scorn they deserve, while they get a free pass for their dogwhistles at him. The point is, this image of Obama--simultaneously mocking his opponents (literally) while also defying their treatment of him, being both above the fray and in it, is only achievable in the cultural space, not the political one. You can't be above the fray in Washington.
We've Always Liked Him
The fact is, many progressives never stopped liking Obama as a figure, and we’ve loved his wife and family fiercely all the way through his term. We're also sympathetic to the unique position he's in as the recipient of ugly, outsized and racially tinged attacks. So when he isn’t kowtowing to completely insane Republicans or sending drones into Pakistan, leaving innocents dead, when he isn't doing things that make us bang our heads against the wall, Obama remains a likeable guy. He has been all along--and the feeling that there’s a badass, smart, brilliant person who has it in him to raise the middle finger to his critics makes his failures more frustrating. Where was that guy during the debt ceiling debacle? Where was he when the NDAA came to his desk?
So as we move forward into campaign season, the question is how to reconcile our need to continually hold the president accountable with our reaction to this renewed charm offensive. And if we are indeed charmed and at least want to see him re-elected, how to avoid falling into Obama-bot mode, defending him against legitimate and important charges from the Left?
The answer is that we can hold multiple ideas at the same time. We can like the man and many of his policy accomplishments, while deploring his policies of empire and political entanglement with the one-percent. We can believe he was hamstrung by a ridiculous Congress and subject to baseless racist attacks while also feeling he hasn't done enough to boost progressive ideas and policies. We can support his reelection while remaining convinced that such an event won't be nearly enough to set the country on the right track--and that policies like detention without trial, corporate welfare, income inequality, stalemate on women's rights, a lack of urgency on the environment, and a creeping police state will continue unless we ourselves combat them with actions more drastic than the ballot.
Perhaps most importantly, we have to continue to push President Obama to live up to the ideals of his campaign persona -- not the post-partisan one, but the tough and idealistic one -- even in the face of an obstructionist, personally vindictive opposition, and to be as confident and uncompromising in his political identity as he appears to be in his personal one.
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10 Ways That the Birthers Are an Object Lesson in White Privilege
April 29, 2011
May you live in interesting times. What a timeless and wonderful curse that so perfectly describes politics in the Age of Obama.
With the election of America's first black president we collectively witnessed the ascendancy of a person whose life story embodies the American dream. Obama was not alone in the grand play that is American life. There were other players who competed for the spotlight.
During this same moment America witnessed the rise of Sarah Palin to fame and glory, a woman who rides White populism and racial resentment in much the same way that a witch rides a broom. As a second addition to the Tea Party GOP's Rogues Gallery there is a carnival barker named Donald Trump, a man who once lurked stage left but is now the GOP front runner as he perfectly embodies PT Barnum's famous observation that "there is a sucker born every minute," while shilling for the worst and most ugly nativist and xenophobic impulses of the White Conservative Soul.
Ultimately, the election of Barack Obama has provided a series of object lessons in the durability of the colorline in American life. Most pointedly, Obama's tenure has provided an opportunity for the worst aspects of White privilege to rear their ugly head. In doing so, the continuing significance of Whiteness is made ever more clear in a moment when the old bugaboo of White racism was thought to have been slain on November 4, 2008.
To point: Imagine if Sarah Palin, a person who wallows in mediocrity and wears failure as a virtue, were any race other than White. Would a black (or Latino or Asian or Hispanic) woman with Palin's credentials have gotten a tenth as far? Let's entertain another counter-factual: If the Tea Party and their supporters were a group of black or brown folk, who showed up with guns at events attended by the President, threatening nullification and secession, and engaging in treasonous talk, how many seconds would pass before they were locked up and taken out by the F.B.I. as threats to the security of the State? If the Tea Party were black they would have been disappeared to Gitmo or some other secret site faster than you can say Fox News.
Earlier this week President Obama tried to be the adult in the room by surrendering his birth certificate in an effort to satisfy the Birthers and their cabal leaders Donald Trump and Pat Buchanan. Of course, his generous act does nothing to satisfy the Birther beast for it is insatiable in its madness. Nevertheless, a lesson can still be salvaged by exploring the rank bigotry which drives the Birther movement. In an era of racism without racists, the Tea Party GOP Birther brigands provide one more lesson in the permanence of the social evil known as White privilege.
Scholars and activists have described Whiteness as a type of property, unearned privilege, normality, and invisibility. Donald Trump and the Birthers exhibit a surplus of all of these traits...and more.
Ten Ways That the Birthers Are an Object Lesson in White Privilege
1. Just as Pat Buchanan did with Justice Sotomayor, the Birthers have sullied President Obama as being an unqualified, "affirmative action" candidate. His academic and professional accomplishments are irrelevant. The fact that he won an open and honest election are unimportant. We should know at this point that the life successes of people of color (and to a lesser degree some women) are always questionable and suspect when viewed through the gaze of Whiteness (and sexism). White men are never burdened with the question or doubt of being qualified for any job, at any time, or any place. Their greatness and ability is a fact not a question, never is it to be interrogated. This self-delusion exists despite the fact that white men have historically been the greatest beneficiaries of unearned privilege in the history of the United States. Their mediocrity has been rewarded at every turn.
2. Naturally, the President should be White. Of course, the leaders of trade and industry should be White. The natural order of things equates being White and male with having natural authority and ability--a set of traits which exist without question or doubt regardless of competence or ability. Whiteness deems the inverse for people of color. As President Obama has learned, by mere fact of his birth, and coincidence of the color of his skin, his legitimacy will always be in doubt.
3. Whiteness equals authority. Thus, any White person, at any time, can question the accomplishments of a person of color. The most mediocre of White people, the sum total of whose life has amounted to 1/100th of President Obama's successes (or that of other people of color) can feel legitimate in questioning how the latter came to find their "unnatural" position in the social hierarchy. Whiteness is an advantage in the marathon of life. Through this unearned head-start a psychic wage is paid, one that allows any White person, anywhere, to question how a black or brown person came to be ahead in life for such a thing can never happen in a "just" world. Whiteness allows white folks to not feel embarrassed or ashamed in asking such impolitic and rude questions.
4. Whiteness is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Whiteness is also the freedom to be utterly unreflective regarding the foolishness and madness of one's deeds and statements as long as the target of such madness is the Other. The Birthers, Buchanan, Trump, Palin, Bachmann, Limbaugh, Breibart and Beck engage in routine crazy talk. But Whiteness allows them to be taken seriously (at least at first) for White privilege allows the luxury of being utterly unreflective in most things.
5. White privilege is freedom from accountability. Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan, and the rank and file Birther brigands will not face any consequences for their ill deeds in slandering the President of the United States, or for openly fomenting sedition and rebellion against the government of the United States.
6. The Obama birth certificate debacle has exposed how to be truly American a person must be White. This is one of the central unspoken (and widely accepted) truths of race in America. For example, Sarah Palin channels The Blood Countess Erzebet Bathory and bathes in this bigotry with all of her "real America" talk. Although it is a lie in the face of history, because America is a mulatto culture where the majority of black folks (and of course our Native American brothers and sisters) were in the U.S. many decades (if not at least a century) before the great unwashed masses of white ethnics arrived here, Whiteness still imagines African Americans and other people of color as semi-permanent outsiders. In total, to be American is to be Black. The Birthers in their racial heliocentrism--where to be White is to be the center of the world--are repulsed by this fact.
7. White privilege is the ability to be "normal" and "invisible." Whiteness is never interrogated. Consequently, the White nationalism of the Tea Party GOP and its embrace of the Birthers has been long able to deflect the charge that they are racist or tinged by yearnings for a return to "the good old days" when "those people" knew their place. Because Whiteness is invisibility it works like chaff to obscure the obvious fact that much of the opposition to President Obama has always been about his race and not about policy. The signs at the Tea Parties are ignored or explained away, the racist emails laughed at and/or minimized as trite and silly, and bigoted White folks who display their bonafides whenever given the opportunity are labeled as outliers. There is slippage in naming the White racism of the Birthers as such because so many are invested in denying the semi-permanency of White supremacy in America, a sentiment that still lingers decades after the end of Jim and Jane Crow.
8. Whiteness is the default position for viewing the world. It is a cognitive map and means of processing reality. The election of Barack Obama upsets this world view. Many of those drunken on Whiteness and invested in the version of events that are offered by the White Racial Frame really do think they are operating as a "principled" opposition or that they are "colorblind," when in reality race, and fears of the racial Other, are driving their behavior. Here, Whiteness and white privilege work as pathologies that make a person immune to the real motivations driving their anti-Obama derangement syndrome.
9. Whiteness is the ability and power to reframe reality. Despite whatever documents or evidence that President Obama may offer to silence the growly, rabid hostility of the Birthers and the White Conservative Soul, the terrain for debate will be continually shifted. This is a function of ideology plus partisanship mixed together and combined in the Right-wing echo chamber. This reframing of reality is also born of the narcissism that is Whiteness, for the world is what they/he/she says it is.
10. White privilege is also surprising. Many black and brown folks (as well as others) have been saying from day one that the opposition to President Obama, and the silliness suggested by the conspiranoid Birthers in particular, have been motivated by racism. Those voices were often silenced and attacked as being too sensitive and wedded to some outmoded notion of political correctness. The pundit classes have finally seen the obvious: race is the driving force behind Trump and the Tea Party GOP's obsession with Obama's birth certificate. When those not White said as much they were dismissed. Lesson for us all: Despite our protests and the evidence that black and brown folks may bring to the table, racism does not exist until good White folks say that it does.
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What the Birthers' Obsessions Say About Identity in America
April 28, 2011
The following article first appeared on TheNation.com. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their email newsletters here.
Remember when the media regularly asked if Barack Obama was “black enough” to get the support of African-Americans? In 2007 pundits wondered if a black-identified but technically biracial candidate who came of age in the post–civil rights era, was raised far from traditional African-American communities, was educated in the Ivy League and boasted a foreign name might be more palatable to white voters than black ones. Today this query seems hopelessly naïve and endearingly optimistic about the fluidity of American racial identities. After the secret-Muslim accusations, the witch doctor posters, the “You lie!” shout-down and the chimpanzee e-mails—it is clear that President Obama is certainly “black enough” to experience both racially motivated public attacks and exceptional support among racial minorities.
But the tenacity of the birther movement has revived the issue of Obama’s blackness for me. Nearly a quarter of Americans, most of them white, believe President Obama was not born in the United States. The resilience of the birther myth—lately given air by Donald Trump—has even forced the White House to post a copy of Obama’s birth certificate online in hopes of settling the matter once and for all. Good luck—this controversy isn’t about documentation; it’s about deeply held beliefs, even faith claims, about who is and is not a legitimate citizen.
Many on the left say that birtherism is just racism, but there’s more than simple racial animus behind it. I suspect that part of the problem is that Obama is indeed not black enough; specifically, the president is not sufficiently Negro—the historical variation of blackness that is uniquely and indisputably American.
The American slave system disrupted the ability of enslaved Africans to retain or pass along their ethnic identities. Igbo, Ashanti, Akan, Yoruba and Hausa became interchangeable units for sale. While slaves nurtured fragments of cultural, religious and familial traditions, much of the specificity of their African experience was surrendered to an imagined and indistinct notion of “Africa.” Moreover, the law did not initially recognize slaves or their US-born children as American. So enslaved Africans were women and men literally without a country, defined solely in terms of their labor value. Their descendants eventually achieved citizenship, but to be an American black, a Negro, is to be a rejected child who nonetheless clings to her abusive father because she knows no other parent. To be a black American descended from slaves is to lack, if not a birth certificate, then at least a known genealogy—to have only a vague sense of where one comes from, of who one’s ancestors were and of where one belongs.
In this sense, Obama is not very black. He is not a Negro. As a black man, President Obama’s confident and clear knowledge of his lineage is precisely the thing that makes his American identity dubious. Unlike most black people, he has easy access to both his American and his African selves.
In 1897 W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “One feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Although Obama is the child of a black African and a white American, one does not sense this unreconciled two-ness in him. He confidently embraces a triumphant American narrative that echoes the tone of voluntary immigrants more than the pathos of the dominated.
Compare Obama’s Dreams From My Father with Michelle Robinson’s senior thesis. The First Lady reflected a Du Bois–like struggle with being the outsider within. She wrote, “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘Blackness’ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton…I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.” Whatever racial invectives have been hurled at Michelle, they have never included a claim against her American identity. Her familial lineage in slavery, the Great Migration and Chicago’s South Side are far too emblematic of American blackness to raise suspicions about her country of birth.
But in another sense, birtherism is the dual-edged blade of African identity for black Americans. In the eighteenth century, choosing the designation “African” was a symbol of self-determination. For example, the Free African Society, founded in Philadelphia in 1787, and its religious offspring, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, were founded in the spirit of defiance of slavery and racial inequality. Later, emigrationist movements led by Paul Cuffee and Marcus Garvey offered physical and psychic return to Africa as an alternative to the horrors of American racism. These efforts reflected black people’s rejection of the idea that they are a people without a place. No one can find the country of “Negro” on a map, but the continent of Africa, no matter how remote after centuries of disconnect, is a real place. To claim it was to recognize one’s humanity.
But black people have also found it troubling to call Africa home. Emphasizing African identity can mean relinquishing hard-earned affirmations of Americanness. The Negro was made an American through the sin of slavery but kept this identity through the sacrifices of citizenship: taxes, military duty, labor, effort, patriotism and struggle. Few acts of racism elicit more disgust among black folks descended from eighteenth-century slaves than being told to “go back to Africa” by a white person whose American heritage goes back only to the twentieth century.
When birthers accuse President Obama of not having a “real” birth certificate, they’re telling him to “go back to Africa.” It’s a taunt he’s able to dismiss because he knows exactly where and when he’s from. But for black Americans descended from slaves, to question one’s birth raises perhaps a more troublesome enigma: to be born in servitude to someone, but from nowhere.
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Rift in the Right: Many Conservatives Reject the Tea Party's Paranoid Views
March 30, 2011
When you think of the word "conservative," what comes to mind? Did you say the Tea Party? Well, if you did, you'd only be half-right. That's because 51 percent of self-identified conservatives do not strongly identify with the Tea Party, and strong majorities within that non-Tea Party contingent reject some of the Tea Party movement's signature sentiments, according to a new study by the University of Washington's Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality -- such as the notion that President Barack Obama is "destroying" America. Yet despite their rejection by the conservative mainstream, Tea Party leaders appear to control the Republican Party agenda.
Among Tea Party-aligned conservatives, 71 percent said that Obama was "destroying the country." Only six percent of those conservatives not strongly supportive to the Tea Party movement agreed with the statement, suggesting, according to a statement issued by institute, that the tea party is taking its philosophy in directions far more extreme than those of average conservatives." In other areas, the contrast was similarly stark. A whopping 76 percent of Tea Party conservatives said they wanted Obama's policies to fail, compared with (a still troubling) 32 percent of more mainstream conservatives.
And why do all those Tea Partiers want those policies to fail? Because they're perceived, somehow, as "socialist," despite the corporation-friendly nature of so-called financial reform, or a health-care reform plan rooted in the private sector. Three-quarters of Tea Party conservatives -- 76 percent -- told survey-takers that Obama's policies were pushing the country toward socialism. While mainstream conservatives more reticent to cry "socialism," 40 percent of them agreed with the Tea Partiers on that claim.
When it came to the conspiracy theories that fuel the Tea Party -- tropes about Obama's religion and place of birth -- the gap narrowed, but remained significant.
Despite the president's well-documented Christian faith, 27 percent of Tea Party-identified conservatives said the president was a practicing Muslim, compared to 16 percent of mainstream conservatives. Among mainstream conservatives, 46 percent agreed that the president is a practicing Christian, while only 27 percent of Tea Party conservatives agreed.
And despite Obama's release, during the presidential campaign, of documentation of his birth in Hawaii, only 40 percent of Tea Party conservatives believe the information on his certificate of live birth, compared with a slim majority -- 55 percent -- of mainstream conservatives.
Since the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency, the Republican Party has become a nearly monolithically conservative party, a reflection of the party's takeover by the religious right in 1979. Gone are the "Rockefeller Republicans" -- politicians and their followers who were fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
So when we speak today of the conservative movement, we're essentially talking about the GOP -- which means that a rupture in the conservative movement, as revealed in the University of Washington data, could signal a rift in the Republican Party not unlike the one that launched the presidential candidacy of Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., in 1964. While the result of that single race was disastrous for the G.O.P., it set the stage for Reagan's ascent 16 years later. And given the speed with which the Tea Party movement sprang in response to the election of the nation's first African-American president, if that acceleration maintains its momentum, could the G.O.P. become the Grand New Tea Party in four or eight years' time?
Already, establishment figures in the mainstream conservative movement -- columnists and pundits such as George Will of the Washington Post, David Brooks of the New York Times and David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter who blogs at FrumForum -- have begun pushing back against the Tea Party movement's more preposterous themes. When former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, now testing a potential presidential run, insinuated that the president was raised in Kenya, George Will accused him of "spotlight-chasing" in a way that rendered him unworthy of overseeing "a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons."
"Right around 50 years ago, you had this split in the Republican Party between the Goldwater people and the Rockefeller sort of Republicans," said Christopher Parker, the University of Washington associate professor of political science, who led the survey. "We see the same split happening right now." Although Parker sees some differences between the Tea Party followers and the John Birch Society fans who helped fuel the Goldwater candidacy, the Birchers "still had these really extreme ideas, you know these ideas embedded and rooted in conspiracy theories," Parker told AlterNet. "Well, we see the same thing now," he continued. "If you get the way that that treatment is worded -- 'Barack Obama will destroy the country' -- I mean, how much more extreme can one get? And you see that these conservatives who do not ally themselves strongly with the Tea Party, they don't follow that line."
Is it possible, then, I asked Parker, that the Republican Party itself will become more divided? "Yes," he replied. "We've been seeing this ever since the mid-term elections... And I, for one, think it's driven by this split among conservatives..."
Although the establishment conservatives -- people like Will and Brooks and Frum -- have the power positions in mainstream media, the Tea Party movement, nonetheless, appears to drive the Republican agenda. "They're more politically active and engaged," Parker explained. "And our data show that across a range of activities or measures for political engagement, that people who strongly support the Tea Party are more engaged and more active than people who don't. And that's ranging from voting in the mid-term elections to attending a meeting to donating to a campaign, volunteering for a campaign -- I mean, you name it."
In other words, House Speaker John Boehner may not be a Tea Partier at heart, but it's the Tea Partiers to whom he must answer. So even though the Tea Party movement has yet to assume the majority within the G.O.P., it drives the agenda because of the destruction its followers could wreak on those who refuse its demands.
The split in the conservative movement could be good news for liberals and progressives, but only if they are willing to exploit the divisions among their opponents, something they've never shown much taste for doing. Wedge-driving has long been the tactic of conservatives and Republicans -- rarely of liberals and Democrats. If those divisions are allowed to take their natural course, the probable outcome will be an even more reactionary and paranoid G.O.P., and that's not good for anybody.
Parker, however, sees another possible scenario, heralded by the uprising in Wisconsin against the draconian, anti-worker, anti-poor-people policies of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, who won his spot as his state's chief executive with a hefty assist from billionaire David Koch, patron of the Tea Party movement. Parker foresees the possibility a nationwide, grass-roots push-back against the Tea Party-driven agenda.
"When you think about what's going on, for example, in Wisconsin," Parker said, "there's a possibility that what's happening with these candidates or with these elected officials who are really paying attention to the Tea Party and all the noise these Tea Partiers are making -- it's possible it could lead to a counter-mobilization. [Wisconsin] could be a case in point, where you see this massive counter-mobilization against these groups."
Parker's latest survey is based on 1,504 telephone interviews of respondents from 13 states.
Under Parker's direction, the Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality began collecting data on Tea Party supporters last year, producing a landmark survey on Tea Partiers' racial attitudes, finding 73 percent of Tea Party "true believers" agreed with the statement that "if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites."
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More Craziness From Arizona: Right-Wingers Aim to Sabotage Obama's Run for Re-Election
January 31, 2011
The birthers have a plan to end Barack Obama's presidency -- and in Arizona, they're making progress.
Last week, Arizona state Rep. Judy Burges, a Republican, introduced a bill that would bar presidential candidates who do not prove they were born in the United States from appearing on the ballot in the Grand Canyon state. And state Rep. Chad Campbell, the top Democrat in the GOP-controlled Arizona House of Representatives, tells Mother Jones that the bill is likely to pass. It was introduced with 25 co-sponsors in the House and 16 co-sponsors in the state Senate; the measure needs 31 votes in the House and 16 in the Senate for approval. "Will it matter?" asks Campbell. "We've started a tradition here of passing legislation that is political grandstanding or that sets up litigation."
But the birthers -- those ardent Obama foes who believe the president was not born in Hawaii and, thus, is not constitutionally qualified serve as president -- see this measure as more than symbolic. For them, it's part of a well-orchestrated campaign to deny Obama reelection.
It's not that Obama necessarily requires Arizona's 10 electoral votes to win reelection in 2012. In 2008, he lost there to John McCain, Arizona's senior senator (though in 2012, Obama could make a play for the state). More important, Burges' bill -- which would establish a strict standard for proving natural-born citizenship (which the birthers presume Obama could not meet) -- is a model for other states, and similar efforts are under way in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Montana, Georgia, and Texas. (Obama won Pennsylvania in 2008 and lost Missouri by less than 4,000 votes.) Arizona may be where this birther ball gets rolling.
"We've started a tradition here of passing legislation that is political grandstanding or that sets up litigation."
Last year, Burges introduced a similar measure that stalled in committee. Her new one is much tougher. The original bill would have set up a system under which a presidential candidate would have to document his or her citizenship to be listed on the state ballot. Here's how it would work: The national political party would submit an affidavit from its presidential candidate in which the candidate states his citizenship, and this affidavit would have to be supported by "documents that prove that the candidate is a natural born citizen." Arizona's secretary of the state would then review the affidavit and supporting documents, and if there were "reasonable cause to believe the candidate does not meet the citizenship" requirement, the secretary of state would be able to keep the candidate off the ballot.
This system left discretion to the secretary of state. And Burges' original bill did not specify what documents would be acceptable. Consequently, the certification of live birth that the Obama campaign produced in 2008 might well qualify as sufficient documentation under that measure.
Burges' new version raises the bar. It notes that the affidavit must be accompanied by "an original long form birth certificate that includes the date and place of birth, the names of the hospital and the attending physician and signatures of the witnesses in attendance." (The other documentation required would include a list "that identifies the candidate's places of residence in the United States for the preceding fourteen years.") And the law states that if the candidate fails to submit these records, the secretary of state "shall not" place his or her name on state ballot.
There's no wiggle room: Produce a long-form birth certificate, or no ballot-listing. That certification of live birth issued by the Hawaiian government would not count. (Two weeks ago, radio personality Mike Evans said he had been told by Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie that no original birth certificate could be found for Obama -- a remark that lit up the birther community -- but this past week, Evans said he had been misunderstood. Meanwhile, Hawaiian legislators have introduced a bill charging anyone requesting Obama's birth records -- meaning that certification of live birth -- $100, in order to cut down on birther requests.)
Burges' bill, if passed, would have to be signed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to become law, and, if enacted, could well face a court challenge. It would establish a hard-and-fast criterion for all presidential candidates.
"Imagine if just one or two states adopt such a measure before 2012. Obama will be forced to comply with those state regulations or forgo any effort to get on the ballot for reelection."
But what if a candidate does not have a long-form version of his or her birth certificate, and the state where he or she was born could not locate a copy -- say, it was lost in a fire, or simply misfiled? Would he or she be out of the running? The law also demands the candidate produce an "original" long-form birth certificate. Does that mean a copy wouldn't suffice?
Birthers are ecstatic about the Arizona move. "It could be a game-changer," declares WorldNetDaily, a conservative site run by Joseph Farah, a leading birther. "Imagine if just one or two states adopt such a measure before 2012," Farah says. "Obama will be forced to comply with those state regulations or forgo any effort to get on the ballot for reelection. Can Obama run and win without getting on all 50 state ballots? I don't think so." In the past, Farah has put up billboards around the country asking, "Where's the birth certificate?"
Campbell complains that the Arizona measure is "not based on an factual evidence. I'm trying to figure out the thinking behind this bill. I can't. It's just another conspiracy." But the strategic intent is clear: maintaining the marginalized birther movement. Numerous lawsuits filed by the birthers have failed in the courts. Last month, Lt. Col. Terry Larkin, an Army doctor who refused to be deployed to Afghanistan because he questioned whether Obama was born in the United States, was dismissed from the Army and sentenced to six months in prison for refusing his orders. And last year, a Republican birther bill in the US House of Representatives fizzled.
Yet the birthers are charged up about this new battle plan: using GOP-dominated state legislatures to pressure Obama to produce a long-form birth certificate. A win on this front in Arizona will not in and of itself scuttle Obama's reelection (assuming no such document for Obama can be produced). But it will certainly encourage birthers in other states to follow suit -- and to keep their hope, and conspiracy theory, alive.
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NAACP Exposes Ties Between Tea Party and Racist Extremist Groups
October 21, 2010
The Tea Party movement has links to white supremacists, anti-immigration groups, "birthers" and other "extremists," according to a report released by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
The 94 page report, entitled Tea Party Nationalism (.pdf), investigates six national organizations "at the core" of the Tea Party: FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, and the Tea Party Express.
"Based on their past allegations about the Tea Parties, I expect the NAACP's newest attack will once again be riddled with stupid and baseless accusations," said Project 21's Emery McClendon. "They are continuing to be the 'squeaky wheel' that demands attention and hopes that enough screaming will make their myths into fact. I hope the NAACP's 'research' receives the scrutiny it deserves."
"Here we go again," Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, told the Kansas City Star. "This is typical of this liberal group’s smear tactics."
Although members of the Tea Party claim the movement is focused on dismantling an out of control federal government, reducing taxes, and balancing the budget, the report claims that the movement is permeated with concerns about national identity and race.
"In these ranks, an abiding obsession with Barack Obama's birth certificate is often a stand-in for the belief that the first black president of the United States is not a 'real American,'" says the report. "Rather than strict adherence to the Constitution, many Tea Partiers are challenging the provision for birthright citizenship found in the Fourteenth Amendment.
Citing one of the links between the movement and extremists, the report says Dale Robertson, the chairman of the 1776 Tea Party, invited Martin "Red" Beckman to be a guest on the Tea Party Radio hour that he co-hosts. Beckman, who was introduced as a "great guy" and "an authority on the Constitution" has been publishing anti-Semitic writings for over twenty years.
Moreover, the report claims that Robertson endorsed a pastor who believes that Jews are a "satanic force" and that "people of color" are less than fully human.
Another faction of the Tea Party is led by the executive director of the Minuteman Project, an organization that has been associated with the murder of migrant Mexican workers. The leader of the Wood County Tea Party in Texas, Karen Pack, was once listed as a supporter of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
The report also details the relationship between the white supremacist group the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Tea Party movement.
"The Council of Conservative Citizens promotes the idea that the United States is or should be a white Christian nation; and that Barack Obama and black people generally oppress white people," page 60 of the report describes. "The Council of Conservative Citizens both led and promoted Tea Party protests. In Mississippi, the organization advertised a 'Mississippi Tea Party' at Flowood City Hall on March 9, 2010... the Florida West Coast chapter distributed three boxes of tabloids as well as an unknown number of membership applications at a Sept. 12, 2009 Tea Party in Crystal River."
The report goes on to describe the involvement of Billy Joe Roper Jr., the former leader of an organization dedicated to creating an all-white country, in the ResistNet Tea Party and former Klansman David Duke's endorsement of the movement.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric and Islamophobia also permeate the ranks of the Tea Party, says the report.
"We are at a point of having to take a stand against all Muslims," the ResistNet Tea Party website claimed. "There is no good or bad Muslim. There is [sic] only Muslims and they are embedded in our government, military and other offices...What more must we wait for to take back this country of ours."
Additionally, Pamela Geller, a featured speaker at a Tea Party Patriots-sponsored convention in Tennessee and at a rally in Arizona sponsored by Tea Party Nation, has claimed that President Obama is "appeas[ing] his Islamic overlords" and that he may be the illegitimate child of Malcolm X.
The Tea Party movement has not just provided a platform for racists and others to express their views, the report also found that white supremacist groups have been using Tea Party events to recruit new members.
Although the report outlines several links between the Tea Party movement and hate groups, the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and the NAACP explicitly reject the generalization that the Tea Party is a wholly racist or hateful movement.
"It would be a mistake to claim that all Tea Partiers are nativist vigilantes or racists of one stripe or another, and this report manifestly does not make that claim."
"We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will," said President of the NAACP, Benjamin Todd Jealous. "I hope the leadership and members of the Tea Party movement will read this report and take additional steps to distance themselves from those Tea Party leaders who espouse racist ideas, advocate violence, or are formally affiliated with white supremacist organizations."
"The danger is not that the majority of Tea Party members share their views," Jealous added, "but that left unchecked, these extremists might indirectly influence the direction of the Tea Party and therefore the direction of our country: moving it backward and not forward."
"To attack a grassroots movement of this magnitude with sundry isolated incidents only goes to show the NAACP has abandoned the cause of civil rights for the advancement of liberal Democrat politics,” responded Sal Russo, chief strategist for the Tea Party Express. "The Tea Party Express has publicly and explicitly repudiated racism."
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