Saturday Must Reads: On Racial Demonization and Political Demonization

#ICantBreathe In Black & White --> (Cartoon by @AnnTelnaes) #EricGarner #p2 pic.twitter.com/mn9n7Iu75r
— Eric Wolfson (@EricWolfson) December 6, 2014

No More Mister Nice Blog

 I've long felt that, since the days of Reagan, conservatives have
thrived by modifying the "Southern strategy" demonization of blacks --
the demons now include Democrats, liberals, college professors,
Hollywood stars, feminists, gay people, immigrants, and other groups.
The rhetoric frequently circles back to race, of course -- especially,
needless to say, while we have a black president -- but the same basic
anger is stoked when the top Democrat is Bill Clinton or Nancy Pelosi.

When White Supremacy is respectable again.

So, now we're at the point where beginning to see signs that openly
racist messaging is on the verge of becoming respectable again. When
right-wing politicians start justifying the murder of black citizens by
white police officers regardless of the specifics of the case, we're one
step below the level of just calling for a system that acknowledges
white supremacy as the natural and "correct" order of things. We're just
one step away from openly saying that equality before the law is not
the goal, and never should be. Recent remarks by Rep. Peter King and Rudy Giuliani, plus the openly-expressed sentiments of countless white citizens, indicates that
we're dangerously close to a situation where white supremacy is just one
side of the political argument...again. And we have the Conservative Movement to thank for that.

 The information age is actually a media age. We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media.

In 2003, I filmed an interview in Washington with
Charles Lewis, the distinguished American investigative journalist.  We
discussed the invasion of Iraq a few months earlier.  I asked him, “What
if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged George Bush
and Donald Rumsfeld and investigated their claims, instead of channeling
what turned out to be crude propaganda?”

He replied that if we journalists had done our job “there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq.”

It's the Media.  They think we are stupid.