Donald Trump and The Ku Klux Klan

Ever since Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the president of these United States, I have been researching the obvious question of why in the hell anyone would support him. And then this happened:

David Duke: Voting against Trump is 'treason to your heritage'

Regardless of the timeline of events, first he didn't then he did disavow the KKK and white supremacists. And the minor dust-up about credentialing a white nationalist radio show host for one of his mass rallies. And the fawning, gushing love for the Donald over at new-nazi website the daily stormer (I'm not linking to it but if you're brave, go have a look). We have the this blast from the past. As JAMES PONIEWOZIK put it in the New York Times, "until this week, the K.K.K.’s loathsomeness had seemed to be a settled issue." 

Hopefully it will be nothing else, but Trump's campaign has certainly proved that this supposed tyranny of political correctness is a toothless tiger. If, on election day Trump secures a paltry minority of votes and his Republican Party is utterly crushed in down-ticket races all over the country, the short-fingered vulgarian and his hate-filled mouth-breathing followers will have shown us all that racism is alive and well, and that the tyranny of political correctness has no idea how to adequately deal with it. And that we are really just one rigged election away from reinstating segregation, white supremacy, and possibly even a return to slavery. Political correctness, at least in the way social conservatives yap endlessly about it, really seems more and more to be a meaningless buzzword that signifies nothing more than "why can't we dominate those non-white people the way we used to?"

Just as the plutocracy and unregulated capitalism were marginalized for a time by the Great Depression, open racism and white supremacy were marginalized by herculean efforts of the Civil Rights Movement and the intervention of the Federal Government. But the will to power and domination represented by these forces are an idea, and just as many commentators pointed out during the "war on terror," you cannot destroy an idea. Thomas Frank discussed this concept in The Wrecking Crew, in regards to the methods and tactics that "conservatives" use to try and destroy liberalism once and for all. Just as plutocracy and "free market" (basically unregulated) capitalism clawed their way back into power by displacing the labor movement and New Deal institutions inch by inch, capitalizing on every crisis to expand and legitimize corporate power, racism and white supremacy has clawed its way back into the discussion by using every shock of modernity to discredit and delegitimize multiculturalism, diversity, equal rights, and tolerance of difference.

By playing footsie with very dangerous people, Trump legitimizes for his followers a belief structure that should have died out a long time ago. The only saving grace is that the majority of authoritarian followers still do not like the label of "racist" and do not want to be associated with words like "KKK" or "Neo-Nazi" however much they hold racial resentments. The next post will describe the KKK of the 1920s and explore similarities with Trump supporters.

Censoring Anti-Censorship Part 2

But it is mathophobic! This poster is
obviously anti-subtraction!

I may have overestimated the impact this intra-librarian skirmish had in the right wing media. In my last post I really worried that Elizabeth McKinstry really opened a wound where the social conservative culture warriors could rush in like a virus and destroy the American Library Association over a poster for banned books week. Just for contrast, this is what that poster looks like without a person in it and I don't think there is enough LSD on the planet to make someone think that it is islamophobic. I wanted to get my initial thoughts down in that post before diving into what others had to say on the subject.

To summarize, it is counterproductive to downright destructive when the far-left attacks a mainstream (i.e. non-conservative) organization. Outside the right wing echo chamber of media and foundations, money and resources are finite. So wasting them on a frivolous squabble subtracts from efforts to hold the line against fundamentalists and fascists, to say nothing of making progress. Sometimes the culture warriors are able to simply destroy a progressive organization, see ACORN. People supposedly on the same side should not be helping the enemy, but it happens all the time; see Glen Greenwald et. al. That is another story for another time though.

The point is, do you know how many times in any given year some rural school principal or "concerned parents" try to get books and other materials banned? State legislators, town council members, conservative churches, and right wing pressure groups are also constantly attacking the very concept of tolerance, diversity, and equality in what we can see and read. The ALA and especially the Office for Intellectual Freedom have their hands full defending your right to read, and having to take time to address some overly sensitive concerns to a poster means that some fundamentalists out there will succeed in getting books off the shelves. So back to my mistake.

Google's algorithms are very complex but con artists and "legitimate" businesspeople are constantly trying to game the system through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). One way to mess with the rankings is through news aggregators, also called content farms. I had a problem with this a while back, I still don't know the depth of what they were up to but as I wrote on that post I did not want to be associated with porn sites, and above all they did not have my permission to use my content. I suppose there is something in the blogger terms and conditions that makes my wishes irrelevant but I digress.

So you can hopefully cut me some slack that what I thought was a slew of stories from right wing media actually turned out to be a single story from The Daily Caller repeated over and over. To it's credit, the story is basically a straight news report with the only questionable segment was in profiling McKinstry's LinkedIn page. I guess it is public knowledge and we all need to be careful what we post online, but is it responsible journalism to post her place of employment and her self-description as a “wildly progressive, feminist killjoy”? I don't know if this detail rises to the level of lone wolf bait but it did not seem necessary to report.

Even more interesting were the comments. There was plenty of islamophobia and rationalizations for hatred toward Muslims, plus the usual character attacks of "liberal this" and "liberal that." But not a word about ALA or the Office for Intellectual Freedom. Perhaps the librarian organization as a whole dodged a bullet.

Censoring Anti-Censorship

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you look at this poster? The second? The third? If you answered that it looks like a somewhat corny play on a Do Not Enter sign, or actually read the text and discerned the intent, good for you. If you looked at this poster and the first, second, or third thing to cross your mind was how islamophobic it is to put a woman's eyes in the middle of a book that is clearly meant to symbolize a niqab, then congratulations you are part of the problem.

Thankfully no more than a handful of the audience for this poster, the official graphic for the American Library Association's banned books week event that highlights the ongoing attempts by regressive people to censor books and other information, made the decision to declare this image islamophobic. Nor did those overly sensitive and easily outraged people seem to grasp the irony of demanding the censorship of an anti-censorship image. But what is interesting is that a few busybodies had so little else to do with their time that they went out looking for easy targets to be offended by and pour precious time and energy into demanding that which inspired such outrage be deleted from their sight. Because there are so few real problems in the world and no bigger villains than the professional organization for our librarians. Right? Right?

After more than a week the petition started on Change.org generated fewer than 500 signatures and I consciously waited to write about this issue in order to not draw attention to this pointless and counterproductive undertaking. The petition has since closed and it is unlikely that any pitchforks will appear outside the ALA's offices. However, it is important to make note of a few aspects this non-issue raised for the direness of the situation in America. I recently posted this image to my Facebook page that summarizes that direness.

Any one of the issues here seems like a more worthy target for activism than the supposed islamophobia of a library poster. And there is the crux of the problem, these things are real but so many "activists" concentrate on fringe pet projects that have no real significance. What would be gained on the whole by getting ALA to remove the poster? And by what means? Here is the melodramatic language used by Elizabeth McKinstry in her petition:

This poster uses undeniably Islamophobic imagery of a woman in a niqab, appears to equate Islam with censorship, and muslim women as victims.  It directly contradicts ALA values of inclusivity and equal access by targeting a particular group.
Whether the poster was intentionally or accidentally a racist design, it is still racist and alienating. It should be removed immediately from the ALA Graphics store, and the ALA Graphics Store and Office of Intellectual Freedom should apologize and explain how they will prevent using discriminatory imagery in the future.
Let the ALA leadership and Graphics Store know that this poster violates the ALA Code of Ethics, represents libraries and librarians as discriminatory and non-inclusive, and must be removed immediately.

"Undeniably?" There are quite a few logical fallacies here but the biggest problem with the language is the directness, this is an attempt at domination. 'Remove this thing that offends me, apologize, and swear that you will never publish anything that could possibly be construed as offensive to anyone anywhere.' Not exactly leaving any wiggle room for saving face are you Ma'am? So any acknowledgement of this petition put ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) in a bad situation, either they are insensitive and unresponsive to public concern, or they are appear weak and easily manipulated by anyone with an imagined grievance. By forcing a confrontation over a manufactured "controversy" McKinstry has opened a new front in America's culture wars. Because if a simple Google search is any indication, her tantrum has drawn attention to ALA by all sorts of bad guys and the organization will be spending more of their time (and budget) fending off attacks than assisting the librarians battling censorship at your local library.

That is, after all, OIF's job. To combat the restrictions that all sorts of fundamentalists want to put on your freedom to access information. The self righteous people in churches and board rooms who want to ban all sorts of books really don't need any help from those who should know better and they should concentrate their energies on real problems.

Then again, if you can turn this:

Into this:

Maybe you need to reevaluate your life instead of searching out monsters to destroy.