[Please note if you have been following this series of diaries that I've changed the four mainstreaming factors labels from numbers to A,B,C,D to minimize potential confusion between them and the diary parts.]
Part 3: Superman to the rescue
[Find parts 1 and 2 here]
In Part 2 of this series, I asserted my belief that there are four essential factors that, taken together, will grant a hate group wide or maybe even mainstream acceptance for a time. So far we've discussed the role of rapid immigration/migration in triggering anxiety that can potentially be channeled into hate activities, and the importance of either central leadership or at least coordination of political activities when it comes to mainstreaming efforts. In this part, I'll examine the roles of media and law enforcement in enabling (or not) the ability of a group or movement to poison the mainstream with hate.
Before turning to the third factor, I want to remedy a "hole" in my analysis that was exposed in the
Part 2 comments (thank you!): lack of some sort of picture of current anti-immigration individuals and their activities. This has been lately and beautifully done by the Southern Poverty Law Center in an
Intelligence Report entitled,
"The Nativists." The article profiles 20 or so of these activists, providing a good feel for both the demographics and the demagoguery of the movement. You will also get information on nativists' criminal pasts and ties to racist organizations wherever applicable--info that is sorely lacking from other sources.
Factor C: Failures in enforcing laws/official sanction
Again I'll use the nativists as an example of how a hate group can put a foot in the mainstream when certain factors are at play, since this movement is growing fast and visibly. In the case of the Minutemen and other border patrol groups, they're getting a boost from the political leadership at all levels simply because hardly anyone is condemning their methods or even speaking up about their racist backgrounds.
President Bush did it right when he commented on Minuteman border-patrol activities:
"I am against vigilantes in the united States of America," Bush said at a joint press conference. Later he added, "I'm for enforcing the law in a rational way; that's why you have a Border Patrol and they ought to be in charge of enforcing the border."
Some people were pretty upset at the term "vigilantes." They had expected him to say, "patriots."
If the Minutemen are vigilantes, then GW Bush is Fox/Mexico's whore. [Comment from same source linked above]
Another commenter said that s/he had scraped all the "W" stickers off the car after the president's remarks. Yet another favored impeachment of the Pres over his apparent malignment of the Minuteman group. Bush isn't right-wing enough. Who knew?
There were also several U.S. Representatives who defended the Minutemen: Tom Tancredo (CO), J.D. Hayworth (AZ), and Trent Franks (AZ). Tancredo and Hayworth, incredibly, are members of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, Tancredo as chairman.
Oh, great. We have 40-some posses of self-assigned border patrol, some of them former felons and many of them armed almost literally to the teeth. NO PUBLIC OFFICIAL should in ANY WAY confer or even imply legitimacy here (PDF alert). To do so is a disgraceful and potentially dangerous act.
To summarize, neither cyclical downturns nor longer-term regional disparities
in living standards appear to be correlated with the incidence of a wide range of hate crimes [including suicide bombing and other terrorism]. Rather than economic conditions as a cause of hate crimes, this literature points to a breakdown in law enforcement and official sanctioning or encouragement of civil disobedience as potential causes of the occurrence of hate crimes.[emphasis added]
But in what may be the most egregious example of the Bush administration's kowtowing to the political far-Right,both the FBI and theDepartment of Homeland Security (DHS) have re-prioritized domestic terrorism threats so that eco-terrorism is Number One. In fact, a DHS report named only left-wing groups as worrisome:
This April, Congressional Quarterly obtained a draft DHS document that listed groups like the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front as the only significant sources of domestic terrorism. The document made no mention of violent right-wing hate groups and individuals. But for all the property damage they have wreaked, eco-radicals have killed no one -- something that cannot be said of the white supremacists and others who people the American radical right.
In contrast, during the 10 years since the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that murdered 168 people, SPLC has documented some 60 right-wing terrorist plots. Some were foiled, but some have killed civilians as well as 15 police officers.
I will never defend or excuse eco- or animal-rights terrorism. But a switch in priorities means a shift in the resources used to uncover plots and finger henchmen, and I do not believe that right-wing terrorism is on its way out. On the contrary, I've been reading of a growing coziness between anti-Jewish right-wingers from the U.S. and the Middle East, making it insane to downplay the right-wing domestic threat. (These readings I will share in another diary.) No doubt we will all pay dearly for this politicizing of the domestic terrorism watch lists.
Factor D: Media messages
Media messages that help mainstream radical right-wing agenda have been a part of these diaries from the beginning: the effects of the movie "Birth of a Nation" on people freaked out by the amount of immigration; the Klan placing ads for membership like any club would; and the convenient omissions of racist backgrounds from news coverage of the nativists, to name a few. You already know that there are a lot of radical literature and websites out there nowadays. So I'd like to switch gears here and share a story of media messages done right.
The KKK has had its ups and downs throughout its history. The mainstream popularity it enjoyed in the 1920s--with perhaps up to four million members at its peak--fizzled at the end of that decade primarily by the slowdown in immigration and migration that accompanied the Great Depression, but also by their support for Nazism and terrible scandals such as this one:
It collapsed largely as a result of a scandal involving David Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of Indiana and fourteen other states, who was convicted of rape and murder in a sensational trial (the woman he attacked was bitten so many times one man who saw her described her condition as having been "chewed by a cannibal").
So the Klan, though not quite dead, was down and out of the game in the 1930s and into the 40s. This is the story of how media helped to prevent its post-World War II revival.
Enter Superman. (Credit Anthony Tollin for his article, "Superman on Radio", 1997.)
The Adventures of Superman radio series catapulted into the media spotlight with its "Unity House" story line in 1946. "Recently the Superman program underwent a change as drastic and unprecedented as some of its hero's exploits," wrote columnist Harriet Van Horne, "It became a program with a message." After years of battling mad scientists, atomic weapons and supernatural menaces, Superman took up the battle against racial and religious intolerance when a rabbi and a Catholic priest were menaced by young vigilantes out to destroy an interfaith community house. In the final installment, Superman tells the gang members, "Remember this as long as you live: Whenever you meet up with anyone who is trying to cause trouble between people--anyone who tries to tell you that a man can't be a good citizen because of his religious beliefs--you can be sure that troublemaker is a rotten citzen himself and an inhuman being. Don't ever forget that!"
Wow. Rightly, they were rewarded for the new message:
"...Superman, Inc., the company that controls the Man of Tomorrow in all media, had to sell the idea to the Kellogg. Co. sposoners, and Mutual--two perpetual worriers over the response of reactionary listeners." Officials for both sponsor and network were relieved when the show's plea for tolerance began attracting the highest ratings in the history of the series. [emphasis added]
Emboldened, Superman took on the Klan itself.
Superman also caused a considerable amount of bad feeling among the Ku Klux Klan by mentioning various KKK code words on the program. The code words had been passed on to Superman via the Anti-Defamation League. As a result, Samuel Green, Grand Dragon of the KKK, had to spend part of his afternoon with his ear pressed against the radio. As soon as Superman used a real KKK password, Green sent out urgent orders for a new one. The Grand Dragon is said to have taken this very badly and to have vented his spite on Kellog's Pep by attempting to stop local sales of the cereal. The Kellogg people refused to be intimidated.
How did the Anti-Defamation League get the code words to pass on to the Superman people?
Enter Stetson Kennedy. Kennedy, born in 1916, is a writer who has spent a lifetime exposing hatred and social injustice. One of his most important works is the 1950s history book entitled, Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was, which is now available online for free. It begins:
Why This Guide
While there are many guides to the U.S.A., this is the only one, which faces the fact that despite the affirmation of the American Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, in America in reality some are more equal than others.
Nearly a third of all Americans are relegated to some degree to second-class citizenship because of their race, colour, nationality, religion or politics, and are treated accordingly.
At the same time, the two-thirds who count themselves among the first-class citizenry are more or less expected to conduct themselves in certain fashion in their relations with the less fortunate...other guides, irresponsibly recommending hotels, restaurants, tours, entertainment, and so on, without taking into account the existing taboos, can actually get you killed.
But this Guide tells you everything you need to know about getting along in America, according to the category in which you find yourself.
Chapters of the book have names like, "Who May Marry Whom," "Who May Live Where," and "No Room for Redskins."
Kennedy is also the man who, along with a couple of confederates, infiltrated the Klan undercover as it tried to regroup after WWII. He passed on information to media and to law enforcement, then wrote a book called The Klan Unmasked. Amazon won't let me copy it, so here's a link to the first page of the first chapter, which will give you a feel for the fast-paced, detective-novel style as well as for the Klan's penchant for super-duper-secret code words and such.
The best place IMO for the story of the effect that Superman's exposure of the Klan's code words is in the book Freakonomics. It includes a description of Klan members' mortification at hearing their own children using their passwords at play. I found the audio version hilarious.
Freakonomics authors Levitt and Dubner also credit Kennedy with beginning a "frown campaign" that encouraged people to show disapproval whenever someone made racist remarks.
Those were the days.
Although at 90 his health has begun to fail, Kennedy is still kickin' so when you visit his site be sure to sign the guestbook.
It's apparent that we will always have to deliver periodic smackdowns to the Klan and its kin, that this work is never finished. But at least we have more knowledge than ever about what needs to happen. We know that hate groups always tend to rise during periods of rapid social change and that these times call for additional vigilance and action, especially in the areas of media and law enforcement accountability. We know that we must expose the hate and the hatemongers at every opportunity. And we know we need the oft-heroic efforts of people like Stetson Kennedy, the good folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and ourselves.
Visit SPLC's Tolerance Project at www.tolerance.org