The Normalization of Hatred in Trump's America Continues

I suspect that history, if it focuses on the truth and not just the spin of Trump and his apologists will conclude that an irresponsible news media played a huge role in putting a dangerous narcissist in the White House. His calls to rally to hatred and bigotry were not properly exposed or opposed thanks to among other things the media obsession of false equivalency.  Under Der Fuhrer alt-right figures have slithered out from under the rocks where they long existed and Christofascist extremists are slated to hold numerous cabinet seats.  None of this is normal and, not too many years ago would have been viewed as reprehensible.  But not any more.  And now A&E is launching a program about the Klu Klux Klan that may have the effect of further normalizing this foul and toxic organization.  A piece in Salon looks at this unsettling new "show." Here are highlights:

[S]tarting Tuesday, Jan. 10, we’ll get a weekly look inside the lives of several families headed by members of the Ku Klux Klan called “Generation KKK.” Giving racism a platform, even under the guise of increasing the public’s awareness of its existence, is all the rage now.

Granted, that’s not the purpose of “Generation KKK.” In a Sunday New York Times article, A&E’s brass and the “Generation KKK” producer explained that the show has been in the works for more than a year and a half. That’s basically right around the time that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign began capitalizing on the sublimated bigotry and racial tension that’s been coming to the fore of our national dialogue.

Between the Klan’s rebranding of its intentions — it’s just about white pride now, never mind that inconvenient history of domestic terror and murder — and openly leaving literature on doorsteps in communities around the nation, the white supremacy organization has been steadily mounting its own campaign of normalizing hatred.

But this series exists, in part, because those efforts are working. The Southern Poverty Law Center has estimated that the number of independent Klan chapters across the United States was at 190 in 2015, a rise from 72 in 2014 and its membership may be as large as 8,000 people.

Two of the initial episodes of “Generation KKK” reveal a loftier intent than what the provocative title implies in that they immediately set up the series’ mission as one of anti-racist activism, focusing closely on the members of Klan families who want out — mostly mothers and children — as opposed to exposing the rituals and intentions of leaders such as Steven Howard, the imperial wizard of the North Mississippi White Knights.

“Generation KKK” may have a noble purpose, much in the way A&E’s “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath” has also served as a piece of anti-Scientology advocacy programming (albeit one that also happened to net the channel its highest-rated premiere in two years). But it’s also joining a channel that currently airs “Duck Dynasty,” the unscripted series that follows the delightful high jinks of the Robertson family including its homophobic patriarch Phil Robertson, who remembered the Jim Crow South as an idyllic period when black people had no complaints in a GQ profile.

Most people understand what the Klan stands for and the conditions that make it ripe to recruit new members — poverty, disillusionment with the political system and a class-imposed practice of keeping the poorest fighting among themselves by scapegoating minorities, for starters.  And if they don’t understand those conditions, they at least, hopefully, understand what the Klan stands for.

Meanwhile, the number of people who don’t know that, say, the Southern Poverty Law Center does, is dishearteningly large. And maybe this series will lead to greater exposure and understanding of the groups that are fighting the good fight.

 And for those who don't know, the KKK is also vitriolically anti-LGBT.  Just saying . . . .

The Price of Racism and Homophobia: Nearly 50% of Viewers Dump Duck Dynasty

While homophobia may be popular in Russia, it apparently is increasingly associated with a real financial cost in America.  Just ask the folks at Duck Dynasty where viewership has dropped nearly 50% after Phil Robertson's diarrhea of the mouth which included the bashing of gays and a Jim Crow version of race relations.  A&E proved spineless in the face of Christofascists outrage over Robertson's suspension from the show.  But thankfully viewers are demonstrating their disapproval by simply changing channels.  Policticususa has details.  Here are excerpts:

After family patriarch Phil Robertson’s racist and homophobic remarks during a GQ interview, Duck Dynasty’s viewership has dropped by nearly 50%.

When Duck Dynasty returned for their fourth season last year, their premiere episode was watched 11.77 million people. After Phil Robertson’s racist and homophobic remarks season five debuted to 8.5 million viewers. The second episode of the season dropped to 6.65 million viewers. The third episode stayed nearly even with episode two at 6.7 million viewers. By the fourth episode the show rebounded to 7.49 million viewers, but last night’s fifth episode dropped to new low of 6.51 million viewers.

Phil Robertson’s racist and homophobic comments to GQ definitely pushed viewers away from the show. Beneath beards and duck calls, millions of Americans found an ugly intolerance for others that they refuse to support.

When Republicans and right wingers like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Fox News support a show, that’s a good sign that a program has fallen out of the mainstream, and their ratings are about to take a tumble. There aren’t enough right wingers out there to support the kind of extremism and hate that Phil Robertson was preaching.

More viewers are leaving Duck Dynasty by the week, because the United States is not a conservative country. The Obama years have demonstrated that the nation is moving left, not right. Duck Dynasty is slowly fading away.
[T]here aren’t enough right wing Republicans in this country to take the place of the millions who stopped watching the show after Robertson’s remarks.

Nearly 6 million television consumers have decided that they don’t want to spend their evenings with the Robertsons. Hate and intolerance have not been rewarded. Almost half of Duck Dynasty’s audience is gone, and more are deciding not to tune in each week.

The LGBT Community's Fair Weather Friends in Hollywood

Cracker Barrel - which, candidly I have never liked - and now A&E have knuckled under to the rants and boycott threats of the white Christofasists who have been "outraged" by A&E's short-lived suspension of gay hater Phil Robertson and falsely claimed that their "religious liberty" and "free speech rights" were under attack.  Meanwhile, of course, it is they who are the victimizers of others.  But that doesn't stop Hollywood from cave in into these purveyors of hate and bigotry.  Not when the targets of such hate are gays or even blacks.  Can one imaging how the Hollywood crowd would have reacted if Robertson's rant had been against Jews and called them Christ killers or some other outrageous bullshit?  Michelangelo Signorile has a justified condemnation of the LGBT community's spineless fair weather friends in Hollywood.  Here are excerpts:

Too many people are dismissing the action of A&E at reinstating Phil Robertson so soon after suspending him from Duck Dynasty. It's just a TV show, they say, and we have all of these wins on marriage equality -- and look at Utah!

But this is not about, "Oh, we're 'winning,' so who cares about Duck Dynasty? As long as our so-called "friends" in Hollywood promote and tolerate this kind of hate for money, we've not won much.

Tomorrow they'll throw an AIDS benefit to assuage their guilt, or come out and say some wonderful things about LGBT people, while making millions of dollars by promoting hate against us, shrouded in religious beliefs, and raising America's kids on hate. And the racism they're promoting with Phil Robertson, who posited that blacks were happier under Jim Crow, while they claim to be so inclusive and anti-racist, is appalling, and shows the height of Hollywood hypocrisy.

Challenging homophobia and racism is not just about "rights" and "winning" in courtrooms and legislatures. It's about what culture promotes and what's acceptable to make money on -- what bigotry is clearly able to be marketed and sold to the masses who've been fed this crap for decades.

Hollywood and it's supposed pro-gay, anti-racist liberals allowed Sarah Palin and the right to give them "free speech" cover -- when we all know this has nothing to do with free speech -- to make millions of dollars off of hate. As blogger Pam Spaulding wrote, the "problem with brushing this DD flap aside as just meaningless, is the fact that corporations, with this quick slap in the face of LGBTs (and black folks) is that it's a recognition of bigots as a demographic that must be catered to. That is no small deal, people."

Search the hate group and white supremacist websites - they are all jumping for joy that they have "won" and that open bigotry is perfectly acceptable.  It's not.  At least not among decent and truly moral people.  And that rules out both the Christofascist/white supremacists and the spineless crowd in Hollywood (which is showing about as much fortitude as the "good Germans" during the 1930's).

Whore Like Republicans Rush to Support "Duck Dynasty" Bigot While Decent People are Repulsed

Proving once again that there are no limits to how low today's Republican elected officials and Tea Party mouthpieces will go in order to prostitute themselves to the Christofascist element of the GOP base, one Republican after another has rushed to support redneck bigot, Phil Robertson of "Duck Dynasty" notoriety after he was suspended indefinitely by A&E for his verbal diarrhea in a recent GQ Magazine interview.  These Republicans  - and fame seekers like the mindless Sarah Palin - literally fell all over themselves rushing to defend Robertson.  Politico looks at some of the pandering whore-like behavior.  Here are excerpts:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Thursday criticized the “politically correct crowd” following the suspension of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson over comments he made about homosexuality and religion in a recent interview with GQ magazine.

“Phil Robertson and his family are great citizens of the State of Louisiana. The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with,” Jindal said in a statement released by his office. “I don’t agree with quite a bit of stuff I read in magazine interviews or see on TV. In fact, come to think of it, I find a good bit of it offensive. But I also acknowledge that this is a free country and everyone is entitled to express their views.”

Not surprisingly, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and others stampeded to join the parade of willing political prostitutes.  It is little wonder that the younger generations are turning their backs on the GOP in drovers. 

Meanwhile, serious thinking people are feeling revulsion towards Robertson and the hate-filled and bigoted mindset he represents.  Civil Commotion summed up well the reality that anti-gay animus is only part of the larger racist and bigoted world view that now permeates the GOP and the far right:

The Wartburg ladies give that bunch the heave-ho they deserve.

We believe that things said in public get to be critiqued in public. While many “gospel” conservatives are jumping up and down about A&E’s response to Phil Robertson’s views on homosexuality, they seem to be quite silent on some other views expressed by Robertson in GQ.  In the January issue of GQ, the Duck Dynasty star also comments on growing up in a pre-civil-rights-era Louisiana.

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person,” Robertson claims. “Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash.”

He adds, “They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

While not totally condemning Robertson - given the freakish reality show format that his show represents - Andrew Sullivan takes umbrage that Robertson only equates homosexuality with a specific sex act:

This is a fascinating glimpse into the fundamentalist mind. You’ll notice that, for the fundamentalist, all sin – when it comes down to it -  starts with sex. This sexual obsession, as the Pope has rightly diagnosed it, is a mark of neurotic fundamentalism in Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity. And if all sin is rooted in sex, then the homosexual becomes the most depraved and evil individual in the cosmos. So you get this classic statement about sin: “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there.”

This emphasis is absolutely not orthodox Christianity. . . . And to posit gay people as the true source of all moral corruption is to use eliminationist rhetoric and demonizing logic to soften up a small minority of people for exclusion, marginalization and, at some point, violence. . . . . What we’re seeing here – and it’s very much worth debating – is how fundamentalist religion seizes on recognizable, immoral minorities to shore up its own sense of righteousness.

 

All we’re seeing here is the effect of cultural isolation. The only thing I find objectionable about it – and it is objectionable – is the reduction of gay people and our relationships to sex acts. Mr Robertson would not be happy – indeed, rightly be extremely offended – if I reduced his entire family life and marriage to sex with a vagina.

Bob Felton also chimed in to remind us of the depraved view of marriage held by the fundamentalist Christian crowd:

Sullivan is right about the cultural isolation and the reductionism, but it shows that he hasn’t spent much time amongst southern fundamentalists. If he had, he would know that they define marriage as sex — or, more precisely, as cosmic permission for sex. The mutual loyalty and shared ambitions that actually make a relationship a marriage are specifically and relentlessly condemned, for those things are presumptions upon … Him, who is to have all your loyalty and who will let you know what are your ambitions.  It’s childish, and it’s odious, but Robertson’s exposition of southern fundamentalist ideals is definitely authentic.

These fundamentalists - and this includes Robertson - are not nice, decent or moral people.  Hate and bigotry are the stock in trade.  More Americans need to recognize this reality and treat these people like the pariahs they deserve to be.