Charles Barron Endorsed By David Duke

The Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY) has gotten even more bizarre, with former KKK Grand Wizard and White supremacist David Duke endorsing pan-African extremist Charles Barron. Barron, notorious for his embrace of folks like Muammar Gaddafi and his loathing of Israel (among other things), is facing off against Hakeem Jeffries. Democratic leaders are panicking a bit as Barron, a longtime New York City councilman, has apparently gained some traction (including an endorsement from Towns as a final "fuck you" to the local and national Democratic establishment).

“The possible election of a dedicated anti-Zionist to the U.S. Congress has thrown the Zionist influenced media and the Zio-political establishment in a tizzy,” Duke says. “The Jewish-controlled New York media is now calling Barron the, quote, ‘David Duke of New York,’ unquote. I’ve been deluged by media inquiries as to whether I would endorse Barron because of his very strong anti-Zionist and anti-Israel positions.”

“In a race for Congress between an anti-Zionist black activist and a black activist who is a bought and paid for Zionist Uncle Tom, I’ll take the anti-Zionist any day,” Duke explains — the "Zionist Uncle Tom" being Barron's opponent Hakeem Jeffries, the establishment favorite.

I have to think being called an "Uncle Tom" by David Duke must be the highlight of any Black politician's career.

Radley Balko joked on twitter that "It's a new morning in America when a white supremacist and a black nationaist can join hands in a shared hatred of Jews." Which I retweeted, because it's hilarious, but actually this sort of alliance is not all that new -- Black nationalists have been forging bonds with White supremacists dating back to at least Marcus Garvey, and one of the commonalities Garvey shared with White supremacists was mutual loathing of Jews.

Of course, part of what brought Garvey down was his ties to the KKK, which rendered him beyond the pale for nearly all Blacks. And one cannot imagine that a David Duke endorsement is helpful in this majority-Black district no matter how crazy things get.

The Futility of Distinguishing Between the Far-Left and Far-Right

There's a cottage industry in trying to pin down the politics of Gabrielle Giffords' would-be assassin (thankfully, it looks like she will survive). Jim Lindgren, claiming that he merely wants to "take the political argument off the table", argues that the best way to do so is to point out "that Loughner was more probably a mentally deranged left winger than a mentally deranged right winger." In support of this, Lindgren cites, for example, Loughner's apparent opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

But I think obsessing over whether Loughner was "really" extremely right-wing or left-wing is worse than just partisan, it's impossible. Why? Because whether they identify as "left" or "right", extremists of this stripe tend to say more or less the same things. Professor Lindgren's observation that rabid anti-war views are an indicator of being "left-wing" is simply flawed. Certainly, it's probably true that there are more mainstream liberals who are anti-war than mainstream conservatives. But once you reach the margins, you see plenty of extreme anti-war rhetoric emanating from the old-school, paleo-con right. If someone yells out that the Iraq War is an imperialist project of our Zionist Occupied Government, I have no earthly way of telling if that's the product of someone who identifies as "far-right" or "far-left". Frankly speaking, once you reach the fringes that folks like Loughner inhabit, it's more or less impossible to tell the difference between the far-right and far-left. The extreme ends of the political spectrum, far from being polar opposites, tend to wrap back around the edges of reality and link up again.

Moreover, extremists left and right don't seem to view each other as enemies, but as fellow sojourners. Cynthia McKinney has been very happy to associate with members of the far-right fascist fringe. The Palestine Telegraph, which I suspect identifies itself as "left", has prominently featured David Duke on its front page. Pushing (slightly) closer to the center, Code Pink attempted to make common cause with the Tea Party. This isn't exactly a rare phenomenom. Hell, there's a long history of at least a grudging respect and accommodation between White supremacists and Black nationalist organizations.

So the question isn't really whether Loughner is "left" or "right" -- a question to which I'm dubious has a coherent answer. There are certain hallmarks of extremist movements -- belief in imminent totalitarianism, wild conspiracy-mongering, racism and/or anti-Semitism, calls for violence against public officials, mistrust of basic governmental institutions (like the currency system), to name a few. And it's a bad thing when politicians of any stripe to tap into that id. The self-identification of either the politician who plays in that mud, or the extremists who listen to it, is besides the point. The fact of the matter is, since "we’re not teetering on the brink of totalitarianism, officials in positions of responsibility probably shouldn’t run around the country saying we’re teetering on the brink of totalitarianism."

We Don't Know What Happened in Jena Until We Ask The White Folk

In the latest rendition of "White southerners are the most credible sources about racial going-ons in the south", we get this article by Jena local Craig Franklin alleging several "myths" about how the story has been coverage. It's really rather pathetic, but unsurprisingly it sounds "entirely believable" to Jonah Goldberg. Essentially, the warrants for the "myths" are that this resident has Black friends. Indeed, "Jena is a wonderful place to live for both whites and blacks," and soon they will go back to their idyllic state of integrated happiness and light, "Just as it has been all along"(!!!) Honestly, who could believe this claptrap? This is a town that voted overwhelmingly for Klansman David Duke as recently as the 1990s.

The mendacity of this is unbelievable. Myth #4 is that of the "DA's Threat to Black Students." How do we know its a myth? Because the DA denies it, of course! Who you gonna believe, a respectable member of the community, or Black people? Myths #5 & 6 similarly appear to rely on (probably White) eyewitness testimony as definitive proof that Black folk are lying. The first sentence of Myth #9 ("Mychal Bell's All-White Jury") is a concession that it isn't a myth after-all, his jury was, in fact, all White. In Myth #2, we're supposed to believe that a White high schooler in Louisiana doesn't know the racial history behind a noose. I can scarcely think of a claim that strains credibility more. And so on and so forth. It stuns me that this is being accorded any credibility whatsoever.

Taking a class on civil rights history this term, one thing that is being impressed upon me quite clearly, from reading a wide variety of sources (primary and secondary) is that when it comes to racial politics and policy in the south, Whites have no credibility. Not because Black people never lie, but because Whites have been historically near-pathological in their willingness to deny racism in the south. They did it because they knew any assertion they made in opposition to a Black person would automatically be accepted as true, no matter how outlandish. This was a key brick in the wall of White supremacy, and it conditioned White folk to feel comfortable rewriting reality, secure in the knowledge that they'd never be called on it. It was a general corruption of the entire idea of truth, and it is embedded in America's racial discourse in the form of Derrick Bell's "rules of racial standing":

SECOND RULE
Not only are blacks' complaints discounted, but black victims of racism are less effective witnesses than are whites, who are members of the oppressor class. This phenomenon reflects a widespread assumption that blacks, unlike whites, cannot be objective on racial issues and will favor their own no matter what. This deep seated belief fuels a continuing effort - despite all manner of Supreme Court decisions intended to curb the practice - to keep black people off juries in cases involving race. Black judges hearing racial cases are eyed suspiciously and sometimes asked to recuse themselves in favor of a white judge - without those making the request even being aware of the paradox in their motions.

I'm not saying every Black charge is right and every White denial is wrong. I'm saying that, given a clash of story, Blacks should be accorded presumptive validity barring clear evidence to the contrary. There is precisely no grounds, when hearing a Black account and White account of a given racial event in America, to default in favor of the White view. There is a lot of grounds for doing the opposite. Extreme position? Perhaps. But historically, it's been borne out time and again. And I can see no other explanation for why someone like Mr. Goldberg would find such an absurd apologia to be even remotely compelling.