Anyways...I do have some possible good news...there is a chance that I might get some major Internet run this coming week. Here's some background to fill in the blanks:
1) Ishmael Reed (a long time Black columnist) writes up a nice article in CounterPunch on the many ways in which the media establishment uses Black journalists to sell a agenda that is most harmful to regular Black folk (and others as well, of course).
2) One of the journalists mentioned in the essay gets all in a hissy fit and uses the pages of the National Association of Black Journalists forum (actually a Yahoo! group that's closed off from the public...suckas) to vent her spleen at Reed for his apparent sins;
3) Then, The Black Commentator (that glorious kick-more-ass-than-the-law-should-allow Black progressive journal) reprints and republishes Reed's original article at their website, which further angers said journalist, who then....
4) Writes up a rejoinder (which BC decides to post for their latest edition) accusing BC and, by thinly veiled implication, Black Leftists in particular, of destroying "civility" by attacking other Black journalists too roughly.
Now, once I got a whiff of Michel Martin's piece (she's the journalist, BTW), it reminded me of an old essay out of an old column that queer socialist/ex-gay male porn actor Thomas Scott Tucker (of the Open Letter Online website) in which he opined beautifully about the limits of "civility" as a tool of squelching radical critique of our society. I really do wish that I could recollect where the essay is or whether it is online; but suffice it to say that Tucker saw like very few Leftist could how the push towards "civility" in debate can be as useful to the present rulers of bipartisan reaction as it could be a positive token to respect and decency.
In any case, I had Scott Tucker in mind when I wrote the following response to Martin's piece and forwarded it to the BC editors, Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon....and there is a chance that it may get published as an column for their next issue, which goes out on Thursday. Whether it does or it doesn't means less to me than the fact that it is appreciated, and I will share it with you here just so that you can see what I felt...and in case Bruce Dixon does some creative editing. (Just kidding, Bruce..do what you have to. :-)
Here's the original email that I sent to BC this evening (forwarded also to Kelley over at Bitch Lab for her comments; she actually got me going on this by referrencing Ms. Martin at her blog today):
From: Anthony J. Kennerson
Date: 05/06/06 20:09:28
To: publisher at blackcommentator dot com
Subject: "Civility....Or Business As Usual???" A Black Leftist Responds to Michel Martin
It was with a great deal of interest that I read Michel Martin's article
in the May 4th issue of Black Commentator titled "Open Letter From A Black
Journalist" criticizing BC (and by extension, the progressive daily news
journal CounterPunch) publishing Ishmael Reed's article, "How The Media Uses
Blacks to Chastize: The Colored Mixed Doubles". Not that I am particularly a
noted fan of Mr. Reed or that I agree wholeheartedly with all of his views
as a eclectic Black liberal/Leftist, but there were a lot of legitimate
points in his article about how the establishment media uses not a few Black
voices to undercut and undermine what is known as the "Black Consensus",
which is decisively and decidedly to the Left of the usual political
spectrum allowed in mainstream media discourse.
First off...I find it quite interesting that Ms. Martin accuses Mr. Reed
(and by extension, CounterPunch and Black Commentator) of lack of "civility"
and feels the need to write the editors of BC to call them out...but she can
t find the time to post her other critique of Reed's article in a public
forum for feedback and response. (Ms. Martin cites a response she gave to
the National Association of Black Journalists forum; but that site turns out
to be a Yahoo! group that is closed in accessibility to journalists only..
and thus inaccessible to those of us in the public.)
For someone who feels the need to throw accusations at individuals on the
Left (and in her email that was published in BC, she specifically aimed her
guns at Reed for his presumed assumptions "that black officials (presumably
of the left since I’ve see no similar protectiveness of those on the right)
are somehow beyond questioning (or chastising for that matter"), Ms. Martin
seems to miss the basic point of Reed's article: that the establishment
media (whether liberal or conservative) is not afraid of using Black people
as a ruse to sell a political agenda that is decisively harmful to the
majority of Black people. The examples that he gave (Vernon Robinson's
Congressional run in North Carolina as Jesse Helms' long lost Steppin
Fetchit grandson; John McWhorter and Shelby Steele from the "End of Racism"
neo-conservative Right; and even the occasional liberal voice like Clarence
Page and Bob Herbert) are only just a few of the many ways in which genuine
progressive Black thought is marginalized and distorted...and voices that
support the dominant conservative-to-Far-Right political spectrum are
reenforced.
Perhaps the real issue that Ms. Martin has with Reed and BC is that she was
called out directly by him for her not-so-fawning coverage of the saga of
Representative Cynthia McKinney (GA - 4th Dist.), who has the unmitigated
gall to actually represent her poor and working class constituents in her
Atlanta district as a principled progressive, and who is one of the few
representatives who dares to challenge the frontal assault of the Right and
Center on average Black people directly....and who also had the unmitigated
hubris to defend herself against an overzealous security guard who just
couldn't keep his hands off her while going to work. (And I won't even go
into McKinney's hair style choices at that time, since I'm sure that even Ms.
Martin are aware of the vile racist epithets that were slung at
Congresswoman McKinney by right-wingers at that time. Nothing that Ishmael
Reed wrote on that article could even begin to approximate Neal Boortz's
"ghetto slut" smack..and those was the more printable insults.) I'm not
saying that McKinney is above accountability; but the perspective of having
a publically active progressive Black woman put down due to her choice in
hair style (not to mention her political positions) might have more than a
bit to do with why she is supported so firmly amongst average Black folk...and it is more than proper to point out how establishment media programs were selling the dominant party line of McKinney being nutty, almost slutty, and a dangerous
ultra-radical Black Leftist that should be shunned by any moderate-thinking
Black politician.
Nor am I that impressed by Ms. Martin's attempt to explain away and dismiss
popular Black anger at media voices who use their newly gained power in the
establishment media for personal self-promotion at the expense of the "Black
Consensus". According to her, that's just the usual media obsession with
gadflies who think "outside the box"; she directly quotes John McCain and
Chuck Hagel as prominent examples on the conservative Republican side as
examples of how internal critics get more attention. There's one small
problem with that analogy, though: Hagel and McCain, for all their
criticisms of the Bush presidency on some occasions, remain firmly and
strongly within the dominant right-wing consensus; and have no plans to
break away at any rate. Indeed, McCain is currently attempting to repudiate
much of his old "maverick" image and suck up to the very same Far Right
resources that killed his earlier 2000 Presidential campaign...considering
that all that remains of the Republican "base" is the fundamentalists and
the former "Dixiecrats", it is more of a Realpolitik move than anything
philosophical.
But it is Ms. Martin's clarion call for BC to be more "civil" which
fascinates me most; it is as if she thinks that only Black Leftists are the
ones that are poisoning the political debate by not "respecting" their
critics enough and resorting to name-calling and "dozens-playing". It's as
if she thinks that if we on the (Black) Left simply played nice and only
used right and proper language and played by Maquis of Queensbury rules and
treated the Right and the Establishment Center as people who played fair and
square, then all the issues affecting Black folk would be resolved rather
quickly. Well, Ms. Martin, I really hate to burst your bubble, but that won
t be happening anytime soon.
For starters....you are aware, ma'am, that if anything, the mass collective
attitude of the Right is not getting any more civil...in fact, quite the
opposite; feeling the fruits of a successful takeover of the political
system through unbridled control of the main political institutions
(including both houses of Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court),
they have simply become that much more aggressive in their tactics of
driving Black folk back to their antebellum status. Not even the
diminishing popularity of their leadership and the demonstrated failures of
their policies has driven them in any way towards the goal of mutual respect
and mutual consent. Rather, it has simply intensified and concentrated
their anger at and fear of losing their assumed privileges as White people..
and they have directed their anger in much more direct language and actions.
Just go over to sites like FreeRepublic.com, LittleGreenFootballs.com,
FrontPageMag.com, and a few other "conservative" sites and blogs, and you
will feel the full fury of White scorn towards Blacks who fail to know their
"place"..and those are the more genteel, upper-class sites. Attempting
civility" in the face of people like them is sorta like negotiating with
people who use cattle prods and biting dogs on you....not too successful,
and potentially fatal. Respect towards others means nothing if that respect
is not returned in kind, and no self-respecting Black person should ever
give those who would enslave or kill him anything other than the utmost
resistance. Given this inequality, "civility" becomes reduced to nothing
more than the same old business as usual of average Blacks getting shafted.
Now, I'm no supporter of cursing in public or of any mother beating her
child in public; and I would agree to a point that our society overall has
lost a real sense of civility in our lives....but rather than aim my guns at
the historical victims and the powerless; I'd much prefer to attack the real
roots of such incivility: the political and economic and cultural
institutions which continue to support and enforce the maldistribution of
resources to benefit the few at the expense of the many....and the racist
(and also sexist, and sex-negative, and classist, and heterosexist, and
anti-enviromental) attitudes all too popular that are used to reenforce such
inequality. That is the main focus and objective of sites like CounterPunch
and BC, and what makes them so radical. Obviously, as a woman of the
establishment, you choose a different tack. That is your right and your
perogative, of course..but please be a bit more honest about your goals and
not attempt to degrade those of us who choose a more radical critique of our
society as lacking "civility". Rudeness and crudity may not be genteel, but
it beats being subjugated; and even Martin Luther King and Gandhi had to
protect themselves against violence and injustice. The old saying remains
the same: No justice...no peace.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to express my views...and they are
strictly just that...my own.
Sincerely,
A bit long, perhaps...but it got my point across, didn't it. I'll just let you decide on that one.
Peaceout.... :-)
Posts
3 comments:
I happened to see this interview on TV and it was hardly the hitpiece that Reed is claiming. Reed is a loudmouth race baiter. For evey intelligent comment he makes, he says two or three wacked things. Here in the Oakland mayors race he's supporting the pro-corporate De LaFuente over black progressive Ron Dellums.
Reed also up until recently (maybe still is) was a defender of a murderous, child raping racist cult called Your Black Muslim Bakery. I know that sounds outlandish but do a little googling or ask Reed himself.
Anon...
Oh, I'm well aware of some of Ishmael Reed's cracked views in the past; I remember him getting into a major blow with some feminists when he suggested that Black feminists were betraying Black men; and I am well aware of his sometimes Black Nationalist streak that will show itself on occasion.
The main point, though, was that he was for the most part on point with the main view in that article that Black journalists have become a convenient foil for conservatives and neoliberals to sell their agenda....and that Michel Martin's attack on BC for publishing his article and promoting "uncivility" was grossly off the mark and distracted from the merits of the article.
I'll have to check, though, on that issue with Your Black Muslim Bakery..that doesn't sound so good.
Anthony
(BTW...I'd really prefer it if you gave some name and ID rather than use the "Anonomyous" tag; I tend to dismiss people who post that way as trolls..even though you are certainly NOT one of them. I've had too much history with them to conclude otherwise.)
i don't support de la fuente, i support dellums, and
have contributed money to his campaign. see sfgate.com search "ishmael reed." also, please check
out the history of the manhattan institute for which
john mcwhorter is the most visible spokesperson.
ishmael reed
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Wed, 29 Mar 2000
Giuliani, the Manhattan Institute, and Eugenics: The Ugly Truth Behind "Quality of Life"
Robert Lederman (ARTISTpres@aol.com)
"There is an issue here about demeaning the whole historical and contemporary importance of the Holocaust," Giuliani said. "When people misuse descriptions like that, in essence they do a grave injustice to the people who suffered in the Holocaust and to the reality of what the Holocaust was all about."
-NY Times 3/10/2000 Giuliani Won't Move on Art Show
There's a fundamental question about the Giuliani as Hitler controversy nobody seems willing to ask let alone answer. Does comparing Giuliani to Hitler demean the Holocaust if Giuliani is in fact a modern day exponent of Nazi-like ideas on race?
In order to intelligently answer this question one needs a historical understanding of Nazism beyond knowing that Hitler killed six million Jews. While the systematic extermination of European Jewery is among the most uniquely horrific episodes in human history it was not all that Hitler, Nazism or the Third Reich were trying to achieve. Eliminating Jews was actually a localized subset of a much larger idea known as Eugenics.
Proponents of Eugenics don't necessarily hate those of other races. There are economic and social aspects of Eugenics distinct from the blatant hatred of anti-Semitism or the anti-Black prejudice that's common in the U.S. Often the justifications offered by proponents of Eugenics focus on economic and social gains to society that can be achieved by its application.
Mayor Giuliani's defenders claim he's not a racist. In a very limited sense they may be right. The Mayor's ideology in terms of race and Eugenics focuses on economic issues and so-called quality of life. Let us not forget however that the main justification the Southern States offered for slavery was also economic as was Hitler's justification for euthanizing and sterilizing millions of German citizens, for invading Eastern Europe and to a large extent for the Holocaust itself. German business interests reaped huge economic benefits from the Holocaust and from the application by the Nazis of Eugenics. Here in New York City, business interests also have been the prime beneficiaries of Giuliani's Eugenics based policies.
Eugenics treats human beings as breeding stock, like farm animals. Eugenicists are preoccupied with issues of racial superiority, racial mixing, racial degeneration and the effects on modern economic society of race generally. So-called "positive" Eugenics deals with promoting socially and economically advantageous human breeding while "negative" Eugenics focuses on the culling out of those with undesirable traits.
Long before Hitler created German laws requiring forcible sterilization, euthanasia and his ultimate Eugenics program, the Holocaust, the pioneers of Eugenics who originated Hitler's ideas were British and American scientists. With the financial backing of some of the world's most famous industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, Cecil Rhodes, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, they were able to promote Eugenics to an amazingly successful degree. Thanks to a century of propaganda distorting and disguising their real purposes, the influential foundations these men endowed with their wealth are viewed as humanitarian, even as mankind's hope for salvation.
By the 1920's many States had passed Eugenics laws requiring involuntary sterilization of mental defectives. Tens of thousands of African Americans, Native Americans and other minorities were deliberately mislabeled as defectives and then sterilized by our government in order to prevent them from reproducing.
Most of those sterilized were actually normal. By the 1930's States were proposing even more extreme policies including compulsory euthanasia for chronic criminal behavior, for the mentally ill and for those with certain diseases. Hitler publicly acknowledged that he directly modeled the Eugenics laws of Nazi Germany on those of the United States.
Due to revelations about the Holocaust that surfaced after WWII the Eugenics movement was forced to reinvent itself under various fronts. Nevertheless, it has continued its work to the present day with programs like the Human Genome Project, the Center for Disease Control, various "humanitarian" Population Councils within the UN and in private organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, The Pioneer Fund and the Manhattan Institute. The ideas and goals of Eugenics are behind issues as diverse as the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the African AIDs crisis and genetically manipulated seeds being forced on farmers.
Not all Eugenics proponents wear white sheets or decorate their homes with Nazi memorabilia. Mainstream Eugenics is usually presented as beneficent aid to poor people, as scientific research or as enlightened social policy and reform. At its opposite extreme the ideas manifest as murder and mayhem committed against ethnic and racial minorities.
A common belief of the proponents of American Eugenics in the early part of this century was that poor immigrants who were coming to the United States in the millions each year such as the Irish, Italians and Eastern European Jews were unhealthy, mentally inferior and a dangerous army of potential Marxists who would destroy the nation genetically, economically and politically. Today the immigrant groups that are the focus of this ideological attack in the United States are primarily Latino. In Austria, Hitler's birthplace and today the stronghold of Giuliani's recent dinner pal Jorg Haider, it's the Turks who are the hated and feared immigrant threat. In other words Eugenics ideology is not focused solely on the Jewish people. The Japanese, to take just one more outstanding national example, had a comparable Eugenics program to Hitler's which viewed Chinese and Koreans as inferior races. Millions of innocent civilians were interned, murdered, raped and experimented on by the Japanese in acts as horrific as anything done by the Nazis.
Hitler claimed that hundreds of years of Jewish participation in German society was responsible for Germany's economic, social and spiritual troubles. According to Hitler, Jewish intermarriage and social influence was a poison destroying the Aryan race. These claims are virtually identical to those made today by the White Supremacy movement in the U.S. against Blacks, Asians and Latinos.
However it's not only fringe groups and fundamentalists who hold these beliefs. American governmental officials at the highest level and many of the nation's top bankers and industrialists knew about the Holocaust before it had begun and did nothing whatsoever to stop it. In fact, they helped finance it.
It was not only Jews that Hitler and his financial backers had a problem with. Eastern Europeans, Slavs, Russians, Gypsies, Africans and Latin Americans were also races they intended to decimate. Communists, not a race but adherents of a political ideology, were also a key target of Hitler's world-wide Eugenics program. In other words, what Hitler intended was not just a Jewish Holocaust but a plan to eliminate hundreds of millions of representatives of various racial, ethnic and political groups around the world. The motivation was at least as much about gaining economic advantage as about racial prejudice.
One might reasonably ask how the German people, considered by many to be the best educated and most cultured population in the world at that time, could accept this ideology. German Jews made a tremendous contribution to German society and culture over hundreds of years and were a major force in its economy, its military, its government and its industry. German Jews were the most assimilated Jews in the world, often indistinguishable from their non-Jewish neighbors. Millions of Germans including Hitler and various other top Nazis had Jewish relatives whose existence they made great efforts to hide.
One way to understand how the German people could participate in the Holocaust is to look at how African Americans are viewed in this country. Despite the undeniable historical fact that Black Americans helped build this nation, established much of it's wealth and made countless contributions to it's culture, its science, its political and social progress and that black soldiers fought and died in every American war, many White Americans believe Blacks are mentally, socially and morally inferior and that they are a threat to the continuation of the so-called American Way Of Life.
Within the dominant White society's views of Black Americans there is a very wide spectrum of belief. For those with the most extremely racist viewpoint, Black Americans are not even human and should be separated from White society or eliminated. For those with more politically acceptable rhetoric if not belief, Black Americans are socially flawed, economically dependent, intellectually inferior and prone to violence. Not all white American's hold these beliefs any more than all Germans hated the Jews and believed Hitler's outrageous lies about them. Ultimately, what's most important is not what average people think but what those in power believe and plan to do.
Which brings us back to New York City and to the question of whether or not it is reasonable to compare Giuliani to Hitler. Is Giuliani in some sense a Nazi? Once we understand clearly what Hitler and Nazism actually represented the answer is clear.
Giuliani routinely admits his policy ideas are taken directly, almost verbatim, from the Manhattan Institute, a CIA initiated "think tank" funded by far right Eugenics advocates like the Pioneer Fund and corporations such as the Rockefeller's Chase Bank which have historically promoted the Eugenics agenda. The Manhattan Institute has sponsored research projects and books like the Bell Curve, Fixing Broken windows and numerous others which propose the idea that blacks are mentally inferior. While the Manhattan Institute is not publicly advocating mass extermination or mass relocation of minorities the policies it does promote are mostly about targeting black and Latino inner City populations in such a way as to make relocation an attractive option and elimination a day to day reality. They take full credit along with Mayor Giuliani for the City's aggressive policing, it's stop and frisk policy, the remedial budget cuts at CUNY, the ending of welfare, the destruction of SRO's and low-income housing, attempts to eliminate rent control, the workfare program, the cleansing of the streets of homeless people, bulldozing community gardens, the privatization of parks, schools and hospitals and many other controversial ideas. Economic improvement is the attractive facade of these policies. Behind that facade are assumptions about minorities that are fundamentally racist.
You won't find swastikas or paintings of Hitler decorating the walls at the Manhattan Institute nor will its staff be seen wearing Nazi uniforms. Their stable of well paid academics, writers and intellectuals are masters of using politically correct terminology to advance and express racist ideas. They are often the most effective guest speakers on television programs and at university conferences on social issues. While the ideas they advance may superficially appear to be about improving quality of life, cutting government waste, improving education and perfecting police strategy the common thread is that every policy is aimed at targeting minorities, immigrants and the poor while benefiting the corporations and wealthy individuals with whom they are aligned and by whom they are funded.
These ideas are very similar to those espoused by Adolf Hitler with one notable exception. There is no anti-Semitism involved. The despised groups in this contemporary NYC branch of Eugenics are African Americans and Latinos. However, if one looks to the early years of this century one will find the exact same attitudes were expressed about New York City's millions of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. They were considered to be uneducable, diseased, mentally inferior, crime prone, violent, unfit parents, socially toxic and a ruinous drain on the economy and infrastructure. To top it all off they were also considered politically subversive Marxists who would destroy the American political system.
For the minority residents of Harlem, Bedford Styvesant or the Bronx, the comparisons between Giuliani and Hitler are self-evident and universally understood. Unfortunately, the well-justified rage within these communities is often directed at police officers who have no part in creating policy and are not in many cases aware of the ideology they are enforcing. The so-called police "training" the Mayor and Police Commissioner are so proud of is a military system of brainwashing and desensitization invented by the Gestapo which trains police officers to view minority males as armed and dangerous suspects with no rights who are to be treated with maximum force even when unarmed. As the Mayor said after the Diallo shooting, "They are trained to shoot to kill".
The corporations, banks and far right race-obsessed groups that fund the Manhattan Institute today were in many cases backing Hitler's rise to power just 70 years ago. They are also the same groups behind Giuliani's Senate campaign and GW Bush's Presidential bid. Chase Bank, the Manhattan Institute's main sponsor, has publicly apologized on numerous occasions for its avid support of Hitler and its enthusiasm to turn over Jewish Bank accounts to the Nazis before they were ever asked to do so. Chase and other U.S. banks helped Hitler seize the gold reserves of European nations that had been deposited in their vaults in order to fund the German military buildup. When Hitler invaded Europe his troops were flying planes, driving tanks and firing ammunition manufactured by German subsidiaries of U.S. companies like GM, Ford and Chrysler, all fueled by the German branch of Standard Oil, The Rockefeller's oil company.
One must not imagine these were simply business decisions intended to protect the corporate bottom-line. The Rockefeller's, owners of Chase Bank, were major advocates of Eugenics and funded Eugenics institute's and experiments around the world as they continue to do today. One of the darker chapters of Rockefeller involvement was their economic sponsorship of Josef Mengele, the Nazis Doctor of Death. Much of Mengele's research material was acquired by conducting monstrous human experiments on Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz. After WWII that research material was brought to the U.S. by those associated with the Eugenics movement within our own government. Today that same research is used by the U.S. military, by the Human Genome Project and by pharmaceutical and chemical companies whose advertising dollars sponsor every aspect of popular American culture from soap operas to PBS.
The Manhattan Institute's founder, former CIA director William Casey, helped bring leading Nazis to America after WWII where they were given positions in the military, in intelligence, in scientific research and in universities. The results surround us today in the form of militarized police departments, efforts to end affirmative action, the governmental importation of drugs into minority areas, the psycho-chemical dosing of children, the criminalization and imprisonment of millions of black and Latino males, the prison-industrial complex and the attendant destruction of minority families and communities. The government itself, saturated by the influence of the Eugenics movement, is promoting and executing these racist policies.
When a Federal agency like the CDC announces that they will test a new experimental vaccine solely on minority children in urban ghettos and on Native Americans living on Indian reservations you are seeing Eugenics not public health at work. When the government works with giant chemical companies, many of whom were owned and operated by the Nazis before the end of WWII, to force genetically engineered foods, artificial hormones or mandatory vaccines on the public, you are seeing Eugenics at work. When Mayor Giuliani has Malathion, an organophosphate nerve gas known to weaken immune systems and cause birth defects, cancer and asthma, indiscriminently sprayed on NYC to fight a viral "epidemic" that may not even exist, you are seeing Eugenics at work. When every NYC social program is cut despite a billion dollar surplus or when schools, hospitals, libraries, police, parks, prisons the courts and emergency medical services are privatized at the expense of minority communities, you are seeing Eugenics at work. And when hundreds of thousands are selectively stopped, frisked, harassed and intimidated based on their race you are seeing Eugenics, rather than garden variety police brutality, at work.
Those actually carrying out these policies on the ground, the inner city police officer, the welfare bureaucrat, the underpaid school teacher, the emergency room doctor, may have no more idea of what the master plan is than those who are being targeted. People needn't be racists in order to carry out racist policies. That's why the Mayor is currently recruiting so many minorities into the NYPD. Just as the Nazis used Jewish capos to help run the concentration camps, Giuliani's anti-minority police state will run more efficiently with fewer complaints if all the cops are Black and Latino. Doctors injecting experimental vaccines into the arms of millions of African children can be well-intentioned humanitarians with no idea what the vaccine is really intended to do. The NYC public school teacher struggling to teach her overcrowded class to read in an unheated crumbling building may have no idea that she is part of a Eugenics policy that intends for her students to be miseducated, unemployable and illiterate and that is actually preparing them for a prison cell.
Politically motivated Eugenics can be applied in many ways. The Cold War, covering Viet Nam with Agent Orange, the embargoes of Cuba and Iraq causing starvation and disease and the funding of the Contras can all be understood as Eugenics policies applied to political situations. When former President Bush depicted Sadaam Hussein as a modern day Hitler armed with chemical and biological weapons, he neglected to mention that it was U.S. corporations and the U.S. government that gave them to him.
That far more Americans are killed by doctors each year than by car accidents, AIDs and guns combined may turn out to be something other than massive medical malpractice. With giant profit-oriented HMO's replacing doctors in the making of virtually all medical decisions Americans are increasingly in the position where being downsized by a corporation can have a permanent and far more sinister meaning than just losing a job.
Eugenics affects virtually every aspect of our lives although it is rarely acknowledged. The recipient of Mayor Giuliani's endorsement for President, GW Bush, has spoken at the Manhattan Institute and warmly praised its policies. Consistent with the pattern of many Giuliani and Manhattan Institute associates the Bush family were intimately involved in funding Hitler and were economic partners with the Third Reich in a variety of business endeavors. The U.S. Congress was forced to seize many of the Bush families' banking assets in 1942 to stop the flow of money to Hitler as the U.S. entered WWII. Ironically, as I'm writing this a news report on the radio states that GW Bush is celebrating his Primary victory at a Jewish center in Austin Texas. No doubt he is wearing a yarmulke and affirming his commitment to the State of Israel while collecting campaign contributions. His appearance at Bob Jones University, covered ad nauseum by the media, was never once depicted for what it actually was; confirmation that Bush represents the most extreme kind of racial and religious bigotry. Apparently Governor Bush even has his own Eugenics program going on in Texas, the state that has executed more than half of all the people killed under the U.S. death penalty in recent years. The "compassionate conservative" has signed a death warrant on average about once every two weeks since being elected Texas Governor.
When political pundits scratch their heads over Giuliani being pro-choice at the same time he is massively soliciting donations from the anti-abortion religious right, the answer is again, Eugenics. From a Eugenics perspective the more abortions among minorities the better. Our Eugenics oriented government will be glad to give Blacks and Latinos abortions, condoms, Norplant, chemical exposure that causes sterility, crack, heroin, epidemics of asthma and AIDS, risky medical experiments and anything else that will lower their rate of reproduction.
Giuliani's infamous temperament is usually offered as the reason he refused to meet with a single black NYC elected official for the first six years of his Mayoralty. Isn't a far more reasonable explanation that he had no need to meet with those he was trying to eliminate? Ex-Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says Giuliani "missed an opportunity" to resolve racial tensions in NYC between the NYPD and minorities. What Bratton is not saying is that resolving those tensions would have been counterproductive to the Mayor's Manhattan Institute-inspired Eugenics agenda.
Does the Mayor deny any of this? Not at all. In fact, his only response during more than six years of being compared to Adolf Hitler is that such comparisons, "denigrate the Holocaust", are "hate speech" and are "anti-Semitic". So far this debate chilling technique has been very effective. To quote Mayor Giuliani's favorite newspaper, "As soon as a dissenting opinion is labeled hate, it need not be countered with reason, and those who hold that opinion need not be taken seriously -- except inasmuch as they are a threat to decency and order and must be suppressed." -NY Post 3/12/2000. One can hardly expect a media that is financed by the very corporations behind Eugenics to expose these policies. Mainstream media depictions of Giuliani ossilate between showing him as a dress-wearing buffoon, a hot-tempered "nasty man" or as an admired public servant. No matter how naughty or nicely reporters depict him the ideology behind his policies is never allowed to be exposed.
The time has come to look beyond the Mayor's feeble knee-jerk labels absurdly mischaracterizing these accusations as hate speech and anti-Semitism. They are not. I am very proud of my Jewish heritage. I know hundreds of other Jews who despise Giuliani and everything he stands for. These are Jews who understand the history of Nazi Germany very well and see the shadow of Hitler lurking behind every Giuliani pronouncement. Neither are these accusations an attempt to trivialize or deny the Holocaust. If the Holocaust is to be more than just a monument to Jewish suffering the cry, "never again" has to be applied not just to the Jewish people but to all present or future targets of the Eugenics movement. To do less than that is truly to denigrate the Holocaust and the memory of those who perished in it.
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