I had an idea, so I put my gag reflex on hold and Google'd "tea party" to see if I was right. And there they were in all their self-righteous "I'm A Real American" glory. The Aryans. The Master Race reborn under the cover of US patriotism.
Oh sure, they have enough political savvy to refrain from wearing white hoods, but joined together with the John Birch Society and Oath Keepers, they're no better than Nazis.
Sixty-five years after the liberation of the concentration camps some things never change. The tea baggers feel beaten down, suspicious, uncomfortable with power vested in groups they fear. So they revert.
They hate Backs, Hispanics, Gays, Jews and, if not women in general, Feminists. They're anti-abortion, anti-immigration, anti-Democrat, gun-toting bullies who want everybody who doesn't fit their mold to shut up and get out of the way. Or else.
Their movement is real and growing and deep down, it isn't about health care or taxes. It's about looking for scapegoats. Getting even. And hating anyone who isn't like them.
We need to start taking them more seriously. They are rabid dogs on a mission to destroy the enemy. That enemy is us -- the Reality Keepers.
The Holocaust
I could be wrong, but I doubt we'll see any Tea Baggers stepping up for Holocaust Remembrance Day this weekend. Unless it's to celebrate or deny the Holocaust. And that's exactly why they're so dangerous.
They want to know about real deprivation and oppression, they should ask a Holocaust survivor.
The Holocaust was the worst crime against humanity in modern history. Not only Jews should be honoring its more than 11 million victims.
Jews were the largest group targeted by the Nazis' "Final Solution" -- genocide of the entire race. At least one-third of Europe's Jews, more than 6 million, were exterminated.
So we have taken up the rallying cry for the Holocaust, written in the blood of those millions: Never Again.
But it's not ours alone. 5 million more from other "non-Aryan" groups were marked by the Nazis for abuse and destruction. Russians, Poles, Catholics, Gypsies, the Disabled. Plus ...not enough people know this... Blacks and Homosexuals.
There wasn't a large African population in Europe, but those who lived there were clearly not the Aryan ideal and were sent to camps and put to death like all the others.
The Nazis persecuted homosexuals as part of their 'moral crusade' for racial and cultural purity. They believed gay men were weak, unfit to be soldiers, unlikely to have children to perpetuate the goal of Aryan dominance. (Online Exhibitions)
Sick, twisted reasoning for the most heinous behavior known to mankind. It was barbaric insanity. Call yourself The Master Race. Dehumanise and conquer. Advance your own agenda through lies and fear and corruption.
So, especially these days, all human beings should join in pledging Never Again.
WARNING: disturbing images below. As they should be.
Reality Check
Lost your house or your job? Need better health care? Struggling to pay bills, buy food, keep your kids in school? Yes, it's deplorable. A real and devastating hardship. Especially because it was avoidable, caused by greed and hubris and a disturbing lack of human decency.
Adding insult to injury, we must watch the rich and powerful who caused our losses get even richer. Their souls are dark and decayed. But that won't put money back in our bank accounts.
Still...
Concentration Camps
The Nazis created camps to corral those tagged unfit, lowly, subhuman. Transported them by rail, packed densely into closed cattle cars, no food, no water, no sanitation, little air for days, weeks. Majority dead on arrival. The weak and the young killed soon after.
Those deemed strong enough to work were forced into slave labor. Digging ditches and burying the bodies. Gathering personal belongings. Servicing their captors. Starved, beaten, raped, tortured, ravaged by disease and exposure and deplorable, execrable housing conditions.
Medical Experiments
Gruesome medical experiments, especially on young women, injections of acid and lye, operations without anaesthesia. Twins surgically joined, then torn apart to see whose organs would survive.
Children torn from parents, subjected to horrendous slow deaths for experimentation on reactions to heat, cold, water, starvation, sex. Babies swung by their feet, heads smashed against walls to see how fast they'd die.
Families separated and destroyed. Homes and bodies looted for valuables. Forced labor. Forced prostitution. Forced betrayal. Mass graves dug by those who were then gunned down and shoved into them. Gas chambers disguised as showers.
Ovens. Ovens. For. People.
(The next time you see a local news story or ad with pictures of abused animals and your eyes fill with tears and your heart fills with indignation, remind yourself: the Nazis did much, much worse ... to human beings).
And the world let it happen. American, Europe, The Vatican let it happen. Nobody, nobody tried to stop it.
Memories? Nightmares!
You read survivors' words and your heart pounds. You look at the pictures and your blood freezes. You say to yourself, How is it possible that human beings did this to other human beings? And then, over the huge lump of rage and sorrow in your throat, you have to say, Never Again.
We have an obligation as human beings to honor the memory and the sacrifice of all those innocent victims. To wrap our brains around the mind-boggling horror of the Holocaust, and to pass the torch of Never Again to our children.
For 65 years, since the liberation of the camps in 1945 when the enormity of the Holocaust became public, Never Again has been a reminder, a warning and a promise.
And now, especially as the last Holocaust survivors are getting so much older, many dying, it must become a universal shibboleth -- to preserve their legacy of suffering, and avenge the deaths of millions, for present and future generations.
We. Must. Remember. We must remind our children. Hatred and lies and self-righteous, unbending belief in your own supremacy above all others can lead to barbarity and chaos. Danger. Anarchy. Worse.
So, let's review with some more perspective: as bad as things are in America and the world today, things have been much, much worse. And if philosophical differences grow into active rebellion, they could get that way again.
The pure evil of the Holocaust is so huge it is still difficult to process, even from a distance of so many years -- but we must try, and we must succeed.
"I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. And anyone who does not remember betrays them again." Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Laureate, Holocaust Survivor
We must not betray them again. We must not betray each other and our children by forgetting the lessons of their massive sacrifice. We must remember what human beings can do to each other when hatred is permitted to thrive, to spread and worst of all, to rule.
It could happen again. It's ugliness is already begining to show.
Yom HaShoah
Holocaust Remembrance Day begins at sundown Sunday, April 11, through sunset Monday April 12. It will be commemorated around the world. A solemn ceremony will take place at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, during Israel's 24-hour observance.
Yom HaShoah will be marked in the same unique way in Israel as it is every year. At 10 AM local time air-raid sirens around the country will signal two minutes of simultaneous nationwide silence in homage to all who perished in the Holocaust. (See it live, in the video below).
Throughout Israel, in homes and offices and schools people stop what they're doing. Traffic stops in the cities, cars pull to the side of the highways. Farms, factories, airports, restaurants, stores, hotels, TV and radio, computers, call centers... Everything literally comes to a halt. Most of us in America will be sleeping; it will be 3 AM ET here. That doesn't mean we can't observe our own moments of silence during the day in honor of so many lives brutally taken by prejudice and evil. "Our motto must be, In spite of despair, hope must exist. In spite of suffering, humanity must prevail. And in spite of all the differences in the world, the worst enemy, the worst peril, is indifference." Elie Wiesel Witnesses to the Holocaust: Liberation 1945 (video, US Holocaust Museum)
In the eerie quiet you can almost hear the souls of the dead pleading for the world to remember them. To acknowledge their unspeakable pain and suffering. To say Never Again.
Personal Stories: For Nathan, Who Was Only Two - Lea Lane Next Year in Jerusalem - Kathy Riordan
Remembrance, Part 2 : Walking in Hell/Cecile's Closure - Lea Lane
Auschwitz in Living Color - Deborah Sosin
How I helped teach a Gentile to never forget the Holocaust - OEsheepdog
Remembering the Shoah - Shiral
Years Later We Would Remember - john guzlowski
For Gedalya on Yom Hashoah - Greg Correll
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Comments
I am glad for your anger here. For your absolute STFU anger. For the gruesome details - a few people have been commenting how we see the past through black and white photos and suddenly it's history because it's not in color.
We NEED to see these images to remember what our minds cannot imagine.
That's been my problem with the Holocaust - I really can't imagine it. So I get numbed by facts and forget that people were duped into ghettos and then onto trains - carrying their belongings, as if the worst that could happen was to go to a labor camp - and marched into gas chambers. Thank you for reminding me that that is, indeed, what happened.
And, most of all, thank you for pointing out the Neo Nazis in our midst in the U.S. who would happily see us all killed in some way or other.
The terror we face within the U.S. is far greater than any terror we face from without.
Thank you Sally - I'll look up Zelig Segal as well.
I will take the time to mark the passing of so many souls, and I will take the time to once more explain to my children why we do this. Why it is necessary. Why they should always remember.
There is very little on OS that can make me cry, but for some reason the first part of the video really got to me...we need to universally remember this, the souls that went before us and their suffering. It could be us--the people that are able to perpertrate this type of suffering are still with us, just in another form, as you suggest.
Alison, I'll put links to Lea's, Deborah's and all other Holocaust posts here. Thank you for reminding me, they all tell different parts of this horrendous story.
Zelig Segal is my sister-in-law's father. He died last month, March 27 in Israel two days before Passover and two weeks before his 99th birthday. He lived a long, hard life but told his family's story and saw a new generation bloom and grow in freedom.
Bill, the video is hard but uplifting too. Made by a young Israeli in English, it's proof the next generation is dedicated to Never Again. As are you, by continuing to explain to your children.
Joan, you and all who can't speak are welcome. It's an honor.
Spud, your words, like Alison's need no response except thank you. And pass the word.
sophieh, thank you for doing just that.. for passing the word, Never Again.
Owl, Dog, B1, we continue to remind each other and the world so their souls can rest. And so the stirrings of collective hate we see will be crushed before they get too strong.
(and thank you for the reference).
Second, I usually shy from equating anyone/grp, no matter how right wing or noxious, with actual nazis. I tend to think it diminishes those who died. At the same time, I do see far-right sentiments, facist ones, in the TPers and more, that its leadership refuses to denounce those in the groups showing up with nazi iconography. That does concern me a lot.
Lea, as you said, we often walk the same roads. This is one I know we share. I wanted to memorialize Malka's father and her family but I can't until the Shloshim ends. So our stories should stand side by side.
Jonathan, I never compare swing groups, no matter how bizarre, to Nazis. You're quite right, it diminishes their victims. But in this case I am beginning to fear there are too many troubling parallels... and direct connections. Mob mentality is growing too fast.
IMUA
I have traveled as mentioned before to Mauthausen and Dachau. I have lived in Europe and I am sure mingled by chance with ex Nazi's.
I have felt disturbed by the Tea Party movement for the exact reasons you mention here. I have repeatedly seen a connection with pre war Germany and the actions of the Bush administration and been disgusted and disturbed by the current, ex Hitler youth pope. As the cover up in church continues to unfold I am sure more signs will point in his direction.
There is a disturbing trend which takes place when people feel threatened and deprived, they look for someone who shouts loudly and points fingers to lead them. More often than not it can be someone who twists truths and manifests hatred with a base remark or rally. I see Palin as such a person, stupid and manipulative, she is able to continue to gain power because she is being given the access to the angry masses through the puppetry of FOX and others.
It does not matter how ignorant, how truths are twisted, she is like a flea on a camel's back, one of many, but more odius and forceful, a leader among the fleas if you will. As these small creatures continue to infest us, we will all soon be scratching and looking for some relief. The leader will emerge and it just might be like the Messiah. Or, it might be someone more like the Devil. We must be stronger in our beliefs and like Bobbet said I will fight with every last breath to save this country from a Hitler like leader. I want peace and harmony for this country. I want this hatred stopped.
Thank you for putting this out there, for the facts, the pictures and the intelligent correlation to today's issues, The Tea Party and their stand. I saw one of the women leaders of this group on Dave Letterman last week I believe. Look it up. Your worst fears will be confirmed. I almost thought I saw her lick her lips at one point like the followers of Voldemort in the Harry Potter series. I am not kidding. It freaked me out. I felt like I was looking at evil. I could sense Letterman's discomfort and restraint. It was frightening in a way that was buried deep within me.
Enough. I have great respect for what you did here and will be remembering on the 11th.
I had the opportunity to hear rare recording of the "Hatikva " from 62 years ago.
It is profoundly moving.
It was recorded by a British reporter in May 1945 in Bergen-Belsen when the British army liberated the few thousand survivors in the concentration camp, half of whom were Jewish, and most of them at the low ebb of their strength.
The British priest organized prayers for Kabbalat Shabbat for the Jews, it was the first time after 6 years of war and after more than 10 years of persecution. With a lot of effort the Jews organized themselves and knowing they were recorded and sang " Hatikva".
They sang the original version exactly as it was written by Naftali Imber. The link is no longer good which I had, but if you ever find it, it will reach your heart and make you strong to fight.
RATED.
Lezlie
Oahusurfer, I agree it's Orwellian propaganda and misplaced anger and hatred. That's why it's so very dangerous.
Sheila, please, your write about this so eloquently, please post it whole on your own blog. Find that link, I'll look too. You wrote about Mauthausen and Dachau? I missed that, please, provide a link. The woman on Letterman, the "testimonials" on the various web sites, I felt I needed a shower and just Had to write this in response.
Lezlie, lots of people don't know how much Blacks and gays were persecuted during the Holocaust (I provided a link above for each). Less than Jews, but that doesn't mean it's less horrendous... there were simply more Jews in Europe at the time. Look at African genocide to know it never stops. That's why the Tea Baggers groups scare me... they hate the same groups.
sixtycandles, you're right, and that makes them powerfully dangerous.
Susan, thank you. I had powerful material.
Note to All: We have the weekend to remember and share personal stories and/or opinions. Please, if you write a Holocaust post, let me know. Let us all know.
Oh, Sally. I will remember them. I will acknowledge the pain and suffering. I will say Never Again. And I will light a candle.
Thank you for your strength.
I'm just starting to read a bit about Zelig...many blessings to you.
Outside, you chose a line that spoke back to me as soon as I wrote it, that still resonates within me. I have to believe it came straight from my own soul.
Alison, I see in my mind's eye rows of candles honoring all whose lights will never be extinguished as long as we Never Forget.
I will be taking my kids to the beach Sunday night at sunset. We'll have bouquets of rosemary and daisies (for remembrance and for innocence), and we'll set them adrift as the sun touches the water. It may be cheesy, but I feel it's important to remind them of those that have experienced real suffering and why, and to help them understand that it's necessary for us all to keep this memory alive.
When I say the tea party is a host for hate groups...people get angry. I'm happy to see I'm not alone in that belief.
Fay, thank you so much! I too worry that not enough people see the parallel and want to stop it before all hell breaks loose.
As always, Sally, eloquent, thorough and very well done.
After the Holocaust was “discovered” and the war ended, I often think much of the world forgot immediately. I don't remember the numbers but I know that to most countries the survivors were still Jews. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew and no one wanted too many of them inside their boundaries. In this country, I've read that we let more German POWs in after the war than we let Jewish survivors. Israel was the world’s out, the survivors could be sent there leaving the word’s conscience – or at least our memory – clean.
And now the forgetting continues. After more than sixty years under constant attack it seems like the world is demanding that the Jews of Israel realize it’s time to "get over it" and walk quietly into the sea, all the noble sentiments expressed around the world every year on Yom HaShoah notwithstanding.
I sometimes think all the forgetting may be even worse than the original crime but I’ve stopped trying to rank horrors.
Always remember.
America bears the shame of taking in Nazis "of value" to us, scientists and architects of war machines. South America took in many who paid with money looted from Jewish bank accounts. The atrocities did not end with the Holocaust, they just took on different forms and faces. You're right, impossible to rant the horrors.
Oddly, I see no name attached to the comment about the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, but the content is so true. The desire to infect "White Youth" with bigotry and hatred is the clearest danger.
Poppi, you provided exactly the right words. Thank you.
Given their preference for angry signs and inflammatory rhetoric, I can totally understand why tea partiers would make liberals nervous, but I don't think us equating them with an emerging Nazi movement is any more helpful than them equating us with being the same exact thing. Besides, arguing over who is the bigger Nazi is just plain stupid and unproductive.
I've been covering the local tea party in my small, very conservative southeast Michigan town for a few months now -- even went to a Michigan Militia picnic on Saturday -- and while the movement is gaining popularity, overall it still represents a very small percentage of Americans.
I personally know many people who are in these tea parties, and I can tell you they are not white supremacists -- not even close. We've have a history of KKK involvement in our town from decades past in our town and I can tell you these people are a long way from white sheets and pointy hats. Do they have a bad case of privileged white suburban arrogance? Definitely. But, lets be real here, that's not exactly the same thing as a cross burning.
Yes, they do have their fair share of bigoted zealots and paranoid freaks, but then again, so did the Left in its radical days (Weather Underground, anyone? They got their point across with actual bombs). I'm just saying lets be careful of painting with so broad of a brush.
I'll be the first to shout from the hills that tea partiers are wrong on just about every possible level when it comes to taking a political position on the issues. My impression in studying them myself that much of this comes from misplaced anger and too much Fox News. They are not violent, and, while certainly ignorant of many non-whites, I would not go so far as to say hateful, to use your term.
If they are too radical for the taste of the electorate, that will make itself known by way of the election process and the right will have to make adjustments, just as the left had to do in its time. I just think dehumanizing any particular group (calling them "dogs" for instance) plays into the exact same types of tactics that we loathe the Tea Party so much for embracing.
Just be careful with the people lumping is all I'm sayin'.
Kasey, what I just said to Jesse. I am not 'people lumping,' I am pointing out some disturbing parallels. Your arguments in defense of the Tea Parties (do you include their compatriots, the John Birch Society and the Oath Keepers?) are similar to those offered by sincere German patriots in the early 1930's. They were so incapable of bigotry and hate they couldn't foresee what a slippery slope organized zealots create when they join together in anger and self-righteousness against others.
Jonathan, thank you for adding the coda to my point. When you lie down with racist dogs you pick up their ideological fleas. And you can become too easily infected.
But..
This illness goes much - much - deeper than the Holocaust. And is much - much - older. And is still happening as we speak. The main reason I'm saying this now is as a caution against too narrow a focus, and suggestion for additional ammunition that is in reach, but we need to pick it up to make use of it.
Africa. Bosnia. The Holocaust. Native Americans. The Crusades. The Burning Times. How many have I missed? Point is that time is a chimera, this illness of fear of those not 'us' has happened many times before, in smaller and greater numbers, is still happening today, we can't place a measure of time on it. And we should be making use of the fact that it's not any one group of peoples - *it can be anyone*. Anyone can be *next*.
I would like to think that if the Holocaust victims would speak for anyone, they would speak for everyone - and they can.
If we let them. If we help them to do that. They are, other than Bosnians and today's Africans, the only ones who can, they're the only ones who have a solid history in pictures and writings to show what happens when this fearful hatred takes hold. For all of the others who only have stories, often just word of mouth, many that have been twisted to lessen their horror. Some so far back in the mists of time that we can't relate to them today, they don't seem real. All of them. Are.
Can the Holocaust victims, and survivors, not speak for all of them?
For all of us?
You said: "I could be wrong, but I doubt we'll see any Tea Baggers stepping up for Holocaust Remembrance Day this weekend. Unless it's to celebrate or deny the Holocaust. And that's exactly why they're so dangerous. "
I'm here to tell you that you are wrong. The Tea Party followers (according to our core principles), while they are a rather 'diverse' group, do NOT subscribe to the racist rhetoric engaged in by some isolated segments of society. I attended a meeting in the last month and one of the main things we did was to PRAY for Israel. We are acutely aware of the Obama administration's snubbing of Israel in so many official ways - not the LEAST of which was to snub P.M. Netanyahu and also to make sure that the administration's nuclear talks were begun the Monday of Holocaust Remembrance Day (which I took as the insult I'm sure he meant it to be, unless he is just that unaware of the meaning of his actions).
Many Christians who are involved in the Tea Party Movement pray for Israel constantly and are in fact fast friends of Israel. In my home we emphasize our connection with Hebrew history as a part of our Christian education. We LOVE Israel, as do many of my friends and fellow Christians, many of whom support the Tea Party.
The fact that radical, racial elements have glommed onto the Tea Party movement cannot be helped, just as the liberal progressive movement cannot help when people who are of unsavory reputation clamp onto their underside.
The term 'race' is actually a misnomer, because many Christians believe we are all one race, on blood. I am one of those Christians. There are ETHNIC differences, and CULTURAL differences that some people may like to point out but the Bible teaches in the New Testament "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:28-29) This passage emphasizes EQUALITY under Christ, and that we should not look on the outside of a person or in their lineage to judge them.
Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of the day when skin color would no longer be the deciding factor in issues of acceptance, and we took him seriously. His niece, Alveda King, is a conservative Christian who defends the rights of fetal children - she is pro-life. Many on the left would say she is 'anti-woman' because of her stance, and because she is a conservative some blacks would say she is a traitor... Yet, the evidence is that approximately 80% of Planned Parenthood's clinics are situated in or near minority neighborhoods, and that over half of all pregnancies in the black community across the nation result in the abortion of a black child - black babies are 5 times more likely to be aborted than white babies. The obvious eugenics involved in the issue (location, location, location) should cause us all to pause and ask where racist affections truly reside. (see http://www.blackgenocide.org/ )
The Tea Party was not started by racists - it was started by people who were tired of our so-called representatives acting like the taxpayer is their personal piggy bank. It was modeled after the Boston Tea Party and is fueled by our desire to see our government restrained from overreaching the limits set for them by our Constitution. Read Article 4, Section 4. The Constitution gives greater power to the CITIZENS, not the congress. They work for us. The same section also corrects the assumption that our government is a democracy - it is not. It is a Republic.
From now on, anyone who comes and acts like an ass at a Tea Party event will be considered by us as an infiltrator - please refer to crashtheteaparty.com and see why now, no one who comes to one of our events to disrupt or cast aspersions on people of differing ethnic backgrounds will be accepted as a part of our movement. They use Alinsky's methods to try to discredit a group who are simply trying to exercise our free speech rights.
We will continue to stand with Israel despite what anyone says about us. We are not anti-semites, and no amount of Christian bashing or calling the Tea Party sexually derogatory names such as 'teabaggers' can negate our support of Israel or our love of our Constitution.
If you want to see a definition and a REAL list of "Holocaust Deniers", see the wiki: Holocaust denial
You will not see the Tea Party there.
Mita, first I would like to thank you sincerely for personifying the Golden Rule... treating me as you would want to be treated... and so even in disagreement making your point with reason and respect. I've received some disturbing, hate-filled messages from Tea Party supporters in the throes of such anger that they make my own point for me instead of furthering theirs.
You are quite right, I painted my thesis here with a broad brush and of course not everyone in the movement is bigoted, racist and/or anti-Semitic. But here's the problem: too many of the most vocal Tea Party leaders and supporters are, often the case with radicals in any group. But those who aren't haven't spoken out in disagreement and urged refocus on the issues instead of the people.
You don't seem to be a person who'd be a member of the John Birch society or the Oath Keepers, but many Tea Party members either support or don't fight their inclusion in the movement. That's what happened during the National Socialism Movement. What started as a reasonable desire to pull the country together and follow a certain philosophical path got horribly hijacked by radicals with power agendas. People like that exist in the Tea Party and its offshoots, they are often grab the the most attention of the media. Frankly, they do the Tea Party a disservice. Anybody fired up by the zeal of hatred and supreme confidence that theirs is the ONLY way is dangerous to you and to me.
You explain the original mission and goals of the Tea Party well. I hope members with less lofty agendas don't take that away from you. And I hope you feel I have answered you with equal respect. We don't have to always agree on the methods to agree that our country could, and should do better for all our citizens.
Thank you for your reasonable response. No, I am not of the John Birch or Oath Keeper ilk and consider them as I would crazy uncle Bert in a family I have no control over. They come to the family reunions because protocol mandates all family is invited... and crazy Uncle Bert sometimes bring the fourth wife and her many unwashed or strangely dressed children... who look like five different people and if not for their mother would not be related at all.
If these strange glommers-on discredit the Tea Party Movement, then the same radical types who act as lampreys on the underside of the Democratic party (ELF, Dennis "is that a UFO?" Kucinich, Lyndon LaRouche...) should discredit them, if we use the same logic.
I think one problem is that it is assumed that everyone at a protest has the same background, education, philosophy, ideology, religious background, etc... we must resist the urge to make a sweeping generalization about a group of people based on fringe elements (that most people in the group would NEVER agree with - even with gun to head). The media (overwhelmingly progressive democrats) make SURE the fringe is all most people ever see - it borders on propaganda.
Do you remember the photo of the man toting the gun at one of the Tea Party rallies? Everyone was so upset about the fact that those racist white people who love guns so much would dare to exercise their Second Amendment rights and come to a protest packing.
MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer had a bit of a problem over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: "A man at a pro-health care reform rally...wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip....there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....white people showing up with guns."
What they very artfully did not reveal was that the man in question... was black. The photos and the video was very careful to make sure his skin was not shown. He also had an open carry permit.
While I don't recommend carrying a gun to a peaceful protest, there is still that right within the laws of the state the person resides in.
There is also a lot of accusation of racism based on the movement not having a large number of blacks in attendance. I would wager there are many more than the media would like you to see, and they are there for the same reasons the rest of us are there.
There are also a lot more black republicans than many people realize - please refer to the National Black Republican Association ( http://www.nbra.info/ ) for more info on that. It's a great site run by Frances Rice.
There are now many black conservatives running for office this election cycle - 3 for Senate seats and 33 for Congress - so far.
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/25/obama-inspires-black-politicians-to-seek-office-—-as-republican-candidates/
Did you know that every single black elected to office before the civil rights movement were republicans? There were 2 black senators and 21 black congressmen all elected between 1868 and 1901. Not ONE democratic black person was elected to ANY office until 1967 - Carl Stokes was elected as a mayor.
The first woman elected to Congress - also a Republican. Jeannette Rankin of Montana held office from 1917 - 1919.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Rankin
Not many people know these facts. Mainly because they also do not know the Democratic party was responsible for supporting slavery through enacting legislation favoring it, Jim Crow laws, lynching laws, and other racist laws on the books. The Republican party in that day was decidedly abolitionist and were instrumental in fighting for blacks to gain the many freedoms they enjoy along with the rest of us today. These facts should make one pause and reexamine which party has really historically been the progressive one to the benefit of all people and the betterment of our nation.
Most people in the course of formulating opinions will gravitate automatically to the logical fallacy of 'hasty generalization' and the related fallacies of Ad hominem and tu quoque instead of arguing on the facts. This is because a lot of us (including me on occasion) won't always use their critical thinking skills - usually because we are too emotional about a subject.
But when we take a breath and look at all the evidence and history behind something, we get a different picture. The bulk of the percentage of Tea Party adherents are perfectly sane, reasonable people who simply are tired of big government and not being heard in Washington. This is the very first time many of them have ever considered coming out to a protest. Most of the time they spend quiet lives working and just trying to make a difference in their own families and communities.
In my own case, I am a stay at home mother of three, one 28 year old daughter who is a single mother, a teenage son who eats me ut of house and home, and the youngest of my children being autistic. My eldest and my grand daughter both live with us and she does not get government assistance nor does she receive child support. S there's 6 people in my house. My husband, who is a route driver and part-time musician, just finished our taxes and we made $44,ooo last year, $11,000 LESS than 2008. We live on one income, and we do not receive any assistance from the government. We are not rich by any means, but we manage to live within our means and pay our bills. However, we won't be able to for long if my husband's employer feels it would be cheaper to pay the fine than to give him the health insurance he's had for 16 years. We'll really be up the creek if his employer starts laying people off and he loses his job because the Obama administration decides to increase taxes on corporations (those evil corporations that just make too much profit also give lots of people jobs). I'd lay down a bet right now they'll delay those taxes until after the midterm elections.
I do not believe the government has the right to force people to be charitable, and especially not when the charity they are forcing the citizens to pay is the government. It is one thing for us to pay taxes for items such as building roads, keeping the peace (local and national), and running government offices in relation to those and other Constitutionally derived duties and responsibilities, but for our elected representatives to mock us, villify us as if we were crazy, act as if we are an 'astroturf' fringe group or the 'unwashed rabble' unworthy of their attention and calling us ignorant when we dare to mention they are stepping over the boundaries laid out for them in the Constitution? That is just too much to tolerate.
I'm just tired of being called racist when I'm not. And most of the people in the Tea Party aren't racist either. We may not agree with liberals, but I've never seen any group being bashed as hard and as mercilessly as the Tea Partiers have been by the liberal media - and with so many people believing every word they say without checking their facts, it's just very annoying.
Anyway, thanks for giving me a forum here - I appreciate yu taking the time to post the information, photos and videos on the Holocaust. I swiped the one with the flag to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day on my facebook - I hope you don't mind. If you have the photographer's info I would like to add it to the caption for proper credit.
Blessings, Mita
If that statement was even one-tenth true, the Tea Party would have started when Bush Jr. invaded a country that wasn't a threat, left New Orleans to drown, and hired John Yoo to write memos justifying unlimited executive power and indefinite incarceration without trials. Where were these "freedom fighters" when all this was happening? Cheering the tyrants on, that's where. Today's protests aren't about "overreaching government," they're about right-wing buffoons looking for someone else to blame for the consequences of their mindset.
Thank you so much for all you did to bring this essay into being. It is clear that you invested a lot of time and energy, and OS is better for it.
Also, we know that many in the original protests last summer were merely insurance company employees whose trips were paid for by their bosses. I hardly see them as revolutionaries. They were just another interest group looking to game the system in their favor.
However many similarities there may be, I think the comparisons to the real Nazis are unfair.
Ranjit, thank you so much for understanding and appreciating the effort, and pain, that went into this post and, most important, it's message: Never Again.
jimmy, I am not comparing the movement as a whole to the Nazi party. I am saying... well, here's part of my reply to Seer, a Tea Party member: You don't seem to be a person who'd be a member of the John Birch society or the Oath Keepers, but many Tea Party members either support or don't fight their inclusion in the movement. That's what happened during the National Socialism Movement. What started as a reasonable desire to pull the country together and follow a certain philosophical path got horribly hijacked by radicals with power agendas. People like that exist in the Tea Party and its offshoots, they often grab the most attention of the media. Frankly, they do the Tea Party a disservice. Anybody fired up by the zeal of hatred and supreme confidence that theirs is the ONLY way is dangerous to you and to me.
I am expressing concern that good intentions can turn into something hugely wrong which takes on a life of its own when clever manipulators use and inflame dissatisfaction to create anger that becomes mob mentality. McVeigh was a disturbed man who caused enormous overkill. Those who would own this movement are much more subtle and therefore far more dangerous. So I am suggesting we look at history to see what can result when smart power mongers strive to create a loyal power base to overthrow established law.
And, I have yet to hear a Tea Party leader denounce the obscene public spewing of racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism by its more famous adherents. Unless and until they do, they are tacitly agreeing. And that's just wrong.
The Tea Party subject alone could (and should) fill several blog pages.
In my experience TPers do not exist in the same world with Jews ... which is why they tend to have dark fantasies of the extraordinary power Jews are supposed to wield over the US and the World.
The difference between the Nazi oppression of left-wing Catholics, the mentally and physically disabled and certain homosexuals (maybe 5-10% of the gay population of Germany) and the Nazi war against the Jews was that the Nazi war against the Jews was TOTAL ... and it was the sum of their ideology - from Hitler's first public speech after WWI to the last words he ever wrote - it was war against the Jews. The "Final Solution of the Jewish question" as they called it. Not the final solution of the homosexual question, or the disabled question.
"The basic motivation [of the Holocaust] was purely ideological, rooted in an illusionary world of Nazi imagination, where an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world was opposed to a parallel Aryan quest. No genocide to date had been based so completely on myths, on hallucinations, on abstract, non-pragmatic ideology – which was then executed by very rational, pragmatic means." -- Yehuda Bauer
The murder of other "non-Aryans" was fallout from this central racist doctrine. In fact, the closest the Germans came to "total war" on another people was their war of extermination against the Rom (sometimes called Romany or "gypsies") - a group you did not mention.
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We may as well get our numbers right, Sally. The Jewish population of Europe in 1939 was 8,301,000. The Germans murdered 5,978,000 of them. The percentage is 72.0.
See http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/jewvicts.html for details.
With all due respect, I think it unfair to compare people who go to Tea Parties (of which I am NOT one) to those who were part of the Holocaust machine. It, and I'm sure you don't mean this at all, trivializes the Holocaust to compare people worried about high taxes, for example, to people who wanted to wipe a race off the face of the earth.
Please give this some thought and, unless you can show generally, but with a good example, how the tea party types are akin with the NAZIs, give it a rest. It is certainly not civil. It is actually deeply dishonest. And you sound too nice to do that.
Till then, implying the tea party types are NAZIs is just name-calling.
I also fear that some on the Left don't get it that Israel criticism sometimes, only sometimes, morphs into anti-Semitism. I have been stunned at the few, but scary, Holocaust-Denying letters I have seen here at Salon. I deeply criticize Salon for giving these people a forum, but that does not lead me to conclude that the Left, all in all, is NAZI-like. And should some evil wacko attend a tea-party, it does not mean that the conservatives who make up the party are anti-Semitic.
Have you condemned Salon lately for hosting Oliver Stone and singing his praises? Now that was mainstream. And the Left, for the most part, was silent.
Good luck.