People on the cable news/propaganda networks.
On MSNBC, more than once beginning with the Charlottesville coverage, someone has claimed to be frightened that the Klansmen nowadays let their faces show, not fearing identification.
Making them seem scarier than they are is part of the effort to convince us we need hate speech laws and even to criminalize these organizations, outright.
But Rachel Maddow ran numerous newsreels of Klan demonstrations going back to the 1920s, and the white robed and hooded thousands and perhaps tens of thousands all let their faces show, every time.
What's different, today?
Today's Klansmen are far fewer, too low-budget for robes, and not engaged in the actual terrorism of their forebears, what with night riding, church bombing, lynching, shooting, bullwhipping, and raping.
They are much, much less fearsome than their forebears, reduced to a losing battle of demonstrations by mere hundreds against the removal of monuments to the Lost Cause.
And their political clout is next to nothing - a very great fall from the days when they nearly chose the nominee for president of the Democratic Party, and when a Democratic president helped legitimate and erect a national regime of segregation and Jim Crow.
Left wing sources report an uptick in the number of white racist groups, and in their membership, since O's election.
Probably true and certainly easily believed.
All the same, we are a very long ways from the Klan in its heyday, or even of the civil rights era, when it was already far from its heyday.
No comments:
Post a Comment