It’s the News Media, Stupid (again)

When I first heard Glenn Beck on the truck radio (following Barack Obama’s election) I thought I was listening to a ridiculous caricature of a revolutionary. Here was this obviously white, pin-headed fear monger, using a national broadcast medium to pretend that he was a threatened underdog. Part comedy, part horror show. And now, since the Tea Party has gained so much attention over the past several months, I still think he’s ridiculous, but the attention also makes him dangerous.

The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913, following the murder of Leo Frank. “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all”

The brutal murder of Leo Frank did not occur in a vacuum. As the 20th century dawned, anti-Semitism was rampant in an American society where resorts commonly advertised, “No dogs! No Jews!” and magazines featured “humorous” caricatures of Jewish people.

It was in this atmosphere that the Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by a lawyer and fearless visionary by the name of Sigmund Livingston. [link to study guide]

The ADL has taken notice of the Tea Party movement, observing:

While most people attending Tea Party events claim they harbor no extreme views, many of the ideas they promote fall outside the mainstream, especially the more conspiratorial ones. Angry protesters have frequently made claims ranging from proclaiming Obama’s “socialist” intentions to making explicit Nazi comparisons to suggesting that the President is defying or even subverting the Constitution.

They give credit to the news media, and Glenn Beck in particular, for “drawing people further out of the mainstream, making them more receptive to the more extreme notions and conspiracy theories.”

Yesterday, I ran across a thought experiment by Tim Wise, Imagine: Protest, Insurgency and the Workings of White Privilege, that pegs this “protest” movement for what it is. His conclusion:

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Read the whole thing at Red Room. Or read it at Alternet. And check out that ADL study guide. It’s a good one.

Hate groups are making a stand. Everyone else needs to stand, as well. We could start with a boycott of Fox News, and anyone who advertises there. A list would be useful.