There Were Also Serious People at That Hearing on White Nationalism

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

A few buffoons invited by Republicans shouldn’t distract us from the national crisis of domestic terrorism

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Tuesday on “Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism.” Despite the inherent magnitude of that topic, it is one that hasn’t much interested Republicans. That’s easy to understand. President Trump, whom they seem unable to defy, has embraced white nationalism in his rhetoric and policies, even as he has repeatedly sought to gaslight the public and the press about the racist philosophy’s scope and influence. We don’t know if he or the party ever really tried to control the violence that would inspire, or whether they even cared to do so. But domestic terrorism carried out by far-right extremists, including several mass shootings by self-declared Trump fans, has been on the steady rise in recent years. There have never been as many hate groups in America as there are now, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Still, Republicans have either been content to sit silent or to do as they did on Tuesday, scraping the bottom of the intellectual barrel to distract the public from the crisis at hand.

As the minority party in the House, Republicans are allowed to invite their own guests to testify at hearings. They chose Turning Point USA communications director Candace Owens, a black conservative known for her “Blexit” movement, some inadvisable remarks about Adolf Hitler and a contention on her Facebook page that “I proudly self-identify as an Uncle Tom” because she has “left the plantation.” (As I have written previously about Owens, nothing I can say about her could insult her worse than she insults herself.) Republicans also invited Mort Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America. Suffice to say, those two were invited to troll the hearing much as a rogue internet commenter would ruin a constructive online thread. They alleged that the real threat was not the fact that most hate crimes since 1995 have been perpetrated against black people, but the activities of Antifa and any attempts to hold right-wing inflammatories like themselves accountable for their inciteful speech. She wrongly said that the infamous “Southern Strategy” of using more subtle racism to bait white voters into voting Republican never existed, despite ample proof that it did and the chairman of the Republican National Committee having apologized for it in 2005. He wrongly said that half the world’s Muslims hate Jews. The testimony that Owens and Klein offered was like a stranger’s glance at the truth, unrecognizing and alien.

Sadly, their words were just stupid enough to merit a lot of coverage, so Owens and Klein served their purpose. But the hearing was noteworthy for more than that nonsense, spotlighting both people with lived experience of the horrors wrought by white supremacist violence and experts who were working to end it.

Kristen Clarke, who has won meaningful victories leading the pro bono Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, was the first to speak after Owens delivered her opening statement. Deviating a bit from her prepared remarks, Clarke said that the hearing was about “real issues that are truly a life-and-death matter for far too many.” That had already been driven home by the testimony of Mohammad Abu-Salha, a North Carolina physician whose two daughters and son-in-law, none older than 23, were shot to death in their home in 2015 in a suspected hate crime.

-more-

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/hate-crimes-hearing-white-nationalism-kristen-clarke-820619/

[mr_lebowski]

1. GAAHH ... I cannot believe a RS writer would write such a Wall-O-Text article, lacking proper

paragraphs breaks. And that their editor didn't fix it.

I want to read it but ... it's unreadable.

[loyalsister]

2. Everyone should see this....

This documentary reveals how ordinary and serious the alt. right activists are. About 2 min. in the interview with a guy who could easily be a neighbor or maybe just the guy who let you cut in line at the store.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. A very good point - I'd seen nothing about witnesses apart from the professional GOP trolls

who were explicitly invited to grab headlines and make sure they were the only 2 minutes any broadcast news would devote to the hearings.

Republicans are now trolls as a way of life; their leader is Chief Troll. His (or his team's) tweets are the start of the trolling every day; say something, no matter if it's a lie, or how stupid or uninformed it is - as long as other people don't get to set the agenda. They have a significant part of the population who don't care how stupid or evil the president or the Republicans are, as long as they hate the right people.

As long as the media pretends those people's feelings are worth examining, then the portion of the population who might be persuaded to vote Democratic will see a "both sides", "views differ" situation, and will, disastrously for the world, not vote for Democrats.

The good, intelligent people who oppose the Republican evil must be praised. Media needs to see that there are millions who want Trump, McConnell and all the other poison banished from public life and power. And I guess that's why DU is worthwhile; it's still a showcase for what liberals care about, and how strongly we feel.

[maxsolomon]

4. A terror campaign that started with Lincoln's assassination

and hasn't ended yet.