Republicanizing the Race Card (Immigration & White Nationalists)

[RedEarth]

It would have been like any ordinary Saturday afternoon at the Dulles Hyatt. Inside the lobby of the sterile suburban Northern Virginia hotel, a gray-haired man busied himself at a baby grand piano, filling the room with the sound of schmaltzy jazz standards. Traveling businessmen sat around chatting, puffing cigars, drinking cocktails and chortling at one another's quips. In the corner a woman cradled a sleeping baby. It would have been like any Saturday at the Hyatt, except for the obvious plainclothes cops guarding the hotel's entrances, the employees forbidden by management from speaking to lurking reporters and the presence, in a hallway, of the beaming white supremacist David Duke, surrounded by a gaggle of admirers.

"The Jewish supremacists not only want to control Israel, they want to control America, Europe and the whole world," Duke announced to a dozen men who crowded around to hear his every word. "The best thing we can do is expose Jewish influence. Then one day the world will rise up, people will fill the streets and call general strikes--just like in Europe."

Duke had arrived at the American Renaissance conference spry and apparently untouched by the ravages of age. After several rounds of plastic surgery and with enough rouge on his cheeks to make Tammy Faye Baker blush, he is the neo-Nazi answer to Dorian Gray. Though Duke's vanity distinguished him from his fellow "white nationalists" who converged for the two-day conference, he was not alone in his struggle to remain relevant and distinctive in a complex political climate where most of the ultra-right's signature issues have been co-opted by pseudo-populist media personalities and Republican politicians.

........

Already, a surprising array of Republican presidential contenders are emulating Tancredo. Senator George Allen of Virginia met privately with Tancredo in September to seek his blessing and advice. Tancredo said he came away mildly encouraged. In February, Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist called for "physical or electronic barriers covering every inch of our 1,951-mile-long border with Mexico--a virtual fence." And Republican Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, who infamously called decorated Vietnam vet Representative John Murtha a "coward" on the House floor, recently removed a claim from her campaign website that Tancredo had endorsed her after Tancredo's office said it was false.

While the virulent but minuscule white nationalist movement struggles to find its bearings, certain conservative Republicans are adapting a nativist appeal to gain a broader following. They are applying Nick Griffin's advice to attack "the enemy we can most easily defeat," leaving overt anti-Semitism to the likes of David Duke. Meanwhile, they stoke fears of nonwhite immigrants, who Tancredo has said are "coming here to kill you and kill me and our families." The far right has figured out its post-9/11, post-Bush strategy, and the Republican hopefuls of 2008 are already gravitating toward it.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060410/blumenthal

[spag68]

1. david duke

is just the latest incarnation of this garbage. This is not uniqely a southern movement, but is almost exclusively centered there. At 64 I remember this movement, joe pyne comes to mind, but this is certainly the most dangerous it has ever been, in that it does have ties to otherwise respectable republicans. We can only hope that they will pay the price when moderates and people of any sense of honor, reject this trash again.

[underpants]

2. Oh good anti-semitism good we need more of that

:eyes::sarcasm:

Very interesting read. I have to say that the whole thing, them openly talking about how they need a new angle a new product to sell, reminds me of snakeoil sellers and traveling clergymen.

[TheBaldyMan]

3. that is an amazing article, I am particularly alarmed at the way the RW

has absorbed all the lunatic fringes policies and incorporated them into the present Sensenbrunner immigration bill, minutemen and such.

The collection af 'academics' from strange private universities and RW think-tanks are truly bizarre. They should stop all that eugenics guff and start to study each other. There is a rich vein of PhD material on dysfunctional personalities waitng to be mined.