Real enemies, False Friends: Imperialism and homophobia in Africa

This article originally appeared on The Kasama Project on 8 February 2014. Reposting here to preserve a broken link. It may also be accessed here.

“What Clinton and Obama have done is weaponize gay rights in the service of neocolonialism.”

By ISH

Gay people in African countries have long confronted existential challenges. But now old laws that criminalize homosexual behavior are being supplemented with harsh penalties and new laws designed to push gay people back into the shadows. This massive wave of repression is being led by local demagogues and visiting American missionaries. But underneath it all, decades of neocolonial exploitation and blatant imperialist hypocrisy have created a perfect storm of terror for gay Africans.

We celebrate the fact that Uganda is a no go zone for the gay people. Let them die like cockroaches and insects with no purpose. We praise the lord that our leaders are put them in their places;- graveyards, cells, prisons and out of Uganda. Yeessssssssssssssssssss this is it, we shall get them.” —a Ugandan supporter of anti-gay legislation, on Facebook

After being stalled for several years and having undergone various revisions, Uganda's parliament made headlines in December by finally passing a deeply repressive bill against gays and lesbians. While the death penalty clause was removed from what was originally referred to as the "Kill the Gays Bill," it sets penalties including life imprisonment for “aggravated homosexuality,” and also criminalizes the failure to turn in known homosexuals for their behavior. According to the Guardian, “Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda under a colonial-era law that criminalised sexual acts 'against the order of nature,' but the Ugandan politician who wrote the new law argued that tough new legislation was needed because gay people from the west threatened to destroy Ugandan families and were allegedly 'recruiting' Ugandan children into gay lifestyles.”

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has so far refused to sign the bill into law, saying the bill would not solve the problem of “abnormality.” But regardless of the status of the bill, Ugandan gay people, referred to as “kuchus,” report a sharp increase in anti-gay harassment and violence. Activist David Kato was murdered in 2011, and Andrew Waiswa of the Gender-Equality and Health Organisation of Uganda (GEHO) was beaten by thugs in December requiring hospitalization. Waiswa, now recuperating at home, reports that his friends are threatened daily on the streets. Says Waiswa, “So they want to kill me for being me and trying to help fellow LGBTq brothers and sisters??? Now that's madness!! I have survived many attempts and I know some of us might lose our lives in this battle, but giving up the fight is not an option....We are born this way!!! We are gay! We are here... we can't hide anymore, we have nowhere to run...yes we are Ugandan Kuchus!!”

A Worldwide Trend?

Unfortunately, Uganda is not the only country in Africa, or indeed elsewhere in the world, where gay or queer people are now being targeted. In January, Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan surprised observers by signing a similarly repressive law that criminalizes gay marriages but also criminalizes the ability of gays and lesbians to associate or to form organizations. Immediately following the enactment of this law, dozens of gay Nigerians were arrested, according to human rights activists.  In northern Nigeria where Muslim sharia law coexists with civil Nigerian law, the new law seems to have fueled a wave of popular anti-gay protest demanding harsh penalties for those arrested.

Nigerian student Udoka Okafor summarizes:

Openly LGBT persons in Nigeria are simply struggling to survive a culture that is hostile to them because of their sexual and gender orientation. The legal system criminalizes them, society ostracizes them, and politicians spit out negative demagogueries about them that further indoctrinate people into a culture of hostility towards LGBT persons.”

Elsewhere, Gambia's president Yahya Jammeh used the occasion of his September speech to the United Nations in New York to denounce homosexuals and their supporters: "Those who promote homosexuality want to put an end to human existence...Homosexuality in all its forms and manifestations which, though very evil, antihuman as well as anti-Allah, is being promoted as a human right by some powers.”

A legislator in Liberia is promoting a law that would also criminalize gay marriage: “[Homosexuality] is a criminal offence. It is un-African...It is a problem in our society. We consider deviant sexual behaviour criminal behaviour,” said the legislator, Jewel Howard-Taylor.

Back in 1995 President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe notoriously said, “I find it extremely outrageous and repugnant to my human conscience that such immoral and repulsive organizations, like those of homosexuals, who offend both against the law of nature and the morals of religious beliefs espoused by our society, should have any advocates in our midst and elsewhere in the world.” He has kept up this anti-gay attitude ever since and non-sexual gay behavior was criminalized in Zimbabwe in 2006. There are many other examples across sub-Saharan Africa.

And of course there is the law in Russia, signed by President Vladimir Putin last summer, that bans “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors.” This law effectively shoves Russia's gay and lesbian community back into the closet, as any open activity can now be cited as “gay propaganda” that might expose children to homosexuality. While homosexuality itself remains decriminalized in post-Soviet Russia (at least for now), activists report a disturbing increase in violence directed against the Russian gay community. The Russian anti-gay law has been a focus of world-wide activists seeking to use the winter Olympics in Sochi to publicize what's happening there and punish the Olympics' supporters for enabling repression by calling for protests and a boycott.
Finally, in December of last year, India's supreme court shocked the world by reinstating a colonial-era law recriminalizing homosexuality. The 1861 law had been struck down in 2009. In the new year, the supreme court even rejected complaints by human rights activists and stood firm on its decision to make homosexuality punishable by up to ten years in jail.

Why Is this Happening?

Yet things look very different in the United States. While violence against transgendered people remains at an unprecented high level, and while a bill against workplace discrimination against LGBT people (ENDA) languishes in congress, the rapid increase in the number of states legalizing same-sex marriage equality would suggest a rising tide of acceptance toward gay people here at home. Despite the furious activity of anti-gay hate groups and the frothings of fascist teapartiers on the American right, mostly the story in the US has been one of rapid legal advance for gay civil rights. So why all this backlash against gay people in so many places around the world?

Many of the African politicians behind these anti-gay laws claim that homosexuality represents something un-African being imported into Africa by criminal European or American gays for nefarious purposes like child molestation. These politicians say there is no history of homosexuality in Africa, despite the fact that this is widely disputed by scholars. Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, one of the architects of the Uganda bill, wrote, “Homosexuality is illegal, unnatural, ungodly and un-African: In Uganda as most of the global South, homosexuality is an 'evil and repugnant sexual act' which simultaneously breaks four established laws [including] the law of our African tribal cultures which have been handed down to us by our fathers from thousands of years of civilized traditions.”

It is true that a moden gay identity owes much to the evolution of gay consciousness in European and American culture, but gay historians and anthropologists have documented same-gender sexuality and gender-nonconforming behavior all over the world, including in many traditional African cultures. It's ironic that what these politicians are actually defending is a legal system and religious morality established by the British colonial masters, who introduced harsh anti-gay codes at the point of bayonets to the indigenous populations of the African regions they conquered in the 19th century.
And it's not as though there are no African gays standing up for their own rights. There are LGBT organizations across Africa. The very fact that African gays now have a roster of martyrs like David Kato of Uganda, or Roger Jean-Claude Mbede and Eric Lembembe of Cameroon, disproves this notion that gay people are outsiders. And who can forget the heroic anti-apartheid activist turned HIV-activist Simon Nkoli?

So what is really happening? Two actual outside forces are involved.

The Evangelical Link

Scott Lively is a right-wing American Christian fundamentalist activist who has devoted his career to attacking LGBT people. The author of a slanderous book that claims Nazi Germany was the product of a homosexual conspiracy, he traveled to Uganda in 2009 to give a series of lectures warning of a gay menace to Ugandan society. His message is not just one of religious conservatism, but a call to political action. American evangelical missionaries have been using allegedly charitable intentions to build networks throughout Africa. Their ubiquitous presence in local relief work, including massive involvement in HIV/AIDS charities, has given them entry to local politics. Their work is not all about mere charity: it comes with a heavy dose of social conservatism and politically reactionary ideology. Their AIDS relief work, where they have become a channel for US government funding, puts AIDS prevention in the context of conservative religious practice and morality, focusing for instance, on abstinence and marriage. Remember the abortive and bizarre “Kony 2012” campaign? The people behind that were part of the same community of zealous missionaries working hard to capture the minds of communities across central Africa.

Lively and others like him, apparently on the losing end of the so-called culture wars in the United States, have found a receptive audience in countries like Uganda. In the U.S., Lively's organizations are derided as hate groups. In Uganda, in the midst of a massive religious revival where antigay attitudes have become commonplace, Lively's political message has found fertile ground. Martin Ssempa, already engaged in a campaign against sexual permissiveness in AIDS prevention, became one of his chief local disciples. An American journalist visiting Uganda in 2005 described Ssempa's message:

In his sermons, he condemns homosexuality, pornography, condoms, Islam, Catholics, certain kinds of rock music, and women’s rights activists, who he says promote lesbianism, abortion, and the worship of female goddesses. He told me that Satan worshipers hold meetings under Lake Victoria, where they are promised riches in exchange for human blood, which they collect by staging car accidents and kidnappings.”

Scott Lively and the American evangelicals have become the catalyst for the transformation of these reactionary ideas into political reality. Although Lively claims to be against harsh punishment for homosexual acts, it's clear that his pseudo-historical and pseudo-scientific diatribes against gay people have sent anti-gay sentiment in Uganda over the top. It's worth noting —and frightening — that Lively has lately been making numerous appearances in Russia. (He's also being sued in the state of Massachusetts for “crimes against humanity” by a Ugandan LGBT group called SMUG, Sexual Minorities of Uganda, backed by the Center for Constitutional Rights).

While Lively is the most prominent of the reactionary evangelical leaders implicated in anti-gay legislation, there are religious organizers across the region influencing popular attitudes and legal processes. The Catholic Church, the conservative wing of the Anglican church, numerous protestant denominations, and in the case of some countries, Islamic fundamentalist movements like Nigeria's Boko Haram, are all preaching intolerance toward gay people.

But it's a mistake to simply blame the new wave of anti-gay repression on mere backward religious ideas. The real issue is power, and this is revealed as we consider who is actually benefiting from this repression.

The Weaponization of Gay Rights

There is a second outside force behind the wave of anti-gay reaction in Africa and elsewhere, and it's actually the more sinister one. Ironically, this force is dressed in pro-LGBT language and intent. This force is the U.S. State Department.

Hillary Clinton, acting as President Obama's secretary of state, made a speech at the UN offices in Geneva in 2011 in which she said, "Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct, but in fact they are one and the same.”  The speech was a sweeping condemnation of anti-gay repression world-wide. Under her leadership, the State Department followed up the speech with broad policy statements that “the United States would use all the tools of American diplomacy to promote LGBT rights around the world.”

American and international LGBT organizations widely welcomed Clinton's remarks, hoping that the United States would use its “leverage” to advocate for gay civil rights in places like Uganda. The American LGBT population largely cheered Clinton and Obama, which was, of course, part of the idea.

But here's the problem. The United States is not actually a force for good in the world, and certainly not a force for good in Africa.

The real interest of the US in Africa is power; economic and political power. In the fifty-plus years of the post-colonial era, African countries have learned well and good what domination by the US means. In countries like Congo, Rwanda, Liberia, and Angola, the US has meant decades of genocidal civil strife and the looting of natural resources. It has meant coup d'etats and rule by viciously corrupt western puppets. It has meant poverty for the masses of people while a select few at the top of African countries are blessed with untold wealth and influence. It has meant crushing national debts and environmental disaster. It has meant brute force against uprisings or national attempts to break free of imperialist — of neocolonial — domination. The United States and its corporations profit from African misfortune.

What Clinton and Obama did was weaponize gay rights in the service of that neocolonialism.
It's no accident that Clinton issued this statement when she did. Obama has his eye fixed clearly on one of the main battlefields of neoliberal globalization. American “advisers” and even armies have been dispatched to central Africa. Drone bases have been set up in west Africa. US military incursions and drone attacks continue in Somalia. And US military aid and mercenary assistance (in concert with its junior partner the Israeli military-industrial complex) is all over east Africa. The radical-looking governments once supported by the Soviet Union have mostly disappeared, but Chinese imperialism has replaced Russia as an economic threat to the US in Africa. The US has used its crocodile-tears version of “human rights” as a weapon before, but now some symbolic concern for LGBT rights has been added to the American armory. Let us be clear: this is not a good thing for the gay, lesbian, transgender, or queer people of Africa.

US Africa policy is drenched in blood. Sure there's lots of money going to famine relief, AIDS prevention, and resource exploration. But each dollar is a strand from a spider's web. And how dare the United States, prison capital of the world, lecture any other country about civil repression?
The neocolonial domination of Africa looks different than the colonial domination of Africa. It requires allowing national governments the appearance of independence. The corrupt, anti-democratic rulers of so many African countries understand this well too. What the weaponization of gay rights allows them is a cheap form of utterly fake anti-imperialism. It allows them to deflect actual criticism of their repressive rule by blaming gay people as subversives and pointing to their own opposition to imperialism by loudly resisting the bullying of the State Department on gay-related social policy. The real fact that the US government and multinational corporations are propping up undemocratic regimes because it's strategically and economically profitable to do so is consciously obscured. The millions of dollars that fatten the accounts of local compradors from their collaboration with imperialism are no longer the focus when these compradors turn around and announce that they are standing up to unfair pressure from the most powerful country on the planet.

Last July, Zimbabwe's Mugabe commented after Obama's visit to a handful of African countries:

Then we have this American president, Obama, born of an African father, who is saying we will not give you aid if you don’t embrace homosexuality....We ask, was he born out of homosexuality? We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality....we will cut their heads off.”

The anti-gay demogogues in Uganda and Nigeria are also clear on this, finding great utility in the time-honored traditions of scapegoating and showboating. One can see exactly what has now happened by examining the Facebook page “Nigerians Must Unite and Liberate Nigeria.” A really interesting page, full of anti-imperialist content, it's the site of daily postings against Nigerian government corruption, ethnic and religious sectarianism, against corporate destruction of the Nigerian environment, and plunder of Nigerian resources. But along came the anti-gay marriage law, and now it is filled with posts and comments praising President Jonathan. “We are forever looking forward to the slightest opportunity to commend Goodluck Jonathan the President of our nation, in the hope that he will do better. In that spirit, my compliments, and in no small measure, go out to President goodluck jonathan, for having the courage to stand up to enormous American & European pressure, by signing into law, the Anti-Gay bill and criminalizing same-sex marriage and public celebration of gay love in Nigeria. Thumbs up on this one.” And, “Good News from Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan has signed into law a wide-ranging bill which not only criminalizes same sex marriage, but all cohabitation, meetings, gatherings and advocacy by or on behalf of gay people in the country: The signed bill says the gays, lesbians in Nigeria will risk a 14-year jail term...Brave President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.” Pro-gay commenters were called CIA agents and banned.

So not only is bigotry triumphant, but the corrupt national leaderships which actually profit from their relationship with neocolonialism and the multi-national corporations are let completely off the hook.

Against Homonationalism

The reaction of the LGBT establishment in the US has been predictable,  lining up to demand that the US, the EU and other governments increase their pressure on African governments. The corporatist LGBT civil rights group Human Rights Campaign (HRC) even traveled to Davos to present at the World Economic Forum vulture nest: "When countries like Russia or Nigeria pass laws that threaten the human rights of LGBT people, world leaders must make it clear that those actions have consequences,” said HRC head Chad Griffin. The HRC basically identifies with imperialism and calls for more misery to be inflicted on Nigeria. Talk about not doing African gays any favors. (For more information on how the HRC actually profits from global exploitation check out these reports: “HRC and the Vulture Fund”  and “HRC International Expansion Funded by the Worst Humans.”)

While the impulse toward solidarity with oppressed lesbian, gay and transgender people in countries like Uganda and Nigeria is positive, it's really impossible under the circumstances of US imperialist hegemony to fail to contextualize what's going on in Africa, and to fail to understand the hypocrisy of American intent. The liberation of Africa's gay people may wind up looking different than the civil rights trajectory in Europe and the United States. This is in no way to excuse or mitigate the brutal repression being inflicted on gays in Uganda and Nigeria; indeed it should be firmly and loudly condemned by communists, as imperialism and the corrupt rule of the compradors should be equally condemned.

But the liberation of Africa from neocolonialism, imperialism and neoliberalism (including the liberation of African gay people) must be the work of Africans themselves.

As in the Middle East, where apartheid Israel is using its supposed acceptance of gays as a propaganda weapon in its war against the Palestinians, the concept here of “homonationalism” is useful.

Writing in Jadaliyya, Maya Mikdashi identifies homonationalism in the context of what Hillary Clinton's aggressive statement really meant: “In her speech Secretary Clinton was...reproducing this generative alienation between political and human rights. She emphasized that LGBTQs everywhere had the same rights to love and have sex with whomever they choose as partners, and to do so safely. In making this statement, she reiterated a central tenet of what Jasbir Puar names homonationalism: the idea that LGBTQs the world over experience, practice, and are motivated by the same desires... Secretary Clinton suggested that queers everywhere, whether white or black, male or female or transgendered, soldier or civilian, rich or poor, Palestinian or Israeli, can be comprehended and interpolated through the same rights framework. But the content of what she she calls 'gay rights' is informed by the experiences and histories of (namely white gay male) queers in the United States, and thus there is an emphasis on visibility and identity politics and an elision of the class and political struggles that animate the lives of the majority of the third world's heterosexual and homosexual populations. Thus detached from its locality, 'gay rights' can travel internationally not only as a vehicle for normative homo-nationalism, but as a vehicle for neoliberal ways of producing politics and subjects more broadly.” 

Thus, part of the problem is that the imposition of American will on African countries is rightfully going to produce backlash, leaving the actual lesbian, gay, transgender or queer Africans forced into making false and dangerous choices. And it's fair to suggest that the active embrace of US bullying by elements in the American gay community who have embraced the agenda of the Obama State Department might mark a transition from “homonationalism” to “homoimperialism.”
Mikdashi concludes with a warning, which is really important when thinking about how to respond to calls for justice against the oppression which is real and horrifying, coming from people and places drenched in the bloody hypocrisy of empire:

We cannot 'choose' to not be who we have become, but we must recognize how we have been formed as neoliberal rights seeking and speaking bodies, and how this formation is linked to a history of depoliticization and alienation. In other words, we must be both tactical and skeptical when this language reaches to embrace us, and when we, as activists and as academics, use it ourselves. We must find ways to critically inhabit this homonational world and try, always, to act within the uncomfortable and precarious line between rights and justice.”

Lenin famously said that communists should be “tribune[s] of the people...able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects.” And so we are called to speak out against the rise of anti-gay repression in Africa, in Russia, in India, and to challenge the credentials of those who claim they are somehow defending African-ness by oppressing gay people. But for us, this work begins here in the US: the State Department, the Clintons, the Obamas, the fascist hate groups and the ilk of Scott Lively, these mortal enemies are all here right at home.

As Andrew Waiswa of GEHO says, evoking past liberation struggles in Africa, “A luta continua!”

International Women's Day, 2012

In getting used to the idea that women's rights to control their own bodies, including the right to have abortions, would remain a social battleground, I can't say I ever really expected the field of battle would actually shift backwards. But so it has done, and now it seems that even women's right to contraception is under attack. At the extreme end may be the putrid neanderthal spokesasshole Rush Limbaugh and his verbal assault on Ms. Susan Fluke, suggesting she was a "slut and prostitute" and out to get the government to support her licentious lifestyle, but at the other end are all manner of politicians including both Republicans and Democrats who think that it's high time that society controls women's genital organs. Apparently the small government types have problems with regulation of pollution and corruption but no problem at all with regulation of women's bodies. That they yearn for a time when women were nothing but baby machines says so much about their general worldviews.

I counter this 1950s style assault on women with a classic propaganda image from the other 1950s, the era of Soviet/Chinese solidarity against the American-led Cold War. Against a field of multilingual banners labelled "Peace," a Chinese and Russian woman gaze determinedly and resolutely against all odds. One boldly grasps a red banner, and yet almost tenderly they grasp hands between them. While certainly representing a different shade of stereotype, these women know that even peace is something that might require a battle to defend. And there remains so very very much to defend.

Happy International Working Women's Day. Stand shoulder to shoulder with your sisters.

The Right Wing's Prescription for Women

Planned Parenthood has been a target of the right wing for years. The current congress has gone to great lengths to demonize the private non-profit agency which provides millions of women, poor and otherwise, with health services including contraception and abortion. For all the insistence on the part of the rightwingers that the issue is preventing government-funding of abortion, the facts show that this is a smokescreen. There's a pie-chart floating around that clearly shows that abortions represent a small portion of Planned Parenthood's services. Given the legal hostility from many Republican and Democratic congresspeople in recent years, Planned Parenthood has worked very hard to follow the letter of the law and isolate the federal funding it gets from those abortion services. But it's futile to present either of these facts to the foes of Planned Parenthood, because the truth is that abortion is only the tip of the iceberg of their objections.

The rightwingers claim they are waging a battle based on moral and religious opposition to abortion based on the "sanctity of life." But what is actually quite clear is that these right wingers are actually waging a battle against something much bigger. And this is revealed by the current controversy over the initial Obama administration insistence that healthcare reform means that religious employers must include access to contraception in the insurance plans they offer to non-clerical employees like the teaching and medical professionals who work for churches and hospitals run by religious institutions. While it seems tragically likely that the Obama administration will concede this argument, the current controversy forces the right wing to admit that contraception itself is their actual problem, even knowing that contraception is a proven abortion preventative. Yes, that's right, the right wing does not want women to have access to the means to control their own bodies.

The right wing wants to defund Planned Parenthood not out of concern for some moral abstraction, but because it wants to preserve the dependency of women, especially poor and working-class women. The Sarah Palins and Michel Bachmanns of the far-right fringe notwithstanding, independent women who are not dependent on men are societal threat to the way the far right wants the world to look. And more fundamentally working-class women who rely on the affordability that government-funded healthcare provides are to them simply expendable.

The recent flap over the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure's shameful temporary plan to withdraw financial support of Planned Parenthood is illustrative. The Komen Foundation is less an institution concerned with women's health than a money-making scheme, a front for fake concern about the inadequate funding of women's healthcare. Forget how an organization allegedly concerned about women's health could sponsor pink buckets of the Colonel's greasy chicken, how could an organization allegedly concerned about women's health, full of smart people who know every last detail of those financial distribution pie-charts, claim that pulling the plug on poor women getting breast screenings could have anything to do with abortion at all? Who actually believes that? Only right wing ideologues with an agenda, that's who.

Here's the truth: This is yet another front on the class war being waged by the privileged classes on regular people. They don't want to pay for abortion, for contraception, for breast screenings, because they don't want to fucking pay for anyone's healthcare at all. Well, except their own.

Funny, it always comes down to the same problem....and the same solution.

Without Comment: 1% vs. 99%

"MATT LAUER: When you said that we already have a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy, I’m curious about the word ‘envy.’ Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?
MITT ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.
LAUER: Yeah but envy? Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as ‘envy,’ though?
ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail."

— from a televised Today Show interview with Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney this morning.

"I personally don’t want to have anything to do with people lobbying or running for office right now, nor do I want to focus all of my time winning small policy changes, and I don’t think that’s the role of Occupy Wall Street. But I sure as hell hope the people whose terrain that is do go and do it. I hope that they can recognize that what’s happening now is the creation of a climate where it’s possible for them to push left and win more. I’m not going to be happy with all the compromises those people have to make, and I don’t think we’re going to survive on reforms alone, but we need that too. If we want a real, meaningful social transformation, we need to win things along the way, because that’s how we provides people the foundations on top of which they can continue to struggle for the long haul, and it’s how we grow to become a critical mass that can ultimately make a fundamental break with this system.

And in the meantime, our role as Occupy Wall Street should be to dream bigger than that. I think it’s our job to look far ahead, to assert vision, to create alternatives and to intervene in the political and economic processes that govern people’s lives....

I think there is more possibility right now than I could have ever imagined. I think in the not-so-distant future, we can win a lot of things that actually improve people’s lives, we can continue to change the political landscape, and we can grow into a mass movement with the strength to propose another kind of world and also fight for it. I think we’re only in the beginning of that, and I think there is a ton of potential. And I also see that kind of possibility in the long term. I think we can win a truly free society. I think it’s totally possible to have a political and economic system that we have a genuine say in, that we democratically control, that we participate in, that is equitable and liberating, where we have autonomy for ourselves and our communities and our families, but are also in solidarity with one another. I think it’s possible, and necessary. That’s kind of the amazing thing about this moment and this movement, I guess. Right now, sitting here, I can’t even imagine the limits of possibility."

— Occupy Wall Street activist Yotam Marom interviewed by Naomi Klein

Ron Paul Is A F*cking Nutbag... Who Cares If He Claims to Oppose War

I've seen some great things attributed to the Ron Paul campaign. That sign with the reversed "LOVE" in "REVOLUTION" called out? Genius. The notion that the U.S. should not be marching around the world dictating policy? Laudable. A desire to bring troops home from Afghanistan and stop sending a fortune to Israel? I'm down with that. But you know what? It doesn't fucking matter one bit.

Because Ron Paul is a right-wing, anti-gay, anti-choice, racist, conspiracy theorist NUTBAG. This is plain to see. Obvious from hearing thirty seconds of the man speak. Clear as day from the actual historical record revealed in a simple google search.

And yet there are legions of Ron Paul supporters twisting themselves into pretzel shapes trying to excuse his disturbing history of pandering to the far-right fringe. There are armies of pseudo-intellectual morons trying to make sense of his calamitous economic ideas. And there are unfortunate crowds of young white people trying to focus on his anti-war appeal while pulling the blinders closer to avoid seeing how close this man stands to those other folks on the Republican stage like anti-gay scum Rick Santorum, deranged fantasist Michele Bachmann who actually runs a business that tortures gay people, racist narcissist Newt Gingrich, and tool of big business Mitt Romney.

I could post facts about how Ron Paul has denounced Civil Rights laws. I could link to stories about how his Iowa chief of staff is a veteran of anti-gay hate groups. I could bring up his ties to the John Birch society. I could repeat what his former staffers say about his unwillingness to use a gay man's bathroom. I could link to stories that challenge the distance Paul claims he has put between him and the scandalously racist newsletters of two decades ago. I'm not going to do any of that. These stories are not hard to find. If you are not busy pretending not to see these things you will find them in ten seconds on the internet.

The Mitt Romney machine has been very very busy demolishing each of his Republican competitors one by one, and they are surely a force behind the sudden media scrutiny of Dr. Paul. But I think given Ron Paul's ground operation he could still do quite well in the upcoming Republican Iowa caucuses. In truth I don't really care who the Republicans go with...they're all horror shows beyond the pale. But I have acquaintances (who should know better) who are actually suckered in by the bizarro-world Ron Paul delusion. I find it sad that people outside the rarified club of bigotry and hateful ignorance that is the Republican party should find themselves strolling down such a doomed path of bad thinking. Actually it doesn't make me sad; it makes me furious.

Libertarianism is a cult-like ideology that elevates selfishness into an economic and political theory. Key to Libertarianism is its omission of a class analysis (the same class analysis rudimentary to the nascent concept of the 99% expressed by the #OWS movement). And there's a good reason for that: because Libertarianism isn't egalitarianism, it's rich-ism. It's about a system where the rich and wealthy are unfettered in their exploitation of the rest of us. With impunity. It's worth repeating: If you want to visit a Libertarian paradise, visit Somalia. I am not exaggerating.

There are Libertarians and Ron Paul supporters running around in OWS, for sure. But take a deeper look. They do not actually want the same things the rest of us want. What the Libertarians are doing is filling an ideological vacuum: given the history of Democratic Party betrayals (hello, Mr. Obama) and the failure of the Marxist left to (yet) emerge from its historically discrediting Cold-War defeat, Libertarians are talking systemic changes and ideological solutions, even if the substance of what they're talking is absolute nonsense.

The 2012 election is still eleven months away. A lot will happen in that time. If I've learned anything from the last year it is that voting for President once every four years is a sad substitute for actual democracy. I think the optimism that so many felt with Obama's rise, and the subsequent reaction to the failure of that rise to actually bear the sweet fruit that many of us hoped for is one of the factors that has contributed to the Occupy Wall Street awakening. The challenge of the next period is to sustain the momentum of last year, to make an alternative to the electoral trap feasible, to show what real direct democracy is. We can aim higher than choosing the best of the worst to predictably disappoint us.

Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian who loved puppies. If you're looking in a library for books about Hitler, I'll make an educated guess that "pet care" and "cookbooks" are probably the wrong places to look. When the books are written about Ron Paul, I'm certainly not saying they will be on the shelves next to books about Hitler, but they sure won't be on filed under "anti-war" either.

If Ron Paul sometimes sounds like a fucking right-wing nutbag... it's because he is one.

An Invitation to Ethnic Cleansing

“Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places.” — Republican presidential candidate, serial adulterer and alleged intellectual Newt Gingrich in an interview with The Jewish Channel.

I wish I could say I was shocked by Gingrich's comments, which have received pretty wide coverage. But I've had many many arguments over the years with supporters of Israel who have said pretty much the same thing. Forget any logical response to this outrage, like does he therefore suggest Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Jordan are equally undeserving of statehood since they share a similar historical pedigree as Palestine? Nevermind his glossing over of the fact that whatever he chooses to call them the indigenous inhabitants of the land occupied by Israeli military force are currently violently besieged, suppressed, and deprived of their civil and human rights. Nevermind that not so long ago people of his political ilk were blaming the Jews for the evils of the world not fantasizing about the money they could earn by pantomiming prostration before the agenda of a foreign country's entirely questionable political policy.

What game are these politicians playing? Even George W. Bush, for crissake, paid lip-service to the idea that Palestinians deserved recognition of their personhood. The Republican presidential lineup have every last one of them (except far-right nutjob libertarian Ron Paul) been stumbling over each other to be the greatest supporter of Israeli Apartheid of all the rest. It's hard not to see it as a certain extension of the Republicans' formerly blatant anti-Semitism, this cartoonish courtship of a small country and a small American demographic which they imagine to require such outrageous genuflection. It's made even more odd by the fact that notwithstanding a little bit of rhetoric here or there, the Obama administration has proved itself a loyal lapdog of the rightwing Netanyahu government.

"And they had a chance to go many places." Absolutely chilling. Imagine for a moment he's talking about the Jews of prewar Europe, or the Tutsi of Rwanda. Newt Gingrich is an amoral sociopathic monster.

If you have a strong stomach here's a little reality check. Mustafa Tamimi was 28 years old; he attended a nonviolent protest in the occupied West Bank, protesting land seizures by so-called settlers. He was shot point blank in the face with a (US-made?) tear gas cannister. This is video of the aftermath of that shooting. Mondoweiss recounts, "The impact blew off half of Tamimi's face, and when his friends and family cried out in horror, Israeli soldiers laughed and said, "So?".

Tony Soprano for President?

Chances are, if we have friends who consistently lie to us, we tend to wall off that relationship, finding minimal space for remnants of friendship that won't lead to danger or disappointment. A friend who steals things from us is soon to be disinvited from visiting, and one who openly commits violence against others is soon apt to be held at arm's distance lest their gaze and physicality be turned to us. We like to surround ourselves with people who make us laugh, who share the bounties of open hearts or engaged minds. We respect people who make achievement seem easy, and are glad for useful advice that is the fruit of sagely earned or learned wisdom and experience.

Isn't it amazing that so many people cast aside these logical behaviors when deciding whom to listen to in the public square? How we tell ourselves that it's okay to put time-honored strategies for self-preservation out of our heads? That we must submit to betraying our every instinct to choose not what we want but what we dislike less? And truthfully this is only half the story. For a great many people, a political system based on poisonous exploitation and oppression transforms the values that we would recognize as normal, empathetic and humane into a corrupt sociopathology dominated by heartlessness, selfishness, bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and rationalization.

Last year at the White House correspondents' Association dinner, President Obama joked about teen idols the Jonas Brothers: "Sasha and Malia are huge fans but, boys, don't be getting any ideas. I have two words for you: predator drones." A friend pointed me to this cartoon from vastleft.com:



This refers to a story mentioned on the OpEd Page of the NY Times about a community meeting in Pakistan: "During the meal, I met a boy named Tariq Aziz. He was 16. As we ate, the stern, bearded faces all around me slowly melted into smiles. Tariq smiled much sooner; he was too young to boast much facial hair, and too young to have learned to hate.... When it was my turn to speak, I mentioned the official American position: that these were precision strikes and no innocent civilian had been killed in 15 months. My comment was met with snorts of derision. ...At the end of the day, Tariq stepped forward. He volunteered to gather proof if it would help to protect his family from future harm. ... [But on] Monday, he was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile."

Obama's joke isn't so funny now, is it? I voted for him: I advocated voting for him, and I thought I was keeping my eyes open. And sadly, there was never any chance that the 2008 election would lead to a less horrible moral conundrum than the one it lead to. It is probable that the election of John McCain and Sarah Palin would have been even worse. Not that it mattered so much to Tariq.

Consider Herman Cain, the right-wing Republican businessman with the unlikely honor of being somewhere near the top of the heap of the Republican presidential primary. It's been revealed that he was repeatedly accused of sexual harassment, that is, of being a sexual predator using his power as a rich businessman to make life uncomfortable for women working under him. While all the facts of this story have not yet been aired, the evidence strongly suggests not the story of a philandering politician consensually consorting with someone randomly extracurricular to the embarrassment of his spouse, but a man engaged in non-consensual harassment of his employees. Cheating on your spouse is not against the law. But sexual harassment is. And yet a portion of the Republican electorate is not shunning Cain like normal people would do, but actually rallying around him.

Or there's the Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry, also running in the primary. A couple months ago he accused his fellow candidates of being heartless for his policy of offering some social benefits to the children of undocumented immigrants. "If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart." This small modicum of human decency was too much for the Republican electorate, and Perry was forced to apologize. "I was probably a bit over-passionate by using that word and it was inappropriate."

There's pseudo-intellectual Newt Gingrich who, as we've discussed before, has twice ditched ailing wives for healthier mistresses and told outrageous racist lies about Obama. There's Michele Bachmann who has told nothing but fantastic lies in her entire political career and makes government money off the discredited fake-therapy of trying to convert unhappy gay men to heterosexuality. There's Rick Santorum and his unhealthy obsession that the small percentage of gay people in society are at the cause of everything "wrong" with it. And there's poor pathetic Mitt Romney who Republicans are desperate to avoid voting for because even they can see his utter moral emptiness and total vacuity of principle.

These are people I would not invite across the threshold of my front door. Why are we in the position of thinking our only choice is to vote for one of them? Even the ones we convince ourselves are the "good guys" are narcissistic sociopaths. Earlier this year I wrote a defense of lesser-evil voting. I wrestle with this constantly. At this moment I still imagine myself voting for Obama again next year...if only because I fear how much more damage the Republicans could do to civil rights laws. This, knowing that his second term is as likely to be as full of betrayals and disappointments, and of lost children named Tariq, as his first was. Knowing it was a mistake to trust him to be different than his predecessors at the helm of the American state.

But it's why I feel such hope in #OWS: finally here is a flicker that it doesn't have to be that way. Politics isn't all about elections, and elections don't always have to be the way they are today. What if people stopped being willing to vote for sociopaths? Or for would-be child murderers or aspiring rapists? Or valued smart people instead of bigoted morons and village idiots? Or together organized and took for ourselves what is rightfully, morally, our own. The elections — the choice between evil and more evil — become less important, when we create alternatives, when we're actively engaged in changing the fundamental problems and social relations not just hoping they'll get better in time.

Because we really are all in this together. We don't have to pretend Democrats or Republicans represent us, because they obviously don't. We can find our own voice.

We know how a fairytale marriage to Kim Kardashian ends. We know what happens when you place your trust in Tony Soprano. So how come here, back in the real world, we don't know how to change the channel?

Everything You Need to Know About Republicans (2)

At last night's disturbing Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas, in which candidates competed to display more heartlessness to the American people, more racism toward immigrants, and more stupidity on international issues:

Anderson Cooper: "Herman Cain, two weeks ago you said 'Don't blame the big banks, don't blame Wall Street, if you don't have a job or you're not rich, blame yourself.'... Do you still say that?" (Cheers from crowd)

Herman Cain: "Yes I do say that." (Wild cheering ovation from crowd)

There's a clip on Huffpo that I won't embed here because it has a commercial.

The peasants are revolting...

'Heather Amato, 35, a psychologist who lives near the protest area, said she felt disturbed by some of the conduct of the protesters. She said she had to shield her toddler from the sight of women at the park dancing topless. “It’s been three weeks now,” Ms. Amato said. “Enough is enough.”' — New York Times, October 7

As the Occupy Wall Street movement gains momentum, spreading across the country to dozens of local Occupy protests, marches, sit-ins and encampments, the establishment, to use a word spawned by the 1960s protests, has begun to look down on the movement with some consternation and confusion. Besides the hatchet job quoted above about how Occupy Wall Street is nothing but dirty, smelly, rude hippies with no respect for property, there was an extraordinarily condescending OpEd piece by the Times's resident old-line conservative, David Brooks:

"If there is a core theme to the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is that the virtuous 99 percent of society is being cheated by the richest and greediest 1 percent. This is a theme that allows the people in the 99 percent to think very highly of themselves. All their problems are caused by the nefarious elite....The Occupy Wall Street movement may look radical, but its members’ ideas are less radical than those you might hear at your average Rotary Club." Of course, Brooks is a die-hard defender of the 1%.

A two-pronged attack on Occupy Wall Street is unfolding: it's an attack by the class that has the most to lose from these protests that hint at the incredible potential suggested by the awakening of those who have thus far been the victims of class war waged against them. The attack will be a classic good-cop bad-cop act.

The first prong of the attack, the "good cop" is as Kasama warns: "Here is the deal: The smell of sulfur is upon the land. Satan himself is coming now… Of course we don’t believe in Satan. It is a metaphor. What I mean is this: The real and difficult struggle within this movement and for this movement is now starting. The media is turning on the machinery. The unions officials will now come as “supporters” but broker for the liberal establishment. “Advisers” will show up. People (who are pliant and acceptable) will now be declared leaders and spokespeople in the media. Demands will be announced or promoted or demanded that correspond to the program of the Democratic Party…. and much more." This will be the strategy of the liberal establishment to co-opt and blunt the Occupy Wall Street movement...to feign sympathy for its ends while trying to channel its energy away from radical potential.

The second prong will be the "bad cop," as those forces who will do anything to defend their privilege and power attempt sway public opinion against the Occupy movement, and then when they believe the movement to be weak, they will unleash whatever forces of repression are necessary to sweep up the remnants.

On the internet front, check out two widely circulated graphics from the teabaggers trying to demean the Occupy movement. The first attempts to paint the movement as idiot hypocrites for being consumers as if to oppose Wall Street we should all walk around in burlap sacks. The second attempts to paint them as anti-patriotic criminals looking for government handouts. For those with strong stomachs, check out the Think Progress video contrasting how the right-wing media coddled the Teaparty and attack the Occupy movement. I could only watch half of it. Link here. And read Gawker's evisceration of the thoroughly tragic attempt by the right-wing to paint the protesters as freeloaders and get suffering working-class Americans to identify with the cause of their suffering, "We are the 53%." To quote Gawker editor Richard Lawson: "these people have been glamoured by vampires, have bared their necks and welcome the pain as a gift. It's so deep and so bedrock in national mentality that the only salve seems, honestly, to be some sort of genuine revolution. I kind of feel like a French person in 1788. I wish these people knew they had allies behind them."

We don't know what will happen. The Occupy movement may grow and bloom, or it may succumb temporarily to winter. I do know that it's impressed the hell out of me personally, and the people involved in it are very, very smart, and becoming very very very wise by their own actions. The time is overripe for this kind of movement. If there's one thing that I hope people in the Occupy Movement understand, and I suspect many of them do, it's that the so-called 1%, whatever that true number is, do not need to understand or be educated, or learn anything: they are doing what they are doing because it is in their self=interest to do so. The rich want to stay rich. The powerful want to keep power. Appealing to the better natures of those with power has its limitations, especially when they understand the logic of the movement even if not everybody in that movement has drawn the same conclusions through to the end.

Those of us who want — who need — change or economic and social justice: it is for us to take. These things are, by virtue of our absolute majority and humanity, our right. No begging is necessary.

(The graphic, of course, is Mel Brooks and Harvey Korman in "The History of the World, Part 1." If you've seen it you'll know why it's here!)

Hater Speaks at Hate Groups' Confab of Hate

There are plenty of other bloggers who enjoy watching every hateful, insane thing uttered by right-wing fundamentalist Christians and their various hate groups, and normally I'm not one for paying too much attention to every bit of hate speech they utter. It's nauseating and tediously repetitious. But here's a brief clip from Brian Fischer of the hate group American Family Association group making the concise point at today's Family Research Council-sponsored Value Voters Summit that the twin dangers of Islam and homosexuality are the worst things facing America today.

To my knowledge not a single Republican politician has explicitly distanced themselves from this single-minded focus on hatred as the unifying principle behind so-called "Values Voters" or social conservatives. It should be presumed that any politician who attended this conference with an aim other than denouncing it completely, including alleged moderate Mitt Romney whose religion has also been denounced by some of these same hate mongers, thinks it's okay to villify gays and Muslims in exchange for votes. What kind of country to they want to live in? Not the one I do. Shame on anyone who does not recognize this conference and every last social conservative it represents as being nothing but a modern-day Klan rally. Indeed while Mitt Romney has generalized about "poisonous language" from Fischer, he certainly didn't boycott the forum provided by people who share Fischer's views, and agrees with Fischer that gay Americans should be denied equal rights. All these groups with "Family" in their name prefer that gay people not be allowed to build loving families equal under the law. "Family" is their codeword for hatred of lesbians and gays.

Incidentally, the hate group FRC, organizers of today's summit, is run by Tony Perkins, who has given money to David Duke of the actual KKK as well as spoken to the white-racist Council of Conservative Citizens.

(Clip from Right Wing Watch via Gawker)

Does Mormon Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney Practice Human Sacrifice?

(Bloody human sacrifice in Ancient Mexico, that may, or may not, be just like the human sacrifices that the Mormons, may, or may not, perform; 16th-century illustration from a Codex).

"When this sign and portent was first seen, [they] were overcome with terror, weeping and shouting and crying out...These shouts and cries were accompanied by sacrifices of blood and of human beings, for this was their practice whenever they thought they were endangered by some calamity." — Not a quote from the Book of Mormon but from The Broken Spears, The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico edited by Miguel Leon-Portilla

"The messengers went to the [temple]...The two captives were then sacrificed before his eyes: their breasts were torn open and the messengers were sprinkled with their blood. This was done because the messengers had completed a difficult mission: they had seen the gods...they had even conversed with the gods!" — Not a quote from Mormon Elder Brigham Young, but another from The Broken Spears

It was almost fifteen years ago that I was initiated into the religion of Santeria; it was a life-changing event, and though I am no longer really active in the religion I am ever grateful for the blessings and changes it brought to my life. As most everybody knows, Santeria is notorious for including the widely misunderstood practice of animal sacrifice. In truth, animal sacrifice is a somewhat disguised component of most of today's religions including the big three Abrahamic faiths, but it's usually considered something prettier and less controversial, like Easter dinner or Passover. Without going into it at great length, the offering of animals in Santeria is most definitely not an exercise in macabre animal cruelty, it's a respectful ritual act that connects worshippers with the mysteries of the life force in a graphic experience of communion. In most cases, though not all, the animals are cooked and eaten, just like that lamb you eat for Easter. It's definitely a challenging part of the religion for those of us who grew up around store-packaged meat, but it ultimately teaches humanity and the sacredness of life. No cute kittens — or human babies — are harmed. It's not some antisocial or Satanic worship of death and gore (and please note Satanism is a subset of somebody else's religion, and that would be Christianity), and despite the occasional slanderous B-movie or tabloid exposé, Santeros most certainly do not sacrifice people.

Anyway my initiation ceremony was a beautiful and transformative thing, altering my consciousness and the way my spirituality is wired like nothing else I have experienced. Two of the priestesses there were elders in the religion, a lesbian couple who I'll call R & R. One was Puertorican, the other non-Hispanic of Jewish ancestry. They were knowledgeable and experienced priestesses, and also very generous and giving people. New initiates are especially encouraged to visit the homes of elders in the religion during their first year, when they're walking around clothed in a protective and identifying total white. R & R were wonderfully welcoming to me; especially considering my own status among the small minority of non-Hispanic white people drawn to what is fundamentally a religion of the African diaspora.

It was probably at one of their ocha birthdays that we were all sitting around their living room in Manhattan. R & R were discussing a recent vacation. They had been out west, I think to Vegas with a side trip to Salt Lake City, Utah. They were regaling us with their visit to the huge Mormon Temple there. I don't remember which of these two Santeria priestesses, expert at the handy dispatch of a chicken, was doing most of the talking: "And we saw the altar! You know beneath that altar is where they do the secret human sacrifices." A hush went over the room. "Really. They do them right there! Oh they don't admit it, but everybody knows they do it." The other priests and priestesses in the room shook their heads and clucked their tongues. "How horrible!" everybody agreed.


(Above is the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City where Mitt Romney may, or may not, conduct his human sacrifices, if he performs them, which he may not.)

Two of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates are Mormons, one the allegedly moderate Jon Huntsman competing for last place; the other tabula rasa trojan horse not-so-moderate Mitt Romney competing for first. And it turns out that more people than my Santeria priestess friends think the Mormons have a human sacrifice problem. If you go to google and start typing "Mormon human", right after the prompt for "Mormon humanitarian efforts" pops up the prompt "Mormon human sacrifice."

It turns out that Evangelical Christians, a base of today's extremist Republican party, do not consider Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, actual Christians. And very many of them think the Mormon Church is up to no good at all. Researching this post I found websites devoted to accusing the Mormons of being the Illuminati, Freemasons, Kabbalistic Jews, Satanic homosexual child abusers, Jehovah's Witnesses, and, of course, Satanic sacrificers of human children.

I would say that the Mormons, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, and the Republican party saddled with candidates that its base doesn't trust, have a big, big problem. Would you want your child to be kissed by Mitt Romney if you were worried he would afterwards snatch it up and hurl it onto an altar of blood-letting? I mean, hey, Wikipedia might explain that the doctrine of blood atonement doesn't mean modern Mormons have anything to do with something as bizarre as human sacrifice, but sites like "Real Mormon History" shout "Holy Murder" begging to differ.

So what's the truth?

Well, you know there's an old saying: you made your bed now you lie in it.

I actually know some former Mormons who regret the church's repressive nature, but who remember their childhoods in the church, or their missionary year, with some fondness. Of course most of the gay former Mormons I know don't look back with anything less than a certain anger. There's a movie I heartily recommend called "Brigham City," that is a small-town crime story made by a Mormon director that is tremendously touching and humanizing. You come away watching this film getting something profound about the nature of community that seems to be of deep spiritual importance for Mormons. It's a beautiful film. It helped me to respect the many mysterious ways that spirit calls to people: some are called to religions that outsiders don't get. I don't challenge that at all; spirit is a beautiful and mysterious thing. I don't challenge anyone's right to follow a spiritual path of his or her own calling, including LDS Mormonism. I don't want my religious practices to be judged unfairly, and I can understand Mormons not wanting theirs to be judged unfairly either.

But here's what else I know: the Mormon Church has spent an untold fortune trying to deny the civil rights of lesbians and gays. They sunk an uncountable fortune into the at least temporarily successful effort (Prop 8) to repeal marriage equality in California. They are widely believed to be one of the main bankrollers of the anti-gay hate group NOM, "The National Organization for [sic] Marriage," that has quite successfully derailed marriage equality in a number of states. The Mormon church, as an organization, is hateful and bigoted: and like many Evangelical Christian churches and the Catholic church, doesn't understand or respect the difference between secular law and church law. The Mormon church and its allies are actively trying to deny equal rights to gay people....to match religious principles that people outside that church don't share. That is simply unforgivable: the separation of church and state should be absolute and inviolable.

Mitt Romney may be an former east-coast governor and alleged social moderate, but he is 100% behind his church's efforts to deny civil rights to lesbians and gays. He's also a sworn enemy of a woman's right to choose, and of family planning. His politics on the subject of marriage equality are no different than right-wing freakshows Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann. His views on immigration are horrible: he supports walling off the U.S. from Mexico (of course in true hypocritical fashion he's also reputed to have hired cheap undocumented workers to mow his lawn). Mitt Romney may or may not actually engage in human sacrifice — I wouldn't know the man, um, from Adam — but he certainly wants to sacrifice the rights of some Americans on the altar of his religious beliefs, and that is deeply, deeply troubling.

Is voting for people who want to deprive some Americans of their rights any worse than voting for people who might, or might not, secretly kill babies?

The evidence suggests that the idea that Mitt Romney and other Mormons are actively committing blood sacrifice of children or adults in the secret inner sanctuaries of their temples is nothing more than a crazy and delusional paranoid conspiracy theory, based on the all-too human tendency to demonize that which one does not understand. But hey, what do I know? They want to deny me civil rights, so maybe they do have a taste for human blood or maybe they don't. Maybe if their church joined the civilized world of respect for civil rights people wouldn't question their secret motivations.

Hey Mitt Romney, kiss my baby! You'll give it back, right? Right? As long as it's not gay?

(Any longtime readers will recognize part of this post is a retelling of a tale I told four years ago, during the last presidential cycle).

Work Makes You Free!

Above each of their labor camps the German Nazis installed a sign that read "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Makes You Free." The Nazis believed that certain people were good only for slave labor, and the concentration camps that were not designed as extermination camps were a source for super low-cost labor for German industry, where no regulations and no unions would interfere with eeking out every last drop of productive energy for corporate profit. As everyone knows, the Nazis believed that non "Aryans" like Jews and Roma (so-called Gypsies) were inferiors, parasites on the society of actual German citizenry. Of course "Work Makes You Free" was also a lie. There was no exit intended from the labor camps.

Which brings us to the clip below from right-wing Iowa Republican congressman Steve King below.



A few choice excerpts: "John Smith said, clear back then in the 1600s, No work, no eat. And that's part of the New Testament... We can't have a nation of slackers... and borrow money to pay the welfare of people who won't work."

What a horrifying and fascinating speech: utterly revealing about the mindset of the Republicans and their "tea party" fascists. He seems to be implying that the unemployment crisis is somehow voluntary, due to laziness. This is absolute dog whistle racist code speech. Which he even tries to justify with a Bible quote, for crissake. Who exactly is he talking about? This is standard white Republican code for the masses of blacks and hispanics who, with their insidious plots like ACORN, they imagine, actually caused the economic crisis.

You can see that he doesn't really believe that unemployment is a real problem, and that in some fundamental way he opposes social programs like unemployment compensation and foodstamps. This is what the Republicans mean when they talk about "job-killing regulations": they mean the regulation to pay a living wage and the regulation to care for the citizenry when the economy is in crisis. They believe that if all the "slackers" would get off their asses and work for less than minimum wage, the job crisis would be over.

Hmm. What did they have back in the 1600s that we don't have today? Perhaps there's a wise solution there? Serfdom? Indentured servitude? SLAVERY? Let's take America back...to 1650! The politics of Republicans like King may not be short steps from the institution of Nazi-style repression and labor camps, but it is indeed short steps away from the ideological justification for them.

Tip on Steve King thanks to Joe.My.God. "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign at Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, photo by me.

Everything You Need to Know About Tonight's Republican Debate

Tonight's Republican Presidential debate was held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Ronald Reagan is a beloved icon for these Republican candidates. Although their politics are far to the right even of his actual record, they claim to cherish everything he stood for.

This is what he stood for:

"The most memorable Reagan AIDS moment for me was at the 1986 centenary rededication of the Statue of Liberty. The Reagans were there sitting next to French President Francois Mitterand and his wife, Danielle. Bob Hope was on stage entertaining the all-star audience. In the middle of a series of one-liners Hope quipped, "I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS but she doesn't know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Fairy." As the television camera panned the audience, the Mitterands looked appalled. The Reagans were laughing. By the end of 1989 and the Reagan years, 115,786 women and men had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States, and more than 70,000 of them had died." — Michael Bronski, The Truth About Reagan, 2003

About That Republican "No"

I've not been particularly inclined to defend Mr. Obama of late, but I am singularly horrified at the small thing that happened to him yesterday. President Obama has been promising for weeks to deliver a "bold" jobs plan in a speech after fake Labor Day. It will no doubt be insufficient, and will no doubt go over like a lead zeppelin in the Republican House. It will no doubt have many rousing platitudes about American workers and no doubt fail to combat the rampant union-busting so prevalent today or actually have much an effect on today's runaway unemployment. But never mind that. It turns out he wants to make a really big deal out of this speech and sent a note calling for a Joint Session of Congress before which he could deliver his address. The request for such a session is a ritual formality, always granted.

But this time Speaker of the House John Boehner said "no, ni**er know your place." Well he actually only said "no," but it's entirely obvious what he meant. Those of us listening for the dogwhistle can hear it very well, thank you, even when it is meant for certain other ears. Congressional historians reached by the NY Times say that such a thing has never happened before. The orange weeper Mr. Boehner made a lame excuse about (unspecified) votes scheduled for that very moment that could not, apparently, be postponed. Although nobody officially mentioned it, Wednesday is also apparently the time that the Republican 2012 Presidential clowncar will be holding one of its early debates at the "library" of their vile hero Reagan in California. Apparently the dishonest pontifications of a bunch of right-wing bigots is of more import than the federal jobs policy at a time of economic crisis.

Apparently the communications between Boehner and Obama were tense, and Boehner suggested the following day; initially Obama refused, and then, of course, he acquiesced to a Thursday appearance before Congress. Thursday is also the NFL kickoff, so fewer people will be wanting to watch national policy on teevee. The rightwing commentators went on the attack, accusing Obama of using his office to "campaign."

I find in this small episode an encapsulation of much of the tragedy of the Obama administration. In his eminently reasonable way Obama is busy talking about "bipartisan proposals," and the Republicans are saying "fuck you" and all but announcing their intention to disregard him entirely. And yet Obama brushes it off. And smiles, and scrambles to fashion some compromise that pulls some faint shadow of a hopeful political plan into a contrived and dangerously inadequate imitation plan that leaves the problem unsolved, him looking weak, and the right wing chortling all over themselves with unconstrained glee.

Maybe that's all that can be accomplished right now, who knows. But here's the thing. Appeasement doesn't work. Hitler invades Poland anyway; London gets bombed.

In the past three years it's been plain as day what the nature of much of the opposition to President Obama really is. The racist nature of the Republican party, both its conservative mainstream and extremist tea-bagger fringe, is clear to anybody who's not desperately trying to convince themselves otherwise. All that crap about the so-called Tea Party being mere economic conservatives, it's a lie. And the Republicans are treating our first African-American president as they have treated no president before, with palpable contempt and disregard.

President Obama was smart enough to know that he needed the energy of outraged progressives to get elected, along with all sorts of other constituencies. Who knows, he may even be smart enough to get himself reelected despite the shithole the economy is in, who knows. But it is painful to watch him transformed by Republican contempt into a Stepin-Fetchit caricature. Read the anti-Obama comments on any political website. There is some incisive criticism from the left here and there, and some programmatic disagreement from the right that is not based on lies and dishonesty. But most of it has turned into derisive objectification of his arrogance, cluelessness, spinelessness, or teleprompter habits. While I find myself disagreeing with his policies over and over again, it's painfully obvious that much of the criticism of Obama consists of sixteen-dollar-words covering up what is merely contempt for an uppity ni**er considered to be something only slightly more impressive than a trained monkey. In becoming a magnet for the disappointment of the American people, Obama is increasingly the catalyst for an explosion of white racist resentment. After the bumbling incoherence of President Bush, people are outraged about Obama's teleprompter? I don't buy it one bit.

And now, in advance, the Republican leader has said to Obama, "we don't really care what you have to say." They are not willing to offer even the ritual respect that is the glue that holds polite society together. As Chauncey DeVega on the brilliant "We Are Respectable Negroes" blog writes, Boehner just pulled a "boy you best get off the sidewalk and let a white man pass moment." And President Obama stepped down into the gutter and let Boehner pass. Will he call them out in his speech? It's nice to think about. I'll be very surprised if it happens.

We can do so much better. Pretending that what is happening is not actually happening will do us no good. America needs to have this confrontation: Obama's attempt to keep his hands clean seems to me aiming very very low. The Democratic and Republican parties need to be split asunder. Let the racists organize their party openly. Let the corporatists from both parties unite and try to take it all back. And let the vast majority of working people discover their own strength and power. Let the racism and the anti-gay bigotry and the thievery of the rich be openly condemned, and then let it be smashed.

Not papered over. Smashed.