Using hate to win elections

(9:00PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

I was reading over at The Field Negro this morning and in his July 4th eve post, he tells this story:

First, I want to talk about the lynching back in 1946 of Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, and George and Mae Murray. According to the AP, “on July 25, 1946, an angry white mob of as many of 30 people dragged the two couples from a car,tied them to trees, and fired three volleys of bullets at them, leaving their bodies slumped behind in the dirt. Dorothy Malcolm was seven months pregnant”.

This happened about 45 miles east of Atlanta (the city that’s now too busy to hate), and my man Hiroshima Harry Truman was so outraged that he sent the feds to investigate. Of course they got nothing, they were met with a “wall of silence” so they had to shut down their investigation. — And people think black folks invented the “no snitch” code.–

But not to worry, justice might be served after all these years. Back in 1991 Clinton Adams came forward to say that as a ten year old boy he saw the lynchings unfold from some bushes he was hiding behind. I wonder what took him so long? Well the good Governor of Georgia reopened the case, and now, finally, the frat boy’s Justice Department is following up. I say the good Governor of Georgia, because Georgia’s governors apparently weren’t always so good. Did I mention that the lynchings might have been sanctioned by Georgia’s Governor at the time, Eugene Talmadge, to sway rural white voters during a tough election?

I couldn’t help but think of a conversation I just had with fortschreitend in my essay on the ICE raids in Postville, Iowa about the motives for such an action that would basically wipe out a small town of 2,300 people by arresting 400 of its members. Here’s how fortschreitend responded:

I’ll suggest one possible motive.

These raids poll pretty well here — this is an election year — and Iowa is a swing state.  Iowa Republicans were left reeling after their 2006 wipeout and have latched onto these raids as something they think helps them.    

The type of brain power at work that supports these raids doesn’t think the town is hurt.  They say only the “illegals” are hurt and they don’t really count since they didn’t belong here.  I hear it all the time about Postville, and the right is so much louder than the left on this.  You should hear the complaints on talk radio about the Postville churches providing assistance — they want legal action against priests and nuns.

So I guess we can claim some progress in that raiding a factory, arresting 400 people and destroying a small town is perhaps less deadly force than shooting and lynching 4 people. But I am seriously saddened that this type of hate still works in this country. And I am even more saddened to hear what fortschreitend said about the right being so much louder than the left on this.

I do not believe that we can afford to stay silent when this becomes a way to win elections.

This last photo is from the Washington Post report on the raid. The caption reads Buses brought arrested workers from Postville to the National Cattle Congress grounds in Waterloo, Iowa, last week.