re: #218 Blind Frog Belly White

This is something that wingnuts don’t grasp. Their whole understanding of the Democratic Party and blacks is colored (haha) by their racism. They see it as the Democratic Party is a white party, like theirs, that has fooled black people into voting for us. But that’s not it. Black people don’t just VOTE FOR Democrats. They ARE Democrats. They are us, we are them. They’re as solidly part of the party as southern whites are solidly part of the GOP - maybe even more so.

Their understanding of this is rooted in the racist view that blacks are too stupid to know what’s in their own interest. And that blacks only believe there’s discrimination because Democrats told them so.

And the amazing thing is, wingnuts cannot understand how deeply racist that is.

Conversely, I know that a lot of us tend to think of poorer white peopleas ‘voting against their own interest’ in voting for Republicans. But really, they’re voting for white privilege, for white supremacy, perhaps not fully understanding and accepting that this is what they’re doing. They’re not ‘voting against their own interest’, they just have a different view of what that interest is.

This is very accurate, well done.

We see that the core cultural message of the cult right is one of white supremacy, of hating liberals and brown people, but it’s also true that there are immigrants and black people that subscribe to this same message. The cultural reinforcement of elevating the lowest white man above the best coloured person is so ingrained in the US media and the US culture that white hoods and burning crosses are no longer necessary to convey it. Now all that media needs to do is continually excuse white men for their sins, and everyone watching understands, subconsciously if not overtly.

FOX, however, makes a specific point of trying to sell their hate cult to black people and Hispanics. You see it in Spanish-speaking FOX, in their use of black people to come on air and peddle their message. What I wonder, though, is whether this will be successful. On one hand, there’s nothing specifically about being black or Hispanic that makes you immune to joining a cult, even a cult that is specifically about hating people like you. But I wonder if the message can truly resonate as well as it does with mediocre white Americans, who have lived their entire life surrounded by this culture. Black Americans have also lived surrounded by this culture all their lives, but it’s a hostile one, one that tells them they are lower than the worst white man. Is seeing someone who looks like you on TV enough to sell that culture to you, to make you feel like you could belong in that cult? I don’t know. I haven’t grown up in either culture.