The Elephant

 

The Elephant

 

        Last week, Punchbowl News (not what I’d call “mainstream media, but…) reported that the semi-psychotic Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Arizona Congressman Paul A. Gosar were preparing to announce their involvement in the launch of an “America First Caucus.” A detailed document laying out the caucus’s platform suggested that it would focus on promoting “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and warned that mass immigration would have an impact on the “unique identity” of the country. Unsurprisingly, harsh and immediate criticism from some of her own party, including, in a brief show of character, minority leader Kevin McCarthy, quickly resulted in “blame shifting” to staffers.

        Having followed Green’s record to date, I find both the plans and the subsequent denial to be totally in character. Hell, if you are crazy enough to even utter the words “Jewish Space Laser” as Green has, the sky’s the limit. More directly, here’s a picture of who she is: On February 29, 2020, Greene attended a gun rights rally in LaFayette, with American Patriots USA, a far-right group, then attempting to further its influence with Georgia Republicans. At the rally, she held up an American Patriots USA banner while posing for photos with Chester Doles, a 5th generation Ku Klux Klansman and “Grand Klaliff” (they love those funky names, huh?) leader, who has nearly a dozen assault arrests and served two separate prison sentences in Maryland—the second, and longest, for the vicious 1993 beating of a black man he and a fellow Klansman left for dead. Lie down with dogs…?

        Part of the supposed aim of the “America First Caucus” apparently revolvers around this concept:

“common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and a return to architectural style that “befits the progeny of European architecture.” (“Architecture?” Just what the actual hell is that even about?)

        Well, and this is the “Elephant” (in the room) referenced in the title, it is primarily about race and racism. It is about the Klan with a cleaner shirt. It is fascinating to me that Americans whose ancestors fled oppression from “Anglo-Saxon” oppression all over Europe and were, in some cases, not even considered “white” (Irish, Italians, other Mediterranean groups) by those who got here first, have now become oppressors, less violent but by “legal” manipulation.

         Fans of “Outlander” (and most historically literate individuals) will be aware that the poor Scots and Scots/Irish, themselves fleeing Anglo-Saxon (as in English) domination and oppression, were among the earliest settlers of the American South, and many were relegated to the lowest rungs of society in those colonies by the English whose assured primacy was determined by huge Crown land grants and control of such legislative bodies as were permitted by the crown.

        Sadly, in many cases, their descendants, themselves just several generations removed from being poor white “clay eaters”, (look it up) are the same folks bemoaning the recent election results and saying everything but “We don’t want persons of color to vote.” The southern elite are enabling and encouraging them.

        Populist politician and Georgian, Tom Watson, summed it up thus in the 1890s: “You (Caucasians and Blacks) are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both.”

        Recent Georgia election law changes make it seem that not as much has changed as one might hope.

        On a similar track, since the departure of Lou Dobbs from daily airtime, the loathsome Tucker Carlson recently upped and reaffirmed his claim that Democrats want more immigration because they hope to “replace” native-born U.S. voters with “more obedient voters from the Third World.” Carlson routinely condemns the addition of immigrant voters to the body politic as an inherently bad thing. He has said, in various dog whistle ways that local culture all over the United States is succumbing under a tide of migration, with some states becoming unrecognizable.”

        Also flagrantly playing the race card, Carlson was openly disdainful of the George Floyd murder verdict, even as several other of his Fox “News” applauded it as a valid decision.  

        These two controversial points of view (Carlson, Green, et al) occupy somewhat different places on the spectrum of despicable nativist and white nationalist viewpoints. But they are related. With the “Anglo Saxon traditions” controversy drawing more attention, we are also seeing versions of Carlson’s viewpoint edging into the realm of Republican “respectability”.

        What is happening here is the great Republican unspoken: The fear that “Someday, us white folks won’t be the majority and in charge.”