Eruptions At The Foot Of The Volcano: Hate Groups

Jun 15, 2009

LEONARD PITTS: There's no expiration date on hate

¨It is jolting to recall that I once thought we were living in the last days of creatures such as this.¨

·"Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me." -- the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, about President Obama

·"I hate gay people." -- Tim Hardaway, former NBA star

·¨A Third World country." -- Tom Tancredo, former Colorado representative, speaking of Miami

·"She's frightening. And she's racist¨ -- Dennis Baxley, former executive director of the Christian Coalition of Florida, speaking of Judge Sonia Sotomayor

·¨Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." -- Glenn Beck, talk show host, to Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., a Muslim.

·"Fifty years ago they'd have you hanging upside down with a (expletive) fork up your (expletive)." -- Michael Richards, comedian, to an African-American in his audience.

¨Last week, a man with a rifle walked in and opened fire, fatally wounding security guard Stephen Johns. Other guards shot the intruder.¨

¨Authorities say the shooter, James von Brunn, was an avowed racist and anti-Semite well-known to the pustular netherworld of white supremacy and to those who monitor it. He believed the Holocaust a hoax and America a "Third World racial garbage dump." He believed this, even at 88 years of age. "It's time to kill all the Jews," he wrote in one e-mail. And can you imagine what might have happened had he managed to shoot his way past the guards?¨

¨It is jolting to recall that I once thought we were living in the last days of creatures such as this. My only excuse: It was the 1970s and I was young, raised on civil rights marches and Norman Lear comedies.¨

·Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria and CANA American branch, State of Virginia, outside Washington D.C., pontificates in public that the ¨children of LGBT people are Hooligans¨ and the CANA NIGERIAN House of Bishops endorses anti-human rights legislation to jail, up to five years, LGBT citizens, and their families and friends for gathering in public places·

¨Kids like me felt, with the offhand smugness of youth, that we were harbingers of a new world too enlightened to ever again hate people because they were. We were past all that.¨

¨Or so we thought. Because what a shock it is to wake up 40 years later in a world where the intercultural dialogue we thought we'd mastered has become a shrill circus overrun by haters and opportunists, a world where on any given day one might be assaulted by the casual anti-Semitism and homophobia that afflict so much of the African-American community, or the racist patter of a washed-up TV star who has mistaken freedom of speech for freedom from thought, or the gassy posturing of political and media figures who happily, disingenuously trivialize the rawest wounds of the American experience for ratings and political position.¨

¨We act as if it were all a game, as if it means nothing when people of position and visibility spew garbage, validating and galvanizing the unhinged and the disaffected who need little encouragement to believe all their problems are caused by Them. We act as if we do not toy with fire when people of authority claim white Christians are a victimized minority or Hispanics a threatening and faceless Other.¨

·Maggie Gallagher ¨Defends Marriage¨ from LGBT Citizens·

¨We act as if we were not heirs and witnesses to a blood-soaked history that tells us exactly where this hate some of us so fecklessly stoke will logically, inevitably lead.¨

·¨Focus on Families¨ doesn´t think LGBT ought have families. One wonders where Pastor James Dobson thought beloved LGBT children/adults came from in the first place?·

¨Hate groups standing now at record numbers. One dead. Ten dead. Six million dead.¨

¨I've always liked the Holocaust Museum because it is a stark reminder in an era where too many are in a hurry to forget. And so it was even quiet and locked up tight. Behind yellow tape it sat, scene of a hate crime authored by an old man who thought he was great because his skin was pale. An American flag drooped limply at half-staff -- as if tired of waiting, waiting for the last days of creatures such as this.¨

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