Human Rights & Civil Liberties

Pat Bagley | Religious Freedom / politicalcartoons.com

Thu, 11/09/2017 - 15:32 — Dave Culver

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Hate Groups Attack Southern Poverty Law Center, and Some Journalists Pile On

Thu, 11/09/2017 - 14:42 — Dave Culver

“Last week I did a monologue on the Southern Poverty Law Center and they took issue, yes 'issue,' with me, with some of the statements made on the show, including a joke, a joke, that they do virtually no law,” Fox News' Greg Gutfeld said in a heavily sarcastic tone. / Fox News / YouTube

Far-right groups attacking the SPLC claim that the group has lost its credibility because it has targeted groups such as the Family Research Council and others on the far right.
Related: The New York Time’s Assault on Press Freedom

Sharona Coutts, Rewire

Sep 19, 2017 | Late last Friday night, Greg Gutfeld, a presenter on Fox News, had to do something that made his face crinkle with revulsion.

He had to apologize to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the nation’s leading nonprofit tracking hate groups and extremists. Most recently, the organization has also been the target of a concerted campaign to discredit it by the very far-right groups it tracks. That campaign is being amplified by the right-wing media, including Fox News.

Sharona Coutts is an investigative reporter, and Vice President of Investigations and Research at Rewire. She has exposed fraud and abuse in areas including pension funds, financial firms, for-profit colleges, aged-care, and New York City schools. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, nationally-syndicated radio programs, as well as dozens of other publications.

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The New York Time’s Assault on Press Freedom, Daniel Lazare, Consortium News

The New York Times building in Manhattan. (Photo credit: Robert Parry)

The New York Times, which once postured as the champion of a free press, now is seeking crackdowns on news that the public gets from the Internet under the guise of combatting “Russian propaganda.”
Related: Special Report | A Free and Open Internet: The Latest from the Frontlines, Week Ending October 28, 2017

Section(s):

Human Rights & Civil Liberties

Media

John Kelly’s Historical Amnesia About the History of the Civil War and Slavery Is a Tool of White Supremacy

Thu, 11/02/2017 - 16:59 — Dave Culver

Part 1: John Kelly’s Civil War history fail speaks to a much bigger problem
Kelly only said what many white Americans believe: Slavery wasn’t that important and the Southern cause was “noble.”
Part 2: Historical Amnesia About Slavery Is a Tool of White Supremacy
Where we have (mostly) condemned slavery, we as a country have refused to condemn its defenders.

Compiled by David Culver, Ed., Evergreene Digest

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Part 1: John Kelly’s Civil War history fail speaks to a much bigger problem

John Kelly(Credit: AP/Wikimedia/Salon)

Kelly only said what many white Americans believe: Slavery wasn’t that important and the Southern cause was “noble.”

Chauncey DeVega, Salon

11.01.2017 | If White House chief of staff John Kelly had any self-respect or integrity he would be embarrassed right now. Despite his distinguished service as a Marine Corps general, Kelly apparently jettisoned such values when he went to work for President Donald Trump.

During an interview on Laura Ingraham's new Fox News show on Monday night, Kelly told the host that he viewed Confederate general Robert E. Lee as “an honorable man. ... He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon.

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Part 2: Historical Amnesia About Slavery Is a Tool of White Supremacy

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists encircle counter-protesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches. (AP Photos / Shay Horse)

Where we have (mostly) condemned slavery, we as a country have refused to condemn its defenders.

Mychal Denzel Smith, the Nation

August 15, 2017 | n 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the observance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a federal holiday, but I didn’t celebrate it by that name until the year 2000. My family moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia, in 1993, where my father, a lieutenant in the US Navy, was stationed after a three-year deployment to Naples, Italy, which is where I started school. Second grade was my introduction to the American school calendar and the set of holidays that would be welcomed vacations from the classroom. As a seven-year-old, I didn’t think to ask anyone why January 15 marked Lee-Jackson-King Day.

The Commonwealth of Virginia began observing the January 19 birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee around 1889, and in 1904 added to this the recognition of General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson’s birthday (January 21). Up until 1983, it was known as Lee-Jackson Day. That year, in accordance with the new federal law, Virginia began observing Martin Luther King Day, only the Virginia legislature voted to combine it with the nearby Lee-Jackson Day, giving us Lee-Jackson-King Day, which I celebrated for seven years of my life.

Mychal Denzel Smith is the New York Times-bestselling author of Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching and a 2017 NAACP Image Award nominee.

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Human Rights & Civil Liberties

Race & Ethnicity

The Huddled Masses Were Never Welcome

Sat, 10/14/2017 - 13:46 — Dave Culver

Photo by Paul Sableman | CC BY 2.0

Uniting immigrants and the native-born is an urgent imperative for the left. To do so, we must collectively reject not just the toxic politics of Trumpism but also the more subtle poison of liberal nationalism.

Kevin Young, Counterpunch

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Lydia Howell

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September 5, 2017 |Trump adviser Stephen Miller made headlines last month when he openly repudiated the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This Emma Lazarus verse is regularly regarded as the embodiment of U.S. generosity toward migrants and refugees. Schoolchildren learn it, and many commentators have invoked it to denounce the current administration’s attempts at ethnic cleansing. But while Trump’s xenophobia is extreme, it’s well within the historic parameters of anti-immigrant policy in this country.

Noble rhetoric notwithstanding, the “huddled masses” have rarely been welcomed into the United States. Our economic and political system has always depended upon the exclusion or subordination of certain people based on class, race, gender, religion, and other factors, and our immigration laws have played a central role in preserving these inequalities. Resisting racism requires that we confront not just Trumpism but the broader elite consensus of exclusion and exploitation.

Kevin Young teaches history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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Books & Liturature

Human Rights & Civil Liberties

Arend van Dam | Saudi Arabia and UN Human Rights / politicalcartoons.com

Mon, 10/09/2017 - 14:29 — Dave Culver

Section(s):

Human Rights & Civil Liberties

How Hate Goes ‘Mainstream’: Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys

Mon, 10/09/2017 - 13:58 — Dave Culver

So what are McInnes’ beliefs? And where do they fall within the range of the far right? Stephanie Keith / Getty

In Rewire’s three-month investigation of the far right, McInnes emerges as one of the main leaders of the so-called alt-lite, one faction on the far-right spectrum of politics that believes in the threat of “white genocide;” maintains that Islam and Muslims endanger “Western” civilization; attacks feminism and women’s rights; and denigrates immigrants who are not white.

Sharona Coutts, Rewire

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Lydia Howell

Rewire Editor's Note: This story is a part of our series on hate groups, in conjunction with the Documenting Hate coalition. We will be reporting on the emergence of people, organizations and groups that threaten human rights, civil rights, and the freedoms of all persons. If you believe you have experienced or witnessed a hate incident, please tell us about it. VIDEOS at LIINK

Aug 28, 2017 | Gavin McInnes, the 47-year-old co-founder of VICE Magazine, announced last week that he will be going “mainstream.” The new venture—the details of which he says he’ll reveal in about a month—will apparently include television, radio, the internet, and books.

Announcing his departure from the Rebel Media, one of the right-wing outlets for which he worked until last week, McInnes said, “I’m going to be a multi-media Howard Stern-meets-Tucker Carlson, if that makes sense.” As for who his new employers are, McInnes said he couldn’t announce it yet, but that it was “gonna be huge.”

Sharona Coutts is an investigative reporter and Vice President of Investigations and Research at Rewire . She has exposed fraud and abuse in areas including pension funds, financial firms, for-profit colleges, aged-care, and New York City schools. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, nationally-syndicated radio programs, as well as dozens of other publications.

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