There’s some areas of the American right still pining for the days of the McCarthy witch hunts. And unfortunately, it looks like they want to export them to these shores as well. Turning Point UK is one of them. If you don’t remember, Turning Point UK is the British spawn of the American Conservative outfit, Turning Point USA. Founded by the repulsive Charlie Kirk, who ‘LIVES AS A CAPITALIST EVERY DAY’, as he shouted at the Young Turks’ Cenk Uighur, this is supposed to be dedicated to inspiring young people with right-wing ideals, turning back the evil tides of liberalism, socialism and so forth. Its British branch got off to a notoriously bad start when Candace Owens, another prominent American rightist, told the assembled faithful at its inauguration that Adolf Hitler wasn’t really a nationalist. She declared that what he did would have been all right if he’d stuck to his own country, but he wanted to make everyone German. This was the opposite of nationalism. This was the opposite of history and morality, as was soon pointed out to her. TPUK have kept a quiet profile since. So much so that it has been suggested that the outfit is no more than a trick to part elderly American Conservatives from their money through encouraging them to donate to it, so little has it actually done. Unfortunately, it still seems to be around and making a nuisance of itself. Zelo Street has posted a couple of articles about the organisation posting attack ads libeling former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and leadership contender Rebecca Long-Bailey as anti-Semites, terrorist supporters and claiming they aid paedophiles.
And now Zelo Street has also reported that one of its scummy number has announced on Twitter that they want to import their parent organisation’s campaign of blacklisting left-wing academics. TPUSA has a ‘Professor Watchlist’ of academics they claim have a ‘left-wing agenda’. One critic, the Skeptical Seventh, has said of this that “They must know that what they are doing will lead to people being harassed, being shut down … It is undermining academic freedom, which is ironic for an organisation that claims to be in favour of free speech”. Yes, but for them it’s a case of free speech for me, but not for thee. However, the Beeb reported that it had been told by Dominique Samuels, one of the TPUK’s influencers, that they wouldn’t be introducing that policy over here.
This has been flat-out contradicted by the odious Darren Grimes. Grimes was upset when Priyamvada Gopal, a lecturer at Cambridge, tweeted a particularly apt quote from Lord Macauley to describe Priti Patel. She said: “We should acknowledge, as we look at Priti Patel, that there was one very successful cultural eugenics project: ‘We must at present do our best to form…a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’”. This was too much for Grimes, who didn’t recognise the quote, and ranted “This person is a lecturer at Cambridge. Is it any wonder our students are churned out of these university factories like hard-left, braindead sheep when this is what is teaching them?! What a truly bloody horrendous thing to think, never mind tweet”. Gopal herself was highly amused by Grimes’ reaction. She said “Before I withdraw again for a bit, I thought I should share my enjoyment of Mr Grimes’ condemnation of Lord Macaulay’s‘truly bloody horrendous thing to think’ … The great thing about British far-right is their complete ignorance of their own history &literature”. Macauley’s comment demanding the anglicisation of Indians is notorious. It frequently appears in textbooks as an illustration of the hostile attitude of the British colonisers to their subject peoples’ indigenous cultures.
The TPUK twitter feed then joined in with the ominous statement “Our uni campuses are overrun by leftist lecturers who teach their overt political bias as objective truth. This is not ok. The fight back begins now. Introducing ‘Education Watch’: Documenting University Lecturers’ Political Bias”.
This is, as Zelo Street has commented, the right using the false assumption that not only do they have the right to their own opinions, but also their facts, to start a witch hunt. And as Grimes was at the launch of Toby Young’s wretched Free Speech Union, it also shows that’s a sham as well.
Paul Bernal, an associate professor of Law at UEA, commented: “Can I just ask, what do the thought-police *want* us lefty academics to teach our students? Obviously facts are out. Analysis is against the law. Nothing foreign. Nothing expert”.
Tim concluded his article on this latest right-wing assault on free speech with the observation that TPUK were obviously trying to whip up hate and harassment because they were so desperate for the publicity. And so he was sure that they would be condemned by all good Conservatives.
Let’s be clear what Turning Point are demanding – the harassment and purging from academic of lecturers, whose politics they disapprove of. This is a feature of just about every totalitarian regime and movement. The Italian Fascists did it. The Nazis did it in the ‘coordination’ of the universities, which saw Jews and Marxists purged. The Communists did it. And it got really unpleasant in China under Mao during the Cultural Revolution, when children were called upon to denounce their parents and teachers. The BNP or National Front also tried something like it in Britain in the 1980s. They urged nationalist schoolchildren to write to them informing on ‘Communist’ teachers. They would then send a couple of their thugs round to assault them. TPUK haven’t called for having them attacked, but this is what such a list would lead to.
As for this wave of left-wing lecturers churning out a generation of impressionable kids indoctrinated with cultural Marxism or whatever, this is, in my opinion, somewhat of an hysterical overreaction. Yes, there are outspoken left-wing academics, and always have been. But there are also Conservatives and all shades of political opinion in between. And, with a few obvious exceptions, such as those calling for sectarian or racist violence and hatred, for example, they should all have the right to teach what they believe to be objective fact. Because this is what democracy and freedom of speech means.
Freedom of speech and conscience means putting up with speech, ideas and opinions of which you don’t necessarily approve. It certainly does not mean tolerating only those opinions that you share. That, whether done by the left or the right, leads to intolerance and persecution.
And in the intellectual context, it also means the massive impoverishment of national culture. As a result of the Nazi purges of the universities and the arts, German culture suffered immensely. That of other countries, particularly America, benefited immensely, as talented scientists, mathematicians, writers, film-makers and artists took sanctuary on the other side of the Pond. It’s been said that if the Nazis hadn’t taken power, and pushed their greatest minds abroad, the 20th would have been hailed as the German century rather than the American.
This is what Turning Point would like to do to America, and which their equally idiotic counterparts on this side of the Pond would like to do over here – a stifling, stagnant, impoverished culture in order to enforce their own intellectual agenda.
I know that many of the readers of this blog are keenly interested in Green issues and renewable energy. In this interesting little snippet, The Young Turks’ main anchor, Cenk Uyghur, discusses a prediction by the head of Nissan’s electric car division that by 2020, the number of recharging stations for electric vehicles will have overtaken the number of petrol stations in the UK. At the moment the number of petrol stations in Britain is 7,800 odd. This is down from the 37,000 + stations there were in Britain in the 1970s. However, purchases of electric vehicles are growing by such an extent, that they’re expected to reach 7,900 in four years time. The growth in popularity is put down to advances in one area of technology, such as batteries, driving improvements in others as more people buy electric vehicles. He also notes the example of a stretch of road that had a high number of electric charging stations installed by a company called Ecotrity, which resulted in more electric vehicles being purchased. At the moment, America is far behind the UK, with only 14,000 recharging stations for electric cars compared to 168,000 gas stations. But this is going to change, predicts Uyghur.
This is really going to drive Conservatives up the wall. They’re very heavily tied into the oil industry, and hence the Tory enthusiasm for fracking. This challenges the market dominance of the petrol industry, at least for automobiles, and hence is going to be potentially a major blow to the power of their corporate donors. Cameron and the Tories are already doing their level best to starve renewables of funds to prop up fossil fuels and nuclear power. If this really does start to go ahead, we’d better get ready to watch them try to close down the electric car industry.
This is another piece from The Young Turks about the current wave of anti-Islamic paranoia in America, which is directly relevant to matters over this side of the Pond. In this video Cenk Uyghur takes apart Republican Congressman Peter King. King has admitted that most of the Muslims in America are normal, good people, and that he has just sworn in the first female Muslim judge in Long Island. He has, however, been responsible for demanding a series of inquiries into Islam in America because of his concerns with terrorism. Uyghur makes the point that this has more than a whiff of McCarthyism.
It’s also grossly hypocritical. King was sanctioned by an American judge for funnelling money to the IRA in Northern Ireland, who, as Uyghur points out, are real terrorists. Uyghur then goes on to show the massive disparity between the number of Islamist terrorist attacks in the US and those of extreme Right-wing, home-grown terrorists. Islamist terrorists have killed 52 people in attacks since 9/11, which Uyghur freely concedes was a terrible event. In the 13 years since then, however, domestic Right-wing extremists have launched 337 attacks, killing 254 people. The racist extreme Right in America are far more of a threat than Muslims.
And certainly from the British standpoint, Congressman King is as much of a threat as a Muslim jihadi. The paramilitaries in Northern Ireland have killed hundreds, if not thousands of people both in the Six Counties and on the British mainland. Despite the immense progress in establishing peace in Ulster, the situation is still very delicate and sectarian tensions are still strong. Supporters of domestic terrorists in the province, like King, could cause renewed conflict and bloodshed. So King has absolutely no business lecturing anyone on terrorism, whether here or over in the Land of the Free.
I’ve blogged today a couple of items on the way the banks, the arms industry and governments are pushing for war in the name of profits, and the immense profits and influence of the global arms trade. Here’s a related video from The Young Turks on the vast profits being made by the arms contractors from air strikes in Iraq and Syria.
Presented by the Turk’s anchor, Cenk Uyghur, the piece gives the following statistic.
The journalist Cliff Judy estimated that each bomb dropped cost $1.6 million. He also estimated that the monthly cost of the war was between $200-300 million. So far – and this piece was released a year ago – American defence contractors – the people manufacturing the weapons, not the Depart of Defense itself, had got $139 billion in contracts.
The waste involved is massive. Between $31 and $60 billion has been wasted by defence contractors in Afghanistan. Uyghur describes a process of massive overcharging, and a cynically blasé attitude to the profits of war, with money brought along in crates which the contractors didn’t even bother to count.
Uyghur makes the excellent point that this is money that could be better spent on peaceful works, building up the local infrastructure back in America, building schools, hospitals, repairing the roads and so on.
The main firm to benefit from the war financially is Lockheed Martin. Other arms manufacturers are also doing extremely well. $105 billion in contracts have been given to the leading five arms manufacturers. And to show you how cynical it all is, Uyghur quotes Jack Ablin, one of the executives of the BMO Private Bank dealing in US investment. Ablin describes the use of weapons and arms systems in preference to boots on the ground as ‘an opportunity’. And as their profits go up, so do these companies share prices.
Uyghur describes the politicians, who are also profiting from this, as whores. Well, that’s what they are, only he’s made the point elsewhere that ordinary prostitutes by and large don’t do anything to harm anyone else. These politicians take money from the defence contractors, and in return they give them contracts. And the same contractors give jobs afterwards to the politicians and generals.
This shows you the truth of the old saying: War is good for business. And business is good.
This is another item from The Young Turks, revealing the Orwellian nightmare into which Western society is rapidly descending. It’s a report on an article in Wired magazine about the CIA’s venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, and its plans to insert spying devices inside the domestic appliances – fridges, and so on – of ‘persons of interest’. As the hosts Cenk Uyghur and Ana Kasparian point out, the fact that the CIA possesses a venture capital firm in itself shows how far business and the military has become enmeshed in America.
The rightly point out this is an Orwellian step, taking us towards the world of Big Brother, where the government was in your home watching you. They point out that the legal prohibition on the CIA spying within the US has been removed following the law’s revision. They also consider that the most likely ‘persons of interest’ will at first be innocent Muslims. Ordinary Muslim in New York have already been the target of CIA and police investigation.
It will not stop there, however. Other groups will be targeted, and the definition of ‘persons of interest’ will expand to cover just about everybody. In addition to spying on Muslims, the CIA has also spied on PETA, the Quakers and peace groups. And as the espionage agency cannot know when a ‘person of interest’ is going to buy a new fridge or TV, the devices will be put in all the devices so everyone will have them.
At the present moment, the devices will only be geographical trackers, rather than bugs. This, however, raises the question of what else the CIA is doing, which hasn’t been made public. It also shows how far constitutional protection for American citizens has been eroded. Once upon a time the authorities had to get a warrant in order to bug someone. Now they no longer have to do so. We are truly approaching the totalitarian world of Big Brother.
This is yet another video from The Young Turks, which is acutely relevant to what is happening in Britain, and to British citizens. The Turks are here reporting and commenting on the revelations by another whistleblower from the shady world of American covert operations. This whistleblower has handed over secret documents from the drone programme. These show how the drone operators are effectively a death squad used to kill their targets rather than capturing them for trial, or for supplying potential valuable intelligence.
The methods used to target their intended victims are also extremely flawed. The drone homes in on the signal from their cell phone or their computer, regardless of who is actually using it. That person may not actually be the intended terrorist, but their mother or daughter. Moreover, several times the signal used does not actually belong to the terrorist’s own phone or computer, but that of a family member, like their mother. As well as the terrorists themselves, drone strikes have also killed the people with them at the time, who may well be innocents.
The result has been that of 200 people killed by American drones during a specific period, only 35 were actually terrorists. Nevertheless, everyone killed by a drone is automatically designated an EKIA – Enemy Killed In Action. This status is only revised if they can prove otherwise. As Cenk Uyghur, the Turks’ main man says, this is the most Orwellian thing he’s ever heard. How can they challenge their status when they’re dead? Family members perhaps?
British citizens have also been targeted for drone strikes, rather than arrest and trial. The Turks’ video includes the case of one Berjawi, who was killed by a drone strike in Africa. British and American intelligence tracked him going to and from Africa, but did not intercept and capture him. Rather, he was simply stripped of his British citizens and then assassinated by drone.The Turks also criticise the way the gathering of the metadata used to guide the drones is presented as being harmless intelligence gathering without any dangerous consequences, which it is now clearly shown not to be.
Here’s the video:
I’m posting this up as it is directly relevant to the way Cameron is gradually constructing a highly secretive and extremely brutal judicial system on the pretext of protecting us from terrorism, and the nuisance and disruption of trade union strikes and popular protests. I reblogged a piece from Mike over at Vox Political the other day, who was concerned about Cameron’s apparent discarding of the principle ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in his anti-terrorism bill. This provides for a person to be prevented from working with children or vulnerable adults, if they are believed to be terrorists. The obviously problem there is who decides that they are, and on what grounds? As I pointed out on piece on it, there were numerous cases during the Cold War in which perfectly ordinary citizens were mistakenly blacklisted as Communists or potential troublemakers, simply for the most trivial reasons. Such as wearing punk clothing, being an unmarried mother, or having spoken to a Communist in a pub. Will British citizens also be executed by drone strikes simply because someone believes they’re a terrorist, but can’t or won’t prove it in a court of law? The evidence from the extra-judicial killing of Berjawi suggests this is a real possibility.
The Independent yesterday carried a bizarre story about the claim by an unnamed general that the armed forces would revolt if Jeremy Corbyn became Prime Minister. The article began
There would be very little support for a military coup if Jeremy Corbyn won the next election, a poll has found.
An unnamed British army general told the Sunday Times newspaper last month that the Labour leader could face a “munity” from senior military officers, “by whatever means possible, fair or foul”.
But a YouGov poll found that only nine per cent of the population would be sympathetic to a coup if Mr Corbyn became Prime Minister.
British Army ‘could stage mutiny under Corbyn’, says general
“The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security,” the general told the newspaper at the time.
Does anybody else find it more than a little strange that a military coup against a democratically-elected political leader can be even considered, here in the United Kingdom?
It is extremely bizarre, though it may not be quite so alarming as it first appears. Firstly, the general is talking about protests by military staff and mass resignations, with the possibility of a coup. The army has protested against decisions by politicians before. I was told by an ex-army friend at College that the army had organised a mass meal at Stonehenge in protest against cuts in military expenditure and mass redundancies by Thatcher’s government. This seems far more likely than any kind of coup, or even, it has to be said, of mass resignations by disgruntled military staff.
The mere talk about a coup does, however, bring back the days in the 1970s, when MI5 and the head of the CIA, James Jesus Angleton, were convinced that Harold Wilson was a Communist spy. Among the others so convinced was one Margaret Thatcher, then merely a Conservative MP. There were rumours of private armies being set up to counter the threat of a Soviet-backed take over by Wilson’s Red troops. As industrial discontent deepened, even the Times started mooting the idea of a coup and the replacement of Wilson’s administration by a caretaker government including more moderate members of the Labour party, like Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins.
It also reflects some of the hysteria amongst the Republicans in America, who are also talking about coups. The Young Turks in this video, posted on the 12th September this year, discuss a poll which showed that 43% of Republicans would support a military coup against a government. 41% of Americans generally would also support a coup against a government that was beginning to violate the constitution. Cenk Uyghur, the Turks’ main anchor, states that it’s only progressives that oppose a military dictatorship in America, and actually stand up for the values of the Constitution.
Now, an awful lot of Republicans really are convinced that Obama is closet Muslim-Communist-Nazi infiltrator, intent on setting up a ‘one world dictatorship’ and take their guns away.
Somehow, I don’t think that poll and the British general’s treasonous utterances are entirely coincidental. It looks the general has been infected by the same paranoia as the Republicans on the other side of the pond.
Or, more likely, he thinks the British public is.
It also looks to me very much that the Tories are running a Red Scare campaign against Corbyn. Remember Cameron’s foam-flecked rant denouncing Corbyn as anti-British, and their claims that he supports Islamist terrorism? The general’s comments seem to be another attempt to undermine Corbyn’s popularity by presenting him as a dangerous subversive, in league with Britain’s enemies. Cameron attempted to pass that off as reality by misquoting Corbyn as opposing the CIA assassination of bin Laden. Corbyn did oppose it, but not because he supported al-Qaeda, but simply because he wanted the terrorist brought to trial for his crimes.
The Tories are trying to smear Corbyn, and this bizarre remark by an unnamed general is part of it. It also reflects badly on the Times, which has a history of smearing left-wing politicians. Remember the allegation that Michael Foot was a KGB agent, codenamed ‘Boot’? That was also rubbish. So is this, but it does show a certain desperation by the Dirty Digger. In his career as a press baron, Murdoch has shown himself far more of a threat to British democracy, freedom of speech and open and responsible government than Corbyn ever has.
Earlier today I blogged about a report in yesterday’s I newspaper, that Tehran had gone back to verbally abusing and attacking America. The newspaper stated that the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had condemned America for spreading myths about the country’s possession of nuclear weapons so that they could claim that Iran was a threat. Instead, Khamenei claimed that the real threat was America.
I pointed out that in fact, despite recent Republican propaganda and fearmongering, Iran possesses no nuclear weapons. Republican politicians and donors in America, such as Sheldon Adelson and one of the senators for Texas, are recommending that America should be prepared to launch a nuclear attack on Iran.
In this case, it would seem that the Iranians are correct: America is the real threat, at least to them.
Here’s another extremely interesting video from The Young Turks. It’s from three years ago in 2012, and is about a report in the McClatchy newspaper about Iran’s stance against nuclear weapons.
Yep, you read that correctly: Iran was against nuclear weapons.
At the talks over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme and the potential threat it may pose, the Iranian’s chief negotiator, Agha Jalili, appeared beneath a banner saying in Farsi ‘Nuclear Power for All; Nuclear Weapons for None.’
Furthermore, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons declaring them to be a sin.
The Turks’ Cenk Uyghur states that it could well be the case that Iranians ‘are just saying that’. On the other hand, he points out that their self-professed stance against nuclear weapons has been very little reporting in America. If the country had declared itself in favour of developing nuclear bombs, Uyghur states this would have been reported absolutely everywhere.
So Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, it wasn’t anywhere near developing any, and Obama’s negotiations with Iran have placed severe limitations on its nuclear programme. Plus the fact that the regime itself has condemned nuclear weapons.
But there are still elements within the Republican party pushing for an invasion of Iran.
We were lied to like this before, when Bush and Bliar invaded Iraq. They’re lying to us again, hoping that we’ve forgotten – forgotten that the death and chaos now enveloping the country is a direct product of that invasion. Forgotten that the real reason for the invasion wasn’t to free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein, but simply to loot their country and seize their oil.
The Independent has also reported today that the Russians have lifted an international ban on selling Iran anti-missile systems. The Kremlin signed the deal with Iranians to supply them with S-300s eight years ago, but pressure from America and Israel caused them to suspend the deal.
Following the tentative deal with America cutting drastically on Iran’s nuclear programme, the Russians have decided that they will now fulfil the deal. The Russians are part of the P5+1 group which negotiated it.
The Independent states that the decision ‘has been greeted with dismay by the West and Israel’. The Israeli Intelligence Minister, Yuval Steinitz, said ‘This is a direct result of the legitimacy that Iran has obtained from the emerging nuclear deal’.
Actually, this time the Russians are right. The rhetoric the Iranian regimes spouts about Israel is indeed genocidal, but the Repugs in America and Netanyahu’s band in Israel seem determined to start a war with Iran by bombing them.
In the clip below, Michael Brooks, one of the contributors to Sam Seders’ left-wing news analysis show, Majority Report, comments on Louie Gohmert’s remarks on Iran in an interview with Fox News. His ignorance and belligerence is too much even for the lady interviewing him, and you can hear muted sounds of laughter. Brooks is a Republican Congressman, and Brooks admits that they’ve made him the butt of many of their jokes, because of his amazing stupidity. And from this clip, it is truly stunning.
Gohmert states quite frankly that America should bomb Iran, if the Iranians don’t accede to their request and give up all of their nuclear capability. When asked how Russia, Iran’s ally, would respond, Gohmert states that they wouldn’t do anything, because they’re also determined to crack down on radical Islam. As Brooks points out, they are. But they also have very good relations with Iran.
And it’s not just the West or Russia which is opposed to radical Islam. So are many severely-normal, ordinary Muslim Iranians. During the 2008 election in Iran, many Iranians voted against Ahmedinijad, because they were afraid he’d turn Iran into ‘a Taliban-state’. Iran does back other Islamic movements around the world. They’re supposed to be backing the Houthi rebels in Yemen. But they’re not the Taliban and very definitely not ISIS. Here’s the clip.
In 2013 Sheldon Adelson, an extremely wealthy Republican donor, told the audience at a conference on threats to Jewish survival, that America should use a nuclear bomb on Iran if the country did not halt its nuclear programme. He recommended that the first nuke should be aimed at one of Iran’s deserts, where it wouldn’t do any harm ‘except perhaps to rattlesnakes and scorpions’. If the Iranians still carried on with the programme, the next one would land in the heart of Tehran.
Here’s the report by The Young Turks discussing Adelson’s remarks.
The Turks’ anchor, Cenk Uyghur, points out that there are seven million innocent Iranians living in Tehran. I’ve met Iranians over here, who come from that great city.
Seven million, vaporised or horrifically burnt, dying of radiation sickness, just to satisfy the Repugs’ bloodlust.
Uyghur further points out that Adelson gave extensively to Newt Gingrich’s campaign, and that of another senior Republican. If either of those two had got in the White House, this would be America’s foreign policy.
The idea of Adelson, Gohmert or any of these people being anywhere near power chills the blood.
Israel’s protected by the Iron Dome defence system, which was given to them by Obama’s administration. With rhetoric like this coming from the Repugs, the Iranians have every right to the same protection.
As for making any kind of nuclear strike on Iran, the mere threat of it is more than likely to increase the Iranians’ determination to acquire nuclear weapons, or at least persuade their allies to guarantee their protection if attacked.
And that wouldn’t be difficult. Pakistan illegally acquired their nukes from China. And about a decade ago, when there was an episode of international tension between America and China over atomic weapons, someone pointed out that the Chinese’s response when they felt threatened was to pass on the technology to even more people. A nuclear strike against Iran might paradoxically persuade more countries to want to acquire nuclear weapons, so they could retaliate, and China may be more than willing to supply them. Adelson’s stupid and murderous comments make nuclear war more likely, not less.
This is yet another video from The Young Turks commenting on American politics, which is nevertheless acutely relevant over here. I realise I’ve put up a lot of ’em, and some readers might be wondering what the point of them are. I’ve put them up because much of British politics is now deliberately modelled on the Americans. Thatcher’s Conservatives took over workfare from Reagan’s Republicans. And Tory policy is absolutely saturated with Republican ideas.
One of the reforms Cameron has introduced are changes to electoral registration that have wiped 7 million off the electoral rolls. That’s no accident, and it’s not intended to voter fraud. It’s intended to stop the poor, Blacks and other ethnic minorities voting, as these groups vote for Labour. Just as in the US, poor Whites and Blacks tend to vote Democrat.
In this video below, The Turks’ anchor, Cenk Uyghur, comments on an interview between one of the journos, Osif Monvie, on the Daily Show with Don Yelton, the Republican chairman for Buncombe County in North Carolina. Yelton is remarkably honest, to the point that he lost his post in the party. Yelton openly admitted that the voter laws were passed to discriminate against poor Whites, Blacks, and students, to stop them voting Democrat.
Monvie asked the question whether or not the law was racist and Yelton himself was racist.
Yelton replied ‘I’ve been called a bigot before.’ He did, however, sort of try to deny that he was actually racist by stating that one of his friends was Black.
Monvie questioned him about a statement on Yelton’s Facebook page, where he compared Obama to a witchdoctor. Yelton tried to excuse this by saying, ‘Yeah, but I was talking about his White half.’
He then apparently got a bit nostalgic for the days when White people call refer to Blacks as ‘N*ggers’, and asked why they could carry on doing it, when Whites couldn’t.
His response to the disenfranchisement of university students, poor Whites and Blacks was the following: ‘so be it’.
On students ‘Well, if a bunch of college kids can’t vote, so be it. Well, they should have gone down and got themselves a photo ID.’
‘If Whites don’t do it, so be it.’
If a bunch of lazy Blacks who want the government to give them everything won’t do it, so be it.
Monvie raised the point that the law discriminated against Blacks, college students and Democrats. Yelton’s response? ‘Gee’. Which pretty much means ‘Yes’, even before he frankly admitted it:
‘Well, the point of the law was to kick Democrats in the butt.’
And the precise number of voter fraud cases? ‘One or two’. In other words, it was insignificant.
Now I realise that this was an American politicians talking about America. But these policies have been imported over here by Cameron, and so Yelton’s comments similarly apply over this side of the Atlantic.
Don’t have any illusions. Despite Cameron’s purge of racists from the Tories, they still are a very racist party, and Cameron has absolutely no compassion or remorse for the suffering he has inflicted on the working class or university students by raising tuition fees. Yelton’s comments could come from just about anyone of the Tories, but they’d probably be too savvy to say them out loud.
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