Oh, THAT Anaheim!
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âViolence Erupts at Ku Klux Klan Rallyâ
Really? At a Klan rally? Surely you must be joking.
That would be me. I hate the Klan, their history is filled with bloodshed, oppression and open hatred, but I still wish counter-protesters would take the high road and not initiate violence. I also know itâs difficult to remain calm and hold back the rage when someone is belittling you to your face over meaningless bullshit like whether you have a star on your belly or not. I canât help but think the Klan is hoping there will be violence, and wants to have a justifiable reason to claim self-defense.
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Yeah, I donât like the violence (Iâm sure even anti-Klan forces there regret it, given that they received some of the most serious injuries). If it were 50+ years ago, when the Klan were still killing people, that would be one thing, but now, in California of all places, theyâre a pathetic remnant of of dumb, largely powerless, hateful assholes who deserve to be mocked more than anything.
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Aw man - I almost walked from this believing you.
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At least those brave protesters have one guy in their corner.
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The ACLU has consistently been supportive of the KKKs right to assemble and free speech⊠You literally donât know what youâre talking about.
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I think itâs human nature. The Germans have a word for it - schadenfreude.
We shouldnât wish cancer on someone or have them die in a fire. But when bad things happen to bad people, the dark corner of our brain is like, âWell, good!â
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Between Song of the South, the Fantasia slave centaurs, and Jim Crow in Dumbo, Waltâs views on race were not very progressive.
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Iâm really surprised they showed the phone number multiple times. Why do the work for them?
To be fair it was the 1940s and just about nobody was progressive on that topic. Also unlike most places Walt actually hired black animators.
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Just about nobody white, I think you mean.
But even then, youâre wrong. The war brought about a lot of integration, as well as economic gains for non-whites, both in the military and domestically. As a result, many whites had already become more progressive than Disney was. Hell, itâs STILL behind the times.
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I suspect that thatâs not working out quite the way you think.
I would not want to be the next person who gets assigned to this number.
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Some of the reasons for the integration:
The Irish guy who built the assault boats for D-day, with his integrated (male/female, black/white, all paid the same) factories - the word got round.
Black soldiers in England before D-day found there was no âcolour barâ and took the news back with them. English people didnât pick up on US class indicators - and for a lot of them their only experience of black Americans was as successful musicians.
Black soldiers in Burma discovered that the Indian and Nepalese soldiers in the British Indian Army considered themselves an Ă©lite who looked down on white American soldiers (Too loud, too careless for jungle warfare.)
From what I understand, it was less white Americans becoming more progressive, more black Americans discovering that the rest of the world was different and deciding it was time to stop putting up with the shit back home.
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I hope the US (and the rest of the world) does not have to find out the hard way why similar displays are banned in Germany.
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Itâs the same way people spout âliberal mediaâ as some sort of bad thing. They probably mean âliberal biasâ instead, but I guess liberal media (which should be considered a good thing) is somehow a bad thing since it has the word liberal in the name.
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I think the reasoning behind not pushing for laws banning this kind of speech is that sunshine is the best disinfectant, that punishing this kind of speech only makes it more attractive for those looking for something to latch onto. Itâs not like there isnât right wing movements in Europe, itâs just that they are forced to be more clandestine. I can see merits to both ideas regarding this kind of speech, but weâd have to see how active the hard right wing is here and in places where this kind of speech is banned in order to know which mode of operating is more effective⊠honestly, I donât know.
Then again, the rise and fall of this sort of right wing hate groups might be utterly disconnected from both, and are instead connected to other issues in our societies. I do think that since the end of the Cold War, the right has been on the march in various places, and they are probably increasingly interconnected due to the internet. The root causes of this are probably multi-faceted and hard to pin down to one thing or anotherâŠ
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Yes, that happened during and after WW I too. Many white Americans did become more progressive, but I didnât mean that they werenât pushed to do so by the demands of racial and ethnic minorities.
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Itâs kind of amazing how seeing the rest of the world can change your views on things like racism and classism (sometimes for better and sometimes for worse).
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Itâs also a nasty canard. Itâs frustrating that so few Americans can see that corporate-owned media have no interest in promoting anything beyond merely ostensible left-wing policies, since doing so would undercut their profits. Come on, people â just because the other networks appear to be to a bit left of FOX doesnât mean they have a âliberal biasâ (only reality has that!).
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Unfortunately, looking at the polls for Republican candidate, rather than sunshine functioning as a disinfectant it seems to be encouraging the growth of some nasty organisms.
I do agree with your general points - that we donât want to create victims and we canât be sure that the European approach is more successful. I do think one reason for the rise of the Right is not linked to the Internet - it is the rise of right wing media owners (Berlusconi, Murdoch) who have been allowed to operate television stations as well as newspapers, and of politicians who have been their cheerleaders. In Berlusconiâs case, of course, he did both jobs.
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