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A PERSONAL REFLECTION ON #DUMPTRUMP, STL
It took us awhile to locate and reach our friends. Police had set up a barricade splitting the protest in two, and were forcing folks to walk around the block through thousands of Trump supporters to reach the other side of the barricade. There was oddly no police presence around the block, and several friends and acquaintances told us they’d been confronted by Trump followers and at least one friend had rocks thrown and misogynist & racist slurs hurled at her on the walk around the block. We also saw Trump supporters engage in body-shaming and the sort of low-brow bullying common on elementary school playgrounds at recess time. We saw Trump supporters telling elderly Black women to “go back wherever it is you come from”, calling redheaded protesters “Carrot Top” and protesters with curly hair “Sideshow Bob”, and especially antagonizing a small group of Muslim Persian & Arab women holding signs which read “Muslims are your friends” and “Islamophobia = Hate, Islam does NOT = Hate”.
A friend struck up a conversation with the Muslim women, and a few of us decided to march with them. My partner got into a verbal altercation with a Trump fan who was body-shaming several protesters and ranting about far-rightwing conspiracy theories steeped in anti-Semitism. Around that time the police announced they were closing the doors to the venue and not seating anymore people. There were still a few thousand Trump supporters in line, and there was a moment when the tension significantly escalated.
A few people from the line wearing military jackets and medals, POW/MIA patches, and Tea Party t-shirts started shouting something at me about ISIS, having spotted a vaguely “middle eastern-looking” person standing with the Muslim women’s group, holding a solid-black flag while wearing a keffiyeh. Somehow that combination of actions and perceived character traits = i’m part of ISIS. One man yelled at us that my flag kills Christians in Iraq. One of the Muslim women yelled back that Trump supporters don’t know their political geography if they think my flag was an ISIS flag. Undaunted by facts, another person from the line shouted that my flag “kills Jews in Syria”, to which another Muslim woman shouted back, “and we Muslims mourn and pray for them all, just as we pray for the countless Christians and fellow Muslims murdered by ISIS. People like you and your imperialist wars make ISIS possible!”
Somehow my friends got their hands on some homemade pennants that read “Make America Gay Again!” Several times confused Trump supporters approached us and asked what that meant. We heard more than a few disgusted bigots murmur amongst themselves “it’s the gay agenda!” Then word got out that the Peabody Opera House was going to blast audio from the rally inside through loudspeakers for everyone who couldn’t get inside. A huge number of people, cops, Trump supporters, and protesters all flooded into Market Street, in front of the opera house. All of a sudden we found ourselves shoulder to shoulder with the Trump people. None of us could remember a time in StL that the cops shut down a major street downtown so that a political candidate who reserved an indoor venue could broadcast his speech to thousands of his supporters standing in the streets outside. i felt that same sick feeling i had when i was a kid the first time i saw pictures of the mass rallies the Nazis held almost a century ago.
Before Trump’s speech even began, protesters who had reserved tickets and made it past security’s profiling to be seated inside started disrupting the rally and getting thrown out, some of them were arrested. This went on for between ten to fifteen minutes at a time. Trump literally spent most of his time on stage screaming “Get them out!” to security, rambling about building a wall, scapegoating China for America’s economic woes, demonizing Muslims, refugees and migrant workers, and talking about how, in his view, “the problem” with protesters is, apparently, that they get “out of line” because police are – again, supposedly – “afraid” to “rough them up a bit” and there’s “no consequences” for “them” protesting, anymore.
In response to this some of my friends started angrily talking about all the people locally who were seriously injured by police at Black Lives Matter protests, the past year and a half, like the pregnant woman who lost an eye to a police “less lethal” round at protests the night of the grand jury decision to let ex Ferguson pig Darren Wilson off the hook for the cold blooded murder of Mike Brown. But all i could think was “this is all like a WWF wrestling event”. Trump’s “Get ‘em outa here!” catch phrase, the more and more i heard it, began to strike me as a symbol for his supporters’ desire to purge America of anyone who doesn’t look like them, live like them, love like them, or worship the same hateful green paper god they do.
As the first major fights broke out, the ones i witnessed resulting from white men putting their hands on people of colour who weren’t having that, who were then tackled and arrested by phalanxes of police, who surrounded and protected the Trump supporters who had started the physical altercations – at least once i saw police giving a Trump supporter who started a fight an “atta’boy!” pat on the back – it dawned on me that even though Trump isn’t really the real threat; his supporters are. Donald Trump, just a few short months ago the joke candidate only taken seriously by far-rightwing conspiracy nuts, has become a lightningrod for the already festering ultra-rightwing in America, drawing together hypernationalist racists, xenophobic “nativists”, elements of the Tea Party and Patriots movements, AM talk radio creeps, gun & conspiracy nuts, Oathkeeper & Minutemen militias, the neo-Nazis and the KKK – the Ku Klux Klan’s former “grand dragon” David Duke having recently endorsed Trump for US President, and of whom Trump recently said:“I have to look at the group. I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about… You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I’d have to look. If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them and certainly I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong. You may have groups in there that are totally fine — it would be very unfair. So give me a list of the groups and I’ll let you know.”
Another interaction my partner and a friend had with a Trump supporter during his speech left me speechless. A young white woman approached my partner and a friend selling Trump merchandise, with a large selection of buttons. Seeing our kid strapped to my partner, the Trump supporter told us “Your child is so beautiful! My baby is due in a few weeks…” Just as i was hearing this, i noticed one of the buttons she was selling read “Just nuke ‘em”, paraphrasing ultra-rightwing ideologue Ann Coulter, with a crude map of N. Africa and the Middle East beneath the slogan. Suddenly, i realized this person standing next to us, acting so friendly toward us and trying to strike up conversation about kids could be anyone, the person sitting next to you on the bus, standing next to you on the train; that she was moving seamlessly between chatting us up and praising our kiddo, while directing her customers to purchase the “Just nuke ‘em” button.
A nightmare scenario unfolded, something like a movie montages in my mind: Trump says he’ll bar Muslims from the US; his favorite slogan lately has been “Get ‘em outa here!”; he says he’ll “round up” and mass-deport refugees, migrants, and Muslim immigrants; he promises to bomb “ISIS” to smithereens; his supporters love all of this, and are linking his campaign, at least in this one instance, to genocide-mongering Ann Coulter’s fantasies of nuclear holocaust in the Middle East. My kid is part Iranian. i am part Iranian. My family is part Iranian. Though none of my family are Muslims, many, MANY of our friends and the people we know and are close with are Muslims. This person adoring our kid wants to nuke the place my family came from. And before today i wouldn’t have known her from anyone else standing in line to order during lunch break at my crappy job.
Make Popcorn: Criminal complaint filed against Southern White Nationalist Matthew Heimbach
Matthew Heimbach pictured here in November, 2013 with the Neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement under a flaming swastika. Heimbach is wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt.
Trump: “anti-political” or right wing?
By Matthew N Lyons | Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Some leftists have declared recently that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is fundamentally “anti-political” rather than right wing. But the evidence they offer actually highlights the similarities between Trump and earlier right-wing populist candidates Patrick Buchanan and George Wallace.
Read More
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2016/03/a ... te-in.html
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
a mass murderer who did a Nazi salute in court, isn't being called a terrorist. Why?"The answer and reason is simply because of the fact that a white terrorist receives privileged consideration in the media. In contrast, the “terrorist” moniker is one that is exclusively reserved for those who don’t come from within, those who are looked upon as society’s dangerous “others”. Nowadays, that “other” is almost always a Muslim.
American Dream » Sun Mar 13, 2016 10:56 am wrote:
A PERSONAL REFLECTION ON #DUMPTRUMP, STL
It took us awhile to locate and reach our friends. Police had set up a barricade splitting the protest in two, and were forcing folks to walk around the block through thousands of Trump supporters to reach the other side of the barricade. There was oddly no police presence around the block, and several friends and acquaintances told us they’d been confronted by Trump followers and at least one friend had rocks thrown and misogynist & racist slurs hurled at her on the walk around the block. We also saw Trump supporters engage in body-shaming and the sort of low-brow bullying common on elementary school playgrounds at recess time. We saw Trump supporters telling elderly Black women to “go back wherever it is you come from”, calling redheaded protesters “Carrot Top” and protesters with curly hair “Sideshow Bob”, and especially antagonizing a small group of Muslim Persian & Arab women holding signs which read “Muslims are your friends” and “Islamophobia = Hate, Islam does NOT = Hate”.
A friend struck up a conversation with the Muslim women, and a few of us decided to march with them. My partner got into a verbal altercation with a Trump fan who was body-shaming several protesters and ranting about far-rightwing conspiracy theories steeped in anti-Semitism. Around that time the police announced they were closing the doors to the venue and not seating anymore people. There were still a few thousand Trump supporters in line, and there was a moment when the tension significantly escalated.
A few people from the line wearing military jackets and medals, POW/MIA patches, and Tea Party t-shirts started shouting something at me about ISIS, having spotted a vaguely “middle eastern-looking” person standing with the Muslim women’s group, holding a solid-black flag while wearing a keffiyeh. Somehow that combination of actions and perceived character traits = i’m part of ISIS. One man yelled at us that my flag kills Christians in Iraq. One of the Muslim women yelled back that Trump supporters don’t know their political geography if they think my flag was an ISIS flag. Undaunted by facts, another person from the line shouted that my flag “kills Jews in Syria”, to which another Muslim woman shouted back, “and we Muslims mourn and pray for them all, just as we pray for the countless Christians and fellow Muslims murdered by ISIS. People like you and your imperialist wars make ISIS possible!”
Another interaction my partner and a friend had with a Trump supporter during his speech left me speechless. A young white woman approached my partner and a friend selling Trump merchandise, with a large selection of buttons. Seeing our kid strapped to my partner, the Trump supporter told us “Your child is so beautiful! My baby is due in a few weeks…” Just as i was hearing this, i noticed one of the buttons she was selling read “Just nuke ‘em”, paraphrasing ultra-rightwing ideologue Ann Coulter, with a crude map of N. Africa and the Middle East beneath the slogan. Suddenly, i realized this person standing next to us, acting so friendly toward us and trying to strike up conversation about kids could be anyone, the person sitting next to you on the bus, standing next to you on the train; that she was moving seamlessly between chatting us up and praising our kiddo, while directing her customers to purchase the “Just nuke ‘em” button.
A nightmare scenario unfolded, something like a movie montages in my mind: Trump says he’ll bar Muslims from the US; his favorite slogan lately has been “Get ‘em outa here!”; he says he’ll “round up” and mass-deport refugees, migrants, and Muslim immigrants; he promises to bomb “ISIS” to smithereens; his supporters love all of this, and are linking his campaign, at least in this one instance, to genocide-mongering Ann Coulter’s fantasies of nuclear holocaust in the Middle East. My kid is part Iranian. i am part Iranian. My family is part Iranian. Though none of my family are Muslims, many, MANY of our friends and the people we know and are close with are Muslims. This person adoring our kid wants to nuke the place my family came from. And before today i wouldn’t have known her from anyone else standing in line to order during lunch break at my crappy job.
tapitsbo » Fri Mar 18, 2016 10:40 pm wrote:I think containment, not confrontation, is the goal, and with Heimbach, just as well. He seems to be keeping some curious observers occupied.
jakell » Fri Mar 18, 2016 5:38 pm wrote:Antifa types want sooooo much for the simpler archetypes of mid 20th century Europe to emerge that they have to really push this set of half-baked musings into a full length article (and of course, a picture from Nazi Germany was needed here).
Of course if they want confrontation, even organised confrontation, that is not hard to come by, but there's no need to invent such a framework for it in advance (unless it's for the inevitable 'we told you so').
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