It Was Just A Matter of Time
by digby
… before Lou Dobbs went full-on racist on the immigration question. Liberal Oasis has the story:
Today on “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” CNN ran a graphic sourced to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group deemed to have a “white supremacy” ideology according to the Anti-Defamation League.
During a piece about illegal immigrants in Utah, reporter Casey Wian said, “Utah is also part of the territory some militant Latino activists refer to as Aztlan, the portion of the southwest United States they claim rightfully belongs to Mexico.”
The CCC is a well known neo-confederate group that is the direct heir to the White Citizens Councils of the Jim Crow south. Trent Lott probably would have kept his leadership post had it not been for a previous scandal featuring him and the CCC which caused quite a furor in 1999:
By Charles Pope, CQ staff writer
February 2, 1999, 11:52AM. ESTThe last thing Trent Lott needs is another controversy with staying power.
But floating around the Senate majority leader is a storm that has been rumbling for weeks, fueled by race, partisan politics and, most of all, the weather-makers at the Council of Conservative Citizens and its leader, Gordon Lee Baum.
The council claims 15,000 members nationally and has an active chapter in Republican Lott’s home state of Mississippi, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which studies hate groups. The law center and other critics characterize the council’s agenda as racist and white supremacist; at least one member of the Republican National Committee has called the group “unsavory.”
It is, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “the reincarnation of the racist white Citizens Councils” that became a potent political force in the 1950s in the South to fight integration. Moreover, the law center concludes the council is “shot through with white supremacist views, members and political positions.”
Baum and other leaders vigorously dispute those labels, but writings in council publications have likened interracial marriage to white genocide and suggested that Abraham Lincoln was elected by communists.
It is not the type of group to which a national politician like Lott wants to be linked. But linked he is, despite repeated efforts to distance himself from the group and claims he was not aware of their views.
When these things happen nobody, it seems, are aware of the CCC’s views. I am sure that Lou Dobbs will say the same. He’s only a credentialed journalist, after all. You can’t expect him to have nose for racist propaganda.
This certainly does bring up an interesting question for me, however. I never thought of the CCC as being a white supremecist organization in the mode of say “Stormfront” or something like that. It’s a neo-confederate group which is certainly racist but organized explicitly around hatred of African-Americans. The fact that they are touting the ridiculous Aztlan “threat” puts the lie to any claims that this immigration debate isn’t being fueled by racism. (Not that that’s a big surprise.)
When you go back to those articles I linked above to the CCC scandal back in 1999, there is a clear desire on the part of the institutional GOP to back away from any association with these people. The party was very, very anxious to shed its racist image. Some of these articles even applaud the end of the southern strategy. Yet here it comes again. This time it’s the “aliens” rather than the blacks, but it’s the same old drill.
It is a sign of Republican weakness this time. They should not have to be shoring up their base with this tired old stuff. But their racist base is restive, looking for a fight, wanting to kick someone’s ass to account for their own feelings of impotence in a complicated world. (Same old shit.) The leadership knows it is a losing long term strategy but they’re left with nothing else.
Lou Dobbs pops an aneurysm any time somebody says that this debate might just be a teensy bit racist. I would suggest that any time someone goes on his show they mention that only a racist would use information from the CCC, the progeny of the White Citizen’s Councils, and not recognize it for what it is.
Here’s the contact info for CNN.
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