Apr 2, 2014

On Rand Paul, Tea Parties, and the White Supremacist Roots

This wee gem is from an antiracist.org pdf March last year:

http://antiracist.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/TTT-V23-n3-summer-2010.pdf

The connection of Rand Paul and his politics to the "truth" movement might appear tangential, but Lew Rockwell's involvement in Craig Lazo aka "Killtown"s 911movement.org forum prove the Ron Paul political machine was deeply invested in "truther" propaganda:

 http://jennyquarx.blogspot.com/2014/02/lew-rockwell-gullible-libertarian-or.html

It's unlikely the apple falls far from the tree and expected Rand Paul will follow in daddy's footsteps, using the conspiracy crowd  to front his Tea Party friendly agenda.   This excerpt by Michael Novick explores how racist dogwhistle politics is integral to libertarian philosophy Rand Paul is pushing--a timely observation given long time "truther" leaders like Barrett have openly endorsed White Power politicians like Merlin Miller of the American Freedom Party(American Third Position):

Merlin Miller is a filmmaker and West Point graduate who has been fighting illuminati-dominated Hollywood for many years by putting out wholesome films rather than the usual toxic, degenerate trash. He ran for President with the American Third Position Party. (And I voted for him.)
And the Nazi scumbag LOST...to no one's surprise.

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 On Rand Paul, Tea Parties, and the White Supremacist Roots
of Private Enterprise and Privatization

 by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action Los Angeles/People Against Racist Terror (ARA-LA/PART)

The victory of Tea Party and militia supporter Rand Paul as Republican nominee
for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky signaled the mainstreaming of allegedly ‘anti-
establishment’ right wing forces. It also prompted a lot of liberal and conservative attention to Paul’s support of private property rights against government, because of his “philosophizing” that the section of the Civil Rights Act which prohibits racial discrimination at restaurants and hotels violated the “free speech” rights of private business owners.

Rand Paul and his supporters claimed he was misrepresented. He wrote, “I was asked if I supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I stated that ‘I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.’ In response, the interviewer asked me about private domains, and I did what typical candidates don’t - I discussed some philosophical issues with government mandating rules on private businesses. I think the federal government has often gone too far in regulating private citizens and businesses.” He claims that he was simply displaying atypical honesty. But these words make clear that Paul was simply using the same weasel code words of “private property rights’ and ‘state’s rights’ that were widely used at the time of the original debates over civil rights to defend racial segregation and de facto US apartheid. Paul specifically explains that “private clubs” restrict membership on a racial basis, which he says is “abhorrent” but protected.

What this really exposes is the covert white supremacy inherent in private
enterprise and in the privatization of public institutions in the US. For
example, in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education finding racial
segregation in public schools unconstitutional, there was massive ‘white
flight’ into private schools and suburban school districts. Ever since, through
vouchers and charter schools, there has been an ongoing effort to divert public
tax funding for education into private hands. This has been paralleled, after
the rebellions of the 60s, by the flight of private industry and capital (again
with tax subsidies) from the inner cities of the north and midwest and the
segregated old Confederate states of the US South into the global south. The
bitter consequences of these publicly supported private policies can be seen in
the destruction and depopulation of Detroit and New Orleans. We see it in LA,
where Black and Mexicano families are being seduced by for-profit schools
to escape the devastation of public schools starved by privatization and racist
budget cutting. We see it in Rand Paul’s adopted region, where Tennessee’s
Corrections Corporation of America is the largest private provider of
incarceration “services” to federal, state and local governments overwhelmed
by mass imprisonment. Private prisons, police, schools and even armies and
spies (like Blackwater) are the final culmination of the privatization of land
and the creation of corporations as the original instruments of empire building.

But Paul is blind to these realities of racism and colonialism in present day USA. He writes in his own defense, “In 2010, there are battles that need to be fought, and they have nothing to do with race or discrimination, but rather the rights of people to be free from a nanny state. For example, I am opposed to the government telling restaurant owners that they cannot allow smoking in their establishments. I believe we as consumers can choose whether to patronize a smoke-filled restaurant or do business with a smoke-free option.” He compares denying business owners the “right” to exclude Black people to forcing them to allow in people carrying guns. He goes on, “Now the media is twisting my small government message, making me out to be a crusader for repeal of the Americans for Disabilities Act and The Fair Housing Act. Again, this is patently untrue. I have simply pointed out areas within these broad federal laws that have financially burdened many smaller businesses. For example, should a small business in a two-story building have to put in a costly elevator, even if it threatens their economic viability? Wouldn’t it be better to allow that business to give a handicapped employee a ground floor office? We need more businesses and jobs, not fewer.”

 First, Paul is perpetuating a lie about the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), which would NOT require a small business in a 2-story building to install an elevator. Second, it was Rand Paul himself who raised the issue of the ADA, seeking to explain or justify his opposition to the Civil Rights Act restriction on private businesses by making a parallel to an area he felt would have less support than racial equity. People ‘shocked’ at Paul’s defense of BP against government ‘bullying’ seemed to buy this subterfuge.

Paul may have accurately measured the opposition to equal rights and access for people with disabilities. Commentary from liberal and left sources focused much more strongly on Paul’s arguments against the Civil Rights Act provisions or for BP than his remarks about the ADA. Ironically, in Detroit where the genocidal impact of the privatization and private property rights that Paul champions are most evident, the recent US Social Forum was oblivious of or hostile to the need for accommodations and access for people with disabilities. As Ryan Alley, an activist from CSU Fullerton wrote: “How can 20,000 ‘activists’ talk about liberation in a space with no accessibility or polygender bathrooms? Others get free shuttles and enter the front of the building via grand staircase. We pay to take the bus downtown, enter through a dark hidden alley and discover that the workshop we wanted to attend was moved to ...another (inaccessible) building. Then we fight for the third day in a row to find a place to pee...” In response to struggles raised about the lack of accessibility, conference organizers emailed back that people who had an interest in that should organize a caucus on the topic and make a presentation. It is outrageous for the “left” to be more backward on this issue than the state, the churches or even the bourgeoisie. Left blindness on, or outright hostility towards, affirmative inclusivity for people with disabilities is unconscionable and inexcusable, in an era when disability is growing exponentially due to war, corporate industrialism, environmental degradation and privatized medical care. What does it say about the left if a disabled soldier has better chances of accommodation by the Pentagon, or a disabled prisoner has a better chance of accommodation from the Bureau of Prisons, than a disabled activist has of accommodation and access to progressive or left activities and organizations?














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