Part I -- Some Background
The Ku Klux Klan (the name derives from the Greek word Kuklos meaning circle with a modification of the word clan added), an American terrorist organization, was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1865. It was organized by Southerners who refused to reconcile themselves to the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War, and its declared mission was to "maintain the supremacy of the white race in the United States." To this end it adopted tactics in the southern states that would so terrify emancipated African Americans and their white allies, that they would not dare to vote, run for public office, or intermingle with whites except in "racially appropriate" ways.
Intimidation took many forms. Non-whites and their allies who sought to assert civil rights were threatened, assaulted and frequently murdered. If they were women they were subjected to assault and rape. The property of these people was destroyed, their homes and meeting places attacked with bombs or burned. Finally, a favorite tactic was lynching.
-- First and foremost, the belief that African Americans, and subsequently all non-whites, were dangerous to "white civilization." This belief was built into the cultural perceptions of the majority. With rare exceptions, a white person could not grow up in this environment without acquiring a knee-jerk prejudice against non-whites.
--As a result, local white populations, as well as local law enforcement, often sympathized with the Klan, sometimes feared it, or just did not care about what happened to the non-white population.
In the years following the Civil
War, the activities of the Klan only subsided when the U.S. government allowed
the Southern states to impose laws that prevented African Americans from voting
and acquiesced in a harsh regime of segregation. When the Civil rights movement
finally took place in the 1960s, the Klan reappeared and participated in the
violent opposition to desegregation and racial equality. This abated only when
the federal government started seriously enforcing its own civil rights
laws.
Part II -- Old Tactics and New Victims
While today the Ku
Klux Klan as an organization is nearly (but not quite) gone, it would be a
mistake to think that the Klan mentality is dead in the U.S. Quite the contrary.
The nation's deep seated history of racism has helped preserve an apparent
permanent subset of Americans who grow up with prejudicial feelings against
anyone they perceive as a threat to their version of the "American way of
life."
This background can help us understand the on-going attacks
against American Muslims. Since 2010 there has been an increase in the
number of attacks on American Muslims, their mosques and other property, as well
as American minorities (such as Sikhs) who are regularly mistaken for Muslims.
These attacks are not the work of a refurbished Ku Klux Klan but, nonetheless,
have about them the same nature: fear of American Muslims as cultural
subversives (for instance, the delusion that they seek to impose Sharia law in
the United States); anonymous threats of violence (via telephone, internet, and also in the form of abusive graffiti); bomb, arson, and gunfire attacks on property; and finally assaults and murders. The
Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department has investigated over 800 such incidents in the last 11 years. Eight such attacks occurred in the first half of the present month of August 2012, including the murder of six Sikhs in Milwaukee on August 5.
An important factor in all of this is the role of a number of campaigning politicians who go around proclaiming the threat that
American Muslims supposedly represent to the country. For instance, just prior to a spate of arson attacks in the Chicago area, U.S. Representative Joe Walsh held town hall meetings in the area where he proclaimed, "One thing I am sure of is that there are people in this country -- there is a radical strain of Islam in
this country -- it's not just over there -- trying to kill Americans every week." His
talk was filmed and posted on YouTube. Similar rhetoric has been heard from a
dozen other politicians including Peter King, the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and Michele Bachmann, who was among those running for GOP candidate for president.
Part III -- What It Takes to Break a Bad Habit
This is what you get when you practice a culture that has evolved
around racist views. And, you get it more or less in perpetuity. In the case of the United States, the nation spent from 1789 (counting from the establishment of the Constitution which legitimized slavery) to 1954 (the year the Supreme Court declared, in Brown v. Board of Education, mandatory segregation of public schools unconstitutional), or 165 years, building up an "American way of life,"
which legitimized discrimination against non-whites. Subsequently, it has spent from 1957 (counting from the year that Brown v. Board of Education actually began to be enforced) to the present, or 55 years trying to undo that legacy. If it takes about as long to undo a nationwide bad habit as it did to establish it, we have a long road ahead of us.
What the years since 1957 have done is to legally enforce non-racist public behavior. This is certainly a necessary
step which, if consistently applied, will eventually lead to an internalized
change in the outlook and morality of most of the population. In this regard, Barack Obama's election as the first African American president in 2008 was a
sure sign of progress. However, the virulent reaction to Obama by more than a few is another sign that, while 55 years is long enough to alter the public behavior of some people, it is not long enough to change the private attitudes of many. Thus, there are still those groups of citizens who are deeply racist. Today, under normal circumstances, they keep their feeling to themselves and their like-minded circle. However, when conditions allow, that racism emerges in a public way, often in hate speech but sometimes more brutally. These extremists are the modern-day versions of yesterday's klansmen and, given a chance, they
will happily commit mayhem in the name of their cherished traditions. American
Muslims are now their target.
Part IV -- Another Example = Our Ally Israel
If you want to see another example of a society that has
historically cultivated discriminatory outlooks and practices, one that American
Zionists consider quite similar to the U.S., take a look at Israel. By the way,
If there is any truth to the belief that Israel is "just like us," it can only
refer to the United States prior to 1957 -- prior to the introduction of civil
rights laws.
Much like the American south of that pre-legal equality era,
Israel is shaped by a culture of ethno/religious exclusiveness practiced amidst
a larger out-group (in this case the Palestinian Arabs). This has led the
Israeli Jews to teach successive generations that it is proper and necessary to
discriminate against Palestinians. And, sure enough, over the years Israel has
produced its
own terrorist organizations that intimidate and attack Palestinian Arabs:
the Irgun and Lehi during the years leading to the establishment of the state in
1948, Gush Emunim and Terror Against Terror in the 1970s and 1980s, and today's
"Price-Taggers" and West Bank settler vigilantes. Just like klansmen in the
American south, these terrorists are rarely prosecuted and almost never
adequately punished for their crimes because much of the Jewish population as
well as the organs of the state sympathize with them. And, just like the
American south, they operate in an environment conducive to an Israeli version
of lynching.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
2
