Some people are saying this is the best speech of her campaign so far, as she finally takes off the gloves and calls Trump racist (in so many words)
The response has been generally good on the left, although many would point out that the GOP was basically racist, and Clinton should have called out the whole damn party. I think that the GOP has been complicit in racism by being silent about its more extreme members who clearly cater to that disgusting sentiment. I’m not sure that amounts to racism, but perhaps so.
After all, let’s look at a timely news item coming out of West Virginia — something embarrassing for WV’s Attorney General:
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey fired a spokeswoman Thursday, after it was revealed that she took part in a video called “The Stop White Genocide Video” that recites slogans of white supremacists.
Carrie Bowe, who was Morrisey’s assistant communications director, appears throughout the video, speaking about white genocide, a white nationalist conspiracy theory that alleges immigration and integration will cause whites to become extinct.
The YouTube video, first uploaded in December 2012 by someone with the screen name of “Johnny Mantraseed,” boasts that it was banned in 18 countries and was once removed from YouTube. It was re-posted to YouTube in 2013 and has been viewed more than 260,000 times.
Throughout the video, Bowe, who started working for Morrisey in January 2015, repeatedly states, “Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white,” a phrase coined by well-known white supremacist Bob Whitaker, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
She has since taken to Facebook (of course) to say she had no idea what the final video would look like, as if that somehow excuses her for saying the following on video:
“If I tell you the ongoing truth about genocide against my race, the white race, liberals and ‘respectable conservatives’ agree that I’m a Nazi that wants to kill 6 million Jews,” Bowe says.
Bowe also says white children in schools are being misled.
“Throughout elementary school, junior high, high school and college, I was told that my race, the white race, was the cause of all the world’s problems,” Bowe says in the video. “Now, many of you have jobs where minorities say things that would get you as a white person instantly fired.”
The four women ask viewers to “recite The Mantra,” a series of phrases embraced by segregationists.
“Asia for the Asians, Africa for the Africans, white countries for everybody,” another women in the video says, the first phrase of “The Mantra.”
Here’s my favorite part:
Bowe, who made $40,000 as a Morrisey aide, served as his acting press secretary in September 2015. She also helped manage his field office staff members.
Before Morrisey hired her, she was member relations director with the conservative Family Policy Council of West Virginia.
That’s the state level version of the Family Research Council.
The conservative Family Policy Council of West Virginia is asking Wheeling leaders to release any and all documentation of the proposed protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents with a Freedom of Information Act request.
The request states that any such ordinance would elevate “changeable” sexual behavior to a special level of legal protection. The Charleston-based council’s president, Allen Whitt, said this ordinance has already likely been drafted under residents’ noses, despite Mayor Glenn Elliott assuring no such legislation is anywhere near a draft, let alone fully realized.
“That is misinformation. It is untruth,” Whitt said. “Their position is to pass a city ordinance. We’ve seen this multiple times. That’s a straight up lie.”
The council describes itself as a “leading conservative policy group championing social issues,” such as religious freedom.
If you were to say there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between alt-right, the klan, and good old fashioned “family values” conservatism, I don’t think many could refute that outright.
In any event, Clinton was obviously trying to woo moderate Republicans who cannot identify with Trump’s blatant racism, so she wasn’t prepared to go that far.
And Clinton’s speech has sent Trump into a fit (“no, CLINTON is the REAL racist!”).
Unfortunately, CNN is chastising both candidates for getting into the mud. The problem with “both sides do it” of journalistic equality is that one side actually has a basis for doing it.