Divide and conquer—that's what they try to do to any group trying to make social change. I call it D&C. Black people are supposed to turn against Puerto Ricans. Women are supposed to turn against their mothers and mothers-in-law. We're all supposed to compete with each other for the favors of the ruling class.
(Florynce R. Kennedy (b. 1916), African American lawyer, author, activist, and humorist. As quoted in The Decade of Women, by Suzanne Levine and Harriet Lyons (1980). Said in 1973.)
I have a request. This is for everyone who thinks that the women of the Democratic party have been acting like stuck up bitches who do not understand how hard it is to live as an African-American in this country, subject to arrest and prosecution for the crime of being Black. It is also is for everyone who thinks that Black men do not understand how hard it is to be female, since every 9 minutes in this country some woman is beaten by her partner. And, it is for women of color who feel like they are being torn in two directions.
Please read
Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis. The book describes the history of the unified feminist and abolition movements lead social pioneers like the Grimke Sisters and Frederick Douglas. Davis’s book also tells the story of how the two groups were torn about by circumstance but also by the machinations of capitalist leaders who saw advantage in keeping their two lowest paid wage slaves divided and conquered.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2713755&mesg_id=2713755The link above is my old book report from January, when DU was in primary mode. Back then, every group hated every other group. If one candidate lost a state, it was because some group in that state was prejudiced. Asians in California did not like Blacks. Neither did Hispanics in Nevada. Men in some states could not stand the idea of women in positions of power. Luckily, that insanity is over. However, I never would have guessed that in mid August, the RNC would still have its moles pitting women against Blacks on the internet, where no one can see that the person posting the inflammatory material is actually some white dude in a business suit named Brad with a degree in political science from a Bible School.
OK, now that you have ordered
Women, Race and Class from Amazon.com or whatever book dealer you prefer, I would like you to consider something. The people who come up those paranoid conspiracy theories that go something like “The pant suit wearing minions of Hillary are going to storm the convention and try to steal the nomination and if they can not do that, they will throw the election to John McCain by casting their 18 million votes for the Republican nominee”----these wacko moles
sound just like right wing fear mongers . No true progressive or leftist Democrat ever talks like that. Leftists do not fear large unwashed masses of people driven by anger. To Democrats,
that is what Democracy looks like. .
Leftists love it when the people speak out. Leftists hate it when the people are silenced by the elite. When a progressive speaks of a conspiracy, they do it in the language that I used above, the language of the Marxist. They talk about capitalists and corporate CEOs and a small cabal of the ultra-rich who conspire to rob the people of their voices. They talk about Karl Rove and the RNC oppo room. No Democratic group
on its own would dream up a conspiracy of African-American Obama supporters being bused from caucus to caucus where they could pad the vote. That is straight out of the imaginations of the right wing, which has nightmares about Democratic vote fraud and angry race riots. We are supposed to imagine the million man march in buses rolling from state to state raising its voice at local causes so that no one else can be heard. Kind of like the Brooks Brothers Riot that stopped the recount in Florida.
Think about the fantasies we have been peddled----Hillary’s 18 million pant suited lesbians, Obama’s 18 million strong abomination----and you will see that they could only have arisen in the minds of someone from the right wing---possibly even someone with experience in the U.S. government.
http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/donner.html New movements are put through subversification to "fuel backlash charges that our national security is endangered by a sinister conspiracy of dissidents who have deliberately depleted out intelligence resources to prepare the way for a takeover." In this Kafka-meets-Orwell world, lack of evidence of the conspiracy becomes proof that one exists. Donner explains that "Since no evidence of such a conspiracy will emerge, the accusers will exploit, as in the past, its nonexistence: Is it not obvious that a cover-up was part of the conspiracy and that the absence of proof demonstrates it effectiveness?"21 The recent work of journalist Steven Emerson and the interviews with former FBI hardliner Oliver "Buck" Revell are examples of this process.
The thinking which is described in the article above, about government efforts to stifle civil liberties and dissent, is consistent with that which is used by those who fabricate the absolutely ludicrous conspiracy theories that have become as common as dirt at progressive forums like DU over the last 12 months.
So, I am calling bullshit on every crackpot story about armies of angry manhaters with unshaven armpits who are out to sabotage the convention
and every tale about how the thuggery committed by Obama’s legion of teenaged pranksters has lead to the destruction of life as we know it on this planet.
Anyone who can not hear the right wing scriptmaster behind these kinds of stories has not been paying attention to the propaganda that our government has been churning out for the last fifty years.
Now that you are no longer distracted, you will be able to concentrate on the record 35 million votes cast in the Democratic primary----which means that the Party is 3/5 of the way to victory this fall. No wonder the Republican strategy includes Democratic infighting. If they can not persuade us to fight among ourselves, the chances are we will win.