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Antisemitism Is Racism

I believe that the reason that so many progressives, including racial justice progressives, don’t understand the threat of antisemitism and even, really, that antisemitism is in fact racism!!! is that we understand racism wrong, or at least incompletely. Here’s what I mean.

U.S. residents, for the most part, think of racism in terms of effects – impoverishment, incarceration rates, etc., – and not in terms of root causes like economic exploitation and the gathering and consolidation of power. When considered in those terms, any group can be targeted if enough pressure is exerted by a competing and, especially, dominant group. … Read more “Antisemitism Is Racism”

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The Anti-Fascist Scouting Report: What The Left Can Learn From the Right

The leadership of the Christian Right has conjured what amounts to a resurrection of a wide array of threat vectors targeting LGBTQ people. They accomplished this by backing Trump’s candidacy and leading, by some accounts, more than 80% of white, self-identified evangelical voters to back him in the election. By allying themselves with Trump, evangelical right wing leaders have won a place at the table of the Trump regime and, seemingly overnight, gains of the LGBTQ movement we thought of as secure signposts of progressive change are in peril.

The cutting edge of Trump’s offensive against civil and human rights … Read more “The Anti-Fascist Scouting Report: What The Left Can Learn From the Right”

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About the Stereotype Busting High Median Incomes of Trump Voters

Nate Silver’s findings regarding the median incomes of Trump supporters are worth taking a look at as what he has found busts the frankly offensive stereotype of the Trump supporter as a working class rube.

When trying to defeat a bigot, one would do best not to fall prey to bigotry. Doing so just polarizes an already dangerously polarized situation, and all while failing to address what may, in fact, be one of the most important bits of knowledge necessary to effectively fight the right: in order to beat right wing movements, you have to separate the leaders from their … Read more “About the Stereotype Busting High Median Incomes of Trump Voters”

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Trump, Racism, and the Fear Factor

A recent USA TODAY/Rock the Vote poll of 1,541 voters aged 18-34 found that younger voters’ lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton is overcome in a theoretical Clinton v. Trump general election race. Across all demographic groups specified, young voters only get excited about Clinton as the lesser evil.

The lack of enthusiasm for Clinton in the primary may be the result of her record as one of the most effective champions of neoliberalism from the center-left. And neoliberalism, the politic of privatization, unfettered free trade (NAFTA, TPP, etc.), and small government, is one of the drivers of the conditionsRead more “Trump, Racism, and the Fear Factor”