Conservatives Blast Cruz for Praising Mandela...Senator's supporters yearn for the days of apartheid

[Cali_Democrat]

Source: The Austin Chronicle

This just in from the "you can't make it up" department: Sen. Ted Cruz has upset his base by (wait for it, wait for it) eulogizing Nelson Mandela.

Let's put this in context. Cruz (or possibly just his press people) think a day without some kind of statement or other is a day wasted. At this point (post-shutdown), most members of the press ignore them. But his Tea Party supporters still pay great attention.

So yesterday, after the announcement of the former South African president's death, with clockwork inevitability Cruz's office issued a letter of condolence to Mandela's family. So far, so polite and reasonable enough. Then he did what he always does: Attempted to rewrite a dead liberal icon as a secret conservative. He did much the same with President John F. Kennedy recently, and now he called Mandela "an inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe" (conservative dog whistle speak for "one of us.&quot He added, "Because of his epic fight against injustice, an entire nation is now free."

Cue moral outrage from the GOP's hard right.

Read more: http://www.austinchronicle.com/blogs/news/2013-12-06/conservatives-blast-cruz-for-praising-mandela/

[BeyondGeography]

1. They turn every instance of shared humanity into a global look-how-fucked-up-we-are party

[Blue_Tires]

2. This is the ultimate problem with politics now...

People are *automatically* conditioned to despise ANYTHING from the 'other' side; no matter how much they have to twist their logic or make up imaginary facts...

How does this nation ever advance when so many people would rather stick to rigid party/religious dogma instead of using their goddamned brains??

[underpants]

3. Wow - I highly recommend reading the whole articles w/ lo

Low lights from the twitter attack on their own

[publicdefender76]

4. THIS is the article you need to read on this topic. 125+ DIRECT QUOTES from these people.

Would someone be willing to post this as a new thread? It is JAW-DROPPING.

From the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/supporters-of-us-senator_b_4399368.html

[KatyMan]

5. boy there's a lot of stupid on that page...

They have to be sock puppets don't they? They're all saying the same thing, communist, marxist, terrorist. Amazing how clueless these people are; I mean, you know conceptually that there's an element of stupid involved, but when you see it out in full force it's pretty shocking.

[ronnie624]

17. They can't use overt racist language anymore.

I think 'communist' serves as a surrogate for a certain racist epithet.

The montage definitely illustrates some powerful stupid.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. I see white southern racists' definition of Communist hasn't changed hasn't changed in 50 years

In those days, they -- and this included the John Birch Society -- called Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders "Communists," even as the KKK (another forefather of the Tea Party) spread white supremacist terror through the South.

[pretzel4gore]

7. having compassion for the poor

i recall reading some chunky charlie from El Salvador was sitting beside Tom Brokaw on a plane to Miami and he told Brokaw that even having compassion for poor people meant you were a commie...
he was probably right....

[Jack Rabbit]

11. Are you shure he was from El Salvador?

Perhaps so, since El Salvador was having a big problem in the seventies and eighties with right wing death squads, but so we amny other Latin American nations.

The first Latin American figure that comes to my mind is General Efraín Ríos Montt, who became President of Guatemala in a coup d'etat in 1982. Although the US was not complicit in the coup, Rios Montt, a Pentecostal Christian, became President Reagan's favorite Latin American dictator. The indigenous population of Mayans suffered greatly under Rios Montt; many Mayans, believed to by sympathetic to leftist guerrillas, were forced to re-education camps and others were forced to work in the fields of Guatemala's wealthiest rancheros. President Reagain paid a visit to Guatemala City in December 1982 and called Rios Montt "a man of great personal integrity and commitment." In June 1983, after 15 months in office, Rios Montt was overthrown by his own Defense Minister, but government policy towards the Mayans changed little.

Rios Montt made a political comeback in the nineties and was elected to the Guatemalan congress in 1999. That same year, President Clinton apologized for US support of Rios Montt in the eighties. Rios Montt's office came with immunity from prosecution; meanwhile, Mayan survivors of his regime, led by Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú, were pressing to bring human rights charges, including torture and genocide, against Rios Montt. Rios Montt term of office in Congress ended in January 2012; twelve days later, Rios Montt was indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity. In May of this year, Rios Montt was convicted as charged and sentenced to 80 years prison, but the conviction was overturned only week later. The government will re-try Rios Montt in 2015, when he will be 89 years old.

Rios Montt sounds like the sort of person who would make a statement along the line that compassion for the poor is a Communist sentiment. However, I don't know if he is the one who said that, and there are a number of other Latin American dictators from that dark period who could have said that.

[pretzel4gore]

22. rios montt- just a typical reactionarky!

i mention this anecdote using the swiss cheese, err, my memory! I recall being appalled at the ignorance some people display, even considering that they believe themselves to be fighting 'good fight'. Mostly, the subhuman mentality rightwingers wallow in displays their moral bankrupcy, which thus makes their 'total' control of the news/info media a vital aspect of their howling success. I notice you have 'omgK!!!' posts, when i still less then 10K! You could probably write a book using your DU activity as template! Man, has the world been fukked, eh? Anyway, to continue the discussion on the latin american fascasti mentality, i wanted to mention Robert D'Aubisson, the defective who oversaw murder of Archbishop Romero. D'Aubisson later died of stomach cancer, apparently pain was so awful even heroine unable to....to...you get pic! At the time, William Casey was running reagan CIA, and Casey was a hardcore Catholic! I suspect D'aubisson maybe was, like agent Samoza, taken out by a bigger asshole (sorry for crudity ) who himself hides behind the US flag and our $trillion dollar militaries! In opposition to ALL them, I consider the 'Potasi Silver Miners'** the epitome of human innocence and decency- so much so i wish i was one!
Keep up the good work Jack!

**Potasi silver mines in Bolivia produced thousands of tonnes of silver for Spain treasury; the miners were local Indians pressed-ganged into slave like work. God alone knows how many died making Mr Pig fat! And Mr Pig is still doing it (maybe because the fascists do not think there's a God, or sin or hell or soon!)

[alp227]

23. Haha. That's their substitute word for n____r.

Just like Reagan giving a "states' rights" speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi in the summer of 1980 was his way of talking to those reminiscing for the days of Dixie (of course, Dixie ain't complete without Jim Crow and "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever&quot .

[Happyhippychick]

8. The editors corrected the spelling

I really wish they hadn't.

[freshwest]

14. The Communist/commie/socialist menace lives! Count how many times this fanatic repeats the words:

You need a history lesson:

Nelson Mandela was a Communist and his group was on the American terrorist list. He was a glorified terrorist. Marxist murdering scum. He was a socialist terrorizer of white Africans. He was a convicted terrorist in the Communist Party. He was a mass-murdering Communist. He was a Communist who murdered many people. He was a Communist. Communist! He was a Communist and a terrorist! Mandela was a Communist and a terrorist. He was a Communist terrorist murderer-bomber in service to the Soviet Union. He was a Commie terrorist, Mr. Cruz. He stood against apartheid, not because it was wrong, but because he is a racist and cared only for his own color. He was a Communist/terrorist. He was an avowed socialist -- an ex-terrorist supported by Castro and the U.S.S.R. This information is readily available, just ask any South African with common sense.

Wonder what the name of this condition is called...

[TRoN33]

20. Its called COGNITIVE-FUCKING-DISSONANCE.

[DonViejo]

15. Wow. Just wow!

[santamargarita]

9. The American Taliban speaks.

[Purveyor]

10. Of course they 'yearn for the days of apartheid' except they have their own version from israel

that they also wholeheartedly support.

[Cha]

12. Idiots.. they know better than crazycruz that Madiba

is a Liberal Icon. And, yes I know.. cc is just trying to steal him in plain sight.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4140433

[tclambert]

16. If only Mandela had devoted himself to fighting Obamacare, he might have accomplished something

really important. Oh, well, I guess not everyone can become a great international hero like Ted Cruz.

[davidpdx]

18. He'll probably retract the statement in a few days

[TRoN33]

19. Guys, it doesn't matter because...

these same racist idiots are well known for notoriously short memory. They won't remember Cruz's praise of Mandela in six months later. They will vote for Ted Cruz in heartbeat if he is Republican's front-runner for 2016 Presidency race.

[hollowdweller]

21. They tend to forget Israel's Socialist Roots

And the fact that many of their prominent politicians of yesteryear were also branded terrorists.

But of course they are mostly WHITE.

[FarrenH]

24. In case anyone's wondering

Last edited Sun Dec 8, 2013, 11:20 AM - Edit history (3)

The American far-right white playbook on SA is exactly the same as the aging, South African far-right white playbook, thanks to Apartheid connections, the Internet and emigration.

On the first score - I was a teenager under Apartheid just after Reagan was overruled by both Democrats and Republicans on sanctions against our country. I remember old white men telling me how it was all just political correctness and many Americans "knew how things really worked". Stories about doing deals with this Texan or that Mississipian businessmen (I'm not picking on the South here, but I remember clearly that these "courageous" sanction busters always seemed to be from the South). Those connections ran deep.

After Apartheid, there was about a decade of white flight, much of it (but not all, admittedly) by the most obstinately unreconstructed racists. Roughly a million white people emigrated, leaving the 9+ million that live here today. Favourite destinations: Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Australia and the USA - mainly the Bible Belt, from anecdotal evidence like tracking old classmates on Facebook.

By the mid-2000s, bitter South African whites had a lively presence on extreme right wing and racist sites on the Internet that were also popular with American right-wingers. Googling claims made by bitter expats, I discovered that many of them had their genesis on the South African forum on Stormfront, where American, Northern European and Australian race supremacists frequently pepper them with questions about the "threatened white race" in Africa and get the most predictably distorted and factually inaccurate conspiracy theories in response.

Among those distortions: Nelson Mandela was a communist. In fact he was an close ally of the SA Communist Party and it was communist countries around the world that helped the liberation movement when the UK and the USA still viewed them as terrorists, which forged deep links and personal loyalties. But he was not a communist. Shortly after his release he was forthright about it: "I am not a communist" he said in a CNN interview.

His style was very consultative so its difficult to credit him alone for policy in a newly liberated SA. But that policy was anything but communist. In fact it was an odd mixture of neoliberalism and welfare statism. SA enthusiastically signed up for the WTO/GATT while at the same time creating a government-sponsored housing program and the beginnings of the largest social welfare program in Africa. In fact its embrace of a neoliberal vision of globalism was among the errors of the young ANC government. Tariffs and trade protections were dropped overnight and foreign investment aggressively courted. We hemorrhaged low-paying jobs to India and China and some industries, like textiles, collapsed almost overnight. As happened elsewhere in the world (mostly white) elites benefited enormously, while some poorer whites, seeing what privilege they had slipping away and being completely fucking clueless about the actual dynamics taking place, blamed it on the ANC's purported "communism", social welfare and AA - and still do.

Mandela and Mac Maharaj said that the only political/economic literature they could get regularly on Robbin Island was the slightly right-leaning Economist, and its clear that it played some role in shaping what they saw as a pragmatic outlook. Mandela's economic ideas can be compared, in their context, to Clinton's. He was in South African terms a kind of "third wayer" when he became president. Describing Tata as a "communist" shows a blitheringly ignorant and simpleminded understanding of history. In fact the South African communist party is to this day a junior partner of the ANC, with a relatively small constituency. Its role has often been characterized as the social conscience of the ruling alliance, although its views are seldom reflected in actual policy.

One clear example I've picked up over the last decade of a global playbook is the "white genocide" trope. In Europe, its the Muslims that are "raping our women" and turning Europe into "Eurabia". In the USA its a whole host of minorites. In South Africa, the peculiar vulnerability of farmers in post Apartheid SA (a community that is the bastion of White Afrikanerdom and home to some of the most virulent old-school racists) is the foundation of claims that there is a co-ordinated effort to wipe out white people (even though whites as a whole ethnic group are less vulnerable - crime statistics indicate that 2% of murder victims are white despite being just under 9% of the population). And here's the thing, far-right Swedes, Americans, Australians and South Africans are all passing these stories between each other on the same message boards. Eagerly snapping up every rant and anecdote as further evidence of some kind of global conspiracy by brown people and simpering white liberals to wipe out the white race or forever dilute its purity.

They're knitting together a global narrative of victimhood, which is why their arguments are all starting to sound remarkably similar.