Racism Is The New (Old) "Not Racist"

posted 7/13/2012 by the Salt City Sinner


When I talk or write about far-right, extremist news site and aggregator WND, formerly "World Net Daily," I usually say that "it's the most far-right website this side of Stormfront." Since I won't be linking to Stormfront, suffice to say that it is a white supremacist / Christian Identity site where scary racist weirdos go to post weird scary racist nonsense.

Well, the distinction between WND's ideology and outright white supremacy just got much blurrier.


Meet Colin Flaherty, newly minted WND contributor and not-at-all-racist author of "White Girl Bleed A Lot: The Return Of Racial Violence To America And How The Media Ignores It" (I won't be linking to that, either).

A face for radio (and a best-selling racist screed)

You know how they say that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?

Let's see what hammer Grand Cyclops Flaherty is wielding right now:

Hmm, do I detect some kind of theme here?

Yes, I think it would be fair to say that the second most recent addition to Big Joe Farah's Three Ring Circus Of Old, Angry White People (the most recent addition is a Christianist weirdo with a rock band who was just slapped down by a judge and ordered to pay Ms. Rachel Maddow's court costs) has something of a thing going on about those scary black people.

Let's pry up a rock, have a peek underneath at the wriggly bits, and see what Colin "Cracker Barrel" Flaherty has to say about a recent issuance of True Justice by a totally non-activist judge:

Judge Marvin Arrington could not take it any more. After six years of looking out over his Atlanta courtroom, dealing with "murders, rapes, robberies and home invasions" he suddenly realized "99.9% (of the defendants) were Afro-American." 

So he kicked all the white people out of the courtroom, then scolded the black defendants: "I simply said to the young people, 'what in the world are you doing with your lives?'" he told Atlanta television reporter Jaquitta Williams.

Judge Marvin Arrington

You know, I'd like to think I live in a country where some grandstanding, racist hyena like the honorable Judge Arrington would be promptly disbarred and/or have his ass sued off for such an action, but I guess I'm old-fashioned that way. What justification did Arrington give for kicking people out of his court based on their race? Something about not wanting the defendants to feel like he was embarrassing them.

What justification did Flaherty dig up?

Some thought the judge's actions unusual. But a white Atlanta court visitor explained it thus: "People of color talk more freely among themselves."

It's interesting that Flaherty would make such a big deal out of this in July of 2012 - four years after the incident in question took place (hardly late breaking news there, Colin). It's even more extraordinary that he would devote one of his Heroes of the Race Wars columns to Arrington after Arrington said, all the way back in 2008 - you know, when this took place - that "In retrospect, [kicking white people out of the courtroom] was a mistake."

There's a three-part pattern at work here that comprises the Flaherty Method as far as I can tell.

First, carefully note the race of any and every person involved in the story, especially if it happens to support your black vs. white thesis.

Second, cite completely unreliable and off the wall sources, whether it's a "white court visitor," gibberish on Twitter (Flaherty's favorite source), or a grainy YouTube video. If you can't find anything to back up your story in the media, grasp at straws - comments on message boards, social media, etc.

Third: if possible, find a proxy willing to go that last extra few inches for you (i.e., "people of color talk more freely among themselves").

My sources on Twitter assure me that this is Colin Flaherty in his free time

Two more quick thoughts regarding Waffen SS Special Commandant Flaherty.

First - it's interesting to note that Big Joe Farah and the rest of the white pride posse at WND scream bloody murder and $h!t themselves every time someone tries to lump them in with violent militias, anti-government terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, or pro-life murderers (there's a funny contradiction) like Eric Rudolph - but how would Big Joe come off if we scraped the bottom of Twitter's barrel and judged him and his "news" organization by what we found?

Lastly, it's worth remembering what Lee Atwater, the forerunner of much of WND's brand of mudslinging, dirty pool politics, had to say on the subject of conservativism and race relations:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N*gger, n*gger, n*gger." By 1964 you can't say "n*gger" - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites...it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N*gger, n*gger."

Keep in mind that was Atwater in his own words, talking about his own political movement (conservatism).

Flaherty's new home, WND, is the biggest pusher of the "Birther" movement, not coincidentally, a movement obsessed with America's first black President's bloodline and heritage.

It's worth nothing that in the case of Flaherty and WND, things are getting a lot less coded and abstract now - that's for sure.