Mike Gold: A Negro and A Jew Walk Into A Bar…
Michael Davis wrote this election day column for ComicMix, which we published on election day, which was yesterday. It’s a very powerful piece, one of the more important we’ve run in the past 10 years. After I read it, I put aside my plans to wax poetic about the Doctor Strange movie. There’s always time to do that. If you have yet to read Michael’s column, I urge you to do so.
I will say this: I’ve known Michael for the better part of 30 years. We have talked a lot. He had never shared that story with me.
And some people say nothing good came out of Donald Trump’s campaign.
What he was talking about, if I might be allowed to define it, is the strategic concept of “divide and conquer.” Often attributed to Philip II of Macedon, it means exactly what it says. Instead of a long-winded explanation of the time-honored concept, I’ll offer an example that is in keeping with Michael’s column.
Back in the early days of America’s ongoing civil rights movement, a lot of Jewish American students from the north went to the southeastern states to stand and march side-by-side with Black Americans in that critical struggle. Many stuck around to help organize. Some got killed. Check out U. S. vs Cecil Price et al., or watch the movie Mississippi Burning.
This could not be tolerated by some. Blacks could not be tolerated, Jews could not be tolerated and together they constituted a genuine Justice League of America that had to be stopped in order to protect state’s rights and, therefore, the American Way. And it was very successful: by rumor, by innuendo, by subterfuge, blacks were frightened by stories about Jews and Jews were frightened by blacks. Jewish doctors injected black children with the HIV virus. Black thugs burnt down Jewish stores. Jewish bankers kept black citizens poor. Blacks singled out Jews for violent attacks. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Since hatred of Black Americans is as American as hatred of Jewish Americans and vice versa, it wasn’t hard to sell these concepts. After all, we are all Americans.
As the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan (et al) took major positions in support of Donald Trump’s campaign, blacks and Jews felt our collective Spidey-Sense tingling. The polite analysis was “Oh, shit, not again.” And then “Oh, shit, this isn’t good at all.”
It’s ironic that Trump campaigned on the anti-PC platform. It is the concept of political correctness that has prevented a generation of discriminated Americans from seeing the snipers in the trees. I’d much rather a hater called me a kike to my face than be surprised that the same person was a closet hater. I’d rather see them coming.
Divide and conquer works best from the shadows. Or, to be more specific, from under a rock. Remove that rock and expose the haters to the light of truth. While stumping for office, Donald Trump and his supporters never used words like nigger or kike, at least not in public. But Donald Trump ran the most discriminatory race in the past half century.
Let’s light the light of truth.
As Michael’s editor, I say “great column, Michael.”
As Michael’s friend, I say “thank you.”
You seem to have forgotten that in those days the KKK was the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party. Today’s equivalent is the BLM.
You are not only being hyperbolic you are shockingly wrong to equate a long standing terrorist organization that’s members held seats of power and committed multiple acts of murder to some protesters calling for equal treatment from law enforcement than white people get.
Anyone who doesn’t know that the southern Dixiecrats were racist and had kkk ties has no sense of history. Also the “Party of Lincoln” would certainly imply a far more African American friendly political party than what we have today.
Actually, Matt, with all due respect, you’re totally full of shit. Read a history book once in a while.
As for comparing the Klan to Black Lives Matter, that is what as known in above-75-IQ circles as a false equivalency. The two outfits differ in an astonishing number of ways. For example, the Klan is best known for lynching people. Lots and lots of people, mostly blacks, Catholics and Jews. BLM hasn’t lynched anybody. I know it’s popular these days for morons who are completely unburdened by the truth to look at every killing of a police officer as a BLM action, but there isn’t a wiff of reality there. You might as well say BLM is the “New Black Panther Party,” an organization crippled by the fact that it does not exist. Also, the Klan was highly organized with hundreds of thousands of white male shitkickers reporting to a well-defined hierarchy. BLM isn’t organized at all; there’s no Grand Imperial Klingon running things, or even suggesting things. I suspect that any dozen random self-defined “members” of BLM couldn’t even agree on where to have lunch.
You’re right, more or less, in the fact that there was an association between southern Democrats and some western Democrats and the Klan. This association, for example, gave us President Harry S. Truman, who was a Klansman. Then Harry screwed the pooch and integrated our armed forces. The southern Democrats — the so-called Dixiecrats — left the Democrats in a fit of pique over the horrors of racial integration that were supported by much of the rest of the Democratic Party. Today, we call these Sons of The Ku Klux Klan “the Republican Party.”
And now, thanks to Putin’s assistance, this far-right wing take-over of the GOP is pretty much complete. There is no Party of Lincoln or Party of Nixon or Party of Reagan. There is just the Party of Trump. The racist, hate-mongering, bigoted Donald Trump.
Kinda sounds like the Klan, doesn’t it?