DAN FLYNN'S TOP 10 EXAMPLES OF NAACP RACISM? UMMM, NO…

This is too easy! Conservatives will all but blow up the planet before they deal with the racists among them, and It is real interesting how whenever conservatives are called out on their racism it is those conservatives that particularly have that baggage that bitch about it the most! Apparently former Leadership Institute memberand former director of the right-wing “Accuracy” in Academia (AIA) Dan Flynn, a guy whom DLJ interviewed at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2000 (a few months before OPP launched), decided to post on his blog the top ten things he finds racist with the NAACP, only he’s a little more David Duke than David Letterman. This is par for the course for Flynn, and given how bad the conservative newspaper Human Events is, not surprising they picked it up too. To Flynn, there are no valid claims of racism a black person could make, and if there is, let’s see a top ten list of that!  This would make sense considering Flynn has no problem with white supremacists. When he was running “Accuracy” in Academia he invited Council of Conservative CItizens member Sam Francis, who among other things believed that “universities today breed an entire class dedicated to attacking and undermining white, Western, Christian and American identities and values”,  to speak at several AIA events, and gave a glowing tribute to him on his blog in 2005 when Francis died. So Flynn has issues, and we couldn’t resist ripping apart his latest whine, so here it is…with a few notes from us (our comments are red and bold). Our contention can actually start from the Human Events website where we saw it first. If you are going to complain about people calling you out on your racism, the last place you want your rant seen is under an ad for the Ann Coulter book where she dedicated three pages to defending the Council of Conservative Citizens (see picture)!

Dan Flynn (with some help from us)

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) condemned the Tea Party movement last month for alleged bigotry within its ranks. The mainstream always seems extreme to extremists. As the following top-ten list demonstrates, the NAACP, a hotbed of political hotheads in recent years, isn’t the best organization to be lecturing others about extremism.

No, it won’t.

10. In March 2008, ABC News revealed that Barack Obama’s pastor had preached that African Americans should sing “not God Bless America, God Damn America,” that 9/11 proved that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” and that the U.S. government invented AIDS. The following month, on April 28, 2008, the NAACP’s Detroit chapter honored the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a keynote speaker at a massive dinner.

One of the biggest lessons we should take from the Shirley Sherrod incident is never to trust edited video, especially when it is being used by conservatives to discredit black leaders. Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been an unfortunate victim of this practice, but since Dan decided to use him as one of his points, we will take the opportunity to discuss him. Rev. Wright never “preached that African Americans should sing ‘not God Bless America, God Damn America.'” In fact, he echoed sentiments that would be heard from a lot of fundamentalist right-wing Christians about how govenments that place themselves above God eventually fall. He was along the same lines with the “Chickens coming home to roost” speech. No one seemed to be all that concerned about these sermons when they were first given, let alone sold as DVDs for years. But here are the videos for you to watch for yourself.

As for the US inventing AIDS contention, while it is still up to debate, even with us, you can’t zero in on Rev. Wright alone for that. This video notes that he cites Dr. Leonard Horowitz as a source::

The unfounded attacks on Rev. Wright were and still are only a part of a routine to discredit then-presidential candidate Obama, and it failed. Sadly, because we allowed the charges to go unopposed they stand and Wright is a pariah now. That doesn’t mean the charges aren’t bullshit.

9. In 2000, the NAACP filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of Mumia Abu Jamal, the former Black Panther who murdered a white police officer in 1981. “I shot the motherf—– and I hope the motherf—– dies,” three witnesses heard a wounded Abu Jamal exclaim in a Philadelphia hospital.

Around the time the NAACP brief was filed, Flynn wrote a pamphlet about how wrong everyone else was about defending Mumia. The pamphlet was long on political propaganda and short on the facts – like how in the police report written the evening of the shooting by Officer Gary Wakshul states, “the Negro male made no comments.” It was only months later and after Mumia filed a police brutality complaint that those three witnesses – Wakshul included – piped up about some comments made. This and tons of other reasons are why people believe something was amiss with Mumia’s case and that he is innocent of this murder.

8. The rhetoric of Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP from 1998 to 2000, exemplifies the organization’s migration from the mainstream to the extreme. In his words, Republicans are “the white people’s party” and “a crazed swarm of right-wing locusts,” America morphs into a place where “white supremacy” is “everywhere,” and the George W. Bush Administration exemplifies a regime “whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritica
l affection.”

So what’s wrong with this? There are many people that would echo many of those sentiments, ourselves included. Danny, you can’t just call someone racist because they called something you like racist. They actually have to be a racist, and this just shows they got your panties in a knot. Oh, someone else agrees with Julian Bond on the “white people’s party” line: Peter Brimelow of VDARE said the same thing in a 2004 article:

“In perhaps the most important and underreported development of the election, Bush did relatively poorly among whites, getting only 54 percent of their votes. By contrast, his father received 59 percent in 1988, and Reagan pulled 64 percent in 1984. Moreover, white turnout has been falling. In 1992, some 61.3 percent of whites over 18 voted; in 2000, turnout was down to 56 percent. These trends hurt Bush greatly because the Republican Party is fundamentally a white party. Virtually all of its votes—91 percent in 2000—come from whites. The evidence is very clear that the Republicans are failing to motivate their base.” 

We should not that in the same year Brimelow wrote this, Dan Flynn’s white supremacist friend Sam Francis wrote, “With Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry now the obvious winner of the Democratic primaries, it has proved to be true once again that highly unified black voters determine the party’s nominee.” While he notes that on some occasion Republicans are seeking nonwhite votes as well, he especially whines about how Democrats are pandering to blacks for their vote. Flynn gives Francis a pass however. We wonder why that is…

7. On July 1, 1934…

Yes, he’s is going as far back to the days of Jim Crow, lynchings, and the Ku Klux Klan to prove the NAACP is racist!

…W.E.B. Du Bois resigned from the organization he helped found after an ugly feud with the NAACP’s more moderate leaders, crudely accusing Walter White, an African American, of being white. The previous year, Du Bois called for a plan that “will involve increased segregation and perhaps migration” for African Americans. “The thinking colored people of the United States must stop being stampeded by the word segregation,” Du Bois insisted in the January 1934 issue of The Crises, adding four months later: “I fight segregation with segregation.” The parting of ways saved the NAACP further embarrassment. Their founder made an ill-advised trip to Nazi Germany in 1936 that resulted in, among other lamentable items, “The German Case against Jews,” an apologia in which Du Bois excused German anti-Semitism as a “reasoned prejudice” based on “economic fear.”

We don’t think that it is by accident that only conservatives tout this “German Case against Jews” crap. They also try to say W.E.B. DuBois praised Imperial Japan too. They ignore the fact that while he correctly noted the improvements of the German economy, he also said that what they were doing to their Jewish populace was “an attack on civilization, comparable only to such horrors as the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade”. And how the hell are you going to attack a black person for defending segregation in 1934 when whites has made it an institution by that point in the first damned place? Oh, by the way: Flynn even notes the feud DuBois had with the NAACP, so given his argument how would this be an example of NAACP racism if they kicked him to the curb?

6. For many, April 8, 1994 was the day the NAACP jumped the shark. The group invited a rogue’s gallery of crackpots, extremists, and racists to a secret meeting, dubbed (take a deep breath): “a deliberate mechanism for communication and interrelations between representative leaders of the progressive community and the NAACP within the inclusive mission of the Chavis administration and the African-centered self-determined program thrust of the ‘new’ NAACP.” Attendees included black supremacist Leonard Jeffries, famous for his “sun people”/”ice people” dichotomy to explain the differences between blacks and whites; Maulana Karenga, the originator of Kwanzaa who went to prison for torturing two women; and fringe presidential candidate Lenora Fulani.

5. Louis Farrakhan teaches that an evil scientist named Yakub created white people, claims to have been abducted in a UFO, and has made a mountain of anti-Semitic utterances. So it shocked many when the NAACP invited the Nation of Islam grand panjandrum to participate in a “leadership summit” on June 12-14, 1997.

This is where Flynn might be able to score some points, but he fails to note that ’94 was also the year that Chavis was ousted from the NAACP for sexual harassment charges and for spending $64,000 of the organization’s money to pay a breach of contract claim.

4. When Al Gore selected Joe Lieberman as his running mate in 2000, Dallas NAACP chapter head Lee Alcorn responded with alarm that a Jewish American had been selected on a national ticket. “I’m concerned about, you know, any kind of Jewish candidate, you know, and I’m concerned about the Democratic Party,” Alcorn said on a radio program. “And if we get a Jew person, then what I’m wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know?” African Americans, the NAACP leader maintained, “need to be suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with, you know, money and these kind of things.”

Lee Alcorn got his ass handed to him for this. He was suspended by then-NAACP President  Kweisi Mfume, who wrote the following in a letter to him: “As President of the Association, I find your comments in this matter to be repulsive. They are, in my opinion, anti-Semitic and anti-NAACP. Your comments do not reflect the views or values of the NAACP, our board, staff or membership.”

3. The Obama Administration bounced Van Jones out of its administration after the media learned he had led a Communist organization, signed a petition claiming that the Bush Administration “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen,” and organized a vigil on September 12, 2001 memorializing the victims of U.S. imperialism. Though Jones was ultimately too extreme for the U.S. President, he was just right for the NAACP’s president. On February 26, 2010, the NAACP’s Image Awards bestowed a “President’s Award” upon Van Jones.

He earned it. Van Jones was among that string of people the Obama Administration threw under the bus after right-wingers bitched about them, and they were wrong to do so. NAACP President Ben Jealous wrote the following:

“He resigned from the White House last year after some sought to discredit him for missteps, such as political statements made years ago. However, we can never afford to forget that a defining trait of our country is our collective capacity
to practice forgiveness and celebrate redemption. This is a nation built on second chances.

 

In America, we ultimately judge people on what they are doing today for tomorrow, not for what they did yesterday. When former Alabama Gov. George Wallace embraced integration, we forgave him for having championed segregation. When West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd embraced civil rights legislation, we forgave him for having defended racist organizations.”

2. In the 1970s, a judge sentenced Benjamin Chavis to prison for his role in the firebombing a white-owned grocery store in a black part of Wilmington, N.C. A judge overturned his conviction on a technicality in 1980, with Chavis’s makeover so complete that the NAACP elected him chairman on April 9, 1993. A few months later, Chavis demanded the inclusion of the Nation of Islam in a 30th anniversary celebration of the March on Washington. He explained, “I want everybody here to know that the NAACP is standing with the Nation of Islam.” Angela Davis, Sister Souljah, and Leonard Jeffries were among the extremists Chavis extended an olive branch to during his short tenure as NAACP leader. Chavis, a former Christian minister, has joined the Nation of Islam since his firing from the NAACP.

We addressed this.

1. Ten years after the NAACP and W.E.B. Du Bois originally parted company in 1934, the civil rights organization welcomed him back. Whereas Du Bois’s peculiar racial views led to the first parting, his support for communism led to the final parting in 1948. Du Bois subsequently eulogized Stalin as a “great” and “courageous” man that had been “attacked and slandered as few men of power have been,” likened North Korean Communists to the American patriots of 1776, accepted a Lenin Peace Prize, was feted with a nation holiday in Maoist China, joined the Communist Party USA, renounced his American citizenship, and emigrated to Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana.

So again, he notes that the NAACP had issues with W.E.B. DuBois to show their racism, and again he reaches back to the days of segregation and white supremacy to do it. It would do him good to stay out of this era, because we can find a number of conservatives like William F. Buckley who remarks about the Civil Rights Movement just might make him look pretty stupid.