Thread: A study in hate, the left/right convergence, and media spin ...

http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...race_flyer.jpg

Racist Literature Distributed in Berkeley
A study in hate, the left/right convergence, and media spin
Berkeley, April 11, 2007

http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_racist_literature/

Summary of the Facts

During the first few days of April, 2007, racist literature was distributed in several Berkeley, California neighborhoods by members of an out-of-town white supremacist group.

Local residents who found the material were shocked at the anti-black, anti-Jewish and almost gleefully malicious messages on the flyers and newspapers -- which were produced by the White Aryan Resistance, a virulent hate group founded by KKK member Tom Metzger, currently headquartered in Temecula, in Southern California.

The racist literature was reported to the police, who determined that no crime had been committed, since political opinions -- even ignorant, racist, hate-filled opinions -- fall under the rubric of constitutionally protected free speech. The material did not contain any specific threat of violence, so no charges were filed.

The incident did not receive national coverage, but was mentioned in a few local media outlets, with articles appearing in The Daily Californian, The Berkeley Daily Planet, Inside Bay Area, and a brief mention in The San Francisco Chronicle.

peculiar aspect of the media coverage is that almost none of the news organizations actually showed what the material looked like. Only The Daily Californian article (linked above) reproduced the flyer shown here, which was one of many.

(All of the news reports focused on one of the other flyers, which calls on "white" people to avenge the mid-1970s' Zebra Murders, one of the worst serial-killing sprees in American history, in which black members of the Nation of Islam killed at least 16 people whom they perceived as white, in an attempt to start a race war.)

However, one detail in particular about the coverage struck me: In almost all of the media reports, mention is made of "anti-Semitic" material -- yet it is never described.

Why not?

The Plot Thickens

Fortunately, a news report broadcast on local television station KTVU includes a few brief images of the hate literature. These go by in a flash, and are not specified by the reporter, but are partially visible for a second or two as they are arranged on a table by a police spokesperson. An online version of the KTVU report can be found here, at least for now.

And in those few brief moments, the anti-Semitic flyer is indeed shown.



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...screenshot.jpg

This is a freezeframe taken from the KTVU report. Because of the low resolution of the video, and because the flyer is wrinkled and not lying flat, the words are not completely clear. But by cross-referencing this image with the one shown below, the entire message can be discerned. It says:

JOIN the UNITED STATES ARMY and FIGHT for ISRAEL



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...eezeframe1.jpg

The same flyer is shown upside-down elsewhere in the KTVU report. I took this freezeframe...



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...eezeframe2.jpg


...and rotated it so that the words are upright. From this angle, the wrinkle in the paper distorts the image in a slightly different way, but it confirms the wording of "JOIN the UNITED STATES ARMY and FIGHT for ISRAEL" and also reveals a stereotypical big-nosed Jew giving orders to an American soldier.

Now, there's no question that these materials were produced by the extremist right-wing anti-Semitic group called White Aryan Resistance. Their name and address are visible on the material. And there's no question that the message they're promulgating is a racist, hateful conspiracy theory.

Which makes it all the more shocking to realize that the EXACT SAME MESSAGE is also frequently stated by the anti-war "Left."

Left-Wing Hate and Right-Wing Hate Become Indistinguishable

The photographs shown below were all taken by me at left-wing anti-war rallies in the San Francisco Bay Area (including some in Berkeley itself) over the last few years. These signs are just a small sampling of similar political opinions visible at these rallies and across the left side of the modern political spectrum, all saying the same thing: that the United States military in effect fights for Israel.



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...6-1695_IMG.JPG



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r..._Jew_devil.jpg


The anti-war left and the racist far-right have come full circle and are now in total mutual agreement: Israel controls US military policy.


The first image was taken at the March 20, 2004 anti-war rally; the second one was taken at the February 16, 2003 anti-war rally. Both were left-wing events, as were all the rallies shown below.



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...e/IMG_8032.JPG



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...e/IMG_8044.JPG


Both of these signs were on display at the August 12, 2006 anti-war rally.



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...6-1691_IMG.JPG



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...7-1730_IMG.JPG


Both of these pictures were also taken at the March 20, 2004 rally.




http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...2-4296_IMG.JPG



http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_r...6-1699_IMG.JPG


And on and on.... These "No Blood for Israel" signs seem to crop up at practically every single left-wing protest.

And it's not just at rallies that such sentiments are expressed. The same conspiratorial demonization of Israel as a master manipulator can be found in "progressive" publications, Web sites and blogs as well. A tiny sampling:

In this essay (one of several by him of a similar nature), influential left-wing professor and pundit Juan Cole says essentially the same thing as the White Aryan Resistance, though perhaps a bit more verbosely: http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467

Now the U.S.' occupation of Iraq is making it even more hated in the Muslim world. It is a policy hatched in part by AIPAC, WINEP, and their associated "thinkers." The cynical might suggest that they actively want the U.S. involved in a violent struggle with Muslims, to make sure that the U.S. remains anti-Palestinian and so will permit Israeli expansion.

(Note: AIPAC and WINEP are pro-Israel groups, often described as "The Jewish Lobby.")

The far-left political magazine Counterpunch ran a story that says the American army fights for Israel -- identical to what the racists at W.A.R. say. http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp02242007.html

Liberal columnist Eric Alterman expounds on the commonly held left-wing view that America is doing Israel's military bidding in this piece for The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/alterman

Those are just the tip of the iceberg: all over the left-wing political landscape one can find sentiments along the same lines -- that Israel is dictating US foreign policy.
http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com...-irangate.html

And it goes the other way too: the White Aryan Resistance Web site even sells videos of Noam Chomsky. http://www.resist.com/Merchant2/merc...T&Store_Code=R

What to make of all this?

If one can't tell the difference between the far-left and the far-right these days, do the labels even have meaning anymore?

The Media's Subconscious Bias?

The question that nags at me is this:

Why did the media fail to describe the "anti-Semitic" literature distributed by W.A.R. in Berkeley? The reporters surely saw the material, as most of the other flyers and publications were described in the various news reports. Of them all, it seems only that one was left unmentioned.

Was this not a random oversight, but instead a conscious or subconscious decision? One wonders if the reporters, upon seeing the anti-Israel flyer and perhaps realizing that its sentiment was identical to the sentiment of the anti-war movement, decided to just sweep that particular detail under the rug.

All the reports mention the fact that there was anti-Semitic material found, and it was decried and condemned by the various people quoted in the article. But then why -- when the exact same messages are displayed at left-wing rallies -- does the media not produce news reports exposing the anti-Semitism of the "peace movement"?


Hmmmmm?

Race, crime, and media taboos
By Michelle Malkin · April 16, 2007


Three provocative reads:



Jack Dunphy examines the underreported murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom and the media's inner-city crime taboos. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...Dg4OTA5ZDdhZjY



Heather Mac Donald tells the Truth about Black Crime Rates. http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-04-02hm.html



John Derbyshire weighs in with Reflections on Race Week. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...hhMzNjZjM3MDQ=



and just so you realise this is not a new 'thing" :


Winona and the Wichita Massacre
Nov. 8, 2002

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com

Here is a story of two trials and how they were covered in the news. Or not covered. You tell me what it says about the media's twisted values.

The first trial was held in Beverly Hills. The accused was Hollywood starlet Winona Ryder, charged with shoplifting at a Sak's Fifth Avenue store. A Nexis search turned up more than 500 stories on the trial published over the past week alone. Television, news, and radio reporters from around the world breathlessly described Ryder's daily court attire-her hairbands, her coatdresses, her shoes, her bra straps, her lipstick.

We learned the all-important details of how she appeared "pale" one day, "chipper" the next. Crack news reporters informed us that she is "doe-eyed" and "petite." Talking heads endlessly scrutinized the trial evidence, tapes, and testimony. Psychologists explained the motivations of kleptomaniacs. Entertainment insiders parsed Ryder's film career for clues.

On Wednesday, the cable shows provided "breaking news" coverage of the guilty verdicts and wall-to-wall analysis of What This Means For Winona. The New York Times and Washington Post followed up with bylined news articles.

This, you see, was news that mattered. News fit to print.


Meanwhile, in unglamorous Wichita, Kansas, the eight-week trial of Jonathan and Reginald Carr came to a close. The brothers were found guilty of four counts of capital murder, along with numerous charges of rape, aggravated robbery, burglary, and theft, committed during an unspeakably brutal killing spree in December 2000.

The perpetrators were black. The victims-including friends Jason Befort, Heather Muller, Bradley Heyka and Aaron Sander-were white. The Carrs were convicted of murdering these four young people, execution-style, on a frozen soccer field after a night of terror in Befort, Heyka, and Sander's townhouse. After breaking into the residence, the Carrs forced Muller and Jason Befort's unnamed fiancé to perform sexual acts on each other; the men were then forced to participate. Next, the Carrs raped the women, drove all five victims to an ATM machine, forced them to withdraw money from their accounts, and headed to the soccer field.

The five victims were forced to kneel in the snow and beg for their lives before sustaining gunshots to the head. The Carrs then ran over their victims with their truck. Befort's fiancé miraculously survived. She walked more than a mile, bleeding and naked, in the snow, before finding help.

When such senseless, evil savagery takes place against politically correct victims, the mainstream media is quick to make national news of such crimes. "If this had been two white males accused of killing four black individuals, the media would be on a feeding frenzy and every satellite news organization would be in Wichita doing live reports," wrote Trent Hungate of Wichita in a letter to the Wichita Eagle after the killings two years ago. Indeed. The horrific James Byrd dragging case in Texas and the Matthew Shepherd murder in Wyoming, for example, garnered front-page headlines and continuous coverage.

But with the exception of local Kansas newspapers, the Associated Press, the Washington Times, Fox News, Court TV, and conservative Internet sites, the Carr trial made almost no news.

If you read the New York Times or the Washington Post or watched the evening news this week, the Wichita Massacre never happened. Not to worry, though. The latest investigative report on where Winona Ryder got that Hermes handbag is coming up next. Stay tuned.