A sharp spike in racist incidents reported after the Brexit vote (Washington Post)
10 Injured During White Nationalist Rally in California Capitol (NBC News)
The 1972 Democratic presidential primaries were historic for a number of reasons. First of all, 1972 was the first year where every state held a primary or caucus, in order to quell concerns over a repeat of 1968’s infamous Chicago convention where Democratic party bosses forced a pro-Vietnam War candidate on a very anti-war party and violent protests ensued. The Democratic candidate to emerge victorious from the 1972 primary, Senator George McGovern, proceeded to lose to President Nixon so horrifically that primary rules were subsequently re-tweaked so those party bosses could help “correct” the primary results if they didn’t like the candidate that Democratic voters selected, which is why we’re still talking about superdelegates to this day. Shirley Chisholm also became the first African-American major party presidential candidate, as well as the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination, and her groundbreaking campaign is still being cited today as an influence on the campaigns of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
On its surface, though, one of the most shocking things to come out of the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries is that George Wallace — yes, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” George Wallace — won the Michigan primary that year. Wallace won a number of southern states in 1972, like he’d done in his previous attempts to become president, but on May 16th he won the primaries in both Michigan and Maryland. By that point the Democratic contest had basically come down to McGovern and Hubert Humphrey, but voters in those two states gave Wallace a couple of big victories that would be his last in that year’s primaries, because he ended his campaign shortly thereafter for a very important reason: On May 15th, the day before those primaries, Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer, and although Wallace survived the assassination attempt, he spent the rest of his life paralyzed from the waist down.
In that context, Wallace’s victories in Michigan and Maryland can be seen for what they really were: A message by those state’s Democrats, to the rest of the nation (and the world), that no matter how abhorrent Wallace’s racism was, he did not deserve to be the target of an assassination attempt. As strongly as we may disagree about politics, no one, whether they’re in office or running for office or just talking about the business of government, should be the target of physical violence. To tolerate political violence in any degree is to risk going down a very slippery slope that leads to the end of civil liberties, rational discourse and, in every meaningful sense of the word, freedom.
On the 16th of this month, while the United Kingdom was in the middle of a very heated public debate over the coming national referendum on whether or not to stay a member of the European Union, Jo Cox, a Member of Parliament who had spent her short political career shedding light on the plight of refugees and arguing for the UK to remain in the European Union, was assassinated while on her way to meet with some of her constituents. Her alleged killer, Thomas Mair, not only has apparent ties to Neo-Nazi groups here in the US, but gave his name in court as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain” at his first hearing. Cox’s assassination cast a pall around the globe, and the remaining week of the referendum campaign was, at least momentarily, indelibly stained by the blood spilled in the name of political terrorism.
One week later, the United Kingdom went to the polls to vote on the issue that led to the assassination of Jo Cox, much like Michigan and Maryland Democrats went to their 1972 primaries with the news of the attempted assassination of George Wallace in their heads. This time, though, Britons decided to vote with the racist assassin.
To be sure, the issue of the UK’s involvement in the European Union is very complicated, and there are both liberal and conservative arguments to be made against how the European Union has conducted itself in its relatively short lifetime. The modern movement to leave the European Union, however, has undoubtedly been led by the same racist, xenophobic and hateful forces that have propelled the UK’s version of the Tea Party, the UK Independence Party, to national prominence in recent years. Their leader, Nigel Farage (one of the most vile and detestable human beings imaginable), was one of the biggest proponents of the so-called “Brexit” campaign (egads, how I hate forced portmanteau), and in any sane country Farage would face such public scorn that he’d stay in his retirement flat in the West Midlands, blathering about “darkies” and “sand n***ers” in an empty room while chain-smoking himself to an early grave. Shortly after declaring victory, Farage even had the gall to claim that his side won “without a single bullet being fired” — effectively erasing Jo Cox, and her assassination, from memory and history just a week after her death.
As I’ve said before, America’s chief exports are xenophobia and stupidity, and nowhere is that more clear right now than in England, where the same forces of intolerance and warmongering that led my country to start cannibalizing itself in jingoistic bloodlust have now found an audience among those elements in the UK who never accepted the end of the British Empire, and who look down on those who don’t share their skin tone as non-human, merely resources to be exploited in the name of sovereign and country. All they needed to trigger their public displays of racism and intolerance, and the horrible politics that those forces have engendered, was an albatross to falsely hang around the necks of the minorities they hate so much, and the UK’s continuing economic woes — caused by “austerity” measures that cripple working-class and middle-class Britons in the name of keeping greedy companies rolling in moolah — was the perfect foil, since they’ve had such disastrous effects on the majority of UK citizens.
To summarize, a nationalist movement in a European country has risen to power by falsely blaming the woes of its average citizen on a minority group, and have now told the rest of the continent to go screw itself because they want to do only what they please without thought (much less a notion of responsibility) for how it will affect everyone else. This is why I argued that we need to suspend Godwin’s Law, because those comparisons have now become so crystal clear that we can’t be afraid to call out what is happening in the United Kingdom for what it is.
Already there’s wide talk of anti-European Union voters in the referendum feeling “regrexit,” saying that they just wanted to lodge a “protest vote” and didn’t think that their vote would “really count.” This is all too similar to the talk of far-right conservatives who, spurred on my the idiotic talking heads of right-wing media, falsely equate not winning an election with their vote somehow “not counting.” As much as a follow-up referendum to overturn the results of the first one would be welcome, it would be incredibly dangerous to overlook the lack of historical recognition among the populace not just of the UK, but America as well, of how these nationalistic movements grow and what horrific consequences they lead to.
The violence already happening in the UK after the referendum would be bad enough, but the larger danger for us Americans is the possibility of violent nationalism taking hold here. It’s bad enough that a major party presumptive presidential nominee has already encouraged that kind of violence, and offered to pay the legal bills of people who wind up in court as a result of that violence, but what happened in Sacramento this past weekend, although hardly a first (or even a recent first) in America, should put everyone on guard as to the possibility of what might happen if these kinds of hate-based movements go unchecked.
America was already in the process of becoming too scary of a place for my comfort, and now the UK, as much as I’ve always wanted to visit it, feels off-limits to me as well. At this rate, Canada may become the only bastion left for liberal-minded English speakers to feel relatively safe (although Canada, as its own citizens will admit, is not without its faults). Even the other major options for national leader, both in the US and in the UK, only seem better because they’re up against such intolerable alternatives. It’s hard to tell just what this worldwide tide of nationalism and racism will lead to, but if history is any guide then none of us may be safe from the horrors that could come in the years ahead. Assassination and attempted assassinations, like what happened to Jo Cox and George Wallace, may soon become the “new normal” in politics if people across the ideological spectrum don’t stand up and denounce them for the terrorism that they are.