![\"clinton-demon\"](\"https:\/\/objects-us-west-1.dream.io\/racefiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/clinton-demon.jpeg\")
I’ve been seeing Facebook posts by Leftists getting the vote out for Hillary Clinton popping up. The first think I thought of as I saw them was,\u00a0wow, that’s brave<\/em>. Then it occurred to me that my thinking that\u00a0says everything about this time in our politics. How the hell did we get\u00a0to the point where committed, true-believer Left leaders making an appeal against what might be fascism, and on Facebook, a social media platform in which you “friend” people, is brave?<\/p>\nAnti-Clinton forces on the Left have made a lot of important points we should remember when steeling ourselves for the fight we’re in for if Clinton is elected. But within the ranks of her critics on the Left there are those who seem to think she’s the devil herself and anyone who votes for her is the devil’s accomplice. That only works if you believe in demons.<\/p>\n
Demonization is dangerous. I know it feels good. I occasionally share the feeling. Especially on the foreign policy front, Bill and Hillary Clinton have not been friends of the Left. In fact, they’ve often behaved like enemies, making demonizing them cathartic.<\/p>\n
As a racial justice advocate, I have a special hate-on for Bill Clinton.\u00a0His was the most sophisticated example of dog whistle racism in my memory. He took the teeth out of racial justice by\u00a0equating it with superficial multiculturalism, while\u00a0also fanning the flames of white racial fear and then calming those fears by leading the way to policies that would eventually result in the biggest prison build up in history. Clinton-style dog whistle racism is the bookend to GOP racism. Between those two bookends of mainstream racial politics, there are no solutions, no equity, no real justice possible.<\/p>\n
But while that may be true, the kind of demonization the Clintons have been subjected to is right in line with a way of thinking that makes institutions of power appear to be monoliths, and governments the equivalent of individual leaders. It is important to see Mrs. Clinton as flawed, but it is also important to see her as a human being who, like all human beings, are historical actors. To do anything else is giving away power.<\/p>\n
Here’s some context for that statement. Democratic President,\u00a0Franklin Delano Roosevelt, signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, giving the War Department the authority to relocate and incarcerate\u00a0120,000 (out of a\u00a0population of 127,000) Japanese Americans living on the continental U.S., and 881 Alaska Natives. One in ten Alaska Natives incarcerated by the Roosevelt administration never made it back out because they were housed in conditions that would have been inhospitable even to cattle.<\/p>\n
Japanese and Native Alaskan internment during WWII was justified by one of the biggest lies ever told in U.S. politics. Worse, taxpayer dollars were also invested in propaganda campaigns to shore up that lie, including through the commissioning\u00a0of Works Progress Administration artists who were deployed to depict\u00a0prisoners as happy campers being “protected” by the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
But there’s so much more. By allowing the New Deal and certain aspects of the G.I. Bill to function as racially exclusive entitlements, the Roosevelt administration did more to bake structural racial inequality into American political culture and the design of American society than any single administration since the end of the Civil War. And, btw, Roosevelt also refused to support anti-lynching legislation<\/a> in order to protect the New Deal, adding insult to serious injury.<\/p>\n Then there’s Kennedy. There’s so much to say here, but as “corrupt” and “criminal” have been put on the table, allow me to remind you of COINTELPRO<\/a>,\u00a0the clandestine and often illegal spying operation executed by the FBI against suspected communists and Civil Rights and Black Power leaders. Under COINTELPRO the FBI didn’t just spy on people, it deployed provocateurs to disrupt political movements and create the circumstances that they believed would provide the justification for even more intense repression and violence. COINTELPRO’s victims include political prisoners like AIM activist Leonard Peltier<\/a>, a person I mention because he seems to have been forgotten by many on the Left, and slain Black Panther Party leader, Fred Hampton<\/a>.<\/p>\n And, of course, there’s Lyndon Johnson, the supposed champion of Civil Rights. Under Johnson, U.S. involvement in the conflict in\u00a0Vietnam grew into a full-scale war. Kennedy is also in this story, as is Nixon, obviously, but no one did more to seal our fate in Indochina than\u00a0Johnson. As a result, genocide was committed in Southeast Asia. Under Johnson, alone, more than 1 million Vietnamese were killed or maimed in a conflict we had no f#%king business intervening in as we did.<\/p>\n Under four U.S. presidents, between 1960 and 1971, including two Democrats, the Department of Defense funded research that subjected poor Black cancer patients to massive whole body radiation bombardment without their knowledge or consent. The researchers actually went as far as to code the records of these experiments in order to\u00a0prevent “either adverse publicity or litigation,” a statement that suggests actionable lawsuits were anticipated and prevented by disguising the evidence.<\/p>\n President Jimmy Carter is lauded as a human rights leader, but in order to win the Democratic Party nomination for governor of Georgia\u00a0in 1970, President Carter ran as a racial conservative. Carter viciously attacked\u00a0former liberal Georgia governor, Carl Sanders, through a campaign built on the template of the last person to defeat Sanders in a campaign for governor,\u00a0segregationist, Lester Maddox.<\/p>\n To those who will respond to this litany by suggesting that maybe all of these leaders are demons, I have this to say. Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n Remember what I said about Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam? Johnson waited until after his election to the presidency to move on Vietnam because he was afraid of public backlash. Once he moved his war policy forward and the public reacted, many of us did so in a way that demonized Johnson and made it impossible for him to stand for reelection. And, who did we get as our next president? Nixon. Had we focused more of our rage on anti-communism and the military-industrial complex, Johnson’s recognition that he couldn’t run successfully and be hawkish on Southeast Asia might have made us think differently about him. There was leverage there. But, too many of us put all of the onus of responsibility on him.<\/p>\n