Black Power Scholar Illustrates How MLK And Malcolm X Influenced Each Other


August 12, 2020
Heard on Fresh Air
TERRY GROSS

A man walks past a mural of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr. in London.SOPA Images/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are frequently seen as opposing forces in the struggle for civil rights and against white supremacy; King is often portrayed as a nonviolent insider, while Malcolm X is characterized as a by-any-means-necessary political renegade. But author and Black Power scholar Peniel Joseph says the truth is more nuanced.

"I've always been fascinated by Malcolm X and Dr. King ... and dissatisfied in how they're usually portrayed — both in books and in popular culture," Joseph says.

In his book, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph braids together the lives of the two civil rights leaders. He says that King and Malcolm X had "convergent visions" for Black America — but their strategies for how to reach the goal was informed by their different upbringings.

"Malcolm X is really scarred by racial trauma at a very early age," Joseph says. "King, in contrast, has a very gilded childhood, and he's the son of an upper-middle-class, African-American family, prosperous family that runs one of the most important churches in Black Atlanta."

What's really extraordinary is that the Black Lives Matter protesters really are protesting for radical Black dignity and citizenship and see that you need both. So Malcolm and Martin are the revolutionary sides of the same coin, and really the BLM movement has amplified that.

Peniel E. Joseph

Joseph says that, over time, each man became the other's "alter ego." Malcolm X, he says, "injects a political radicalism on the national scene that absolutely makes Dr. King and his movement much more palatable to mainstream Americans."

Now, with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Joseph says that King and Malcolm X's visions have converged: "What's really extraordinary is that the Black Lives Matter protesters really are protesting for radical Black dignity and citizenship and see that you need both. So Malcolm and Martin are the revolutionary sides of the same coin, and really the BLM movement has amplified that."

Interview highlights

Basic Books

On what Malcolm X meant by racial separatism

This idea of separatism is really interesting. The deeper I investigated Malcolm X, the more I understood what he meant and what the Nation of Islam meant by racial separatism. It wasn't segregation. It was separatism, they argued, and Malcolm does this in a series of debates against Bayard Rustin, against Jim Farmer, against James Baldwin, Louis Lomax. He says that racial separatism is required because white people do not want Black people to be citizens and have dignity. And if they did, you wouldn't have to protest and experience police violence and police brutality: small children trying to integrate Little Rock High School, young people trying to integrate lunch counters, and they're arrested and brutalized, sometimes people were killed, of course. So what's interesting about this idea of separatism, Malcolm argues separatism is Black people having enough self-love and enough confidence in themselves to organize and build parallel institutions. Because America was so infected with the disease of racism, they could never racially integrate into American democracy.

On Malcolm X's vision of "by any means necessary" protest


CODE SWITCH
Malcolm X's Public Speaking Power

Malcolm is making the argument that, one, Black people have the right to self-defense and to defend themselves against police brutality. It's really striking when you follow Malcolm X in the 1950s and '60s, the number of court appearances he's making, whether it's in Buffalo, N.Y., or Los Angeles or Rochester, N.Y., where members of the Nation of Islam have been brutalized [and], at times, killed by police violence. So Malcolm is arguing that, one, Black people have a right to defend themselves. Second part of Malcolm's argument — because he travels to the Middle East by 1959, travels for 25 weeks overseas in 1964 — is that because there [are] anti-colonial revolutions raging across Africa and the Third World in the context of the 1950s and '60s, he makes the argument that the Black revolution in the United States is only going to be a true revolution once Black people start utilizing self-defense to end the racial terror they're experiencing both in the 1950s and '60s, but historically. And one of the reasons Malcolm makes that argument, obviously, is because his father and his family had experienced that racial terror.

On King's policy of non-violent protest v. self defense

One thing that's important to know is that when we think about nonviolence versus self-defense, it's very, very complex, because even though Martin Luther King Jr. is America's apostle and a follower of Gandhi and believes in nonviolence, there are always people around King who are trying to protect him and in demonstrations, who actually are armed, they're not armed in the same way that, say, the Black Panthers would arm themselves later, but they're armed to actually protect and defend peaceful civil rights activists from racial terror. And of course, King famously had had armed guards around him in Montgomery, Ala., after his home was firebombed during the bus boycott of 1955 to '56. And it's Bayard Rustin who famously told him he couldn't have those armed guards if he wanted to live out the practice of nonviolence.


CODE SWITCH
The Power Of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Anger

So King usually does not have his own people being armed. But when he's in the Deep South, there are civil rights activists who actually are armed and at times protecting him. They're not necessarily connected to his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but the movement always had people who were trying to protect peaceful demonstrators against racial terror.

On King's response to Malcolm X's argument against non-violent civil disobedience

Enlarge this image
Peniel E. Joseph, Ph.D., is the founding director of the LBJ School's Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas, Austin.Kelvin Ma/Basic Books

King has several responses: One is that nonviolence is both a moral and political strategy. So the morality and the religious argument is that Black people could not succumb to enemy politics. And this idea that when we think about white racism, we would become as bad as the people who are oppressing us. So he pushes back against that. Politically, he says, well, then there aren't enough Black people, even if they arm themselves to win some kind of armed conflict and struggle. And then finally, he says and there's a great speech in 1963 in Los Angeles where he doesn't mention Malcolm X, but he's speaking out against Malcolm X in terms of what's happening in Birmingham. And Malcolm has called him an Uncle Tom and all kinds of names. He says that non-violence is the weapon of strength. It's the weapon of people who are powerful and courageous and brave and heroic and disciplined. It's not the weapon of the weak, because we're going to use this non-violent strategy to actually transform the United States of America against its own will. ...

I say Malcolm is Black America's prosecuting attorney. He's prosecuting white America for a series of crimes against Black humanity that date back to racial slavery. Dr. King is Black America's defense attorney — but he's very interesting: He defends both sides of the color line. He defends Black people to white people and tells white people that Black people don't want Black supremacy. They don't want reverse racism. They don't want revenge for racial slavery and Jim Crow segregation. They just want to be included in the body politic and have citizenship. But he also defends white people to Black people. He's constantly telling — especially as the movement gets further radicalized — Black people that white people are good people, that white people, we can redeem the souls of the nation. And we have white allies who have fought and struggled and died with us to achieve Black citizenship. So it's very interesting, the roles they both play. But over time, after Malcolm's assassination, one of the biggest ironies and transformations is that King becomes Black America's prosecuting attorney.

On how Malcolm X and King's visions merged

They start to merge, especially in the aftermath of Malcolm's assassination on Feb. 21, 1965. And in a way, when we think about King, right after Malcolm's assassination, King has what he later calls one of those "mountaintop moments." And he always says there are these mountaintop moments, but then you have to go back to the valley. And that mountaintop moment is going to be the Selma to Montgomery march, even though initially, when we think about March 7, 1965 — Bloody Sunday — demonstrators, including the late Congressman John Lewis, are battered by Alabama state troopers, non-violent demonstrators, peaceful demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.


CODE SWITCH
'A Proud Walk': 3 Voices On The March From Selma To Montgomery

But by March 15, LBJ, the president, is going to say these protesters are right and they are part of a long pantheon of American heroes dating back to the revolution. And then March 21 to the 25, the Selma to Montgomery demonstration is going to attract 30,000 Americans — including white allies, Jewish allies like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel — to King and the movement. So King is going to make his last, fully nationally televised speech on March 25, 1965, where he talks about American democracy, racial justice, but the long road ahead. By that August, Aug. 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act has passed. So these are real high points.

But then five days after the Voting Rights Act is passed, Watts, Los Angeles explodes in really the largest civil disturbance in American history up until that point. And when we think about after Watts, that's where King and Malcolm start to converge, because Malcolm had criticized the March on Washington as the "farce on Washington," because he said that King and the movement should have paralyzed Washington, D.C., and forced a reckoning about race in America. And they didn't do that. By 1965, King says that in this essay, "Beyond the Los Angeles Riots," that what he's going to start doing is use non-violent civil disobedience as a peaceful sword that paralyzes cities to produce justice that goes beyond civil rights and voting rights acts.

Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.

The Oil Spill At Mauritius Is A Disaster. And It Could Soon Get Worse

August 11, 2020
CAMILA DOMONOSKE Twitter



A man scoops oil from the coast of Mauritius on Saturday. A Japanese cargo ship ran aground near Blue Bay Marine Park in late July and began to leak fuel oil and diesel into pristine waters.Jean Aurelio Prudence/L'Express Maurice/AFP via Getty Images

A Japanese cargo ship struck a reef off the coast of Mauritius more than two weeks ago and has now leaked more than 1,000 metric tons of oil into the pristine waters and unique ecosystems of the island nation.

Mauritius has declared a state of environmental emergency, and the French government has sent technical support to assist with the disaster response. In addition, independently-organized local volunteers have been working to clean up and protect beaches with improvised materials.

But an even bigger danger looms.

A crack inside the ship's hull has been growing, and government officials warn the entire ship could split in half, releasing all the oil remaining inside the vessel.

Efforts are underway to pump that oil out of the ship before it breaks apart. As of Tuesday, just over 1,000 metric tons of oil had been pumped out of the ship, while some 1,800 metric tons of fuel oil and diesel remain on board, according to the company that owns the ship.


A large patch of leaked oil travels on ocean currents near the Pointe d'Esny in Mauritius on Saturday. The worsening oil spill is polluting the island nation's famous reefs, lagoons and oceans.AFP via Getty Images

The ship, the Wakashio, was a cargo ship, not an oil tanker, carrying 4,000 metric tons of fuel to power its engines (in comparison, supertankers can carry hundreds of thousands of metric tons of oil.) However, any oil spill larger than 700 metric tons is classified by industry groups as a large spill, and this spill has already released more oil than the combined total from every tanker spill documented in 2019.


Mauritius has declared a state of environmental emergency, and the French government has sent technical support to assist with the disaster response.


ENVIRONMENT
How California's Worst Oil Spill Turned Beaches Black And The Nation Green

The Mauritian government has urged residents to stay home and leave the clean-up to authorities, the BBC reports, but residents have organized themselves anyway and assembled home-made oil booms — floating barriers to contain and absorb the toxic spill.

Reuters reports that sugar cane leaves, plastic bottles and human hair (cut off and donated by residents) are being sewn into makeshift booms.

"People have realized that they need to take things into their hands. We are here to protect our fauna and flora," environmental activist Ashok Subron said, according to AFP.

Subron told a local news outlet the collective action by everyday citizens demonstrated "the failure of the state," and other residents are angrily asking why action wasn't taken sooner to prevent this unfolding disaster.

"The authorities did nothing for days," Fezal Noordaully, a taxi driver from a coastal village in Mauritius, told The Guardian. "Now they are but it's too late."

Scooping oil at the beach in Bambous Virieux, in southeast Mauritius, on Saturday.-/L'Express Maurice/AFP via Getty

When the Wakashio initially ran aground on July 25, its hull was intact and no major oil spill was detected. A Dutch company was brought in to refloat the ship and prevent spills.

But late last week, oil began to escape from the ship's tanks; the ship's owners issued a statement blaming bad weather and rough seas for the breach. The vessel's operators acknowledged "the regretful harm to the beautiful nature in Mauritius."


The vessel MV Wakashio was grounded on a reef for nearly two weeks before it began to leak large quantities of oil. The Japanese company that owns the ship says bad weather and rough seas caused one of the tanks of the vessel to be breached. Now a crack inside the hull of the ship has expanded and authorities worry it could break apart.Daren Mauree/L'Express Maurice/AFP via Getty

The island nation of Mauritius is located east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It's home to a number of endemic species, or plants and animals that live nowhere else — from the pink pigeon, recently saved from extinction, to the blue-tailed day gecko, which pollinates a rare flower that only has 250 plants remaining.

The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting endangered plants and animals that exist only in Mauritius, says it has helped lay booms to protect the Ile aux Aigrettes nature preserve as well as protected wetlands on the main island.

THE PICTURE SHOW
'Where The Land Used To Be,' Photos Show Louisiana Coast 10 Years After BP Oil Spill

But the key challenge is stop the flow of oil, the group says; until the source of the leak is addressed, shoreline clean-up will accomplish little.

In addition to environmental devastation, the spill could have "dire consequences for Mauritius' economy, food security and health," Greenpeace Africa warns. Tourism is an important part of the economy and had already taken a hit from the coronavirus pandemic.

SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/locals-in-mauritius-are-going-to-great.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/mauritian-prime-minister-seeks.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-oil-spill-at-mauritius-is-disaster.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/update-mauritius-battles-devastating.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/mauritius-oil-spill-locals-scramble-to.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/oil-spill-off-mauritius-is-visible-from.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/france-offers-aid-as-mauritius-declares.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/mauritius-facing-catastrophe-as-oil.html

'Teeth The Size Of Bananas'; New Study Paints Picture Of 'Terror Crocodiles'


August 12, 2020
GABRIELA SALDIVIA Twitter




A new study of Deinosuchus or "terror crocodiles," led by Adam Cosette, offers a fuller picture of the ancient creature from head to tail. Cossette said Deinosuchus had large, robust teeth, ranging from six to eight inches long, as shown in the photo.Adam Cossette

Enormous "terror crocodiles" once roamed the earth and preyed on dinosaurs, according to a new study revisiting fossils from the gigantic Late Cretaceous crocodylian, Deinosuchus.

The research, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, reiterates that Deinosuchus were among the largest crocodylians ever in existence, reaching up to 33 feet in length. New in this study is a look at the anatomy of the Deinosuchus, which was achieved by piecing together various specimens unknown until now, giving a fuller picture of the animal.

Adam Cossette, a vertebrate paleobiologist at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University, led the study that corrected some misunderstandings about the Deinosuchus.

"Until now, the complete animal was unknown," Cossette said. "These new specimens we've examined reveal a bizarre, monstrous predator with teeth the size of bananas."

Past studies on cranial remains and bite marks on dinosaur bones led paleontologists to believe the massive Deinosuchus were an opportunistic predator, according to the press release. Fossil specimens now make it clear that Deinosuchus did indeed have the head size and jaw strength to have its pick of prey, including large dinosaurs.


"Deinosuchus was a giant that must have terrorized dinosaurs that came to the water's edge to drink," Cossette said.



Deinosuchus were the largest semiaquatic predators in their environments and are known to have fed on large vertebrates, including dinosaurs. The photo shows a Deinosuchus skull in dorsal view (A) and a skull in ventral view (B).Adam Cossette

University of Iowa vertebrate paleontologist Christopher Brochu, the study's co-author, said another important realization from the paper is that there were several species of Deinosuchus that roamed North America between 75 and 82 million years ago.

The study notes Deinosuchus hatcheri and Deinosuchus riograndensis lived in the west, from what is now Montana to northern Mexico. Deinosuchus schwimmeri lived in the east from New Jersey to Mississippi.

"Some of them were separated by a seaway that at one point cut North America in half from what's now the Gulf of Mexico up to the Arctic Ocean," Brochu said. "And that may have driven what we call speciation. There might have been one ancestral Deinosuchus form in North America, and then the seaway cut that population in half and on one side it evolved in one direction, the other side in a different direction."

Despite the nickname "terror crocodiles," Brochu said Deinosuchus were more closely related to alligators than to crocodiles but "didn't look like either one of them."

Deinosuchus had a snout that was long and broad, with the front appearing inflated unlike any other living or extinct crocodylian. On the tip of the snout is a large pair of holes. Researchers are still unsure of their function.

Both Brouchu and Cossette assert this paper disproves the idea that crocodylians are living fossils, or in other words, animals which never evolved.

"There's this concept out there that crocodylians are unchanging forms," Brochu said. "That they appear way back in the distant past and haven't changed since the days of the dinosaurs. That is simply not true."

If you look at the modern species of crocodylian, Cossette explained, there are just a handful and they all look and act very similar. But if you look at the fossil record there is diversity of size, shape, diet and lifestyle.

"Most people think crocodiles haven't changed in 75 million years," Cossette said. "This study shows that the ancestors of today's American alligator didn't look anything like them."

"Crocodiles are actually these incredibly dynamic creatures that have experienced incredible evolutionary histories, have lived in places that modern crocodiles don't live, done things that modern crocodiles don't do and have grown to sizes that modern crocodiles never achieve. That I think is the cool part [of the study], at least for me," Cossette added.

Veteran GOP Strategist Takes On Trump — And His Party — In 'It Was All A Lie'
August 11, 20201:03 PM ET
DAVE DAVIES

Download

Transcript


"I've never heard any Republican officeholder speak of President Trump as if he should be president," says GOP strategist Stuart Stevens.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Veteran political consultant Stuart Stevens has spent years working as a strategist for Republican campaigns, including the presidential bids of Bob Dole, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. But Stevens didn't support the party's candidate in the 2016 presidential election — and he wasn't alone.

"In 2016, when I went out and attacked Trump on television," he says, "I would say maybe a third of the party hierarchy would email me and thank me for doing this."

But Stevens notes that many of the Republicans who had privately voiced concern about Trump changed their tune on election night. "I started getting emails like, 'Could you maybe delete that email?' " he says.

"It's an extraordinary contradiction," Stevens tells Fresh Air in an Internet interview.

He notes, "I've never heard any Republican officeholder speak of President Trump as if he should be president. ... They know he shouldn't be president. [But] he is president, and they still support him."

In his new book, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, Stevens argues that the party's support for Trump isn't just a pragmatic choice. Instead, he says, it reflects the party's complete abandonment of principles it long claimed to embrace, such as fiscal restraint, personal responsibility and family values.


Stevens acknowledges his own role in the party's shift: "One of the things that drew me to the Republican Party was the concept of personal responsibility. So I don't know where to begin with personal responsibility except to take responsibility personally."

Interview highlights

On why he believes the leaders of the Republican Party became more extreme and anti-intellectual

It's an abdication of leadership on behalf of Republican Party leaders that have allowed these kooks and lunatics and anti-intellectuals to become dominant in the party.

Stuart Stevens

I think one of the conclusions you have to come to is that leaders really matter in helping shape the party. And I think that it's an abdication of leadership on behalf of Republican Party leaders that have allowed these kooks and lunatics and anti-intellectuals to become dominant in the party. It didn't have to be that way.

There was a time when there was an intellectual core to the Republican Party. We used to say we were the party of big ideas and there was some truth to that. And one of those big ideas was opposing Communism. One of those big ideas was the role of society in helping people become less dependent on government. ... So you can make a good case that the Republican Party was a victim of its own success: We won the Cold War. Bill Clinton passed welfare reform.

Enlarge this image
Penguin Random House

And so around 2000, it was a question of how do you formulate a new policy? And we never really came to grips with that. And it has allowed those with the loudest voices to become dominant in the party. I compare it to sports teams. Who is it in the stands that gets the most attention? It's the person that takes their shirt off and runs out on the field. And that's really what's happened in our politics, but particularly in the Republican Party. And the leaders have not stepped in and stopped it.

On the GOP doing an "autopsy" after the 2012 election when Mitt Romney lost to Obama


CODE SWITCH
Why Did Black Voters Flee The Republican Party In The 1960s?

I think Reince Priebus, who was the chairman of the party then, and there's a lot of credit for initiating that so-called autopsy. It's always difficult to be self-critical. And what's fascinating about that is the conclusions were fairly obvious. You had to appeal more to nonwhite, yet appeal more to younger voters who had to appeal more to women. But it was presented not only as a political necessity to win elections — because we'd only won the popular vote once since [the] 1988 presidential votes — it was presented as a moral mandate, that if you are going to deserve the right to be the governing party of this big, confusing, loud, changing country, you needed to reflect that. So then Donald Trump comes along, and you can almost hear this audible sigh of relief and all that got thrown out and go, "Well, thank God we don't have to pretend we care about this stuff. We can just win with white folks and we can just be comfortable with that." And I mean, it just showed how phony it was.

On Trump's campaign strategy for the fall



It is going to be the ugliest campaign we've ever seen by a desperate man.

Stuart Stevens on Trump's 2020 presidential campaign

It's going to be a racial grievance campaign unlike we have ever seen on the national stage. I think it is going to be the ugliest campaign we've ever seen, by a desperate man. So Donald Trump is behind now and he's talking about suspending the elections. Think about a week out if he's behind: If I was a Canadian minister of defense, I'd be worried he's going to invade Ottawa. This is an unstable man who is headed to potentially a historic defeat. And I think he's going to wave the bloody shirt and try to scare white voters, and I think they're going to do everything they can to suppress nonwhite votes. Legal, illegal, quasi-legal. That's what they're going to try to do because they think that's the only way they can win.

On what he believes is next for the Republican Party

I really am extraordinarily negative on the prospects of the party, and it's an unusual position for me because I've always been sort of the eternal optimist and always thought that we could come back from any deficit. I came across a statistic recently that just absolutely blew my mind: Of Americans 15 years and under, the majority are nonwhite. ... And what does that mean for the Republican Party? It's just a stage 4 cancer warning and the party gives no reason that it's going to change.

So I see the Republican Party, [what will] happening nationally, as what happens to the Republican Party in California. So California was the beating heart and soul of the Republican Party. It was an electoral citadel that we based all victory on. And now where's the Republican Party? It's in third place, not second, third [in registration]. ... And the Republican Party, really, for the most part, became irrelevant in the debate of policy in California. They've made themselves irrelevant. And I see the same thing happening with the national Republican Party.

There is a market for a center-right party and a need for it in America. I think something else will evolve. But to get a sense of how deep Trumpism is instilled, there's another Republican Party out there and that's these governors. So if you look at these very popular governors in blue states like [Larry] Hogan in Maryland, Charlie Baker, Massachusetts, Phil Scott here in Vermont, I work for all these guys. And if the Republican Party had any sense, I'd say, look, these guys are wildly popular in the hardest market. What can we learn from them? Instead, the party kind of treats them with benign neglect. But each of these governors, wildly popular as they are, they can't pick their own party chairman. They're Trump people, and the idea that a governor couldn't pick a party chairman is so mind-boggling, it just shows how deep Trumpism has become in the party.

Sam Briger and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.

BEFORE BEIRUT

On This Day: Port explosion kills 173 in Tianjin, China

On Aug. 12, 2015, a series of powerful explosions rocked the Chinese port city of Tianjin, killing 173 people and injuring hundreds more.

By UPI Staff


Chinese Premier Li Keqiang inspects the blast area and rescue operations from the roof of a building close to the massive fire and explosion zone caused by hazardous materials stored in a warehouse owned by Ruihai International Logistics in Tianjin on August 17, 2015. File Photo courtesy of Government Handout/UPI | License Photo

Read More

UPI Archives: Dead fish pile up on Tianjin shore after deadly blastsUPI Archives: Tianjin residents protest broken laws, demand restitution after explosions

Christian nationalists are willing to toss the Constitution aside because Trump gave them exactly what they want

August 11, 2020 By Nancy LeTourneau, Washington Monthly- Commentary

On Sunday, Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro attempted to justify the president’s memorandum on coronavirus relief by suggesting that God had something to do with creating executive orders.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro defends Trump’s executive orders: “I mean the Lord, and the Founding Fathers created executive orders, because of partisan bickering and divided government. That’s what we have here.” pic.twitter.com/exduSYOtGi
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) August 9, 2020

The narrative is that congress is simply a “swamp” and so Trump took action via something that was created by God and our founding fathers to bypass the legislative body. Of course, that is the opposite of what was written into the Constitution when it describes three separate, but equal branches of government. In a sense, Navarro is claiming that our founding fathers created a mechanism for the president to act as king. He backs that up with the idea that God was involved with doing so.

None of that is going to be a concern for Trump’s base among Christian nationalists. Over the weekend, Elizabeth Dias published a piece in which she reminded us of that one time when Trump actually told the truth by saying that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and his supporters wouldn’t abandon him. She noted that it was during that same speech at a Christian college in Iowa that Trump said this:

“I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it,” Mr. Trump said.

Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country, he said. And then he slowed slightly to stress each next word: “And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have.”

If he were elected president, he promised, that would change. He raised a finger.

“Christianity will have power,” he said. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else.”



Over the last four years, we’ve heard endless attempts to explain why Christian nationalists have been so loyal to a man who has lived the opposite of everything they have claimed to value. But there you have your answer: he promised to give them power. That is precisely why Katherine Stewart titled her book about Christian nationalists, The Power Worshippers. She explains that we miss the mark if we assume that this movement is all about the so-called “culture wars.”

This is a political movement that wants power. I do think it is helpful, in understanding this movement, to distinguish between the leaders and the followers. The foot soldiers may believe that they’re fighting for things like traditional marriage and a ban on abortion. But over time, the movement’s leaders and strategists have consciously reframed these culture war issues in order to capture and control the votes of a large subsection of the American public. They understand if you can get people to vote on just one or two issues, you can control their vote. So they use these issues to solidify and maintain political power for themselves and their allies, to increase the flow of public and private money in their direction, and to enact economic policies that are favorable to their most well-resourced funders.

MAMMON, GEORGE FREDRICKS, THE TATE

In commenting on the Christian right’s comparison of Trump to King Cyrus, Stewart wrote this:

Today’s Christian nationalists talk a good game about respecting the Constitution and America’s founders, but at bottom they sound as if they prefer autocrats to democrats…The great thing about kings like Cyrus, as far as today’s Christian nationalists are concerned, is that they don’t have to follow rules. They are the law. This makes them ideal leaders in paranoid times…

This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

They want it all. And in Mr. Trump, they have found a man who does not merely serve their cause, but also satisfies their craving for a certain kind of political leadership.

This is why you’ll find no objections from Christian nationalists to the prospect of Trump upending Constitutional norms like the separation of powers among the three branches of government. They want the tyrannical power associated with an autocrat in order to enact their agenda.

Bishop falsely claims Joe Biden is not a Catholic — and it doesn’t go well for him

BISHOP PEDERAST HOISTED BY HIS OWN PETARD

August 11, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


On Tuesday, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island attacked former Vice President Joe Biden’s faith, claiming that he is not really a Catholic.

Biden-Harris. First time in awhile that the Democratic ticket hasn’t had a Catholic on it. Sad.
— Bishop Thomas Tobin (@ThomasJTobin1) August 11, 2020

Biden is a lifelong, practicing Catholic, and he was also on the 2012 ticket, so Tobin’s claim doesn’t make any sense. But Tobin is an extreme right-wing firebrand with a history of politicizing the church — in 2007 he denied communion to former Rep. Patrick Kennedy for his pro-choice views, and in 2019 he called Gay Pride events “harmful for children” and demanded Catholics not attend them.

Tobin’s attack on Biden’s faith triggered a wave of outrage on social media — with many commenters reminding him that he claimed it was “outside his responsibility” to prevent child sex abuse in the church.

Biden is a Catholic. What is your problem. You’re embarrassing the rest of us.
— Zingamomma

(@tubawidow) August 11, 2020



Step away from the Twitter, @ThomasJTobin1 not only does it remain an occasion of sin, but now you’re tweeting gibberish. Biden was Catholic in 2008 and 2012 and he is Catholic now.
— Jenna Wims Hashway (@JWimsHashway) August 11, 2020

Hey bishop you know what else is sad…. priest diddling little boys
— Tyler Best (@WorldWideBest) August 11, 2020

he’s a duly confirmed and baptized catholic. You don’t get to take that away from him just because you don’t like his politics.
— Aida stayathomesavelives GN

 

(@agninri) August 11, 2020



(1) “a while” is two words
(2) Joe Biden is Catholic
(3) Saying otherwise because you think women are state-owned wombs is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy
— Jedi, Interrupted  

(@JediCounselor) August 11, 2020

You allowed children to be abused for years under you watch. You’re an embarrassment to Catholicism and a truly shameful human being.
— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) August 11, 2020


“In 2018, Tobin acknowledged that he “became aware of incidents of sexual abuse when they were reported to the diocese” between 1992 & 1996 in Pittsburgh when he was the auxiliary bishop of that city… He said, however, that reporting the allegations was not his responsibility.”
— #ICannotWaittoDanceonTrumpGraves (@greeneyesmilw) August 11, 2020

Leaving aside his sincerity, which you obviously doubt, Biden is a baptized Catholic. Catholic baptism creates an irreversible, ontological change. As a bishop you are obligated to understand that and not deny it. Don’t you have a theology degree?
— Tim Spalding (@librarythingtim) August 11, 2020

funny, during the decade I spent as a youth minister and the 40 years I’ve spent on this planet as a Catholic, I was taught that being baptized into the Body of Christ was permanent, I didn’t know bishops were empowered to delete your baptism via tweet
— Claire Willett (@clairewillett) August 11, 2020


You’ve got some nerve. https://t.co/2XT238tkBH

— Cinloou   (@cinloou7) August 11, 2020



Bishop Tobin is opining on the fact that Biden supports “choice”. Biden has also expressed that he would not choose that for his family but women have a right to make their own choice. Bishop Tobin is pretty cool with the current Rapist-in-Chief tho.
— Robert the Spruce (@Bufshuf) August 11, 2020



I suppose when your definition of catholic is enabling child abuse then yeah, Joe doesn’t qualify like you do.
— Mueller, She Wrote Podcast (@MuellerSheWrote) August 11, 2020

VP Mike Pence brings his 'Ignore the Adultery (and Other Sins)' tour to Arizona

HOISTED BY HIS OWN PETARD

Opinion: At least spare us the homily about moral leadership when backing Donald Trump?

OPINION
EJ Montini, Arizona Republic

In the 1990s, when Vice President Mike Pence was a radio talk show host in Indiana, he’d argue that religious faith and moral character were essential to leadership.

Of course, this was before his sold his soul to a serial adulterer who has gleefully violated just about all of the other commandments as well.

PENCE AS COVID TASKFORCE CZAR


Pence is in the Valley on Tuesday to drum up support for the philanderer in chief in the upcoming election, helping to launch what is being called a "Latter-day Saints for Trump" coalition.

I’m sure that Pence and the political sycophants accompanying him will somehow try to sell LDS voters on the "moral" leadership of Trump.


PENCE AS COVID TASKFORCE CZAR

A president for whom fact checkers at The Washington Post have documented 20,000 false and misleading statements. Including some about the coronavirus that no doubt have had deadly consequences.

A man who is more covetous of power, money and fame that perhaps anyone on earth.

A man caught up in a fraudulent schemes like his "university," which have harmed thousands and cost millions to settle lawsuits.

A man accused of sexual harassment or assault by more than a dozen women.

A man who cheated on his first wife with his second, and who, according to The Wall Street Journal, cheated on his third with a porn star only a few months after his youngest son was born.

Then paid the woman $130,000 to keep quiet.

PENCE AS COVID TASKFORCE CZAR

A few words from Pre-Trump Pence

What would Mike Pence have said about all that before making his deal with the devil?

Let’s review.

Pre-Trump Pence once wrote, "Throughout our history, we have seen the presidency as the repository of all of our highest hopes and ideals and values. To demand less is to do an injustice to the blood that bought our freedoms."


Pre-Trump Pence wanted Bill Clinton removed from office for an affair with an intern.

Pre-Trump Pence said on his radio show:

“I mean, is adultery no longer a big deal in Indiana and in America? I’d just love to know your thoughts because I for one believe that the seventh commandment contained in the Ten Commandments is still a big deal. I maintain that other than promises that we make of fidelity in our faith, the promises that we make to our spouses and to our children, the promises that we make in churches and in synagogues and marriage ceremonies around this, it's the most important promise you'll ever make. And holding people accountable to those promises and holding people accountable to respecting the promises that other people make, I, to me, what could possibly be a bigger deal than that in this country?”

For Post-Trump Pence, that would be keeping his job.

Jerry Falwell Jr is the true face of white evangelicals — and dumping him changes nothing

REAGAN & FALWELL SR.'S GOP FAMILY VALUES MORAL MAJORITY REVEALED

August 11, 2020 By Amanda Marcotte, Salon - Commentary


One has to imagine that for Jerry Falwell Jr., things feel very unfair right about now. For more than four years, the world of right-wing American Christianity has not only lined up behind Donald Trump — a thrice-married chronic adulterer who bragged on tape how he likes to “grab ’em by the pussy” — but has embraced him as if he were the second coming. White evangelicals’ devotion to Trump didn’t wane after he became president, even in the face of stories about Trump paying off a porn actress and a centerfold model to stay quiet about his compulsive cheating on his third wife. Nor was there any angst on the Christian right over Trump’s relentless grifting or his efforts to blackmail the Ukrainian president into bolstering lies about former Vice President Joe Biden.

On the contrary, the WHITE MALE Christian right’s worshipful attitude toward Trump has only increased over the years, with pastors comparing Trump to Jesus himself and calling Trump “God’s chosen one.” The president’s approval with white MALE evangelicals remains strong, at 72%, and 82% say they plan to vote for him.

With all this Christian love for a president who makes all ordinary sinners look like amateurs, it’s no wonder that Falwell — the president of Liberty University, which was founded by his dad, the legendary Southern Baptist pastor and televangelist — thought it was no big deal to unbutton his pants a little. But when Falwell posted a photo on social media of himself partying on a yacht with those literally unbuttoned pants, holding something that resembled an alcoholic beverage and with his arm around the waist of a pregnant female acquaintance with her shirt rolled up, he did not get the Trump treatment.

NOT MY WIFE, 

BUT SHE IS PREGNANT WINK WINK

SO AM I ALL LIFE IS SACRED 

Instead, Falwell was asked to take an indefinite leave of absence from his job at Liberty University, the right-wing evangelical institution in Lynchburg, Virginia, that his father, Jerry Falwell Sr., founded in 1971. On Tuesday, the school announced that Jerry Prevo, chairman of its board of trustees, would replace Falwell as acting president.

The photo itself, if we’re being honest, was hardly “racy,” as some outlets called it. It looked no different from any other photo of people at a social gathering acting goofy after a few drinks. Still, this was apparently the last straw, after a year of reports that Falwell was getting up to precisely the kind of antics for which Trump apparently gets a permanent pass.

Last summer, a series of titillating stories about the Liberty president, including a report that Falwell and his wife had lavished financial favors on a “pool boy” half their age they met while partying in Florida. Falwell also reportedly emailed photos of his wife in a French maid costume to an employee, later claiming that was an accident and he’d meant to send the photos to her personal trainer. This raised more eyebrows, however, since the personal trainer is another good-looking younger man whom the Falwells have helped financially. Other photos of the Falwells partying in a Miami nightclub in 2014 were published last year.

Giving Falwell the boot only after he embarrassed the evangelical community in public only reinforces the main takeaway from this story: The supposed morality of white evangelicals is largely a facade, propped up in order to justify the Christian right’s real purpose, which is to defend white supremacy and male dominance. It’s worth asking why anyone would bother to keep up the facade, now that Trump has proved right-wing America doesn’t need to hide behind the Bible and the cross to defend its true agenda.

Before Trump, it was actually a pretty good racket that white evangelicals had going. As Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute writes in “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” his book on the racist history of much of American Christianity, “most white Christian churches have protected white supremacy by dressing it in theological garb, giving it a home in a respected institution, and calibrating it to local cultural sensibilities.”

Piety can give cover to racism by positioning white evangelicals as morally superior. By policing sex and prohibiting the pleasures of gambling, partying, drinking or even dancing, white evangelicals can craft a narrative where they are upright guardians of virtue, rather than mean-spirited racists who organize — in distinctly un-Christ-like fashion — to preserve their privileges at the expense of people of color. Indeed, the more white evangelicals defended a racist social order, the more effort they put into portraying themselves as “virtuous” by the way of strict rules governing individual behavior.




It’s the same story with white evangelicals and sexism. The prohibitions on premarital sex, contraception, abortion and divorce mainly serve to control girls and women, channeling them away from living independent lives and keeping them under the thumb of one man or another, first a father and then a husband, for their entire lives. Whenever feminists criticized evangelical misogyny, the Christian right defended itself by claiming that its sexist ideology flowed from “faith,” when in reality, it was the other way around: Male supremacy was the core belief, and religious faith was used to rationalize and justify it.

One of the remarkable developments in the age of Trump has the collapse of any meaningful need for all this Bible-hugging to defend bigotry against people of color, women and LGBTQ people.

Oh, Trump sometimes loves to wave a Bible around, though always with an awkwardness that suggests he’s afraid it may burn his fingers. But it’s unclear that anyone is fooled. With his ham-fisted and sloppy fake piety — and his obvious ignorance about all religious or theological questions — Trump illuminates a fundamental truth about right-wing Christianity, which is that it’s largely a cover story used to defend the otherwise indefensible.

As I argue in my book, “Troll Nation,” the true innovation of Trumpism is a kind of asshole pride, the collective conservative realization that there’s no longer any need to pretend to be moral or virtuous or even to care about other people. It’s become a time to embrace playing the role of the villain.

For the modern conservative, “triggering the liberals” by being a jerk is the highest calling, and “political correctness” is the slur directed at anyone who tries to harsh their vibe by suggesting that overt racism and sexism is uncool. Their president is a witless wannabe insult comic, and the more that Trump resorts to flinging childish insults, the more his supporters love him. Ours is an era where conservatives deliberately go to the grocery store without masks and film themselves harassing minimum-wage workers who are trying to enforce basic public health rules, so they can glory in what massive jerks they are. Their entertainment comes from crude right-wing shock jocks in the Rush Limbaugh tradition. Trolling liberals — for example, by awarding the odious Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom — has replaced pious posturing as the lingua franca of American conservatives.

In other words, the American right no longer feels any need to justify their will to power with over-the-top moralizing. Dominance has become its own justification.

So it’s not surprising that Falwell got a little lackadaisical about pretending to believe all that crap he’s been preaching about the virtues of sobriety and chastity. And more than a little dopey that the board of Liberty University is trying to act offended and going through the ritual of asking him to step aside. The notion that the religious right is motivated by “morality” and “faith” was blown to bits the second they bet their future on Donald Trump. Their massive hypocrisy has been permanently exposed, and dumping one prominent figure to save face won’t change that.

THE APPLE DOES NOT FALL FAR FROM THE TREE
TRIGGER WARNING

 / XENI JARDIN / 11:50 PM TUE MAY 15, 2007

Jerry Falwell talks about his first time.

Link to larger JPEG (1222 x 1608) of the historic parody ad for Campari liquor that once appeared in Hustler magazine. In the fake-interview text, Falwell recalls having lost his virginity to his own mother in a goat-filled outhouse. Wikipedia link to the history of "Hustler Magazine v. Falwell," a legal case that helped defined free speech rights in America, in relation to parodies of public figures. Larry Flynt must be having a pretty happy day today. (image via medialibel)

Here's a statement released today by Flynt on the occasion of Fallwell's death. (thanks to everyone who suggested this)

Previously:

Falwell's stupidest quotes, direct from hell.

Reader comment: BoingBoing reader says,

This is a clip from a series of sermons Jerry Falwell gave in 1998 about Y2K. He reminisces about goats, too.

CAMPARI ADS WERE POPULARLY IDENTIFIED WITH HUSTLER'S COMPETITION; PLAYBOY
EACH MONTH THE AD 
HAD A DIFFERENT PERSON
TALKING ABOUT THEIR FIRST  
TIME DRINKING CAMPARI
FALWELL OF COURSE WAS 
AN ABSTAINER IN A STATE FAMOUS
FOR ITS BOURBON NOT VERMOUTH