Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [53]
Let’s unravel Buchanan’s little parable. The dark-skinned mob represents rampaging liberals seeking to force “radical feminism,” “abortion on demand,” “homosexual rights,” and “discrimination against religious schools” on the American people, who cower helplessly in their nursing home. But, hark, here comes the Eighteenth Cavalry, a.k.a. the Republican Party, brave Christian solders [sic] who would sacrifice their lives to stop dangerous liberals from molesting traditional American citizens. That’s persecution politics.
Needless to say, Buchanan’s story is a pile of hooey. The residents of the Vermont Knoll Retirement Center defended the center from rioters by forming a human shield around the building. By the time the cavalry arrived hours later, all was quiet. According to the center’s director, “There were no guns drawn. No mob attacking . . . I don’t know where he got those facts, but they were not correct.”58
Brown Becomes the New Black
Speaking of the LA riots, most analysts believed that they had been sparked by police brutality against an African American named Rodney King, a logical conclusion because the riots began in a black neighborhood the day after the highly publicized acquittal of the cops who beat up King. But Pat Buchanan never lets logic stand in the way of political opportunity. Always a forward thinker, Buchanan had moved beyond the black-white conflicts of the Wallace era. Black race riots were so 1968. In 1992, brown was the new black. Mexican brown. Observing that many of the rioters were Hispanic, Buchanan concluded, “Foreigners are coming into this country illegally and helping to burn down one of the greatest cities in America.”59
Illegal Latino immigrants offer a number of advantages over blacks as a target for persecution politics. First, whites didn’t enslave Latinos for two hundred years and then repress them for another hundred, so the media is less sensitive to verbal attacks on them. Second, illegal immigrants have no claim to taxpayer support, since they’re not officially American. Even the most hardened welfare opponent might acknowledge some moral imperative to assist American families that have nothing to eat and nowhere to live. But many Americans don’t believe that “illegals” deserve anything from us and, besides, if we gave them benefits, it would just encourage more welfare parasites to come over the border. It was in this spirit that the citizens of California once more took government into their own hands in 1994 and passed Proposition 187, a.k.a. Save Our State, to deny social services, health care, and public education to illegal immigrants. Californians, incidentally, also went after affirmative action two years later with Proposition 209, a.k.a. the California Civil Rights Initiative.au Both propositions were supported by civil rights heroes Pat Buchanan and David Duke.
The trouble with contemporary racism, however, is that society’s taboos are too constraining for effective fearmongering. A conservative pundit who wants to keep his syndicated column and his regular slot on The McLaughlin Group can’t disseminate theories about militant black conspiracies to kill whitey. While quotas and welfare might be oppressive,av they won’t lead to concentration camps for white people. If you really want to