A CHAIN OF IDEOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
DECEMBER 29, 2017
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HAS APPOINTED A KNOWN RACIST TO A FEDERAL JUDGESHIP, THOMAS ALVIN FARR. THE NAACP AND SPLC HAVE SPOKEN OUT AGAINST THIS CHOICE FOR OBVIOUS REASONS. I WONDER IF THAT WAS JUST A NAME THAT WAS RECOMMENDED TO HIM, OR A PURPOSEFUL CHOICE TO PULL THE WHITE SUPREMACY ISSUE FURTHER WITHIN HIS CHAIN OF RELATIONSHIPS IN THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY.
THE GOOD OLD BOY CHAIN LINKS US ALL, LIKE IT OR NOT, EVEN YOU PIOUS NORTHERNERS. LOTS OF HATERS LIVE OUTSIDE THE SOUTH AND WEST ALSO. PAINFULLY, AS IT IS BASIC TO THE SOUTHERN SOCIAL STRUCTURE, WHITE PRIVILEGE IS UNAVOIDABLE. IF YOU GREW UP AS I DID IN THE SOUTH, YOU PROBABLY HAVE BEEN HEAVILY INDOCTRINATED, ESPECIALLY IN AREAS THAT ARE OUTSIDE LARGE CITIES. I PERSONALLY LIKE COUNTRY PEOPLE UNTIL THE CONVERSATION COMES TO THIS SUBJECT, AND THEN I HAVE TO DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO CONTINUE AS CLOSE AN ASSOCIATION WITH THEM, ACCORDING TO HOW STRONGLY THEY DISAGREE WITH ME AND HOW POLITICALLY ACTIVE THEY ARE.
THAT GOOD OLD SOUTHERN TRADITION – WHY DO “GOOD” SOUTHERN PEOPLE LET THIS GO BY WITH NO COMPLAINT OR CRITICISM? DO THEY THINK THAT SPEAKING OUT AGAINST EVIL IS NOT AN AMERICAN RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY, OR PERHAPS THAT SUPPRESSING HUMAN BEINGS IS NOT DEEPLY IMMORAL? I KNOW A NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THIS CATEGORY PERSONALLY, AND IT SADDENS ME.
THE LINKS IN THIS CHAIN SEEMINGLY HAVE NO END. SEE THE RACHEL MADDOW REPORT ON DONALD TRUMP’S NOMINATION FOR FEDERAL JUDGE. IN MY EARLIEST DAYS AS A VOTER, I USED TO SEE JESSE HELMS ON A NEWS SHOW. I DESPISED HIM THEN AND I STILL DO NOW, AND HERE IT IS AGAIN AS A LINK BETWEEN DONALD TRUMP AND THE ALT-RIGHT.
IF YOU HAVE STRONG, COURAGEOUS POSITIVE VIEWS ON THE AMERICAN CULTURE SUCH AS THE IMPORTANCE OF ENSURING THE FULFILLMENT OF THE RIGHT TO VOTE, DON’T LET ANYBODY TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE TOO “ANGRY.” HANG ONTO THOSE VIEWS. YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU’LL NEED THEM TO FACE DOWN NATIONAL NEGATIVITY AND DOWNRIGHT EVIL AGAIN, AND THAT MAY BE SOON.
HIGH RANKING MEMBERS OF THE PIONEER FUND, THOMAS F ELLIS AND JESSE HELMS OF NORTH CAROLINA, FIRST MET AS AIDES DURING A 1950 NORTH CAROLINA SENATE CAMPAIGN THAT WAS NOTORIOUS FOR ITS RACISM AND INCLUDED ADS THAT STATED, “WHITE PEOPLE, WAKE UP BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.” THAT SHAMES “THE GOOD OLD NORTH STATE,” IN MY VIEW, AND SADDENS ME.
THERE WAS YET ANOTHER TRUMP NOMINEE WHO WAS “YANKED” BECAUSE OF THE BAD PUBLICITY THAT IT GENERATED -- TIM KELLY: HTTPS://WWW.EDWEEK.ORG/EW/ARTICLES/2017/11/09/TRUMP-NOMINEE-FOR-CAREERTECH-POSITION-BEING-PULLED.HTML. “BUT KELLY TOLD THE DETROIT NEWS THAT HIS BLOG REFLECTED MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT.”
" . . . . Tim Kelly, a Michigan state representative who President Donald Trump tapped to lead the office of career, technical, and adult education at the U.S. Department of Education, after it surfaced that he was the author of a personal blog that made offensive statements about Muslims, Head Start parents, and federal efforts to recruit women into the sciences, a source said.
"It became clear that Mr. Kelly had made a series of statements that were not reflective of the secretary's values," said an administration official. Sources characterized this as a decision that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy Devos made when she was presented with the information. The blog should have been caught in the White House vetting process, one source said. And Kelly should have disclosed it with his application, but failed to do so, this source added.
Kelly did not respond to an email from Education Week, and his state legislative office declined to make him available. But Kelly told the Detroit News that his blog reflected mainstream conservative thought.”
THE TIM KELLY BLOG – APPARENTLY NOBODY TOLD KELLY THAT WHEN WE “ASSUME,” WE MAKE AN ASS OUT OF U AND ME. THE WHOLE POINT OF SCHOOLING IS TO TEACH EACH PERSON, AND THEY DON’T HAVE TO BE CHILDREN OR SUPREMELY INTELLIGENT. TEACHING, NURSING AND CERTAIN OTHER PROFESSIONS ARE OFTEN CALLED “THE HELPING PROFESSIONS.” THAT IS DONE FOR ALL, EQUALLY, AND AS AN ACT OF HOPE AND FAITH. IT IS A RELIGIOUS DUTY.
I BELIEVE THAT OUR JOB AS A TEACHER IS TO PROVIDE A FOUNDATION FOR AN EVER-FULLER LEARNING EXPERIENCE IN EVERY PERSON, ON THEIR OWN. TWO THINGS THAT MUST BE PLANTED IN EACH KID IS CURIOSITY AND THE JOY OF LEARNING. IF WE DO THAT, WE’VE SUCCEEDED. IT’S LIKE THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. JUST THROW OUT THE SEEDS. IT WOULD HELP IF YOU WOULD ADD SOME WATER AND LOOSEN THE SOIL WITH YOUR TRUSTY HOE BEFORE YOU START, THOUGH. AFTER THAT, IT’S UP TO THE HIGHER POWER. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?
JUST BECAUSE NOT EVERY KID WILL BE ABLE TO LEARN OR WILL EVEN BE INTERESTED IN IT, DOESN’T MEAN AT ALL THAT, AS DECENT TEACHERS WHO DESERVE OUR SALARY, WE SHOULDN’T DO OUR BEST TO TEACH AND EXPLAIN AND ENCOURAGE EACH AND EVERY ONE, AND WITH NO NEGATIVE “ASS”UMPTIONS AT ALL. I ALSO RESENT THE ASSUMPTION THAT “LOW INCOME KIDS” MEANS BLACK KIDS, AND EVEN IF IT DOES, A TEACHER WORTHY OF THE NAME WILL NOT MAKE ANY NEGATIVE “ASS”UMPTIONS ABOUT THEM AT ALL. JUST DO YOUR DAMN JOB.
WHAT PEOPLE THINK IS OBVIOUS TO CHILDREN – THEY’RE SMALL, NOT STUPID -- AND THAT SORT OF DEVALUATION IS TERRIBLY DAMAGING TO A CHILD. THEIR ARE A NUMBER OF VITALLY IMPORTANT THING A CHILD NEEDS TO LEARN AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE, AND TO ME THE MOST IMPORT ARE TO LOVE THEMSELVES AND ALSO LOVE OTHERS. IF THEY’RE TREATED LIKE A FRESH COWPATTY THEY WON’T LEARN THOSE THINGS. THEY’RE VERY FRAGILE, AND IF THEY JUST “CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING,” THEIR CHANCES ARE LESS THAN AVERAGE IN EVERY WAY.
NOW, AS FOR THIS DISGUSTING STATEMENT, “INSTEAD OF ASSUMING THAT ALL PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN, LET ALONE CAPABLE OF, BLOWING UP WESTERN, CHRISTIAN, OR JEWISH THINGS, LET’S ASSUME ALL MUSLIMS ARE.” FOR ANYONE WHO WOULD THINK THAT, MUCH LESS BE FOOLISH ENOUGH SAY IT ALOUD, THAT IS REASON ENOUGH NOT TO HIRE THIS MAN. HE ISN’T BRIGHT.
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/11/10/these-blog-posts-about-muslims-and-women-cost-tim-kelly-an-education-department-nomination
These blog posts about Muslims and women cost Tim Kelly an Education Department nomination
Nov 10, 2017 7:45 pm
Aaron Colen
STAFF WRITER
Photograph -- Michigan Rep. Tim Kelly had his nomination for a Department of Education post pulled by the Trump administration for blog posts he wrote several years ago. (Image source: WKAR YouTube video screenshot)
President Donald Trump nominated Michigan State Representative Tim Kelly for a high-level career and technical education position in the Department of Education, but the administration pulled that nomination after some comments in Kelly’s blog from years ago gained public attention.
“It became clear that Mr. Kelly had made a series of statements that were not reflective of the secretary’s values,” said an administration official.
THE COMMENTS
From 2009, after a Nigerian man attempted to board a Detroit-bound plane with explosives in his underwear:
“Forget for a moment, that this young man from Nigeria purchased his one-way ticket with cash, had no luggage, or that his father had warned the authorities of his radicalism. He should have been on anybody’s no-fly list because his name is UMAR FAROUK ABDULMUTALLAB! Zenaphobic [sic]? No, I’m being pragmatic … Instead of assuming that all people are interested in, let alone capable of, blowing up Western, Christian, or Jewish things, let’s assume all Muslims are.”
Another, about women in STEM fields:
“Research shows that bias against women in the sciences is extremely weak. Studies point to data that indicate men and women simply have different tastes when it comes to areas of study. For instance, women may be underrepresented in the fields of engineering, but thrive in the areas of sociology and biology. … For my money, this kind of ridiculousness in academia should not be rewarded and certainly not paid for by the American taxpayer.”
From 2011, about low-income parents using federally funded early-childhood education programs:
“As I said, there have been a number of independent studies over the years that have concluded that these program children come to school with no more social or cognitive abilities than their non-program counterparts. So why then do we continue to pay for this failure? … In other words, we pay the very same people, the parents of these children, who are often themselves academically and socially needy, to teach their own not to emulate the destructive and debilitating behavior and practices they witness everyday in their own homes and neighborhoods. Yeah, that’s gonna work.”
Kelly defends himself
Kelly blamed the “deep state” and Trump haters for digging up and leaking the questionable blog posts to sabotage his nomination.
“If people read the [blog] posts, people will think … this guy got a bad deal,” Kelly said. “I’m appalled that people would take this out of context. … I wrote this blog several years ago. Someone from inside leaked this. I wasn’t ever hiding it. I was forthcoming with it from the get-go.”
After having his nomination pulled, Kelly said he didn’t think it would be good to work for the Trump administration anyway.
“I don’t see why anybody with any sense wants to go there,” Kelly said. “They take good people and ruin them.”
i>
Pioneer Fund
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with The Pioneer Fund, a Denver-based charity founded by Helen M. McLoraine.
“PIONEER FUND IS AN AMERICAN NON-PROFIT FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED IN 1937 "TO ADVANCE THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF HEREDITY AND HUMAN DIFFERENCES". THE ORGANIZATION HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS RACIST AND "WHITE SUPREMACIST" IN NATURE,[1][2][3] AND AS A HATE GROUP BY THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER.[4]
From 2002 until his death in October 2012, the fund was headed by psychology professor J. Philippe Rushton. THE FUND STATES THAT IT FOCUSES ON PROJECTS IT PERCEIVES WILL NOT BE EASILY FUNDED DUE TO CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECT MATTER. As of October 2013, Richard Lynn is the primary contact for Pioneer Fund.[5]
Two of the most notable studies funded by Pioneer Fund are the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart[6] and the Texas Adoption Project, which studied the similarities and differences of identical twins and other children adopted into non-biological families. PIONEER FUND HAS ALSO BEEN AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF FUNDING FOR RESEARCH ON THE PARTLY GENETIC HYPOTHESIS OF IQ VARIATION AMONG RACES.
THE FUND'S GRANTEES AND PUBLICATIONS HAVE GENERATED CONTROVERSY INCLUDING THE 1994 PUBLICATION OF THE BELL CURVE, WHICH DREW HEAVILY FROM PIONEER-FUNDED RESEARCH. THE FUND HAS ALSO BEEN CRITICIZED FOR ITS TIES TO EUGENICS.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws
Nuremberg Laws
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime, see Nuremberg principles. For the set of research ethics principles for human experimentation, see Nuremberg Code.
The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany. They were introduced on 15 September 1935 by the Reichstag at a special meeting convened at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani people and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Gypsies as "enemies of the race-based state", the same category as Jews.
Out of foreign policy concerns, prosecutions under the two laws did not commence until after the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, they began to implement their policies, which included the formation of a Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) based on race. Chancellor and Führer (leader) Adolf Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933, and the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April, excluded non-Aryans from the legal profession and civil service. Books considered un-German, including those by Jewish authors, were destroyed in a nationwide book burning on 10 May. Jewish citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks. They were actively suppressed, stripped of their citizenship and civil rights, and eventually completely removed from German society.
The Nuremberg Laws had a crippling economic and social impact on the Jewish community. Persons convicted of violating the marriage laws were imprisoned, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Non-Jews gradually stopped socialising with Jews or shopping in Jewish-owned stores, many of which closed due to lack of customers. As Jews were no longer permitted to work in the civil service or government-regulated professions such as medicine and education, many middle class business owners and professionals were forced to take menial employment. Emigration was problematic, as Jews were required to remit up to 90 per cent of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country. By 1938 it was almost impossible for potential Jewish emigrants to find a country willing to take them. Mass deportation schemes such as the Madagascar Plan proved to be impossible for the Nazis to carry out, and starting in mid-1941, the German government started mass exterminations of the Jews of Europe.
Background[edit]
Main articles: Nazi eugenics and Nazism and race
The National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP; Nazi Party) was one of several far-right political parties active in Germany after the end of the First World War.[1] The party platform included removal of the Weimar Republic*, rejection of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, radical antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism.[2] They promised a strong central government, increased Lebensraum (living space) for Germanic peoples, formation of a Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) based on race, and racial cleansing via the active suppression of Jews, who would be stripped of their citizenship and civil rights.[3]
[http://www.chegg.com/homework-help/definitions/weimar-republic-45 –
“Weimar Republic]
The Weimar Republic was the democratic government founded in Germany following Kaiser Wilhelm II's abdication near the end of War World I. It continued in name until 1945, but actually ended with Hitler's seizure of dictatorial powers in 1933. From the beginning, the Weimar Republic suffered from the financial and psychological effects of the Treaty of Versailles, including the requirement to pay "reparations" to France and England, several military occupations, and its famously crippling inflation. Additionally, controversy surrounding that treaty and the manner of Germany's defeat in World War I led to increased support for extremist nationalist groups, such as the Nazi party, which won the largest majority in parliament in 1932 and soon thereafter established a dictatorship.”
While imprisoned in 1924 after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to his deputy, Rudolf Hess.[4] The book is an autobiography and exposition of Hitler's ideology in which he laid out his plans for transforming German society into one based on race. In it he outlined his belief in Jewish Bolshevism, a conspiracy theory that posited the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy for world domination in which the Jews were the mortal enemy of the German people. Throughout his life Hitler never wavered in his world view as expounded in Mein Kampf.[5] The NSDAP advocated the concept of a Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community") with the aim of uniting all Germans as national comrades, whilst excluding those deemed either to be community aliens or of a foreign race (Fremdvölkische).[6]
Nazi Germany
Discrimination against Jews intensified after the NSDAP seized power; following a month-long series of attacks by members of the Sturmabteilung (SA; paramilitary wing of the NSDAP) on Jewish businesses, synagogues, and members of the legal profession, on 1 April 1933 Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses.[7] By 1933, many people who were not NSDAP members advocated segregating Jews from the rest of German society.[8] The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April 1933, forced all non-Aryans to retire from the legal profession and civil service.[9] Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practise.[9] In 1934, the NSDAP published a pamphlet titled "Warum Arierparagraph?" ("Why the Aryan Law?"), which summarised the perceived need for the law.[10] As part of the drive to remove Jewish influence from cultural life, members of the National Socialist Student League removed from libraries any books considered un-German, and a nationwide book burning was held on 10 May.[11] Violence and economic pressure were used by the regime to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country.[12] Legislation passed in July 1933 stripped naturalised German Jews of their citizenship, creating a legal basis for recent immigrants (particularly Eastern European Jews) to be deported.[9] Many towns posted signs forbidding entry to Jews.[13] Throughout 1933 and 1934, Jewish businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of access to government contracts. Citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks.[14]
Other laws promulgated in this period included the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (passed on 14 July 1933), which called for the compulsory sterilisation of people with a range of hereditary, physical, and mental illnesses.[15] Under the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals (passed 24 November 1935), habitual criminals were forced to undergo sterilisation as well.[16] This law was also used to force the incarceration in prison or Nazi concentration camps of "social misfits" such as the chronically unemployed, prostitutes, beggars, alcoholics, homeless vagrants, and Romani people.[17]
Reich Gypsy Law[edit]
The Central Office for Combatting Gypsies was established in 1929.[18] In December 1938 Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued an order for "COMBATTING THE GYPSY PLAGUE". Romani people were to be categorised in terms of their Roma ancestry as a racial characteristic, rather than their previous association as 'anti-social' elements of society.[19] This work was advanced by Dr Robert Ritter of the Racial Hygiene and Population unit of the Ministry of Health, who by 1942, had produced a scale of ZM+, ZM of the first and second degree, and ZM- to reflect an individual's decreasing level of Romani ancestry.[20] This classification meant that one could be classified as Roma and subject to anti-Roma legislation on the basis of having two Roma great-great grandparents.[21] Dr Zindel of the Ministry of the Interior prepared a draft of a Reich "Gypsy Law" intended to supplement and accompany the Nuremberg Laws. According to Zindel, the "Gypsy problem" could not be dealt with by forced resettlement or imprisonment within Germany. He recommended identification and registration of all Roma, followed by sterilisation and deportation. In 1938, public health authorities were ordered to register all Roma and Roma Mischlinge.[22] Despite Himmler's interest in enacting such legislation, which he said would prevent "further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions which go together with the existences of Gypsies in the living space of the German nation",[23] the regime never promulgated the "Gypsy Law".[24] In December 1942, Himmler ordered that all Roma were to be sent to Nazi concentration camps.[19]
. . . .
Persons suspected of having sexual relations with non-Aryans were charged with Rassenschande (racial defilement) and tried in the regular courts. Evidence provided to the Gestapo for such cases was largely provided by ordinary citizens such as neighbours, co-workers, or other informants.[58] Persons accused of race defilement were publicly humiliated by being paraded through the streets with a placard around their necks detailing their crime.[59] Those convicted were typically sentenced to prison terms, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps.[58] As the law did not permit capital punishment for racial defilement, special courts were convened to allow the death penalty for some cases.[60] From the end of 1935 through 1940, 1,911 people were convicted of Rassenschande. Over time, the law was extended to include non-sexual forms of physical contact such as greeting someone with a kiss or an embrace.[58]
For the most part, Germans accepted the Nuremberg Laws, partly because Nazi propaganda had successfully swayed public opinion towards the general belief that Jews were a separate race, but also because to oppose the regime meant leaving oneself open to harassment or arrest by the Gestapo.[61][62] Citizens were relieved that the antisemitic violence ceased after the laws were passed.[63] Non-Jews gradually stopped socialising with Jews or shopping in Jewish-owned stores.[64] Wholesalers who continued to serve Jewish merchants were marched through the streets with placards around their necks proclaiming them as traitors.[65] The Communist party and some elements of the Catholic Church were critical of the laws.[56] Concerned that international opinion would be adversely swayed by the new laws, the Interior Ministry did not actively enforce them until after the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin that August.[31][61]
The Interior Ministry estimated there were 750,000 Mischlinge as of April 1935 (studies done after the war put the number of Mischlinge at around 200,000).[56] As Jews became more and more excluded from German society, they organised social events, schools, and activities of their own.[66] Economic problems were not so easily solved, however; many Jewish firms went out of business due to lack of customers. This was part of the ongoing Aryanization process (the transfer of Jewish firms to non-Jewish owners, usually at prices far below market value) that the regime had initiated in 1933, which intensified after the Nuremberg Laws were passed.[67] Former middle-class or wealthy business owners were forced to take employment in menial jobs to support their families, and many were unable to find work at all.[68]
Although a stated goal of the Nazis was that all Jews should leave the country, emigration was problematic, as Jews were required to remit up to 90 per cent of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country.[69] Anyone caught transferring their money overseas were sentenced to lengthy terms in prison as "economic saboteurs".[70] An exception was money sent to Palestine under the terms of the Haavara Agreement, whereby Jews could transfer some of their assets and emigrate to that country. Around 52,000 Jews emigrated to Palestine under the terms of this agreement between 1933 and 1939.[71]
By the start of the Second World War in 1939, around 250,000 of Germany's 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Palestine, Great Britain, and other countries.[72][73] By 1938 it was becoming almost impossible for potential Jewish emigrants to find a country that would take them.[74] After the 1936–39 Arab revolt, the British were disinclined to accept any more Jews into Palestine for fear it would further destabilise the region.[75] Nationalistic and xenophobic people in other countries pressured their governments not to accept waves of Jewish immigrants, ESPECIALLY POVERTY-STRICKEN ONES.[76] The Madagascar Plan, a proposed mass deportation of European Jews to Madagascar, proved to be impossible to carry out.[77] Starting in mid-1941, the German government started mass exterminations of the Jews of Europe.[78] The total number of Jews murdered during the resulting Holocaust is estimated at 5.5 to 6 million people.[79] Estimates of the death toll of Romani people in the Porajmos range from 150,000 to 1,500,000.[80]
ON FARR AND HIS BACKGROUND, INCLUDING THE FAR-RIGHT PIONEER FUND, SEE THE ITEMS BELOW. THIS MSNBC VIDEO INTRODUCES THE SUBJECT OF THE PIONEER FUND GROUP IN HISTORY.
VIDEO
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 12/28/17
Trump nominee's racist roots raises alarm*
Rev. William Barber talks with Joy Reid about his concerns about the racism of Donald Trump judicial nominee Thomas Alvin Farr. Duration: 5:58
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/12/04/eugenics-voter-id-laws-thomas-farrs-connections-pioneer-fund
From eugenics to voter ID laws: Thomas Farr's connections to the Pioneer Fund
December 04, 2017
By Alex Amend
Over the summer, President Donald Trump nominated Thomas Alvin Farr to be a federal judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. For good reason, his nomination has earned universal opposition from the civil rights community.
In a September letter to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), argued that Farr "does not possess the temperament necessary to serve in an impartial judicial position.” What Farr does possess, according to Barber, “is a long record as an advocate for hyper-partisan, segregationist causes.”
Farr’s record of fighting advances in black political participation spans decades. It includes his involvement in drafting and then defending the 2013 North Carolina “monster” voter restriction law struck down by a federal court because it targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.” “Because of race, the Legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” the court ruled.
And just recently, Farr was reported to have misrepresented his role in voter suppression activity directed at black voters conducted by the Jesse Helms Senate campaign in 1990 against Charlotte’s first black mayor, Harvey Gantt. A former Justice Department lawyer placed Farr in the center of the unlawful conduct.
This record should be disqualifying on its own. What’s missing and more disquieting in Farr’s story, however, is his early connections to one of the most influential racist hate groups of the 20th century: the Pioneer Fund. Founded in 1937 to pursue “race betterment” for those “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution,” the Pioneer Fund was the “primary source for scientific racism” well into the 2000s and one of the key funders of the fight against civil rights in the South from the 1950s onward.
Farr’s connection to the Pioneer Fund comes principally through his longtime boss and mentor, Thomas Ellis, the political mastermind behind the arch-segregationist Senator Jesse Helms. Ellis was a Pioneer Fund director, grantee and close associate of the hate group’s president, Harry Frederick Weyher, Jr., for over 60 years. In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed from the Pioneer Fund to a tax-exempt foundation called the Coalition For Freedom that was under Ellis’ control and represented by Farr.
thomas-ellis-thomas-farr
Thomas Ellis (left) was a Pioneer Fund director, grantee, and close associate of the hate group’s president, Harry Frederick Weyher, Jr., for over 60 years. Ellis hired Thomas Farr (right) at his law firm in 1983 where they both worked until 2003 before leaving together for another firm where Farr is currently a shareholder.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder ruling that gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act — a ruling that gave Farr and his allies a free hand to introduce their “monster” law — Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker wrote that “Americans tend to imagine that the racial history of their nation is a steady line sloping upward; in truth, it looks more like an EKG.”
Americans also tend to imagine organized racism as the province of hooded Klansmen. In reality, Farr stands as a direct descendant of one of the most sophisticated segregationist projects in American history.
The Pioneer Fund
The Pioneer Fund was founded in 1937 by Wickliffe Preston Draper, a reclusive heir to a textile fortune. The Pioneer Fund’s first president Harry S. Laughlin was the most prominent American eugenicist of his era. One of Draper’s early investments was in the work of white supremacist Earnest Sevier Cox, who helped draft an amendment to Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act that outlawed interracial marriage. Cox wrote that he was seeking to prevent “near-white negroids” from being able to “marry into the white race.”
William H. Tucker described the Pioneer Fund’s legacy in his definitive 2002 history of the hate group:
Despite attempts to sanitize Pioneer’s image, it is undeniable that the fund was established to use science to pursue the goals of its founder: the preservation of white supremacy and white racial purity from the threat posed by blacks and undesirable immigrants, especially Jews…
For decades, the Pioneer Fund did this by supporting like-minded scholars; publishing or republishing racist tracts and research and sending them to opinion leaders, institutions of higher learning, and elected officials; and bankrolling lobbying efforts against civil rights legislation and affirmative action policies.
Aside from Draper, the most important figure at the Pioneer Fund was Harry Frederick Weyher, Jr., who first became friends with Ellis when they were both undergraduates at the University of North Carolina.
“[A]ll the segregationists’ projects intersected on Harry Weyher’s desk,” wrote Tucker, and Weyher decided which projects received funding. After Draper’s death in 1972, Weyher ran the Pioneer Fund until his own death in 2002, as Tucker summarized:
Weyher would make Draper’s cause his own, heading the Pioneer Fund through the rest of the [20th] century, disbursing his mentor’s acknowledged and unacknowledged donations to the campaign against equality for blacks, organizing many of these efforts, monitoring their results, and becoming the heir not just to much of the Colonel’s fortune but also to his social policy agenda. If Pioneer was originally “Draper’s Fund,” it was to become Weyher’s.
One example of Ellis and Weyher collaborating occurred in the 1950s. According to Tucker, Ellis likely sent Weyher the work of University of North Carolina professor Wesley Critz George, including a pamphlet titled “The Race Problem from the Standpoint of One Who Is Concerned with the Evils of Miscegenation.” In it, George decried the “protoplasmic mixing of the races” which would “destroy our race and civilization” because African Americans were “genetically unacceptable.” Weyher would fund George on the basis of this recommendation.
Around the same time, Ellis echoed George in his role opposing integration as special counsel to the Pearsall Committee, set up by the North Carolina governor to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. “[T]he present integration movement in the public schools is but a part of a planned social revolution in the South, fostered, directed and financed by non-southern whites...[whose] eventual goal…is racial intermarriage and the disappearance of the Negro race by fusing into the white,” Ellis said.
Ellis and Weyher were both deeply involved in the fight against integration throughout the 1960s. The Pioneer Fund dumped millions into the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, which The New Republic called “the largest state-level spying effort in U.S. history,” while Ellis in North Carolina considered legislation that would eliminate the tax-exempt status of black churches in order to target the spaces where the NAACP met to strategize integration efforts.
Pioneer Fund grantees were just as hostile to the idea of extending voting rights to African Americans as they were to the desegregation of public schools and interracial marriage. For instance, one major grantee, Carelton Putnam, wrote in 1967 that “the unlimited suffrage concept is marginal [even for] an advanced and experienced race like the Anglo-American [but] to apply it to states or communities with high percentages of a retarded race is suicidal.”
Farr Joins the Ellis Network
By 1973, Ellis officially joined the Pioneer Fund as a director on an invitation from Weyher. This fact only became public following a New York Times exposé in 1977 which revealed a number of grant recipients, including Stanford University Professor William Shockley and Dr. Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California — two towers of scientific racism — as well as Dr. Roger Pearson, a racist extremist who maintained ties with former Nazis.
Ellis recruited Helms to run for Senate in 1972 and remained a top aide into the 1990s.
At the same time, Ellis and North Carolina’s new Senator Jesse Helms, were creating a powerful political empire designed to influence both politics and policy against the rising tide of integration and civil rights. That venture further extended the reach of the Pioneer Fund in the political world. While a Pioneer director, Ellis developed a set of interlocking directorates and associations that shared leadership with the Pioneer Fund and relied, in part, on its funding. These relationships would continue even after Ellis resigned from the Pioneer Fund after his association was made public.
Ellis and Helms first met as aides during a 1950 North Carolina Senate campaign that was notorious for its racism and included ads that stated, “White people, wake up before it’s too late.” After Helms’ first senate victory in 1972, a campaign which Ellis managed, Ellis created and chaired the North Carolina Congressional Club, a vehicle initially designed to retire the campaign’s debt. Ellis turned the state-based organization into the National Congressional Club, an incredibly powerful national political action committee that served the conservative movement for decades. A longstanding director of the Congressional Club, Marion Arendell Parrott, also served as a director of the Pioneer Fund.
(Left) Ellis at the North Carolina Congressional Club headquarters in 1979. (Right) Ellis and Helms first met working as aides for a 1950 North Carolina Senate campaign notorious for its racist appeals including this "White People Wake Up" flyer. Ellis would perfect racist appeals in campaigning over the decades.
By the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Ellis had developed a suite of organizations — both for-profit and tax-exempt — to complement the National Congressional Club and perform functions that it could not without running afoul of campaign finance or tax laws. These entities provided research and analysis to support legislative proposals, raised political money to elect like-minded candidates and developed messaging and communications.
In 1983, Farr became intricately engaged with this network of organizations when he joined the Raleigh, North Carolina-based law firm that bore Ellis’ name, Maupin, Taylor & Ellis. (William W. Taylor, Jr. worked with Ellis to staff the Pearsall Committee).
Farr worked with Ellis at Maupin, Taylor & Ellis until 2003, and then followed Ellis to another firm where Farr is still a shareholder.
Only months before Farr joined Ellis’ firm, Ellis’ connections to the Pioneer Fund resurfaced following his nomination to the Board for International Broadcasting. When asked during his hearing before a Senate Committee if the concept of racial inferiority intellectually offended him, Ellis first replied, “I don’t know how to answer that question.” Ellis added "I do not believe in my heart that I'm a racist." His Pioneer Fund association and other strong indicators of Ellis’s racist views forced Ellis to withdraw his nomination.
After his racist associations and political activities were examined by a Senate committee, Ellis withdrew his nomination to the Board for International Broadcasting* in 1983, the same year Farr joined his law firm.
[*BIB -- BOARD FOR INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING, PARENT COMPANY OF RADIO FREE EUROPE AND VOICE OF AMERICA.]
Despite national condemnation of his ties to the group, Ellis was shortly back in business with Weyher, and the money he controlled through the Pioneer Fund. Upon joining Maupin, Ellis & Taylor, Farr assumed the role of lawyer for many of Helms’ organizations, including those either bankrolled by the Pioneer Fund or, in the case of Marion Parrott, one that shared a board member. Farr’s answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire lists his representation for the Helms for Senate Committee in 1984 and 1990 and the National Congressional Club for the same years.
In 1985, Farr represented both Jefferson Marketing and the National Congressional Club after the FEC alleged that the organizations had violated campaign finance laws. That same year, Pioneer Fund director Marion Parrott—who had joined the Pioneer Fund at the same time as Ellis in the early 70s—was also on the board of the National Congressional Club.
Farr’s law firm also represented the Coalition For Freedom, a tax-exempt organization within the network. Ellis was its principal director. This organization received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Pioneer Fund throughout the 1980s.
The Coalition For Freedom relied on Farr’s law firm for organizing the interlocking entities to maximize their monetary and political influence. The Coalition For Freedom ended up making the contributions, resulting in an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service about whether the tax-exempt organization served a private interest to Jesse Helms, the Helms for Senate Committee and the National Congressional Club. The IRS ultimately revoked Coalition For Freedom’s tax-exempt status because it had engaged in political campaign activities and provided a private benefit to the group's "insiders."
The network had other ties to the Pioneer Fund. After President Ronald Reagan’s landslide re-election in 1984, Ellis organized an attempted conservative shareholder takeover of the CBS television network with a new front group called Fairness In Media, Ellis enlisted Weyher to serve as its lawyer. Jesse Helms sent letters to his base across the nation urging them to purchase CBS stock, which garnered Helms enormous publicity. When CBS fought back with litigation, it pointed to Ellis and Weyher’s connections to the Pioneer Fund and noted Ellis’ opposition to racial integration in North Carolina.
"[Weyher] and Tom Ellis have been acquaintances for years, and we were interested in legal counsel [Weyher] who was one, competent, and second, even more importantly, understood what our concerns were philosophically," said another member of Fairness in Media in 1985.
Farr’s Success in Racist Politics and Suppressing the Black Vote
In 1984, Helms, Ellis and Farr used their vast political network to suppress African American votes and scare up white resentment in Helms’ campaigns for senate. With Farr as lead counsel, the campaign circulated photos of opponent Governor Jim Hunt with African American leaders such as Jesse Jackson and cited Hunt’s support of voter registration, the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday — the vote for which Helms infamously filibustered in the Senate — and the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. The campaign was even mentioned by the Supreme Court in a redistricting case, Gingles v. Edmisten, as evidence of continued racism in North Carolina politics.
Farr also served as lead counsel for Helms’ senate campaign in 1990. The opponent was Harvey Gantt, the first black mayor of Charlotte. In its final days, the campaign ran an ad showing white hands crumpling a rejection letter with the announcer stating: “You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.” Farr’s mentor Ellis was credited with authoring the ad.
Farr’s mentor Ellis was credited with authoring the notorious "white hands" ad.
That same campaign engaged in voter suppression so egregious that the Justice Department under President George H.W. Bush filed a complaint for intimidating black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Specifically, the campaign mailed over 100,000 postcards to mostly black voters in North Carolina one week before the election. The postcards suggested the voters were ineligible to vote and threatened jail time. The Justice Department complaint found that the mailing was undertaken to influence the senate election and had the purpose and effect of intimidating and threatening black voters from exercising their right to vote. A North Carolina voter who received the postcard recently told a reporter: “We were looking at it, and it just seemed like you would basically be afraid to go vote, in case you would do something wrong…And the wording on the card just gave you a chill.”
The Justice Department’s voting rights complaint identified familiar faces within the organizations and persons connected to Helms and Ellis’ empire. Among those named as defendants were the Helms for Senate Committee; Jefferson Marketing and three of its wholly owned subsidiaries; and Douglas Davidson who had served as president of Jefferson Marketing and was identified as an agent of the Helms for Senate Committee and having supervisory control over Jefferson Marketing company personnel.
The complaint alleged that in the summer of 1990 representatives of defendant Helms for Senate Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party had discussed whether to conduct a “so-called ballot security program,” in conjunction with the 1990 general election.
The complaint continued:
“On or about October 16 and 17, 1990, Defendant Locke attended a series of meetings at which the 1990 ballot security program was discussed. Among those attending such meetings were defendant Davidson; Peter Moore, the campaign manager of Helms for Senate Committee; Mark Stephens, president of Jefferson Marketing; and an attorney who had been involved in past ballot security efforts on behalf of Senator Helms and/or defendant North Carolina Republican Party. During the meeting, some of the participants formed a tentative outline for the 1990 ballot security program, which included a mailing targeted to voters who may have changed residences.” [Emphasis added]
The postcards were mailed on October 26 and 29 to selected households using voter registration lists maintained by Jefferson Marketing and utilized by the Helms for Senate Committee.
During his hearing this fall, Farr told the Senate Judiciary Committee he had no role in the mailing and heard about it only after being contacted by the Justice Department. Ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked Farr: “Did you provide any counsel, or were you consulted in any way, about the content of or the decision to end [sic] these postcards?” Farr responded, “No.”
But a former Justice Department lawyer, Gerald Hebert, who worked on the case, places Farr squarely in the center of the activity. According to Hebert’s contemporaneous notes, Farr was the unnamed attorney who was also the primary "ballot security" person for the 1984 campaign. “I don’t think [Farr] can really claim that the first he heard of it was from a Justice Department letter,” Hebert said.
Farr’s Praise for his Mentor: An Unrepentant Racist
William H. Tucker, the author of the history of the Pioneer Fund, uncovered correspondence between Senator Jesse Helms, Pioneer Fund president Harry Weyher and Marion Parrott, a board member of both Pioneer and Helms’ Congressional Club, yucking it up as late as the 1990s:
More contemporary correspondence in the genealogy indicated that even in the 1990s, in the clubby atmosphere characterizing the exchanges between North Carolina political insiders, Weyher and his friends — Senator Jesse Helms and fellow Pioneer board member Marion Parrott, a relative of Weyher’s — still referred to white Southerners who voted for a black candidate as “scalawags” and, only partially in jest, joked about how “the Indians didn’t get enough of them.”
Helms never apologized for his crusade against civil rights. In fact, his crusade never stopped. Helms fought until nearly the end of his time in the Senate to resist the appointment of a black judge to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
The same can be said of Helms' right-hand man and Farr’s mentor, Thomas Ellis. In 2001, Ellis was interviewed by The New York Times following the news that Helms was retiring from the senate. Asked about his time at the Pioneer Fund, Ellis was unmoved:
He has been pilloried for serving in the 1970s as a director of the Pioneer Fund, which financed research on the relationship between race and intelligence. He said it remained an open question in his mind whether one race was genetically superior. ''I have no idea,'' he said, seated beneath a portrait of Robert E. Lee. ''I've never tested it, don't know whether it's a valid argument or not. Because there is such a huge cry about the thing, you can't have a legitimate, intelligent argument about it.''
Six years later, in 2007, Farr spoke at a private event at the North Carolina Museum of Art “in honor of Tom Ellis.” The occasion was Ellis receiving the Freedom Leadership Award from Farr’s alma mater Hillsdale College, a deeply conservative college located in Michigan which long ago decided to forgo federal funding to avoid compliance with civil rights laws. A short reflection from the late Christian Right leader Howard Phillips is all that exists as a record of the event and notes that Farr and the Hillsdale College president delivered remarks. In his Senate questionnaire, Farr said he did not have a copy of his speech to share with the committee.
For more than 30 years Farr worked side-by-side with Ellis in an escalating war against voting and labor rights that predominantly targets black North Carolinians. Together they fought on behalf of Helms, and perfected the potent political appeal to white racial grievance. Their North Carolina network included people like the Pioneer Fund’s Weyher and Parrott, men who provided funding and guidance to their efforts for decades. It served them well. And for Ellis and Helms, neither paid a price.
Indeed, with the election of President Trump, the Ellis and Helms approach to politics returned and with it came a resurgent white nationalist movement. Ideas long relegated to the fringe, especially those kept alive by groups and individuals supported by the Pioneer Fund, found massive new audiences on social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube.
The legacy of the Pioneer Fund, however, is not best measured by the number of white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville this past August. Rather, it should be measured by the legal and policy approaches that, like the “monster” voter suppression law in North Carolina, target black voters “with almost surgical precision.”
Farr was groomed as part of a project long in the making. In a low irony, if Farr is confirmed to the bench, it will extend the record to 143 years that the Eastern District of North Carolina has been without a black judge.
I RESPECT THE SPLC MORE THAN THE ACLU. ACLU SOMETIMES DEFENDS PEOPLE OR GROUPS WHO ARE INDEFENSIBLE IN MY VIEW. THIS BUSINESS OF TAKING DRIVERS LICENSES FOR NON-PAYMENT OF FINES IS UNFAIR. PEOPLE NEED THEIR CARS TO GET TO WORK AND TO THE DOCTOR OR THE GROCERY STORE. ALSO, THESE PENALTIES ARE VERY FREQUENTLY USED DIFFERENTIALLY ON THE BASIS OF RACE. THERE IS SO MUCH OF THAT STILL LEFT IN THE USA – THE GREAT USA – THAT IT IS GETTING BORING. YET, TIME AND AGAIN MORE STORIES COME OUT ABOUT IT IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2017/12/19/splc-reaches-agreement-mississippi-reinstate-over-100000-driver%E2%80%99s-licenses-suspended-non
SPLC reaches agreement with Mississippi to reinstate over 100,000 driver’s licenses suspended for non-payment of fines
December 19, 2017
Mississippi will reinstate more than 100,000 driver’s licenses that were suspended for non-payment of traffic tickets and will no longer suspend licenses for failure to pay fines, under an agreement that was announced today between the SPLC, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety (DPS) and another organization.
Under the new procedures, DPS will also waive its $100 reinstatement fee, will notify these drivers that their licenses are no longer suspended and – if their licenses have expired since they were suspended – will instruct motorists how to reinstate them.
The new policies could have far-reaching effects in Mississippi, where nearly 95 percent of residents travel to work by car. Low-income people with suspended licenses were often forced to choose between paying fines or using money for food, housing and health care – or to choose between driving with a suspended license and losing a job.
In a state where 22 percent of the population lives in poverty – the highest percentage in the nation – the new procedures could spare many people from further impoverishment.
Previously, DPS would automatically suspend a license, without asking people why they could not pay and without giving them extra time to pay or an alternative punishment like community service.
“We commend the state of Mississippi for taking steps to ensure that in the future, no one will lose their license if the only reason they failed to pay a traffic ticket is that they simply did not have enough money,” said Sam Brooke, SPLC deputy legal director. “We also welcome Mississippi’s decision to reinstate licenses that had been previously suspended because people were unable to pay.
Brittney McCardle faced license suspension after she was unable to pay a $155 fine and court costs related to her traffic case.
“Poverty is not a traffic crime,” Brooke said. “There is a growing recognition across the country that people should not face additional punishment just because of their poverty, and that includes taking away their driver’s licenses when they can’t pay fines.”
The agreement makes Mississippi the fifth state to require an ability-to-pay determination before suspending a driver’s license. Other states with a “willfulness” determination include Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Oklahoma, according to a recent analysis from the Legal Aid Justice Center.
Additionally under the agreement, DPS will no longer enforce a statute that authorizes license suspension for non-payment without first determining whether the person willfully failed to pay. Drivers with multiple reasons for suspension will have suspensions for non-payment removed from their driving records, and DPS will notify them why their licenses remain suspended, as well as how to resolve the suspensions.
The policy changes came about after the SPLC and the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center raised concerns about the practices last year.
The settlement will help people like Vicki Smith of Columbia. Her license was suspended because she could not afford to pay two traffic tickets from 2013. She was working as an accounts payable specialist but had to leave her job when her doctor ordered her onto pregnancy bed rest soon after the tickets were issued.
Vicki Smith, of Columbia, had her license suspended because she could not afford to pay two traffic tickets from 2013.
“My suspended license made it very difficult to get on my feet again and to find a job,” said Smith, whose only source of income is food stamps and her autistic son’s Social Security disability checks. “I recently lost my job as a health aide because I don’t have reliable transportation and there is no mass transit. I would have paid the tickets if I could, but I can’t afford it. I struggle to pay for my son’s medical expenses and basic necessities.”
Brittney McCardle of Petal, who is unemployed and receives food stamps to support herself as well as Social Security disability benefits for her autistic daughter, was facing license suspension after she was unable to pay a $155 fine and court costs related to her traffic case.
“I live on a fixed income and told the judge I couldn’t afford to pay for the traffic ticket by the deadline,” said McCardle, who also donates blood plasma for $45 to help pay for her living expenses. “I was worried that I was going to lose my license, which would have made it more difficult for me to find a job, go to the store, or take my daughter to the hospital if she couldn’t breathe because of her bad asthma.
“I have been applying for jobs, but most require proof that I have a driver’s license to get to work. Hopefully, this is something I won’t have to worry about now with the state’s new policy.”
The SPLC and the MacArthur Justice Center say that Mississippi courts have not been following the law regarding collection of fines and fees, and both entities have been pursuing litigation throughout Mississippi, addressing the rights of indigent defendants.
For example, the SPLC has filed a lawsuit against the city of Corinth and Municipal Judge John C. Ross for operating a modern-day debtors’ prison, unlawfully jailing poor people for their inability to pay bail and fines.
SPLC Logo Facebook Twitter
THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
400 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36104
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MEMORIAL CENTER
Thomas Alvin Farr PIONEER FUND
No comments:
Post a Comment