Wonkette Joins The New Klan

posted at 2:55 pm on May 21, 2006 by Bryan
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Time was that the Ku Klux Klan donned robes and targeted free blacks for intimidation, ridicule, even violence and murder. The targets were often successful in business or had committed the sin of simply being; there was something about them that infuriated the haters enough to target them and all too often, act.

The Klan often marked the homes of their targets with a symbol–a burning cross. The cowards would light their cross afire in the safety of a dark night and with their faces obscured by hoods. Having lit the fire they would run to the woods or hills, to watch the reaction their handiwork inspired and to keep their identities secret. By day, they might be the local barber, the baker, even the sheriff or preacher, with clean scrubbed faces and a smile for everyone. By night, they were sheet wearing devils, focusing the rage from their own impotence on The Other. The hoods kept the daytime community leader’s identity separate from the vile rider of the night, though they were always and everywhere, the same twisted person inside.

It’s fair to say that in terms of tactics, the Klan (or its ideological descendants) has changed a great deal. It still targets minorities for intimidation and ridicule. But instead of burning a cross on their lawn to mark them out, its haters publish the target’s personal information on the Internet where any unhinged nut can read it and act on it. Most of them still don a hood to protect their daytime identities–the hood in this century usually being a pseudonym on a blog or an anonymous email account. Or they hide by faking racist conversations to put vile words in fictitious people’s mouths–words they believe themselves. And the weaker among us cheer the lynch mob from the tall grass, lacking both the courage to stop it and the guts to join it–making it reasonable to wonder that when push comes to shove, just which side the weak man will join.

Am I saying that those who spend their time attacking my friend Michelle from so many racially-charged angles are members in an organization called the KKK? No, I am not. Am I saying that many on the left’s behavior today carries a great deal more than just an echo of the old circle of hate? Yes, I am saying exactly that. It is an undeniable fact that they are targeting her and marking her in part because of her ethnicity. That is racism, identical in spirit to that practiced by the Klan.

Those who are the most guilty of these practices will mock and protest this post the loudest. That will only prove my point. We have a new kind of Klan among us. It’s on the political left, hiding behind false names and burning virtual crosses and drumming up new racist smears every time my friend opens her mouth. Its tactics have been updated, but its hatreds are no different from the Klan of old.

What can we do about this? First, identify it and criticize it for what it is. All people of good will across the political spectrum should recognize and even ostracize these haters. But second, and perhaps more importantly, pray for the haters. We are all flawed in our own ways, but only a deeply corrupt and unhappy person can come up with the kind of smears routinely leveled at my friend, who is without a doubt one of the nicest, most talented and hardest working people I’ve ever had the privilege to know.

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