The local paper in the hometown of Jewish Center shooter Frazier Glenn Miller seems oddly solicitous of the town’s new Mayor who has spoken up as a supporter of Miller’s views. Says the Aurora Advertiser …
Utilizing his First Amendment rights, Clevenger has made what some term as anti-Semitic and racist comments. The comments came as he spoke about the alleged involvement of local resident Frazier Glenn Miller (also known as Frazier Glenn Cross) in the shooting and subsequent deaths of three individuals in Overland Park, Kansas, on April 13.
Interestingly, Mayor Clevenger’s views came in for some controversy before he was elected last week when an old letter to the editor emerged in which he championed Miller’s views and decried the “Jew-run medical industry” and the “Jew-run government backed banking industry.”
Clevenger insists he’s not a racist or anti-semite but was only “point[ing] out the corporations responsible for destroying the United States are run by Jews.”
Continuing our ‘Hard to Handle’ series, TPM Reader RL talks about the acculturating effects of two very different institutions: the US military and Fox News …
I’m sure you’ve heard many stories from your readers about kindly relatives who were racists. Mine go back a couple of generations. I was raised in a military family and despite the conservatism inherent in the military, socially (at least as far as race goes) it has always been reasonably progressive. By the time I was growing up in the 60’s it was fully integrated and my parents racial views more or less followed the military lead.
While the Mayor of Frazier Glenn Miller’s hometown agrees with him that the Jews are destroying America, a state Klan leader says no real Klansman would go off yelling ‘Heil Hitler’ like Miller did. In any case, he says, the Klan’s not a hate group anymore. They’re focused on defending the constitution and prayer in schools.
What happens when a tea party favorite — endorsed by Senate Conservatives Fund, the Club for Growth, and FreedomWorks — gets hit from the right for being a dyed-int-the-wool government bureaucrat?
TPM Reader JB adds to our “Hard to Handle” thread on the subject of race and reminds us of that other elephant in the room …
I’ve been following with interest the series of TPM posts on race. They touch on many points I think are correct, but so far at least are leaving out something important.
I just opened a thread at The Hive (sub req) to discuss the series of “Hard to Handle” Reader emails and personal testimonials discussing race in America. Curious to hear your thoughts, reactions, criticisms and stories.
You’ve probably seen the deeply disturbing reports of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine telling Jews to “register” with their would-be break-away government. But there are reasons to be skeptical.
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TPM Reader JOD chimes in with his experience with ‘the Fox effect’. I think it’s important to recognize in these stories that you don’t just stand up a new TV network and suddenly you’re changing the the political and racial attitudes of a whole generation of baby boomers and pre-boomers. There’s much more cause and effect at work. But these things can be powerful catalysts. There’s a reason why people invest in propaganda. It works. Just not in a vacuum.
Just a backup to what reader RL had to say…
I was brought up in a very multi-ethnic working class community where nearly everyone was more or less on the same socio-economic level. I ran around with white, black, Hispanic and Indian kids. We were all always in and out of each other’s houses and all of our parents got along very well. This was the 1970s.