South Carolina Congressman Joe “You Lie” Wilson is a demagogue, a man who wantonly and willfully incites racial passions to dangerously high levels. Other powerful forces in conjunction with Wilson have camouflaged their vehement racial resistance of the Obama administration behind a supposed opposition of health care reform. Wilson and others are sweeping up intense ethnic animus, creating a toxic cultural atmosphere where citizens believe it is OK to carry extremely inflammatory signs to “Tea Parties” that compare Obama to Hitler or to a witch doctor. There was even one troubling sign that read: “We need to bury Obama with Kennedy.”
What’s next? It’ll only be so long before someone thinks it’s OK to take the next step.
National syndicated columnist Clarence Page and former president Jimmy Carter are part of a too small cadre of vocal opponents, people who are willing to say publicly that Wilson’s unprecedented outburst against President Obama within the joint session of Congress was purely based on race.
“There is a feeling among many people in this country that an African American ought [to] not be president and not given the same respect as if he were white,” Carter said. “This has permeated politics ever since I’ve been involved in it back in the 1960s, not only in the South but in many parts of our country.”
Worse off, Wilson is now a national figure. Wilson’s two words (“You lie”) have rescued him from political nothingness, out from deserved obscurity where he toiled in anonymity with no real distinction and no accomplishment to speak of. He is now being exalted as a valiant hero of anti-Obama crusade of segregationists and the extreme right wing of the Republican Party.
There is historic precedent for how a single man can create atmosphere against a person. And we don’t have to look any further than within our own community.
Though Louis Farrakhan was never implicated in the assassination of former Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, many believe that Farrakhan’s super-incendiary declaration of Malcolm as a traitor led to his violent demise.
“Only those who wish to be led to hell, or to their doom, will follow Malcolm. The die is set, and Malcolm shall not escape … such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death.” (March 1965)
Stanford professor Claybourne Carson, the author of the 1991 book Malcolm X: The FBI File, showed how incendiary words can create such an emotional storm that it can lead to physical violence.
As Farrakhan says in Muhammed Speaks: “The question is not whether they wanted to see him dead, but whether they actually ordered the assassination … there was no need to do it. If you label somebody as an enemy, then the strongest believers are going to believe that is an invitation to take matters into their own hands. It didn’t have to come down as an order. Farrakhan would not have had to order the assassination. All he had to do was identify Malcolm as a traitor.”
So when someone carries a placard to a fiery rally of thousands that says, “We should bury Obama with Kennedy,” what do you think a psychotic or unstable person would do? –terry shropshire
