Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

A List of Black Anti-Crime Groups in KC, For Uninformed White People

Posted on by under Race Relations

Whites ranting about black-on-black crime usually stems from one of two purposes: trying to get Black Lives Matter advocates to shut up about police abuse or making not-so-subtle implications that blacks by nature are more deviant or aggressive than white people (because the idea of a disproportionate number of minority people living in poverty — the legacy of Jim Crow — creating disproportionate minority crime is somehow too difficult to grasp, even though poverty breeds crime among whites as well).

The absurdities are numerous, but looking solely at the first function, it should be obvious to thinking adults that complex societies often have multiple problems, and therefore it seems rather strange to condemn people who focus on one issue for not focusing on another. It’s important people are tackling problems they care about! But just because you focus on one doesn’t mean you don’t care about others! And just because one movement gets more media attention, or has larger marches or influence, doesn’t mean the other isn’t happening.

Further, the timing of the loudest condemnations of Black Lives Matter is interesting. When a police shooting occurs, outrage sounds across the country. A seemingly equally loud reaction then arises trying to silence Black Lives Matter by pointing to black-on-black crime. Yet a police shooting only emphasizes the importance of nonviolent protest against unnecessary force. Is a homicide in the inner city a signal for people to shut up about local violent crime? Quite the opposite.

Many black-led groups in Kansas City are working tirelessly to reduce violent crime in black neighborhoods. But if, as a white person, your interaction with black folk is limited because of where you live, work, or go to school, or if you aren’t actively connecting with social justice or community improvement movements on the other side of town, you may not have heard of them. This article provides a list that isn’t even complete (and won’t include efforts like the No Violence Alliance, which is a city and police program). These grassroots groups hold meetings, vigils, peace walks, protest marches, rallies, and social events. They raise awareness, influence policy, and support other people and organizations pushing for positive change.

So the next time someone says, “Black Lives Matter types need to f*ck off and go protest black-on-black murder, that’s killing more black people than the police,” perhaps this list can help. There are incredible people in Kansas City working on one of these important issues, some working on both. Perhaps we should let those who wish to focus on police violence do so and those who wish to focus on local crime do so. Only good can come from either.

Ad Hoc Group Against Crime: “The AdHoc Group Against Crime is a community resource that, through crisis intervention and prevention, supports youth and families who are affected by criminal behavior.”

100 Men of the Blue Hills: “This is an organization that provides men who are natural leaders in K.C. an opportunity to take on the responsibility of resolving conflicts on a grassroots level before they reach the level of violence. Many but not all of our members have been leaders in the street who are in transition and committed to abstaining from and preventing any acts of violence we can. We believe this effort must be led by real people who have credibility in K.C. and particularly our streets. Our intent is to keep our community safe,productive and beautiful.”

KC Mothers in Charge: “Violence Prevention, Education & Intervention for Kansas City youth, young adults, families and community organizations.”

Aim4Peace: “Aim4Peace is an evidence-based public health approach to cure violence in Kansas City… Aim4Peace uses highly trained violence interrupters and outreach staff, public education campaigns, Neighborhood Action Teams and community mobilization to reverse the violence epidemic in Kansas City, MO.”

Stop the Killing KC: “A group of concerned Community Activists, Families, People, and support organizations who have made a commitment to the halt of violence and murder that is catastrophic to our families in our community.”

Momma On a Mission: “Momma On a Mission, Inc. is a nonprofit 501(c) (3) advocacy program for the families of homicide victims: helping them with emotional support, awareness of services, and organizing community activities to solve crimes.”

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KC’s Cathay Williams Said She Was a Man to Join the Army

Posted on by under History

Cathay Williams became William Cathay
And no one was to know
The secret of her identity
As a soldier she did grow.

So wrote Linda Kirkpatrick in her 1999 poem “Cathay Williams,” about the first black woman (that historians know of) to enlist in the U.S. Army — in the guise of a man.

Williams was born a slave in Independence, Missouri, in 1842. A grown woman enslaved in Jefferson City at the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, she was taken by a Union regiment and put to work, like many other slaves “freed” by the Army. She told the St. Louis Daily Times in January 1876:

[When] United States soldiers came to Jefferson City they took me and other colored folks with them to Little Rock. Col. Benton of the 13th army corps was the officer that carried us off. I did not want to go. He wanted me to cook for the officers, but I had always been a house girl and did not know how to cook. I learned to cook after going to Little Rock…

Williams traveled through Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Iowa, and other places, serving as a cook and laundress. The war ended in 1865, but Williams was not done with the military.

Female soldiers being unlawful, she disguised herself as a male (she was tall, at five foot nine) and enlisted in St. Louis. She called herself “William Cathay” (at times spelled “Cathey”). An Army surgeon, whose job seemingly did not entail a thorough physical examination, declared her fit for duty. She joined the 38th U.S. Infantry, a black regiment (“Buffalo Soldiers”), on November 15, 1866. She remembered:

Only two persons, a cousin and a particular friend, members of the regiment, knew that I was a woman. They never ‘blowed’ on me. They were partly the cause of my joining the army. Another reason was I wanted to make my own living and not be dependent on relations or friends.

What followed is believed to be an uneventful two years in the military. Williams marched from Missouri to Kansas to New Mexico, but likely did not see combat. She was hospitalized five times for various medical problems — joint pain, nerve pain, severe itching — but somehow was not discovered immediately. According to her, some ailments were faked:

I carried my musket and did guard and other duties while in the army, but finally I got tired and wanted to get off. I played sick, complained of pains in my side, and rheumatism in my knees.

Then a doctor had the surprise of his life: “The post surgeon found out I was a woman and I got my discharge.”

That was at Fort Bayard, New Mexico. Interestingly, neither her commander nor the surgeon mentioned anything about her gender in the discharge papers. The commander said Williams “has been since feeble both physically and mentally, and much of the time quite unfit for duty. The origin of his infirmities is unknown to me.” The surgeon said Williams was of “…a feeble habit. He is continually on sick report without benefit. He is unable to do military duty… This condition dates prior to enlistment.”

Whether these men were too embarrassed to admit a woman had pulled the wool over their eyes is a matter of speculation (though her “condition” dating “prior to enlistment” seems a wonderfully humorous comment on her gender; otherwise, one might ask just how a surgeon at a New Mexico fort knew her “feeble habit” dated prior to enlistment in St. Louis, where a surgeon declared her fit for duty).

In any case, Williams faced immediate harassment: “The men all wanted to get rid of me after they found out I was a woman. Some of them acted real bad to me.”

She served as an army cook in New Mexico for a time, then spent the rest of her days in Colorado and St. Louis. She was hospitalized again, and applied for a disability pension based on her military service. Her application was rejected. She died in 1892.

A monument for Williams can be found in Leavenworth, Kansas.

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Trump Did So Well Because Many Conservatives Are Just Like Him

Posted on by under Politics

In a sensible world, the following statement concerning Donald Trump wouldn’t be controversial:

Donald Trump’s political success is, to a significant degree, explained by conservatives who like him hold virulent disdain and disturbingly disrespectful attitudes toward Muslims, blacks, undocumented Hispanic immigrants, and so on. In other words, people with deplorable views electing a deplorable man.

But such a statement immediately comes under fire from those wishing to defend conservatives and conservatism from accusations of bigotry. Let’s examine the typical counterarguments before exploring the idea.

Many conservatives despise Trump and hate his rhetoric. This is true, and quite a relief, but nowhere does the statement claim all conservatives hold bigoted views — nor that all conservatives support or voted for Donald Trump. In the primaries, Trump won a lower percentage of GOP votes than anyone since Ronald Reagan in 1968, having more votes cast against him than any Republican candidate ever — by a margin of 4-5 million. This can in part be explained by a very large field of GOP candidates, which heavily split the votes. However, Trump received more votes than any other Republican candidate in history, by a margin of 2-3 million. Both are explained by a very high voter turnout. While it is heartening to hear, simply saying “Lots of conservatives voted against him” or “My conservative friends and I hate him” is beside the point. The statement refers to those who did vote for him and do support him.

Trump is not a true conservative. There is some truth in this, but it’s irrelevant. It’s true, in the past Trump held more liberal positions on abortion, gun control, and healthcare — even donating to Democratic campaigns. On other issues he held conservative positions, particularly relating to business. For the purposes of this election, he clearly created an ultraconservative character (not unlike Stephen Colbert’s rightwing blowhard alter ego). This is not to say he isn’t a bigoted, crass, narcissistic, greed-fueled person, but changes to his prior political positions were necessary to win the conservative base; saying so many horrible things about ethnic and religious minorities only helped.

Further, one can say that Trump’s authoritarianism — such as vowing to monitor American mosques, create a registry of Muslims, and ban Muslim immigrants — is antithetical to conservatism. After all, true conservatives believe in small government and personal freedoms. But that is a matter of opinion. Liberals understand that while the “small government” talk is true concerning taxes, economic regulations, and aid to the poor, it is consistently untrue for social issues like marriage, abortion, drug use, prostitution, privacy rights in wartime, and so on. Likewise, to Trump’s supporters and many conservatives, such authoritarianism is precisely what is necessary, according to polls: some 76% of Republicans supported the idea of banning new Muslim immigrants and a plurality supported Big Brother monitoring American Muslims. You may not think Trump is a true conservative, but that’s beside the point. His conservative supporters think his conservatism is just fine, no matter how oppressive or callous toward our neighbors.

There are other explanations for Trump’s appeal. This is true. It should not be claimed that xenophobia and bigotry are the only appealing things about Trump for certain people. It’s more complex than that. Trump’s outsider status is desirable to those who despise the corruption in Washington and eternal rule of establishment politicians. His business experience is appealing to poor conservatives trying to navigate unemployment and low wages. His talk of the corrosive effect of corporate money in politics and how regime change is too dangerous appeals to many, including some liberals (see below), despite the fact he publicly brags of taking advantage of the former and usually opposes U.S. military interventions only after supporting them — Iraq is only one example. If we look beyond the primaries, of course, many who vote for Donald Trump will do so — reluctantly or unhappily — to avoid a Clinton presidency and restore Republican power and policies.

Liberals and Democrats voted for Trump, too. This has some merit, but the scope of the phenomenon is very limited. (Unless of course you trust miserable writers like Michael Harrington at Red State, who “after a lot of work” finished his “math calculations” and found that in the GOP primaries only 3 million Republicans voted for Trump, whereas 12 million Democrats voted for him, many sneakily switching party affiliation in states with closed primaries. The GOP primaries were therefore “electorally gang raped by Democrats,” the “plants” who “stole” the election. Naturally, Harrington offers no data or evidence to support his claim, only the absurd statement that “ten million more Republicans and 12 million less Democrats” voted in the U.S. primaries from 2000 to 2008 — apparently because so many Democrats switched to the Republican Party to subvert elections! This isn’t even remotely true. GOP primary votes in 2008 were up about 4 million compared to 2000, Democrats up by a colossal 23 million in the Democratic primaries in 2008 compared to 2000. If you recall, the 2008 Democratic primaries were exciting for many due to a certain candidate.)

Let me be clear here. Because of all the horrible things Trump has said about so many good people, Democrats and independents voting for Trump is just as despicable as Republicans doing the same. The same can be said for any of his few Hispanic, Muslim, or black supporters. Further, Trump’s hateful venom likely appeals to some moderates and liberals. Neither the left nor the center are immune from prejudice. I will come back to this, but here the only point is this: some Democrats and center-left or liberal independents are voting for Trump, but there is no real evidence they have played a crucial role in his success. They are few. Only self-described moderates could be said to have had a significant impact.

Both liberal and conservative media, from Breitbart to the Atlantic, tracked down Democrats voting for Trump, their stated reasons typically involving a strong dislike and distrust of Hillary Clinton, economic hard times in former manufacturing hubs, and so on, as mentioned above. Hostility toward minorities and others, I believe, is also a piece of the puzzle, as with conservatives. But the person who claims Democrats played a significant role in Trump’s success have quite a challenge to prove it (unless you wish to simply make stuff up like Harrington), for two reasons: he or she must analyze the crossover vote in each state and determine what portion of the crossover vote went to Trump.

Consider Ohio. Now, every election cycle sees crossover voting (Republicans voting for a Democrat, Democrats voting for a Republican). In Ohio, 115,000 registered Democrats switched to the Republican Party (35,000 Republicans switched to the Democratic Party). This could be evidence of a surge in leftist support of Trump, but to know for sure one would have to track the voting patterns of those who switched. Otherwise it’s mere speculation. After all, John Kasich crushed Trump by 11 percentage points (it was Kasich’s home state). Perhaps Democrats were flocking to Kasich — to help beat Trump! The challenge is obvious. Unless you could somehow examine the votes of Democrats who switched party affiliation (you can’t), you cannot say with confidence Democrats were flocking to Trump to support him. The same can be said of the independents who registered Republican (910,000; 710,000 went to the Democrats).

In all, over 2 million votes were cast in the Ohio Republican primary. If one assumed (foolishly) that all 115,000 Democratic turncoats voted for Trump, that amounts to just over 5% of the total vote. Not quite a figure that would make a reasonable person blame Democrats for Trump’s overall success — and again, 5% is extremely unlikely.

This challenge of not knowing who crossover voters sided with, plus very small numbers of crossover voters anyway, makes blaming Democrats for Trump seem rather childish. The challenge exists in all states, even where Trump won soundly. Consider Massachusetts. Trump won by a massive 30 percentage points. 16,300 Democrats became independents, while 3,500 Democrats became Republicans. With 631,000 people voting in the GOP Massachusetts primary, this means the Democrats-turned-Republican accounted for 0.5% of the vote (Democrats-turned-independent being 2.5%). And it is probably not the case that they all voted from Trump. This suggests leftist support for Trump is quite small.

It is also important to look at the change in the number of Democrats and independents participating in the GOP primaries compared to 2012. For some states, there was an increase in participation, others a decrease — but all changes were quite minute. Iowa saw 2% more Democratic voters, Massachusetts 1%, Oklahoma 1%, etc. But New Hampshire had 1% fewer, Vermont 4%, Michigan 2%, etc. Not thrilling numbers.

“But what of all independents, those beyond the recent converts?” the anti-Trump conservative still wishing to protect the conservative image asks. “Trump did best in open primaries where independents could vote. Those independents must include a ton of liberals!”

True, Trump had his biggest wins in open primaries (his biggest was Massachusetts). But the aforementioned challenge remains. The notion that the independents flocking to him are made up of a large number of liberals is pure speculation; one cannot precisely track how independents intended to vote or voted — one can only rely on polls. Could it not be that Trump simply did well among right-leaning independents in some states? Or moderate independents? Could their high turnout explain it?

It may be valuable to reverse this thinking. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton did far better in open primaries than Bernie Sanders. Suppose I were to posit that this was due to significant support from right-leaning independents and indeed Republicans eagerly switching party affiliation to support her! Or perhaps they were conservative “plants” ensuring Clinton would win so Trump could beat the easier opponent in the general election. Possible, but it all starts to feel a bit absurd when I suggest it’s happening in massive numbers.

Since tracking votes is illegal, polls give us the best idea of who is voting for Trump (unless you wish to pander to conspiracy theorists and suppose huge numbers of anonymous liberals polled simply pretend to not be liberal). In an exit poll after the Massachusetts GOP primary, only 5% of participants (whether Democrat, Republican, or independent) described themselves as liberals (moderates were 33% of participants). Expectedly, the rest were conservatives. In the Ohio GOP primary? 3% called themselves liberals (moderates 25%). How about traditional blue states beyond Massachusetts where Trump won big, like New Hampshire (2% of participants calling themselves liberal)? And so on. The participants still calling themselves Democrats were 8% or less for these states. Even assuming (again, without basis) that every liberal participant voted for Trump, these numbers are not impressive. Same with every Democrat.

Compare these primaries to those of 2012. Like Democrats, independents in some states had a stronger showing than in 2012 (Iowa, Oklahoma, etc.), while other states saw a weaker showing (Vermont, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, etc.) — and most of the changes were by 1% to 4% either way. Why didn’t the number of Democratic or independent participants skyrocket if there was substantial leftist support for Trump?

Overall, one cannot make the case that people who call themselves Democrats or liberals, nor those who became independents or Republicans for the sake of this election, played a large role in Trump’s success. Moderates, yes. Democrats and liberals, no.

(Update: On November 8, 2016, Trump won the Electoral College, and thus the presidency, while Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by millions of votes. Only 9% of voters calling themselves Democrats and 10% of voters calling themselves liberals voted for Trump; 7% of Republican and 15% of conservative voters cast a ballot for Clinton. In the 2004, 2008, and 2012 elections, 11-13% of liberals and 7-11% of Democrats voted Republican. This year, independents leaned slightly Trump, moderates slightly Clinton. Only 4% of the electorate went from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. Like the primaries before it, it cannot be said Democrats and liberals were particularly enthusiastic about Trump.)

Trump is largely the product of an ugly segment of conservative America, with some moderates close behind.

Screen Shot 2017-07-04 at 12.24.24 PM

Having established that many conservatives hate Trump and his nastiness, Trump is not the typical conservative, there is not just one answer for why people support Trump, and Trump’s support from liberals and Democrats isn’t exactly something to boast about, let us consider all that is left to consider: Trump’s devoted following.

91% of Trump supporters are white. The majority of his followers, all colors included, are not college educated, and they are disproportionately older. (Update: As in the primaries, two-thirds of Trump voters in the general election made over $50,000 a year. It wasn’t the white poor that made up the bulk of his base. It was simply whites, whom Trump took with a 21 point margin overall. At all income levels, whites without college degrees supported Trump at rates 20 points higher (or more) than whites with college degrees.)

65% of people who like Trump believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. Nearly 60% believe he was not born in the U.S. 40% think black people are more “lazy” than white people. 50% believe blacks are more “violent” than whites. 16% think whites to be a “superior race,” while 14% are “not sure.” These answers are much worse than those given by Clinton fans. Support for Trump correlates with stronger racist attitudes (even better than economic dissatisfaction) and greater distress that the U.S. is growing more diverse. One study found that reminding people who care about their whiteness that persons of color would soon make up the American majority led to greater support for Trump. A solid third of Trump supporters think imprisoning Japanese Americans during World War II was the right thing for America to do. 31% express support for banning homosexuals from the U.S. Prejudice among Trump fans is statistically worse than other Republicans.

Nearly 60% of Trump’s supporters dislike Islam, over 50% dislike atheism. 69% believe “immigrants are a burden on the country” and 64% say “Muslims should be subject to more scrutiny.” As mentioned, there is strong support among Republicans for Trump’s proposal to ban Muslim immigrants (as well as the statistically untrue idea that illegal Hispanic immigration increases crime; there is widespread support for deportation). Republicans who believe that a “growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens U.S. values” and that it is “bad for the country that blacks, Latinos, Asians will be the majority of the population” are more likely to favor Trump. Those who use terms like “Holohoax,” “BanIslam,” and “WhiteGenocide” on social media are many times more likely to follow Trump than other GOP candidates like Ted Cruz. A sampling of 10,000 of Trump’s Twitter followers found about 35% also followed white supremacists like David Duke.

38% of Trump supporters think minorities have “too much influence” in the U.S., and 21% believe whites have “too little influence.” 38% of South Carolinians who voted for Trump wish the South had won the Civil War, and 20% disagreed with the “executive order which freed all slaves in the states that were in rebellion against the federal government,” Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. While it could well be a strong stand against executive orders themselves, the supporters of other candidates were a bit more accommodating when it came to executive orders ending the enslavement of black people: only 5% of Marco Rubio’s supporters disagreed, 12% of Jeb Bush’s, 3% of Kasich’s, etc.

As with Obama being a Kenyan Muslim, there is a frightening willingness among Trump supporters to parrot whatever Trump says, for example 69% believing if Clinton wins the election was rigged and 47% claiming to have seen the thus far non-existent video of $400 million being given to Iran that Trump swore he saw.

I don’t think any person who isn’t totally divorced from reality would dispute the idea that a significant factor to Trump’s success has been disproportionate support from Americans infected by nativism and bigotry. White Christian discomfort over increasing racial, religious, cultural, and sexual diversity has been a defining theme of American history and still exists today. All this aligns neatly, by the way, with modern psychological research indicating a person who thinks in less abstract ways or has a larger right amygdala, which influences fear and anxiety, tends to be conservative. Fear of “the Other” is a real factor of political ideology. It helps explain — not excuse — Trump’s appeal and the willingness of ordinary people to verbally or physically abuse the Americans Trump attacks.

When neo-Nazi leaders start calling your chosen candidate “glorious leader,” an “ultimate savior” who will “Make American White Again” and represents “a real opportunity for people like white nationalists,” it may be time to rethink the Trump phenomenon. When former KKK leader David Duke says he supports Trump “100 percent” and that people who voted for Trump will “of course” also vote for Duke to help in “preserving this country and the heritage of this country,” it is probably time to be honest about the characteristics and fears of many of the people willing to vote for Trump. As Mother Jones documents, white nationalist author Kevin McDonald called Trump’s movement a “revolution to restore White America,” the anti-Semitic Occidental Observer said Trump is “saying what White Americans have been actually thinking for a very long time,” and white nationalist writer Jared Taylor said Trump is “talking about policies that would slow the dispossession of whites. That is something that is very important to me and to all racially conscious white people.” Rachel Pendergraft, a KKK organizer, said, “The success of the Trump campaign just proves that our views resonate with millions. They may not be ready for the Ku Klux Klan yet, but as anti-white hatred escalates, they will.” She said Trump’s campaign has increased party membership. Other endorsements from the most influential white supremacists are not difficult to find.

His rhetoric has emboldened and inspired the worst in humanity, from the men who beat a homeless Hispanic with a metal pipe and urinated on him while invoking Trump’s name to the vocal Trump supporter who issued death threats against Muslim worshippers; from the man who screamed “Worthless stupid fucking stupid cunt. Donald Trump 2016! Put them back in the fucking fields where they belong” at a black woman to the Trump voters who, upon seeing a report that showed if women didn’t vote then Trump could win easily, called for a repeal of the 19th Amendment. Peaceful protesters were beaten at numerous rallies, inspired by Trump rhetoric like “I promise I’ll pay the legal fees,” “I’d like to knock the crap of them,” “He should have been roughed up,” “Try not to hurt him. If you do I’ll defend you in court,” and that in the good old days “they’d be carried out on a stretcher.” Not even evidence that contractors working for Democrats may have tried to incite violence at rallies (“It’s not hard to get some of these assholes to pop off”) can explain (or excuse) the scope of violence against innocent people around the country. A spike in murders, assaults, arson, vandalism, and bombings against Muslims just happened to coincide with Trump’s campaign and harshest anti-Muslim rhetoric. Same with hate crimes against Hispanics. Other incidents against anyone Trump has vilified abound, from racial slurs to stabbings.

Observe the glee with which this man glorifies Trump before saying, “Black lives don’t matter” and “You’re a nigger” to an African American.

Even conservative writers who oppose Trump have been subject to “reckless hate”: anti-Semitism, threatening phone calls, messages sent to spouses featuring extreme violence, death, and pornography, emails threatening children, and so on. “They relish your pain,” a National Review staff writer said. “I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”

No one who has ever been online would struggle to understand that people with deplorable attitudes and opinions are numerous — people who use “nigger” and “faggot” with reckless abandon, denouncing “political correctness” (politeness). As a rapper recently put it, “Have you read the YouTube comments lately?” They put Trump’s rhetoric to shame. And such people vote. So do people who may not be as vile but are simply unable to empathize with others, extending to them the treatment and rights they desire for themselves and their children. So a politician suggests monitoring mosques and banning Muslims — why not vote for him, I am not a Muslim. A politician perpetuates stereotypes of brown immigrants and black men — why not vote for him, I am not a brown immigrant or black man. And so on.

(Update: After Trump’s victory on November 8, 2016, hate crimes swept the nation. Trump supporters were emboldened, validated, out for blood. Women were grabbed by the genitals, homosexuals beaten, hijabs ripped off Muslim girls, blacks called “niggers,” Hispanics mocked and told to leave the country. Vandalism featured swastikas, nooses, and racial slurs.)

Now, there is violence and vitriol on the other side. Look no further than the attacks on Trump supporters in San Jose, the firebombing of a GOP headquarters in North Carolina, or the harassment of a black Trump supporter in L.A. Actions like these are equally reprehensible, and demonstrate the tension and divisions of this turbulent election. However, while equally horrific, any rational person can surmise that one is a reaction to the other. Had Trump ran a campaign that encouraged tolerance of all Muslims unless proven guilty and stressed that illegal immigrants commit crimes less often than native citizens because most are careful to obey the law to avoid deportation, Trump supporters would have been much safer from horrible attacks. There is a reason the chaos and violence at San Jose and other places didn’t infect the rallies of other GOP candidates like Bush or Rubio. That does not excuse this violence; it helps explain it. Further, while the violence is equally wrong, it is not equal in scope: of the 867 hate incidents recorded by the SPLC in the ten days after the election, only 23 were anti-Trump (2.6% of all incidents).

Having established that significant numbers of Trump supporters discriminate on the basis of race, sexual orientation, religion, and immigration status, it must be reiterated that yes, there is prejudice on the left. There are some liberals that also hold reprehensible views similar to Trump supporters. Take for example Trump’s idea to punish the many for the crimes of the few, banning all Muslim immigrants:

Screen Shot 2017-07-04 at 12.25.47 PM

via Texas Politics Project

As you can see, 15% of liberal respondents either strongly support or somewhat support this policy. That is very discouraging for anyone who cares about religious freedom, tolerance of others, and basic human dignity. But if 15% is a tragedy, how much more so is 75% of conservative respondents saying the same? The pattern is replicated elsewhere and is not hard to find. Some liberals embrace disrespectful, disdainful, discouraging views of blacks, immigrants, homosexuals, Muslims, and so on, but it is rarely as egregious as conservative support. Even if it was, we have already established few liberals are voting for Trump, meaning the claim at the beginning of this article remains sound.

That claim was:

Donald Trump’s political success is, to a significant degree, explained by conservatives who like him hold virulent disdain and disturbingly disrespectful attitudes toward Muslims, blacks, undocumented Hispanic immigrants, and so on. In other words, people with deplorable views electing a deplorable man.

While this is not the only piece of the puzzle, it is a large one indeed. Large enough that I believe if Trump had run as a Democrat and said the same things he wouldn’t have gotten very far. Degrading women and talking about sexually assaulting them, threatening to strip Muslims of their civil rights, perpetuating untrue stereotypes of blacks and immigrants, and so on doesn’t work as well on liberal voters.

If Trump’s nonsense and venom worked just as well on leftists, we surely would have seen more liberals voting for Trump in the primaries. We might see liberals abandoning a very unlikable Democratic candidate in droves and helping Trump win in a landslide in November, an unlikely outcome. Most importantly, we might ask why Trump didn’t simply run as a Democrat, since he previously held more liberal views on several issues. Why choose to run as a Republican instead? I think we know why. He wouldn’t have been taken seriously. Any toxic hate would have been rejected by more voters. Going about spouting authoritarianism and blatant stereotypes, mocking disabled people, and telling obvious lies about what you said on camera yesterday wasn’t going to be as successful with non-conservatives.

Donald Trump’s rise has been a valuable opportunity to show Americans (and the world, embarrassingly) what is accepted by and appeals to too many millions. It’s a good time to acknowledge the problems we still face from many on the right, and elsewhere to a lesser degree, who put up obstacles to tolerance and basic human dignity. We have to be honest with ourselves: Donald Trump is not the real problem.

The problem is the millions willing to vote for him.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

Socialism in Kansas City: A Short History

Posted on by under Socialism

 

[A man] carrying a red flag…should be arrested [like a] dangerous man who is flourishing a deadly weapon.

So wrote the Kansas City Star in the waning years of the 19th century.

As the 20th century dawned, American socialist and communist movements grew in popularity and became a political force to be reckoned with. As documented in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, an estimated 1 million Americans read socialist newspapers. The Socialist Party had nearly 120,000 members. Socialist politicians served in 340 cities across the country, some 1,200 mayors, councilpersons, state congressmen, and other politicians. Victor Berger of Milwaukee, a city run by socialists off and on for 50 years, became the first socialist U.S. Congressman in 1911. Eugene V. Debs of Indiana was the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. In 1920, he garnered 6% of the national vote (nearly 1 million people), a percentage many modern third-party candidates would die for — and he did it from a prison cell, having been jailed for speaking against U.S. involvement in World War I.

This article will not explore the ideology of socialism in-depth, but generally speaking socialists believe workers should own and manage their workplaces democratically and share the wealth workers create, rather than allow one owner or a board to monopolize decision-making power and award themselves much while offering workers little. As Kansas City’s Midland Mechanic wrote on July 14, 1898, “Labor produces all wealth and provides the luxuries of the rich, but it clothes itself in rags, lives in hovels, is denied justice and ridiculed by plutocracy.”

Therefore, socialists were leaders of the labor movement, organizing and striking for higher wages, union rights, workplace safety, and the end to child labor and 12- and 16-hour workdays. Socialists further believe government, both local and national, should be controlled by the people (yes, some in the past believed the government should own the workplaces, with the people or their worker representatives owning the government). In short, in both the political and economic worlds, the many should rule, not the few — power to the people. Such ideas often encouraged solidarity and friendship between workers regardless of race, religion, national origin, or gender. Not always, by any means, but at times. Hence, socialists and communists (including many black socialists and women socialists) were often leaders and supporters of historic equal rights and anti-war movements.

Like other cities, Kansas City was home to socialist organizations and newspapers. In fact, what would become the largest socialist newspaper in the nation with 760,000 subscribers, the Appeal to Reason, began in Kansas City. Julius A. Wayland, after fleeing Indiana to avoid a lynching over his socialist ideology and helping found the utopian, communal Ruskin Colony in Tennessee, moved to Kansas City and started the paper in 1895. Its name was a nod to Thomas Paine. Wayland printed 50,000 copies of his first issue. To save on costs, Wayland moved his business to Girard, Kansas, in 1897.

From there it would grow into a national paper. Wayland included the writings of Thomas Paine and of course Karl Marx to popularize socialism. Further, to quote the Socialist Worker, a modern publication:

Among the paper’s correspondents were Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Mother Jones and Eugene V. Debs. The Appeal first made Upton Sinclair famous. In 1905, Warren approached the novelist with the idea of shedding light on the appalling working conditions in Chicago meatpacking plants. Sinclair was to work incognito, gathering information. The result was a series in the Appeal called “The Jungle,” which modern readers may know as one of the most widely read works of American literature.

The paper arrived during the depression of the 1890s, when the Kansas City Star was writing that there was “a tendency to speak of ‘the unemployed’ as of a permanent, recognized, and even organized class” and the Kansas City Mail wrote that “hard times is the cry of everyone nowadays.” The Socialist Labor Party in Kansas City declared in 1895, “Never before in the history of mankind has there been so much suffering from hunger and privations of all kinds alongside of luxury and abundance of nature’s gifts and the products of labor.”

The Star, however, was not pro-labor. It boasted that “the grievous oppression of labor is no longer possible in America” in 1891. It condemned Eugene Debs for the Pullman Strike, a nationwide strike of railroad workers in 1894. The Mail wasn’t particularly thrilled about radical leftists either, declaring in 1893, “Mormons and Socialists should be scattered to the four winds.”

The Kansas City branch of the Socialist Party published a weekly newspaper, the Workers’ World, “one of the few pro-Communist papers in the Midwest.” One can actually read copies from 1919 online. It was founded by socialists James Cannon and Earl Browder, prior creators of another labor paper, the Toiler. Published by Max Dezettel, the Toiler advocated syndicalism — transferring ownership of business to the workers and their unions. The Kansas City Syndicalist League, which historian Edward Johanningsmeier called “the strongest component of the national league,” had “practical control” over the local cooks, barbers, and office workers unions.

Browder was a member of the American Federation of Labor and worked in a bookstore and for the Johnson County Cooperative Association in Olathe, Kansas. Like Debs, he spoke out against World War I, the draft in particular, and was imprisoned from late 1917 to late 1918. Cannon was an International Workers of the World member and one of the founders of this country’s Communist Party (in 1919) — Browder became its General Secretary in 1930. Six years later, Browder was nominated as candidate for president of the United States. Cannon traveled multiple times to the Soviet Union to represent U.S. communists at the Comintern.

On Friday, April 4, 1919, in its first paper (selling for 5 cents), the Workers’ World laid out its raison d’être, its reason for being:

Capitalist society is destroying itself with the forces generated within its own body… Unemployment is growing in these United States weekly, daily, hourly. Sporadic strikes are occurring everywhere, and growing in power and scope with every strike. Wage and working standards are being demoralized. Prices are going up instead of down…

Our rulers, from the “schoolmaster” down to the smallest bank director, are exhibiting nothing but futile gestures, sonorous phrases, and a general incapacity for even an intelligent understanding that a fundamental change is necessary. From such a situation nothing can come but a great crash, and the crash will not be long in coming.

Socialism offers the only way out. But socialism, to be effective, must be organized and must become vocal. This is the “Why” of the Workers’ World, to demand the abolition of exploitation, to assert the necessity for the control of society by the workers…and to assist in developing the practical program by which the workers will take over industry for society as a whole…to foster and encourage, in season and out, that faith in the working class and its ability to control its own destiny…

The paper focused heavily on socialist theory and practice, prison reform, and labor struggles. It arrived during the fourth month of a great streetcar worker strike, which had two causes. Workers who organized into a union, the Carmen’s Union, were immediately fired by the streetcar company. Further, workers wanted a wage increase from 36 cents to 42 cents an hour. The men left their jobs and “met at Labor Temple and paraded, with bands and banners, through the main streets of the city, and under the windows of the Street Railway office at 15th and Grand.” Then “the case was taken before…Wm. Howard Taft,” the former president, at the National War Labor Board, which was designed to mediate worker-employer disputes.

The company hired scabs (or “finks”), who lived like a “herd in the barns at 16th and Garfield where they were being housed and fed by the company,” to replace the strikers. So thousands of “indignant and outraged workers gathered around the barns, overpowered the police, burned a few cars as a sign that they were in earnest, and escorted the ‘finks’ in a body to Union Station, where they saw them carefully out of town.”

Things only escalated from there. “Kansas City was given the strange spectacle of soldiers with fixed bayonets and machine guns, patrolling the streets of Kansas City night and day in motor cars. A campaign of terrorism was inaugurated against the men, strikers, and even suspected sympathisers [sic], being arrested upon the flimsiest pretext. To utter the word ‘scab’ publicly meant at the least a week or two in jail.” Four men were arrested after rumors that strikers were dynamiting streetcars arose — and were allegedly forced by the police to confess. Then “certain men, supposed to be in the pay of the railway company, were said to have been caught trying to place explosives in the Labor Temple.”

“The government acts only to uphold the company,” Workers’ World wrote. “All forces are arrayed against the men, who are still standing together in magnificent solidarity with nothing on their side but the justice of their demands. Will cynical and arrogant forces win? It will be a black day for the Kansas City capitalists when ALL the workers realize as fully as do the streetcar men that justice can only be obtained by taking the government into their own hands.”

Socialism was discussed in public forums in Kansas City. For example, the American Federation of Labor held a convention in Kansas City in December 1898, where, according to the New York Times, “socialism was the absorbing topic.” Indeed,

The Socialist delegates made a determined effort to infuse Socialistic doctrine into the law of the Federation, by the introduction of a resolution the gist of which was that the constitution of the federation be changed so as to admit indorsement [sic] of no political party except that “bearing on the class-conscious propaganda for abolition of the wage system.”

Probably they will not succeed, for there is a majority against them, but the Socialist orators held the floor nearly all the afternoon, and will continue their argument to-morrow.

Kansas City was gripped by the typical hysteria over socialism — the Red Scare.

Take for example 1913, which saw a “Free Speech Fight in Kansas City” (International Socialist Review). 85 members of the Industrial Workers of the World were thrown “in jail for speaking on the streets. The number is increasing daily with men who come from different parts of the country, some of them from as far as Great Fall, Mont., beating their way, braving the cold and snow, to fight and suffer for the right to agitate and educate the workers for the overthrow of capitalism.”

The mass protests and mass arrests began when “the police broke up a street meeting on behalf of the Wheatland prisoners. Five men were sentenced to 200 days in the workhouse. The others have been sentenced to similar and even longer terms.”

The police “clubbed the speakers off the streets.” Some were “clubbed and so badly injured that they had to be taken to the hospital,” the punishment for those “brave men who dare to speak against capitalism.” Yet the “resolute rebels have determined to have free speech at any cost.”

Like elsewhere, some socialists (white and black) helped push forward black rights. People like Herb March of the Young Communist League and socialist Charles Fischer united blacks and whites at places like the Armour packing house, where blacks were fired first and underrepresented in better positions. They formed a union that became the largest racially diverse organization in the city, with leaders from both races. In September 1938, after a pay dispute involving unpaid blacks, 400 black and 600 white workers occupied Armour together for days. “It left a unity of friendship that couldn’t have been created in any other way,” Fischer recalled. Further, he remembered:

There was, of course, that religious difference and that racial difference, which were obstacles at first but which were all overcome. All of them — simply by showing the people that we all had a common goal to make a decent living, to have a decent standard of living, and this was the way to go, and the only way to go, because without a union, we’re all lost.

The strikers won their demands.

Further, black and white members of the Kansas City branch of the Communist Party marched through the city together to protest unemployment in 1931. Black communists like Abner Berry gave speeches around the city to help unite workers (see Racism in Kansas City: A Short History).

Many socialists understood the relationship between race and class: racist doctrines justified economic oppression by capitalists, employers. Just like emancipation of yesteryear would mean the end of free labor for slave owners, human equality would force business owners to pay blacks the same wages as whites. Racism served to prevent this, just as sexism and xenophobia prevented the same for women, undocumented immigrants, and others. Further, racism discouraged diverse workers from uniting (and was often stoked by corporations as thoroughly as possibly to weaken labor organizations). In 1931, James Cannon, former editor of Workers’ World, wrote for a New York paper:

In its struggle against the workers’ emancipation movement capitalism plays upon all the dark sentiments of ignorance, prejudice and superstition. This is seen daily and hourly in its endeavors to divide the workers and oppressed people along national, racial and religious lines…. [White workers are] inflamed against the foreigner, the Jew and the Negro. Communism cannot be other than the mortal enemy of these devastating prejudices…. Communists must be the heralds of a genuine solidarity between the exploited workers of the white race and the doubly exploited Negroes.

Kansas City was home to a branch of a black socialist organization called the Black Panther Party. The local chapter started in 1969 and was headed by Pete O’Neal. The Panthers aimed to promote self-defense and use of Second Amendment rights, to unify workers against capitalist exploitation, to embrace black pride, to make African Americans politically powerful and economically self-sufficient, to end illiteracy, hunger, and poverty in black communities, and to fight and die at any time for freedom. Marxist ideas of giving power to the common people attracted many, as did the idea of revolution in an America where blacks were stripped of their human rights and white vigilantes and police could attack and kill peaceful marchers with total impunity.

The local chapter created social programs to lift Kansas City blacks out of poverty. Its “three major survival programs included a free breakfast program, black history classes, and free health screening for sickle cell and hypertension.” Food donations from local businesses fed 700 children each day (Racism in Kansas City). The Kansas City Panthers had female members and leaders, like Charlotte Hill O’Neal.

Indeed, men were not the only socialists (though socialist women were usually made subordinate to men). Take Kate Richards O’Hare, who, while being a racist segregationist, was a vocal Socialist Party organizer, an anti-war and anti-militarism advocate who was also imprisoned under the Espionage Act (freedom of speech was not particularly popular in America during the Great War). She later made an unsuccessful run for Congress on a Socialist Party ticket. O’Hare lived on a farm in rural Kansas and then moved to Kansas City as a youth. She remembered in an article for the Socialist Woman:

Then came the day when we left the ranch and went to the city to take up the life of a wage-worker’s family in the poverty-cursed section of the town. For, of course, no other was possible for us for father’s wages were only nine dollars a week and nine dollars is not much to support a family of five. Of that long, wretched winter following the panic of 1887 the memory can never be erased, never grow less bitter. The poverty, the misery, the want, the wan-faced women and hunger pinched children, men trampling the streets by day and begging for a place in the police stations or turning footpads by night, the sordid, grinding, pinching poverty of the workless workers and the frightful, stinging, piercing cold of that winter in Kansas City will always stay with me as a picture of inferno such as Dante never painted…

I, child-woman that I was, seeing so much poverty and want and suffering, threw my whole soul into church and religious work. I felt somehow that the great, good God who had made us could not have [wanted to abandon] his children to such hopeless misery and sordid suffering. There was nothing uplifting in it, nothing to draw the heart nearer to him, only forces that clutched and dragged men and women down into the abyss of drunkenness and vice. Perhaps he had only overlooked those miserable children of the poor in the slums of Kansas City, and if we prayed long and earnestly and had enough of religious zeal he might hear and heed and pity.

O’Hare was a machinist with her father and a trade unionist, until she heard Mother Jones speak at the Cigar Maker’s Ball in Kansas City. She “hastily sought out ‘Mother’ and asked her to tell what Socialism was.” O’Hare then became a socialist, reading the Appeal to Reason, gaining Wayland as a mentor, and joining the Socialist Labor Party of Kansas City in 1899. She joined with Caroline Lowe (a teacher) and Winnie Shirley, other Kansas City socialist women, to push for socialism throughout the southwestern U.S. O’Hare soon rivaled Eugene Deb’s popularity in the Southwest, gaining a national and even international reputation, according to historian James Green.

Another famous socialist woman was Ella Reeve Bloor, who helped establish the Communist Labor Party in Kansas City and was later a national organizer. She wrote for the Workers’ World as well.

Socialism in Kansas City found a home in the 1970s in the form of the Kansas City Marxist-Leninist Cell and the Kansas City Revolutionary Workers Collective, a black Marxist organization with “roots in the Afro-American student and community struggles” that reached out to national communist groups and local groups like the Wichita Communist Cell. The KCRWC declared, “We will struggle to unite the working class movement with the movement of oppressed national minorities, women, students, and all who will struggle for the socialist revolution. We will lead the U.S. working class to its greatest victory yet — the [establishment] of the People’s Socialist Republic of the United States!”

The KCRWC had harsh words for both the United States and the U.S.S.R. regarding imperialism, calling the two superpowers the “most dangerous exploiters… These two bloodsuckers are the biggest threat to world peace… The competition for world domination by these two superpowers, which is particularly acute in Southern Africa, the Mideast, and Europe, exposes their true aims.” Further,

The U.S. has long been regarded as a reactionary imperialist power, and has long ago won the bitter hatred of the world’s working people — from Puerto Rico to Chile, from southern Africa to Vietnam… The Soviet Union is now a fascist police state internally, and a vicious exploiter internationally. We say that the Soviet Union is social-imperialist — socialist in words, imperialist in deeds.

During the great Kansas City, Missouri, School District teacher strikes of the 1970s, the KCRWC stood with the teachers, calling the strike a “just struggle.”

Black and white teachers went on strike for forty-two days in 1974 and again, three years later, for forty-four days. The strikes, organized by the American Federation of Teachers, pushed for better wages, smaller class sizes, sick leave, better working conditions, and other demands. The district sought court edicts to end the strikes or weaken them through restraining orders. Violations of court orders earned strikers fines or jail time.

On April 7, 1977, the Star ran the headline “127 Teachers Arrested in School Disturbances.” The strike beginning March 1977 shut down ninety-two schools and left 51,000 students out of class (see Racism in Kansas City).

The KCRWC condemned the priorities of those who “own all the wealth and power in society”:

To the capitalists, the education of the working class children is not a profitable venture. Consequently, public schools are allowed to deteriorate. Capitalists invest in more profitable areas, such as spending billions for bombs and missiles to be used against other peoples of the world.

It called for parents, students, and workers to unite against the school board and the capitalist economic system.

It wasn’t the first time in Kansas City that socialists were involved in public school reform, for example in the 1890s and 1910s criticizing “the centralized structure and elite membership of the local school board… [They] called for representative democracy, but unfortunately lacked the power to implement desired changes,” as historian William Reese writes. The Socialist Labor Party in Kansas City called the school board “absolutely capitalistic.”

In modern times, some Kansas Citians still believe in socialism. Small groups come and go, too numerous to fully list: the Kansas City Marxist Alliance, the Kansas City Youth for Socialist Action, and so on. Today, there exist socialist groups like the Progressive Youth Organization, the Kansas City Revolutionary Collective, and the Kansas City Democratic Socialists of America. Groups and individuals study, write, talk, and preach about socialism, working toward what William Morris called the “next step” in the Workers’ World on November 28, 1919:

A new society founded on industrial peace and forethought, bearing with its own ethics, aiming at a new and higher life for all men, has received the general name of Socialism, and it is my firm belief that it is destined to supersede the old order of things founded on industrial war, and to be the next step in the progress of humanity.

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The Absurd Sanders-Trump Comparison

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Stephen Marche wrote in The Guardian, “The same specter of angry white people haunts Saunders’s rally [as Trump’s], the same sense of longing for a country that was, the country that has been taken away.”

Jonah Goldberg penned in the National Review an article entitled, “Sanders and Trump: Two Populist Peas in a Pod?” He argues government incompetence and lies sparked “populist backlash” on the Right and Left, and that Sanders’ and Trump’s “programs overlap a great deal.”

His “evidence”? He notes “Sanders has praised Trump’s favorable statements on single-payer health care” and juxtaposes Sanders saying capitalists benefit from the cheap labor of illegal immigration and Trump saying “real immigration reform puts the needs of working people first — not wealthy globe-trotting donors.”

In The New York Times, David Brooks writes Sanders and Trump  have “no plausible path toward winning,” that these “cults never last,” and that “these sudden stars are not really about governing. They are tools for their supporters’ self-expression. They allow supporters to make a statement, demand respect or express anger or resentment.”

George Packer in The New Yorker article “The Populists,” while correctly highlighting the stark difference between Sanders’ “plausible reforms” through “elections and legislation” and Trump’s “just let [me] handle it” absurdities, nevertheless echoes Marche and Brooks, and then says:

Responding to the same political moment, the phenomena of Trump and Sanders bear a superficial resemblance. Both men have no history of party loyalty, which only enhances their street cred—their authority comes from a direct bond with their supporters, free of institutional interference. They both rail against foreign-trade deals, decry the unofficial jobless rate, and express disdain for the political class and the dirty money it raises to stay in office.

The whole comparison between Sanders and Trump is truly absurd, and accomplishes nothing except serving as a slur to discredit Sanders, who has 32 years of elected office experience and is the most popular senator in the nation. Whether this is the purpose behind the comparison is up for debate, but the result, obvious to any rational person, is that Sanders is dragged into the mud with a racist with no political but much fear mongering experience.

What other purpose does this serve? What is the point of noting these two politicians have armies of passionate followers and have skyrocketed in the polls in a brief time period? That anti-establishment candidates are popular in a time of great discontent with the establishment?

That is true, and it is right to report it, but if such information isn’t immediately followed by the drastic differences between Sanders and Trump in both personalities and policy goals, if political theorists grasp at straws to show their followers have the same motivations, it likely amounts to nothing more than the establishment of guilt by association. Put Sanders’ name next to Trump’s and hope the disgust toward the latter will somehow shift toward the former.  

This foolishness is not hard to replicate. Watch. Noam Chomsky is a Leftist historian and philosopher who is generally ignored by the mainstream American media. David Duke is a white supremacist, the former Grand Wizard of the K.K.K., and a Republican politician who is generally ignored by the mainstream American media.

Why are they being ignored? There must be parallels between their personalities and beliefs, and of course those of their followers, to explain this. How are they the same? They’re both white and have many passionate white followers. Their followers must be angry, hungry for change. They’ve both written books. The Southern Poverty Law Center called Duke “the most recognizable figure of the American radical right.” David Horowitz called Chomsky “the most prominent leader of the radical Left, with cult status among the group.”

But why go hunting for what they have in common as an explanation for why they are both ignored by the mainstream media, when really their only commonality is they are both ignored? Could it be they are ignored for very different reasons? Perhaps because Chomsky is a fierce critic of the American government’s massacre of innocent people overseas, but Duke openly despises black people? Perhaps their followers have different sentiments, too, explaining why they gravitate towards one or the other, but not both.

Yes, Sanders and Trump both came out of nowhere. Both have huge followings. They aren’t typical candidates. They’re “populist,” i.e. representing the interests of ordinary citizens. Sometimes they talk about the same American problems — joblessness, trade, immigration, corruption — just like every single other political candidate.

After that, there are no similarities. Sanders hugs a young Muslim woman at a rally and promises to do everything in his power to “rid this country of the ugly stain of racism.” The crowd cheers. Trump looks on as a Muslim woman, “Salam: I come in peace” emblazoned on her shirt, stands up at a rally in silent protest. She is removed by security, to the glee of the screaming crowd.

Sanders goes to a mosque to demand an end to religious bigotry; Trump calls for the monitoring of mosques and the banning of Muslim migrants, and is open to registering Muslims in a database or issuing them special identification.  

Sanders stands with striking fast food workers to show solidarity in the push for a higher minimum wage; Trump opposes a higher minimum wage and thinks wages are “too high” already.

Sanders declares, “Black lives matter…we need to combat institutional racism from top to bottom” and fix “a broken criminal justice system”; Trump shares racist misinformation online, takes out ads in newspapers calling for the execution of black suspects, and is sued for refusing to rent to blacks. His supporters beat a black protester. Neo-Nazis call him “glorious leader.”

Sanders wants a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants; Trump stereotypes them as rapists and drug dealers, and wants to round them all up and deport them. His supporters beat Hispanics at rallies and on the streets, chanting “USA! USA!”

Looking at the most common themes of the campaign thus far, Sanders and his followers are most angry at the powerful, the few growing rich off the labor of the many and controlling government policy to boot. Trump and his fans are angriest at the powerless: immigrants escaping dire poverty and drug violence in Central America, blacks protesting police killings of unarmed neighbors, Syrians fleeing a brutal civil war.

In short, Sanders is a good man who genuinely wants to better society for many powerless, marginalized groups, and a lot of Americans agree with him. Trump is a bigot who stokes white pride, anti-immigrant hatred, anti-Muslim terror, and other dangerous ideas, and a lot of Americans — too many — agree with him.

Anyone who has paid any attention to current events (or the candidate platforms) knows the Sanders-Trump comparison, beyond their swift rise, is empty. They are not “peas in a pod.” Their programs in no way “overlap a great deal.” You may find “angry white people” at both candidates’ rallies, but they are not similarly-minded angry white people.

Sanders and Trump are very different men saying very different things and are adored for very different reasons. In such a “political moment,” this isn’t the time for political thinkers to draw parallels that don’t exist just to put something in an editor’s hand for the day, or to feign intellectualism by presenting something true (Sanders and Trump have passionate followers) and expanding it into something false (their passions stem from the same needs and desires), or, worst of all, to slander a good man.

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