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The shooting rampage in Buffalo, NY by the young racist/fascist that killed 10 Black people has filled me with mixed emotions. One, of course, is sadness and anger at this outrageous loss of innocent lives because of the ideology and practices of the extreme rightwing, neo-fascist movement in this country, a movement which is explicitly or implicitly supported by much of the machinery and the state and national leadership of the Republican Party.
Another feeling is deep weariness about the too-strong foothold that these violent extremists continue to have in the USA. It’s not hard to understand why they do, given Trump’s victory in 2016 and strong showing in 2020. Any country where those things happened is a country with some very big problems.
The problems, however, are more than the obvious ones of white supremacist ideology, groups organized on the basis of it, and a racist/fascist/misogynist/heterosexist subculture maintained and built via social media, Fox media and other poisonous sources.
What else is there? I’d say another very big culprit is the dominance of corporate interests over the Democratic Party. What’s the connection?
At one time the Democratic Party was generally seen by working class people of all races and nationalities as their party. This began in the 1930’s with FDR’s support of the rising labor movement led by the Congress of Industrial Unions, the CIO. It continued with the national Democratic Party’s support, begrudgingly, eventually, of the Black Freedom Movement in the ’50s and ’60s. But…
