by Mickey Huff
Censored #5: Hate Groups and Antigovernment Groups on Rise across US
Corporate media pump doubts over public safety and fear of terrorists into the minds of American public. The basic message is that we have much to fear but our government is ever vigilant to protect us from the bad guys.
Censored story #5 covers the rise of hate groups in the US, suggesting that we do have something to fear, but that this rise may be an unintended consequence of US policies. Laws intended to keep Americans safe may actually be alienating the very people who join “patriot” and militia groups. In March 2013, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups and antigovernment groups, released a report showing i,360 radical, antigovernment patriot groups and 321 militias actively operating within the US. SPLC statistics indicate an 813 percent rise in the number of such groups since 2008.3 Hate groups are most prevalent in California, with eighty-two documented groups; Texas stands second among states with sixty-two.4
By the SPLC’s standards, hate groups “have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics,” and their activities can include “criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.”5
With the numbers of patriot groups now higher than during the peak of the 1990S militia movement, the threat of non-Islamic domestic terrorism is real and growing, according to the SPLC. As the SPLC released its report, the Center’s president, J. Richard Cohen, sent a letter to the US attorney general and the homeland security secretary urging the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security “to establish an interagency task force to assess the adequacy of the resources devoted to responding to the growing threat of non-Islamic domestic terrorism.”6
According to the SPLC report, hate groups are now transitioning from racist hatred to hatred focused on the government and its repre-sentatives.7 As Brian Levin reported,
While hate groups and rightwing extremists, with some notable exceptions, have largely been unsuccessful in carrying out violence, analysts are increasingly concerned due to:
A steady stream of thwarted violent plots,
Several notable spontaneous violent encounters with police,
The rapid increase in groups, [and]
Widespread political, economic and social distress.8
As Cohen and the SPLC argued, “serious questions have been raised about the level of resources that are now being devoted to assessing the threat of non-Islamic terrorism.”9
Corporate media paid scattered attention to the SPLC report. Both the New York Times and MSNBC covered the report on the day the SPLC issued it. Otherwise, establishment media have done little to shed light on this subject. In some cases, corporate media actually contribute to the problem. As the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, the growth in extremism
has been aided by mainstream media figures and politicians who have used their platforms to legitimize false propaganda about immigrants and other minorities and spread the kind of paranoid conspiracy theories on which militia groups thrive.10
Individuals that identify with patriot groups often seek to preserve a strong white nationalism, which they perceive as threatened by cultural shifts in today’s society. These shifts include the election of Barack Obama as America’s first black president, changes in the nation’s demographics (with the loss of its white majority predicted by 2043), and, in his second term, President Obama’s agenda for gun control and immigration reform.11 Of course, change is nothing new in the US. From the abolition of slavery through the civil rights movement to the present, greater inclusivity appears as a threat to those who would maintain the status quo. Perhaps corporate media pay less attention to (white) militia groups because, in a way, these organizations do the ruling class’s dirty work.
Censored #10: A “Culture of Cruelty” along Mexico–US Border
US treatment of immigrants crossing the Mexico–US border shows that we do not see all people as equal. US policies have left many citizens of Central American countries without adequate work.12 As Censored story #10 documents, when immigrants travel to the US in hopes of economic opportunity, they encounter what the organization No More Deaths has dubbed a “culture of cruelty.”
Drawing on the work of No More Deaths, Erika L. Sánchez reported how migrants crossing the Mexico–US border face not only the dangers posed by an unforgiving desert but also abuse at the hands of the US Border Patrol. Crossing the desert, migrants risk dehydration, starvation, exhaustion, and the possibility of being threatened and robbed; the dangers continue if they come in contact with the Border Patrol, Sánchez reported.13 In “A Culture of Cruelty,” the organization No More Deaths revealed human rights violations by the US Border Patrol including limiting or denying migrants water and food, verbal and physical abuse, and failing to provide necessary medical attention; female migrants face additional risks, including sexual abuse, according to No More Deaths.14 Sánchez reported, “Dehumanization of immigrants is actually part of the Border Patrol’s institutional culture. Instances of misconduct are not aberrations, but common practice.”15 The Border Patrol denies any wrongdoing and has not been held responsible for these abuses. No More Deaths reported 179 human remains found in the desert in 2012 alone.16
Public debate on immigration tends to ignore not only the potential dangers of crossing the desert, but also the reasons for the migration of undocumented immigrants to the US. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed by US President Bill Clinton and Mexican President Carlos Salinas in 1994, displaced many Mexican farmers and workers from their farms. Lack of employment resulting from NAFTA continues to motivate many to migrate to the US. Sánchez reported:
Most undocumented immigrants have had to leave their economically ravaged towns in order to survive and assist their families. In the documentary The Other Side of Immigration, filmmaker Roy Germano explored the causes of Mexican immigration to the United States by interviewing 700 men and women in the Mexican countryside. One of the major factors he found was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed in 1994. . . . Many people were forced to leave their homes because there were no employment opportunities or because they lost their farms as a flood of cheaper corn came South from the United States.17
Fear of immigrants from Mexico and Central America has led the US government to undertake extreme measures in order to keep immigrants out of the US. The enormous wall that separates the US and Mexico is just one example of this. Both the wall’s construction and the second-class status of the Mexican people parallel the situation between Palestinians and Israelis living in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and throughout Israel. The walls that snake throughout these regions are made by the same manufacturers who helped construct the physical barriers along the US-Mexican border—with the same intent: to keep undesirable people out.18
Censored #20: Israel Counted Minimum Calorie Needs in Gaza Blockade, Documents Reveal
US corporate media regularly distort, and even censor, news reports about Israel–Palestine.19 US corporate media systemically avoid stories on the Israel–Palestine conflict that portray Israel in critical terms, and when they do report on the conflict, that coverage employs double standards that favor Israel.20 The “monumental cover-up” of news on Palestine, described by Alison Weir in 2004,2 continues in 2013.
The Israeli human rights group Gisha fought a legal battle that led to the release, in October 2012, of government documents that exposed Israeli policy to permit Gazans just 2,279 calories of food each day.22 The 2008 defense ministry study, titled “Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip—Red Lines,” sought to determine the “minimal subsistence basket” that was “sufficient for subsistence without the development of malnutrition.”23 The evidence indicates that Israel decided hunger would be an effective means to coerce residents of Gaza to force out the Hamas government.
Since June 2007, Israel has imposed tightened restrictions as a form of col
lective punishment for Palestinians who democratically elected Hamas to lead the government in Gaza. From 2007 until 2010, Israel only allowed food into Gaza that it determined as vital for the survival of the civilian population. Furthermore, with limited exceptions, Israel has banned the export of virtually all goods from Gaza, creating additional hardships for Gazans attempting to earn a living and support their families.24 In January 2011, WikiLeaks released a US diplomatic cable from 2008 in which Israel informed US officials of its intent to keep Gaza’s economy “on the brink of collapse” while avoiding a humanitarian crisis, which would require an international response.25 Despite its restrictions, Israel continues to allege that it does not control Gaza.
Censored #25: Israel Gave Birth Control to Ethiopian Immigrants Without Their Consent
In January 2013, Israel acknowledged that medical authorities have been giving Ethiopian immigrants long-term birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent. The Israeli government had previously denied the charges, which were first brought to light by investigative reporter Gal Gabbay in a broadcast of Israeli Educational Television’s news program, Vacuum, on December 8, 2012. The following month, the Israeli Health Ministry’s director-general, Roni Gamzo, ordered all gynecologists to stop administering the drugs.
Alistair Dawber reports for the UK’s Independent that the Ethiopian women in question believed they had to accept medical treatment in order to be allowed to enter and stay in Israel; but medical personnel administering the injections—alleged to be Depo-Provera, a highly effective and long-lasting form of contraception—did not explain the injections’ purpose.26 The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah reported that the Israeli health ministry ran the convert contraception program in transit camps with the assistance of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC),27 which describes itself as the “world’s leading Jewish humanitarian assistance organization.”28
In late January 2013, in a carefully framed article, the Times of Israel reported that health minister Roni Gamzo ordered new standards when renewing prescriptions of the birth-control drug Depo-Provera for new Ethiopian immigrants.29 Gamzo did not admit wrongdoing and only acknowledged that the women had been given the shots without understanding their effects. The article provided further denials that Ethiopian women were singled out, and the JDC denied any involvement in procedures for Jewish immigrants to Israel.30
Nevertheless, these health policies raise concerns of government-sanctioned racism. If the shots were given without proper consent, with the intent to target Ethiopian women and reduce their birthrates, then the forced contraception program may fit the legal definition of genocide, in violation of Article II(d) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.31
This story must be understood against the backdrop of antiAfrican sentiment, and even violence, in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publically stated that African migrants threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.32 And, in May 2012, a thousand Jewish Israelis ran through the streets of Tel Aviv, looting and destroying African-operated businesses and physically assaulting any person of color they encountered.33 As David Sheen reported, such racism has not been properly addressed or quashed by Israeli religious, economic, or political leaders; instead, that establishment has “ramped up their efforts to expel all non-Jewish African people from the country.”34
CONCLUSION
Each of the stories in this news cluster demonstrates how those in power will go to great lengths to maintain social and political institutions that favor them. The conflicts that charge these underreported news stories involve a paradigm of white-and/or Jewish-supremacy and policies and practices aimed at maintaining status quo demographics in order to sustain hegemony over people who are not white and/or Jewish. Judged on the basis of their reluctance to cover such stories adequately, US corporate media appear to have an interest in maintaining such power structures. Therefore, it is urgent that we continue to report and reveal the truth.
SUSAN RAHMAN, MA, is a sociology instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College and the College of Marin. Her areas of interest include Palestinian self-determination, issues of privilege and inequality, and media literacy. Her current work focuses on the role of self-reflection in social transformation. She lives in Sebastopol, California, with her partner Carlos, daughter Jordan, and dogs, Rosie and Cody.
DONNA NASSOR is an adjunct United Nations Non-Governmental Organization (UNNGO) representative with the International Peace Research Association, a UNNGO Human Rights Committee Member, a restorative justice and business professional, a retired attorney, and a mediator. She is working on a PhD in nonclinical psychology at Saybrook University. Her current research project is titled “Palestinian Voices: Peace with Justice through the Eyes of Palestinians Living in Their Homeland.”
Notes
1. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010).
2. Ibid.
3. LaurieInQueens, “‘Patriot’ Groups At All-Time High, Hate Groups Up Again: Report,” National Memo, March 7, 2013, http://www.nationalmemo.com/patriot-groups-at-all-time-high-hate-groups-up-again-report/. The National Memo story is based on the SPLC report itself. See Mark Potok, Intelligence Report: The Year in Hate and Extremism, Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring 2013, http://www.splcenter.org/home/2013/spring/the-year-in-hate-and-extremism.
4. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Hate Map,” accessed June 4, 2013, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map.
5. Ibid.; quoted by LaurieInQueens, “‘Patriot’ Groups At All-Time High.”
6. J. Richard Cohen, “SPLC Letter to DOJ & DHS,” Southern Poverty Law Center, March 5, 2013, http://www.splcenter.org/home/splc-letter-to-DOJ-DHS-.Ua4kueCCKXs.
7. For example, on “major terrorist plots and racist rampages that have emerged from the American radical right in the years since Oklahoma City,” see “Terror From the Right: Plots, Conspiracies and Racist Rampages Since Oklahoma City,” Southern Poverty Law Center, no date, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/publications/terror-from-the-right.
8. Brian Levin, “U.S. Hate and Extremist Groups Hit Record Levels, New Record Says,” Huffington Post, March 8, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-levin-jd/hate-groups-splc_b_1331318.html.
9. Cohen, “SPLC Letter to DOJ & DHS.”
10. “Hate and Extremism,” Southern Poverty Law Center, no date, http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/hate-and-extremism.
11. See Potok, “Year of Hate and Extremism.”
12. Juan Gonzales, Harvest of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2011).
13. Erika L. Sánchez, “Ripped Off by Smugglers, Groped by Border Patrol: The Nightmares Women Migrants Face,” AlterNet, June 26, 2012, http://www.alternet.org/immigration/156035/ripped_off_by_smugglers,_groped_by_border_patrol%3A_the_nightmares_women_mi-grants_face?page=entire.
14. No More Deaths, “A Culture of Cruelty,” September 21, 2011, http://www.nomoredeaths.org/cultureofcruelty.html.
15. Sánchez, “Ripped Off.”
16. No More Deaths, “Culture of Cruelty.”
17. Sánchez, “Ripped Off.”
18. The Department of Homeland contracted Kollsman, Inc., the US subsidiary of Israeli-based Elbit Systems Ltd., to work on its Secure Borders Initiative. See, for example, “Israeli Firm Gets Mexico Border Wall Contract,” World War4 Report, November 8, 2006, http://www.ww4report.com/node/2743; “Boeing Team Awarded SBInet Contract by Department of Homeland Security,” September 21, 2006, http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2006/q3/060921a_nr.html.
19. Alison Weir, “American Media Distortion on Palestine,” Middle East Monitor, May 1, 2013, http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/guest-writers/5890-american-media-distortion-on-palestine.
20. See, for example, Peter Phillips, et al., “A Study of Bias in the Associated Press,” Censored 2007: The Top 25 Censored Stories, ed. Peter Phillips and Pr
oject Censored (New York: Seven Stories, 2006), 348–349; Phillips, et al.’s analysis of AP bias in coverage of the Israel–Palestine conflict drew on “Deadly Distortion: Associated Press Coverage of Israeli and Palestinian Deaths,” If Americans Only Knew, April 26, 2006, http://ifamericansknew.org/media/ap-report.html.
21. Alison Weir, “U.S. Media Coverage of Israel Palestine: Choosing Sides,” Censored2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories, ed. Peter Phillips and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories, 2004), 285–300, quote at 285.
22. “Israel Forced to Release Study on Gaza Blockade,” BBC News, October 17, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19975211; John Glaser, “Israel Counted Minimum Calorie Needs in Gaza Blockade, Documents Reveal,” Antiwar.com, October 17, 2012, http://news.an-tiwar.com/2012/10/17/israel-counted-minimum-calorie-needs-in-gaza-blockade-documents-reveal/.
23. Gisha, the Israeli human rights organization that secured the document, has published an English version of it online, http://www.gisha.org/UserFiles/File/publications/redlines/red-lines-presentation-eng.pdf.
24. David Poort, “History of Israeli Blockade on Gaza,” Al Jazeera, November 2, 1011, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/10/20111030172356990380.html.
25. The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten was the first to publish the leaked cable: http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/article3972840.ece.
26. Alistair Dawber, “Israel Gave Birth Control to Ethiopian Jews Without Their Consent,” Independent, January 27, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gave-birth-control-to-ethiopian-jews-without-their-consent-8468800.html.
27. Ali Abunimah, “Did Israel Violate the Genocide Convention by Forcing Contraceptives on Ethiopian Women?,” Electronic Intifada, January 28, 2013, http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israel-violate-genocide-convention-forcing-contraceptives-ethiopian-women.
