There is a facebook page called The Patriot Nation, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: people raging against an America that isn’t white. And it is on facebook, so hell no, it’s never going to get taken down, even when it lies.
This is how it lies. The photo on the left, below, is the original, of a woman protesting the Trayvon Martin verdict. It didn’t fit the racist narrative of the goddamn Patriot Nation, though, so they had to do a little blatant photoshop tweaking, and produced the faked photo on the right.
These scum are the people who defile the good name of my country, who make me gag and recoil when someone calls anyone a “patriot”. That woman on the left? I’d be proud to call her my fellow American.
Further nastypoints to the photoshoppers for changing “Justice” to “Justise.”
…AND “sons” to “suns”! Good grief.
Wow.
Wow.
Well, so much for that “post-racial America” myth.
Well, that twigged a memory of passing a “Museum of Patriotism” near the Aquarium, when I was in Atlanta four years ago. A little googling, and I find that it’s now defunct due to mismanagement, and reduced to an online gift shop: http://foundationofpatriotism.org/, see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Patriotism
Not the same people as the FB page, but the same disease. (Not that patriotism per se is a disease — it depends on what you mean by the word).
Unfortunately, Dr Johnson was mistaken: patriotism is usually the first resort of the scoundrel.
Perhaps an oversight of casual language, but I see no reason to be ashamed of the one on the right either.
Patriotism has become such a toxic concept thanks to the ‘my nation right or wrong’ elements that are now part and parcel of it to most people, along with the heinous racism (and often misogyny and homophobia) and general far-right wingnuttery that go hand-in-hand with it.
Some people still consider the term complimentary, but in practice it has become the most egregious insult when applied to any person of conscience, and one of the clearest indicators of rampant, bigoted arsehattery when employed self descriptively.
As a result, it is not even remotely surprising that a group that calls itself ‘The Patriot Nation’ should be chock full of racist aresholes who lie compulsively in pursuit of their nasty ideology.
The “redux” suggests that they have been reported and taken down before.
The go-to site for hate groups in USAlienstan is the Southern Poverty Law Center. However, they don’t seem to have anything on that site (or, as far as I could tell, on FraceBork (hate pages) in general), perhaps because there isn’t an “organized” group per se responsible.
I see their photoshop skills have improved. Much better than the racists that photoshopped Obama out of that picture with his grandparents.
I’ve never actually encountered ‘patriotism’ used to mean anything other than ‘fascism and bigotry,’ practically speaking. Any time anyone claims that they’re doing something patriotic, it’s pretty much inevitably an excuse to be horrible to someone. That’s one reason I declared myself an internationalist at an early age (too early to understand all the potential meanings, but I stand by it still.)
“In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.” –Ambrose Bierce
Wow, their facebook page is just sickening,… posts and comments dripping with lies, racism and hatred. What a national disgrace. Patriots my ass. Facebook should take a stand and nuke the page.
Freedom of speech is one thing, but lying hate speech is quite another. Speaking as a Canadian, I understand that here in Canada, our laws are a lot tighter regarding “hate speech” than any laws that you may have in the States. Is that true or do your free “free speech” laws trump all, except in cases of slander? Does anyone have any insight into this?
Re #8 ( Greenwood ):
I see the ruse; they can’t wait to call a man of conscience a “patriot”, who then responds with “Wait, I’m not a patriot, don’t call me that!”. The patriot will then exclaim, “Gotcha! You admitted you ain’t a patriot, what are you a treasonous pinko?” I see it comin’ ; 3, … 2, … 1, … go!
People like that are part of why I’m so fucking ashamed of my country at this point that if money weren’t an issue I’d renounce my citizenship and move to Finland.
re 14 quatguy
As a Canadian, maybe you can enlighten this poor ignorant ‘Merican. Do you think your “hate speech laws” can be applied to the “pissed off mother” who wrote that pink-paper screed to the grandmother of the child with autism?
{Sorry to go off topic of the OP, but referring to a previous post on the same site.} {She printed the note and published it (to a single reader; but what the hey), so doesn’t that qualify? If only they could find her and “slap her wrists”, here’s hoping.}
re 17:
oops, FTFme:
pink-paper screed
@17: If you dig into comments over there, you’ll find links to stories indicating that the police have concluded the language in that note does not rise to legally-actionable hate speech, though there may still be cause for a harassment or mischief charge.
I read the same stories regarding the RCMP’s statements that the pink letter was not hate speech. Probably need a lawyer to comment why it did not meet the definition of hate speech. I was just curious if the US has hate speech laws at all or if your free speech laws trump all?
I see maybe I spoke too soon about our Canadian hate speech laws…..http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/06/28/hate-speech-no-longer-par_n_3517390.html
How did Obama get elected president? Pathetic racists desperately trying to rewrite reality actually did have something to do with it.
stevem @ 15;
Exactly – poison the whole notion of patriotism to the point where no one with one ounce of empathy or decency could ever identify with the notion, while simultaneously holding it up as the ultimate moral good and the final measure of trustworthiness. Present it as a dichotomy where you either embrace a mindless, fascistic vision of your nation as possessing unchallengeable moral authority as part of some ‘manifest destiny’, or you are automatically marked out not simply as disagreeing or as preferring to place our common humanity above tribalistic concepts of national identity, but rather as someone who bears ill will toward your fellow citizens on a point of principle, is allied to hostile, violent groups at least in ideology if not in parctical terms of offering material support (the whole, incredibly idiotic meme of liberals, and in particular atheist liberals, being allied to extremist islamist terror groups that popped up post 9/11 being a case in point), and is in essence a ‘traitor in waiting’.
It is oppressive, McCarthy-ite ‘reds under the bed’ paranoia with a modern spin, and the religious right can’t get enough of it.
@1 and @2
They probably thought they were fixing her spelling. :)
Doesn’t this count as slander or libel?
I might have thought that having to lie to make your case would clue you in to the unworthiness of your case.
I might have been wrong.
The photoshop meaning in a nutshell:
The plebs are outbreeding us! The plebs are outbreeding us!
The US does not have a legal concept of “hate speech” per se. The concept of “hate speech” is a relatively modern concept that has not been adopted by American law and is unlikely to be anytime soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States
America still relies on old common law restrictions on free speech; speech can only be abridged if it is legally deemed to be lewd, obscene, profane, libel/slander or to be threatening or inciting violence. Generally, it takes a lot for spreech to be abridged for any of these reasons today. (This is, of course, a bit simplistic.)
Burning a cross is not legally “hate speech,” however there are many other charges that can be filed. Putting a swastica on a door might be illegal for property damage, but there is no “hate crime” legislation that can cover it in the US. American jurisprudence is extremely reluctant to disallow speech, and relies on other crimes to police speech that other countries would deem “hate speech.”
Some American jurisdictions have “hate crime” legislation, such as NY, where the finding of a hate crime would augment sentencing, but that is as close as the US gets.
At first I just noticed the two misspellings they photoshopped in without even noticing how they changed the number. Words fail.
laurentweppe #25
The word they would use is not plebs. It starts with an N.
Their retraction and accompanying comments are a pathetic exercise in damage limitation.
Patriotism is a sick sort of religion.
To clarify part of Kristin’s excellent post–“hate speech” in and of itself is not a crime in the U.S. However, using hateful slurs and language while engaging in other, related criminal activity can result in the offense being deemed a “hate crime”, and thus result in a more severe sentence; this aspect of the law is, itself, fairly new, and not universal across the country–it’s mostly by jurisdiction.
The legal theory for this is that, if a crime is committed in such a way as to exemplify hatred for a particular group (for instance, trespassing and arson in the case of a cross-burning on the lawn of a black family that has just moved to a white neighborhood), then that crime has victimized not only those directly harmed, but also the group to which they belong–essentially, ‘hate crimes’ are an attempt at terrorism, using violence and vandalism to instill fear in a group.
MarkM1427
Why settle for Finland when Sweden is just next door? When it comes to matters of equality, Finland lags behind other Nordic countries and watches how’s it worked out in Sweden… and maybe follows suit after five years or so. Or not.
The very same thought that occurred to me! Perhaps they felt sorry for her! “Oh, look, this por darkie woman dont no how to spel goode. Must b a moran. We’ll fix it 4 hur.”
Of course, that would assume that they have kind motivations, which would be at odds with the obvious fact that they are venomous, bottom-dwelling, scum-sucking trash.
Speaking of racist groups, the mayor of Regina ended up with egg on his face after declaring European Heritage Week for October, only to find out the request came from the Nationalist Party of Canada. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2013/08/20/sk-proclamation-cancelled-regina-.html
She actually does have a subject-verb agreement error.
jaxkayaker,
You have a decent-human agreement error.
Finland was the first example of how the Scandinavian countries are light years ahead of the US in terms of equal opportunities and standard of living that I read about so that’s the one that came up when I posted that. I’ll have to look more into how they compare to each other though.
@jaxkayaker,
She does, but I doubt the people who photoshopped this image (or their audience) are smart enough to recognize that kind of error. Still, her message is pretty damn clear, and that’s all that really matters.
Thank You For Your Contribution.
On the subject of Canadian “hate speech” laws versus American equivalents or lack thereof: with the caveat that I’m not a lawyer, but did get curious after reading these comments and following the story of the letter sent to the family of the boy with autism, there are actually a couple of different sets of laws.
Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (the subject of the HuffPo article in comment 20 and which has been repealed) dealt with “hate messages” quite broadly, identifying communications on “any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination” as a “discriminatory practice”. If I understand this section correctly, complaints made under the CHRA are not criminal matters; they would go before a human rights tribunal. Sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code deal with “hate propaganda” and “inciting hatred”, involve criminal charges, and are still in force, but hate speech is defined more narrowly and there is an exception for speech in private conversation. I am curious if this is the reason why the letter did not meet the criteria for hate speech set by the Criminal Code, but may end up judged as harassment.
In either case, though, I don’t think Canadian hate speech laws have been particularly effective at regulating hateful speech online, so it’s unlikely that having an equivalent would mean much in the situation described here. Read just about any article about First Nations issues or the Roma with open comments in a mainstream Canadian newspaper if you need confirmation.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”
Of course, these sick, stupid people are “masters” only when safely under their rock, or penned in their sties, or safely in the middle of their herd.
Their gutlessness is as huge as their dishonesty – though all else pales before their ignorance and self-loathing.
Yes, and those who are “patriots” in the real sense of the word are kicked to the curb and insulted.
My hubby has served his country for over 32 years, 11 as an active duty officer and 21 as a federal worker. The GOTP has decided to use the hard-working federal workers as scapegoats, so now we are dealing with furloughs and the possible government shut-down in a few weeks.
I’m already seething about that, and then today we get a letter from the American Legion. They are another group that twists the meaning of the word patriot. A few years ago, my hubby joined that group, mainly to compare it’s benefits with those of the AARP. The very first American Legion magazine that we received made us regret that move. In it, we were promised that our money would be going to “fund the fight against Obamacare and to defend DOMA”. From that moment on, the magazines went straight into the trash. We refuse to renew our membership with them, and we always renew our AARP membership.
Here, check out the original post from the person who figured out the deception and created the comparison image. It’s seriously worth reading.
Oh, PZ already linked it. I need to click on things more. Well, the point still stands, it’s a great piece of writing.
I’d renounce my citizenship and move to Finland.
Why do you assume they’d take you?
do your free “free speech” laws trump all, except in cases of slander?
Well, of course pornography is regulated. As is divulging information that some parts of the government claims are ‘secret’ …
Something else that I’ve been growing increasingly aware of: how do all the racists and bigots and so forth behind these images all manage to use the ugliest file formats? The original image was just fine but now they’ve introduced these blue and pink compression artifacts to the white sign.
They went to the trouble of throwing a fake little frame around it and watermarking it so this is at least close to the first draft they edited, but somehow it is going to become worse and worse as people repost it. I’m starting to think that everyone with these regressive mindsets was taught to take a screenshot and paste that into paint so that they can save it at a new, somehow always lower quality compression.
Did somebody identify all of these awful people and pull a prank on them while originally teaching them how to use the internet or something?
As others have noted, the altered spellings are clearly intended to make the woman appear uneducated.
So who runs that website? The idiots who run “caste football”?
“Patriotism”? Raceriotism is more like it, since they’re trying to incite one.
There’s always some shithead out there who thinks that crap is funny.
I’m sorry to say, neither Sweden nor Finland (or Norway or Denmark) are paragons of equality. I have never lived in the US so I can’t compare of course but both Sweden and Denmark have very problematic right-wing parties with lots of seats in their respective parliaments.
Being Swedish I’m more aware of the Swedish issues so I can’t tell you much about the actual politics of the other Scandinavian countries. Just the esprit de temps.
In Sweden the party known as SD (“Sweden Democrats”) are actually the reconstituted actual, bona fide, Nazi parties of the nineties, hiding behind a thin veil of Oh, we left that ideology behind. We run on the same issues but without ACTUALLY burning crosses or wearing swastikas. Except for when we get caught burning crosses and wearing swastikas and then we get denounced by the party leadership before we get quietly re-instated. This is the third largest party in the Swedish Riksdag. Over 10% of Swedes voted for these assholes. I can’t say with any accuracy how many of those just didn’t get that they were voting for a Trojan Horse or if they actually know what they voted for – and agree. Either way it doesn’t flatter the Swedish.
Finland has an issue with institutionalised racism and hate crime. Denmark has had crazy far right immigrant hating parties in their national assembly for decades before Sweden also succumbed to the stupid. Norway has daily newspapers happy to openly hate on Pakistani immigrants and their reformed-but-not-really Nazis “Fremskrittspartiet” are gaining traction as well.
The issues are muddled and in about as much denial as the atheo/skeptic movement is about its inherent misogyny. We have had several situations in Sweden where we have to explain, over and over again why blackface isn’t okay. And Swedish people just don’t get it. They think themselves non racist and therefore nothing they do can be racist, even when it is. Students hold “slave” auctions – in blackface. You tell them that’s not on and you get a faceful of hate, the vitriol of which can only be described as MRA-worthy.
I will give you this: an American or Canadian who immigrates to Sweden will probably be treated nicely by neighbours and coworkers whether s/he is black or white. But any colour in between that and you can expect to be treated like garbage, because US and CA are considered cool but Swedish brains only understand African American or Caucasian American as American – everything else gets filed under “immigrants”.
Yes. There are lots of people who actively work against this. But they are losing. The SD party has proven not just to be inherently racist but also incredibly incompetent (fortunately, I guess). They can’t fill the seats they win, they tend to use convicted felons as candidates, they pull a Wounded Gazelle at least once per month. They do things like setting fire to their own front doors and claim themselves to be victims of hate crime. Or send themselves threats through the mail and report it to the police. And claim themselves to be victims of hate crime. IN THEIR OWN HAND WRITING. They film themselves grabbing pieces of pipe, talking about “going out and beating up n******” and then these films get leaked and the press pick it up.
AND YET PEOPLE STILL VOTE FOR THEM.
It is not a good time to be an immigrant in Sweden. It’s not a good time to be anyone in Sweden. It’s slipping so hard and so fast. Nothing of the things people used to admire about Sweden is left. The equality is suffering a huge backlash. Racism is rampant. The disabled, the elderly and the terminally ill are paying for tax credits to people who already live well. And this is one of the reasons some deluded souls vote for those SD asses: one of their promises is to bring back all that. Never mind that they can’t organize a piss-up in a brewery – they have no intention to. And even if they could, it would be at the cost of immigrants and women. Because apart from most of them being racist as fuck, they are also staunchly anti-abortion, although they bury this in their party program in the hope that women voters won’t notice – and not many people read an entire party declaration before they vote.
I’m sorry for the novella but I see Scandinavia tossed around like Jerusalem to quakers on these blogs and the sad truth is that we suck. We suck really bad and we keep making it worse with every election.
I don’t know if we suck as bad as you feel your countries do but we are doing our level best to get to as deplorable a level of suck as soon as possible.
I’m sorry if this removes the last hopes for anyone but on the other hand, maybe we should dig where we stand?
@Eamon Knight
In my experience anyone who self-describes as a “patriot” is really using it as a code word for “flag-worshipping xenophobic Nationalist”. I think most people these days have adopted that definition.
It has been a while since I’ve seen the word “patriot” to mean something other than someone who loves America, but hates Americans.
(alternatively, that could also read “loves America, but hates everything it stands for”)
@50: I’ll grant that I haven’t heard the word in a non-toxic context for a while (now I’m even suspicious of the “true patriot love” line in O Canada). But I didn’t want to risk offending anyone here who might self-identify in some reasonable sense of the word.
What, only?
Let me tell you, you’re still världens lyckligaste folk as a book title had it a few years ago.
I found an appropriate quote for these “America lovers who hate Americans” (good one, arakasi):
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!”
—Samuel Adams
These guys are a fighting a rear-guard action against demographics and time. White conservatives are already hugely overrepresented in American elections because of the structure of the senate and demographics of the states, but they’re trying to maintain their power with gerrymandering and purging likely Democrat-voting groups from the rolls. They’re good at politics and understand how to use the system to their full advantage, but their vision of American just isn’t that attractive as I think the 2012 presidential election showed. Even in a bad economy, Romney couldn’t use race to get over the hump.
Part of that is that Mitt Romney was terrible at pandering to anyone who wasn’t an investment banker, but it’s also that the white supremacy with a human face he was selling is just losing its force and appeal. White people are becoming less tribal as we become a smaller share of the population.
I’m already seething about that, and then today we get a letter from the American Legion. They are another group that twists the meaning of the word patriot. A few years ago, my hubby joined that group, mainly to compare it’s benefits with those of the AARP. The very first American Legion magazine that we received made us regret that move. In it, we were promised that our money would be going to “fund the fight against Obamacare and to defend DOMA”. From that moment on, the magazines went straight into the trash. We refuse to renew our membership with them, and we always renew our AARP membership.
The Legion were brownshirts before the brownshirts. They were founded in 1918 to be thugs to use violence against leftist organizations and did so with gusto in their early years.
quatguy @ #20
Actually, we still have hate speech laws …in the Criminal Code. They were removed from the Human Rights Act because of the large (and actual) problem of abuse, due to the ease with which a matter can be taken to the Human Rights Commission and the onus it places on the accused. (Although those details are seriously debated …I’m not sure if the abuses of the system were so onerous for the system, but certainly the onus of defense being on the accused was patently unjust in a similar way to Britain’s libel laws.)
Hate speech is still illegal and can still be prosecuted criminally.
Ironically, yes. The American far-right these days is so vile, so habitually dishonest, that Americans are weary of their crap. This is part of the reason Obama got elected twice.
#55 Witlesschum
#55 Witlesschum
Good quote and post.
Seems like you can’t escape the racists and the bigots anywhere.
Tim Wise has a good video on this subject called “On White Privilage” that I caught via UpWorthy. What he says makes a lot of sense. Not that racism makes a lot of sense, except to some.
I guess that not only can’t you choose the country into which you are born, but you can’t escape the less tolerant types anywhere.
In case you didn’t see it, they have posted a response on the FB page:
So, if they’re to be believed, they didn’t create this, but they did simply accept it as being genuine because it fit into their viewpoint, which isn’t racist, of course, no sirree.
I have some familiarity with how this shit hits Denmark thanks to the Waifu (to be fair, she is white). You’re still doing better than us, if that’s any indication, especially since Sweden seems less terrible than Denmark.
You know, when Teddy Roosevelt said that, he meant black people weren’t American, not as a sign of solidarity. Color me unsurprised.
Well, not just black people. Roosevelt was kind of a huge dick, and his memetic badassery is more than a little annoying.
zmidponk quoted:
In other words these folks are saying, “Sure, we’re racist fucks, but make sure it’s using coded language and don’t use the N-word. We want this to be deniable since we get so much mileage from turning accusations of racism back at the evil socialist communist nazi fascist liberals who say our ranting about urban youth, welfare moms, and gangster culture is racist.”
That makes them the third largest party in the Riksdag. And there are several local councils where they have their own majority. They have power. Hands up who else has actual Nazis in their government? (Not people you like to call Nazis because they are hateful scum – but people who subscribe to white supremacy and who have been active members of outright Nazi groups. Who here has a third largest party with a leader who has been filmed, unironically, singing Horst Wessel-lied?) Nazis (literal, not figurative, are making policy decisions for us. And the populist vote is pushing our right-wing parties further right. They keep catering to this agenda in the hope of enticing back the populist vote. Which means that actual xenophobic policies are being implemented.
In the Swedish Riksdag, historically, we have had two blocs consisting of right or left wing parties of varying moderation. Since the nineties we also have the Greens who tend to play libero position, depending on who is in charge. Before the election that saw these asshats take places in the Riksdag both the Red (left) and the Blue (right) swore they would never coalition with the Nazis. After the election, the Blues decided to coalition with the Nazis. Do you not see how this is a horrible erosion of the basics of human value as the fundament of both bloc’s ideology?
Argument by assertion noted.
Argument to Book Titles was new, though. So from this I can take it you believe Atlas did, in fact, shrug.
So, how long have you lived in Sweden?
Oh, and also: way to minimize someone’s concerns without actual arguments.
Now, where have I seen that before?
@Jessica Lundborn
We have two BNP (British National party) Borough Council members in the UK. None of them, however, are MPs or have any say in central government. I am truly sorry for your predicament. I don’t think I could stomach living in a country with Nazis in central government.
@zmidponk, #60
Erm… yeah. That reply isn’t exactly helping their case either.
“There is but ONE race — the AMERICAN race, and it isn’t hyphenated!”
Because diversity is bad, I suppose. Being proud of ancestral heritage is bad, I suppose. Cuz ‘Merica.
@ck, #63
“In other words these folks are saying, “Sure, we’re racist fucks, but make sure it’s using coded language and don’t use the N-word. We want this to be deniable since we get so much mileage from turning accusations of racism back at the evil socialist communist nazi fascist liberals who say our ranting about urban youth, welfare moms, and gangster culture is racist.”
I’m always amused when people who clearly harbor racist sentiments and are clever enough to seek ways to hide them say things like this. I heard one person say “I think past race, and the fact that you are speaking in terms of race shows you are a racist.” He then went on to describe how people from urban, hip-hop backgrounds are born with less intelligence and more laziness. Not even a hint of irony with that one.