Roy Edroso mocks the right wingers who are lost in racist fantasies about how the cities are going to go up in flames tonight, win or lose. They seem not to have learned their lesson from the Ashley Todd incident.
Nordlinger doesn’t get around very much—rightbloggers are already on riot patrol. “As I live in the Chicago Area, I’m ‘hunkering down’ for the riots that are sure to ensure—whether or not Obama wins or loses,” says NoBamaNation. “If Obama Loses the Left Will Riot,” says Ray Thomas. “Vote Obama, because if you don’t blacks will riot,” says Drew D. “I guess I can now be called racist.” “I want more than anything to watch them fall in the midst of the Obama Victory Celebration Obama Pity Riot,” says Political Republican Opinion. “Obama and his supporters are showing as much political civility as the citizens of Paris prior to the Bastille,” says The Council of Conservative Citizens, calling for their readers to “stop our recession into a dark and ugly future,” presumably by any means necessary.
The last time there were election-related riots in this country, it was a group of Republican thugs that shut down vote counting in Florida, which helped cinch the election theft of 2000.
McCain/Palin have spent most of the last weeks of the election pumping up their base to think of black people, urban dwellers, and Hispanics as illegitimate voters, both with the “real America” rhetoric and phony stories about voter fraud that are a coded way to imply that legally eligible voters should be intimidated on the base of race, geography, age, and probably gender. (Young white women being viewed as more suspicious than young white men.) Email blasts have been sent out asking for groups of Republicans to challenge voters, especially in swing states. Translation: Lurk around looking dangerous and picking on people who look vulnerable and belong to a “suspicious” group.
So who’s using the threat of violence and riots to influence the election again? With that, I’ll leave you with an interesting tidbit from Umberto Eco’s essay “Eternal Fascism”:
Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.
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The best part of this election is to watch the racists continue to be wrong about everything.