Worse than the "some say" line of proof employed, this tale also relies on some experts that end up being expectedly biased sources. The AP asks a white supremacist what he thinks -- as if there is any doubt that he would be for increased racism -- and a university professor hawking a book on racism -- as if there would be any doubt that she'd see racism everywhere. There is also all sorts of claims and worries by authorities, but no proof of any real "growing racist movement" is presented.
As ominous as the ABC report referenced by Baker, this AP report starts out with foreboding words.
Crazies. Lone nut jobs. Isolated loonies. Those are frequent descriptions of people like James von Brunn, the 88-year-old white supremacist accused of opening fire at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and killing a black guard.
Others believe he represents something more dangerous: a growing racist movement motivated by a number of converging factors, including the first black president.
The potential for an increase in violence from whites who feel they are slipping from power is high, people from across the ideological spectrum say.
And who does the AP turn to to prove out these dark predictions? Professor Carol Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, is trundled out to tell us, "I believe we are headed for an unprecedented level of conflict and racial turmoil."
It shouldn't be surprising that Swain sees racists under her bed, though. After all she wrote the book "The New White Nationalism in America" so she has a vested interest in alarming people enough about resurgent racism to go buy her book.
This AP piece goes on to reveal that "federal agents have increased their monitoring of white supremacist groups since Obama's election, and have noticed increased chatter and membership." Not that this isn't a prudent move, but it is not proof that they are actually finding a "growing racist movement" in America. Only that they are looking.
Then the AP asked the chairman of the "National Policy Institute," which is a white advocacy group, if he thinks racism is on the rise. Surprise, surprise, the guy that wants to see racism on the rise tells the AP he sees racism on the rise. Shocking, eh?
But in a nation of 300 million people, the AP has but three cases to point to as evidence of this "growing racist movement" in America. Not very convincing.
Now, let us look to past American history and see some real evidence of racial separatists that bespoke real trouble.
Let's take the 1930s, for instance. Nazism was a real worry in the United States then and it was not peopled by just a few nuts and fringe wackos like it is today. Nazism in America was so big then that an actual political entity had grown around it in New York and New Jersey. Called the German-American Bund and headed by Fritz Julius Kuhn, the organization once commanded a crowd of 20,000 New Yorkers to a parade and speaking event in February of 1939. Of course there was violence at that event.
And we don't even have to mention the many hundreds of thousands of Ku Klux Klan members that held sway in this country on up into the 1950s. The KKK was so strong at one time that it controlled nearly the entire Indiana legislature, including the Governor. It wasn't until 1924 that the rape and murder of a woman named Madge Oberholtzer by Indiana's Grand Dragon, David C. Stephenson, caused the unseemly connections between the Klan and Indiana state government to come to light toppling the government and leading to Stephenson's imprisonment. The Indiana Klan supposedly once counted some 180,000 members.
Now those are some real racist oriented organizations that presented real dangers to America. These historical troubles make the "some say" reporting of the AP and other Old Media outlets today look foolish by comparison.
