By Mohamed Matope
As we mourn Nelson Mandela and honor his
extraordinary life and triumphs of his remarkable leadership, it’s important to
remember that, Mandela like any other revolutionary fighters and prominent international
persona; he was a polarizing and divisive figure.
American conservatives disdained Mandela, on 80’s
during Conservative administration of President Reagan, US declared hostile
policy towards African National Congress (ANC).He placed the African National
Congress on America’s official list of terrorist organizations, Dick Cheney and
John McCain (along with 144 other Republicans) opposed a resolution urging
Mandela’s release from jail and conservatives has consistently referred the ANC
as a group of Marxist terrorists.
The conservative movement was so invested in opposition to Mandela that decades later it has become a problem for the latest conservative generation, which represents a constituency that still hates Mandela as a dangerous ideologue.
In the eyes of many conservatives, Nelson Mandela was a terrorist—indeed some are still saying so today—so they might be understandably tongue-tied when he ascended to the pantheon of great men
For far too long, conservatives have been comfortable playing to the worst instincts of their base, especially those steeped in racial antagonism and uncomfortable with the changes wrought by the civil rights movement. It will take years of hard work in the conservative vineyards to rip away all the suspicions that they are not friendly to black and brown citizens.
Since Barry Goldwater ran a 1964 presidential campaign on a platform of states' rights, the Republican Party has honed a strategy of appealing to disaffected whites -- stoking their resentments, fueling their fears, marshaling their paranoia. Every republican presidential candidate since Goldwater has used that strategy because it reliably delivers certain voters to the polls.
In more recent times, conservative leaders have struggled to try to find a way to broaden the party's appeal to a more diverse constituency while also continuing to win the hearts and minds of disaffected whites. But it's a fence that cannot be straddled. Too many Republican voters refuse to acknowledge the toll of their country's racist past. And too many fear a future wherein whites will no longer constitute a majority.
Conservatives probably hoped that enough time had passed for world and
17 comments:
Conservatism is not a political philosophy. It is a drooling mental disorder. It is driven by the victim's inability to achieve effective brain function needed to accommodate interaction with reality. It's defining characteristics are fear and hatred in response to fantasims conjured up in the victim's deranged mind. Conservative arguments can have a transitory appearance of coherence, but they always dissolve in the fullness of time. Their only consistent feature is that they always advocate and justify the suppression and injury of those perceived as different from the victim. The conservative fantasy relies on an authoritarian force to execute its oppressive and punitive desires. One of the great ironies of the conservative disorder is the tendency to identify with and justify oppressive forces even when the victim is not a member of the oppressive aristocracy and may actually be one of the oppressed. Attempts to apply logic to conservative behavior is futile. All you need to know is what are they currently afraid of and who do they hate today. Everything else flows from that
When "Conservative" means no more than "reactionary," it is wrong - and that is all it means these days. Today's conservatism contains a strong thread of bigotry, not just against a black president but also liberals (read Jews) pushing secularism, the "gay agenda", the New World Order etc.; against Mexican immigrants without whom our economy couldn't function; and of course those other brown people, the Arabs. To borrow an old phrase, the Cruz/Palin/Fox News conservatives are the recessive gene in our body politic. We're stuck with them but that doesn't mean we can't tell them to take a hike when their ignorance threatens us and our children's future.
You can stick Nelson Mandela with many labels - activist, peacemaker, revolutionary - and all of them would fit. You could also compare him to many people - Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., even Malcolm X - and, though you wouldn’t have a full picture of the man the world called ‘Mandiba’, you will have captured a piece of him.
One person you could never compare Mandela to, however, is former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum. Yet, Santorum made a ridiculous link between himself and Mandela, the man who sacrificed his freedom to help bring an end to apartheid in South Africa:
"Nelson Mandela…was fighting against a great injustice. I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that."
Mandela lived the last few decades of his life as a great man but he was not always so peaceful and wise. Conservatives can appreciate the man he became without your blessing but they have no obligation to recant their resistance to the young and impatient Mandela.
he GOP are on the wrong side of history because history, as well as progress, has completely passed them by. The conservative movement is still log-jammed in the 1800s.
The only reason why the GOP has managed to stay around this long, despite strenuously fighting against the common good of all Americans, are the number of myths they have purveyed over the decades … such as, the "fiscal conservative" myth (see Hoover, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Jr.); the "good on foreign policy" myth (see Ford, Bush Sr., Bush Jr.); and the single most laughable "personal freedoms" myth (see Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr.).
Conservatism, (heading around the corner into fascism depending upon the level of stupid involved), is characterized by overblown nationalism, racism, and disregard for the poor and working people for the advantage of corporations and the wealthy ruling class. These are the basic battles that are always being fought, and conservatives have been slowly losing ground over the last 250 years or so.
But as long as there is selfishness, greed, and cruelty; as long as people take pleasure in stomping on others just because they can, this war will go on. And it's true, liberals have to fight the war against self-righteousness and cruelty within themselves. You go too far to the left or to the right, and you end up on the other side of the circle where Hitler & Stalin meet.
I completely agree, and have blogged about it, that conservatives have been wrong on every conceivable issue including the decision of the apes to climb down from the trees and walk upright across the savanna. However it is worth noting that Mandela and his ANC evolved into the benign force we see today from their original identity as radical terrorist corporate takeover communists during the cold war in a nation with not only huge supplies of diamonds and gold but technologically important (read war material) rare earths as well.
Conservatives would openly welcome members of the Afrikaaner resistance movement ( a south african white supremacist movement) by claiming that they are pro-democracy (read pro-capitalism), civilized (read white ), anti-communism (read pro-greedy corporations), christian (read "white"), anti-terrorist( read anti-black or anti-colored).
In fact, while Mandela was in jail, members of white supremacist south african groups were allowed entry into the US, Britain and Europe to spread their message of hate ( pro-white power) to the right-wing in these countries. The right-wing here still continues to foster, fascist, right-wing, closet white supremacist views disguised as "patriotism and capitalism".
The conservatives, the right-wing are backwards , closet racist bigots and the best thing they could do is disappear into oblivion, hopefully lose all elections for decades to come.
At the end of the day, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". Mandela, Gandhi and Dr.King were called "terrorists" by their oppressors but their white supremacist oppressors were the ones who were true "terrorists
There is little about today's conservative's positions that I support. But to say that someone who is Conservative would be automatically against Mandela is laughable. The war had many causes. One of those was a reflection against unreasonable actions by the English King including taxation without representation, unreasonable search and seizures without warrants, etc. Conservatives certainly did not support those actions, and while Tomasky has said that rich, white guys "must" have been conservatives, the reality is that most of the leaders of the revolution were those same rich white guys. We can find similar issues with all of Tomasky's romp through history.
If you define conservatives as those longing to hold on to an existing or recent way of living, they will always be on the wrong side of history. More importantly, they romanticize the past, ignoring the often ugly truths of the times. The one constant is change. Conservatives will never be right as long as they choose to look back instead of forward - making them ultimately doomed to failure.
I was going to leave this one alone when I first read it, but just can't.
I hate it when I feel I'm forced to agree with Mr. Matope. In this case I can't agree. His definitions of Conservative is incorrect. His determining what those motivations were back through the ages is comical.Mr Matope ,i am Cliff McConnel from Colorado ,conservative opposes mandela at a time when white south africans power domination were threatened . its true GOP is about white dominance.
The so called "conservatives" are not only wrong about most things, but they commit the worst sin of all, when they keep making the same mistakes over and over and over.
Of course, deregulation and tax cuts for the rich are the relentless "economic policies" of the GOP and their conservative ilk. And it doesn't matter how many times these "policies" do not work as advertised, which in the case of "deregulation," is supposed to unleash the free market, but it has not been to everyone's benefit, and in the case of the tax cuts to the so called "job creators," have proven to produce few, if any jobs.
The whole GOP political strategy is based on the base hating african americans. What would happen if the base heard stories of one of the greatest leaders in the world who 1) chose love over hate 2) is black? It might grow the hearts of the base. Thus the stirring of the terrorist and communist memes in places where base voters of the GOP congregate. This is about the cornerstone memories the base has. And how the right wants to control what becomes the pinnacle in their bases' minds. The base might be moved by Mandela's humanity. Mandela's death is one of those events that make it into people's episodic memories (where were you when Mandela died?), which then become part of a person's personal narrative. This is about controlling the minds/hearts/narrative of the base. Teaching hate of Mandela is about politics in the USA and the 2014 elections. The base is a cult. They must 1)hate 2) hate African Americans. The GOP will fight to the death to keep it so
Matope ,acha ,uchungu uwo,Mandela alikuwa mtu wa kupatanisha watu .Weusi ,weupe masikini na matajiri.Hii column yako ,si hivyo kabisaa.Hii ni column ya kugawanya watu,hii column yako inaturudisha nyuma wakati wa ukoloni,na apartheid in South Africa.Lets move on and think about the future.Hawa wazungu wenzetu wametuzidi nguvu ,wana mabomu ,wana technology ,hatuwez kushindana nao .Mambo mengine inabidi tuyafukie chini kwa chini tuu,ingawa kama uliyosema ,YOU CAN NEVER ERASE MEMORY.lakini memory inafichika BABA WEE.
OK ,im tired of these praise,Matope,let me put you on your knee for praising a communist murderer? Because that's what he was, all his adult life. He joined the communist party, wrote a treatise on how to be a better communist and openly endorsed terrorist acts, including bombs timed to explode during rush hour. I understand that the left hate racism (when it's practised by whites) but that doesn't mean that he was a decent human being. His movement "Spear of the Nation" openly practiced things like "necklacing" a horrible way to kill someone, used on suspected informants. His wife was a horrible, horrible person whose followers beat a boy to death on the flimiest of evidence. Did he denounce or divorce her? Of course not because he was all for violence. He didn't stay in jail for 27 years because he refused to give up on a free SA. He stayed there because he refused to renounce violence.
Dj LUKA ni kama Mr Thamsanqa Jantjie
fake interpreter kwenye mazishi ya mandela .Kwa nini anaachi comments za watu ambao hawampendi Mandela ,ambao wanamwita Mandela terrorist.Hacha sign zako za fake DJ.Hongera Matope.
Every coin has two side, it is your choice to pick one. Whatever part you pick, stick your fit to the ground and defend it.
Mhh jamani wengine lugha haipandi msituboe luka waambie wafungue blog zao au watuwekee dictionary
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