Black Hillary Supporters May Be Receiving Death Threats

by Marc Sheppard - February 26th, 2008 - The American Thinker

Earlier this month, popular black author and talk-show host Tavis Smiley disclosed death threats he'd received from those accusing him of blasphemy against their black prophet. Then, at Saturday's Smiley-hosted State of the Black Union forum, Congressional Black Caucus member Stephanie Tubbs Jones lent credence to Smiley's claim by suggesting that many black elected officials not swearing allegiance to Obama have also been the target of violent threats.

While widely ignored by the mainstream media, the implications here are nothing short of momentous. The very prospect of physical intimidation as a means of garnering political compliance from Americans awakens frightening images of the thuggish antics of one William M "Boss" Tweed in mid-nineteenth century New York.

The author is certainly working hard to not identify the most obvious example of similar behavior. The antics of the Tweed machine were mostly about power, not race. A more obvious and more recent example of this behavior is the Klu Klux Klan. These were white racists who intimidated white officials for daring to exhibit apostasy on their view of race.

It was the Republican Party which resisted that pressure and fought for equality for 100 years before a Republican, Everett Dirksen, wrote the 1964 civil rights bill that ended the ability of the KKK to intimidate white officials by creating government power as a counter balance.

However it is disingenuous of the author to try and pretend the current pressure of the racists in the black community to intimidate their peers is something new. Campaigns claiming Republicans are killers for not supporting particular laws, radio spots that claim voting Republican will mean "they take away your right to vote", calling blacks who express any conservative views "Uncle Toms" along with "hater, sellout and traitor", insistence that the party of Lincoln is the racist party . . . these are all common tactics of the black Democrats who are the enforcement brigade of the Democrat Party. Their intimidation tactics continue this day.

This is about political power. Just as the KKK was an intimidation power to keep whites on top, the defenders of black privilege and special rights, are delirious with the idea that "one of theirs" could have the most powerful position in the world. Barack Obama is a minority activist. He is not "one of theirs" just because he is black, but also because he is following the script for political power that black leaders have practiced since the 60s. It is the reason that anyone in the black community who is a conservative still registers and votes Democrat irrespective of the issues of the two parties. Intimidation.

In a discussion about the waste and corruption of a former black school Superintendent from a local county here in the Inner Banks, one of the people who was demanding that the conduct be ignored actually snarled at me, "It don't matter, it's our turn on top."

What this article ignores is that white liberals are being targeted with similar tactics of intimidation but with less overt threat. Some part of that may explain the unwillingness of liberal press to point out the inconsistencies of Obama's positions, and the ridiculousness of some of his followers almost blind allegiance.

I think that this excess of threatening violence against anyone, black or liberal, who does not get in line . . . may be the best thing that could happen to end the intimidation. In the late fifties and early sixties, jokes about the KKK started to become popular, even as the KKK turned up the volume of their hate. That is now starting and it indicates the end of the power. No one can withstand being laughed at.

A recent article pointed out that comedians are starting to make fun of Obama and his supporters. Beth Gorham of the Canadian Press wrote of this phenomenon in her article "Obama faces parodies, questions about his promises in Democratic race."

Websites . . . are poking fun by asking if Obama is indeed the Messiah or relaying messages like "Barack Obama remembered your birthday" and "Barack Obama carries a picture of you in his wallet."

Saturday Night Live entered the fray last weekend by skewering sycophantic journalists in a mock debate where the moderator confessed to being clinically diagnosed as "an Obamaniac" and being "totally in the tank" for Obama, like "everyone else in the news media."

The article mocks Obama by calling him such names as, "The Prophet", "His Hopeness" and "The Chosen One" in addition to the "Messiah" reference.

This is at least a start. Another important step will occur when people in the black community start to realize that allowing themselves to be intimidated by these tactics of fear has simply replaced the KKK with an equally reprehensible group of black racists who dictate who they can vote for and how they must think. The American dream is about individual freedom, not group power.

Political intimidation must end. Freedom is what America stands for. Intimidation is incompatible with that belief. Arguing that there is always intimidation is not acceptable. Free speech demands that persuasion be uncoerced. We ended slavery because it was a violation of everything our nation stands for. We must end this intimidation for the same reason.