If your against Obama you're a racist.

[BrasilNuts]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20081117/ts_csm/aaryan

Atlanta – In rural Georgia, a group of high-schoolers gets a visit from the Secret Service after posting "inappropriate" comments about President-elect Barack Obama on the Web. In Raleigh, N.C., four college students admit to spraying race-tinged graffiti in a pedestrian tunnel after the election. On Nov. 6, a cross burns on the lawn of a biracial couple in Apolacon Township, Pa.

The election of America's first black president has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – a record in modern presidential elections. Moreover, the white nationalist movement, bemoaning an election that confirmed voters' comfort with a multiracial demography, expects Mr. Obama's election to be a potent recruiting tool – one that watchdog groups warn could give new impetus to a mostly defanged fringe element.

Most election-related threats have so far been little more than juvenile pranks. But the political marginalization of certain Southern whites, economic distress in rural areas, and a White House occupant who symbolizes a multiethnic United States could combine to produce a backlash against what some have heralded as the dawn of a postracial America. In some parts of the South, there's even talk of secession.

"Most of this movement is not violent, but there is a substantive underbelly that is violent and does try to make a bridge to people who feel disenfranchised," says Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. "The question is: Will this swirl become a tornado or just an ill wind? We're not there yet, but there's dust on the horizon, a swirling of wind, and the atmospherics are getting put together for [conflict]."

Though postelection racist incidents haven't posed any real danger to society or the president-elect, law enforcement is taking note.

"We're trying to be out there at the cutting edge of this and trying to stay ahead of groups that are emerging," says Special Agent Darrin Blackford, a spokesman for the Secret Service, which guards the US president.

"Anytime you start seeing [extremist propaganda] floating around, you have to be concerned," adds Lt. Gary Thornberry of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, a member of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. "As far as it being an alarmist situation, I don't see that yet. From a law enforcement point of view, you have to be careful, because it's not illegal to have an ideology."

After sparking conflict and showdowns in the 1990s – think Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing – white supremacist and nationalist groups began this century largely splintered and powerless. Though high immigration levels helped boost the number of hate groups from 602 in 2000 to 888 in 2007, key leaders of such groups had died, been imprisoned, or were otherwise marginalized.

But postelection, at least two white nationalist websites – Stormfront and the Council of Conservative Citizens – report their servers have crashed because of heavy traffic. The League of the South, a secessionist group, says Web hits jumped from 50,000 a month to 300,000 since Nov. 4, and its phones are ringing off the hook.

"The vitriol is flailing out shotgun-style," says Mr. Levin. "They recognize Obama as a tipping point, the perfect storm in the narrative of the hate world – the apocalypse that they've been moaning about has come true."

Supremacist propaganda is already on the upswing. In Oklahoma, fringe groups have distributed anti-Obama propaganda through newspapers and taped it to home mail boxes. Ugly incidents such as cross-burnings, assassination betting pools, and Obama effigies are also being reported from Maine to Alabama.

The Ku Klux Klan has been tied to recent news events, as well. Two Tennessee men implicated for plotting to kill 88 black men, including Obama, were tied to the KKK chapter whose leader was convicted in a civil trial in Brandenburg, Ky., last week, for inciting violence. The murder last week in Louisiana of a KKK initiate, allegedly killed after trying to back out of joining, came at the hands of a new group called Sons of Dixie, authorities say.

"We're not looking at a race war or anything close to it, but ... what we are seeing now is undeniably a fairly major backlash by some subset of the white population," says Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report in Montomgery, Ala. "Many whites feel that the country their forefathers built has been ... stolen from them, so there's in some places a real boiling rage, and that can only become worse as more people lose jobs."

In an election in which barely 20 percent of native Southern whites in Deep South states voted for Obama, the newly apparent political clout of "outsiders" and people of color has been unnerving to some.

"In states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, there was extraordinary racial polarization in the vote," says Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. "Black Americans really do believe that Obama is going to represent their interests and views in ways that they haven't been before, and, in the Deep South, whites feel exactly the opposite."

But for nonviolent secessionist groups like the League of the South, the hope is for a more vigorous debate about the direction of the US and the South's role in it, says Michael Tuggle, a League blogger in North Carolina.

Mr. Tuggle says his group isn't looking for an 1860-style secession but, rather, a model that Spain, for one, is moving toward, in which "there's a great deal of autonomy for constituent regions" – a foil to what is seen as unchecked, dangerous federal power in Washington.

"To a lot of people, the idea of secession doesn't seem so crazy anymore," says Tuggle. "People are talking about how left out they feel, ... and they feel that something strange and radical has taken over our country."

[Smith]

This same secession and marginalization stuff was "documented" after Bush's second election in northern states. People were saying they were going to leave the union and move to Canada. I believe it was NH that actually had a fairly large and well organized effort underway to explore the possibility.

You are right that the narrative will be dissension=racism. It was Obama who made it clear he did'nt look like the other presidents etc, etc.

I find it interesting that we are as a majority not racist because we elected him and yet still polarizing racist in opposing him.

BTW the south votes in relatively the same dynamic along socio political lines in every recent presidential election.

Edited November 17, 2008 by Smith

[Guest nraforlife]

The dung storm IS coming!!!

[enfield]

If being anti-communist makes me a racist I'll wear the label proudly.

[Mark@Sea]

Marxism isn't a race. Neither is despotism.

Neither Ruby Ridge nor Waco had anything to do with white supremacists. History is revised before your eyes, here, folks.

Southern Poverty Law Center, if ever it did worthwhile things, is long years past it and searches for (creates) racism from the merest shadows, in order to cash in on civil rights suits.

[Guest GUTTERbOY]

The crap at NCSU in Raleigh kind of annoys me. For those who don't know, there's a pedestrian tunnel on campus known as the "Free Expression Tunnel." Students are free to paint whatever they want on the walls of the tunnel, whenever they want. Hence the name. But now we come to the election, and some students pain some apparently racist stuff in there. (I don't know the exact wording) And other students are now calling for the administration to ban that kind of stuff in the tunnel.

Kind of takes away from the "Free Expression" aspect, doesn't it?

Here's an idea: If you find out somebody painted something in there you don't like, then take your can of Tactical Krylon down there and cover it up.

I'd like to know exactly what was painted down there. Maybe it was really racist. But I wouldn't be surprised if it took some creative interpretation to slap that label on it.

[TGO David]

This belongs in the Political section, not the Newsworthy Reports section.

[Guest Guitarsnguns]

I have close professional and social contact with folks from widely various social/religious background, economic status and race. I am sorry to say that based on my observations, Obama's election has created unprecedented class and political division in America. I believe the publics reaction to this election has actually set racial relations and acceptance of one another back 30 years or more. Not quite what the liberals were hoping for. Perhaps they will learn someday.

[tnvols]

i could care less about skin color, sadly there seems to be an issue with it still when people say "you didn't vote for him your a racist"... noo I didn't vote for him because I don't agree with his policies, what he stands for, what he wants to do to this nation..

#1 - gun control, its only hurting the people who LEGALLY own guns, all the criminals and gun runners are still going to be doing their business. We (as a country, or should I say the COURT system) can't even uphold the laws that are already in place when we are letting people off the hook that have been arrested for illegal guns.

#2 - spreading the wealth? I am sorry... I work, I eat, its my money. I don't make any where close to $200k a year but the people who actually spent the time, years of college (for most) to obtain higher paying jobs are now going to be taxed higher because of it? I completely disagree with this. No one who DOESN'T work DESERVES money, or "luxeries" of being in America...

just my 2cents

[fizik]

i could care less about skin color, sadly there seems to be an issue with it still when people say "you didn't vote for him your a racist"... noo I didn't vote for him because I don't agree with his policies, what he stands for, what he wants to do to this nation..

#1 - gun control, its only hurting the people who LEGALLY own guns, all the criminals and gun runners are still going to be doing their business. We (as a country, or should I say the COURT system) can't even uphold the laws that are already in place when we are letting people off the hook that have been arrested for illegal guns.

#2 - spreading the wealth? I am sorry... I work, I eat, its my money. I don't make any where close to $200k a year but the people who actually spent the time, years of college (for most) to obtain higher paying jobs are now going to be taxed higher because of it? I completely disagree with this. No one who DOESN'T work DESERVES money, or "luxeries" of being in America...

just my 2cents

amen, that just about sums up my thoughts on the matter. sadly my girl totally disagrees - one of her favorite sayings when i piss her off is "say hello to your president elect and say goodbye to your guns!" and somehow we still get along. I'm just hoping the rest of the country can get by with compromises that don't leave too much out for the next four years kinda like us.

[tnvols]

amen, that just about sums up my thoughts on the matter. sadly my girl totally disagrees - one of her favorite sayings when i piss her off is "say hello to your president elect and say goodbye to your guns!" and somehow we still get along. I'm just hoping the rest of the country can get by with compromises that don't leave too much out for the next four years kinda like us.

lol thats amazing.. i couldn't keep my mouth shut on that one

there are other issues I disagree with too tho, pulling out of Iraq in 12months (i believe thats what he said anyway) isn't going to do anything for us or them. i think we need to finish the job we started and then start pulling out.

[greenego]

If being anti-communist makes me a racist I'll wear the label proudly.

++1