Former democratic party activists are organizing Muslims and Arab-Americans in Swing states to vote against Biden with the demand that he support a ceasefire in Gaza.

I’ll allow them a little bit of electoralism this time.

  • star_wraith [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Good article. It’s not the main point but I liked this section:

    The lie that Obama is Muslim was always code for ​“He’s Black.” But in 2008 liberals couldn’t say that they wouldn’t vote for someone who is Black. Post-racial anti-Blackness had to be more subtle. After seven years of the War on Terror, it was widely accepted that Muslims are subhuman and our lives disposable. So it was easy for people to simply say that they wouldn’t vote for someone who is Muslim.

    It never occurred to me - though it’s obvious to me now - that all the accusations of Obama being a Muslim were really just the way white folks were able to launder their unwillingness to accept a black man as president. That’s why they doggedly held on to that belief despite how it was so obviously not true.

    • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Eh, the people who kept bringing up that he was a muslim, born in kenya, etc were always hardcore chuds who had no problem being abhorrently racist.

      • ZapataCadabra [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Yeah but a favorite racist tactic is to throw accusations that are false/baseless so the liberal will debate you and thus validate the point as worth talking about.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        That was the vast majority, yes. But plenty of Hillary primary supporters didn’t vote for Obama in the general. And we know plenty of conservative Democrats have, shall we say, some work to do on racial issues, even if they aren’t dressing up in white robes on the weekends. That Venn diagram is a circle.

    • ChapoKrautHaus [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      It never occurred to me - though it’s obvious to me now - that all the accusations of Obama being a Muslim were really just the way white folks were able to launder their unwillingness to accept a black man as president.

      I think Ta-Nehesi Coates wrote a couple of books about that

    • stevehobbes@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I know no one here will want to hear this. But that’s lazy thinking and revisionist history. He got elected twice. The same folks calling him Muslim and asking for his birth certificate are now chanting Let’s go Brandon and doing other horrible stuff.

      I’m sure a percentage of people think he’s extra bad for being black, but they were going to hate him just as much for being liberal.

      • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        213,313,508 eligible voters in 2008, 131,407,000 voted, 95% of black voters for Obama, 59,948,323 went to McCain (a supermajority of them white) even after eight years of George Bush, when polled conservatives policies are highly unpopular with a supermajority of the population (whites included)

        Race, demographics, and cultural identity have far more valence on the outcome of elections than ideological commitments, especially in a country with such poor political education

        • stevehobbes@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          The supermajority of all voters are white.

          The majority of Obama voters were white.

          Conservatives in 2008 were almost exclusively white.

          Race for sure played a factor, it always does. But it absolutely does not outweigh ideology.

          • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Conservatives also exist within the democratic party and in 2008 they were Hillary people, many of whom were still mad at Obama for ruining her coronation the first time which led many of them to not vote for him

          • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Conservatives in 2008 were almost exclusively white

            Exactly that’s my point, and the supermajority of non-whites voted for Obama, while the majority of white voters who voted went for McCain, if ideological commitment formed the core of election outcomes then that wouldn’t have been the case, and we would see a more even distribution among demographic groups

            The majority of McCain and white Obama voters voted the way they did because Obama was black, the conservatives voted the way they did because he was liberal and to be liberal is to be black or support black causes, and white Obama voters (aside from the ones who genuinely didn’t care he was black) voted for him because voting for the first black president would’ve been a cultural signifier they could use as social capital in the more cosmopolitan spaces they inhabit

            White Obama voters who voted a second time couldn’t have cared less about his ideological promises because he betrayed all of them in his first term

            • stevehobbes@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Holy shit that’s insane.

              Go look at the graphs of the electorate before and after 2008. It is not wildly different.

              A majority of people did not vote because of race.

              You’re drawing very sweeping conclusions from one and a half data points.

              • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Go look at the graphs of the electorate before and after 2008. It is not wildly different.

                lmao yeah that just strengthens my point, otherwise if ideological commitments swayed voters then YOU have to explain why white Obama voters didn’t punish him for betraying those ideological commitments in his first term, it’s almost like demographics and cultural signifiers were more important than concrete ideology, and the need for cultural identification among white liberals only intensified between 2008 and 2012 after the mostly cultural conservative backlash against Obama and HIS Democratic Party, a backlash that surprise surprise found its expression in racial politics

                A majority of people did not vote because of race.

                What a profound argument, I’ve now changed my mind

                • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  it’s almost like demographics and cultural signifiers were more important than concrete ideology

                  Great point.

                  Since most in the US have no concrete ideology, there are only demographics and cultural signifiers. Politcal Parties are just lifestyle brands

      • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I think the difference here that you’re not addressing, is that no one claimed Biden or even Hillary were Muslim. They only did that with Obama. Yeah they would have hated Obama if he was white too, just like the hated Clinton before him. But no one called Bill Clinton a Muslim. I don’t see anything revisionist or lazy about this idea. It may or may not be right, but i don’t think its lazy or incongruent within the historical context.

        I’m sure a percentage of people think he’s extra bad for being black

        This seems kind of hand wavy regarding the existence and level of rascism in the US. Obviously, i hate Obama for all the legitimate reasons to hate him, but there was a nonstop barage of rascist attacks against him that drowned out real critiques of his ghoulish, status quo admin.

        The US is a white supremacist state. Its not just a certain percentage, its the bedrock of the US project.

        I know no one here will want to hear this.

        Why? Or do you just want to sound like a condescending redditor?