If someone had hung a noose in the garage of NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, that would have been a racist outrage.
Granted, there wasn’t a hate crime involved, and it didn’t take long for everyone to suss out that the “noose” (actually just a knot on a garage pull-rope) had been there since the previous autumn, meaning it wasn’t put there to target Wallace, who is black.
However, the stench of the scandal-that-wasn’t still remains — and any time the societal aspect of stock car racing is brought up, talk of the Bubba Wallace “noose” isn’t far behind.
It’s been months since that happened, of course, but you’d know exactly what I was talking about if I simply uttered the words “Bubba Wallace incident.” I don’t even need to bring up the details or the investigation — you’re probably aware of them. It’s still fresh in our minds despite the fact no hate crime actually happened.
I mention this only because demonstrators outside of the White House on Thursday put an effigy of President Donald Trump in a guillotine and chopped off his head in protests related to Trump’s acceptance speech to cap off the Republican National Convention.
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Someone just put a fake Trump on the guillotine in front of the White House. There’s a piece of paper on him that says “Ticket – Fascist, Rapist, Criminal”@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/zOmQ7DgIo0
— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) August 28, 2020
The mock assassination received barely a peep of mainstream media attention.
Not that the protests themselves didn’t receive attention. In fact, one could argue they received too much of it, sharing front-page space with coverage of the acceptance speech itself.
Did this incident deserve media coverage?
The Washington Post: “Chants, marching and music in D.C. as demonstrators protest Trump speech.”
WJLA-TV in Washington: “Protesters gathered near the White House ahead of President Trump’s RNC speech.”
USA Today: “Protesters outside the White House make themselves heard inside as Trump delivers RNC speech.”
The first paragraph of The Post’s story pretty much sums up the tenor of most of the coverage: “Hundreds of protesters chanted, marched and played music near the White House on Thursday as President Trump spoke on the final night of the Republican National Convention — a loud and often raucous rejoinder to a leader they say has divided the country and supported racist policies and practices.”
It’s only in the second and third paragraph that they mention this “raucous rejoinder” included a confrontation with Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul, “who had to be escorted to a nearby hotel by police.” But don’t worry, the minatory demonstrators were redeemed because police did bad things to them: “Officers sprayed a chemical irritant at the protesters,” The Post reported.
USA Today also described the scene as “[r]aucous” twice (including once where it was misspelled as “raucus,” proof that one or more of the three writers whose bylines appear on the piece is in need both a dictionary and a thesaurus) and noted that “[a]n area outside had also become a dance party featuring EDM remixes of MoTown music.”
According to our lexicographically and orthographically challenged correspondents (who were also unaware that you don’t capitalize the T in “Motown,” for whatever it’s worth), there were also chants of “Black lives matter,” “No justice, no peace” and “Black women matter, because we get stuff done!”
This almost sounds like a politicized version of the Electronic Daisy Carnival, in other words. I’m not even going to bother harping on the fact that we can apparently get down to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles at 120 beats per minute outside the White House but can’t vote in person, because at this point it’ll just exhaust you and me both, and without a point.
But, of course, there were serious sentiments mixed in with the levity.
“The Republican National Convention is a celebration of how far they’ve come in hammering a fascist agenda into place,” event organizer Carl Dix told The Post.
“I’ve been fighting for revolution for 50 years, so it ain’t like I love what’s been happening in this country. But I also see that these are fascists.”
Fascism has plenty of calling cards — too many to list here. One of them, however, is the frequent agglomeration of mobs of supporters threatening to kill those who oppose them.
In that vein, I present these pictures from the demonstration outside the White House, posted by The Daily Caller’s Jordan Lancaster:
they’re executing what looks like a donald trump doll in a makeshift guillotine pic.twitter.com/oiGKp6GHGO
— Jordan Lancaster (@jordylancaster) August 28, 2020
Other calling cards of fascism include assaulting your opposition …
An elderly man was just punched in the head at Lafayette square. Not sure what started this. (Twitter cut off the first part of the video in my last tweet) pic.twitter.com/JuHajh1nhl
— Jordan Lancaster (@jordylancaster) August 28, 2020
… and physically chasing away media trying to cover your rallies.
another camera crew was just chased out pic.twitter.com/efYdmbUrSy
— Jordan Lancaster (@jordylancaster) August 28, 2020
This doesn’t make the anti-Trump protests fascist, of course, but they were a good deal more representative of the fruits of the fasces than anything going on at the White House on Thursday night.
The sad thing is that assaulting voices of dissent and chasing media away aren’t unusual occurrences in recent demonstrations. There’s something a bit different, however, when demonstrators being mostly lauded by the media conduct an effigial killing of the leader of the free world.
This is hardly new, either. In 2017, back during the antediluvian period of Trump-related hyperventilation, comedian Kathy Griffin made headlines by posing with the mock severed head of the president.
But that’s the thing: It made headlines.
Thursday’s protest was one of the biggest demonstrations during the Republican National Convention, one where demonstrators seemingly conducted a mock beheading of the president. This means there was a whole phalanx of legacy media journalists who either didn’t bother paying attention to the less-savory aspects of the goings-on outside the White House or felt it was more important to inform readers all about how people were busting a groove to Four Tops remixes.
Yes, the purported noose in Bubba Wallace’s garage — if it were actually an invocation of lynching — was extremely newsworthy for a whole host of reasons. He’s the only black driver in a sport that hadn’t barred the Confederate flag from being displayed at its events; the noose appeared after Wallace successfully petitioned NASCAR to stop it from being displayed.
Whether or not the impression is accurate, it’s also worth noting NASCAR is associated in the minds of many with some of the problematic aspects of the Old South.
However, it was quickly made clear Wallace hadn’t been the target of a racialized death threat — and yet, the issue continues to linger.
There isn’t a racial aspect to putting a stuffed likeness of the president under the guillotine and chopping its head off. I’ll give these demonstrators that much. It’s very little credit, considering this was still a death threat directed at the president of these United States — something that usually invites the intervention of the Secret Service.
From the media, however, all this warranted was a shrug emoji.
Meanwhile, let’s hear more about those sick grooves being thrown down by the DJs outside the White House. I hear they were pretty raucous.
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