Lou Dobbs just got busted on his connections to white supremacist groups

Lou says he doesn't think that matters.

Don

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/28/ldt.01.html

POTOK: No. It's unrelated to -- I don't think you're a racist at all, and we've not argued that. You know what, we are really saying, Lou, is that your show, which is an important show which plays in an hour seven days a week, that is, you know, commonly seen by the nation as a leading news hour, your show, I think, covers a movement that, in effect, is not real.

In other words, you simply do not cover the unsavory aspects of this movement. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the goals of the anti-illegal immigration movement. So in my opinion, there are numerous instances in which the Dobbs show, in which your show, has simply not covered major developments in this case.

DOBBS: Like what?

POTOK: I think, for instance, a very good example is the way the show treated the Proposition 200 battle in 2004 in Arizona. As I imagine people will remember, this was essentially proposition which would limit very severely any kind of benefits given to undocumented immigrants.

DOBBS: And that bill won passage by the people of Arizona.

POTOK: Absolutely.

DOBBS: In point of fact.

POTOK: Absolutely. But the point is that just a couple of weeks before that bill, in fact, went to the polls, before that proposition went to the polls, a woman named Virginia Abernethy was appointed to head their national advisory board. This became immediately a scandal really Arizona-wide. Virtually every paper and newscast in Arizona covered the fact that she was, in fact, a member of the white supremacist group. Or in her own words, a self-described white separatist. This really affected what was said in Arizona. It was on all the debates, on all the front pages.

DOBBS: Right.

POTOK: And yet, the show, your show, never touched that fact at all. And you know, that is the essence of the criticism is that time and time and time again that has happened.

DOBBS: Time and time again ...

POTOK: I would like to offer another brief example.

DOBBS: This isn't brief, Mark. You've been talking now for two minutes, so if I may.

He's one of them. He NEVER talks about the racism/bigotry within the movement of the anti-immigration crowd. I saw the Confederate flags the Minutemen were flying when they showed up at the AZ border. I know Dobbs did too. He's a PIG.

that aspect of it, even if he didn't agree with it.

I admit I do not reguarly watch him, but the one time I did, it seemed pure editorial - mostly an opinion piece. I hope it is billed that way.

And, thereby, he gives a patina of respectability to scumbags.


From the link:

*************QUOTE*********
POTOK: I think, for instance, a very good example is the way the show treated the Proposition 200 battle in 2004 in Arizona. As I imagine people will remember, this was essentially proposition which would limit very severely any kind of benefits given to undocumented immigrants.

DOBBS: And that bill won passage by the people of Arizona.

POTOK: Absolutely.

DOBBS: In point of fact.

POTOK: Absolutely. But the point is that just a couple of weeks before that bill, in fact, went to the polls, before that proposition went to the polls, a woman named Virginia Abernethy was appointed to head their national advisory board. This became immediately a scandal really Arizona-wide. Virtually every paper and newscast in Arizona covered the fact that she was, in fact, a member of the white supremacist group. Or in her own words, a self-described white separatist. This really affected what was said in Arizona. It was on all the debates, on all the front pages.

DOBBS: Right.

POTOK: And yet, the show, your show, never touched that fact at all. And you know, that is the essence of the criticism is that time and time and time again that has happened.

DOBBS: Time and time again ...

**********UNQUOTE*********

And here are the slave flags, Nazi & Confederate, at Minutemen rallies:
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2005/08/minutemen-home-for-extremists_08.html

Here's a link to the SPLC report, which I've been posting whenever DOBBS comes up as a topic. The SPLC take on DOBBS is consistent, then and now.

*******QUOTE*******
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=589

Broken Record
Lou Dobbs' daily 'Broken Borders' CNN segment has focused on immigration for years.

But there's one issue Dobbs just won't take on.

By Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok

.... For more than two years now, Dobbs has served up a populist approach to immigration on nightly segments of his newscast entitled "Broken Borders." He has relentlessly covered the issue, although hardly from a traditional news perspective -- Dobbs favors clamping down on illegal immigration, and his "reporting" never fails to make that clear. He has covered the same issues, and the same anti-immigration leaders, time after time after time. In recent months, Dobbs has run countless upbeat reports on the "citizen border patrols" that have sprung up around the country since last April's Minuteman Project, a paramilitary effort to seal the Arizona border.

But there's one thing Lou Dobbs won't do. No matter what others report about the movement, Dobbs has failed to present mounting and persistent evidence of anti-Hispanic racism in anti-immigration groups and citizen border patrols. ....

He covers what he feels is important

Yet he has ignored a key component of the Border issues and the Minutemen, which is the racist component MIXED with the legitimate conerns about immigration. What is the implication of the link about the FBI informant and the Neo-Nazi---that we are to infer that the skinheads at the Minutemen rallies are FBI plants?

Nobody is expecting one dude to report "everything" about everything. But a dude who focuses so closely on ONE issue HAS to be editing out severely and knowingly when a HUGH!1, SIGNIFICANT component of his ONE issue is totally ignored.

As for your second link, the point that there ARE legitimate concerns about the borders, and nobody doubts that DOBBS is voicing a certain amount of populist fervor. But you keep deflecting that ALONG WITH the legitimate concerns, there is a SIGNIFICANT MIXING of racist content. When a whole lot of deflecting is going on in an argument, it is a sign that an agenda is being withheld. What's yours?

Or just reaffirm the same old prejudices?

I don't see anyone ever going any further to test certain hypothesis, which may well be wrong, such as that any job moved overseas always results in the loss of one net job - for all we know, other countries are outsourcing their jobs over here and we just never hear of it.

Likewise no one ever reports the concept that if we gave working visas to Mexicans that they would be legal and therefore have the right to unionize and command at least minimum wage and all other protections, and therefore, they would not be cheaper than Americans. We would also have basic ID on who is here, they would all pay their taxes, or at least be able to do so upfront like the rest of us (though they probably wouldn't be a big source of revenue, being at the bottom of the job hierarchy most of the time).

No Lou, we kind of miss seeing white sheets and burning crosses. I missed it what happened.

...woman he was promoting her views on immigration is a self described white separatist. Lou turned white as a ghost and cut the guy off.

I will post the transcript when it comes up.

Don

But it was good to have the Southern Poverty Law. Lou is dangerous...but so is most of Tveee

I am on the side that agrees that there is a need for discourse, but it's an issue where someone's prejudices will taint the waters and make it impossible to discuss the valid points. And I think it's clear, he stepped over the line.

really well. They have been instrumental in rooting them out in the Northwest whenever they have intimidated or harmed any minorities there. If they say certain people or groups are linked to the movement you can be sure that they have done their homework. Lou should face his responsibility and learn from them.

Will he ask SIMCOX about that Chinese army on the Southern border? HAH!!1

Suits and ties instead of robes. Martinis instead Coors. Limos rather than pickups. "Reasonable discourse" rather than racial epithets. TV shows rather than Klaverns. Cooked statistics rather burning crosses. "Saving American jobs" rather than virtuous White Maidens' chastity.

Sort of like shit covered with perfume.

The Bushes and company.

TV shows rather than Klaverns?

First it was the fucking Vikings. We should have drawn the line there before the damned English and French and Spaniards and Dutch and every other Euro-mutt flavor started piling in here, taking away native jobs.

I'd need to see more proof before I'm willing to make the leap that he's "connected" to those groups.

The important part of the transcript to me was what the guy at the SPLC said that I found incredulous (and I support their work 100% btw). This blew me away:

POTOK: No. It's unrelated to -- I don't think you're a racist at all, and we've not argued that. You know what, we are really saying, Lou, is that your show, which is an important show which plays in an hour seven days a week, that is, you know, commonly seen by the nation as a leading news hour, your show, I think, covers a movement that, in effect, is not real.


THE MOVEMENT IS REAL. I see bumper stickers all of the time. I hear people talking about losing their jobs to folks willing to do it for bare minimum wage all the time, folks who are not from this country. When we are all outsourced and going to Circuit City and having to use a Spanish-English dictionary because CC finally found people who would do the job for dead even minumum wage, there is going to be a HUGE backlash against immigration and immigrants in this country. AND ITS NOT THE IMMIGRANTS FAULT, its the expolitive corporations.


Dobbs made some good point here too IMHO:

DOBBS: You have taken issue on the coverage of illegal immigration, but you have also taken issue with some of the facts on this program. By the way, in terms of Proposition 200, I didn't consider her involvement one way or the other material. She was never a guest on this broadcast, and played whatever role she did in support of that legislation. She was hardly, in my opinion material, but that may be a difference of opinion between and you me.

........

In which it is empirically demonstrated that wages are going down because of illegal immigration. And to suggest, as you have, that there is a racial tone within being anti-illegal immigration, I am not aligned with any, any whatsoever, zero, any, any ...

It's an important economic issue for a huge percentage of folks.

Big corporations are all for it because the greater the number of workers - legal or illegal - the more downward pressure on wages.

Distraction. Covering. Misdirection (as in magic). Standard propaganda techniques.

Let them be legal and they have to be as expensive to employ as Americans are.

Then they will only come if they can get a job on the same terms as Americans. Now they come because there are jobs for them, and more, since each of them can be paid less than minimum wage, and they can say nothing about working conditions or they are in fear of being deported.

They should just register and get some type of H visa, one that never leads to permanent residence or citizenship unless they stay in the U.S. permanently, something like 10 years or more, and show they want to transfer their allegiance from Mexico to the U.S. Most Mexicans I know don't even want to do that. They don't want to come to the U.S., they just have to. And they'd rather go home when they can.

But if they were legal at all times, then the employers would have to treat everyone the same. I am thinking there must be a true demand for the work they do or there would not be so many here. Americans can't be forced into a field, either, even if it would represent better opportunities. It is clear for example that there is a greater demand for nurses than there are Americans that go into it. We can import aliens with RN degrees but we can't somehow pick out a group of Americans and force them to go to nursing school.

Illegal immigration is keeping wages down. All the corporations love it, because it keeps their costs down. Yeah, politics makes strange bedfellows. It is probably true that white supremacists also agree that illegal immigration should be prevented. That doesn't make me aligned with them, or their goals, other than the need to enforce immigration laws.

It would behoove Lou Dobbs to report on the true and ugly side of people who agree with him. I actually admire him for having people like Potok on his show, at least, who point this out.

I really don't think Lou Dobbs is racist (and neither does Potok).

regarding immigration. But these are MIXED IN with those of the racists, who are ATTRACTED to the legitimate issues as extensions of and covers-FOR their racism. You know, "English-Only" and shutting down the Southern border while keeping the unequal treatment at the Northern border the same. Things like that. See posts 9-19 above.

The racists are drawn to the border issues like moths to flames. And it goes beyond undocumented. Here's an item where a U.S. citizen/Mexican American city councilman in Austin, TX, was told to "Go back to Mexico."

***********QUOTE********

http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/12/17minutemen.html


**********UNQUOTE*******

Well, the link is a couple of years old, so it's gone. The City Council was passing a resolution condemning the Minutemen, and the MM in the public comment segment told the Mexican-American U.S. Citizen to "go back to Mexico."

just so they happen to support their racist agenda. Most of their claims about the economic effects have never really been tested, the rest of us seem to just go along with them out of fear and the apparent logic on the face of these theories. But they are specious and shallow theories. The economy is not as one dimensional as these theories assume. We could actually be hurting the economy by not letting certain immigrants in. The trick is to know who, and on what terms to let them in - that's another subject, but our laws are basically from 1952 and don't serve us very well now.

Lou pretending that there is not a racist basis for the anti-immigration movement is not based in reality.

There is no evidence that wages are going down because of illegal immigration. There is. IMO, much evidence that wages are intentionally being driven down by anti-labor policies, some of the same anti-labor policies that Lou Dobbs supports.

Not reporting on some racist lunatic "connects" Lou Dobbs to white supremacist groups?

Who else didn't report on that woman? HOW DEEP TO THESE "CONNECTIONS" RUN?!

:think:
*quick search*
Interesting, every post I found by you is mocking people on this board and critical of Democrats. I wonder why that is...

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I noticed this pattern last week.

who think that Lou Dobbs is a white supremacist, then who the heck can I mock?

At least it's better than my semi-stalker who always posts a "Huh?!1"

Occidental Quarterly is published by William Regnery -- a member of the right-wing Regnery publishing family, whose name came up here at DU a couple of years ago when he started a whites-only dating service. The magazine and its contributors are white supremacists, but of such a genteel sort that they generally manage to straddle the line between the "respectable" right and full-out unreconstructed racism.

Here's an article on them from 2004:

http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=8442

It's hard to fathom that a small journal like the Occidental Quarterly, which publishes articles defending the science of eugenics, claiming that "neoconservatism is indeed a Jewish intellectual and political movement," contending that Abraham Lincoln was a white supremacist pressured into "an unnecessary war," and saying that the United States made a grave error in declaring war on Nazi Germany, could have had much of an impact on American politics.

Yet as the premier voice of the white-nationalist movement, the Occidental Quarterly acts as a roundtable for some of the far right's most influential figures. And with election day only eight weeks away, many of the activists and intellectuals on the Quarterly's board are campaigning -- from Western swing states to backrooms at the Republican national convention -- to reshape the Republican Party in their ideological mold. . . .

The anti-immigrant activists on the Occidental board have united behind Representative Tom Tancredo, a virulently anti-immigrant Republican from Littleton, Colorado (home of Columbine High School). As the Republican convention opens with the Republican National Committee endorsing George W. Bush's guest-worker proposal for undocumented immigrants, Tancredo is working behind the scenes to make sure that the convention plank supports his anti-immigrant politics. He's vowing "to raise hell" if he's thwarted.

Tancredo's frustration is echoed by Jared Taylor, Occidental Quarterly board member and editor of American Renaissance, a magazine that he says approaches issues of race and culture "from a white perspective."

Lesbians in the White House basement ... what else?

Boy, that Regnery family sure has the goods on those degenerate Clintons, don't they? I feel like I'm standing at the supermarket check-out counter.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/eviatar/3

Nightly Nativism

Crass commercialism isn't a new motive for TV news, of course. But in this case, the impact may be profound. Dobbs's show "has become the pipeline for nativists and nationalists to move their views from the margins into the mainstream," says Devin Burghart, a director at the Center for New Community, which monitors anti-immigrant groups. "Many of the most hard-core anti-immigrant activists have appeared on his program--people like Joe McCutchen, one-time member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the largest white nationalist organization in the country. He appeared on the program without any attempt to expose his involvement with those organizations."

Indeed, Dobbs often features and quotes activists with links to extremist and even openly racist groups, as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, reported last year. Yet Dobbs consistently fails to mention those connections--even when he or his reporters interview the founder and leader of a hate group. Glenn Spencer, for example, who heads the nativist American Patrol, deemed a hate group by both the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League, was portrayed as a hero for running a "shadow border patrol" with "a handful of committed friends" using technology that rivals the federal government's. The reporter didn't mention that Spencer has also predicted a war with Mexico; his popular website, which often quotes Dobbs and links to his show, spreads rumors that immigrants are plotting to overthrow the Southwest United States. There's also Protect Arizona Now (PAN), which successfully pressed a ballot initiative that denies state services to illegal aliens and requires state employees to report them. Dobbs ran glowing features on the group and its campaign, never mentioning what many news outlets had reported: that Virginia Abernethy, a self-described "white separatist" and former editorial adviser to the white-supremacist CCC, headed PAN's national advisory board.

Dobbs has used material directly from the CCC--in the process spreading and adding legitimacy to some of that group's more bizarre views. In an almost surreal segment in May, Dobbs reporter Casey Wian described the US visit of Mexican President Vicente Fox as a "Mexican military incursion." As Wian spoke, a full-screen graphic appeared, with seven Southwestern states in darker color, portrayed as a map of "Aztlan," a mythical nation of the Aztec people comprising part of the territory Mexico lost to the United States 150 years ago. According to Wian's report, Mexico and "militant Latino activists" secretly aim to take it back. The map was provided by the CCC, which has called blacks "a retrograde species of humanity" and warned that immigration is turning the US population into a "slimy brown mass of glop."

Please don't tell me he is considered "news." It was pure editorial.