A Theory* of Racist Smears and the Case of Robert Stacy McCain

Barrett Brown, who was included in my post the other day, quickly snagged his opportunity to exploit my comments in furtherance of his smears against Robert Stacy McCain. See, "A Reply to Donald Douglas and a Restatement of My Offer to R.S. McCain." In turn, Brown's post was picked up by the Lizard Freak, Charles Johnson, and his essay, "Regarding Barrett Brown's Offer to Debate White Supremacist Robert Stacy McCain."

Barrett's piece is politely said, if not quite accurate. For example, I've never sought to establish myself as some kind of expert on Robert Stacy McCain's journalistic legacy. I've even said so, noting previously that, "I'm not in the habit of following along all that closely." What I have done is taken my personal experience with Robert and laid that out as measure of the man's character (see, "Take It From Me, An Interracial Man in an Interracial Marriage, Robert Stacy McCain is No Racist!"). Despite all of this, Barret Brown takes me to task, opportunistically, to forward his meme of Robert as an "evil" racist redneck -- or, in Brown's words, "a white supremacist with significant past ties to the neo-Nazi community."

Boy, that's heavy stuff, all of it. But there's actually not that much too it. As I've said before, Robert Stacy McCain can fend for himself, but what little evidence Barrett Brown offers is wholly tainted as products themselves of ideological smear campaigns. Exhibit A is this post from "Sergey Romanov," entitled, "Meet Robert Stacy McCain, a Neo-Confederate Wacko Extraordinaire." The entry's basically a long crib sheet of allegedly "vile" articles and comments from Robert's days as an associate editor at the Washington Times. This includes a long bibliography of comments Robert's said to have posted around the web, at places such as Free Republic. All of this is supposed to be damning. But looking at them, I see nothing there that's any more inflammatory than, say, what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington argued in his penetrating but politically-incorrect book, Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity. Indeed, as far back as 1993, Huntington gained tremendous notoriety for his seminal essay "The Clash of Civilizations?" The reaction was immediate and furious. As always, anyone who proposes that America's historic Anglo-Protestant culture is superior to the rest will be labeled racist. American exceptionalism is out of vogue on the left, for it proposes a certain model of traditionalism that has deep roots in the multiple traditions of American conservatism. Major leftist pushback thus goes with the territory. Huntington, who was a former president of the American Political Science Association, handled the attacks with grace and reason, in contrast to many of the truly "vile" attacks by his critics, seen as literally unhinged. When Huntington passed away, the left's radical gay activists cheered. See, "Racist Samuel P. Huntington Is Dead."

In any case, what's mosting interesting in looking at the Sergey Romanov post is the reactions. As one commenter there indicated with respect to Charles Johnson:

Johnson has heaped equal moral approbation on conservatives for essentially every stand any conservative has taken on anything since 1/20/2009.

In the sequence of johnson's disengagement from the right, this Stacy McCain thing is the most recent. His allegations came at the time they did at a point at which his credibility and assumptions about his good faith where at their nadir already ....

Johnson now believes that the Tenth Amendment to the Bill of Rights is a "racist dogwhistle". His criteria for identifying racism on the right is now as obtuse as once was his criteria for identifying antisemitism on the left.

Many other observers of Charles Johnson's descent to hell have made similar points. Visiting Little Green Footballs one sees in insanely quixotic mission to destroy difference -- yes, just difference -- on the right of the spectrum. For example, just today, "Malkin Links to 'Buzzworthy' Anti-Israel Rant at White Nationalist Website":

But with regards to Barret Brown himself, I've found this really interesting bit of information at one of Robert's responses to the smears. It's this screencap below, to this blurb on the 'Godless Americans March on Washington" from 2002. And Barrett Brown is listed as "Communications Director" at Enlighten the Vote. So, what kind of organization is this? Enlighten the Vote is a political action committee of the American atheist movement. The PAC is apparently so bad that no one -- and I mean absolutely no one -- wants anything to do with them.

Frankly, I have to admit my ignorance on this group, or Barret Brown, for that matter. But my inclination all along, since I first noticed how Barrett Brown was getting picked up by the Lizard King, is that the True/Slant blogger was soldier in the radical left's campaign for gay marriage, if not for pure homosexual licentiousness. And lo and behold, what do I find searching around a bit? Brown attacks James Dobson as a "degenerate old fascist."

Of course, now it's fair to say that Barret Brown is dreadfully wrong to suggest that I'm "in no position to know what the 'bulk of these charges' may be" against Robert Stacy McCain." No, actually, despite my disclaimer, I wasn't wrong in the first place, and I'm not wrong now. And let me disabuse Barret Brown of his notion that "the totality of the evidence" that he's offered "unambiguously" convicts Robert Stacy McCain as "a white supremacist with significant past ties to the neo-Nazi community." It does nothing of the sort. I've looked through everything he's linked. I've visited American Renaissance, and I long ago dismissed those of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Michelangelo Signorile as race and sexual-orientation shakedown artists who'd make Jesse Jackson proud.

Screw these people. The only thing Robert Stacy McCain's guilty of is speaking his mind. Perhaps you might throw in a little bravado or stupidy for having posted at websites and message boards advocating white supremacy and race war, but none of Robert's actual quotes are particularly inflammatory -- unless you're looking for a "racist" target. The most Barrett Brown, Charles Johnson, and now Patrick Frey, can do is alleged R.S. McCain's "racism" twice or three times removed from those who could be accurately described that way. As I've already shown, for example, there's nothing inherently racist about not favoring interracial marriage. If that were so, we'd have to call most Americans white or black "racist," since they prefer to marry someone of like ethnic charateristics.

No, what I've shown all along --- the "general theory" proposed here -- is that "racism" is all these idiots have left. And of course, it's basically checkmate when you throw in they nihilist gay rights advocacy for these twerps. Even Patterico's in favor of gay marriage, which explains his motives for joining in the smear campaign against Robert Stacy McCain. Again, see my previous post on the left's victimology industry, "Take It From Me, An Interracial Man in an Interracial Marriage, Robert Stacy McCain is No Racist! And see also, South Texian, "The McCain Defamation":

... Robert Stacy McCain did not and has not exhibited racism, nor has he ever excused it. As Stacy himself likes to say, "there are facts and there are witnesses to those facts." The fact is that Stacy is a good man, and you may consider me one of the witnesses.

* The theory holds that in the presence of firm conservative views among movement activist and leaders (those who privilege the superiority of traditional culture and values), radical leftists will resort to unprincipled, morally-bankrupt demonizations and unsubtantiated hearsay smear-campaigns in the absence of effectively superior argumentation or irrefutable evidence for their allegations. (In other words, when all else fails, play the race-card.) This ends up being a law-like proposition, which is theoretically correlated with the deterioration of race relations in America upon the accession to power of Barack Obama as president. (Polls suggest that CRITICISM of the administration is tantamount to racism, when it's anything but). In other words, "conservative = racist." See, "The Function of General Laws in History":

A universal hypothesis may be assumed to assert a regularity of the following type: In every case where an event of a specified kind C occurs at a certain place and time, an event of a specified kind E will occur at a place and time which is related in a specified manner to the place and time of the occurrence of the first event.

Added: Robert Stacy McCain, "Resolved: Barrett Brown is a Putz."