Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny

The last time I wrote about Jesse Lee Peterson of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) I noted that he had managed to carve out a rather unique niche for himself among right-wing activists:

Peterson, who is black, has carved out a niche for himself as an outspoken foe of racism ... or rather, an outspoken foe of black racism which, in his view, is the same thing as being a Democrat, like when he declares that Barack Obama was elected president thanks to the votes of "black racists and white guilty people" and proclaims that black ministers who supported Obama were leading their congregations straight to hell.

Conversely, when it comes to white racism, Peterson tends to serve primarily an apologist for the likes of Michael Richards or Duane “Dog” Chapman.

In Peterson's world, all Democrats are racist, except for African America Democrats, who are actually Black supremacists who out to intimidate conservatives and Republicans (who are totally not racists) into silence for fear of being called racist. 

This niche must be quite lucrative for Peterson because he is still producing columns (for WorldNetDaily, naturally) spewing this sort of nonsense - like this one:

Barack Obama hates white people – especially white men.

That is the very first line, and it just gets better from there:

A growing number of Americans were questioning his out-of-control spending ($1 trillion in six months), but they didn't see him as racially polarizing. That all changed after he weighed in on the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and accused the white cops of racial profiling without knowing the facts. For the first time he spoke from his heart without the aid of a teleprompter, and we saw the real Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is Jeremiah Wright Jr. He is the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus! He embodies the aspirations of every left-wing black group that wants to tear down this country and take power away from the "oppressive" white man. He's not an obvious race hustler like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson; but Obama is a smooth pathological liar – with a wicked heart.

...

Barack Obama is dividing the races like no other president in history ... Both Obama and his friend Henry Louis Gates are racist ... President Obama spoke of this being a teachable moment, and it certainly is for white Americans. The lesson is that they need to speak up or lose their country!

Allow me to also point out that not only do right-wing rags like WND give Peterson a platform to spew this nonsense, he and his BOND organization were recently tapped to join the Religious Right umbrella coalition calling itself The Freedom Federation, along with groups like the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, Family Research Council, and several others.

Today we are starting a new feature highlighting other good posts from progressive blogs that relate to the issues we work on.  

So, without further ado: 

• The Texas Freedom Network has released it’s annual “The State of the Religious Right” report, which explains that while some “might assume the religious right’s influence [in the state] will be much weaker in the 81st Legislature ... that would be wrong … the religious right will not easily give up its long-standing influence over public policy.”

• Media Matters catches BOND’s Jesse Lee Peterson declaring that “most black Americans, 96 percent of them, are racists who (unintelligible) white Americans. And white folks feel guilty and they are afraid of being called racists.” Pam's House Blend has more.

• Good as You highlights Tony Perkins voicing concerns about new RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

• Tips-Q takes on Matt Barber's latest insanity.

• Sarah Posner points to Focus on the Family's Stuart Shepard asserting “that conservatives' failure to speak up for poor Rush Limbaugh in the face of the fascistic criticism from all those ‘wild-eyed liberals’ is like not speaking up against Nazism.”

• Finally, Dan Schultz (aka Pastor Dan) writes in Religion Dispatches that efforts to find a common ground between conservative, moderate, and liberal Christians tend to overlook the basic fact that the views of each group are often antithetical to one another and that “to think that they can be resolved in due time around the kitchen table not only underestimates their importance, it underestimates the people behind them.”

Few constituencies were more surprised by Barack Obama’s win in last week’s Iowa Democratic caucus than the right-wing media—Clinton obsession has been its bread and butter for over a decade. Nevertheless, the Right is doing its best to prove it will pull no punches no matter who the Democrats nominate.

The Right has hardly refrained from attacking Obama—remember his visit to Rick Warren’s church over a year ago? Or last summer, when the National Clergy Council declared “Obama's Christianity [to be] woefully deficient”? But the last few days have seen a seeming uptick in the number of anti-Obama articles: For example, Human Events editor-at-large Terence Jeffrey warned that the Democrat is “the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever.” A CNSNews piece surveyed African-American religious-right activists on the candidate, such as Rev. Clenard Childress of Blackgenocide.org, who implied that abortion is worse for blacks than was lynching, and Jesse Lee Peterson of BOND, who said, “For Barack Obama to support abortion shows a lack of love for the black community and especially for the unborn."

But the Illinois senator’s faith seems to be the most appealing target of the Right. Newsmax correspondent Ronald Kessler offers a menacing warning that Obama attends a black church whose pastor propounds the “thesis that blacks in America are oppressed.” “At the least,” writes Kessler, “Obama’s membership in [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright’s church suggests a lack of judgment and an insensitivity to views that are repugnant to the vast majority of white Americans who are not bigots.”

(In particular, Kessler objects to the “Black Value System” on the church’s website. “One can only imagine the outrage that would erupt if a white presidential candidate like Romney subscribed to something called the White Value System,” he writes. One can only imagine what Kessler would think if he knew about the Religious Right’s “Black Contract with America on Moral Values.”)

But if Kessler wants to present Obama as a radical Christian, he’s going to have a lot of competition from those on the Right who want to present Obama as a radical Muslim, a (needless to say, inaccurate) smear that continues to be distributed as an e-mail forward. Daniel Pipes (nominated by Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace) wrote an article for David Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine purportedly “confirming” the senator’s secret Muslim past.

Kessler concludes his report on Obama’s pastor with a bizarre comparison:

But media bias or not, if Obama is his party’s nominee, his Republican opponent will rightly be able to make use of Rev. Wright and his radical teachings as effectively as supporters of George H.W. Bush used Willie Horton’s furlough to help Bush win the presidency.

The 20-year-old Horton ad would hardly be the first campaign strategy to come to mind, unless Kessler were recalling the ad’s widespread reputation as a crypto-racist attack on Michael Dukakis. In that sense, comparing it to these insinuations about the black church may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The idea that undocumented immigrants are causing a crime wave in the U.S.—while not supported by evidence—has been a mainstay of anti-immigrant activists for decades. For example, in instituting ordinances against hiring or renting to immigrants, Hazleton, Pennsylvania Mayor Lou Barletta claimed that immigrants were “terroriz[ing]” the city. But defending the ordinances in court, Barletta could not back this claim up. “The people in my city don’t need numbers,” the frustrated mayor declared when confronted with the city’s own statistics showing the opposite.

Similarly, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist have been touting phony numbers on immigrants and crime.

But if statistics don’t back up their claims, anti-immigrant activists can always latch on to anecdotes. A recent multiple-homocide in Newark, New Jersey has implicated illegal immigrants, and national activists quickly descended upon the city, claiming that the crime was linked to local police not questioning suspects’ immigration status.