The late Sam Francis opened the introduction to his (posthumously released) collection of essays Race and the American Prospect with this observation: "In the Victorian era, the Great Taboo was sex. Today, whatever the label we attach to our age, the Great Taboo is race." After making many comparisons between the different times, he wrote: "If the analogy between the Victorian taboo on sex and the contemporary taboo on race is valid, then the essays in this book are logically the analogue of pornography." [Return of the Repressed, The Occidental Quarterly Fall 2005]
Francis' insight is particularly prescient given the Anthony Weiner scandal. The now-disgraced Congressman sent some pornographic images of himself to various attractive young women on the internet, sometimes unsolicited.
Disgusting pornographic images are not taboo to Democrats, of course—consenting adults and all that—but with so much political momentum against Weiner, they have begun trying to find some "progressive" reason to throw their former hero under the bus. Naturally, the best way is to accuse Weiner of breaking today's "Great Taboo".
Weiner is a far-left ideologue who has a 100% rating from the NAACP. He voted for "Hate Crimes" legislation, to apologize for slavery, and was one of a few dozen white Congressmen to vote against the censure of corrupt black Representative Charlie Rangel. What could Weiner have possibly done to deserve this indictment?
Well, in 1991, Weiner ran for city council in Brooklyn shortly after the Crown Heights Riots.
For those unaware of the history of the riots: a Hassidic Jew named Yosef Lifsch got in a tragic accident which resulted in the death of a seven year old black child and caused serious injuries to another. Instead of helping the children, the blacks in the area decided to beat Lifsch brutally.
Not content with Lifsch, black thugs from Crown Heights then went after Jews in the neighborhood, and they were eventually joined by black thugs from the rest of the city. Al Sharpton and the usual race baiters put fuel on the fire with gems like "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house."
Black Mayor David Dinkins and black Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown refused to allow police to stop the riots allegedly because they felt black community needed to "vent their rage" over the incident.
The community vented for three days by screaming "Death to Jews" as they turned over cars, torched buildings, and beat up every white person they could find. A mob stabbed a doctoral student Yankel Rosenbaum to death.
An organization associated with Dinkins and Jackson called the Majority Coalition for a New New York endorsed Weiner's opponent Adele Cohen. [VDARE.com note: The Majority Coalition for a New New York was a "wide range of minority groups with liberal leanings who argue that together they have become the city's new majority." The New New York they were talking about was "white minority" New York. In the first year of the Dinkins administration, there were 2,262 murders.] So Weiner distributed flyers and mailers to voters that stated "The Majority Coalition endorsed Adele Cohen. Obviously she agrees with the Dinkins/Jackson agenda. Do you?"
The end. That's the extent of Weiner's affront to racial tolerance. He connected his opponent, quite truthfully, to an unpopular mayor and s race hustler.
To apply Francis' analogy, this is definitely soft core pornography. Nonetheless, it is enough to make many liberals denounce their former hero.
The New York Observer reported on this history two years ago [An Old Weiner Story Resurfaces In Brooklyn, By Azi Paybarah, May 26, 2009], and Salon was the first to exhume it after the sex scandal, in an article headed "The dirty trick that launched Anthony Weiner's career" , June 7, 2011. The author, Steve Kornacki, [Email him] argued that it would be unfair if Weiner was forced to resign over the picture—but this was just karma because it's not "exactly fair that he ever made it this far."
Alexis Garret Stodghill, on the African American news site NewsOne, wrote that Rep. Weiner's sexual perversions made her like him more: "To err is human, and Weiner's crimes of the heart and underpants make him seem less like a political demi-god and more endearingly like us."
But, like the Daily Kos, Weiner's supposed "race baiting" is less acceptable to Stodghill: "Can we forgive Weiner for playing on his potential constituents' fear of blacks in the wake of the Crown Heights riots to win his first office? Maybe… no." [Weiner Race-Baited To Win Office, by Alexis Stodghill, June 8, 2011]
Even some conservatives got into the game. Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, which broke the Weiner scandal, gleefully linked to the Salon piece. Blogger Stacy McCain—who himself has been the target of vicious and ungrounded attacks of racism—referred to Weiner's "race mongering past" where he "shamelessly…exploited racial fear."
But Americans should have quite another reason to be outraged over Weiner's 1991 campaign. Rather than oppose him for his "race baiting," we should oppose him because he ran as someone who would stand up to anti-White hustlers—but ended up embracing them.
In this respect, Weiner joins a long line of liberal politicians like Jimmy Carter and Richard Gephardt, who were elected by posing like George Wallace but governed like Jesse Jackson.
In his Race and the American Prospect essay, Sam Francis noted that the "political left seems to enjoy virtual carte blanche to denounce, vilify, spy on, demonstrate against, intimidate, and even occasionally assault and beat up individuals and organizations that have transgressed the racial Victorianism of our age."
Like most conservatives, I will admit to a bit of schadenfreude over Weiner's predicament.
However we should defend him against—or at least not take part in—this witch-hunt over his 20 year-old breach of racial Victorianism.
Alexander Hart (email him) is a conservative journalist.
