Biden is not some innocent bystander. The author of the racist 1994 crime bill, who made common cause with segregationists, won his party’s nomination against a civil rights protester in Bernie.
As recently as 2015, Biden bragged about his relationship with white nationalist senator Jesse Helms, who was a fierce defender of vicious white minority rule in Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe), sending two aides to a conference in 1979 to urge Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith to “stiffen his spine” against the guerrilla movement leading the independence struggle.
Dylann Roof titled his blog “The Last Rhodesian.”
Lest you think Biden’s behavior is ancient history, the president earlier this month pined for the old days when he and his party got along with virulent racists.
“We always used to fight like hell — and even back in the old days when we had real segregationists, like Eastland and Thurmond and all those guys — but at least we’d end up eating lunch together,” Biden said.
For reference: Senator James Eastland often spoke of Black people as “an inferior race,” according to his obituary in the New York Times.
Senator Strom Thurmond ran as an independent third party candidate in 1948 on an unabashedly pro-segregation platform and led the longest filibuster in history against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Biden’s history of downplaying the dangers of white nationalism in favor of an elite collegiality might explain why his administration has been so reticent to take action on policies that would take some of the wind out of the sails of a rising extreme right, frothing at “critical race theory” and Great Replacement delirium.
