I am Irish. For many years in my native land the Rev. Ian Paisley
spouted bigoted hatred about Catholics in Northern Ireland, but then
claimed innocence when some militant sectarian group massacred
Catholics. Speech was not murder, he said. He would never condone
killing, he said. Then he went right back to feeding the attitudes that
spawned the killing. Few were fooled.

We should not be fooled in America today.

In this country the "mainstream" right-wing has made an industry of
demonizing African-Americans as "thugs" and criminals - just look at the
divergence in tone between the recent coverage of Ferguson or Baltimore
and the (mostly white) biker massacre in Waco, TX. For decades, white
America has been told that black Americans are lazy leeches, dependent
on hand-outs funded by your hard-earned taxes to bankroll their immoral
lifestyles.

The first black president was greeted by the right not only with diehard
obstructionism but a chorus of color-coded abuse ("lazy," "food-stamp
president" etc) and questions about his very American-ness: he was "not
one of us," a foreigner adhering to a foreign religion who has no right
to be president.

The siren song of racial hate relentlessly put out by the "mainstream"
right finds echo in the gunshots that rang out in Charleston.

Rightists will, of course, deny the connection, the way Paisley did. But
we are not fooled.

- - -

This is a highly cited comment in the NYTs, and it perfectly describes
what many on the conservative right are doing to continue and further
racial hate.

Need evidence here? Just read the racist and racially motivated posts
of rightest John Herring (and others).