So in the middle of the media firestorm featuring President Trump and his battle with four progressive Democrat freshman members in the House calling themselves “The Squad” — a whirlwind of stories over racism and anti-Semitism — The Washington Post ran a big story on none other than George Takei.
Mr. Takei, of course, is famous for his role in the original Star Trek series as Hikaru Sulu, the helmsman of the starship USS Enterprise. He is now 82, described by the Post as an “activist for gay rights and social justice.”
Takei is also the author of a new book, They Called Us Enemy. The book tells the story of Takei’s childhood when he, along with his parents and two siblings, were rounded up and - literally at the point of bayonets - sent to one of the ten now-infamous internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II.
What makes the Post story so amazing is that, right in the middle of a national brouhaha over racism, the left-wing paper publishes a lengthy story that conveniently leaves out two central facts — the who and why — of Takei’s story. Those two facts would be central fact to the history of Takei’s story.
Here’s how the latest game of left-wing journalism by omission was played.
The Post headline reads: “The extraordinary trek of George Takei: The cult icon is on a mission to make sure America doesn’t forget a shameful legacy.”
Then the paper says this of Takei’s experience:
“George Takei spent ages 5 to almost 9 imprisoned by the U.S. government in Japanese American internment camps. A relentless optimist, he believed the shameful legacy of incarcerating an estimated 120,000 Americans during World War II would never be forgotten or duplicated.
…Stories fell into the sinkhole of history, given the omission of the camps from many textbooks and the shame felt by former internees, many of whom remained silent about their experiences, even to descendants. Takei takes no refuge in silence.
…Takei had little understanding of his family abandoning their belongings, the government questioning their patriotism and their return to Los Angeles with nothing, starting over on Skid Row. As a teenager, he came to understand the toll.
“...
Bayonets and a 5-year-old boy. It is, as Takei says, an American story — a frightening and lamentable one.
All we can do is learn.”
Got that last line, which was written by the Post? “All we can do is learn.”
And what do we learn from the Post’s version of history? ? We learn that George Takei and his family were swept into one of these internment camps by “the U.S. government.”
Mysteriously a very central fact is omitted entirely. Who, exactly, was running the U.S. government? Who was responsible for this “legalized racism” This central truth of history —what might be called, to borrow from the Post headline, a “shameful legacy” — was omitted by the Post, not by George Takei. That is clear when one goes to Amazon and checks the description of his book as provided by his publisher. That description reads this way, bold print supplied:
“In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.
They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism...”
Mind you, now, even as the Washington Post is running one story after another supporting the progressives of “The Squad” and their flat-out demand to be judged by their skin color, there is a long story in the very same paper that leaves out entirely another central fact of history: It is the shameful legacy of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt who signed the infamous Executive Order 9066 that sent George Takei and 120,000 Americans to internment camps - all based on the color of their skin.
As I have detailed long ago FDR’s party — the Democrats — have a decidedly “shameful legacy” of supporting “legalized racism.” There were the six presidential platforms supporting slavery, the Democratic congressional votes against the 13th Amendment that ended slavery, the 20 platforms supporting segregation or falling silent on the subject. This was identity politics on steroids. And out of that culture of blatant racism came the Japanese-American internment camps, with Americans judged as dangerous because of their skin color.
There was a legal challenge to this blatantly racist order. It was decided in 1944 by the U.S. Supreme Court and is known to history as Korematsu v. United States. In a 6-3 decision, the internment camps were ruled to be constitutional. And the Justice who wrote the decision? That would be the progressive former Democratic Senator from Alabama and FDR Court appointee Hugo Black. And what of Justice Black, the man who gave a constitutional thumbs up to the legalized racism of the internment camps?
In his book Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past, former Reagan domestic policy adviser Bruce Bartlett writes this of Black:
“Black became a member of the (Ku Klux) Klan on September 13, 1923…..He became active in the Klan, too, marching in parades, speaking at Klan meetings throughout Alabama, and wearing the Klan regalia, including hood and mask. Historian J. Mills Thornton (of the University of Michigan) says Black’s involvement in the Klan was ‘extensive and ardent.’’
Black was much celebrated by his fellow Klansmen, who, in September of 1926, awarded him “a gold passport signifying life membership” in the Klan.
Thus the blatantly racist history of the man FDR would place on the Supreme Court and who would eventually write the Supreme Court opinion that gave a constitutional thumbs up to sending young George Takei — at bayonet point — to an internment camp. All because of George Takei’s skin color.
None of this disgraceful history of the ties between progressives like Hugo Black (he was far from alone in the Democratic Party) and the sheerest of outright racism is mentioned by the Washington Post in their long story about George Takei. It is history disappeared.
Yet even as the Takei story appeared, the Post was out there defending members of The Squad — in an ugly recall of the skin-color judging beliefs of Hugo Black. The Squad members were out there openly demanding to be judged not on their ideas but by their skin color. And the Post’s response in that editorial linked above included this:
“What is new and frightening is the Republicans’ cynical, almost casual willingness to engage in the basest of slanders about them. Their campaign teaches us nothing about the four women but a great deal about their attackers.”
There is nothing in the Post editorial — nothing — noting the blatant racism of these four progressive Members of Congress who demand to be identified by race and are busy spewing anti-Semitism such as“its all about the Benjamins baby” and then filing a House resolution proclaiming that Israel is the equivalent of Nazi Germany.
The other night Mark Levin appeared on Hannity and among other things had this to say about the left-wing media’s defense of the racism and anti-Semitism of The Squad:
“They (the leftwing media) have a high tolerance for racism and anti- Semitism. Why? Because they are the mouthpiece for the Hard Left.”
Indeed they do and are.
For confirmation of Mark’s point look no further than the Post mysteriously leaving out of their George Takei story the history of a seriously shameful legacy that tells just who marched young George to an internment camp at the point of a bayonet in the first place.
And why.
