This wasn't parody but it might as well have been. Tuesday night on MSNBC, two liberal journalists accused the Republican party of leveraging racial victimhood to get their agenda across; in this case, racist voting laws.
Filling in for Chris Hayes, All In host MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan brought on Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman to discuss two of his op-eds this week bashing the GOP for both 1. criticizing mandatory vaccine passports and 2. Using fictional racist grievances to pass racist voting laws in red states. Hasan sneered at the top of the show,“The Republican playbook, make racist policy and then complain about being accused of racism.”
After playing clips of conservative commentators and various Republican politicians decrying the notion of COVID vaccine passports being required to do everyday activities, Hasan mocked:
“Seriously? What on Earth is this Orwellian, Nazi, Satanist proposal that has them so afraid?” he vented, before tying passport fears to “right-wing victimhood:”
This is what the Republican party is now. It's not a party of ideas or reasonable debate. It exists to play up fears and push ideas of right-wing victimhood. It's the only thing they are really good at these days. Take for instance that new Georgia voting law which will hit black people disproportionately hard. In a recent piece in The Washington Post, columnist Paul Waldman argues, that what just happened in Georgia was ‘a double victory for the G.O.P.: Republicans got their law passed and they also got the opportunity to renew the sense of racial victimization they have so carefully cultivated among their constituents for years.’
Hasan didn’t explain how Democrats could hold these two same viewpoints at the same time: Obtaining a driver’s license is a racist burden to black voters; but requiring these same voters to show a vaccine passport is just fine (when minorities are more “vaccine hesitant” to begin with.)
Entering the scene, the Post columnist sneered that the GOP “taps into anger” by telling whites “they are oppressed because of their race” “cancel culture is coming after them” and the “specter of a transgender girl playing on their kids’ softball team is the end of life as they know it.”
The MSNBC host brought the discussion back to race. He played a clip of Sen. Lindsey Graham griping that the left calls every Republican policy, racist.
Offended, Hasan ranted, “They are tired of it, Paul. They are the real victim!”
Waldman added his own disgust for conservatives calling out the media’s constant race-baiting in every facet of life:
One of the central themes on Fox News, on conservative talk-radio um, is that first of all there all there are malevolent forces of racial reckoning that are coming for you. In the latest iteration its Black Lives Matter. The only real racism is white people unfairly accused of being racist. This is a constant theme. That any time you enter a discussion that even gets remotely around race, that liberals will accuse you of being a racist and it's an unanswerable charge. This is something conservatives talk about all the time and they very firmly believe it...But conservatives feel like this is something they are constantly being accused of. I think politicians like Lindsey Graham really use that to kind of activate white identity, this is at the center of the political conflict in America is liberals who are going to kind of come after you because you're white.
The journalist also mocked conservative media for overplaying Antifa and Black Lives Matter violence:
“If you watch Fox News or listen to conservative talk radio you would have thought that half of American cities had burned to the ground because this murderous Black Lives Matter movement massacring people left and right,” he touted.
MSNBC’s nuttery was sponsored by Gillette and Fidelity. Contact them at the Conservatives Fight Back page here.
Read the relevant transcript portion below:
MSNBC
All In With Chris Hayes
3/30/2021
MEHDI HASAN: You mentioned race, and almost all our conversations come back to race. This was Lindsey Graham's response to the Georgia voting bill. Have a listen.
LINDSEY GRAHAM: They had the highest turnout in the history of Georgia. We had 150 million something people vote. So anytime a Republican does something it’s racist. If you are a white conservative, you're a racist. If you are a black Republican, you are a prop or Uncle Tom. They use the racism card to advance a liberal agenda and we are tired of it.
HASAN: They are tired of it, Paul. They are the real victim! In your piece you cite a poll from the public religion research institute which found that although 52% of Republicans said black people do face discrimination, 57% said white people face discrimination which for me, kinda sums it up, really sums it all up.
PAUL WALDMAN [WASHINGTON POST]: Yeah and if you are not tuned into the Republican media universe, you may not be aware of this. One of the central themes on Fox News, on conservative talk-radio um, iis that first of all there all there are malevolent forces of racial reckoning that are coming for you. In the latest iteration its Black Lives Matter. The only real racism is white people unfairly accused of being racist. This is a constant theme. That any time you enter a discussion that even gets remotely around race, that liberals will accuse you of being a racist and it's an unanswerable charge. This is something conservatives talk about all the time and they very firmly believe it. It's not that there aren't sometimes excesses where some liberal really does issue an unfair accusation of racism.
But conservatives feel like this is something they are constantly being accused of. I think politicians like Lindsey Graham really use that to kind of activate white identity, this is at the center of the political conflict in America is liberals who are going to kind of come after you because you're white. You know we saw that when Barack Obama was president. And every single policy thing that he did was described as reparations that there were going to be grabbing from your pocket to give to unworthy black people --
HASAN: Paul --
WALDMAN: We saw it last summer. If you watch Fox News or listen to conservative talk radio you would have thought that half of American cities had burned to the ground because this murderous black lives matter movement--
HASAN: Let me jump in.
WALDMAN: Massacring people left and right.
HASAN: I am going to jump in. I completely get what you are saying. You do make the argument that this is good for Republicans, it's a strategic move by them...
