Both Sides Have A History Of Bigotry And Racism
The Republican Party has become the world’s most successful electoral force due to the abhorrent tactics of a small group of people at its core, who made a conscious choice, years ago, to embrace the worst elements of the American electorate.
As difficult as this is to believe for modern political students, it was the Democratic Party who were once the key supporters of segregation in American society.
The Republican Party was actually formed to tackle the issue of slavery, and it was a Republican President who outlawed it.
Democrats, on the other hand, had passed laws making it harder for poor people and minorities to vote … this doesn’t sit well with liberals these days, but it’s a fact.
All that changed under John F Kennedy, and after him Lyndon Johnston, who changed their party’s legacy on these matters and flipped American politics on its head. When Johnston got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, it was actually supported by more Republican legislators than Democrats; it also infuriated the south.
Johnston knew it too, but he did it anyway and seemed to be vindicated when, in the 1964 election he won in a landslide.
Only five states – all of them in the south – voted for his opponent, Barry Goldwater.
But the seed was planted and a new group of Republican strategists, led by Karl Rove, Lee Atwater and a young George W. Bush, saw an opportunity.
Whilst the Civil Rights Act pushed minorities into the Democratic Party tent, these guys saw a way to make the Republican Party the representatives of “white America.”
They grabbed it and the party never looked back.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Their campaigns from then onwards have become increasingly fixated with issues of race, and when Trump made his spectacular and bigoted announcement that he would, if elected President, build a wall across the Mexican border and ban Muslims from entering the US that was music to a certain class of Republican voter’s ears.
Sevco, birthed as it was from the DNA of Rangers, came complete with every issue and defect of character that haunted that club for years.
The latent sectarianism of its own supporters has become one of the defining characteristics of the NewCo; from their love of The Billy Boys to their abhorrent chant of religious and social supremacy We Are the Peepul, some of its fans continue to taint and contaminate the whole brand.
This is a tough one to judge.
But the Republican Party’s embrace of racial attitudes and policies was the work of a few nasty individuals, and is partly maintained out of political expediency.
Rangers was virtually built on an appeal to sectarian attitudes, and Sevco is maintained by the promotion and continuation of the same.
It’s that historical consistency that nails it.
I have to give this one to the Sevconians.
Another point to The Peepul.