On Tiffany Cross’s show MSNBC show on Saturday, resident provocateur Elie Mystal of The Nation made an invidious generalization about white people that would be condemned as racist if made in respect of people of another race.
Commenting on Donald Trump’s statement that there would be “big problems” in the country if he is indicted, and the possibility of violence, Mystal said:
The cause of the problem, of course, is Trump himself and his MAGA acolytes themselves, and the people who are willing to
do the violence in Trump’s name. Again, I’m not, I guess I want to say that I’m not surprised that he’s threatening this because, A, he’s literally done it before. And B, this is literally what conservative white folks do when they don’t get their way. They turn violent . . . White people turn violent when they don’t politically get their way. All the damn time in this country. It’s what they do!“
Cross agreed: “You are not opining. That statement is rooted in history, in fact. If you are even a modest student of history, you have seen this scenario play out several times.”
Of course, there are examples of white people turning violent. The most recent example being January 6th itself, in which the rioters were predominantly white.
But singling out whites is a very one-sided view of history.
To illustrate, let’s compare and contrast the historical situation in Los Angeles.
In 1992, when the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted, much of LA was burned and looted.
Three years later, when O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman…crickets.
And in recent times, there’s the glaring example of the widespread violent riots following the murder of George Floyd.
We could catalog many other such examples. But the bottom line is that violence is not the answer. And neither is the distortion of history by leftists like Mystal and Cross.
On Tiffany Cross’s MSNBC show, regular guest Elie Mystal saying that conservative whites “turn violent when they don’t get their way” was sponsored in part by Subway, Abbott, maker of Rinvoq, and DirecTV.
Here’s the transcript.
MSNBC
The Cross Connection
9/17/22
10:08 am EDTELIE MYSTAL: The cause of the problem, of course, is Trump himself and his MAGA acolytes themselves, and the people who are willing to
do the violence in Trump’s name. Again, I’m not, I guess I want to say that I’m not surprised that he’s threatening this because, A, he’s literally done it before. And B, this is literally what conservative white folks do when they don’t get their way. They turn violent.TIFFANY CROSS: Yeah!
MYSTAL: As a black man in this country, as a person who is aware of the black history in the New World. White people turn violent when they don’t politically get their way. All the damn time in this country. It’s what they do! And so, from the perspective of a black person, I’m kind of like, welcome to a world that I’ve been living in, America. Because now, what we have is white domestic terrorists threatening to turn violence against non-black people —
CROSS: Right.
MYSTAL: — against everybody else, if the white supremacists ideology doesn’t win the day, and their white supremacist king is held accountable for crime. That’s [inaudible] normal.
CROSS: Right. And you’re not opining. That statement is rooted in history, in fact. If you are even a modest student of history, you have seen this scenario play out several times.