Michelle Bachman’s racist Tea Party caucus in the House had a press conference yesterday with an African-American woman standing front and center declaring, “We are not terrorists.”  This old trick of oppressing people by finding individuals in the oppressed group who will cooperate with the oppressor has been around a long time.  After all, both Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner were betrayed by other slaves.   Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg have written about how some Jews helped round up and ship off other Jews to the concentration camps.

In the more modern phase of a highly sophisticated, complex form of racism/oppression, we have the Michael Steeles and whoever the other African American crazies are that are usually well rewarded for helping right wing Republicans continue racist Republican causes.  This technique will not be examined in the mainstream press.  NBC, ABC, CBS and the like won’t touch it while PBS would only touch it if someone from the Heritage Foundation were brought in to present “the other side.”