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Obama Hate Speech Surges on Facebook
A Baylor University study has found that hate groups are using Facebook to spread their message, attract new followers, and launch racist attacks against Barack and Michelle Obama.
More that 20 Facebook groups/pages were analyzed using the keywords hate, Barack Obama, and Michelle Obama to pinpoint them. According to Mia Moody, Ph.D., assistant professor of journalism, public relations and new media in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences, Facebook has become a potent communication tool for Obama hate groups, “The growth of Facebook groups from a fringe activity to a significant communication source illustrates the recent evolution in the spread of hate speech. Hate groups, which might have remained benignly isolated at one time, recruit online and increase their numbers instantly.”
The study differentiated between political hate of Obama and racial hate, “In general, hate groups, fall into two categories—politics and hate speech. Hate groups indirectly spread hatred toward women and blacks by targeting the Obamas with racist and sexist rhetoric. Unflattering photos, comments and articles containing racist and sexist discourse frame the two negatively. While political pages offer some educational value by emphasizing the President and first lady’s political platform, hate pages primarily focus on personal characteristics such as their culture, dietary habits, attire and physical features. Users share derogatory comments about the two playing basketball, dancing and eating items such as watermelon and chitterlings. Animalistic photos depict Obama or his whole family as animals, particularly apes. Findings demonstrate historical stereotypes have made their way onto social media applications.”
It also debunked the excuse used by those who engage in racial attacks against the President and First Lady that they are being called racist because they disagree with Obama, “The groups often highlight the President and First Lady with features that are meant to be negative or funny such as beards, Afros, mustaches, gold teeth, do-rags and various costumes. Mrs. Obama is depicted as a masculine, unattractive ‘angry black woman.’ Most pictures are accompanied with a disrespectful caption. Most captions do not attack the president and first lady’s political views; instead, they attack them personally with racial slurs that build on racist historical narratives. The shocking nature of these pictures spur numerous comments and ‘likes.’”
Moody explained how these groups violate Facebook’s hate speech guidelines while avoiding detection, “Some Facebook members evade those policies by spotlighting a celebrity, politician or athlete. Because slurs are not in the official title, Facebook is not as quick to shut them down. Some group target blacks by focusing on President Obama. One such group refers to him as “n—–” and a “no-good jungle monkey.”
The political question that arises from these findings is how much has the Republican Party’s race based anti-Obama strategy fueled the growth of these groups?
What the Republican Party did when they adopted the anti-Obama rhetoric of the racists was legitimize those beliefs and that language within their own party. GOP operatives understand that their best, and some would say only, chance of beating Obama is to polarize and divide the electorate as many ways as possible. The smaller and more divided the electorate, the more influential the united and vastly white Republican voting bloc will be on Election Day.
The Republican leadership embraced race based politics with open arms, and the result has been the creation of new a virulent strain of racism that has used talk radio and social media to warp a constituency that already disagreed with Obama into an angry mob motivated by racial prejudice.
Long after the Obama presidency has come and gone, the consequences of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party’s cynical racism strategy will live on.
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46 Responses to Obama Hate Speech Surges on Facebook
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Andrew Carvin
Jul. 26th, 2012 at 11:00 pm
Republican/Mitt Romney policies: Public Relations = Sponsor hate groups, and fan the flames of bigotry. Education = Keep people as stupid as possible so that they keep voting for Republicans who hate them. Military policy = War for profit, and I don’t care how many innocent people die so long as my war stocks go up. Health care = die. Jobs = outsourcing. Unemployment = Hurry up and die. Women’s rights = get back in the kitchen and poop out some more babies you can’t support, and we’re not going to help you with them either. Mitt Romney = death of America. Unemployment will do nothing but increase wherever Republicans have power. I made a video about unemployment, and how we can fix it. It’s at my YouTube channel Zarrakan, and here’s the name:
2012 6 5 ZOC Job Pyramid
Watch it, share it, and join the fight against those who want to kill all of us with destructive social policies.
David Deal
Jul. 26th, 2012 at 11:04 pm
This is not a surprise to me. I see it every day. Even the multitude of ficticious chain emails full of lies, easily debunked on any factcheck style site. We KNOW what motivates it all.
Leslie Parsley
Jul. 26th, 2012 at 11:19 pm
The other problem with Facebook is, when attention is called to these despicable pages they give some lame excuse for not taking them down.
Marion
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 2:54 pm
True, Leslie. I have reported many myself and given excuses. I don’t understand why. It makes me wonder if FB is complicit in the hate.
eshowoman
Jul. 26th, 2012 at 11:26 pm
The closer we get to the election, the more the racist will spew their garbage. They have an incredibly weak candidate in Mitt Romney. Attacking the President is the only way they can express their hatred.
majii
Jul. 26th, 2012 at 11:32 pm
No American should be surprised by this. It has always been this way for those of us who happen to be black. The election of Barack Hussein Obama has allowed what was once only something a subset of the American population had intimate knowledge of to emerge and expand. Although the Republican Party will disavow the role it played in the proliferation of hate groups since 2008, I think most of us who have been paying close attention to them know that the party’s members have played a huge role in making open displays of racism acceptable in 2012.
A Walkaway
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 10:32 am
Before 2008, it was a common experience to have people denigrate or deny the hate speech I observed, and to deny the rabid racism in America. They refused to believe that racism is still existent and especially the racists declared racism as a thing of the past. Now people are starting to see it, although one thing that bugs me is that I run into people who seem to forget that racism wasn’t only against African-Americans. (That’s why I am rather aggressive about mentioning my own people – Native Americans – because we often are completely forgotten and I’ve even seen us not listed on lists of American minorities.)
I don’t remember hearing or reading anything about Romney and my people, but if he DOES say something (or have written something), I’d bet that it is atrocious. His religion IS founded on anti-American-Indian racism, after all.
Reynardine
Jul. 26th, 2012 at 11:32 pm
I daresay they’re using Facebook, but they’re just as filthy over at the CNN commentary, where they never censor anything but decent, educated speech.
FauxPalin
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 1:21 am
In the past, I found that CNN was very positive re: Pres. Obama. Yes, I agree. It has recently become more hateful on Pres. Obama
So far, I have found ~The Hill~ website the most hateful by far.
Sally
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 12:04 am
It is really sad that these people have nothing better to do than think up awful disgusting thin gs to lie about a perfectly lovely American family, and their President. If the GOP ever regains power again, these very people will be the ones out of work, taxed, and on the outside looking in at the rich white men who have taken over the country and demoted the rest of us to peons with no health insurance, no Medicare or Medicaid as we age, and no SS. Not to mention they intend to privatize everythig from police to schools, not to make it better or cheaper, but to make sure there is profit involved for their rich buddies. I am praying the electorate is far smarter than these idiots who act on fear and nothing else. We changed this antion in 2008; let’s keep moving forward, not back to the 1800′s.
Kevin Moore
Jul. 28th, 2012 at 6:39 am
“Rich white men” Talk about a racist comment.
MRY-USA
Aug. 3rd, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Agree that some comments posted here to support this “one-side” article were just racial-sexist “white men” within. Social public (now is on FB) have talked negatively about its government and Presidents (or PM in some other countries). If they are not happy they would complain. It can call “hate” which seems to be a strong word — what different between “I don’t like what s/he did” and “I hate what s/he did” as a measure to fit scales of the people’s suffers while one group of people is in office spending the country’s tax money recklessly.
Chris Punches
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 12:23 am
Wow, talk about amateur reporting. Why are you trying so hard to make an issue out of nothing? This is obviously a false flag report targeted at political opposition. ‘The Republican party’ is no more responsible for what people do than Facebook is.
How is it that someone like you ended up writing for a huge site like this and someone like me gets the job of sifting through the endless crap that people like you put out in the hopes of finding anything substantive? Don’t you know you’re an enemy to reality? Please go back to school –and come back with a story.
trailfaz
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 1:02 am
Chris, The problem is these hate groups represent The primitive, conservative agenda. The conservative politicians condone This kind of behavior. They think they can get the whole country all worked up into a “hate froth”. Not going to work. The idiots are the minority. You are living a life filled with ignorance. Have a good one.
Reynardine
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 7:01 am
Chris, your use of “false flag” indicates you spout phrases from a list you were told to use without understanding their meaning. Watch out, or you’ll wind up like the immigrant who thought “hot cock” meant “roast chicken”.
WTF1113
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 11:05 am
Chris, you obviously failed to completely read the article. Nowhere in the article was Facebook being blamed for the actions of its users, and the GOP anti-Obama rhetoric was only cited as possible fuel for the white supremacist (thanks Kevin) fire that already burned within these individuals. These hate mongers are incapable of independent thought, and the fact that you look past the author’s actual words and assume that he is assigning blame anywhere but squarely on the people posting slurs and hateful images indicates that you just might be one of them as well.
lopez
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Chris, I’ve seen these pictures on Facebook. I can’t believe how disrespectful people can be towards the President of the United States and the First Lady. These pictures are usually posted by the “Christians” who like to post how much they love Jesus. I’ve never seen such right wing, garbage spewing, hate filled character assasinations in all my life. What gets me is that alot of these people are self-employeed. Do they realize how many people like me will never use their services! One of them is actually a preacher! This is how ignorant these people are.
lionfish
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 10:22 pm
And here we are, this is what it’s all about. Denial, don’t you know that those of us who been on the other end of this can recognize a smoke screen when we see one. Why don’t you just get it all out, we see you anyway.
Rho
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 5:41 am
Show these guys how much you hate what’s going on, even at a local level. Don’t re-elect anybody. There are plenty of fresh, new people running this year, and many are not demopublicans. Get educated about everyone running, and get us out of the base-2 rut we are in. Why is it that we chose from 50 people for Miss America and only 2 for president? there are more than two choices, and the media is conveniently forgetting that.
reformparty.org/
Reynardine
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 7:03 am
That’s called a fancy way to vote for Romney.
A Walkaway
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 10:38 am
Reform party? Are you kidding? What are you going to reform… the constitution so that separation of church and state doesn’t exist any more?
Seriously, everyone that pushes for a third party is working to put people in power who will try to do that very thing. Plus they’ll strip women and minorities of their rights, start unnecessary and unwanted (by the majority) wars, etc.
In this election, third parties serve to strip votes. Everything I’ve heard from President Obama says that he’s the only choice if you value freedom and truth.
(Those that support Ron Paul have got to have the worst set of blinders on, because that “candidate” is a real monster!)
Incredulous
Jul. 30th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Obama? In support of Freedom? Surely You jest. How is it freedom to try and force people to buy something or be penalised if they don’t. Some of us are really poor and he wants to force us to buy health insurance or penalis us with extra taxes. Thats not freedom when he ties to enforce HIS will apon US. I’ll be honest. I don’t approve of Obaaone little bit, and it will probably mark me a racist by other people simply because Obama is black. Could it be that I disagree with his policies? Could it be that I am NOT a RACIST bigot? Could it be that the real racists are the ones accuseing ME of being racist just because I disagree with him and I’m white and he is black? Could it be that I’m just a Republican and I diagree with the Democrats? Think about THAT.
Dan Skinner
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 6:22 am
this is the 21st Century? And the republican/conservatives are still wearing their KKK hoods and sheets? Shame on them!
A Walkaway
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 10:42 am
A highly-placed Klan leader (I found out the man was in the Klan literally decades later) once pointed at “Klansmen” marching in a parade and told me “____, those aren’t the real Klan. You’ll never know who the real Klan are!!!”.
They’re the elites in power at the local level… the sheriff who is widely popular with his “crack down on criminals”, the rich businessman who if you look doesn’t have a single minority person on his payroll, etc. They keep a low profile. They are VERY careful with their language and doubly careful to not leave any sort of paper trail.
As explained to me, the people in the robes are the cannon fodder, the shock troops.
lopez
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
The KKK shows up in a town a few miles from me during Black History month. They stand on the street in their full garb and hand out pamphlets to get people to join. I’ve heard that in the evenings they have a cross burning out in the country. And yes, believe it or not, this is 2012!
Nobody
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 6:23 am
As deplorable as these racist swine may be, remember, everybody… it’s just facebook. You can get the same despicable racism from Reddit and responses to/comments about web videos on Comedy Central’s Tosh.0 website.
Idiots will say idiotic things and while I may personally disagree with hate mongers, I will fight to the death their right to say it.
robyn ryan
Jul. 28th, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Agreed.
Defending their right to be idiots does not entail trying to educate them in posts.
They know they are wrong. They’re just trying to suck the conversation from the topic to them.
The cure? DNR – Do not reply.
oldladyDem
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 7:48 am
It’s hard to believe the racists hate the country more than they hate Obama. They just think they hate Obama more. Leave them to heaven.
A Walkaway
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
“Heaven” has never done anything about them, even though they claim to be “Good Christians”.
In fact, I swear from reality, they get rewarded for their discrimination and harm of innocents.
buckeyewill
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 8:37 am
When they win the White House, expect Medicare and Social Security to be privatized, and more urban Blacks and Hispanics plus Whites from the suburbs and the small towns to be marched into another war.
Gary Vaughn
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 9:25 am
I guess Chris never watched Fox or a republican debate or stump speech. Saying black kids had nobody to teach them “work ethics” or I don’t want to take people’s money and give it to blah people. And that is just 2 that were clear enough even without the Frank Luntz vocabulary or dogwhistles, not to mention the part about the anglo saxon special relationship.
Kevin Shinn
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 10:03 am
“…[H]ate groups are using Facebook to spread their message, attract new followers, and launch racist attacks against Barack and Michelle Obama.”
I know it unwieldy but if up to me, in such citations we’d strike blanket (and to my mind misused) term racist and insert white supremacist for the sake of both precision and education.
A Walkaway
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Racist is both adequate and accurate.
former mormon
Jul. 29th, 2012 at 8:50 pm
I think you have a valid point here, Kevin. They don’t seem to be motivated by some kind of generic hatred of minorities as much as it is a specific fear of losing their privileged demographic status.
Mittens Rmoney
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 10:10 am
I thought Conservatives were all about God and “love thy neighbor”? Nice to see they are finally showing their true colors: that of hatred and selishness.
They don’t even believe in their own scripture:
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1)
clarence swinney
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 2:11 pm
I recall Clinotn lecture to his staff
“I have an opponent not an enemy. We debate only on policies.”
Clinton-Gore put promises in writing”Putting People First”. I edited and had 58 promises.
Took action on 56 in first two years.
WP listed 162 and tracked to find action on 96% in first two years.Successful. You bet.
clarence swinney
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 2:15 pm
%GDP billions
2000—revenue 20%–spend 18%=surplus
2009———–15%———25%=1400 deficit
Timeline that period
revenue dropped 30%–spend increased 33%
=6000 borrowed
In 2009, AGI individual Income was 8000 and We taxed 11% tax rate—no wonder we have debt
will we ever learn?
clarence swinney
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Want History HerCLINTON TO BUSH TO OBAMA
Who Dug the Deep Hole? Who Fumbled the ball?
Numbers rounded
Clinton left Bush an 1800B Budget
Bush Left Obama a 3500 Budget
Clinton left Bush a 240B Surplus as far as the eye can see
Bush left Obama a 1400B Deficit as far as the eye can see
Clinton left Bush 5,700B of Debt
Bush left Obama 11,800B of Debt
Clinton left Bush a 237,000 net new jobs created per month
Bush left Obama a 31,000 lowest number since Hoover.
Clinton left Bush 17 Million Manufacturing Jobs
Bush left Obama 11 Million Manufacturing Jobs
Clinton left Bush a 10,800 Dow
Bush left Obama an 8028 Dow
Clinton left Bush Peace on Earth Good Will From Most Men
Bush left Obama Hell on Earth Two disastrous wars. Enmity of 1500 Million Muslims
Clinton left Bush a President most highly rated of any peacetime President in Asia, Africa, Europe.
Bush left Obama the most hated President in history
Bush left Obama an Housing Tsunami and Financial Volcano
Bush left Obama, in 2008, an 8500B Bail out commitment Yes! 8500 not just 700
Bush left Obama his Takeover of Fannie/Freddie, AIG, and first bailout of Chrysler
Bush increased maximum loan by Fannie/Freddie from $153,000 in 2000 to $300,000 then to $729,000
That is how F&F got stuck with so many toxic mortgages. Bush gift to Big Bank pals.
Bush increased FDIC maximum deposit coverage from $100,000 to $250,000. Help the rich.
clarence swinney–political historian–lifeaholics of america burlington nc
author-Lifeaholic–Life story of Workaholic failure to Lifeaholic success
Best seller list in haw river nc population 200 and growing
comments welcom facts -numbers not opinione is Good stuff
Incredulous
Jul. 30th, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Interesting pinof view. So tell Me. How has Obama improved anything. So the contry was worse off after Bush was through then when Clinton was through. But can the President REALLY be responcible for everything that happens? Tell Me…. if Bush is responcible for making things so bad… what has Obama doen that REALLY makes things better?
Susan Mayflower
Jul. 27th, 2012 at 6:19 pm
I have noticed this as well; the desperation is growing, and the posts of some of my Facebook “acquaintances” have gotten more and more outrageous, vile, and just made-up craziness. The “I did build this” theme has pushed all the wrong buttons, and made the foaming-at-the-mouth hatred for Obama worse.
One of my Facebook “friends” unfriended me, calling me a socialist worm among other ugliness; he posts the most vile anti-Obama propaganda, and he is an official in the Republican Party, state level.
ConcernedCitizen
Jul. 28th, 2012 at 5:12 am
It’s not just Facebook. Check it.
liberalforum.org/liberalf...
Rudy Gonzales
Jul. 28th, 2012 at 9:59 am
I have long contended that bigotry, discrimination, prejudice and hatred has raised it’s ugly head since Obama won the right to run against McCain. It has come to fruition.
Kini
Jul. 29th, 2012 at 1:03 am
Critical race theory? Nuff said, another racist study that paints conservatives as racists. Yawn!
Shiva (Moderator)
Jul. 29th, 2012 at 7:51 am
You just have to deal with it. The evidence is overwhelming
1stAmendment
Jul. 29th, 2012 at 7:08 pm
The purpose of the 1st Amendment is to protect unpopular speech… So whatever your take is on it, its free speech.