German Bush-Blog Publishes Racist Katrina Comments

The world press has reacted angrily to the images of human tragedy and death coming out of New Orleans this past week, and the media have condemned the inadequate and delayed response of the Bush administration.  Newspapers from across the political spectrum – including the ultra-conservative Union Leader in New Hampshire – have righfully pointed to the failed leadership of President Bush.  But reading the Bush-Blog David’s Medienkritik  one would think that this was some vast conspiracy of the pathologically anti-American German press. In their eyes, the president has performed admirably; it is the press that is blinded by hatred for Bush.

This point of view has resonated with racist readers – presumably American – who have posted some interesting comments:

• "There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit–but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals–and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep–on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves."
• "The social pathologies created by the leftwing welfare social state became more and more concentrated in the City of New Orleans. You didn’t see, what happened in New Orleans, happen elsewhere even in Louisiana, much less Mississippi and Alabama. The hard hit areas include towns, but also loads of poor rural (black and white) folks.Am I surprised about the breakdown in New Orleans or the lack of concern by leaving 100,000 people in the city by the race-baiting, welfare-pimping, gun-grabbing, incompetent and evil Democrat politicians?"
• "Many of the people stranded in New Orleans are suffering from a lifetime of personal choices right to the one that kept them in the city through the biggest hurricane to ever hit that city"
• So why are all those people still there? {…}Now, I suspect that the largest set, which most likely intersects with the set that is rampaging at the Superdome and threatening riot at the convention center, consists of: (1) People who expect the government to take care of them in all circumstances, and were waiting for a limo to be sent to their door; and (2) people who, two days ago, were looting. The first group is just lazy; there’s no getting around it. They had plenty of chances to fend for themselves, but they just couldn’t be bothered. That was someone else’s job. Now they are, basically, overgrown children throwing a temper tantrum because they have gone for two days without any candy. The second group, having briefly fulfilled their lifelong dreams of acquiring all of the material possessions that they were never willing to work for, now expect to be rescued (yet again) from their own indescrections. Because, you see, nothing is ever their fault. Society made them do it. Or Bush made them do it. Or whitey. Whoever. It isn’t their fault. They’ve never done anything wrong in their lives. Just ask them; they will tell you. All they ever did was take what was rightfully theirs anyway. Now there’s nothing left to take. What are they supposed to do now? How do they stay alive without someone to give them whatever they need, whenever they need it?
• That’s what you’ve got happening in New Orleans now. Circumstances have had the effect of concentrating the worst elements of their society. Corrupt officials, lazy welfare queens, greedy looters, self-important radical wannabes, it’s all there. It’s an unfortunate fact that the Southern coastal cities tend to attract the ne’er-do-well element, who see places like New Orleans, Tampa, Galveston, Miami, et al, as their ticket to the easy life. The lazy, the shiftless, the cons, the criminal, they all tend to concentrate on the coast. New Orleans is now suffering from its failure, over the years, to deal with them in the manner that was necessary.

This is just a sampling.  The authors of the blog often ban or delete comments from Bush critics, so presumably these remarks I’ve just quoted are perfectly acceptable to them.

Incidentally, Medienkritik, along with other German Bush-Blogs, has caught the attention of politically left-leaning bloggers. See the post by Wolfgang Lünenbürger-Reidenbach (Die Wirkungen der Neocons) on Wahlblog.  The ensuing comments provide an interesting discussion on the similarites and differences between neo-conservativism and right-wing extremism.  While many of the American readers of Medienkritik are the same right-wing extremists one finds on FreeRepublic.com , the authors see themselves as neo-conservatives, and seem to look up to the writers from the (Murdoch-owned) Weekly Standard as well as the National Review Online.  Unfortunately, with the NRO the distinction becomes blurred:  The National Review was started by William F. Buckley nearly 50 years ago to make eloquent, intellectually-sophisticated arguments against civil rights for black Americans.  Ironically, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is the culmination of Buckley’s vision of a racially segregated America.