Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Civil Rights Movement & Torture

I keep returning to the civil-rights movement as an historically effective way to hang out to dry Bush torture regime sycophants.

As noted here with a hat tip to BooMan,
the sycophant talking point that we shouldn't be debating torture because it's a field day for terrorist recruiters sounds awfully similar to arguments by segregationists in the 1960s that debating black inequality gave comfort to the enemy -- the Soviet Union -- and its recruiters because it damaged the argument that America was a free, just and inclusive society.

I have been relentlessly critical of the mainstream media's generally uncritical coverage of the torture regime, and Oliver Willis indirectly makes another big point in reviewing a book on news media coverage of the civil-rights movement:

The more the media learned of the brutalities visited upon blacks in general and civil-rights workers specifically, the more it played an advocacy role, and a necessary one at that. So why is it struck deaf and dumb over torture regime brutalities?

No comments: