Any idiot with a computer, a Facebook account, and internet access can set up a group or page for any damn cause or issue or animal, vegetable, or mineral. That relative freedom is one of the things that has attracted the third of a billion Facebook users who obsessively check their status updates for comments. Somewhere, anthropologists and sociologists are studying the fuck out of this phenomenon for papers and dissertations.
Often, it can be damn funny to trawl around the FB and see what's there. For instance, there's a "Fuck Jesus Christ" group that has 4500 members, which is a place for fairly interesting atheist talk. Of course, there are at least 5 pages dedicated to getting rid of the Fuck Jesus Christ page, the largest of which has 260,000 members. Free speech and the effort to ban free speech, which is itself a kind of free speech: the vicious cycle of liberty.
As you might imagine, there's a whole fuck of a lot of anti-Barack Obama Facebook groups of varying shapes and sizes. And as you might imagine, or maybe not, there's a fuck of a lot of racist images that make the groups' members and administrators giddy. You may remember the controversy from October about racist Obama images showing up on the GOP's Facebook page. The smaller FB groups that propagate racist imagery related to Obama generally fall under the radar. For instance, there's this one from The Hardcore Right-Wing News group, which has nearly 2000 members:
That isn't a lingering image from the campaign. As you can see, it was just added this week, to the delight of the commenters:
Fun observation about the group: the first three names of the administrators, who are not listed in alphabetical or any order, all start with K. You can also buy an Obama witch doctor t-shirt there. (To follow the money, the shirt is from "Wall Street Market News" as a 9/12 Project item. It's a fucking insane conservative conspiracy theory website.)
There's layers upon layers of these...well, let's just call them "fringe groups." They share images; that witch doctor t-shirt is available for sale through pro-Sarah Palin groups, pro-Glenn Beck groups, and a dozen or so other conservative groups. Another image making the rounds in the last couple of weeks is this one, with the caption "'bamas mistress" (that'd be the poster's punctuation there):
It's featured in the nearly 3000 member Don't Tread on Me group, as well as at the smaller, wordily-named "Let's Help Obama's Approval Rating Drop 20% in 3 Months" and "Remove Our Communist President from Office" groups.
As far as the Rude Pundit can tell, unlike the "Fuck Jesus Christ" group, no one is agitating to get the groups kicked out or to get the images taken down. Which is fine, actually. This is not a call for Facebook to ban anything. It's not really about Facebook at all. Facebook just makes it easier for racist pussies to share their hatred in a virtual circle jerk. Used to be, people like this would have to meet in secret and speak in code in public. Not anymore. Now it's perfectly fine to let everyone know that you're a proud, backwards ass redneck.
This is a reminder, as we on the left disagree with Obama and oppose some of his policies, of what we're actually up against, our own extremists and the absolutely bugfuck insane shit they are willing to say openly.