Editor's note: as I mentioned in our previous post, Facebook's fash-appeasing and nonsensical false balance policy has forced me to migrate a bunch of content off my Facebook blog and onto other sites; because re-posts are annoying, Sunday morning is one of the best times to do that. Today's post originally appeared on October 1st, 2019 and looks at how Native Americans view Elizabeth Warren's false claims of Indigenous heritage.
The white supremacy of Elizabeth Warren
In today's article analysis I'd like to go back and look at this March 4th piece from earlier this year by Twila Barnes and Cole DeLaune over at Indian Country Today.
I don't imagine that a lot of liberals who're going to vote in the Democratic primary read this meticulously-sourced article back in March and I suspect that if you showed it to them today, they would blithely dismiss it out of hand. From the classic "white moderate" perspective the title (The white supremacy of Elizabeth Warren) will likely seem offensively hyperbolic and modern liberal decorum doesn't leave a lot of room for indigenous people who self identify as "Indians." The last uptight Democrat I tried to share it with immediately dismissed it as "just some blog."
Perhaps it really is too much to expect some light search engine operation from your average liberal at this point, but to paraphrase the good doctor "we're made of sterner stuff than that" here on the left. I don't profess to be an expert on indigenous online media but a little poking around on the internet revealed that Indian Country Today is indeed a popular and reputable indigenous news organization with a wide reach and a proud history - currently being operated by the National Congress of American Indians, which itself was founded in 1944 and represents a large number of federally and state recognized Native American tribes (see link below.) Presumably the purely subjective complaint that "this looks like a blog" can be answered by the site's forward-thinking design which ICT notes is optimized for delivery to your mobile phone.
Okay now that we've established that liberals should be reading it (we we're going to read it anyway) because it's a credible news site that both reaches and represents perhaps millions of Native Americans, what does it say? Spoilers: not great things about who Liz Warren is and how this next election might go if she's the eventual Democratic Party nominee.
I really do encourage you to read the full article but the short, short version is that Liz Warren is absolutely not indigenous, there is almost a zero percent chance she's simply been innocently repeating false "family lore" and that Warren has apparently been outright lying about her heritage for a variety of political and career-orientated advantageous.
The authors also note the blatantly racist overtones of Warren's decision to use a flawed genetic test to prove native ancestry, her repeated trafficking in native stereotypes (high cheekbones) and that both "phenotypically and culturally", Liz Warren is objectively a (rich) white woman.
Perhaps the harshest words of critique against Warren however are reserved for describing her repeated failure to support native causes in government, address indigenous concerns about Liz's "professional native" cosplay and apologize honestly for the damage her yarn-spinning has done to native communities.
The authors accuse Warren of refusing to meet native activists to discuss the issue, allowing her campaign to malign them as pawns of "right-wing extremists" and stonewalling interview requests with Indian Country Today.
This isn't random malingering here; there is real (and longstanding) anger in this article - in the words of the authors themselves:
"In summary: when confronted with Indigenous perspectives that posed an obstacle to her personal advancement, Warren’s carefully calculated response was to pretend that we didn’t exist."
"Eventually, of course, the DNA debacle of her own making forced Warren to deliver a qualified mea culpa. But she has never acknowledged – much less apologized for – her active hostility toward the Indigenous critics who first tried to reach out to her and then strived to hold her to account. She has unequivocally failed in the most foundational moral duties of her position: to listen, to engage, and to represent. For almost six years, she intentionally did what colonialism has always done to people of Indigenous origin: she has erased us from our own story."
This is of course the "elephant in the room" of the Liz Warren campaign and the evidence is clear that the mainstream Democrats and media minions flocking to her banner absolutely know it - once again I quote directly from the article:
"And the fallout is real and concrete. Right now, left-leaning media reeks with the condescension of nominal white progressives – numerous prominent pundits and reporters among them – all too willing to dismiss and demean the insights of their Indigenous counterparts. Because of their Twitter commentary on the subject, Ryan Grim, DC bureau chief of The Intercept, accused Cherokees of “doing Trump’s work” and “enabling his abject racism.”[20] Reporter Thor Benson of The Rolling Stone and The Daily Beast sneered at the “virtue signaling” of critiques about Warren by a Dine/Inhanktowan Dakota author.[21] In an article denounced by the Native American Journalists Association[22], The Huffington Post’s Jennifer Bendery minimized the chorus of Native qualms on the matter (even from the Cherokee Nation Secretary of State) as “crickets.”[23] Bill Maher lectured his television viewers, “If you think this stupid, blown-out-of-proportion Indian controversy makes her inauthentic, you’re the phony.”[24]
Naturally that elite liberal media establishment backlash will sound awfully similar to DACA and immigration activists, young climate protestors and anti-mass incarcerations advocates who have spoken out against a Democratic Party power structure that's happy to have them for the photo-op, but doesn't stand up for marginalized people. It will also sound awful familiar to left wing LGBTQ people, Medicare for All advocates and members of the Black Lives Matter movement. Finally of course most supporters of Senator and 2020 Democratic Party nomination contest candidate Bernie Sanders will be *also* be quite familiar with this bizarro-world application of weaponized identity politics that suggests that those who are oppressed, are actually the oppressors because simply mentioning your problems somehow counts as "racist" or "bigoted" in its own right - an argument that might I add is both absurd and obscene when deployed against full-tribe Native American activists and journalists on behalf of a seventy year old, rich, white Harvard Law school professor.
Therein of course lays the crux of the problem for both Liz Warren and the Democratic Party at large:
Angry leftists and outraged indigenous people might not cost Liz Warren the nomination contest; especially if the media continues to abuse, shame and malign anyone who speaks up about it - but then what?
While it's certainly possible that through attacks against marginalized people, smearing lies or falsehoods and hyper-aggressive tone shaming you can keep anyone on the left from mentioning that Warren is a rich old white lady who faked being indigenous to further he own career; what happens if she wins?
When you're surrounded by leftists and liberals, you can get away with saying Sanders supporters who don't like her are just sexist, you can pull off spouting that indigenous people who are outraged at Warren wearing their culture like a hall pass are just "virtual signaling" and you can arrogantly dismiss the largest online Native news source as "just a blog." Do the Democrats sincerely believe that calling Trump racist is going to stop him from bringing all of this up when the cameras are rolling?
The answer is of course no and the sad truth is that rich liberals don't care - they would rather lose a culture war election about "affirmative action" to nazis with Liz Warren, than risk surrendering one inch of power to the labor class and marginalized people by nominating Bernie Sanders.
And if that's starting to sound a lot like how they lost to a reality TV show pederast rapey fascist in 2016 to you, please know that you aren't the only one.
Please dear god, save us all from bougie white moderates.
- nina illingworth
Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!
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