Saturday, October 21, 2006

A Lovefest Between Two Deniers of Genocide: Ann Coulter Speaks with Faux-Comanche David Yeagley

When will the mainstream media develop enough spine to call Ann Coulter what she is, a virulent racist rather than a conservative?The late father of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater, was dead set against bigotry of any kind, as are many other conservatives. Goldwater received some support from American Indians and displayed a Navajo tattoo on his forearm. But Coulter and Yeagley and others posing as "conservatives" routinely show themselves to be to the right of Pat Buchanan (in Yeagley's case, to the right of David Duke) and rarely get hard questions from an easily intimidated or ignorant mainstream media.

Within Indian Country, a white supremacist posing as Comanche named David Yeagley is widely regarded as either a pariah or a joke. Nothing could further confirm these impressions than Yeagley's embrace and embarassing outright worship of Ann Coulter. In Yeagley's interview, offensively titled, "The Great White Woman Speaks," Coulter spent most of her time denying or defending genocide carried out against American Indians.

Much like Coulter's writings, Yeagley began his race baiting in the title. US presidents were generally "great white fathers" by American Indian leaders, which Yeagley is certainly not. Coulter has no simple human decency, much less greatness about her. She displayed her racist hatred for American Indians in a previous article, "The Little Injun That Could." In it, Coulter gleefully reveled in tasteless and viciously racist jokes about genocide: "Time to pack up the tipi and hit the Trail of Tears!"

Yeagley obviously knew nothing behind the actual meaning of terms like "great white father." Washington and other presidents were give this title to remind them that fathers protect their children, not destroy them or abuse them.

"Dr. David Yeagley interviews Ann Coulter."

The public should not be confused by Yeagley's title of "doctor." Yeagley routinely claims expertise in history, culture, and current affairs. His actual degree was in music, and his accomplishments in academia are almost nonexistent. Yeagley is largely a paid blogger for the far right, hired by David Horowitz to be a professional token Indian. (The problems is that all evidence points towards Yeagley as a white imposter.)

"I think of Ann as the Great White Woman--not to be confused with the Great White Buffalo Woman, of course."

Here Yeagley is deliberately trying to bait American Indians who hold White Buffalo Woman as a sacred figure.

"Yeagley: My place in society as an American Indian patriot is regarded as disingenuous by many."

Actually it would be regarded as treasonous, were Yeagley actually Indian. For a Native to call one's self a patriot would mean they were an "apple Indian" (white on the inside) and no longer identified with their tribal nation. All further quotes below come from Coulter.

"The record of Medals of Honor won by Indians is astonishing. Their service in the military is well known to every American who is not a half-wit—i.e. everyone but liberals. "

What should be astonishing to Coulter is the number of Medals of Honor denied to American Indians (as well as Blacks and Latinos) who deserved them, because of racism. What also should astonish and disgust anyone is who not a half-wit (i.e. everyone but Coulter, Yeagley, and their supporters) is the way Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers who slaughtered Native non-combatants. The most notorious case is the massacre at Wounded Knee. Despite protests by American Indians for decades, the military refuses to rescind the awarding of those medals.

What also might astonish Coulter is the amount of draft resistance long practiced by American Indians, as well as how American Indians overwhelmingly opposed the current war long before the rest of the American public. Natives oppose this war (among other reasons) because they see parallels between how Native tribes were treated then and how the Middle East is being treated today.

Among scholars who've written on Native veterans, you can find liberals like Alison Bernstein as well as conservatives like Donald Parman.

"The code talkers could have chattered away on open phone lines and the Japanese wouldn't have been able to break it."

Wrong. Coulter shows her ignorance here. The Code Talkers didn't just "chatter way" in their own language. They invented a complex code that other Navajos could not understand either, as the Japanese Imperial Army found out when they unsuccessfully tortured Navajo soldiers.

"Another interesting fact about Indians: As a group, they are generally immune from a fear of heights, which is why iron workers are disproportionately Indians. "

Wrong again. This is racist garbage designed to make Natives seem less human, much like the accounts I've found of white Army officers who thought Indians could see in the dark like cats. Plenty of Indians have a fear of heights, including friends of mine who work construction. Iron workers in the New York area are actually disproportionately Mohawk, who have a long tradition of ironwork going back to before Europeans arrived. In much of the country, ironworkers are mostly Latino. Paul Rodriguez jokes that the last time a white guy worked construction was one of the Village People.

"The relationship of the White Man to the Indians is a complicated history. By the standards of the world at that time, it was better than most."

Wrong again, and an outright lie. American Indian tribes generally treated whites far better than they were treated in turn. That's why so many whites eagerly left colonial villages to join Indian tribes. Anyone doubting that should read James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me.

"African Muslims were still enslaving anyone they could get hands on well into the 19th century."

Is that supposed to mean whites were somehow better? It's stereotypical for Coulter to claim that all of one ethnic group is collectively better or worse. Some white Americans were still enslaving Native from tribes such as the Navajo well into the 20th century, as late as 1910. Other whites in places like Brazil were still enslaving Africans up to the end of slavery there in 1880.

"The Apaches and Iroquois were brutal mothers -- not only to the White Man, but to other Indians."

Wrong yet again. Coulter is confusing being good warriors and having good military tactics with brutality. The historical record shows some whites slaughtering Apache and Iroquois civilians, women, children, elderly, burning villages and food stores, and the rape of women and girls, far more than the other way around.

"In fact, a lot of the initial contacts between European settlers and Indians in the East -- we're required not to know this now - consisted of completely unprovoked attacks by the Indians."

Interesting that Coulter could not name one single instance of that actually happening. The simple reason is that there were no cases like that. Some European "settlers," on the other hand, practiced genocide against the Pequots who had done nothing to provoke it. The Pilgrims and Roger's Rangers both practiced cannibalism, eating dead American Indian corpses. In King Phillip's War, many English colonists even slaughtered huge numbers of Christian Indians who had committd no offense.

"It was the Cherokees who really got screwed, which was entirely the doing of racist scumbag Andrew Jackson, Democrat. Jackson broke treaties, evicted the Cherokees and sent them off to Oklahoma. Did I mention that Jackson was a Democrat?"

Did Coulter also mention that the Democrats were a conservative party at the time? No? What a surprise.

"In New England, the settlers were perfectly fair to the Indians -- much nicer than the Spanish were. "

Wrong yet again, in several ways. In New England, the settlers WERE the Indians, who had settled villages and agriculture. Europeans were the nomads coming from thousands of miles away. Again, these Europeans wanderers practiced wars of extermination against the Pequots and even against Christianized Indians in praying towns.

The Spanish actually had a far better record, which is why there are so many more Indians south of the Rio Grande than north of it. Spanish heros like Bartholome de Las Casas argued conquest was un-Christian and the work of Satan. But of course Coulter has to smear the Spanish since she sees them as "less white."

"The French were supposedly the most benign, but that's because the French never sent people to America in great numbers."

Wrong again. Actually the French were the most benign because they depended on Natives for the fur trade.

"The first instinct of the English was to make treaties with the Indians and purchase their land, not to steal it."

The first instinct and practice of the English was to go to war. They generally made treaties when they were losing to Natives.

"The worst thing that happened to the Indians in New England was that they had no immunity from European diseases like smallpox. Despite the claims of semi-retards like fake-Indian Ward Churchill, it is preposterous that this was done intentionally."

Wrong again. We have the diary of British General Amherst himself stating that smallpox was spread intentionally.

And it's more than a little ironic for Coulter to complain about Ward Churchill when she's promoting a white supremacist imposter like Yeagley. Didn't Yeagley's resemblance to Michael Jackson, post-surgeries, give her a clue that he's not Native?

"The settlers wouldn't have known enough about transmission of diseases to do it on purpose."

Wrong again. Try repeating this after me, Ms. Coulter: You don't have to be white to be a settler. It is racist to equate white with settler or settled.

People knew enough about the transmission of disease to practice biological warfare even in ancient times. Many ancietn and medieval armies tried to break sieges using dead animals to infect cities or their water supplies.

"Violating Indian treaties was generally not official government policy."

Wrong again. Without exception, every last treaty the US had with Natives was broken.

"The problem was that settlers just kept moving into Indian territories and the government didn't stop them -- much like illegal immigration today."

So would Coulter deport all whites west of the original thirteen colonies?

Didn't think so.

"Republicans have a good record on Indians because we admire fighters. From George Washington and the Federalists to Richard Nixon, right-wingers have treated Indians well."

Coulter conspicuously left out Reagan, who directly caused the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Indians in Guatemala, El Salvador, and elsewhere. Washington called for the extermination of Natives. Nixon used federal agents to crush Native activism and civil rights movements. As my conservative mentor, Donald Parman, pointed out to me, Nixon made a few token concessions to Natives so his party could give the appearance of not being racist but would not have to give concessions to Blacks. After all, South Dakota and Oklahoma weren't important states for Republicans to win, but the Deep South was. Many important rights for Native people were also won during the Carter administration.

"Even when Democrats were supposed to be the big multicultural party, the one Indian in the Senate, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, became a Republican."

Coulter keeps falling for whom she thinks is an Native. Jodi Rave recently wrote an article pointing out that Ben Campbell is actually Portugese.

"All true right-wingers are big Indian fans."

A lot of rightwingers are big fans of what they IMAGINE Indians to be like. Many others, like David Duke, Pat Buchanan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, are vicious racists who openly despise Natives. Many rightwingers also promote people they falsely believe to be Indians, such as Ben Campbell and, of course, David Yeagley. As I already pointed out, Reagan has the blood of a lot of Native people on his hands, and Nixon did all he could to crush Native activism.

To paraphrase what Yeagley often says, Republicans do nothing for Indians but kill them, take away their rights, or tell lies about them.

"Ridiculous court rulings have made reservations havens for gambling, which is a real sickness."

Wrong yet again. Native gaming makes up only 2% of the gambling in the US. Christian churches, white businessmen like Donald Trump, and overseas gambling from Great Britain each make up a far greater share of gambling than Native tribes. Coulter is either race baiting or ignorant.

"[Indians] are a nationality, as distinct a group within America as the Mormons, the Amish, Hassidic Jews, and the Osbourne family."

Wrong one more time. Natives are actually HUNDREDS of nations, as distinct from each other as Swedes are from Greeks. Or as distinct as Coulter and Yeagley are from actual conservatives or decent human beings.

"[Indian mascots] is a completely synthetic issue ginned up by idiot liberals to create more whining victims."

Wrong yet one more time. Leaders opposing "Indian" mascots are all from within Native communities, highly respected people like Charlene Teeters and Dr. Cornel Pewewardy. I do not know of one single activist on the mascot issue who is either white or a liberal.

"The idea that Indian mascots are condescending toward Indians is insane."

Not condescending, which is what Coulter is being throughout this interview. Indian mascots are racist, ignorant, and stereotypical.

"Republicans consider Indians valued and honored members of our community and view them with real veneration -- not the sentimental crap you get from liberals."

It's curious that Yeagley didn't speak up here, because he's one of the biggest defenders of that "sentimental crap" i.e. stereotypes of the Noble Savage.

"Fenimore Cooper established the Indian as the archetype of American freedom."

Actually most scholars would say that happened much earlier with people like Ben Franklin and Rousseau. Cooper established many of the early stereotypes. More talented writers like Mark Twain mocked Cooper endlessly.

"Okay, fine, we'll live like the Indians, but start getting used to a fair amount of cruelty to animals."

Cruelty? Since when have American Indians done anything even remotely close to Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo?

Through this and other articles, Coulter confirms her place in life as a professional bigot for profit, a woman utterly out of balance with the world around her who should be pitied as much as defended against. She apparently has added American Indians to the list of groups she feels she can disparage without fear of damage to her career, alongside Arabs, Muslims, and gays. That Yeagley spent the interview soliciting these opinions and aproving of them only shows how little credilibity his claim of being Comanche or speaking for American Indians should be given.

To find out more about Yeagley's lies and false claims, see not only www.davidyeagley.org, but also the brand new www.badeagle.org.

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