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‘Critical Race Theory’ Was Weaponized Against Obama In 2012 — And Flopped

‘Critical Race Theory’ Was Weaponized Against Obama In 2012 — And Flopped

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

A few weeks before he died, Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart teased his masterplan to take down President Barack Obama ahead of the 2012 election. In part, the plan relied on associating Democrats with the little known academic study of systemic racism called "critical race theory" and rendering it radical and toxic enough to damage them in the upcoming election cycle.

"This election we're going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008," Breitbart declared during a speech at Conservative Political Action Conference. "The videos are going to come out."

The most-hyped video among the ones Breitbart promised was ironically already publicly available and had been reported on during the 2008 election. It finally surfaced after Breitbart's death in early March 2012. The footage showed a law-school era Obama who was then the president of the Harvard Law Review talking about and hugging an academic named Derrick Bell at a 1990 protest. The video was supposedly evidence of Obama embracing — literally in this case — extreme anti-white views.

As Joel Pollak, then-editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, would tell CNN's Soledad O'Brien, "Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia. He passed away last year, but during his lifetime, he developed a theory called critical race theory which holds that the civil rights movement was a sham and that white supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown."

Ultimately, the smear attempt flopped. But it marked conservative media's first crack — led by Breitbart, Steve Bannon (who at the time was a board member of Breitbart News Network), and their employees — at poisoning the specific phrase "critical race theory" and seeding it in the wider public discourse.

This attempt may also partly explain why the current fear-mongering about critical race theory spread so fast and successfully. Right-wing media and activists, as well as their peers at conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute, seem to know exactly what they are doing because they have dusted off the same playbook from 2012. And they even share some of the same funders.

Hug-Gate: Breitbart's Campaign Against Derrick Bell

Back in 2012, Breitbart and the rest of the conservative media apparatus were laser focused on painting Obama as a secret radical ahead of that year's general election — a tactic not all that much different from what they had tried in 2008. In fact, Andrew Breitbart's final written piece, published posthumously, connectedObama to famed leftist organizer Saul Alinsky.

Once the hug video was published, Breitbart flooded its homepage with stories about Bell and his supposed transgressions. Between March 7 and March 14, 2012, the site published dozens of video clips and articles purportedly exposing Bell, Obama, and critical race theory.

Then-Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro, a familiar face from the current discourse on critical race theory, painted Bell as a Louis Farrakhan-loving antisemite whose work Obama loved and assigned as reading in his law school classes.

On March 7, 2012, Shapiro authored a story headlined "Obama: 'Open Up Your Hearts And Your Minds' To Racialist Prof" in which he wrote: "This is just the beginning. And this video is a smoking gun showing that Barack Obama not only associated with radicals, he was their advocate."

Open up your hearts and minds -- Shapiro

Pollak and Shapiro also appeared on Hannity on March 7 to discuss their "exclusive" scoop.

On March 11, 2012, Shapiro penned a supposed critical race theory explainer in which he claimed that Obama's entire administration was "an ode to CRT."

In the months that followed, Shapiro's "CRT" motif was apparent in Breitbart's coverage of the administration. There were suggestions that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who graduated from Harvard Law in 1986, was suddenly an ardent proponent of critical race theory, as was deputy White House counsel Cassandra Butts.

At one point, Pollak suggested that then-Attorney General Eric Holder's infamous statement about the United States being a "nation of cowards" on race was evidence that Holder — and likely the rest of the Justice Department — were also under the spell of critical race theory.

In the end, the effort to paint the Obama administration as a bunch of secret radicals stationing critical race theorists at the head of every public institution was short-lived. Even reactionary Fox personalities like Geraldo Rivera and Bill O'Reilly panned Breitbart's big scoop in March.

Same funders, same playbook, different year

Fast forward to 2021 and right-wing circles are rabid with critical race theory outrage. Republican state legislatures are promoting legislation to curb it — even when they don't know what it is. School board meetings are being overrun by conservative activists who are organizing online. At every level, the GOP is betting on its new boogeyman to convert "racial anxiety into political energy" ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

And once again, Breitbart is publishing scores of articles about "critical race theory." Some are even written by the same guy, Joel Pollak, who was pushing the same narrative back in 2012.

Ben Shapiro, now one of the most popular conservative pundits in the country, is once again helping lead the right-wing media campaign against critical race theory. But this time his megaphone is bigger, broadcasting the same talking points about critical race theory to his millions of followers on major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Per Media Matters' internal data, Shapiro is responsible for 13 of the top 20 posts (receiving the most interactions) about critical race theory on Facebook since the 2020 election. Last month, we reported that among Facebook pages that post about politics, nearly 90 percent of the posts that mention critical race theory were by right-leaning pages.

There are even similarities in the dark money behind the 2012 and 2021 efforts. Robert Mercer (advised by Bannon, who became executive chairman of Breitbart after Andrew Breitbart's death) infamously financed Andrew Breitbart's early smear campaigns. His daughter Rebekah has donated large sums of money to two think tanks that seem to be behind the newest weaponization of critical race theory. Bannon, for his part, is now predicting the current anti-"critical race theory" campaign will not only win the House of Representatives back for Republicans in 2022, but may also prove to be a right-wing presidential winner in 2024.

Nearly a decade later, Breitbart News' failed smear of critical race theory is back — and this time it appears to be working.

Research contributions from Carly Evans.

‘A Threat Of Fascist Violence’ Hinted By Trump In Breitbart Interview

‘A Threat Of Fascist Violence’ Hinted By Trump In Breitbart Interview

Speaking with Breitbart News, President Donald Trump delivered a garbled but nevertheless disturbing statement in an article published Thursday that many interpreted as a prediction — or possibly a threat — of political violence.

Though the outlet didn’t provide an outright transcript or quote the questions Trump was responding to, it said the following remark came in a discussion about “how the left is fighting hard”:

You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad. But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress … with all this invest[igations]—that’s all they want to do is –you know, they do things that are nasty. Republicans never played this.

As is often the case with Trump’s rambling answers and statements, it’s not entirely obvious what he means here. But he seems to be suggesting that while Democrats “play” at being tough — presumably, by using the formal powers of Congress and the courts to check and restrain his power on occasion — Republicans and his supporters are really tough. The clear implication being that, if Democrats go too far (by doing what? Uncovering his criminal activity? Winning the next election?) his supporters will resort to extreme measures to fight back.
Most troublingly, he refers to the “military” as his supporters — implying it may be more loyal to him personally than to the office he holds.

This is…a threat of fascist violence by the President ?” said MSNBC host Chris Hayes, responding to the remarks on Twitter.

Writing for the Washington Post, Greg Sargent reminded us that Trump has played this game before, most notably when he suggested that ‘Second Amendment people” might somehow be able to stop Hillary Clinton from appointing judges if she were elected president.

We shouldn’t casually accuse the president of threatening political violence. But Trump’s garbled vagueness, his apparent inability to express a complete thought at times, often serves his purpose better than explicit threats would. Members of his party might have to actually say something against him if he genuinely threatened that he’d use the military or the police or a group of violent supporters to maintain his grip on power. So he won’t say that explicitly. But he’ll plant the seed of the idea — enough to provoke and inspire fear, but not enough to earn condemnation.

Lawrence O’Donnell, another MSNBC host, responded to Hayes’ comment by arguing that Trump’s remarks seem to be more a “hope” than a threat.

“Trump’s supporters aren’t as bad & violent & criminal as he hopes they are,” he said. “They peacefully watched President Obama inaugurated twice. They’ll do that again for the next Democrat. Let’s not help him fan his imaginary flame.”

Others have been critical of the idea that Trump is slouching toward authoritarianism, pointing out that he’s actually a particularly weak leader. His defeat in the Senate on Thursday, for example, showed that he has much less control over elected members of his own party than he might hope for.

But Trump’s weakness is not a counterpoint to his authoritarian streak. In fact, that weakness may be a necessary condition of it. If Trump were a powerful leader within democratic strictures, maintaining the ability to convince lawmakers and voters to support his agenda and expertly overcoming legal objections, he’d have no need to resort to authoritarian measures like the exploitation of the National Emergencies Act to seize funds for a border wall.

It’s when he’s at his weakest — when his party abandons him, when the rule of law threatens to constrain him — that he’s most likely to lash out and break the bonds of normal democratic governance. That’s when his off-hand suggestions of violence and his dismissal of the legitimacy of any opposition become truly scary.

Danziger: Nomertà

Danziger: Nomertà

The Breitbartification Of CPAC

The Breitbartification Of CPAC

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters for America.

“My biggest fear is that later this week I will be among the legions at CPAC rearranging the furniture,” wrote Andrew Breitbart just days before the first Conservative Political Action Conference of President Barack Obama’s administration. “Instead, the conservative movement needs to think in revolutionary terms.”

Eight years later, Breitbart has passed away, but the revolution he started is at its peak: the media company he founded is everywhere at CPAC, and his successor is in the White House working for Breitbart News’ chosen candidate.

Former editor Milo Yiannopoulos is no longer on the program, but seven Breitbart editors and reporters will participate in panels and or give speeches at the conference this week. (In an almost certainly related note, Breitbart is a “Partnering Sponsor” of the event, the highest level.)

White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, who took over the website following its founder’s death, will appear alongside White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp today for a “conversation” intended to show that the Republican Party establishment and the fringe outsiders who pushed President Donald Trump to victory in the 2016 presidential primaries are united.

And of course, after he pulled out of speaking at last year’s conference following a backlash from conservative critics, Trump himself will loom over the conference, with an address scheduled for Friday morning.

Andrew Breitbart himself dominated CPAC in the early years of the decade. He strode through the conference like a rock star, granting media interviews, greeting cheering supporters, confronting liberal provocateurs, and scouting for new talent. His annual speech-screeds drew large audiences far more interested in hearing his rants against journalists and other elites than a sober speech from a Republican politician or think-tanker.

“I’m old, so I remember CPAC before Andrew Breitbart: Quiet,” wrote David Weigel in 2012. “Since 2010, the first CPAC after Breibart’s Big Government released James O’Keefe’s ACORN video investigations, Breitbart’s appearances at the conference have begun with media interviews, continued with assorted people confronting him on video, and ended with his own speeches, full of nostalgia for the stuff that just happened.”

Weeks after his 2012 CPAC appearance, at which he famously freaked out at liberal protestors, Breitbart suddenly passed away. Bannon took the reins, and began turning the website Andrew Breitbart founded into “the platform for the alt-right.”

The following year, CPAC celebrated the first anniversary of Breitbart’s passing. Hundreds of CPAC attendees showed up for events intended to remember the right-wing media mogul. A standing-room-only showing of his final documentary was followed by a panel featuring his former colleagues and friends, followed by a cocktail party. In 2014, the paeans continued as CPAC rolled out the Andrew Breitbart First Amendment Award (radio host Mark Levin was the first recipient; Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson was the second).

But even as CPAC showered love on Andrew Breitbart’s memory, under Bannon’s leadership, the website he founded was suggesting that the conference was too politically correct and overly dominated by the establishment. In 2013 and 2014, Breitbart News hosted “The Uninvited” sessions during CPAC featuring anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, and fringe figures not welcome at the conference itself.

Notably, The Uninvited sessions featured Frank Gaffney, the founder of the Center for Security Policy — which the Southern Poverty Law Center characterizes as “a conspiracy-oriented mouthpiece for the growing anti-Muslim movement in the United States.”

Andrew Breitbart once hired Gaffney to help run his national security website; he still contributes to Breitbart.com. And Bannon loves Gaffney, calling him “one of the senior thought leaders and men of action in this whole war against Islamic radical jihad.” But Gaffney was persona non grata at CPAC for years because he is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who accused two members of CPAC’s board of being secret supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (he has returned in recent years and is on the 2017 agenda).

The situation was bad enough that after he became chairman of the American Conservative Union, which oversees CPAC, Matt Schlapp invited Breitbart editor Matt Boyle to the ACU’s headquarters for a lengthy interview in February 2015. Schlapp and his staff, in fairly obsequious fashion, pitched Boyle on how that year’s CPAC would be more responsive to Breitbart.com’s concerns.

CPAC had “drifted away from the core values of conservatism” but now, “concerted efforts by the ACU to listen to grassroots concerns about the direction of the landmark conference, the organization is now emerging as stronger, more conservative and more united,” Boyle concluded following the presentation.

In the two years since, the Republican establishment has been routed by the Breitbart-led forces who pushed Trump to the front of the Republican presidential primary field and supported him at every step of the way. Bannon moved seamlessly from head of Breitbart, to head of Trump’s campaign, to Trump’s top White House aide.

In addition to Trump and Bannon, attendees at this year’s CPAC will have the opportunity to see Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow interview a Republican congressman on tax reform. They can watch Breitbart UK chief Raheem Kassam introduce Nigel Farage, his former boss at the right-wing UK Independence Party. Breitbart’s Frances Martel and John Carney will be moderating panels on “China’s Expansion” and “Repealing Obama’s Banking Monstrosity,” while Joel Pollak and Sonnie Johnson are on panels discussing trade policy and how the left hates cops. James Delingpole will be leading “CPAC Conversations” on energy.

Breitbart.com spent years shilling for Trump’s candidacy. Now Trump will swagger through the conference that Andrew Breitbart once owned, while the news site he created is a dominant force at CPAC. An ascendent Breitbart.com and President Trump are truly Andrew Breitbart’s greatest legacy.

IMAGE: Media Matters