Derek Wall of the UK Green party took credit at at the beginning of 2008 for urging former member of Congress Cynthia McKinney to run as Green party candidate for president of the US.
According to Wall at the time:
…Cynthia could be the first third-party candidate to make a real impact.
…..
Neither Clinton nor Obama look like ending the war in Iraq, supporting justice for Palestinians or taking radical action to deal with climate change. A strong green challenge could shift the US political system – that decaying plutocracy – in a fresh direction.So, I am saying, “Go Cynthia, go”; you might just do it.
I tried to let Wall down easy:
No, Derek. She won’t.
Nonetheless, Wall and other contributors to the Socialist Unity blog frequently and warmly praised McKinney and her campaign over the course of last year, although Andy Newman did express disappointment that she lost the plot when she asserted that the US government dumped the bodies of 5,000 executed prisoners in a Louisiana swamp during the week of Hurricane Katrina. The problem with this is that it assumes McKinney until that moment had a plot to lose. (She had earlier come out as a 9/11 truther.)
Despite this support, and the coveted endorsement of Mumia Abu-Jamal, McKinney– whose stated goal was to win 5 percent of the vote– finished with a more modest one-tenth of one percent, well behind even Ralph Nader.
Did this overwhelming rejection feed McKinney’s conspiracy obsessions? (i.e., “I would have done better if it hadn’t been for– them.”)
I posted about McKinney’s recent participation in a London conference sponsored by an antisemitic Malaysian foundation. I also linked to Adam Holland’s post about her endorsement of the antisemitic conspiracy theories of Matthias Chang.
Adam Holland continues to monitor McKinney’s tumble into the antisemitic abyss and her increasing popularity among the Jew-hating element of the extreme right.
I found this segment– from an interview McKinney did on a far-right antisemitic internet radio program called “The Information Underground”– especially telling:
Q: I have the name of a guy who joined the army in 1991 during the first Gulf War. I have reviewed several videos (of?) the former PR guy for the Democrats, Dick Morris. Morris said that Bill Clinton was afraid of only one guy and it was this guy. He’s got Jew nationality and Jew loyalties. The name “Megef” (?) comes to mind when I talk about this guy, Rahm Emanuel. Is there somebody giving more instructions to Rahm Emanuel or am I completely way off?
McKinney: I think that what you’re talking about is who controls the U.S. government. There are people in the front and the American people go through the exercise of electing their representatives on every level, including congressional and the presidency. But who really calls the shots? And I think one could look at my career, honestly, and say “well, maybe it’s not Congress who are making the policy”. And you can just look at the monied interests . . . the special interests. The special interests basically rule. And the people take a back seat to the special interests.
That’s right– instead of responding instantly and angrily to the hateful mention of “Jew nationality and Jew loyalties,” McKinney blathered on about control of the US government by the “monied interests.” By failing to challenge the blatant antisemitism of the question, she in effect endorsed it.
Again, this should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed her career. As far as I know, McKinney never publicly repudiated her father’s claim after her loss in a 2002 Congressional primary that “Jews have bought everybody. Jews. J-E-W-S.”
Perhaps understandably, Socialist Unity hasn’t had anything to say about Cynthia McKinney since last December, when she was a passenger on a “peace boat” blocked by the Israeli navy from reaching Gaza during the war there. But they haven’t denounced any of her recent outbursts. And the US Green party continues to feature her increasingly bizarre “commentary.”
