SCOTUS Goes All In on Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook with Affirmative Action and LGBTQ+ Rulings

SUMMARY: This blog post discusses two significant recent SCOTUS decisions concerning affirmative action and LGBTQ+ rights. The tenets of Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook as itemized in a previous post are applied to each decision. The only rational conclusion is that SCOTUS is no longer concerned with the application of law but of the furtherance of propaganda and political rhetoric.

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KEYWORDS: Affirmative action, Color-blind society, LGBTQ+ rights, Equality, Discrimination, Hitler, Propaganda

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This week the Supremes handed down some major breathtaking decisions that departed from decades of precedence and used some pretty twisted logic to support their conclusions. Ye Olde Blogge is not a legally focused enterprise, so this post will refrain from legal interpretations and commentary. However, it will focus on the way the opinions fit the propaganda narrative of the right and have jettisoned any pretext of adhering to the legal traditions and norms of the US.

SCOTUS has become nazified. It is as simple as that. It has openly adopted Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook and is busy spewing forth lies, deceit, and twisted reasoning. Let’s take a closer look at two of its most damaging and recent rulings: the affirmative action case and the fake website maker objecting to making a fake gay wedding website for a fake gay wedding and apply the findings of Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook from the previous post.

Affirmative Action and a Color Blind Society

In John Robert’s majority opinion, he has joined the GOP in gaslighting the nation and trying to convince us that up is down, hot is cold, and we are no longer a racist society because we are color blind. The Constitution, according to him, should be interpreted as being race neutral. There are several reasons why this idea is not only problematic but follows the propaganda playbook.

America Isn’t Color Blind

When someone tells you they don’t see race, they are gaslighting you. You can’t help but see race. Essentially, race describes someone’s skin tone and color. It is the most prominent physical feature we have. It is one of the most difficult to change, just ask Michael Jackson, and it is the first thing we perceive when we look at someone.

What’s more, we all have associations with skin color. We can’t help it. We are human. Those associations inform our response to the person we are seeing.

Trying to deny this is denying reality, which is tantamount to madness. The Supreme Court is gaslighting us.

Race is in the Constitution

It certainly isn’t the case that our Constitution is color blind, either. Three-fifths compromise, anyone? The admission of free and slave states in tandem? And, then there are the amendments:

• THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT outlawed slavery, except among prisoners, thus the prison-industrial complex and the school to prison pipeline. And, the unequal incarceration of Black people. Funny how that works.
• THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT was passed to stop racist traitorous Southern states from denying their former slaves their rights under the law.
• THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT was adopted to stop the traitorous anti-democratic Southerners from preventing their Black citizens from voting.

Even though they don’t mention race explicitly, the debate around their writing and passage makes it clear to any all originalists and textualists that they were intended to equalize the treatment of Blacks. It is clear to any Harvard or Yale educated lawyer, which all of the SCOTUS justices are, so this ruling and contradicts all of the traditions and norms of our legal system.

Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook and the Affirmative Action Ruling

Let’s look at what specific recommendations of the playbook this ruling supports or enacts.

• NEVER ALLOW THE PUBLIC TO COOL OFF: White grievance stays front and center in MAGAland. Affirmative action to white eyes seems unfair because white people only see things from the white perspective. We don’t see the legacy and donor admissions, the better school districts, higher levels of literacy, the tutors and SAT courses that all advantage white kids on the whole. We just see liberals shuffling undeserving lazy Black and Brown takers to the front of the line disparaging all of our hard work.
• NEVER CONCEDE THAT THERE MAY BE SOME GOOD IN YOUR ENEMY: Conservatives treat the rest of us like we’re foreigners — diseased, dirty, uncouth. This ruling confirms that the liberal justices do not share the wholesome values of white supremacists. There is no good to be found in liberal America.
• NEVER LEAVE ROOM FOR ALTERNATIVES: The ruling carves out an exception for the service academies because we need the Blacks and Browns to fight and die for white America, we just don’t need them in the professional class. There were other ways to approach this situation, one that could include legacy and donor admissions, you know anything that gave a candidate an unfair advantage.
• PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE A BIG LIE SOONER THAN A LITTLE ONE: We give the Court the benefit of the doubt — or at least did before the Roberts Court came along. We assume that the justices are doing their best to interpret and apply the law within the bounds of our customs and norms. This Court told a huge whopper that anyone with even a modicum of understanding of how unequal the social outcomes are for Blacks and Browns in our country are could not possibly believe.
• IF YOU REPEAT A IT [LIE] FREQUENTLY ENOUGH PEOPLE WILL SOONER OR LATER BELIEVE IT: White America is desperate to believe that they are not racist at heart. We are so desperate, we won’t even discuss it for fear of confronting our own inner racist. If the Roberts Court continues spouting the lie that the only way to stop discrimination is to not discriminate, which this ruling doesn’t do, then white people will come to believe it.

LGBTQ+ Rights

There is the equally outrageous ruling that a woman with sInCeReLy HeLd ReLiGiOuS bElIeFs should be allowed to be as homophobic as she wants to be even though no one asked her to violate her beliefs. She might could one day maybe be interested in making a website for a wedding so maybe the courts need to preemptively excuse her homophobia?

• NEVER ALLOW THE PUBLIC TO COOL OFF: The GOP sees the gays as being an ideal wedge issue because they lack theory of mind. They can’t imagine that anyone would want to be around a gay person, so assaulting gay rights from the religious fervor angle is win-win since they are all about being so Christian and turning the other cheek and doing unto others and all that.
• TAKE ADVANTAGE OF EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO RAISE A POLITICAL WHIRLWIND: If the legal pundits are correct, this case should’ve never been accepted by any court since it was all just projection and fantasy, so that the Court accepted it just took advantage of an opportunity to keep the issue alive and chip away at hard fought gains.
• NEVER CONCEDE THAT THERE MAY BE SOME GOOD IN YOUR ENEMY: This ruling puts the scapegoat target squarely on the backs of the LGBTQ+ community. They are making it open season on the gays. Soon we’ll be seeing No LGBTQ+ people allowed signs in store windows and stand your ground laws used to defend murderous homophobes.
• NEVER LEAVE ROOM FOR ALTERNATIVES: The principle that we operate under is that we cannot discriminate against a person for a quality that they could not reasonably be expected to change. When two rights conflict, the court is to balance the rights of both parties. There was no attempt to do that here.
• PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE A BIG LIE SOONER THAN A LITTLE ONE: The lie that the Court is propagating is one of religious freedom. They are saying that if you have a “sincerely” held religious belief, you cannot be compelled to violate it ever under any circumstances. Except of course you can if your sincerely held religious belief isn’t conservative Christian, like say wearing a hijab or dreads or a Star of David. If your religious belief requires you to turn away ten percent of the public — ten percent is the best guesstimate for proportion of the population that is LGBTQ+ — then, maybe you shouldn’t be in business or in a public facing job.
• IF YOU REPEAT A IT [LIE] FREQUENTLY ENOUGH PEOPLE WILL SOONER OR LATER BELIEVE IT: They want the public, meaning non-white non-conservative-Christians to believe that Christians are being persecuted and deprived of their rights when “forced” to violate their beliefs, but those beliefs cannot be so stringent as to impact a large segment of the population. They want you to believe that trans women are just men wanting to get a glimpse of someone tinkling in a public restroom. We can’t trust some pervert not use the trans bathroom laws as an excuse to indulge their perversion, but no one would ever abuse a sincerely held Christian belief just to harm a class of people they dislike. That’s what they want us to accept.

With these two rulings and the student loan case demonstrates that we are no longer a country of laws. The Court has thrown off any mantle of impartiality. They don’t care about their reputation. For the conservative justices the ends justify the means and they put their self-interest, religious, and social views above those of the rest of us. They know better than the majority of Americans what a more perfect union means and all people are created equal.

Hopefully, these decisions will keep the electorate agitated and fired up to vote against the GOP and the anti-democratic forces in this country because if it wasn’t clear before that our democracy is ending, it should be now.

Image Attribution

“Blind Justice” by michaelpickard is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.