Kevin Petersen, who campaigned with state representative Glenn Gruenhagen (R, Glencoe) for the constitutional amendment to limit the freedom to marry to straight people, is arguably one of the odder figures in Minnesota state politics.
Readers may remember Petersen from our 2013 post, In bizarre floor action, Gruenhagen roils entire body of Minnesota House with "ex-gay" friend. The incident went national the next day on Huffington Post, Think Progress and other venues. Or from the factually-challenged bizarre anti-gay video claiming HIV is transmitted in sweat that Gruenhagen and Petersen's Pro-Marriage Amendment Forum created in an effort to defeat the Safe Schools bill.
Last night on his Facebook page, Peterson posted a bizarre response to the objections of some African-American community leaders to the finding of the grand jury investigation of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. He wrote:
When reading any Al Sharpton-like response to the Ferguson verdict (or Trevon Martin verdict) just replace the word "African-Americans" with "Germans" and "White America" with "Jew"...
...and it all makes sense.
We're not sure how any of that makes sense as an analogy, as an understanding of the discourse of race in America, or as anything other than a very odd sense of injured merit on Petersen's part. Surely he's not suggesting that African-Americans objecting to police shooting unarmed black men are like Hitler spurring Germans toward committing mass, organized genocide against Jews.
The status isn't even an illustration of Godwin's Law, as it simply appeared magically on Petersen's page rather than as a debate-stopper on a longer thread. It's more along the lines of Ted Nugent's Ferguson-inspired rant comparing Sharpton to the Ku Klux Klan, though blessedly not as potty-mouthed.
We'll file it under "Things Glenn Gruenhagen and His Friends Think About Black People," along with Gruenhagen's infamous floor statement that the government pays "minority" men to impregnate women.
Here's a screenshot of Petersen's status:
Photo: Representative Glenn Gruenhagen (R, Glencoe), left, and his ex-gay friend Kevin Petersen, right, on the "Speechless" public access cable show in 2012. They were discussing the efforts of the Pro-Marriage Amendment Forum, a group they founded, to pass the amendment to restrict the freedom to marry in Minnesota to only opposite-gender couples.
You can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or use the paypal button below:
Email subscribers can contribute via this link to paypal; use email sally.jo.sorensen at gmail.com as recipient.
I'm loath to try to understand such a comment, but I think it goes beyond just a claim that White Americans are the oppressed (like German Jews of the 1930s) and African Americans are the oppressors (like the Nazi-dominated Germans of the 1930s). Rather, I think he is claiming that the African Americans are justifying their actions through a mythology of victimization by Whites in the same way that the Nazis used a mythology in which the Germans were alleged to have been victimized by Jews, so that any violence was merely an upwelling of righteous indignation.
In particular, I suspect Mr. Petersen may have been thinking of the events of November 9-10, 1938, which the Nazis called "Reichskristallnacht" or more briefly "Kristallnacht," though more neutral parties prefer "Novemberpogrome." That was a deliberately organized pogrom against Jews, but it was justified as having been spontaneously released anger by the German people at alleged Jewish wrongdoing. In particular, it was allegedly touched off by the shooting of vom Rath by Grynszspan, but was also not coincidentally on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the armistice.
Ever since 1918, the German right (first the DNVP, then the Nazis) had claimed that the war was not lost by the Army, but rather by a "stab in the back" by some odd mixture of international socialists and war profiteers, who despite their class differences had in common their Jewishness. In the intervening 20 years, the Germans had endured terrible economic privation and sporadic outbursts of violence, and all that too was the Jews' fault, according to the right.
So, when Herschel Grynszpan (Darren Wilson) fired his bullet at the innocent Ernst vom Rath (Michael Brown), the outrage could plausibly be claimed to have touched off a firestorm of long-built-up resentment in the German people (African Americans) that allegedly caused them to spontaneously pillage the shops of the Jews (White Americans), although really the rioting was deliberately organized -- by the Nazis in one case, by some mysterious unnamed party (Sharpton?) in the other.
At least, I think that is the claim Petersen is making.
Editor's response: that's an interesting analysis which might be what Petersen was driving at. However, it's some mythic Sharpton, rather than the real one, whose speech today was included in a National Public Radio report about the verdict. The real Sharpton was urging engagement while condemning violent responses to the grand jury's findings. Not exactly Kristallnacht in any sense.
Posted by: Max Hailperin | Nov 25, 2014 at 03:25 PM