EDWARD CLINE: AL SHARPTON’S THUGGISH FUND RAISING
http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2015/01/al-sharptons-thuggish-fund-raising.html
Al Sharpton’s notoriety stems not only from his repellent bigotry, but also from his skill for practicing extortion on corporations for “donations.”
Having had my stomach full of news about Al Sharpton, the card sharp of racism, I decided to search the Internet for more information on him. Quite by chance in the course of my search I happened upon a few articles which detailed how Adolf Hitler was able to persuade so many German businesses and industries to support the burgeoning and noisy NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers Party, or the Nazi Party) from the 1920’s on up through his accession of the Chancellorship in 1933 . I read many of these articles and book reviews, suspecting, and as it turned out, rightly, that Al Sharpton’s methods of garnering public and not-so-public support and money for his National Action Now (NAN) organization, emulated those of Hitler and the Nazis.
A black “NSDAP,” or, if you will, a National Socialist Black Workers Party (NSBAP)? Or, just plain NAN? Sharpton professes much interest in and anger over the plight of the “economically oppressed and exploited” black man. If there is any truth to Sharpton’s rants, it is that the Democratic Party and its economic policies are responsible for black unemployment and also its “social” policies of keeping blacks dependent on government largesse (aka, handouts and entitlements). Or, as some pundits would have it: Keeping them on the welfare state plantation. But this is something Sharpton will never recognize or permit. Manumitting blacks from Democratic possession and thralldom would liberate them from him and from government dependency.
Hitler’s addresses to German businessmen were, to put it mildly, preliminary shakedowns. Later, after he seized power in 1933, would come the arm-twisting, openly soliciting the “cooperation” of big business – or else face nationalization and/or a one-way trip to a concentration camp.
Reading up on how Hitler cajoled, persuaded, and subtly threatened German business executives and tycoons to support the Nazi Party with financial donations or at least to speak well of it or not actively oppose it concerning the Party’s vision and plans for economic recovery, I noted that Sharpton’s extortionate methods differ not a whit from Hitler’s.
Hitler gave over 5,000 speeches during his career as a political activist and agitator and later as Führer. He spoke frequently at business get-togethers and formal meetings of various business associations. At the same time, most of these businessmen and associations gave in nearly equal sums to the various competing parties that were vying for political power in the Reich of the Weimar Republic, except to the Communists. Like many American companies today seeking protection from expected political mischief, they played both sides of the fence and then some.
Sharpton apparently studies the field of American businesses to spot ones that might be open to boycotting and public browbeating over alleged discriminatory practices against blacks (and sometimes against Latinos) and makes his move. In typical “community organizer” style, he employs the Alinsky tactic of targeting a “mark,” isolating it, and fulminating against it with as much fiery media-friendly bombast as his limited vocabulary can muster. He invents problems where none before existed. Sooner or later the “mark” caves under scurrilous publicity (with a big assist from the MSM), makes concessions, and donates money to NAN.
Like his ally in race politics, Jesse Jackson, Sharpton poses as a firebrand for justice, but his notion of “justice” is of the liberal, Progressive brand, “social justice.” He declaims in his semi-literate, raucous way for entitlements rather than civil or natural rights. His sole skill has been to set fire to asbestos. He is a career arsonist of racial harmony with a vested interest in social turmoil and political conflagrations and likes to see that harmony go up in smoke. He is a racist and race hustler with a stake in racism. Without racism, real or imagined, he, like Jesse Jackson, would be an obscure Baptist preacher in a store-front church no one would have any reason to know about.
The New York Post’s article of June 15th, 2008, “Rev. Al Soaks Up Boycott Bucks” listed several companies that were subjected to Sharpton’s card sharp tactics.
Anheuser-Busch gave him six figures, Colgate-Palmolive shelled out $50,000 and Macy’s and Pfizer have contributed thousands to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s charity. Almost 50 companies – including PepsiCo, General Motors, Wal-Mart, FedEx, Continental Airlines, Johnson & Johnson and Chase – and some labor unions sponsored Sharpton’s National Action Network annual conference in April [in 2008].
Terrified of negative publicity, fearful of a consumer boycott or eager to make nice with the civil-rights activist, CEOs write checks, critics say, to NAN and Sharpton – who brandishes the buying power of African-American consumers. In some cases, they hire him as a consultant.
Most corporate donors enter Sharpton’s House of Contrition and Reparations with their eyes wide open and with little doubt about the nature of their “support” – that it’s nothing more than Mafia-style “Pay us not to break your windows or your kneecaps” protection money.
“We support those that support us,” wrote Sharpton and the Rev. Horace Sheffield III, president of NAN’s Michigan chapter, in a letter to American Honda. “We cannot be silent while African-Americans spend hard-earned dollars with a company that does not hire, promote or do business with us in a statistically significant manner.”
More briefly, Sharpton promises not to put the squeeze on companies that surrender to his extortion.
In 2003, Sharpton targeted American Honda for not hiring enough African-Americans in management….. Two months after American Honda execs met with Sharpton, the carmaker began to sponsor NAN’s events – and continues to pay “a modest amount” each year, a spokesman said.
Extortion is extortion and it is a criminal offense.
“I think this is quite clearly a shakedown operation,” said Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center in Virginia, a conservative corporate watchdog. “He’s good at harassing people and making noise. CEOs give him his way because it is a lot easier than confronting him.”
Unlike Hitler, who was maneuvering for the German chancellorship, Sharpton isn’t aiming for the White House (except as a frequent guest of Barack Obama when they probably yuk it up over the number they’re both pulling on the country – “We’re fixin’ those gun-clingin’ honkies real good, ain’t we, Bro?”). The Conservative Tribune has a more dramatic way of listing all the companies Sharpton has in his pocket.
Not all the media is duped by Sharpton’s antics and pose as a “civil rights” advocate. Not even National Public Radio (NPR), the federally licensed and subsidized emitter of the party line, denied Sharpton’s deleterious role in race relations. Kelsey Dallas of the Deseret News reported last August, during the Ferguson riots and destruction:
His presence in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City following the recent police-involved shooting deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner raise the question: Do Sharpton’s regular appearances detract from the strength of his message? [Note: Garner wasn’t shot.]
In January 2013, NPR published an in-depth look at Sharpton’s daily life, parsing the many myths that surround his civil rights work.
“The Rev. Al Sharpton has spent nearly all of his adulthood in the spotlight, earning both praise and condemnation,” NPR explained. “He has been called a race-monger, anti-Semite, shameless self-promoter and a shakedown artist who has used the threat of protest to extra corporate donations for his civil rights organization, National Action Network. (But) he’s also respected for his commitment to nonviolence and asked a judge for leniency for the man who stabbed him.”
Sharpton recently met with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, police commissioner William Bratton and other faith leaders in the wake of Garner’s death to discuss the relationship between community members and law enforcement officers. The Wall Street Journal reported Sharpton was a polarizing figure in the discussion, criticizing Bratton’s policies. Sharpton will be in New York again Aug. 23 to lead a march protesting police’s role in Garner’s death July 17.
Sharpton is no more “committed to nonviolence” than was Hitler in annexing Austria and invading Poland. Or France, or Belgium. He has an amorphous army at his beck and call to picket companies with noisy chants and to commit violence, invariably drawn from the Left.
The only thing Sharpton’s mobs lack is uniforms by Hugo Boss.
The New York Post reported in 2008:
NAN, which began humbly in Harlem in 1991 with Saturday-morning rallies at PS 175, now boasts 45 chapters across the country. The group lobbies for African-American rights and raises awareness of issues such as police brutality and racial profiling. “Sharpton went national just like a franchise,” said Flaherty. “Each of these local chapters can now hit up businesses for support in their communities.”
NAN, a tax-exempt nonprofit, closely guards its corporate largesse. Most companies also keep the sums secret, and some would not divulge them. The corporations interviewed by The Post viewed their relationships with NAN as friendly and beneficial.
Anheuser-Busch states on its Web site that it gave the group “between $100,000 and $499,000″ last year.
It would be fair to assume that since 2008, Anheuser-Busch has forked over to NAN at least $1 million not to have its Clydesdales poisoned or castrated.
Before and after two New York City policemen were murdered by a Muslim in Brooklyn, Sharpton was engaged in anti-police rabble-rousing and was partly responsible for inciting the murders.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson declared on Sunday that MSNBC activist host Al Sharpton and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder were guilty of inciting the murder of two police officers in Brooklyn over the weekend.
On Saturday, NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were shot to death while sitting in their patrol car. The suspect eventually turned the gun on himself after police caught up with him at a subway station. Messages posted to his social media accounts indicated that the suspect intended to commit violence against law enforcement officers in retaliation for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown….
“For [President Obama] to embrace Sharpton,” Carlson opined, “Who is just an open bigot and a criminal and a tax cheat, who’s been whipping up race hatred in New York for all these decades. For the president of the United States to embrace this guy as a personal friend, an adviser, to show up at the NAN meetings, to have him in the White House again, and again, and again, and again, to endorse his message — boy, no wonder you’ve got craziness going on in the streets.”
Carlson should not be so surprised that the current President of the United States would fraternize with a thug. After all, he nominated another racist thug, Eric Holder, to be his Attorney General. Obama and Sharpton are birds of a feather. However, as Newsmax reported on December 20th:
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told Newsmax that Saturday’s execution-style shooting of two uniformed police officers was ultimately encouraged by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Rev. Al Sharpton — and “they have blood on their hands.”
“de Blasio, Sharpton and all those who encouraged this anti-cop, racist mentality all have blood on their hands,” he said. “They have blood on their hands.” The two officers were shot about 3 p.m. while sitting in their marked car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn by a man identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley.
He wounded his girlfriend in a shooting in Baltimore before driving to New York and ambushing the officers, according to the New York Daily News.
Brinsley, who reportedly belonged to a gang, later killed himself on a crowded Brooklyn subway platform as police closed in on him. He bragged on his Instagram page just hours before that he wanted to kill police officers, the Daily News reports.
Investigators said that Brinsley was avenging the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown by killing the officers.
Kerik told Newsmax that the officers’ deaths resulted from a climate created by de Blasio, Sharpton and other New York City officials.
This guy’s intent — based on that Instagram post — was retribution for Eric Garner and Michael Brown,” he told Newsmax. “The people who encouraged these protests — you had peaceful protesters who were screaming ‘kill the cops’ — the so-called peaceful protesters.
“Who was encouraging these protesters? De Blasio, Sharpton and other elected officials and community leaders. They encouraged this mentality. They encouraged this behavior.”
Well, so does Islam. I’m surprised that CAIR and Louis Farrakhan haven’t weighed in much publically on the issue. Brinsley posted on his Facebook page a quotation from the Koran, verse 8:60: “Strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah.” I can picture Sharpton nodding his head in agreement. Strike terror, and then pick their pockets.
Columnist Michelle Malkin touches on Sharpton’s criminal past in her October 19th, 2009 column, “Yes, let’s talk about Al Sharpton’s racial demagoguery, shall we?” in which she all too briefly describes Sharpton’s Tawana Brawley hoax in 1987, his provoking anti-Semitic riots in Brooklyn in 1995, and his fatal Freddy’s Fashion Mart adventure in Harlem in 1995.
Al Sharpton is just one “poster child” among many Progressive radicals dedicated to stirring up racial conflict and overall social turmoil. He is the spawn of moral relativism, who, in an age of reason, would not have a chance to rise above his mean malevolence to attain anything more than the obscure notoriety of a loud-mouthed bigot.
In a civilized society, his basic nasty character would get him into barroom fights and more often than not deservedly have the crap beat out of him, either by a “cracker” (his favorite term for whites) or by a “brother” who also would have had enough of his mouth.
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Edward Cline
Williamsburg, VA
January 2015
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