OF NEO NAZIS, KU KLUX KLAN, AND BARACK OBAMA

After the initial euphoria of Obama's election night win, for the next 24 hours I naively thought the world had actually changed. To be fair, yes, for those of us who believe in democracy, equality, open government, the separation of church and state, education, human rights...it was indeed a victory. But now the sickening underbelly of the human race, the residue of all our hatreds, the scum that had been hiding just under the surface of our consciousness has begun to bubble up. We must not let it deter us.

The first major public acknowledgment that these forces could be a real danger to Obama came in the last days of the campaign when Steve Edwards the son of Imperial Wizard (this is not Harry Potter folks) Ron Edwards of the Imperial Klans of America, was involved with two white supremacists who were charged in a bizarre plot to behead blacks across the country and assassinate Barack Obama while wearing white top hats and tuxedos. These are clearly either totally drugged out, brain damaged, people, or perhaps it's just the result of that good old fashioned southern inbreeding.

Living here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one easily forgets that places like Dawson Springs and Central City Kentucky, home of the nations second largest (after the Brotherhood (glad it's not the "sisterhood") of Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan inMarion Ohio) Ku Klux Klan group, still exist. Not only do they exist, but the Kentucky group has a 28 acre compound surrounded by gates and armed guards in militarycamouflage gear, including an open field for burning crosses. (Now there's a fun way to spend a family weekend, attend a cross burning in Kentucky.)

But thanks to the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center, these sickos may soon be forced into bankruptcy. They are bringing a civil rights lawsuit against Ron Edwards accusing his group of inciting it's members to severely beat a Latino teen who was attending a country fair. The legal costs fighting the suit, may (hopefully) put them out of business, or at least curtail their operations.

But there is a spate of such racist events now surfacing. An Oklahoma woman was killed in Louisiana because she tried to leave a Ku Klux Klan initiation ritual. The killers were arrested inCovington LA. In Springfield Massachusetts, the Macedonia Church of God, a predominantly Black church, was burned to the ground last Wednesday. It's been declared arson. The police are investigating. The 71 year old Bishop of the church was a former school principal and police commissioner, said hisparishioners "were deeply disappointed, surprised, disheartened and stunned." He knew of no threats against the church and hoped "that it's just arson..." and not someone expressing their hatred of the first black president.

I know the majority of Europeans are enthusiastic about Obama. I recall the hundreds of thousands of people who thronged to see him in Berlin. But we can not forget that Germany and Austria are the heartland as well as the homeland of the Nazis. So I was not terribly surprised to read the following hate filled statements European right wing nuts.

These include a leading Austrian television journalist, Klaus Emmerich, who a day after the election, said on camera that he "wouldn't want the Western world to be directed by a black man." Emmerich, who works for the country's leading public television station, had previously work in Washington DC as a foreign correspondent. Emmerich told viewers:

"I think the Americans are still racists and they must be very badly off to so spectacularly -- and that has to be said, no doubt -- send a black man with a black, very good-looking and clever woman to the White House."

When he was later asked to apologize, Emmerich told an Austrian newspaper that "blacks are not as politically civilized."

Separately a right-wing member of Poland's Parliament called the election result "the end of the white man's civilization." He added: "America will soon pay a high price for this quirk of democracy."