NOT MUCH ADO ABOUT MECHA:

Ignoring radical racialism (John Leo, 9/15/03, US News)

The mainstream press has been doing a miserable job covering Cruz Bustamante's ties to the creepy Chicano secessionist group MEChA. This may not be the biggest story of the California recall election, but voters surely have a right to expect some actual information about the leading Democratic candidate's views of a group that is certainly racialist, if not racist.

A MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) slogan translates as "For the race everything. For those outside the race, nothing." El Plan de Aztlan, a founding document carried now on many MEChA Internet sites, talks about the "call of our blood" and the need to reclaim the Southwest (Aztlan) from "the occupying forces of the oppressor." As if the Nazi-like call to the power of blood isn't scary enough, Miguel Perez of Cal State-Northridge's MEChA raised the issue of ethnic cleansing. Once Aztlan has been taken over, he said, non-Chicanos "would have to be expelled" and opposition groups quashed "because you have to keep the power."

Bustamante is no wild-eyed radical. But he has had as much trouble renouncing his connection to MEChA as Trent Lott did in retracting his admiring comment on the Dixiecrats. Bustamante joined MEChA in his college years in the 1970s and has reportedly addressed MEChA groups since. Under heavy prodding at Fox News, he said he would be governor of all the people, but he has offered no direct disavowal of the group.

Now, it's safe to say that if a leading Republican candidate for governor had any ties at all to a MEChA-like group of white supremacists, past or present, 20 or so reporters would charge out of every California newsroom, eager to commit journalism. [...]

Defenders of MEChA portray it as a benign social group now distant from its radical roots. But that portrait is hard to square with the information put out on MEChA sites today. Those sites tell Chicanos not to work outside the bronze race and to condemn "multinational" alliances. And there are hints of violence. El Plan calls for "self-defense against the occupying forces of the oppressors" and mentions "the utilization of our bodies for war."

If this is leftover '60s bluster, why don't MEChA and Bustamante simply disavow it? The group may be harmless on some campuses, but it clearly positions itself as a virulent identity group with no interest in pluralism or tolerance. Why are the press and the Democrats giving a candidate with this kind of background a pass?

One of the more absurd moments of self-congratulatory insularism in the blog world came when Trent Lott was forced to give up his leadership post and folks convinced themselves that "alternate media" had been responsible. The fact of the matter was that big media took the story and beat a Republican senseless with it. Now we have a story that is almost exactly comparable but it involves a Democrat, so other than the occassional John Leo, where is the national feeding frenzy on this story? The media sharks are always circling, but no matter how much chum bloggers put in the water, they only attack when there's a Republican involved.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 13, 2003 5:43 AM