Is It GOOD To Name A Pro-Apartheid Loon As Ambassador To South Africa?
L. Brent Bozell III once called Trump a huckster, but common interests have brought them together!
In normal times, the US expelling the ambassador from another country would be big news! It’s an unusual move, reserved for the worst sort of behavior. In 2012 Obama expelled the Venezuelan consul general in Miami over allegations that she had discussed possible cyberattacks on US soil, and the Syrian chargé d’affaires in response to a massacre there. And Obama and Biden expelled Russian diplomats for spying on us.
BUUUT last week the Trump administration expelled the South African ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, for the violation of diplomatically and correctly pointing out that Trump’s policies are white supremacist, how he tweetle-tweets on his white-supremacy dog whistle all the damn time, and his regime is working to export that white supremacy and great-replacement-theory horseshit to the whole world, too:
“So in terms of that, the supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement, the Make America Great Again movement, as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48 percent white. And that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon.
“And so that needs to be factored in, so that we understand some of the things that we think are instinctive, nativist, racist things; I think that there’s data that, for example, would support that, that would go to this wall being built, the deportation movement. [...] I think that there is also an export of the revolution. It’s no accident that Elon Musk has involved himself in UK politics, and elevated a Nigel Farage and the Reform movement, in much the same way that he was instructed that on his way to the Munich security summit, Vice President Vance addressed the [AfD] to strengthen them in their election campaign. And that, then, begins to say, what then was the role of Afrikaners in that whole makeup. And very clearly, it’s to project white victimhood as a dog whistle…”
Which was so spot-on it true it really burned Trump and L’il Marco Rubio’s britches!
RACE-BAITING SOUTH AFRICAN! Gee, we don’t know of any of those!
Now Trump’s choice as top diplomat to South Africa has been named, and guess what, he’s a slobbering white supremacist and longtime supporter of Apartheid, Leo Brent Bozell III.
If you’re lucky enough to not know who that guy is, he’s the founder of right-wing fart-huffing hacktanks including the Media Research Center and the Parents Television Council (known to huff that Ally McBeal was “smut”), and a frequent Fox News contributor, where he and Sean Hannity like to commiserate about how conservatives are the biggest victims of all time because the media is so lefty and mean to them. And he was pals with Rush Limbaugh, of course.
Bozell III’s been on that mean librul media grind a long, long time; and the pro-Apartheid-for-South-Africa one too. Way back in the ‘80s he was a member of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, along with Nixonite pinhead Roger Stone, which actively opposed the end of Apartheid, and joined up with a group called “The Coalition Against ANC Terrorism.” (Ronald Reagan was also a member, and supported the Apartheid government, too.) Bozell III even wrote a letter in 1987 to Reagan’s secretary of State, George Shultz, protesting his plan to meet with ANC President Oliver Tambo.
Bozell III’s other greatest hits include saying Barack Obama looks like a “skinny, ghetto crackhead” and that Al Sharpton was “a racist” like “David Duke” for calling George Zimmerman’s acquittal “an atrocity.” Because, you see, it’s only “race baiting” when someone who isn’t a white supremacist says anything about racism. Supporting Apartheid and calling Obama a crackhead, that’s FREE SPEECH, and you’re racist if you point out that it’s racist, racist!
Back in 2021, The Nation called the Bozells the “First Family of Right-Wing Violence,” which is hard to argue with! L. Brent Bozell Jr. and William F. Buckley Jr. founded the National Review, and Bozell Jr. was so wacked-out that he advocated a preemptive nuclear war against the Soviet Union in between writing speeches for Barry Goldwater. Bozell Jr. also got with Buckley’s sister, and L. Brent Bozell III was Buckley Jr.’s nephew. And Bozell III’s son, “Zeeker” Bozell IV, was arrested and sentenced to four years on 10 felony counts related to being one of the first January 6 tourists to break into the Capitol: He smashed glass on the Senate Wing Door and was one of the people chasing Officer Eugene Goodman down the hall. Real family bonafides! Trump pardoned “Zeeker,” of course.
Naming B-III as ambassador is of course a big old fuck-you to South Africa, which is trying to pull itself out of centuries of white-supremacist colonialist oppression, and 75 years of brutal, explicitly racist policies that seized Black South Africans’ land, denied them the right to vote or run for office, fired people for being Black, shot schoolchildren in the back for protesting, made people have to have passbooks to travel around their own country, and oh, so much more.
And since Elon Musk has become presidential First Buddy, saying fuck you to South Africa is one of Trump’s favorite pastimes. Whether it’s by pulling all aid and granting rapid pathway to citizenship for (white) South African farmers based on a many-times-over-disproven conspiracy theory about white South African farmers being murdered (turns out they are mostly killing each other), or lying that white farmers are having their land confiscated by the government (they are not), he just can’t get enough. Dogwhistle to racists is an understatement, this is a bullhorn in front of a wall of speakers under a flashing neon sign.
Like Vance and L’il’ Marco himself, Bozell III was once anti-Trump, and in 2016 called him a “huckster,” “shameless self-promoter” and “the greatest charlatan of them all.” The National Review even published an entire anti-Trump issue with a dozen essays opposing his nomination, and B-III, Ted Cruz supporter, himself pointed out how Trump had fundraised for Hillary Clinton.
But Trump loves a zealous convert!
Bozell III will still have to be confirmed by the Senate, which probably will, because there’s nobody they won’t confirm for him.
On the upside, Bozell could soon be leaving here, and South Africa has plenty of experience with dicks like him. If he only wants to hang out with pro-Apartheid white people, he will spend 93 percent of his time in Kearsney House, wankin’ it to old Ally McBeal episodes and rrr-grring to himself about how things were so much better when de Klerk was in charge. But ugh, this is so embarrassing.
[DW / The Nation / Politico ]
There's a very strong possibility that the government of South Africa will not grant Agrément, meaning they won't accept him as the US' ambassador to their country. Stay tuned. I would not be surprised in the least if they tell TFG to fuck off with his nomination.
South Africa doesn't have to accept him.