User-Submitted Racist Photos Posted On Official GOP Facebook
The new concerted effort by the Republican party to move online and skew younger keeps backfiring. First, the launch of GOP.com was met with intense mockery and meme-making, then the Republican National Committee’s Facebook page left racist and hateful images — including photos of President Obama eating fried chicken along with a bigoted caption and others mocking John Kerry and Mother Theresa — in the fan photos section for nearly a week without moderation.
The interactive part of the page, removed as of 1:40pmET on Monday, was meant for user-submitted visual content, but as anyone versed in the internet knows, without a careful supervision the trolls come out quickly. Now, the GOP is learning the hard way just how careful of an eye is necessary after multiple offensive images sat untouched since October 20th. Raw Story is reporting:
Among them was a picture of President Barack Obama eating fried chicken, subtitled with a call to
prohibit interracial marriage. The photo’s caption read: “Miscegenation is a CRIME against American Values. Repeal Loving v. Virginia.”
Miscegenation refers to the “marriage or cohabitation between a man and woman of different races.”
Loving v. Virginia was a landmark Supreme Court case that, in 1967, struck down all of the US’s laws against interracial marriage.
A comment under one photo read: “Racism is necessary in our capitalistic system. To subject ourselves to the the socialist ideal of equality will surelydestroy the American way of life. As a black man, racism has served as a great inspiration for me to work harder. God bless the Republican Party and God bless America.”
A first round of removals this morning took down most of the inappropriate photos and offensive comments, but left up a few crude Photoshopped images including one text graphic that read “OMG, Just Shut Up Obama.” Now, the entire fan photos section has been deleted, but there’s another lesson in this for the GOP: online, nothing disappears. Both Animal New York and Raw Story snagged a few of the more line-crossing images, which can be seen below.
