Prominent
actors, writers and thinkers joined a "Stop Hate Dump Trump" campaign
to denounce the billionaire Republican presidential frontrunner, saying
he is a threat to the United States.
Actors Harry Belafonte, Kerry Washington and Jane Fonda, filmmaker Jonathan Demme and intellectual Noam Chomsky are among those lending their support to the drive to prevent Donald Trump getting into the White House.
"We are offering Americans a chance to be heard and engage in action, as Trump's campaign gains momentum even as he increases his hateful and divisive rhetoric," said playwright Eve Ensler, one of three cofounders.
"We also intend to put the media and political institutions on notice that they are accountable for normalizing Trump's extremism by treating it as entertainment, by giving it inordinate and unequal air time and by refusing to investigate, interrogate or condemn it appropriately."
Trump announced his bid for the White House last June, dominating the news cycle of the presidential race ever since with insults slamming Mexicans and illegal immigrants, and a call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
The website said it united people as diverse as worker movement leaders, actors, teachers, farmers, students, poets and heads of companies.
"We believe Trump is a grave threat to democracy, freedom, human rights, equality and the welfare of our country and all our people," the campaign said.
"History has shown us what happens when people refuse to stand against hate-filled leaders. We pledge ourselves to speak out in every way possible against the politics of hate and exclusion he represents."
Nearly 1,200 people had added their signatures to the campaign within hours of it going live on Wednesday.
Jodie Evans, a documentary film producer and cofounder of the anti-war organization Code Pink, said the initiative had arisen out of a conversation with Ensler and said the celebrity endorsements had come from their friends.
"The media is pushing the hate of Donald Trump like it's a reality show," she told AFP.
The third cofounder is law professor Kimberle Crenshaw. For the real story on Jane Fonda check out the story below:
Hanoi Jane on North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun: A few hundred yards
from the location of this photograph, American POWs were being
subjected to all manner of torture at the "Hanoi Hilton." You can read
about one of those POWs, Col. Roger Ingvalson, whose aircraft was shot down by an NVA-AAG similar to the gun Hanoi Jane is straddling.
Fonda called returning POWs "hypocrites and liars," adding, "These
were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been
starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed. ... Pilots were
saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic. I
believe that's a lie." You can read about one of Fondas "hypocrites and
liars" in this Veterans Day Profile: Point Man, Roger Helle
Read the transcript of Hanoi Jane's propaganda radio broadcast delivered in Hanoi, North Vietnam on August 22, 1972.
As for the success of anti-democracy protests by radical protagonists like Fonda, John Kerry and others, Hanoi could not have been more pleased.
General Vo Nguyen Giap, supreme leader of the North Vietnamese Army, told CBS in a 1989 interview: "We paid a high price [during the Tet offensive] but so did you [Americans] ... not only in lives and materiel. Do not forget the war was brought into the living rooms of the American people. ... The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory.... The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion. "
More to the point, in a 1995 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a communist contemporary of Giap and Ho Chi Minh, who was serving as an NVA colonel assigned to the general staff at the time Saigon fell, had this to say about the Leftmedia and Soviet puppets like "Hanoi" Jane Fonda and John Kerry: "[They were] essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."
Bui stated further, "Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."
Most notably, Bui observed, that the 1968 Tet Offensive was "to weaken American resolve during a presidential-election year. We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect."
Sixteen years later, under enormous pressure after Ronald Reagan had restored the honorable social standing of military service, Fonda admitted to former American POWs and their families that she regretted the pain she caused them. Few accepted her apology.
In a 2005 interview with CBS, Fonda reiterated that she had no
regrets about her trip to North Vietnam in 1972. "There are hundreds of
American delegations that had met with the POWs. Both sides were using
the POWs for propaganda... It's not something that I will apologize
for."
Actors Harry Belafonte, Kerry Washington and Jane Fonda, filmmaker Jonathan Demme and intellectual Noam Chomsky are among those lending their support to the drive to prevent Donald Trump getting into the White House.
"We are offering Americans a chance to be heard and engage in action, as Trump's campaign gains momentum even as he increases his hateful and divisive rhetoric," said playwright Eve Ensler, one of three cofounders.
"We also intend to put the media and political institutions on notice that they are accountable for normalizing Trump's extremism by treating it as entertainment, by giving it inordinate and unequal air time and by refusing to investigate, interrogate or condemn it appropriately."
Trump announced his bid for the White House last June, dominating the news cycle of the presidential race ever since with insults slamming Mexicans and illegal immigrants, and a call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
The website said it united people as diverse as worker movement leaders, actors, teachers, farmers, students, poets and heads of companies.
"We believe Trump is a grave threat to democracy, freedom, human rights, equality and the welfare of our country and all our people," the campaign said.
"History has shown us what happens when people refuse to stand against hate-filled leaders. We pledge ourselves to speak out in every way possible against the politics of hate and exclusion he represents."
Nearly 1,200 people had added their signatures to the campaign within hours of it going live on Wednesday.
Jodie Evans, a documentary film producer and cofounder of the anti-war organization Code Pink, said the initiative had arisen out of a conversation with Ensler and said the celebrity endorsements had come from their friends.
"The media is pushing the hate of Donald Trump like it's a reality show," she told AFP.
The third cofounder is law professor Kimberle Crenshaw. For the real story on Jane Fonda check out the story below:
Traitor: "Hanoi Jane" Fonda
She was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda, but earned her reputation as "Hanoi Jane" Fonda after "aiding and abetting" the enemy -- North Vietnam -- as documented in these photos taken in Hanoi (July 1972):
Hanoi Jane laughing it up
Showing her admiration
Visiting with Friends
Looking for Target
With Tom Hayden back from Hanoi
As for the success of anti-democracy protests by radical protagonists like Fonda, John Kerry and others, Hanoi could not have been more pleased.
General Vo Nguyen Giap, supreme leader of the North Vietnamese Army, told CBS in a 1989 interview: "We paid a high price [during the Tet offensive] but so did you [Americans] ... not only in lives and materiel. Do not forget the war was brought into the living rooms of the American people. ... The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory.... The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion. "
More to the point, in a 1995 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a communist contemporary of Giap and Ho Chi Minh, who was serving as an NVA colonel assigned to the general staff at the time Saigon fell, had this to say about the Leftmedia and Soviet puppets like "Hanoi" Jane Fonda and John Kerry: "[They were] essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."
Bui stated further, "Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."
Most notably, Bui observed, that the 1968 Tet Offensive was "to weaken American resolve during a presidential-election year. We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect."
Sixteen years later, under enormous pressure after Ronald Reagan had restored the honorable social standing of military service, Fonda admitted to former American POWs and their families that she regretted the pain she caused them. Few accepted her apology.
Fonda Power
Peace
More Peace
Fonda with last in husband line, Ted Turner,
Village drunk and self-appointed ambassador to North Korea, who
observed recently, "Obviously, I don’t like to see nuclear
proliferation, and I’m very upset about [the North Korean test]," as
opposed to his earlier position being "absolutely convinced that the
North Koreans are absolutely sincere" about not developing nuclear
weapons.
What a life
Hanoi Jane's real life -- so far...
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