Alabama Editor Calls for Ku Klux Klan to Clean out DC
The end of racism may have been prematurely declared.
A bizarre story in the Montgomery Advertiser (“Alabama newspaper editor calls for Klan return to ‘clean out D.C.’“):
Goodloe Sutton — who is the publisher of the Democrat-Reporter newspaper in Linden, Alabama — confirmed to the Montgomery Advertiser on Monday that he authored the Feb. 14 editorial calling for the return of a white supremacist hate group.
“If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off,” Sutton said.
Asked to elaborate what he meant by “cleaning up D.C.,” Sutton suggested lynching.
“We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them,” Sutton said.
When asked if he felt it was appropriate for the publisher of a newspaper to call for the lynching of Americans, Sutton doubled down on his position.
“… It’s not calling for the lynchings of Americans. These are socialist-communists we’re talking about. Do you know what socialism and communism is?” Sutton said.
In the newspaper editorial, Sutton wrote:
Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama. They do not understand how to eliminate expenses when money is needed in other areas. This socialist-communist ideology sounds good to the ignorant, the uneducated, and the simple-minded people.
When asked if he recognized the KKK as a racist and violent organization, Sutton disagreed, comparing the Klan to the NAACP.
“A violent organization? Well, they didn’t kill but a few people,” Sutton said. “The Klan wasn’t violent until they needed to be.”
Sutton said he didn’t know any Klan remaining in the area, stating most died out after the 1960s.
The editor said he welcomed people to call him, write him a letter or boycott him.
My first instinct was to question whether Sutton was a grade-A moron or a grade-F satirist. Even aside from the bizarre take on the Klan and the merits of violence, the thinking expressed in the editorial was self-refuting. It simply makes no sense to rail against “Democrat wars” and then in the next breath complain about the end of the draft. So, it struck me that this was just a bad attempt to make fun of far-right views.
Alas, not so much.
Sutton, who has worked at the paper since 1964, inherited the publication from his father. Sutton and the newspaper received national acclaim in the 1990s for their reporting on a corrupt local sheriff.
In 2015, he ran a headline titled: “Selma black thugs murder Demopolite Saturday night.” At that time, the paper had about 3,000 subscribers.
Linden is located about 100 miles due west of Montgomery near the Mississippi border.
So, no, Sutton isn’t a failed humorist but a successful racist. His fellow Alabama journalists seem to agree with my assessment:
Chip Brownlee and Mikayla Burns — editor-in-chief and managing editor, respectively, at The Auburn Plainsman — first spotted Sutton’s editorial and shared it online Monday.
“As a newspaper editor myself it’s disturbing to see this type of editorial printed,” Brownlee said via email. “Granted, I’m the editor of a student newspaper, but all newspapers should be held to the highest ethical and moral standards. Editorials should be about new ideas, constructive criticism and opinion backed up by facts. To call for the return of domestic terrorism — no matter its form — is counterproductive and wrong. It’s important to welcome and encourage differing opinions, but violence is never right.”
As to this . . .
The Advertiser contacted the Alabama Press Association, the state trade association for newspapers in the state, to inquire whether or not Sutton and the Democrat-Reporter were members.
“We do not agree with the opinion,” said Felicia Mason, APA executive director. “However, APA is not a policing agency. We simply have no authority over what our member newspapers publish.”
I have no objection to Sutton being allowed to publish his racist nonsense and don’t think it’s the job of press associations to cast out those who publish such things. But I sincerely hope there’s a rival newspaper offering local residents the ability to follow local news without Sutton’s editorial sensibilities.
UPDATE: As I was putting the finishing touches on the post, I see that Sutton is already facing consequences from the rapid spread of this story:
Montgomery Advertiser (“Controversial publisher booted from alma mater’s hall of fame after pro-KKK editorial“):
The publisher of a small western Alabama newspaper who wrote a controversial editorial that calls “the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again” to “clean out D.C.” has been removed from his alma mater’s Communication Hall of Fame.
In 2007, Goodloe Sutton, 79, was inducted into the University of Southern Mississippi’s School of Communication Hall of Fame for anti-corruption articles and editorials.
After the Advertiser reported on Sutton’s recent editorial in the Democrat-Reporter newspaper in Linden, and subsequent comments, the university removed him from the Hall of Fame.
“Within the last few hours, the School of Communication at the University of Southern Mississippi learned of Mr. Goodloe Sutton’s call for violence and the return of the Ku Klux Klan,” a USM release stated.
“Mr. Sutton’s subsequent rebuttals and attempts at clarification only reaffirm the misguided and dangerous nature of his comments. The School of Communication strongly condemns Mr. Sutton’s remarks as they are antithetical to all that we value as scholars of journalism, the media, and human communication.
While I tend to be skeptical of removal of career honors for single acts, I’d say it’s appropriate in this instance. Being a double murderer certainly changes my view of OJ Simpson, but it really has no bearing on his greatness as a football player. Ditto serial rapist Bill Cosby and his comedy career. But Sutton’s award was for being an outstanding representative of Southern Miss’s School of Communications; he’s clearly demonstrated that he’s not worthy of that recognition. (At the same time, I wouldn’t retroactively revoke awards he and the paper won for taking down a corrupt sheriff years ago; that achievement stands independently of Sutton’s odious racial views.)
Um…the same state that gave us Jeff Sessions and Roy Moore?
Who’da thunk it?
Wanna bet?
How interesting that you can be a newspaper publisher, editorialist, and a journalistic hall-of-famer and not know how to spell “ideology.”
I always try to remind myself that the difference between a backwater state like Alabama and a modern state like Colorado is about 10%. My guess is that on balance 55% of the people in Alabama are behaving in ways that actively hold the state back, while 45% are trying to move it forward*. In Colorado, I suspect those numbers are reversed. But the impact of going above or below that critical threshold is immense.
*FWIW, what I actually believe is that 70% of the population merely wander around bumping into the furniture when in comes to social or political change. It’s really only 30%, good or bad, that have an impact.
So he’s saying that it’s okay, in fact desirable, to lynch Democrats because they’re not “real Americans,” they’re “socialist-communists” out to destroy America.
I think this attitude is a huge elephant in the room of American politics, one that is very widespread on the right, although not to the same degree. (Most Republicans would not agree with the lynching part). It’s the idea that Democrats/liberals/the left are not “real Americans,” they are in fact some alien force trying to destroy the American way of life. Thus, any support for the Republican, no matter how corrupt, incompetent, or traitorous they are, is preferable than allowing Democrats anywhere near the levers of power.
« It simply makes no sense to rail against “Democrat wars” and then in the next breath complain about the end of the draft. »
Makes sense if the point is “elite Democrats enter in wars and now they not even have the cost of their sons having the risk os being drafted”
Has Mr. Sutton’s family taken any action to have him assessed by someone knowledgeable in senior brain issues? I suspect that his apparent advocacy of terrorism is due to a decline in his faculties. Mr. Sutton is 79 years old. I am a few years younger and believe that I’m fairly intact, but I am aware that after age 75 the risk of dementia rises to 15-20%. He might not be evil, just wearing a crown of rank fumiter.
@Monala:
The problem is more widespread on the right but I do think there’s a mirror of this on the left. Coastal liberals don’t think rural Americans or Republicans aren’t “real Americans” but that’s partly because they’re not really nationalists. But there is a widespread belief on the left that religious/conservative/rural Americans are an “other,” and, as Hillary Clinton termed them, “deplorables.” The combination of the two is what makes genuine politics—which requires compromise and working together in between election cycles—next to impossible right now.
Actually, not bizarre at all. In fact, with today’s GOP it was utterly predictable.
“Coastal liberals don’t think rural Americans… are real Americans”? WTH? Really? This may well be your all time winner-sure they are lot of people with retrograde views (on all sides I may add) but in no way are these people viewed as anything else but Americans. The media may cover flyover country in frankly an embarrassing and condescending manner but that’s not reflective of nationhood.
@James Joyner:
I think she refered to half of Dennison’s supporters, not rural Americans, as deplorables;
Was she wrong? I would say recent history has borne her out. Half of the red hats are deplorable.
You went on to say:
You can’t compromise with people you are demonizing without cause, James.
You’ve spent years hating on the Clinton’s, in spite of decades of investigations that have proven nothing of consequence. You are part of the very problem that gave us Dennison.
@James Joyner:
Bullshit James. Just flat out bullshit. Let’s take a look at what Hillary really said:
Unless you think all religious/conservative/rural Americans are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic.
@Monala:
It’s sad. Painting everyone in one party or another as an enemy is using way too broad of a brush. But if someone had to do it, the Republicans are the obvious choice to be traitors and Quisling-Americans. 90% of them support Trump and the President has obviously sold us out to at least one of our enemies. That’s just a fact.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
100% correct. Her ratio might even be too generous. James, I’m curious: do you think less than 50% of Trump’s base are racist or anti-nonChristian? Or homophobic? Or do you think Clinton was right but should just not have spoken plainly?
He wants the KKK to lynch Democrats? But Dinesh D’Souza told me that the KKK supported only Democrats even to this day. Did D’Souza lie to me?
I am not a doctor, and it’s not appropriate to diagnose people remotely without a proper evaluation. But that guy needs meds, stat.
What do these sentences mean, in his article?
“Slaves, just freed after the civil war, were not stupid. At times they borrowed their former masters’ robes and horses, and rode through the night to frighten some evil doer.”
WTF?
@Not the IT Dept.: He means, “It wasn’t the good honorable white people of Alabama riding around whipping and lynching black people in the town square, it was those treacherous, licentious, deceiving darkies stealing their good former masters robes and committing evil acts so as to avoid blame for their own sub-human behavior.”
@Raoul: I said the opposite; the double negative may have been confusing.
@OzarkHillbilly: @MarkedMan: I think there are a lot of racists out there. But, no, I don’t think they’re half of Trump voters. But there is a huge swath of rural America that hasn’t managed to understand, let alone accept, relatively recent changes in the way we view GLBTQ people and resent being called bigots for believing things that were common American values 15-20 years ago.
@Not the IT Dept.: Yeah, I dunno. It’s just a bizarre article. A series of ill-informed and illogical statements followed by calling people who disagree ill-informed and illogical.
@Not the IT Dept.: It means both sides do it.
@Raoul:
You either mis-read the comment, or the comment was edited after you read it.
He states,
Sure it’s a double negative, as it were, and maybe clumsily written, but after parsing the statement, he was denying that liberals think rural persons aren’t Americans…
@James Joyner: I’m going to challenge you on this idea. I know there has long been a stereotype of rural people, particularly Southerners, as unsophisticated yokels, but that was equally countered by the positive stereotype of rural people as “salt of the earth” good people. But I don’t think the hostility, “no compromise is possible,” attitudes existed among Democrats until we experienced such coming our way from the right for decades. I know that the first time I – who grew up in the Midwest, and has lived in coastal cities my entire adult life – heard the term “flyover country,” was in 2008, coming from people on the right accusing people on the left of thinking of them that way. Until 2004, it was a truism that Democrats needed a white Southern male on their ticket to get elected.
@James Joyner:
I do. There are many ways to express racism other than calling a black person a “ni**er”. It doesn’t have to be overt, it can just be willful ignorance of inconvenient facts, and let’s face it white people love to say “I’m not racist.” as tho that makes it OK to be silent in the face of police shootings of unarmed black men. As I have repeatedly said, “Voting for trump doesn’t mean you’re a racist, but it does mean your OK with a racist in the White House.” That in itself is a form of racism.
Yeah I know, I live among them. And just because bigotry against certain people was once acceptable in America doesn’t mean it was ever right. And let’s face it, they are bigots. If they don’t like being called bigots, maybe they should stop acting like them?
Was what Hillary said impolitic? Sure. It was also dead on the money, which is one reason people got so upset with her for saying it. (nobody wants to face the ugly truth about themselves) trump has said far far worse, and at this point everybody just kinda shrugs and moves on. I wonder why that is?
ETA Also wanted to say that there are more than a few rural people who AREN’T homophobic, tho it can be difficult to spot them.
I find it interesting that this story breaks less than a day after one our resident trolls on the other thread brings out the old “Dems are the true KKK” chestnut. It’s clear this editor is a Republican who hates Democrats. But he’s writing for a paper with the word “Democrat” in its name. Doing a quick glance at Wikipedia, I was not surprised to learn the paper was begun in 1911. Most of the racist Republicans in the South today either are descended from or once were themselves Democrats, who switched to the so-called Party of Lincoln after the civil rights era–a fact still preserved in some of the region’s institutions such as the names of local papers.
@Robert in SF: I too misread it the first time.
To be fair, the Klu Klux Klan must know a lot about cleaning in order to keep their robes so crisp and white.
@Robert in SF:
…which makes his earlier claim of a ‘mirror’ complete bullshit. One might as well say “A’s think B’s should be lynched; B’s think A’s should be spanked and sent to bed without supper. See, it’s like a mirror; both sides do it equally.”
(If you didn’t mean ‘equally’, James, you should certainly never have used the mirror analogy.)
Given that it was on Valentine’s Day, shouldn’t we call it a love letter to a hate group?
(Yeah, I have nothing worthwhile to say, other than to make bad jokes. Obvious racism is obviously bad, etc.)
@Monala: “Until 2004, it was a truism that Democrats needed a white Southern male on their ticket to get elected.”
Worse than that, the truism was simply that they needed a white Southerner — because it never would have occurred to any who believed it that it might not be a male…
@Gustopher: “I have nothing worthwhile to say, other than to make bad jokes.”
Who’s to say that making bad jokes isn’t worth while?
@OzarkHillbilly:
And there are more than that who ARE homophobic, but don’t really care that much. “Eww, but whatever.”
A pet peeve of mine is that homophobia itself is considered bad — lots of things make me skittish, it’s only a problem when I try to enforce my skittishness on others, or use it in hiring decisions.
We shouldn’t be trying to eliminate skittishness, we should be teaching people to recognize their biases and not let their biases rule them. This may lead to less personal bias, or less intense personal bias, but definitely leads to less systemic bias.
Lumping together everyone on the range from “Ew, buttsex, isn’t that … messy?” to “god hates f*gs” under one label doesn’t reward people for less worse behavior, and is just a level of purity policing that none of us would withstand across all 74 axis of acceptable behavior.
@James Joyner:
This earns an upvote for making an unpopular statement.
You’re partly right. I would say people on the left despise much of the people in “flyover country”as hicks, yokels, hillbillies, or to paraphrase Caesar “long lines of inbred mental defectives,” mired as they are in racism, sexism, homophobia, guns and religion. And lately add opiate addiction.
They are mocked, ridiculed, satirized, etc. That’s very bad.
But.
But I don’t hear people on the left, or Democrats, wanting to disenfranchise them, exclude them from government programs, or even, contrary to popular belief, take away their guns. You don’t hear people on the left saying opiate addicts should be arrested and left to rot in jail for a long, long time, either (you do hear it on the right a little).
Hell, where do you see Democrats fighting to keep abortion legal, safe and available? Not in California or New York.
So while there is some bad blood on the side of the Democrats, there is no malice, no desire for payback.
There is a movement to reduce gerrymandering and keep these regions from exerting outsize influence, yes, but that is mostly fair. Granted, given a chance Democrats would gerrymander things to give themselves outsize influence, no question. But given the years of obstruction by a GOP-dominated Congress, plus the slow-moving train wreck that is the Trump White House, a good case can be made of Democratic supremacy as self-defense.
I’ve said before Democrats grow the power of their base by welcoming more people into it, not by disenfranchising or otherwise limiting the political power of the other side. I know which means I’d rather have.
@James Joyner:
With all due respect, Dr. Joyner. I’ve spent the last 10 years of my professional life in Georgia and Texas. I think you’re being naive, or your own biases are evident. The “deplorable” part of the “base” is much more than half racist, xenophobic, homophobic and, definitely, transphobic.
They resented a black president.
They resent that they can’t say “Ni**er” anymore.
They resent that there aren’t $25/hr jobs with benefits, like their parents had in the steel/coal/car manufacturing/textile factory.
They hate “those Mexicans” for stealing their jobs.
Yet…
They choose to stay in towns that are dead.
They choose to ignore the real global changes happening, and stick their heads in the sand.
They choose to to bitterly cling to their guns and religion.
Hell, you want to see the GOP melting down in real time, read Dreher and his commenters. It’s as though transgender people are going to, literally, overrun all aspects of society. It’s completely devoid of what happening in the real world.
I’ll take educated and determined over stupid and lazy any day.
@Gustopher:
No. NononononononoNO. That is NOT homophobia. That is, “Do what ever you want behind closed doors, I don’t want to know about it.” Do you want to know how your parents got it on? Do you want to know what kinks your sister is into? Ever find yourself thinking, “Just what is it Roger Stone does at those swinger parties?” My guess is No, No, and No.
Homophobia is “How DARE you do those DISGUSTING things with a person of the SAME sex!!!” (ever notice how many Evangelicals complain about butt and oral sex among homosexuals as opposed to how many complain about it among heterosexual couples? There is a marked difference.)
I’m not sure where you coming from with this. I mean really. I have absolutely zero interest in watching a couple of guys get it on. That does NOT make me homophobic. I also have zero interest in any of the shades of gray. Does that make me S&M phobic? No, it just means I’m not interested. People who are homophobic can’t stand the idea of 2 guys (or gals) (tho they never really complain about the gals, do they?) getting it on.
It is a whole different animal.
@James Joyner:
I thought about this statement while I was working in the shop this afternoon. And I have another quibble. (if an elephant can be considered a quibble)
For more than a few years on the left, there has been the complaint that the real sin is not in being a homophobe or a racist, but in someone calling a person a homophobe or a racist when they act in a homophobic or racist manner, as in “How dare you tell the truth about my homophobia/racism!!!!”
You are making excuses for them. You are enabling their homophobia. You are saying, “They can’t help it, look at the times and where they grew up. It’s not their fault. They are good people.”
First off, they aren’t good people, they are just people, some of whom are better than others. 2nd of all, they can help it. The thing is, change is hard. People don’t change because they want to, people change because they have to.
What you are saying is, “Now look, being a bigot isn’t right, and I really wish you would stop it with all this nonsense, but if changing is going to cause you some discomfort, by all means continue as you have,” the unspoken ending being, “it’s no skin off my teeth.”
I stand corrected. Yup fell for the old double negative.
@OzarkHillbilly:
There’s a range of “I don’t want to know about it”s — from “please do not describe your sex acts in explicit detail in the lunchroom” to “don’t have a picture of your same sex partner on your desk, why do you have to ram this whole big, throbbing gay thing down our throats?”
And then there is a middle range, where they are uncomfortable, but somewhere between an ally and not caring.
I am transphobic. They honestly frighten me a bit.
I do, however, support their rights. Behind closed doors, in public, in jobs and housing. I think insurance should cover appropriate medical care (which is apparently to modify the body, rather than learn to just accept the body, but I defer to medical professionals). I’ve supported transgender folks who were interviewing for a job where I worked. But, they freak me out. That’s my problem, not theirs.
I’m transphobic, but not a bigot.
Well, allow me to make some video recommendations that will change your mind….
No, but seriously, I’m bisexual, and I recognize that there are a whole lot of people who are basically on my side, but are uncomfortable with the concept of bisexuality, and that’s kind of good enough. Using the same terminology for those people and the “god hates f*gs” people pushes the people who are basically allies away.
@Slugger: I was thinking that very thing–especially after I read the balance of the Nov. 3 editorial posted by Mister Bluster. Serious disconnect from reality–and crass, too!
@EddieInCA:
Why this is “deplorable”?
There also seems to be a sizeable swath of rural America that hasn’t managed to understand, let alone accept, relatively recent changes in the way we view ethnic minorities and women and resent being called racists and misogynists for believing things that were common American (well, Southern American) values 50 years ago…this yahoo editor is only writing what others of his ilk are thinking…
@Miguel Madeira:
Because they voted out the unions and the infrastructure that kept those jobs where they were. The moment these idiots started buying into the GOP mantra that “All unions are bad”, they pretty much sealed their own fates.
My mother worked in a clothing factory. Her only goal in life was to provide for my sister and I to make sure my sister and I would NEVER work in a factory, so it was all about education for us.
You can choose to get educated or you can be left behind. If you choose to not educate yourself so that you can do better than your folks, then yeah, you’re deplorable.
@Gustopher:
True, and I think we have a similar issue with racism. There are genuine deplorables in Trump’s base, a lot of them, but there are also a lot of people who were uncomfortable with a black President without being self aware enough to recognize why. For lack of better terminology we lump them into one word, “racism’.
To be fair, and pedantic, the editorial is not racist.The guy obviously is racist as fwck, and possibly, as noted above, drifting into cognitive issues. But he’s not saying his reconstituted KKK should ride on DC and lynch black people. He wants them to lynch Democrats, including “Democrats in the Republican Party”. He’s echoing Trump’s drain the swamp rhetoric, with no more idea what the swamp is than Trump himself. It’s the “elites”, “globalists” stuff, not racism. He wants to lynch people who are too dumb to understand the evils of a “socialist-communist idealogy”. Even if he could spell it I doubt he could define “socialist-communist idealogy” in any sensible way. but that’s who he wants to lynch, not black people. This time.
My grandfather worked for the mines owned by the railroads in Washington State. He was a plumber (I believe the term nowadays is safety engineer) and made good money. He told my father and uncle that they could do anything they wanted to, but if they went to work in the mines, he was going to disown and disinherit them.
Among other things, he saw the diesel electric engines were going to make the mines obsolete sooner rather than later.
@DrDaveT: My point is that the Democratic version of “real Americans” is seen in things like Hillary’s “deplorables” comment and, more clearly in the sentiments expressed by @EddieInCA above.
I tend to agree with @Kathy that it manifests in more evil ways on the Republican side, because it’s been used to justify things like disenfranchisement campaigns. But I think that’s mostly because that side is losing and knows that it’s doomed if Democrats are represented to the degree of their actual presence in society. (Democratic constituencies tend to undervote naturally for a variety of reasons but not as much as they did 20 years or so ago.)
I generally agree with EddieinCA and for the same reasons: Education and a willingness to move to where the jobs were changed my life for the better and, over time, changed a lot of my beliefs. At the same time, I’m much like @Gustopher in recognizing degrees of bigotry—and in thinking it unhelpful to call well-meaning people who are 15 years behind the times on social mores “bigots.” I think it helps that so many of my high school and Army friends, who I keep touch with through Facebook and the like, are among those people. None of them are of the “God hates fags” crowd, at least overtly. But a lot of them still think homosexuality is wrong because of their social background (age, religion, and region).
@James Joyner: I find myself agreeing with you wholeheartedly and completely disagreeing with you at the same time. And I’m having trouble figuring out why. But here’s at least a piece of the issue: defining the transition from someone being culturally uncomfortable to being deplorable is not easy. And, to me, the big problem with that Hillary said that 50% of Trump supporters “were deplorable” rather than “did deplorable things”. And if you think that is a minor quibble, ask yourself how you would react to someone saying “you are stupid” versus “you’ve done some stupid things”. We’ve all done stupid things, and an adult can easily admit that. But being labeled “stupid” is another matter entirely.
Is it deplorable to feel uncomfortable or even grossed out about unfamiliar and strange things? For me, I would say no.
Is it deplorable to not want to be around such people? Again, no, but now we are on a slippery slope.
Is it deplorable to not give a job to someone because they are gay or black because you don’t want to be around such people? Yes.
Is it deplorable to gossip about your coworkers because they are gay or black and focus on every negative thing and ride the gossip exaggeration elevator until a triviality becomes the apocalypse and they are fired? Yes.
Is it deplorable to join forces with people who are truly deplorable (Nazis and other violent white supremacists) because there are some things you both want. Yes. And this one is especially germane. The Trump people put a leader of the Proud Boys on the podium behind him at a recent rally. And before that, the day after… (I’m forgetting the specifics, maybe Trump had to condemn a racist mass shooting or maybe it was after he had to say something nice about MLK on MLKJ day) someone invited a white nationalist to the White House where he took and posted a picture of him standing in the driveway in front of it.
So after some thought, do I think 50% of Trump supporters are deplorable at their core? No. But I think more than 50% regularly do deplorable things, and delight in them.
@Gustopher:
Boo!
@MarkedMan: There is nothing in your value system that says you must retain the “deplorable” framework Clinton left you with. Let it go.
@Kathy: Eek!
@James Joyner:
I know. And our counterpoint is that this is a totally false equivalency. It’s like saying that the other side’s version of “lynching” is seen in things like twirling wedgies.
As multiple people have pointed out to you,
(1) Hillary’s ‘deplorables’ comment clearly singled out only a subset — half — of Trump’s supporters. Less than half of GOP voters.
(2) It identified them by their behaviors, not by their identification with Trump or the GOP
(3) It was accurate
It isn’t demonization to point out that racists are deplorable, and there is no hint whatever in her comments (or in EddieInCA’s) that those deplorable people should be treated in any way as less than full Americans, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.
Now, explain that equivalence to me again…