By John McMahon
[Author’s note: This article was originally written for the [dis]claimer newspaper at the University of Denver, to be published on Sept. 10. Also cross-posted at the DU Dems blog.]

In the early hours of September 6, former Special Advisor for Green Jobs in the Obama White House, Van Jones, resigned his position after controversy, led by Glenn Beck, over supposedly controversial comments in Jones’s past. As the controversy intensified in the preceding days, the Obama administration provided little to no support for Jones before his resignation, and offered little regret in its aftermath. By conceding victory to the individuals and groups behind the real extremism and racism in opposition to Obama (Obama is not American; Obama is a Nazi Communist Black Muslim; Obama’s ‘death panels,’ etc.), the White House has not only pushed out one of the few true ‘movement progressives’ in the Administration, but also cowered in front of the real crazies.

Van Jones is a celebrated activist and author; he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and Green for All and wrote the New York Times bestselling The Green Collar Economy. He was appointed by Obama to be the White House ‘czar’ for green jobs. The controversy stems from Jones’s signing of a petition in 2004 circulated by the organization 911truth.org calling for, among other things, “immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.” Jones, who was asked, according to environmental journalist David Roberts, “to support the calls of 9/11 families for further investigation of the attacks,” disavowed the sentiment of the petition. He has also been criticized for calling Republicans “assholes” in response to a question in February 2009, referring to their tactics in passing legislation (Jones called himself an “asshole” in the same sense in that very sentence.

Expressing skepticism over the official story regarding the attacks of September 11 is not and should not be a controversial act. Indeed, in a 2006 New York Times/CBS News poll, 53 per cent of respondents thought the Bush administration had hid information regarding the attacks. More importantly, however, this sentiment pales in comparison to various “legitimate” forms of extremism exhibited by the very people who called for Jones’s resignation. A House bill requiring Presidential candidates to prove their American citizenry has originated from the ‘birther’ movement insisting Obama is at times Kenyan or Indonesian. The existence of a copy of the certificate online and verification by Hawaiian authorities has not assuaged the racism of those unable to accept a President of color perpetuating this hoax. The bill currently has ten co-sponsors in the House; if Van Jones is supposed to resign for his ‘extremism,’ then I hope that these Congresspeople are turning in their resignation tomorrow.

This is far from the only example of blatant hypocrisy on the resignation for Jones. Rep. Mike Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House, whined that Jones’s “extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this Administration or the public debate.” This comes from someone who voted to make the unconstitutional ‘Patriot’ Act permanent, supported the illegal war and occupation in Iraq, and had no problem violating domestic and international law by torturing detainees. I also do not remember him calling for Dick Cheney to step down when Cheney told Sen. Patrick Leahy, “fuck yourself.” Sen. Kit Bond called for a Congressional investigation into Jones’s fitness for his position, asking if “the American people trust a senior White House official that is so cavalier in his association with such radical and repugnant sentiments.” I cannot recall Bond asking the same questions of Bush officials who were supporters of the Project for a New American Century, which called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in order to implement radically neoconservative policies and embark on a crusade for imperial global domination.

All this is to say that while Van Jones and the Obama administration are portrayed as the ‘radicals,’ there is a striking hypocrisy in that the Bush administration, and even parts of the contemporary set of Republicans, are guilty of ‘extremism’ in a way I would argue is much more egregious and insidious; but only when the person comes from the left and is black is that individual accepted as extreme in everyday discourse. All that Van Jones did is sign a petition, while rightist radicals forced this country into two tragic foreign occupations, instituted an economic policy that widened the income between the highest and lowest earners to unprecedented levels and bankrupted the middle class, enabled economic crisis, destroyed civil liberties, and violated human rights around the world. Yet, in all of this, Van Jones is made the enemy.

Therein lies another ominous problem: failed mainstream political discourse dictates Van Jones must go, the Obama admin does nothing to stop this if not encourages the resignation, and this discourse strengthens further. What results from this cycle? University of Chicago journalism professor Jeff McMahon (no relation) cautions us all to “notice that it’s still unreasonable, as Jones’s example shows, to wonder about the connections between the Bushes and the Bin Ladens, but it’s more reasonable–because it defends the status quo–to make claims about death panels in health care legislation.” The Obama administration gave in to the real extremists, and when they choose their next target whether it is an individual or a policy, they will likely succeed. And the establishment, both media and political, is complicit.