Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga (MAMZ) Disavows Membership in Any Ethnic Group other than White Men

If you want to learn about and understand a public figure and find his "macaca moments", there is no better place to start than the articles s/he wrote for his college newspaper. Yet, to my knowledge, no "mainstream" media outlet has ever reported a single word from the college newspaper writings of Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA (MAMZ). For instance, no mainstream newspaper has reported that the would-be dean of leftism wrote a hateful screed against gays while he was in college, advocating that ALL participation by gays in the military was "inherently uncomfortable" to MAMZ.

Instead of printing MAMZ's own words from the time, and his earthshattering confessions of his CIA training while starting DailyKos, which confession comes 2006, the mainstream media has been content to rely on MAMZ's own account of what was in MAMZ's articles and letters.

For example, One biographer wrote:

His focus changed after he read a negative column about Mexican-American students in the school newspaper, the Northern Star. Moulitsas felt the need to write a column of his own in response; a few semesters later, he not only had a regular column but was also the editor in chief of the paper . . .

However, having read every single article that MAMZ published at his alma mater, I cannot find any evidence that he wrote and published "his own response" to the negative column about Mexican-Americans. I encourage readers to look at the archives and see if perhaps I have missed something. I cannot find any articles at all in the student newspaper by or about MAMZ being Latin American or engaged in Latino advocacy.

There is no evidence that MAMZ was a Latino leader in college, but there is plenty of evidence that he was not. If you actually read what MAMZ published in his college newspaper on this topic, you discover that MAMZ explicitly disavowed being a Latino or Hispanic. Instead he insisted that, by virtue of being a white man, and not a member of any ethnic or religious group that suffers persecution, MAMZ was never subjected to prejudice of any kind.

After writing a four-part series on "racism" for his college newspaper, on Thursday, September 2, 1993 MAMZ wrote and published the following letter in his college newspaper. The letter is remarkable and embarrassing in that MAMZ disavows all participation in any ethnic group (including Latinos and Hispanics) and other such groups as might be targeted based on their apparent membership or participation in any ethnic group.

MAMZ says in the letter,

I could always talk against racism, fight ignorance and prejudice wherever I ran into it, yet I would always be looking in from another room and I could always close the door. My life, in my world, in my own detached selfishness.

Are progressives and liberals really people who look upon "racism" with "detached selfishness? Keep in mind that he published this in the college newspaper immediately after interviewing many minorities on campus about their experience. And then he declared that he could and would turn his back on the experiences others had shared with him and about which he had written.

Moreover, he asserts that he did "pass" for a white man, saying:

And as I left the ugly reality of racism behind, it struck me that what was such an easy and trivial exercise for me would be impossible for anyone whose skin color or religious persuassion (sic0 made them the target of bigotry and discrimination. They would never be able to escape who they were. (Emphasis added.)

Clearly, MAMZ was disavowing participation in any ethnic group whatever and and feeling the relief that comes from knowing that racism only effects "them", not us white men.

Read the entire letter. It helps to explain why DailyKos is 97% white, 2% Black and zero percent Latino. After you read the letter, you will understand that Markos cannot be counted as an Hispanic or Latino because, with the benefit of white skin, he has verbally and explicity disavowed participation in any ethnic group besides white men. Keep in mind that the editor of the newspaper often writes the title and not the author of the article.

Student opinion: Escape will only breed ignorance

By Markos Moulitsas

Today the Star ran the last of my four-part series on racism at NIU. Having been a project that dominated my life for the last couple of weeks, I was more than glad to have it finished and over with so I could return to the mundane world of Faculty Senate meetings and other reporter stuff.

Yet as I gathered the last interviews and typed the final words of the final story, I was overcome by a strange, uneasy feeling.

I was terribly happy to escape the ugliness of a racist world for the safety of my every day-to-day life. Sure, I could always talk against racism, fight ignorance and prejudice wherever I ran into it, yet I would always be looking in from another room and I could always close the door. My life, in my world, in my own detached selfishness.

And as I left the ugly reality of racism behind, it struck me that what was such an easy and trivial exercise for me would be impossible for anyone whose skin color or religious persuassion made them the target of bigotry and discrimination. They would never be able to escape who they were.

Nor should they ever have to! It truly is a sad commentary on our society when this debate is even necessary.

There is so much that people from different cultures could learn about each other. The benefits would be incalcuble, yet they remain unattained.

Many of you know or have read Pete Schuh, a reporter and columnist here at the Star. He has occular albanism, which makes his eyes perpetually wander from side-to-side, something over which he has no control.

When I first met him last summer, his eyes were the feature that most stood out about him. I would sit and talk to him, but since I couldn't make true eye contact with him it made me feel very uncomfortable. Finaly (sic)I got my courage up one day and asked him about it.

We spent a few hours discussing it, and I don't know about him, but I felt better for having been educated about something about which I didn't understand and felt uneasy about.

And this is the part that gives me hope that our species will someday be able to get along:

A few days ago, I overheard Pete talking to somebody else here at the newsroom, and during their conversation, he made a casual reference to the problem with his eyes.

I was stunned. As I got to know Pete for who he was, and not what he was, such trivial differences such as his eye problem became so irrelevant to our friendship that I had forgotten it even existed. I could keep eye-contact with him and I wouldn't even notice his eyes!

Now why couldn't the same thing happen between our races (sic)? There are truly no physical differences or gulfs in beliefs between any of us that can form a permanent barrior (sic) to better understanding.

And to achieve this understanding we all need to enter the ugly world of racism and intolerance I so much wanted to escape. Sitting in the room with the closed door will never solve anything, only breed further ignorance.

But to open that door to the knowledge and understanding that currently sits on your doorstep can accomplish nothing but let in the solution.

So, there you have it: MAMZ took the position that "racism" and religious persecution are problems for victims to confront, but not for white men (such as himself), who can simply ignore "racism" and "religious persecution" and go about their daily lives as if these realities did not exist.

It's not hard, then, to understand how Moulitsas C. Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA ended up with Gina Cooper as the coordinator of Netroots ("Whiteroots") Nation, the annual gathering of the white-skinned part of the blogospher During the 2007 gathering Gina Cooper told Washington Post writer Jose Antonio Vargas , "I hate to use the word diversity."

Meanwhile, the Washington Post interviewed some of the few non-white participants and wrote:

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, who is part Latina, attended a panel on Friday called "The Changing Dynamics of Diversity in Progressive Politics," organized by Cheryl Contee, an African American woman. Ancona works for Vote Hope, a California-based activist group, and said one reason she came to Yearly Kos was to get an answer to this question: "Why is the blogosphere, which is supposed to be more democratic, reinforcing the same white male power structure that exists?"

The clearest direct evidence of discriminatory intent comes from mouths of Markos Moulitsas and Gina Cooper themselves. MAMZ says,

I would always be looking in [at colorism] from another room and I could always close the door. My life, in my world, in my own detached selfishness.

Gina Cooper expresses a similar aversion to discussion and participation of minorities, saying to a WaPost writer,

"I hate using the word 'diversity.' I don't know what we use there.

So, as the Red Alerts blog characterized it at the time, "Surprise! DailyKos is All White (and Full of Racists)."

I don't think it should surprise us that during the same period MAMZ wrote and published a letter opposing ALL gay participation in the US military, whether "out" or "in the closet." Today, you can sign a petition (as over a hundred other people have) opposing MAMZ's effort to exclude all gays from the military.