Comments by "ThinkBefore YouType" (@thinkbeforeyoutype7106) on "We're thankful for every day we wake up in Gaza, with Abubaker Abed" video.

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  4.  @72defender  “When Mandela was imprisoned and struggling to end apartheid, the Republican Party — through the policies of the Reagan administration and the work of party activists — opposed U.S. sanctions against the white supremacist regime.” “In 1985, Mandela’s 22nd year in prison, then South African President P.W. Botha gave a speech affirming apartheid’s rejection of "one-man-one-vote" and defending Mandela’s imprisonment. The infamous "Rubicon Speech" fueled ongoing rioting in South Africa and prompted the African National Congress (ANC), Mandela’s party, to call for the United States to impose sanctions.” “President Ronald Reagan and the American right were not sympathetic to that request. "Our relationship with South Africa … has always over the years been a friendly one," Reagan said in a 1985 radio interview, rejecting any change in policy. Televangelist Jerry Falwell went one step further and visited South Africa the week after Botha’s speech to insist that sanctions were opposed "in every segment of every [South African] community." “Lobbyists hired by the South African regime also played a role in the perpetuation of the idea of Mandela as a threat. These groups lobbied and publicly attacked politicians who opposed the South African regime’s interests. Republican operatives Marion Smoak and Carl Shipley led an aggressive campaign in 1982 to defeat Rep. Howard Wolpe (D-MI) because of his support for sanctions. Later, Smoak and Shipley hired now-Sen. Jeff Flake(R-AZ) as a lobbyist after he returned from his Mormon mission in South Africa.” “Some of today’s most recognizable political operatives also played a role in pushing the apartheid government’s agenda. In 1985, following his term as national chair of College Republicans, Grover Norquist was brought to South Africa for a conservative conference, where he advised a pro-apartheid student group on how to more effectively make its case to the American public. While there, he criticized anti-apartheid activists on American college campuses: Apartheid "is the one foreign policy debate that the Left can get involved in and feel that they have the moral high ground," he said, adding that South Africa was a "complicated situation." “Jimmy Swaggart, another popular televangelist, told his viewers that the conflict in South Africa was nothing less than a struggle between Christian civilization and the Antichrist. In his presidential campaign in 1988, televangelist Pat Robertson called advocates for sanctions the "allies of those who favor a one-party Marxist Government in South Africa." After his race ended, he became even more direct: "There needs to be some kind of protection for the minority which the white people represent now," he said in 1992. And in 1993, he saidon his show, "I know we don’t like apartheid, but the blacks in South Africa, in Soweto, don’t have it all that bad." At a time when the Dutch Reformed Church, the traditional theological backer of apartheid, was reversing its position, the American religious right provided new religious cover — and they made the case to millions of Americans who tuned into their shows.” - Apartheid Amnesia : How the GOP conveniently forgot about its role in propping up a white supremacist regime. - Source : Foreign Policy
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