June 4, 2001
Mr. Netkin --
You are full of shit.
You angrily attack the media for misrepresenting yourself as racist, yet you on include a warning on your website about the "Mexicanization of Los Angeles." Maybe I'm just one of those squishy-minded hate-monger liberals, but posting such a warning on your website does not seem strike me as the best way to disarm your critics. In fact, it strikes me as pretty damn inflammatory. It reminds me a little of Nazi Intellectuals in the 1930's who used to warn of "The Jewificiation of Germany".
You attack Antonio Villarigosa for "weaseling" his way out of the Carlos Vignali controversy (a criticism I happen to agree with, actually). Yet you engage in exactly the same kind of weaseling by trumping your El Salvadoran wife and African-American son-in-law as evidence you are not a bigot. So what? Your critics charge that you are a bigot because your website feeds into ethnic stereotypes and inflames them. If the critics are wrong, then defend your website. But don't change the subject by talking about your family. For that matter, how is that any different from Antonio Villarigosa deflecting questions about his past membership in MECHA by talking about all his Jewish friends?
You attack your critics for making unfounded charges of racism against you, yet you have no hesitation to make completely unfounded charges about Antonio Villarigosa being an anti-Semite. Where is your proof for these charges? It's not from any actions or comments from Villarigosa himself . Rather, your charges are that 1) Villiarigosa was a member of MECHA at UCLA 26 years ago 2) MECHA is a Latino Nationalist organization 3) Some members of some MECHA-related organization -- not MECHA itself, but organizations who also happen to use the Aztlan motif -- have engaged in anti-Semetic rhetoric. 4)Therefore, Villarigosa is an anti-semite. Your guilt-by-four-degrees-of-separation tactics would be laughable if they weren't so effective.
Is that what your parents came to America for?
Sincerely,
Name withheld
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Your opening insulting greeting reveals who the angry one really is and leaves little doubt about your corrupt character.
I have a mountain of evidence that Villaraigosa is a separatist and a Mexican Nationalist who wants to Mexicanize Los Angeles. I realize that there are other more radical Raza organizations that are not directly connected to Mecha, but since Villaraigosa characterizes himself as the champion of anti-hate, his not willing to publicly repudiate the most vicious Raza antisemitic organizations like El Voz de Aztlan, which posts this kind of garbage,
begs the question as to whether he is really a racist, a coward or both.
My use of the term "Mexicanization of Los Angeles" means the forced displacement of the American culture with the Mexican culture. How is that racist? If anything, it is racist to want to displace an already multicultural city with one single culture.
I can't see how presenting my family in the way I did proves anything. If anything, it is evidence that I could hardly be a racist. Your accusations about me are purely conjecture. The only proof you have that I am an angry racist, is in your mind.
Hal Netkin
P.S. My wife is from Mexico -- it's my brother's wife who is from El Salvador
