What struck me and many other people about the case of USDA official Shirley Sherrod was how easily the mainstream media, the White House, and even the NAACP got "hood-winked" by the Andrew Breibart video attack.  The manner in which the Breibart video manipulation was used in order to suggest that a current Black official of the US Department of Agriculture was anti-white was amazing in its audacity.  But what was even more amazing was the lack of any immediate fact-checking with the release of the story before actions were ordered.

What disturbed me was the failure to question the accuracy of a video compiled by a known right-wing blogger.  In addition to a failure to question there was the willingness to engage in any action against Ms. Sherrod on the basis of this flawed and misconstrued video.  To believe that a Black, experienced USDA employee would make a public address announcing an anti-white farmer view should have immediately set off bells and whistles as to whether this was factual in the first place.

So, here are a few lessons that immediately jump out from this incident:

(1)The danger of Internet releases:  The lightning pace in which certain news stories move at this moment in history is breathtaking.  No media outlet wants to be found sleeping at the switch, so there is a tendency to jump onto something irrespective of whether the facts have been checked and whether it passes the straight-face test.  As a result, misinformation is regularly posted.  In addition to this, there is an assumption by much of the public that if something happens to be posted on the Web, for instance, it must be true.  Thus, for example, when there emerged a proliferation of Internet-based stories concerning allegations that President Obama was supposedly not born in the USA, the fact that there were so many stories led many people to automatically believe them to be true.  The Sherrod case was just another example of the Internet/Web gone wild.

(2)The mainstream media runs scared of the political Right:  This is true generally, but it is especially true in times when the political Right has a certain amount of momentum and when progressive forces are complacent or on the retreat.  The political Right is never constrained by the truth and, therefore, feels very much at ease repeating, time and again, certain views that lack substantiation.  The allegations of so-called weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq is certainly a case in point.  The Right is able to succeed at this, however, because of their use of "echo chambers," that is, a process through which right-wing commentators around the country, in a coordinated fashion, repeat certain themes in print, on the radio, on TV and on the Web.  When the Right engages in this, they are able to create momentum and the perception of accuracy irrespective of whether it happens to be the case.  When that takes place, the mainstream media tends to cower.

(3)One more example of an active campaign by the Right to promote the myth of an alleged anti-white racism by Blacks in authority:  The current situation is reminiscent of attacks that took place during the Reconstruction period (1865-1876) where white supremacists actively worked to overthrow governments led by Blacks and poor whites.  Central to their campaign was the notion that Blacks were out of control, corrupt, and exercising a tyranny over good white people.  In the current era, this theme has been played time and again by the Right since early 2009.  Every time that the issue of race emerges, the Right jumps in to undermine the discussion with stories of alleged Black racism.  In the Sherrod case, Breibart overreached, and may have set his own cause back.  But we should not assume that these attacks will stop.  This is a point that progressives need to get.  The nature of the right-wing attacks on Obama and on Blacks in authority for allegedly being anti-white are aimed at scaring an already fearful white electorate into closing their eyes and voting Republican as a way of holding off the mobs of people of color who are portrayed as preparing to destroy white America.

The Sherrod case should be used by progressives in order to launch a counter-attack on the Right.  Laughing at Breibart's stupidity is fine for thirty seconds, but what is really necessary is a broader campaign that aims to accomplish several things, not the least being, debunking the myth of anti-white Black racism and, needless to say, standing up to the efforts at intimidation by the Right.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president ofTransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.