1. These are just "lone wolf" psychos who are acting alone. You can't hold anybody else responsible for what crazy people decide to do.
True and false. But mostly false.
It's true that every one of the nine right-wing terrorists who've made the news since Jan. 20 had a history of mental illness, domestic violence, and/or drug abuse. Several were military veterans who were having a really hard time adjusting to civilian life. None of these people could reasonably be considered sane; and, for whatever twisted reasons, they made a personal choice to do what they did.
But it's not true that they were acting alone. People who are dealing with these kinds of demons are often drawn into movements that offer a strong narrative that helps them make sense of a world that never seems to add up right for them. They're usually drawn into organizations like Operation Rescue or the Minutemen that are nominally nonviolent, but which also indoctrinate them into a worldview that justifies and motivates people to commit terrorist acts. They come to believe that they must do this to save the world, to serve God and to be the heroes they desperately want to be.
They're already walking sticks of dynamite. But it takes the heat of that apocalyptic, dualistic, eliminationist, pro-violence narrative to light their fuses and make them explode.
2. These terrorists are really left-wingers, not right-wingers. Because everybody knows that fascism is a phenomenon that only occurs on the left.
False does not even begin to cover the absurdity of this claim.
Fascism has always been a phenomenon of the right. Every postwar academic scholar of fascism -- Robert Paxton, Roger Griffin, Umberto Eco and onward -- has been emphatically clear about this. Benito Mussolini admitted as much. It's part of the very definition of the word.
Jonah Goldberg has gotten a lot of traction on the right for his argument that fascism is somehow a left-wing tendency; but in his badly argued, barely researched tome Liberal Fascism, he gets here by taking logical leaps that no college professor would accept from the greenest freshman.
The worst, perhaps, is the way he conflates "fascism" with "totalitarianism." There is such a thing as left-wing totalitarianism: Stalinism and Maoism both qualify. But they were communist, not fascist, movements. It's only when totalitarianism happens on the right that we call it fascism.
3. Public right-wing groups like Operation Rescue or the Minutemen don't advocate violence, so these acts have absolutely nothing to do with them.
As noted above: These groups may not engage in violence themselves, but they do provide the narrative and worldview that convinces people that terrorism is the only available means of getting what they want.
Once people have accepted these ideas as truth, terrorist violence begins to seem like an unavoidable imperative -- and lone wolves, smelling blood, will start to hunt for targets.
4. This is just a minority movement that isn't really capable of changing anything. We don't really need to worry about it.
False, and evidence of tremendous denial.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the U.S. is up 54 percent since 2000, with nearly 1,000 such groups active across the country right now. Fueled by bone-deep racism, an unnatural terror of liberal government, frustration over the economic downturn, and fears about America's loss of world standing, they tell us, the militant right is rising again. You can find groups in every corner of the country, incidents of racist violence are rising; and the traffic on far-right Web sites is up, too.
Make no mistake: The right-wing radicals are angry, and there are enough of them out there to do some real damage. As noted, they're far more cohesive and better-connected than they've ever been. And they're only getting started.
5. It's not fair to hold right-wing media talking heads responsible for the things their listeners might do.
Advertisers will spend about $50 billion this year on TV ads, and $15 billion more on radio. That's a lot of money. These ads take up roughly one-third of every hour of airtime -- and sponsors pay up gladly, because long experience has shown that broadcast ads are a very powerful way to influence consumer behavior.
Furthermore, conservatives have railed against Hollywood for decades, claiming that movies, TV shows, music and video games are a powerful corrupting influence on the country's morals. They've howled even louder in recent years about Al-Jazeera's perceived negative effect on the political discourse in the Middle East. But when it comes to their own media -- no, no, nothing to see here. Nobody's really listening to us, let alone acting on anything we might say. How could you even suggest such a thing?
As usual, they're trying to have it both ways. The religious right came to power almost exclusively on the persuasive (and fundraising) strength of cable-TV shows. The conservative grip on the country's red counties is largely attributable to right-wing talk radio and Fox News. Obviously, conservatives strongly believe that other people's media have tremendous power to undermine their preferred narratives; and there's no denying that they've been very aggressive in using it to promote their own worldview for decades.
6. All that crazy stuff you hear on the right -- you can find the left wing saying things just as bad. They're equally culpable for how bad it all its.
False. There is no equivalency whatsoever to be drawn here.
It’s absolutely true that the commenters can get just as out of hand on liberal sites as they do on conservative ones. (And most of us who've been hanging around the Internet for a while have the flamethrower scars to prove it.) But the problem has nothing to do with the commenters. It has to do with the opinion leaders who are driving the conversation.
On the right, it's actually hard to name a single major voice who hasn’t called for the outright extermination, silencing, harassment or killing of liberals. Rush. Bill O’Reilly. Ann Coulter. Sean Hannity. Laura Ingraham. Michelle Malkin. Michael Savage. Glenn Beck. Bernard Goldberg, who has been cited by at least one assassin as the inspiration for his actions. Michael Reagan, just yesterday. This kind of eliminationist language is stock in trade on the right. A lot of them literally cannot get through the week without it.
And I’m sorry -- but you just don’t hear anything like this same murderous vitriol coming from any of the major voices on the left. Kos' commenters may engage in that, but Kos himself does not. Nor does Arianna [Huffington]. Ed Schultz talks tough, but he's never called for liberals to silence conservatives. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are flaming liberals -- but they would choke on air before actually threatening anyone with bodily harm. Both of them have said repeatedly that they regard that kind of thing as a grossly irresponsible use of a media soapbox. Every reputable left-wing leader or talker wholeheartedly agrees.
Furthermore, you don’t see Volvos and Priuses (Prii?) out there sporting "conservative hunting licenses," despite the fact that "liberal hunting licenses" have been a hot item on the right for years. We’re not the ones driving the huge surge in gun purchases, either. And most importantly: You don’t see us out there shooting up fundamentalist churches, crisis pregnancy clinics, conservative gatherings or cops.
You have to go all the way back to the 1970s to find anything like that kind of overt political terrorist violence coming from the left. But starting in the 1980s, we've had ongoing waves of it coming out of the right -- now including the nine violent right-wing attacks on innocent Americans since Barack Obama was inaugurated.
I agree that it’s time to dial this down. But since it's the right wing who gathers power by whipping up people’s fear and anger -- and it's the right wing (and only the right wing) that's now actually taking up arms and killing people -- then all I have to say is:
You first.
7. "Dial it down?" Don't you mean that you want to use the power of government to forcibly shut up right-wing hate talkers?
False. There are a few folks in Congress who tried to gin up support for some kind of legislation -- but progressives should resist this impulse and denounce it as the shameless grandstanding that it is. We believe in the First Amendment. And if we compromise it now, we're no better than the Bush-era conservatives who were so eager to shred the Constitution when they felt threatened. We are better than that -- or should be.
Besides, we've already perfected a tried-and-true method that actually works. Even better, it's grounded completely in conservative free-market philosophy; so when the right wing starts blustering about it, we get to fire right back and call them out as hypocrites. Big fun all around ... and so much more elegant than wantonly trampling on people's civil rights.
Short and simple: We take our appeal to the advertisers. We note who the hate talkers are, what they're saying, what date and time they said it -- and then we write letters to the CEOs of the companies that sponsored those shows. Do these people speak for you? Is this the kind of media you want your product associated with? If the answer is no, what do you intend to do about it?
Note that this is not a boycott -- just a call for moral accountability. Being associated with hate speech is so bad for business in so many ways that no boycott should be required. It taints the brand. It usually violates the sponsors' own human resources standards -- any employee who said that stuff at the office would be canned on the spot.
8. But what you're suggesting is censorship! You're trying to censor free speech!
Oh, please. Anybody who argues this with a straight face shouldn't be allowed into a voting booth until they're sent back to eighth-grade civics for a basic refresher, because they apparently know less about the Constitution than the average immigrant who's had to take a citizenship test.
Follow me here: "Censorship" is strictly defined as "government suppression of free speech."
When citizens appeal directly to advertisers, that's not censorship, because the government isn't anywhere in the mix. It's just the Almighty Divine Hand of the Unfettered Free Market at work, y'all. The sponsors are voting with their dollars -- which, in the conservative free-market utopia, is precisely how it's supposed to work.
9. What about that guy who shot the recruiters in Arkansas -- isn't that proof that the left wing is just as bad as the right?
False. I mean, really, really false.
Abdulhakim Mohammed's assassination of two military recruiters was an act of Muslim terrorism, no different than 9/11 or the London subway bombings or Richard Reid and his amazing explosive sneakers. He didn't have a pile of Thom Hartmann books in his apartment. There have been no reports that his computer bookmarks linked to Firedoglake and Crooks & Liars. Near as we can tell, Mohammed was radicalized after being held and abused in a Yemeni prison -- and had absolutely no association with the American left at all.
Yes, he said that he did it because he protested the war. (I actually fielded a radio caller who insisted that his opposition to the war was de facto proof that he's a raving liberal.) But here's a news flash, kiddos: You don't need to be a progressive to think the war was a bad idea. It may come as a surprise to learn that there are a lot of people in other parts of the world who also think it was a bad idea.
* * *
This is terrorism we're dealing with. We can't afford to let ourselves be distracted by spin. We will not be able to respond effectively until we're able to deal in facts. The sooner we shoot down these myths, the sooner we'll be able dispel fear, think clearly and start having some real, honest conversations about the actual threats we face.
#3 posted June 30, 2009 at 10:16pm (EST) edited June 30, 2009 at 10:16pm (EST)
Define "Acting Alone". I mean Terry Nickles and Timothy McVeigh acted alone without any outside help. But then again, they had each other, so in a way technically they weren't acting alone.
"According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the U.S. is up 54 percent since 2000, with nearly 1,000 such groups active across the country right now."
One small caveat about that statistic. The number of active hate groups isn't necessarily a good proxy of measuring total amount of hate. I mean if two hate groups merge and become one, thats technically one less hate group. On the other hand, a single hate group can splinter off due to irreconcilable differences among members. Still, groups can "disappear" and just rename themselves as something else (eg: the KKK did just that because they owed a crap load of back taxes to the IRS).
I obviously won't get into the rest, because it is known that pretty much anyone with an internet connection can go find evidence that would back whatever point of view they want to back up.
southernyankee wrote: > I obviously won't get into the rest, because it
> is known that pretty much anyone with an internet
> connection can go find evidence that would back
> whatever point of view they want to back up.
So basically, your "argument" is base don nothing more than the piece being found on the internet? How about, oh I don't know, addressing the points? Or would that just be too reasonable and logical for you?
Yes, I was planning on going to rebute every one of your points, but its kinda long. This is the sort of stuff that left-wing nuts and right-wing nuts pull out of their asses to have their long drawn out flame wars. Really, these assessments are nothing more than the leftwinged equivalent of "where is Obama's birth certificate?". I really expected much better from you.
southernyankee wrote: > Yes, I was planning on going to rebute every one
> of your points, but its kinda long. This is
> the sort of stuff that left-wing nuts and right-wing
> nuts pull out of their asses to have their long
> drawn out flame wars.
Ironically, that whole "the left is just as bad" thing gets addressed in the larger piece.
> Really, these assessments
> are nothing more than the leftwinged equivalent
> of "where is Obama's birth certificate?".
Except it isn't. And it disturbs me that you could see it that way. Is it going to take another Oklahoma City for you to get it, what we're facing here?
1. They're usually drawn into organizations like Operation Rescue or the Minutemen that are nominally nonviolent, but which also indoctrinate them into a worldview that justifies and motivates people to commit terrorist acts.
And what exactly "worldview" would that be? Operation Rescue or the Minutemen are single issue organizations. I don't see how membership in one would translate into any larger right-winged movement. eg: LJD joined the Minutemen, but she's also anti-free trade (more left-winged than right-winged), pro-choice (more left winged in addition in opposition to O.R.), anti-interracial mingling (very right winged), anti-overpopulation (more left winged than right-winged), anti-federal reserve (right wingned) among other things. I don't think there's a larger "single view point" that people get brainwashed into. Minutemen members tend to be very diverse.
If we're gonna talk about political groups that cause violence, since you must name two right-winged issues; I'll name a left-winged one: Eco-terrorists.
2. "The worst, perhaps, is the way he conflates "fascism" with "totalitarianism." There is such a thing as left-wing totalitarianism: Stalinism and Maoism both qualify. But they were communist, not fascist, movements. It's only when totalitarianism happens on the right that we call it fascism."
Ok, fair enough, if you're gonna be this nuanced. I guess by definition there are no left-winged anti-government types because by definition left-wingers want more government (generally too much) and right-wingers want less government (generally not enough). That still doesn't explain Eco-terrorists though, but thats besides the point.
3. see above
4. "According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the U.S. is up 54 percent since 2000, with nearly 1,000 such groups active across the country right now."
Thats a useless statistic, see previous post.
"You can find groups in every corner of the country, incidents of racist violence are rising; and the traffic on far-right Web sites is up, too."
Well, thats not really a shocker. Internet traffic generally has increased for just about every type of web sites, now that more people have internet connections, and faster connections. More to the point, racist people tend to be older on average. So that means less of them per-capita would even know how to get on the internet. But over the years, even older people know how to get online, ergo-- increase in web traffic to hate sites. (I could be wrong on this off course).
Still, more to the point, now that Obama just got elected, racist people are more likely to post offensive crap in internet discussions. So more people would click on the links (even people who disagree with the cause) while they're engaged in flame wars. Also, more concerned people would visit hate sites just to see what the people there are up to now that we have a first black president. Ergo- traffic to these sites increases. Well, thats my theory anyway. Not backed by anything, but it does make sense if you think about it. Feel free to debunk me if you don't think thats right.
5. "Furthermore, conservatives have railed against Hollywood for decades, claiming that movies, TV shows, music and video games are a powerful corrupting influence on the country's morals."
The annoying religious right has been taking over the GOP on-and-off, which are pretty annoying in their own right, but thats another topic for another thread.
"As usual, they're trying to have it both ways. The religious right came to power almost exclusively on the persuasive (and fundraising) strength of cable-TV shows. The conservative grip on the country's red counties is largely attributable to right-wing talk radio and Fox News. Obviously, conservatives strongly believe that other people's media have tremendous power to undermine their preferred narratives; and there's no denying that they've been very aggressive in using it to promote their own worldview for decades."
You have a point there with the right trying to have it both ways, or at least you would have so long as you lump racists, gun nuts, religions wackos, anti-immigration groups, extreme economic libertarians into one collective basket. For instance, you can't say that Glenn Beck or Rush is a hypocrite for "spreading hate" but wanting to censor others because of what Jack Thompson tried to do with GTA, simply because they're part of the right wing. Sorry, you don't get to blame religious wackos for anti-immigration and racist wackos (hell, catholic priests are even helping illegal Mexicans hide as we speak), just like you don't get to blame extreme libertarians for what religious wackos do.
If you want to make the argument that the right-wing is more dangerous than the left-wing, or whatever, fine. In that case, its reasonable to lump various groups as right or left winged. But if you want to make the claim that the right-wing is a bunch of hypocrites, you only get to pick one segment at the time to judge them against their own standards (eg: racists having sex with people of other racists, religious guys having sex with dudes behind their wives backs, libertarians collecting welfare, environmentalists littering, etc). You don't get to call Ron Paul a hypocrite if he decides to have a gay three-way with midgets covered in KY.
6. "On the right, it's actually hard to name a single major voice who hasn’t called for the outright extermination, silencing, harassment or killing of liberals. Rush. Bill O’Reilly. Ann Coulter. Sean Hannity. Laura Ingraham. Michelle Malkin. Michael Savage. Glenn Beck. Bernard Goldberg,..."
Ok, why exactly are we lumping random talk show hosts as one. These are all quite diverse. O'Reilly is more of a traditionalist grandpa complaining about kids these days, Sean is mostly a fiscal conservative mixed in with sensationalist blonds, Beck is more of a libertarian, Savage is just a mean spirited prick whose a dick to everyone, Laura is a social conservative who'se very anti-feminists, Rush is mostly about fiscal stuff, plus a little bit about national security. I haven't heard about most of these others.
In any case, neither O'Reilly nor Beck have said anything hateful that I can remember. Sure, they can get kinda annoying from time to time (as anyone on TV with a microphone will eventually be), but hateful. I know some people even tried to pin the holocaust museum shooter on Beck (surprise surprise, the shooter hates Fox News with a passion). I have a tough time buying that Oreilly or Beck would actually inspire anyone to do something violent.
I am surprised you haven't tried to put Huckabee in that list as well, arguably one of the most soft-spoken people on TV.
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