talkpolitics | Words DO Matter -- Which Is Why It's Probably Not Going to Change

From Eric Heubeck’s “The Integration of Theory and Practice”:

We must channel undesirable impulses to serve good purposes…We must always operate based on this cardinal principle: Leftists are never morally responsible for the evil they commit; but we as conservatives are morally responsible for not having done more to prevent them from committing that evil. We must learn to treat leftists as natural disasters or rabid dogs.. We must be feared, so that they will think twice before opening their mouths. They must understand that there is some sort of cost involved in taking a "controversial" stand...

Six years ago, I wrote a four part series for Buzzflash entitled “Dangerous Clowns.” It was an attempt to make sense of the increasingly ugly rhetoric coming from the right. My premise was – and remains – that powerful conservative movers and shakers had made the conscious decision to reject reasoned debate and instead use raw hatred and ignorance as leverage. As I put it back in 2005, the tactics outlined by Heubeck involved destroying:

…any rational public discourse on the subject of anything they label as ‘liberalism.’ They want any liberal or anyone labeled as such to be dismissed out of hand no matter how valid their arguments might be, denounced as mad, stupid, or evil.

… One does not debate natural disasters or rabid dogs, or even treat them as if they were capable of framing an argument. Both are problems to be prevented, if possible and if they occur, contained or destroyed.

It would be fascinating to hear Eric Heubeck’s comments on the current situation, but alas, Heubeck himself seems to be a rather obscure figure. The organization that published his essay, “The Free Congress Foundation,” is not obscure at all. It’s an influential conservative think tank and its founder, the late Paul Weyrich, was a co-founder of the Heritage Foundation.

At the time I wrote “Dangerous Clowns,” things were a bit different. George W. Bush was president. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin were practically unknown. Ann Coulter was the right wing star blithely equating Democrats with traitors and insisting that we liberals had to be physically intimidated to keep us from committing treason.

The names have changed. The political environment I describe in that piece has not. In fact, it’s gotten worse. Instead of just talking about violence, right wing zealots have begun wielding guns in public, and openly using physical intimidation as a campaign slogan. What else does “We’ve Come Unarmed THIS Time,” or “Second Amendment remedies” mean?

In the wake of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, I’ve seen no sign that it’s going to get any better. The right is doubling down and doubling down hard. Heubeck’s strategy of using “undesirable impulses” -- the combined, dangerous power of raw, irrational physical threat -- is just too effective to be relinquished.

There’s been some debate about the politics of Jared Loughner, the disturbed young man who apparently murdered and maimed over a dozen people in Tucson last Saturday. As I’ve said, I don’t think he has a coherent enough world-view to qualify as either on the right or the left. But there is a quote attributed to him that I believe resonates with the current right wing strategy.

“Words don’t matter,” he’s supposed to have told a friend.

That, in a nutshell, is the rationalization the right wing is currently offering for their mainstreaming of violent rhetoric. It’s “hyperbole,” we’re told. Metaphor. Satire. Jokes. Never mind that Joyce Kaufman’s rant about bullets being used when ballots failed was obviously meant literally. Never mind that Glenn Beck’s apocalyptic broadcasts are plainly not intended as mere “satire.” Never mind that using such “hyperbole” in front of huge national audiences is going to net a significant number of people, either madmen or extremists, who take it quite literally.

They’re all just “words,” we’re being told. They couldn’t possibly be related to action.

And what’s truly contemptible about this justification is that it’s a cynical lie. The movers and shakers behind the inflammatory language being used by Tea Partiers and Fox news understand the importance of words, and have understood it for a long time.

That’s why Newt Gingrich compiled his famous list of words in his GOPAC memo back in 1996. It was entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”

I doubt that Palin, Angle, Bachman, Beck, or Kaufman use the language they do with the specific intent of causing physical attacks on people like Gabrielle Giffords.

I think, as I watch the reaction to the travesty in Tucson, that they just don’t give much of a Goddamn one way or the other. Oh, they’ll look sad and furrow their brows, and talk about how “unfortunate” and “regrettable” it all is. But they won’t walk back their rhetoric.

Channeling “undesirable impulses,” after all, is going to occasionally result in this kind of thing. I believe many of them see it as the “unfortunate,” “regrettable” price of doing their brand of business.

Needless to say, I'd love it be proven wrong in this case.

Unfortunately thus far, as I've watched the right since 2005, I haven't been.

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dwer.livejournal.com

-- July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how "liberals" are "destroying America," walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.

-- October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.

-- December 2008: A pair of "Patriot" movement radicals -- the father-son team of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge, who wanted "to attack the political infrastructure" -- threaten a bank in Woodburn, Oregon, with a bomb in the hopes of extorting money that would end their financial difficulties, for which they blamed the government. Instead, the bomb goes off and kills two police officers. The men eventually are convicted and sentenced to death for the crime.

-- December 2008: In Belfast, Maine, police discover the makings of a nuclear "dirty bomb" in the basement of a white supremacist shot dead by his wife. The man, who was independently wealthy, reportedly was agitated about the election of President Obama and was crafting a plan to set off the bomb.

-- January 2009: A white supremacist named Keith Luke embarks on a killing rampage in Brockton, Mass., raping and wounding a black woman and killing her sister, then killing a homeless man before being captured by police as he is en route to a Jewish community center.

-- February 2009: A Marine named Kody Brittingham is arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate President Obama. Brittingham also collected white-supremacist material.

-- April 2009: A white supremacist named Richard Poplawski opens fire on three Pittsburgh police officers who come to his house on a domestic-violence call and kills all three, because he believed President Obama intended to take away the guns of white citizens like himself. Poplawski is currently awaiting trial.

-- April 2009: Another gunman in Okaloosa County, Florida, similarly fearful of Obama's purported gun-grabbing plans, kills two deputies when they come to arrest him in a domestic-violence matter, then is killed himself in a shootout with police.

-- May 2009: A "sovereign citizen" named Scott Roeder walks into a church in Wichita, Kansas, and assassinates abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

-- June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester named James Von Brunn opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.

-- February 2010: An angry tax protester named Joseph Ray Stack flies an airplane into the building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. (Media are reluctant to label this one "domestic terrorism" too.)

-- March 2010: Seven militiamen from the Hutaree Militia in Michigan and Ohio are arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate local police officers with the intent of sparking a new civil war.

-- March 2010: An anti-government extremist named John Patrick Bedell walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two officers before he is himself shot dead.

-- May 2010: A "sovereign citizen" from Georgia is arrested in Tennessee and charged with plotting the violent takeover of a local county courthouse.

-- May 2010: A still-unidentified white man walks into a Jacksonville, Fla., mosque and sets it afire, simultaneously setting off a pipe bomb.

-- May 2010: Two "sovereign citizens" named Jerry and Joe Kane gun down two police officers who pull them over for a traffic violation, and then wound two more officers in a shootout in which both of them are eventually killed.

-- July 2010: An agitated right-winger and convict named Byron Williams loads up on weapons and drives to the Bay Area intent on attacking the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, but is intercepted by state patrolmen and engages them in a shootout and armed standoff in which two officers and Williams are wounded.

-- September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. The man, 26-year--old Justin Carl Moose, referred to himself as the "Christian counterpart to (Osama) bin Laden” in a taped undercover meeting with a federal informant.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/independents-day.html

From:

telemann.livejournal.com

SEE IF EVERYONE WAS PACKING HEAT, THEN NO ONE WOULD DIE!

A place to discuss politics without egomaniacal mods.

Words DO Matter -- Which Is Why It's Probably Not Going to Change