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9 Conservative Myths About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism
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By Sara Robinson
Our Future.org
Monday, Jun 22, 2009
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 January 20 had a history of mental illness, domestic
violence, and/or drug abuse. Several were 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 non-violent; 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.
Unfortunately,
these groups also make it easy to take that final step over the line,
because they often have close ties to other more secretive groups that
do advocate and plan terrorist violence as a solution. Operation Rescue
teaches that killing abortion doctors is justifiable homicide; and then
feeds its most extreme members into the Army of God. The Aryan Nations
and several other white nationalist groups supplied the nine members of
The Order, a racist terrorist group that killed two people (including
left-wing talker Alan Berg) and stole over $4 million during a
nine-month spree in 1984. Al Qaeda got many of its recruits from the
nominally non-violent (but still radical) Hizb al-Tahrir. Of course,
when violence actually occurs, these groups always denounce it—but they
also usually have a very good idea of who was involved, because they've
been hanging around with the perpetrators for quite a while themselves.
One
of the things the public is finally beginning to understand is that the
"lone wolf" story has never been accurate, because these guys are never
really alone in the world. Every one of them was well-marinated in
large, long-established subcultures that put them up to terrorism, and
promised to make heroes out of them if they succeeded.
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. Mussolini admitted as
much. It's part of the very definition of the word.
Jonah
Goldberg has gotten a lot of traction on the left 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.
Still, this idea has caught on like
wildfire, and is being widely promoted by right-wing talkers like Glenn
Beck. If you want the full takedown on this, I refer you to Dave
Neiwert's exhaustive series of debunking articles, which are linked to
in the sidebar at Orcinus.
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.
False.
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. As I
wrote here, these narratives have a very specific structure that sets people up for terrorism:
Long before they turn dangerous, political and religious groups take their first step down that road by adopting a worldview that justifies eventual violent action. The particulars of the narrative vary, but the basic themes are always the same.
First: Their story is apocalyptic, insisting that the end of the world as we've known it is near.
Second: It divides the world into a Good-versus-Evil/Us-versus-Them dualism that encourages the group to interpret even small personal, social, or political events as major battles in a Great Cosmic Struggle—a habit of mind that leads the group to demonize anyone who disagrees with them. This struggle also encourages members to invest everyday events with huge existential meaning, and as a result sometimes overreact wildly to very mundane stuff.
Third: This split allows for a major retreat from consensus reality and the mainstream culture. The group rejects the idea that they share a common future with the rest of society, and curls up into its own insular worldview that's impervious to the outside culture's reasoning or facts.
Fourth: insiders feel like they're a persecuted, prophetic elite who are being opposed by wicked, tyrannical forces. Left to fester, this paranoia will eventually drive the group to make concrete preparations for self-defense—and perhaps go on the offense against their perceived persecutors.
Fifth: communities following this logic will also advocate the elimination of their enemies by any means necessary, in order to purify the world for their ideology.
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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 US is up 40% since 2000, with nearly
1000 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 websites 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.
Riiight.
Advertisers
will spend about $50 billion this year on TV ads, and another $15
billion 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.
But this argument asks us to
believe that what happens during the other 40 minutes per hour has
absolutely no effect on anybody, ever. Got that? Ads: Powerful
influences on behavior. Featured content: No influence whatsoever.
Absurd.
Furthermore: conservatives have railed against Hollywood
for decades, claiming that movies, TV shows, music, and videogames 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.
But now they're turning around and insisting that
nope—nobody ever did anything because some talking head told them to.
And that sound you hear? Don't worry—it's just the head of the ad sales
department quietly having a stroke because we've completely undermined
her ability to ever sell another spot.
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 Internets 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. 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 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 separate violent right-wing attacks on innocent
Americans since 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 if 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 HR standards—any employee who said that stuff at the
office would be canned on the spot. It's horrible PR, especially if
some enterprising blogger decides to make an issue out of it. Simply
pointing that out has often been enough to convince executives that
it's a bad idea, and they need to get out before it blows up in their
faces.
Don Imus lost his show this way. So did KSFO's Melanie Morgan. (There's even a verb for it —"spockoed"—referring to the blogger
who used this technique to get Morgan and several other California hate
talkers off the air.) It turns out that advertisers actually read these
letters—especially when they're getting them by the hundreds. It
doesn't take much of this before they pull back their ads; and when
their major sponsors walk away, the talkers lose their shows. They may
thrash a little—but usually, it's all over in a matter of just a few
weeks.
Note, too, that both TV and radio stations are already
losing revenue year over year at a rate that's starting to rival
newspapers, so they're probably even more exquisitely sensitive to this
kind of pressure now than they were just a couple years ago. If we want
these people off this air, this is the way to get them gone for
good—and make the cultural point that this garbage is no longer
acceptable on the nation's airwaves.
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. An
absolutely shocking number of them are Muslims and/or people who've
spent time in the Middle East. Go figure.
It's a sign of how far
detached from reality the right wing is that it no longer can tell the
essential difference between Muslim terrorists and garden-variety
American progressives. We're not wrong to ask: should people who are
that thoroughly blinded by their prejudices be issued drivers' licenses?
♦ ♦ ♦
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.
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