Right Wing Hate Speech and Violent Assaults on Liberals

[Varian P]

Is there really a connection?

The Tragic Arkansas Shooting and Conservative Hate Speech

When I consider recent examples, the claim seems ludicrous. When I think about lynchings and church burnings from times past, though, not so much.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Just wishful thinking by the Libbies.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Well, it is strange that you never hear of any conservatives being shot by liberals. Nary a Republican has been shot by a Democrat that I can recall.

Who shot George Wallace?

 

[Varian P]

Just wishful thinking by the Libbies.

Oh? What's the non-wishful alternative?

 

[rgraham666]

I don't think that 'conservative' hate speech triggered these events. The people that performed these heinous acts would have performed them no matter what. 'Conservative' hate speech simply gave them an excuse.

A century ago they would have done the same, only they would have used anarchy or The Industrial Workers of The World or some other philosophy of dissent to excuse their acts.

Note: I do not regard Limbaugh, Coulter or O'Reilly as conservatives. I regard them as revolutionaries. And considering their economic determinism and their use of language much closer to Marxists than conservatives.

 

[Varian P]

Well, it is strange that you never hear of any conservatives being shot by liberals. Nary a Republican has been shot by a Democrat that I can recall.

Strange? Perhaps. Though somehow it doesn't seem entirely surprising that the majority of individuals who think they can solve their problems by riddling an 'enemy' with bullets are from right of center.

Who shot George Wallace?

Arthur Bremer, though apparently Nixon was his top choice, but too inaccessible.

It seems Bremer's goal was "to do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC, FORCEFUL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see". Yes, indeed. What a manly man.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Strange? Perhaps. Though somehow it doesn't seem entirely surprising that the majority of individuals who think they can solve their problems by riddling an 'enemy' with bullets are from right of center.



Arthur Bremer, though apparently Nixon was his top choice, but too inaccessible.

It seems Bremer's goal was "to do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC, FORCEFUL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see". Yes, indeed. What a manly man.

If hate speech by Reactionaries causes the assassination of LIberals, why doesn't the endless display of violence in Hollywood (a Progressive bastion) films get labeled the source of violent crime world-wide? Everytime some group expresses their concern about violent "entertainment" Hollywood gets all pius about the First Amendment and "we're just providing what the public wants." I fail to see how it can be one way but not the other. Either we have to admit that "nutz is nutz" or we need to start restricting the "expression" in our culture. No?

 

[3113]

If hate speech by Reactionaries causes the assassination of LIberals, why doesn't the endless display of violence in Hollywood (a Progressive bastion) films get labeled the source of violent crime world-wide? Everytime some group expresses their concern about violent "entertainment" Hollywood gets all pius about the First Amendment and "we're just providing what the public wants." I fail to see how it can be one way but not the other. Either we have to admit that "nutz is nutz" or we need to start restricting the "expression" in our culture. No?

While I agree with you in general, your specific point is apples and oranges. There *is* a difference between an action hero shooting down a dozen drug dealers at the top of a tall building, and a talk-show host saying, "YOU"--speaking to real people, with real lives, "Are losing your homes and your jobs because of THESE PEOPLE" speaking or real people who really exist, "And you must stop them however you can if you want to keep your job, home, family safe!"--speaking of their REAL home, REAL job and REAL family.

Seeing a fictional character on television in a fictional situation doing violence is not the same as urging real people to do real violence out of REAL fear for their lives, homes, country, family.

Which is why propaganda will get people out waving flags, putting on uniforms, taking up real guns to kill real people in foreign lands (or just lynch them here at home), whereas a movie about a creature who invades your nightmares and slaughters you and your teenage friends won't do anything more than make money at the box office.

So. If you're going to argue this point, make sure you keep the two separate. No one's going to join the army to protect their nightmares from being invaded by a dead psycho killer. But they are if they honestly feel that their jobs, homes, families are being threatened by a very real group of people.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

While I agree with you in general, your specific point is apples and oranges. There *is* a difference between an action hero shooting down a dozen drug dealers at the top of a tall building, and a talk-show host saying, "YOU"--speaking to real people, with real lives, "Are losing your homes and your jobs because of THESE PEOPLE" speaking or real people who really exist, "And you must stop them however you can if you want to keep your job, home, family safe!"--speaking of their REAL home, REAL job and REAL family.

Seeing a fictional character on television in a fictional situation doing violence is not the same as urging real people to do real violence out of REAL fear for their lives, homes, country, family.

Which is why propaganda will get people out waving flags, putting on uniforms, taking up real guns to kill real people in foreign lands (or just lynch them here at home), whereas a movie about a creature who invades your nightmares and slaughters you and your teenage friends won't do anything more than make money at the box office.

So. If you're going to argue this point, make sure you keep the two separate. No one's going to join the army to protect their nightmares from being invaded by a dead psycho killer. But they are if they honestly feel that their jobs, homes, families are being threatened by a very real group of people.

Okay. Not being a listener to talk radio of any sort, I'm in no position to judge what actually is being said so I withdraw from the argument. I find the rhetoric of ideologues just as tedius now as I did back in university where a particular lecture blamed everything he disapproved of on "racism". He didn't make any sense either.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

VARIAN P

The alternative is to hold people responsible for what they do, not use outside influences as excuses.

 

[Varian P]

VARIAN P

The alternative is to hold people responsible for what they do, not use outside influences as excuses.

That's not really an alternative.

Yes, people should be held responsible for what they do. Should people who make their living raising people's hackles be exempted?

 

[Varian P]

Rob, VM, 3113, you're all getting at the issues I think are really interesting, here.

What is the power of media? Of authority, in terms of rhetoric and propaganda?

I'm in the camp of those who laugh at people like Tipper Gore and Hillary Clinton when they go on tirades about how Grand Theft Auto or Ozzy Ozbourne lyrics drive children to rape and mayhem.

But I think 3113 makes a valid point: real-world propaganda is different. Recall, for example, what happened in Rwanda. A concerted radio campaign calling on the Hutus to exterminate the Tutsi "cockroaches" preceded the massacres.

 

[rgraham666]

I'd recommend the book Snapping, Varian. It has an interesting concept in it; information disease. I wrote an essay on it a couple of years ago.

Although there may be other factors that play in more extreme forms of behavior I now look at people's thoughts and actions in terms of information disease.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

If hate speech by Reactionaries causes the assassination of LIberals, why doesn't the endless display of violence in Hollywood (a Progressive bastion) films get labeled the source of violent crime world-wide? Everytime some group expresses their concern about violent "entertainment" Hollywood gets all pius about the First Amendment and "we're just providing what the public wants." I fail to see how it can be one way but not the other. Either we have to admit that "nutz is nutz" or we need to start restricting the "expression" in our culture. No?

Maybe we should blame Hollywood's demonization of capitalists and business people for every incident in which a former employee flips out and shoots up his old workplace. Maybe we should have some controls on how these movies portray business. A Fairness Doctrine or something.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Maybe we should blame Hollywood's demonization of capitalists and business people for every incident in which a former employee flips out and shoots up his old workplace. Maybe we should have some controls on how these movies portray business. A Fairness Doctrine or something.

That'll work, uh-huh.

 

[Varian P]

Maybe we should blame Hollywood's demonization of capitalists and business people for every incident in which a former employee flips out and shoots up his old workplace. Maybe we should have some controls on how these movies portray business. A Fairness Doctrine or something.

First, though, we should burn every extant copy of Thus Spoke Zarathrustra and Crime and Punishment.

 

[Tricialen]

Have you read the hate and malice that comes from the likes of the Huffington post?...it's vile.....horrible attacts against Tony Snow for Gods sack when he was dying and when he died.....it goes both ways....

 

[Pure]

varian, note to Rox

nice thread,

raises some interesting issues. in canada and europe some 'hate speech' is against the law. i wonder if coulter would go to jail? i wonder if 'political affiliation' constitutes and 'indentifiable group' under the laws; i'm not sure.

of course one could ask if such laws really work. the do suppress some neo nazi stuff, BUT here in canada, the resulting trial gives the guy 10 times the publicity.

rox's complaints about speech that unfair to business is a hoot. i guess she'd ban* 'norma jean' and Silkwood, about the atomic energy critic who meets an unfortunate accident.

she has no complaints about those falsely labeled terrorists, who are later exonerated.

on the subject of 'hate speech', what about various right wingers calling for the assassination of obama, including mccain's joke about the topic.

*this is partly a joke; maybe it's better to wonder if it might not be a fantasy of RA's. in practice on free speech, i imagine she's latitudinarian.

 

[Belegon]

Have you read the hate and malice that comes from the likes of the Huffington post?...it's vile.....horrible attacts against Tony Snow for Gods sack when he was dying and when he died.....it goes both ways....

While there is no doubt that there is extremism on both sides...

NO. This is getting out of hand. NO, the old excuse of "Every politician does it" is already becoming the hinge upon which John McCain is mounting the screen door to separate himself. If he actually gets linked to things, the next words out of supporters mouths are "Well, every politician does that."

Saying "liberals do it too" is a watered down version of the same thing.

SHOW ME. Where has Obama derided McCain? John McCain has done television, talk shows, etc... and, although partially because of longevity, far more of them than Obama. He has shamelessly promoted himself and his writings, just like Barack. Yet somehow Barack is an empty-headed celebrity and McCain is not. SHOW ME where Barack has linked McCain to Spears and Hilton.

SHOW ME where Barack has questioned McCain's Patriotism.

SHOW ME where Obama has prepared two negative ads and chosen which one to run based on what McCain does.

SHOW ME. GIVE ME EVIDENCE, NOT SOUNDBITES.

The truth is that NOT all politicians and websites are the same. The Huffington Post goes too far on occasion in my opinion. But they don't go anywhere near as far as the extrremes on the other side, from Limbaugh and company.

Even Rev. Wright's comments are tame compared to some of the stuff from Robertson, Falwell and their ilk. And those aren't even the people on the "edge" as Wright is portrayed to be. The edge for the right would be people like Phelps.

SHOW ME where the Huffington Post or liberal media have accused McCain of being a communist or commie sympathizer due to having been brainwashed for six years (like Obama is supposedly a muslim because he was a child in Indonesia.)

SHOW ME how they have taken McCain's name and suggested he is linked to IRA terrorists who killed Londoners (Like the Obama=Osama stuff)

Yes, they have jumped on John McCain for getting his foreign policy statements from wikipedia, for consistently referring to Czechoslovakia as still existing, for getting a free ride about ditching his deformed wife for a woman beautiful, rich and 18 years younger. (BTW, the sainted Reagan wouldn't even speak to McCain over that... Hollywood Ronnie, who existed in that environment for so long.)

SHOW ME the best-seller from Ariana Huffington claiming that McCain still does drugs because they were so prevalent in Viet Nam that he could not have avoided them.

The far left sometimes goes too far... but not even close to the degree the far right does.

ETA: Any "Show Me" that is a direct response and defense of a comment from the other side will be looked at with that in mind. A parry-riposte is not being overly aggressive, it is simply defense.

 

[Tricialen]

Both sides .... are guilty....the far crazies on both sides are both wrong and out of control.....the only thing about Obama that I don't like is his inexperience...but I have to think that if he is elected he will protect our country and do right by all of the people who live here......somewhere the nastiness must stop.....

 

[rgraham666]

It probably won't.

There's too much power to be won and money to be had.

 

[Belegon]

Both sides .... are guilty....the far crazies on both sides are both wrong and out of control.....the only thing about Obama that I don't like is his inexperience...but I have to think that if he is elected he will protect our country and do right by all of the people who live here......somewhere the nastiness must stop.....

Please know that I have zero animosity towards you... if my speech comes out as abrasive, it is through frustration.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Of course their rantings have something to do with these murders. We know that's true from the David Berg case in Denver, where far right-wingers killed a liberal talk-radio host because of his politics.

The unfortunate truth is, though, you either have freedom of speech or you don't. These people should be ashamed of what comes out of their mouths but they're shame-proof. They're slime, and the people who listen to them are idiots who are just ripe for the effects of hate talk. They want answers, and the shock jocks give them answers that are simple, appealing, and wrong. In times past they would have been fired. People would have complained. Now it's entertainment and they're syndicated.

That's America today. It's all profits. It's all what sells. Taste and truth and human life be damned.

 

[Pure]

possible examples of hate speech

james corsi, author of the recent book trashing obama has, if not in this particular book, engaged in hate speech according to the blogger below.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12526.html

[excerpt]Corsi is an unabashed partisan. In 2006, he mulled a run for president under the hard-right Constitution Party’s banner and last year he signed on as a senior strategist for a group that intended to become to the right what MoveOn.org is to the left.

But his outrageous assertions and fringe theories — which include allegations that President Bush worked to eliminate the borders with Mexico and Canada and the assertion that Kerry is a Communist — have hurt his credibility on the right, as well.

Corsi’s co-author on the Kerry attack book, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth spokesman John O'Neill, downplayed Corsi’s role after the left-leaning press watchdog group Media Matters exposed Corsi’s venomous postings in the conservative blogosphere.

On the blog FreeRepublic.com, Corsi wrote that pedophilia “is OK with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press,” that “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters” and that Kerry is “Anti-Christian, Anti-American.”

Last year, Corsi released a book charging President Bush was secretly plotting to create a North American Union by merging the U.S. with Canada and Mexico.

The idea that there is a secretive plan for a North American Union is a favorite bogeyman for small-government conservatives but has been derided as baseless by mainstream thinkers and officials.[end]

==
by the way, on the last statement, i think there is more than a grain of truth to Corsi's proposal that a kind of north american merger is in the works. however i don't think it a "secretive plan," it's out on the open, if you look at the wording of treaties and consider the intentions, one can reasonably infer, which lie behind them. many on the left have noted the disappearing importance of national governments. as well, many a nation, including its government, has less power globally than does, for example, Exxon.

 

[Boxlicker101]

The right wing might commit more deadly assaults, although they are rare, but I would bet the left wing commits more non-lethal assaults. This would be things like pie-throwing and pelting with fruit, and things like that. Although non-lethal, they are still considered to be assaults, and are illegal.