By Michael Burton
The reaction of ultra-conservative pundits to the terrible tragedy in Arizona is sadly predictable. Since they already control talk radio and the bulk of the broadcast news market (with Fox News, conservatives are now attempting to re-frame the debate over the causes to the tragedy, portraying themselves as the victims of this bloody massacre, instead of the innocents who got shot with a semiautomatic weapon.
Already, Sarah Palin has invoked a little known anti-Semitic phrase (“blood libel”), to position herself as a victim of the “liberal media.” In her carefully crafted Internet message more than four days after the shooting, she said: “Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” Uhh? So incendiary language espousing violence against the government didn’t incite the hatred, but criticism of ultra-conservatives did? There’s a nonsequitur. Rush Limbaugh even jokingly suggested the Democrats had arranged a mass murder for their own political benefit, and seriously opined that liberal Democrats are “doing everything in their power to aid and help" Loughner (see http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/11/limbaugh_sigh ).
To be fair, the mainstream media is partly to blame for allowing commentators like Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck to control the debate. Progressives have been concerned about the toxic political atmosphere that has led to an increase in both threats and gun violence against government officials during the last two years. So when they pleaded for some restoration of sanity and civil discourse in our political debate, the media rushed to frame the story with headlines such as “Is politics to blame for Arizona shootings?”
In the revelations that followed the killings, it’s pretty clear that Jared Loughner didn’t follow any clear political ideology. Still, his assassination attempt of a Democratic congresswoman is, by very definition, a political assassination attempt, and the gunman himself defined his act as such. He didn’t target a musician or actor, he targeted a United States representative who had already been threatened for her healthcare reform vote and opposition to Arizona’s immigration law. She wasn’t just a supporter of then healthcare bill, she favored a public option in health insurance reform (http://giffords.house.gov/2010/03/us-rep-gabrielle-giffords-statement-on-health-insurance-reform.shtml ).
While journalists and the FBI are still trying to make sense of Loughner’s extreme views, it’s clear the 22-year-old loner had much more in common with right-wing hate groups than he did with the radical left ( see http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/01/09/who-is-jared-lee-loughner/ ). Loughner, like many elements in the Tea Party, were extremely angry against the federal government. Like the Tea Party Patriot Movement and the anti-New World Order movements, Loughner saw the federal government as the enemy. He also reportedly espoused extreme anti-abortion sentiments. And, according to Fox News, the Department of Homeland Security suspects Loughner had ties to a pro-Tea Party white supremacist, anti-immigrant organization called American Renaissance.
Loughner’s obsession with currency not being backed by gold and silver is a core idea of the militia, or Patriot, movement. Also, his rambling Internet missives come from well known online sources of the radical right. His theory on grammar, especially, comes from the writings of the Milwaukee-based, far right activist David Wynn Miller (http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/10/jared-lee-loughner-s-mental-state.html). These insights into Loughner’s views are not assigning blame to any political party; they are reasonable and justifiable investigations into his motives and state of mind. He may indeed be mentally insane (which I’m sure his defense will argue, although no doctor has made that evaluation), but to think that his actions stand in a vacuum from the current political climate is naïve. “He was all about less government and less America,” one of Loughner's senior high school classmates said to the New York Times, adding, “He thought it was full of conspiracies."
Loughner’s anti-government views and far right-wing conspiracy theories have witnessed a big resurgence since President Obama was inaugurated.
If anyone thinks these conspiracy theories are just the ramblings of one man or a few nutcases, think again. Many of the far-right conspiracy theories found mainstream acceptance after Barack Obama was elected, thanks to talk commentators like G. Gordon Liddy and even Lou Dobbs. Last year, more than 60 percent of registered Republicans said they were either unsure or disbelieved the president was born in this country (see January 2009 post in this blog that details the mainstream media’s failure to expose or discredit these conspiracy groups). While radical left conspiracy groups also exist, they pale in comparison to the rise and level of violence associated with extremist right-wing organizations (from 2009 to 2010 the number of anti-government ‘Patriot’ and militia groups has jumped 244 percent, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center).
Since the last presidential election, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in gun violence from right-wing groups, including the neo-Nazi assailant who killed the security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. to the Knoxville, Tennessee man who killed two people at a progressive church (he said he really “wanted to kill every Democrat in the Senate and House”). For an eye-opening account of violent threats and acts against the government, read http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-freedom/insurrection-timeline. Much of this violence from neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups has gone under-reported by the mainstream media. And, as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence reports, some of the calls to take up arms against government officials have come from talk show hosts.
Underlying all of this is the violent rhetoric of popular conservative commentators and Tea Party politicians. Fox commentator Glenn Beck has fantasized about “citizen militias in the South and West taking up arms against the U.S. government" and advocated violent actions against a "tryannical" government. Left-leaning commentators didn’t incite violence against the government when Bush was president.
When Fox viewers hear Glen Beck say things like “There is a coup going on...grab a torch...the war is just beginning,” and Tea Party leader Sharron Angle talking about using “second amendment remedies” to “take back our country,” this rhetoric doesn’t fall on deaf ears. Palin’s infamous map using crosshairs from a gun scope to target Democrats in Congress should be troubling to most people. Yes, some Democratic members have used targets in other maps, but they didn’t use gun crosshairs or gun metaphors that directly aim at individual congressional representatives and senators. Palin's fellow Republican colleague who ran against Giffords posted a message about a campaign event that read: "Get on target for victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly." Will Palin apologize for using language like “Don’t retreat – instead, reload!” on her map targeting Giffords? Will she take a pledge to renounce the use of violent shooting images against her political opponents? (http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/palin_violence/index2.html). Of course she won’t, and she never will, because people like Palin and Beck see no correlation between words that incite violence and violent acts, and they see no problem with language that feed the lunatic fringe that is partly their base. Palin and Beck take their playbook right out of Joe McCarthy’s, who, when challenged, attacked his critics personally by questioning their patriotism. It’s the stock and trade of fear-mongers.
In light of the assassination attempt, Rep. Gifford’s own words in an MSNBC interview about Palin’s inflammatory language proves to be eerily prophetic:
“Community leaders, figures in our community, need to say: ‘Look, we can’t stand for this. This is a situation where – people don’t – they really need to realize that the rhetoric, and the firing people up and you know, even things for example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, the way she has it depicted, we’re in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there are consequences to that action.”
No apologies will come from the Palins, Becks, Limbaughs and Liddys of this world who stoke the fears and angers of the far right. Their only recourse is to pretend to be victims and falsely claim their opponents want to take away their First Amendment rights. President Obama’s call for more civility in our political discourse will not be heeded by those who only to stand to gain from inciting fear and hate.
At the end of the day, we are again left with the flaming political diatribes between the two reigning parties, instead of an open, honest, and sensitive dialogue about the roots and causes of violence that will only claim more victims.
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