How much does right-wing rhetoric contribute to right-wing terrorism?

Goober

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How much does right-wing rhetoric contribute to right-wing terrorism?

Yesterday, a man and a woman shot two police officers in a Las Vegas restaurant after saying, “this is a revolution.” Then they draped their bodies in a Gadsden flag. According to reports now coming in, the couple (who later killed themselves) appear to have been white supremacists and told neighbors they had gone to join the protests in support of anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy. It was one more incident of right-wing terrorism that, while not exactly an epidemic, has become enough of a trend to raise some troubling questions.

What I’m about to say will raise some hackles, but we need to talk about it. It’s long past time for prominent conservatives and Republicans to do some introspection and ask whether they’re contributing to outbreaks of right-wing violence.

Before I go on, let me be clear about what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that Republican members of Congress bear direct responsibility for everything some disturbed person from the same side of the political spectrum as them might do. I’m not saying that they are explicitly encouraging violence. Nor am I saying that you can’t find examples of liberals using hyperbolic, irresponsible words.

But what I am saying is this: there are some particular features of conservative political rhetoric today that help create an atmosphere in which violence and terrorism can germinate.

The most obvious component is the fetishization of firearms and the constant warnings that government will soon be coming to take your guns. But that’s only part of it. Just as meaningful is the conspiracy theorizing that became utterly mainstream once Barack Obama took office. If you tuned into one of many national television and radio programs on the right, you heard over and over that Obama was imposing a totalitarian state upon us. You might hear that FEMA was building secret concentration camps (Glenn Beck, the propagator of that theory, later recanted it, though he has a long history of violent rhetoric), or that Obama is seeding the government with agents of the Muslim Brotherhood. You grandfather probably got an email offering proof that Obama is literally the antichrist.

Meanwhile, conservatives have become prone to taking the political disagreements of the moment and couching them in apocalyptic terms, encouraging people to think that if Democrats have their way on any given debate, that our country, or at the very least our liberty, might literally be destroyed.

To take just one of an innumerable number of examples, when GOP Senator Ron Johnson says that the Affordable Care Act is “the greatest assault on freedom in our lifetime,” and hopes that the Supreme Court will intervene to preserve our “last shred of freedom,” is it at all surprising that some people might be tempted to take up arms? After all, if he’s right, and the ACA really means that freedom is being destroyed, then violent revolution seems justified. Johnson might respond by saying, “Well, of course I didn’t mean that literally.” And I’m sure he didn’t — Johnson may be no rocket scientist, but he knows that despite the individual mandate going into effect, there are a few shreds of freedom remaining in America.

But the argument that no sane person could actually believe many of the things conservatives say shouldn’t absolve them of responsibility. When you broadcast every day that the government of the world’s oldest democracy is a totalitarian beast bent on turning America into a prison of oppression and fear, when you glorify lawbreakers like Cliven Bundy, when you say that your opponents would literally destroy the country if they could, you can’t profess surprise when some people decide that violence is the only means of forestalling the disaster you have warned them about.

To my conservative friends tempted to find outrageous things liberals have said in order to argue that both sides are equally to blame, I’d respond this way: Find me all the examples of people who shot up a church after reading books by Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman, and then you’ll have a case.

In our recent history, every election of a Democratic president is followed by a rise in conspiracy-obsessed right-wing populism. In the 1960s it was the John Birch Society; in the 1990s it was the militia movement shouting about black UN helicopters, and during the Obama presidency it was the Tea Party. Some of those movements are ultimately harmless, but alongside and around them are people who take their rhetoric seriously and lash out in response. After these killings in Nevada, and the murders at a Jewish community center in Kansas, and the murders at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and multiple murders by members of the “sovereign citizens” movement in the last few years, it’s worth remembering that since 9/11, right-wing terrorism has killed many more Americans than al Qaeda terrorism.

And I promise you, these murders in Nevada will not be the last. It may be going too far to say that conservative politicians and media figures whose rhetoric has fed the deranged fantasies of terrorists and killers have blood on their hands. But they shouldn’t have a clear conscience, either.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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It's like the Hulk. They don't create crazy, they just aim it.

It's only fair. We had the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Red Brigades, the SDS. It's the right wing's turn.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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SDS, how many deaths|?
Cherry-picking? Baader-Meinhof, Red Brigades, SLA, Black Panthers, how many deaths?

Unless your logic is "the SDS didn't kill anybody, which proves no left-wing group ever killed anybody!"

Is that your argument?

Hey! Here's a notion. Let's count up left-wing killings and right-wing killings, and you can use that to "prove" whatever point you think you have!
 

Goober

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Cherry-picking? Baader-Meinhof, Red Brigades, SLA, Black Panthers, how many deaths?

Unless your logic is "the SDS didn't kill anybody, which proves no left-wing group ever killed anybody!"

Is that your argument?

Hey! Here's a notion. Let's count up left-wing killings and right-wing killings, and you can use that to "prove" whatever point you think you have!

No, you used 2 known groups that killed, and one that did not. My I am just a DDH, kinda slow and all on the uptake.
And no that is not my argument.
I posted an OP.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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To my conservative friends tempted to find outrageous things liberals have said in order to argue that both sides are equally to blame, I’d respond this way: Find me all the examples of people who shot up a church after reading books by Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman, and then you’ll have a case.
Sure, soon as you demonstrate the connection between Glenn Beck and right-wing murderers.

In our recent history, every election of a Democratic president is followed by a rise in conspiracy-obsessed right-wing populism. In the 1960s it was the John Birch Society; in the 1990s it was the militia movement shouting about black UN helicopters, and during the Obama presidency it was the Tea Party. Some of those movements are ultimately harmless, but alongside and around them are people who take their rhetoric seriously and lash out in response. After these killings in Nevada, and the murders at a Jewish community center in Kansas, and the murders at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and multiple murders by members of the “sovereign citizens” movement in the last few years, it’s worth remembering that since 9/11, right-wing terrorism has killed many more Americans than al Qaeda terrorism.
Demonstrated any connection between those and Rush Limbaugh or Ted Cruz? No? OK. Bafflegab on, then.

This is way stupider'n your usual, Goob.
 

Retired_Can_Soldier

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I think the question any party (Left or Right) should ask themselves is whether they should be drawing a connection between extremism and political leanings. It is silly to do so. It's generalization and it's the old glass house reference. You could say Glen Beck, they say Senator Bird. Glen Beck is anything but a republican, he is a Libertarian with ties to the Tea Party Movement, but more so he is an opportunist who thrives on polarization. I'd agree that the gun laws in the US are ridiculous, but that does not make lawful gun owners tantamount to the idiots that carried out this attack and drawing a connection is short sighted.
 

Goober

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Sure, soon as you demonstrate the connection between Glenn Beck and right-wing murderers.


Demonstrated any connection between those and Rush Limbaugh or Ted Cruz? No? OK. Bafflegab on, then.

This is way stupider'n your usual, Goob.

Stupid, well yes I can be.
Missed, of course there are things I miss.
Me perhaps more than others.
I miss my hair, I also miss my slimmer waist line.
My sanity, but on occasion it returns.
My humor, never missed, as it is always there.
Friends I have lost, miss them dearly.

But I do not think I missed the point he was making.

The point is rhetoric, allegations and intensity, is it not. Or have I missed the intent of the column?
 

gopher

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and today are mostly - well, you know what ...

... besides, there's always this to consider:


 

Kreskin

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Feb 23, 2006
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Masquerading as news organizations I primarily blame MSNBC and Foxnews for the sad state of idiocy.
 

BaalsTears

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What happens when the rule of law breaks down? Fear grows. Frightened people are in a sense wounded. Wounded creatures are dangerous. Who is causing the rule of law to break down? People in power who ignore the law or who enforce it arbitrarily and capriciously. Does that sound like anyone we know?
 

Kreskin

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Feb 23, 2006
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What happens when the rule of law breaks down? Fear grows. Frightened people are in a sense wounded. Wounded creatures are dangerous. Who is causing the rule of law to break down? People in power who ignore the law or who enforce it arbitrarily and capriciously. Does that sound like anyone we know?
It broke down when George Bush lost his marbles. Now we're dealing with the aftermath of that idiot.
 

mentalfloss

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Funny, I can't find 'Moncton terrorist' anywhere on google.

Maybe if he was wearing a turban instead of an army outfit he might get the nod.
 

taxslave

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What happens when the rule of law breaks down? Fear grows. Frightened people are in a sense wounded. Wounded creatures are dangerous. Who is causing the rule of law to break down? People in power who ignore the law or who enforce it arbitrarily and capriciously. Does that sound like anyone we know?

Junior bush. But he has been gone for a while now but others may have drank the water at his place.

Funny, I can't find 'Moncton terrorist' anywhere on google.

Maybe if he was wearing a turban instead of an army outfit he might get the nod.

Thats because he is white. Whites can not be terrorists. Only raving loons with firepower.