3378
(1 vote, average 4.00 out of 5)
Written by Jamakaya
Jul 28, 2011
“It was international jihadism that we feared,” said a Norwegian leader about the terrorist bombing and massacre of young liberals in his country. “But what we have now is more painful in terms of a re-evaluation of ourselves.”
What’s true for Norway is equally true for the United States. Our country is more politically fractured than ever. Polarization has been exacerbated by economic collapse and unemployment. And our anything-goes media often fan the flames of unreason and resentment through sensational and inaccurate reporting.
I hope the Department of Homeland Security is investigating domestic extremists – and I don’t mean Quakers signing petitions against our foolish wars. Conservatives, always on offense, attacked DHS a few years back for documenting how the economic and political climate was fueling a resurgence in radicalization and recruitment among right-wing groups, including private militias. The DHS, thoroughly cowed, withdrew the report and unwisely cut the number of analysts tracking domestic terrorism from six to two.
The report had cited an increase in anti-government rhetoric, conspiracy theories, resentment about immigration – a laundry list of things that motivated Norway’s Anders Breivik and our own Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995.
I worked as director of the Wisconsin Center for Pluralism for six years. The center studied and tracked right-wing activity across the state. I attended right-wing conferences, monitored extremist websites and interviewed many true believers. I always was, and still am, shocked by the casual violence of right-wing rhetoric and it came to mind again thinking about the horrific events in Norway.
At the Wisconsin Conser-vative Leadership Conference in 2006, Madison radio squawker Vicki McKenna urged the audience to challenge the “left-ended world view” of the mainstream media “until we kill them, until they are deader than dead.”
At the same meeting, Chris Kliesmet of Citizens for Responsible Government repeatedly referred to politics as a “blood sport” and reveled in the current “target-rich environment.”
Stanley Zurawski Sr,. of Tosans for Responsible Government, a perennial “anti” campaigner (anti-tax, immigration, gays, Victoria’s Secret), declared in 2005: “We need more intolerance.”
Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, on political campaigns: “I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag.”
J.J. Blonien on staff members of the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, which promotes separation of church and state: “Somebody should kill them all.”
Ann Coulter could have coached Anders Breivik in his mass political assassination of liberals. In 2002, Coulter opined about the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh: “In contemplating college liberals, you really regret, once again, that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals by making them realize that they could be killed too. Otherwise, they will turn into outright traitors.”
Although liberals like me can be vociferous in our opposition to right-wing leaders and policies, there is no comparison to the overt, lethal threats continually issuing from the right.
Controls traditionally exercised by ethical, scrupulous editors over uncivil discourse have dissolved in our freewheeling Internet age. The Supreme Court has ruled video games depicting the mutilation and murder of women are protected by the First Amendment, making it highly unlikely they will ever restrict political speech.
So the fear mongering, scapegoating and intimidation will go on. Bloodbaths will ensue. Where is the moral leadership to stop this free fall into chaos?
