Death Panels, Palin's Targets, and Political Assassination

[autorank]

http://agonist.org/cultureofviolence">Death Panels, Palin's Targets, and Political Assassination

Michael Collins


(video)

The attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords raises the bar for political lies and hate to a new level. Previously, incendiary political lies stopped just violent imagery. Sarah Palin's Take Back 20 campaign presented a violent threat in the form of rifle site crosshairs placed over the congressional districts of 20 Democratic supporters of health care reform. Ironically, Giffords sent Palin a clear message to end the violent allusion in the ads. In this brief video, she warns:

"… we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list but the thing is that the way she's had it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun site over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there consequences to that action." Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

The appeal had no effect. It took the events of Saturday, January 8 at a shopping mall in Tucson, Arizona to finally get Palin to pull down her "cross hairs" studded map marking 20 Democrats for defeat as punishment for support of health care reform. snip

Violent Imagery with Dead Seniors as the Predicate

The newly formed Tea Party, financed by right wing lobbyists, claimed that the Obama reforms would introduce "death panels." Some reform opponents claimed that these fictitious panels would decide whether seniors would live or die at a certain point in their later years. This was, of course, an absurd lie. Nevertheless, the foundation for irrational hate and fear was established. In composite form, it stated: The 20 members of the House targeted voted for a health care bill that created "death panels" to kill seniors simply due to their age. The votes were cast in support of a Muslim president bent on creating a Marxist world government.

More: http://agonist.org/cultureofviolence

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