Let's Get This Straight: There Is No Progressive Equivalent to the Right's Violent Rhetoric

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149470/let%27s_get_this_straight%3A_there_is_no_progressive_equivalent_to_the_right%27s_violent_rhetoric/

The shooting in Tucson was not an anomaly. It was an inevitability, and as long as we play this foolish game of "both sides are just as bad," it will be inevitable again.

Both sides are, in fact, not "just as bad," when it comes to institutionally sanctioned violent and eliminationist rhetoric.

An anonymous commenter at Daily Kos and the last Republican vice presidential nominee are not equivalent, no matter how many ridiculously irresponsible members of the media would have us believe otherwise.

There is, demonstrably, no leftist equivalent to Sarah Palin, former veep candidate and presumed future presidential candidate, who uses gun imagery (rifle sights) and language ("Don't Retreat, RELOAD") to exhort her followers to action.

There is no leftist equivalent to the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a group which was created from the mailing list of the old white supremacist White Citizens Councils and has been noted as becoming increasingly "radical and racist" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which classifies the CCC as a hate group—and is nonetheless considered an acceptable association by prominent members of the Republican Party, including a a former senator and the last Republican presidential nominee.

MORE at the link --

[old mark]

1. Back in the '60's there was, but much of THAT rhetoric from the extreme "radical left" was just

rhetoric-and was condemned by many others on the left. We did have our own bombers, bank robbers, etc, even a few assassins, but NO support from the elected "leaders"...Radicals in those days knew what they were and acknowledged it. Those on the right today hide behind the delusion that they are acting in some "American Tradition", or "religious" zeal.


mark

[RandomKoolzip]

2. True, but many I've argued with still use the 60s student radicals as

an example of violent rhetoric from the left- they see their own violence as redressing some kind of balance. How sad that is, to still be living in the 1960s! THey really have no idea what the American left is about anymore.

[Donnachaidh]

5. Doesn't Jerry Rubin work on wall street now?

Sure there was violence from the left in the 60's -- but a HALF CENTURY has passed since then! However, I'll bet you could do a timeline over the course of that 50 years and see RW rhetoric and threats of violence AND violence continue unabated.

[DBoon]

6. Jerry Rubin is dead now

Not sure if that disqualifies him from working on wall street

[Donnachaidh]

7. but he DID go to work on Wall Street after the 60's n/t

[DBoon]

11. He certainly did!

nt

[LiberalEsto]

4. True

The 1960s Left was splintered into a vast number of factions, including many who believed in passive nonviolence. Today's wingnuts have NO equivalent for passive nonviolence that I'm aware of.

In addition, some of the most violent anti-government attitudes of the 60s came from infiltrators and provocateurs who wanted to make all anti-war groups look bad by making them appear more militant than they actually were. And the media went out of its way to selectively cover anti-war activities. They would try to make the events seem much smaller and poorly attended than they were, and focused more on small groups pro-war demonstrators, trying to make them seem much more prevalent than they actually were. The media used similar tricks in covering protests of the invasion of Iraq.

I remember attending a huge anti-war rally in New York's Central Park many years ago. It was peaceful.
On my way out of the park I passed an ABC "news" crew taping a scene of hippie-dressed actors having a fake fight. I don't know if the scene was aired on tv, but if it was, it was obviously aimed at making viewers believe the anti-war rally attendees were a bunch of thugs.

[old mark]

12. I might have been there, too-I took some hand out literature from a

Maoist group, just to read it at home...When I got there, an FBI agent followed me into my place, and asked me about someone else in the building who had for conscienscious objector status...and he "noticed" my pamphlets. Years later, I found I could not get a top secret clearance in the Army because I had an FBI file that reported this incident of "unamericanism"...I got a copy of it in the '80's through the FOIA.
Right on, Brother!


mark

[Kingofalldems]

16. J. Edgar at work probably.

[Bandit]

9. I can not think of a single leading politician of that time that used rhetoric of that sort.

I know there was the Weather Underground and the SDS and Black Panthers, and many college groups that used such rhetoric, but I can not recall anyone in any position of authority or leadership that ever did..

[LiberalEsto]

13. I was in SDS for a very short time

Mostly what they wanted to do was urge us to make friends with "working people", quit college, get married to SDS members of the opposite sex, and become members of the working class ourselves. One guy even proposed to me on that basis. I told him no thanks, and he went on to finish medical school and become a doctor, from what I heard. So much for joining the working class!:rofl:

[Tippy]

3. there are seemingly no responsible grown-ups to be found among conservatives anymore.

I know I' havn't seen any lately.

[DirkGently]

8. As Rachel pointed out, "Second Amendment Remedies" was not even rhetoric.

It was plain speech that translated simply to, "If Republicans and conservatives are not sufficiently pleased with the outcome of the mid-term elections, they may respond with weapons."

Not hyperbole, like Grayson's oft-cited "Republicans want you to die quickly" comments. Not metaphor, like, "targeting" districts. The Republican Senate candidate SAID that armed action was a possible alternative to defeating Harry Reid politically. She was not arrested. Her campaign was not shut down. She continued to say these things -- just limiting her comments to rightwing media outlets, which broadcast them.

Then we have the collection of "lone nuts" that adds up to a rather large, one-sided basket, all on the right. Organized groups advocating the murder of abortion providers, providing tracking of their whereabouts, and trumpeting the multiple successful assassinations of not one or two, but several doctors. Bombings, of clinics and gay-friendly business establishments. Shootings, at the Holocaust Museum,and on the streets of Oakland, likewise motivated by rightwing extremism. And at a Unitarian church, by an assassin frustrated he could not get to people on a mainstream rightwing pundit's list of the "worst liberals." A woman who took Glenn Beck at his word, armed herself, and set out to find the "FEMA deathcamps."

Then we have the "Tea Party," which takes its name from an event associated with the beginning of the Revolutinary War, and whose supporters delight in bringing firearms to political rallies, sporting signs about how if "Brown can't stop Healthcare, a Browning (pistol, with helpful illustration of same) can." Not one sign. Many. Figures of Congressional representatives hung and burned in effigy. Which is, by the way, an explicit threat. There is no other interpretation of hanging and burning people in effigy besides, "WE will kill you." The alleged basis for these threats: "Too much spending." "We disapprove of healthcare reform." "Tax cuts for billionaires must continue."

When the Tea Party engaged in explicit violence, kicking the skull of a prostrate young female protestor, the result was that its candidate Rand Paul still won his election. The outcry was pooh-poohed. "She should have expected that."

Threats made by telephone, bricks thrown through office windows and the like are so common that they hardly bear mentioning. Rightwingers celebrate and crow about this. If the left does it, it's apparently not enough that we even hear about it.

We don't even bother to raise alarm about armed militia groups practicing war on the United States government, ONLY when a Democrat is in office, anymore, because those activities pale beside the neck-bulging, gun waving antics of more visible rightwingers. It's just part of the landscape now that conservative people carry out paramilitary training under the assumption that they will be engaged in a shooting war with a Democratically controlled government "some day."

The rightwing in America doesn't just engage in "violent rhetoric." It engages in violence, and threats of violence, and explicit references to armed insurrection as a means to political victory, as a matter of course, over issues as pedestrian as tax policy.

It's become a game to see who can be more apocalyptic and more darkly threatening in their speech; who can more nakedly demonize their political opponents on the left as anti-American, or closet terrorists. Who more forcefully equate the President with Islamic radicals, or health insurance reform with a government conspiracy to murder the elderly.

They don't HAVE another strategy. This is the mainstay of the current conservative American political movement. "WE WILL SHOOT YOU."

In fact, if any one of many of the mainstay political positions, arguments, and slogans of the rightwing, including mainstream Republicans like Chuck, "Pulling the plug on Grandma Grassley," and Michele, "The census MIGHT be used to put people in 'internment camps' Bachmann were true, armed violence would not only be possible, but expected, and necessary.

The one-sidedness here not only exists, but has reached absurd proportions. Imagine for a moment if the two guys calling themselves, "The New Black Panthers," waving signs in a black voting district, over whom the Fox network pitched a non-stop two-week bleating fit, had TOUCHED a young white woman waving a conservative sign. "A concussion isn't that bad?" "She should have expected that, with the sign waving and everything?"

Really?

They can't have it both ways. They can't base their entire position on the proposition that every non-conservative approved position is the the result of anti-American "Marxist" forces scheming to destroy America, and then disclaim responsibility when a supposed "nut" simply takes them at their word and does what anyone would do, if they believed rightwingers were telling the truth .



editted for speling.

[urlnts1]

10. So True,Another Case Of R/W Media Lies

On every board and forum I have tried to repeat this fact,please keep it up!The Right and the New Right Media that now owns and controls so many of our Press "organs" has tried to play the equivalency card! From the second that they realized how bad this looked and how mean,hateful and violent the right sounds and acts,they started thinking about a defense,but their defense is to always go on the offensive(and if anyone can be offensive, it's a rightwinger)!That's why you have so many on the right ,like the Whiner from Wisila ,still pouring gas on the fire, sounding tone deaf and looking heartless and mindless!I would also like to think that they felt some tinge of guilt or remorse,but that would take believing their word about being REAL Loving,Jesus Following Christians???

[Freddie Stubbs]

14. Except perhaps for Paul Kanjorski

[Kingofalldems]

15. Democrats did it too!! One guy said something!!

Republicans are great! :shrug: