This flier was circulated in Dallas in the days before John F. Kennedy was assassinated…
Any of that look or sound familiar?
If not, and if you didn’t see the Tucson Shooting coming months and months ago, then you are living in a world of complete and utter delusion.
[Update 1/11/11: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., responding to the Giffords shooting at Huffington Post, draws a similar allusion to the atmosphere in Dallas in the days prior to the murder of his uncle.]
If you, like pretend media critic Howard Kurtz, are finding rationalizations and excuses to justify what happened yesterday, dismissing it all as little more than the work of a “lone nutjob,” you are similarly deluded and among the most dangerous of apologists.
You are also anything but “conservative,” since the core of that ideology used to include personal responsibility. Taking none, unfortunately, seems to be the new hallmark of the no longer any more than name-only movement.
Remember what happened after this video-taped moment in September of 2009, when Nancy Pelosi called for “taking responsibility for our words” before tearing up while recalling the assassination of Harvey Milk in her own district in the 70’s, and while decrying the scores of death threats and broken windows at offices of Democratic members of Congress after they’d voted in favor of Health Care Reform?…
The Right, fomented by Glenn Beck of all people, obnoxiously savaged her for her concerns about the growing threats of violence against members of Congress:
Pelosi’s concerns, viciously mocked by the Right at the time, seem all too prescient today; Beck’s reaction cause for firing if Fox “News” had any standards whatsoever.
The above moments (courtesy of a timely “flashback” post by Double Dutch Politics) came just a few months after the Right had savaged the Obama Administration’s Dept. of Homeland Security for releasing a report on the rising tide of Rightwing extremism, as ordered and created by the Bush Administration before it.
The false Rightwing outrage was so loud, and the Democrats were so cowardly, Obama’s Administration retracted and apologized for the report that warned about almost exactly what we saw yesterday in Tucson — and what we’ve seen time and again, several times a month, over the last two years since the report was retracted.
If you click on nothing else in this article, click on this exhaustively documented timeline detailing the (almost entirely) Rightwing insurrectionism over the last two years, as fomented, virtually without pause, by Rightwing media, candidates and elected officials over that same period. Bookmark that page. You’re gonna want to keep it handy.
If your apologist memory needs still more of a refresher, here are just a few more reminders of recent Fox “News” murder fetishism, none of which speaks to the nearly round-the-clock, anti-Government, anti-“Democrat”, anti-liberal, anti-progressive 24/7 villainization and vilification by Rightwing talk radio or even the years-long eliminationist rhetoric from Rightwing superstars such as Ann Coulter and the like.
After detailing just three recent instances of deadly Rightwing assaults by “lone nutjobs”, Kurtz, of CNN and The Daily Beast (formerly of the Washington Post), instructed us yesterday that he found calls for accountability for those who would foment such “lone nutjobs” to be terribly “depressing” for him, since they can’t really be held to blame for such things — no matter how many times they keep occurring. One can only wonder if Rep. Gabrielle Giffords would similarly enjoy the luxury of being “depressed” by hearing such calls. Poor Howard.
Poor us for living in a society where folks like Kurtz (married to a Rightwing operative, by the way) “serve” the nation by sufficing as our top MSM media critics.
But let’s not reserve all the condemnation for the Rightwingers and their apologists. There is plenty of blame left for the Democrats and the Obama Administration (and the supporters of both) who have failed to take even one step towards reforming the broadcast media where Rightwing corporations have been allowed to “buy” up our public airwaves to use them for their own nefarious purposes to the exclusion of we, the people, who actually own them. Neither have they taken a single step to assure the FCC performs its statutorily mandated responsibility for enforcing the provision that requires broadcast licenses be used in the public service.
For those on the Left who suggest talk radio isn’t all that important since, after all, there is so much progressive reporting available on the Internet, here are a few points recently detailed by documentarian and former reporter Sue Wilson [Note: Wilson incorrectly uses the name “Conservative” instead of the more accurate Rightwing or Republican]:
- 53 million people in the U.S.listen to Talk Radio.
- 91% of Talk Radio Programs are Conservative.
- 2,570 hours of Conservative Talk Radio are broadcast each weekday…compared to 254 hours of Progressive Talk.
- 92 percent of talk radio stations do not broadcast a single minute of progressive talk radio programming.
- Radio has the greatest penetration of any media (print, broadcast, or digital,) reaching 90 percent of Americans each week.
- Despite the availability of numerous new media alternatives, radio’s weekly reach has declined only modestly in the past several years, from 94.9% in Spring 2001, when the iPod was introduced, to 91% in Fall ’08.
- Sean Hannity gets 2.5 million viewers on FOX News, but 14.25 Million listeners on Talk Radio.
- Glenn Beck gets 2.125 million viewers on FOX News, but 9 million radio listeners.
And one more stark point from Wilson’s study, underscoring the necessity of restoring fairness and balance to the nation’s broadcast spectrum:
As we noted at Alternet long ago, Obama promised to take steps towards reforming the media situation that we are paying so dearly for now, on his very first day in office, before quietly scrubbing such promises down the memory hole while largely nobody but us noticed or even cared.
But in this moment, at this time of entirely predictable and oft-predicted tragedy, our loathing is reserved for those who would hope to marginalize or dismiss entirely their own responsibility by desperate and shameful acts of false equivalency or disingenuous exhortations against “the blame game.”
As satirist Andy Borowitz tweeted earlier today:
Bingo. And that just after he smartly noted:
Since yesterday’s shooting, many have pointed to Sarah Palin’s now-infamous “gun sights” maps, “targeting” twenty Democratic Congressmembers for removal with “bullseyes”, exhorting supporters, “Don’t Retreat, Instead — RELOAD!”.
Giffords was one of those twenty Congressmembers “targeted” by Palin and one of only two to win re-election nonetheless.
Despite protests from Rightwingers that Palin’s map had nothing directly to do with yesterday’s shootings — (who knows, at this moment, whether it did or didn’t?) — her staff quickly scrubbed the site where the map was originally posted, and her mouthpiece Rebecca Mansour dug the disingenuous hole deeper during an interview published today, claiming they were going to take down that site anyway and, besides, those were never meant to be “gun sights” on those two maps, they were simply (try not to laugh) “surveyor’s symbols.” Someone ought to tell that to Citizen “RELOAD” Palin who pointed to those “bullseyes” in a tweet while taking a victory lap after last November’s election.
For her part, yesterday, Palin pretended she hadn’t been a part of the last two years of vitriol and vilification along with her Fox “News” colleagues Glenn “Progressive Moment is the Cancer Destroying the Country” Beck, Bill “Tiller the Killer” O’Reilly or candidates like Sharron “Second Amendment Remedies” Angle and the rest of the “By Ballot or Bullet” crowd. Instead, she posted a simple Facebook note of “sincere condolences … to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s shooting in Arizona.”
Author and activist David Swanson may have had the best response to that in 140 characters or less when he tweeted this morning:
So was it all Palin’s fault? Of course not. It was the fault of all of those who fostered this violently inflamed tinder-box environment, and those who did nothing to try and help put out the flames before it became too late. But would even Sarah Palin have stood for her own actions had the violent fomenter been of a different color or religious persuasion?
Tweeted filmmaker Michael Moore on that point last night:
No need to ask, Michael. We all know the answer.
To his credit, even while downplaying any direct culpability by Palin, former George W. Bush “Axis of Evil” speechwriter David Frum was one of far too few on the Right to even acknowledge that Rightwingers bore any personal responsibility for what we have become and what it all helped to foster yesterday, writing today:
On the other side of the aisle, former John Kerry campaign director Peter Daou offered a similar sentiment, but focused on the “bogus equivalency between right/left extremism,” as heard so much today via not just desperate Rightwingers, but also by their enablers in the mainstream media:
Even the most cursory perusal of rightwing radio, television, blogs and assorted punditry illustrates a profound distinction: in large measure, the right’s overarching purpose is to stoke hatred of the left, of liberalism. The right’s messaging infrastructure, meticulously constructed and refined over decades, promotes an image of liberals as traitors and America-haters, unworthy of their country and bent on destroying it. There is simply no comparable propaganda effort on the left.
The imbalance is stark: Democrats and liberals rail against the right’s ideas; the right rails against the left’s very existence.
At The New Yorker today, George Packer hit a nail or two on the head on these points. The first graf should sound particularly familiar to those who bothered to read the John F. Kennedy “Treason” flier we started this article with above:
And then, Packer drives the big take-away home, in a point which Media Matters’ Jamison Foser urged members of the media to “Read … Read it again. Read it a third time”:
Finally, nobody is able to say it better than the man who found himself at the center of yesterday’s tragedy. As the blood from the massacre was still wet in Tucson, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, during a press conference last night, stated what so many of us have been trying to point out for so many years — that this is truly a time for this nation to “do a little soul searching”:
…
The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business … This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in.
…
It’s not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. That’s the sad thing about what’s going on in America: pretty soon we’re not going to be able to find reasonable decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.
…
Let me just say one thing, because people tend to poo-poo this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.
Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Though lord knows we’ve tried — and even helped create a StopDomesticTerror.com campaign a long time ago in further hopes of doings so.
Naturally, Rightwingers have begun to savagely attack Sheriff Dupnik for his comments. What else would you expect at this point?
Of course, if “both sides do it”, as many on the Right are now claiming, why are they so angry at Dupnik for his comments? He didn’t say anything about either the Right or the Left, as John Cole points out.
Once again, in case you’ve already forgotten the recommendation above, here is that startling “Insurrectionism Timeline” from just the past two years. Read it.
Then, in lieu of any similar timeline you are able to offer, detailing a similarly well-documented, wholly-verifiable, fact-based list of similar incidents of violent insurrectionism and dangerously vitriolic rhetoric from those not on the Right, you can hold your “both sides do it” apologism for those folks like yourself who haven’t a conscience or, apparently, even a shred of human decency left.
Thanks for this thread, Brad, and the links and especially the poster atop.
In the question Brad asks, “Any of that look or sound familiar?” I have to answer yes I read the MIAC report. I’ve seen lots other memo’s, directives, and orders of misguided dangerous stuff from the dhs as well.
The poster atop I am not that impressed with.
Going out on a limb as the devil’s advocate, “Don’t Retreat, Instead — RELOAD!”. Sounds like a hunting vacation resort advertisement in the back of Southern Living Magazine. It’s all about word games. I beg you all STOP it.
Bamboo Harvester in da house ………….
Some of the grievences reported by the Timeline are legitimate, such as Pelosi being against the Constitution when she failed in her duty to initiate impeachment against the Bush administrations head officials, which would also be true regarding none brought against Obama, although it should be noted the congressperson making the accusation was several years too late. What would be more impressive is a listing of persons and organizations that provided the funding for these seemingly seperate groups beginning about 100 years ago when the Hate Machine realy got going after the Civil War. Impunity also feeds the flames, which really got going when Democrats refused to impeach Reagan and GHW Bush for their many crimes. IMO, the state of affairs today would be markedly different if those two killers had been put into prison until they died. As you state, Democrats are just as responsible. Perhaps it’s because both parties owe their allegience to the Money Power instead of the People that the creeping police state which certainly favors the Money Power exists.
Yes, there is a direct correlation between Hate Media and the actions described by the Timeline. The question for me is Qui Bono? My answer is the demostrably anti-democratic, anti-humanrights Money Power, the Power Obama, the RNC and DLC clearly serve by their actions/deeds.
Thank you for pointing out that the Department of Homeland Security had seen an increase in this type of behavior. People have seemed to have forgotten about that. and the important link to the f c c.
I can’t help thinking about the case of the guy (whose name I choose not to use) who shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee. He had been reading books by right-wing people like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reily, and he said, “Liberals must die”.
We’re all very close to the edge of the cliff here. Think about all that could happen if even one act of retribution were to take place right now. We’re not so far away from Beirut really.
Reading that timeline, I see a lot of evidence of how stupid, ignorant, and misinformed the right is. They want freedom, democracy, and capitalism, but what they are fighting for is fascism.
Germany went through that and they learned the hard way. Germany now has socialized medicine. The German people are healthier than we are, live longer, and they spend a lot less on health care. German workers get huge salaries compared to Americans, and six week vacations. They have benefits American workers could never dream of. But Germany competes with China for the biggest exporter of goods in the world. While Chinese goods are cheap, German goods are high quality.
By law, a law imposed by us after WWII by the way, half of the Board of Directors of every corporation in Germany is composed of workers, and they have an equal say in management, so corporations can’t export German jobs or cut corners on worker safety.
The right wants socialism, but they don’t know what it is. I often tell the story of the time I was standing on line at a supermarket for a flu shot (I stopped getting flu shots years ago, as I believe that they are useless and possibly dangerous) behind a Navy mom with a kid in a stroller and we started talking. She told me that she believe that everyone should have access to health care, but she was opposed to socialized medicine. In other words, because it has a label she doesn’t understand and fears, she opposes exactly what she wants.
That’s the right wing. They blame poor hard-working immigrants for taking their jobs, as rich white male CEOs continue to outsource the few jobs we have left. No immigrant ever outsourced a single American job, but millions of jobs have been outsourced to China, Burma, the Phillipines, Mexico, India, and anywhere else that wages are low and workers have few rights or protections.
The right is supporting tyranny because they fear tyranny. Of course they’re violent and kill people. They don’t know how to think, so they believe what they’re told and when it doesn’t make any sense, they lash out. The same rich white CEOs who outsourced their jobs, fund the right wing propaganda that tells them to blame immigrants. So they support their enemies and shoot their friends.
In most countries, the political right represents the wealthy oligarchs, and the political left represents the working class. Here, the working class actually believes that the right represents them, and blames the Democrats (the working class on the right blames the Republicans), instead of uniting with other working class people against the tyranny of the rich.
Obama and Congress won’t do anything because the Democratic Party is just as dependent upon big corporate donors as the Republican Party–in fact those big corporate donations are the only thing the two parties compete for, so they support the same corporate agenda. And the nutcase right is shooting Democrats for not supporting torture, wars of aggression, free trade, globalization, and the continuing theft of the commons by privatizing and making unaffordable everything that is needed for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, such as jobs, health care, and a social safety net.
These people are so dumb that if Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and the rest pointed them at mirrors and told them to shoot their enemies, they’d scream, “Down with tyranny” and shoot themselves.
England took away guns, not just from citizens, but also from cops. The result was that the murder rate dropped precipitously. But they also have socialized medicine, only they started it right after WWII and everyone agreed about it, so nobody was shot. Every industrialized country in the world has a national health care plan, but the Tea Party wants to kill anyone who dares to suggest that they’re entitled to free medical care. They’re not smart enough to know that because countries with socialized medicine spend less on health care, they’d save money, and they think it would cost them money. We have the most expensive health care in the world, and it sure isn’t the best.
Right wing Americans are people who, if a corporation dumped poison in their drinking water, and all the children in town developed cancer, but nobody in town smoked cigarettes, would blame it on a smoker who walked through the town fifty years earlier with a lit cigarette, because right wing Americans know that smoking causes cancer and that corporations provide jobs. And if a several independent scientific studies proved conclusively that the cancers were due to the poison, and legislators tried to enforce laws against corporations dumping poison in drinking water, right wing Americans would shoot the legislators for imposing on their freedoms, even as they buried their children.
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DEMAND THE FCC HOLD THE NETWORKS ACCOUNTABLÂE FOR NOT BROADCASTIÂNG
IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST … OR ARE THE NETWORKS TOO BIG TOO SHUT DOWN ?
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Mark E. Smith @8, referring to the 21st Century “know nothings” aka “Tea Party” followers, wrote:
The problem, Mark, is that the typical right-wing follower does not understand the fundamental contradiction between “capitalism” and “freedom and democracy.”
When right-wing, billionaire sociopaths, like the Koch brothers, who fund and control the “Tea Party” movement, refer to “free markets,” for example, they actually mean the “freedom” of capital to enslave the mass of humanity. The corporate security state they envision is not merely “fascist” but neo-feudal.
They consider real democracy–one in which an enlightened citizenry places the needs of the many, and of a sustainable planet, above the greed of the privileged few–as their mortal enemy.
The vitriol of 24/7 hard-right propaganda is intended to exploit the fear brought on by the displacement of the middle-class by a harsh capitalist reality.
By directing emotional angst against government, convenient scapegoats, like immigrants (during the Weimar Republic Jews provided the ideal right-wing scapegoat) and a perceived socialist boogieman, the billionaire class evades focus on the true source of the economic demise of the middle-class–corporate capitalist greed and the very billionaire class that is funding their movement.
Despite a solid analysis presented here by Brad, and by others elsewhere, linking that vitriol to repeated acts of violence (remember O’Reilly’s “Tiller the killer”?), at most, we can expect a temporary pause, before the irresponsible vitriol resumes. Vitriol is a vital component of a deceptive, anti-egalitarian movement.
During his appearance on Democracy Now, Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates who investigates right-wing movements, ties Loughner’s seemingly random, paranoid ideas to “longstanding right-wing conspiracy theory.”
The Koch brothers do not control all of the Tea Party factions. And that has already become a problem for the GoP.
There is a very interesting article by Matt Taibbi in the current Rolling Stone that offers some valuable insight into at least one faction that refused to be bought out. And it’s in Boehner’s back yard too!
Crap..here’s the link
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-the-crying-shame-of-john-boehner-20110105?page=4
Well, of course, Dan-In-PA, every movement triggers fringe splinter groups that can potentially get out of control. But the truth is that the so-called “Tea-Party” is a top-down, billionaire-funded, organized and controlled group whose followers are clueless as to the extent of their own manipulation.
The so-called “Tea Party” presents the illusion of a grassroots organization by putting its useful idiots out on the front lines–and that applies whether you follow the carefully arranged movements and meetings of the “Tea Party Express” or the seemingly spontaneous but well-organized angry mobs who shut down the town hall meetings.
And, if you ask any of those indoctrinated and manipulated useful idiots, they’ll express the unfounded belief that they are actually in charge.
This article should be well distributed and the links are all keepers.
The striking phenomena to me is that much of the events on those lists, have never been reported or mentioned in the mass media, so people don’t know.
Thank you Brad Friedman for such terrific work, you are awesome!
Gabrielle Giffords Faced Opposition from Local Anti-War, 9/11 Truth Activists
This is how local antiwar activists in Tucson have viewed Gabrielle Giffords (and her political machine) in the past. We offer our condolences for those who have died, those who were injured, and their families who are left to deal with the aftermath of this horrific tragedy. The fact is there was a lot of opposition to Gifford’s stance regarding the wars, torture and rendition, the patriot act and impeachment of the Bush administration. We are proud of the work done in pointing out the hypocrisy of pro war crime politicians no both sides of the isles. Everyone loses if you start attacking free speech.
See video here.
Hi JT Waldron,
I really appreciate where you are coming from, and I do agree that Free Speech needs to be protected.
But the rhetoric that has been advanced most especially by the Tea Parties, Palin, Beck and Fox News has shifted far from free speech, through outright negligence and on to contrived outrage manipulated by lies. It has become a sick and psychotic exercise the most volatile forms of cognitive dissonance.
Look, only a few weeks ago, Fox aired Glenn Becks “Puppet Master†series.
In that series, Beck explicitly accused Holocaust survivor (and “liberal†philanthropist) George Soros of being a Nazi collaborator (thats a pretty serious charge to throw at anyone, let alone someone who survived the horror of the Holocaust.)
Beck also claimed in his series that Soros is responsible for destroying entire economies world wide, and that he intends to do just the same (through Obama, “progressives†and HealthcareReform) here in the US. These statements are lies, and ones that are designed to make you want to fight.
Beck produced that series and explicitly stated those lies himself. He pushes them every week with an almost evangelical fervor. Its on the record, and that cant be changed.
How much more incendiary and alarmist does a program need to be? Is that Free Speech, or is that just very deliberate and damaging hyperbole specifically intended to inspire the most hostile emotions in Becks audience?
Perhaps you might remember that just last summer Byron Williams got into a shoot-out with police en route to an armed assault on the Tides foundation. Williams credited Beck with “blowing his mind†by revealing the “truth†about Tides (an organization that Beck had frequently cited as a nefarious Anti-American enemy), and other community organizing groups.
And lets not forget that, not too long ago, Beck acted out the scenario of poisoning Nancy Pelosi on tv as a “jokeâ€. Its right there online.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j66UQDzW3yU
These arent occasional outbursts… it’s the fever pitch insanity that Fox and the Tea parties regularly stimulate day and night non-stop.
The Tea Parties repeatedly lie about a deadly and imminent ambush on American sovereignty by claiming things like “Obama made the Constitution illegal. Obama made George Washington an enemy of the state., Obama is a Muslim, etc…†They send out emails stating these things all the time. They state these lies explicitly and persistently (I know because I have the misfortune of receiving these emails from people who I know in the Tea Parties.)
Its not an attack on Free Speech to notice that there is a very overt attempt by Fox and in the Tea Parties to enrage people with fabricated nightmares. Look how they conflated HealthCare Reform with the Holocaust.
I mean, only this last Christmas, Fox & Friends’ Gretchen Carlson enraged her audience with claims that a Florida School had “cow-towed to political correctness” and forbad the use of green and red holiday decor. Gretch and pals were really ticked off about that, and if you saw the broadcast, you’d know that she really played up the idea that the Christian Holy Day (and Christianity itself) was in the grips of a severe threat from Big Liberal Government.
Then it turned out that the whole thing was fake, and that Fox never checked the facts before airing the story. The Florida school district issued its own demand for a correction, and demonstrated that no anti-decor policy was ever instituted there. Fox never issued a retraction… they never do.
So yeah, lets protect Free Speech, but lets promote RESPONSIBLE news.
Re J.T. Waldron @16.
First, Gifford’s positions on war and peace, the USA PATRIOT Act, etc., are irrelevant to the core issue raised by this piece.
The question, as Brad aptly puts it, usually in the context of election integrity but just as applicable to the topic at hand, is not left or right, but right and wrong.
The 1st amendment right to free speech is not a license to say “anything.” You can be prosecuted for yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. You can also be prosecuted if you incite someone else to commit an imminent lawless act, e.g. murder.
Charles Manson did not personally participate in the Tate/LaBianca murders. He persuaded others to kill for him, and, for that, he was appropriately convicted and sentenced for first degree murder.
What Brad is saying but we’re not seeing elsewhere is “Its the media, stupid”.
Bill Clinton’s saying politics need to change. How the heck will that happen given that the media is almost completely controlled by one party? A party that has used media to intimidate and smear?
“How the heck will that happen given that the media is almost completely controlled by one party?”
Media is far beyond “one party”, it’s not the party causing the problem, or the L vs R paradigm. These stations get to say whatever they want, as long as they embrace the establishment’s agenda. This is the dirty little secret of how they keep their FCC license in today’s world.
Out of this We get, CNBC’s “the economy is recovering.” No news at all out of the GOM when clearly people, not just animals are dying from it. Anti-Wikileaks, Pro-war, Pro-TSA and DHS which We now have in 9000 locations across the nation like Wallmart. Want to be adeptous exemptous? Watch CiaBS to see how it’s done.
The volume has in fact been cranked up a level!
So what happens when one of those 9000 Wallmart DHS ads ruin You or a loved one’s life, because of some stazi snitch thinks your a terrorist?
Why are all the middle east war toys being aimed at American citizens now?