DiscussMormonism.com

9 Conservative Myths About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism

Right Wing Myth #2. "These terrorists are really left-wingers, not right-wingers. Because everybody knows that fascism is a phenomenon that only occurs on the left"

False does not even begin to cover the absurdity of this claim.

Fascism has always been a phenomenon of the right. Every postwar academic scholar of fascism -- Robert Paxton, Roger Griffin, Umberto Eco and onward -- has been emphatically clear about this. Benito Mussolini admitted as much. It's part of the very definition of the word.

Jonah Goldberg has gotten a lot of traction on the right for his argument that fascism is somehow a left-wing tendency; but in his badly argued, barely researched tome Liberal Fascism, he gets here by taking logical leaps that no college professor would accept from the greenest freshman.

The worst, perhaps, is the way he conflates "fascism" with "totalitarianism." There is such a thing as left-wing totalitarianism: Stalinism and Maoism both qualify. But they were communist, not fascist, movements. It's only when totalitarianism happens on the right that we call it fascism.

Still, this idea has caught on like wildfire and is being widely promoted by right-wing talkers like Glenn Beck. If you want the full takedown on this, I refer you to Dave Neiwert's exhaustive series of debunking articles, which are linked to in the sidebar at Orcinus.

#4. "This is just a minority movement that isn't really capable of changing anything. We don't really need to worry about it."

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the U.S. is up 54 percent since 2000, with nearly 1,000 such groups active across the country right now. Fueled by bone-deep racism, an unnatural terror of liberal government, frustration over the economic downturn, and fears about America's loss of world standing, they tell us, the militant right is rising again. You can find groups in every corner of the country, incidents of racist violence are rising; and the traffic on far-right Web sites is up, too.

Make no mistake: The right-wing radicals are angry, and there are enough of them out there to do some real damage. As noted, they're far more cohesive and better-connected than they've ever been. And they're only getting started.

#5. "It's not fair to hold right-wing media talking heads responsible for the things their listeners might do."

Riiight.

Advertisers will spend about $50 billion this year on TV ads, and $15 billion more on radio. That's a lot of money. These ads take up roughly one-third of every hour of airtime -- and sponsors pay up gladly, because long experience has shown that broadcast ads are a very powerful way to influence consumer behavior.

But this argument asks us to believe that what happens during the other 40 minutes per hour has absolutely no effect on anybody, ever. Got that? Ads: Powerful influences on behavior. Featured content: No influence whatsoever. Absurd.

Furthermore, conservatives have railed against Hollywood for decades, claiming that movies, TV shows, music and video games are a powerful corrupting influence on the country's morals. They've howled even louder in recent years about Al-Jazeera's perceived negative effect on the political discourse in the Middle East. But when it comes to their own media -- no, no, nothing to see here. Nobody's really listening to us, let alone acting on anything we might say. How could you even suggest such a thing?

As usual, they're trying to have it both ways. The religious right came to power almost exclusively on the persuasive (and fundraising) strength of cable-TV shows. The conservative grip on the country's red counties is largely attributable to right-wing talk radio and Fox News. Obviously, conservatives strongly believe that other people's media have tremendous power to undermine their preferred narratives; and there's no denying that they've been very aggressive in using it to promote their own worldview for decades.

But now they're turning around and insisting that nope -- nobody ever did anything because some talking head told them to. And that sound you hear? Don't worry -- it's just the head of the ad sales department quietly having a stroke because we've completely undermined her ability to ever sell another spot.

#6 "All that crazy stuff you hear on the right -- you can find the left wing saying things just as bad. They're equally culpable for how bad it all its."

False. There is no equivalency whatsoever to be drawn here.

It’s absolutely true that the commenters can get just as out of hand on liberal sites as they do on conservative ones. (And most of us who've been hanging around the Internet for a while have the flamethrower scars to prove it.) But the problem has nothing to do with the commenters. It has to do with the opinion leaders who are driving the conversation.

On the right, it's actually hard to name a single major voice who hasn’t called for the outright extermination, silencing, harassment or killing of liberals. Rush. Bill O’Reilly. Ann Coulter. Sean Hannity. Laura Ingraham. Michelle Malkin. Michael Savage. Glenn Beck. Bernard Goldberg, who has been cited by at least one assassin as the inspiration for his actions. Michael Reagan, just yesterday. This kind of eliminationist language is stock in trade on the right. A lot of them literally cannot get through the week without it.

And I’m sorry -- but you just don’t hear anything like this same murderous vitriol coming from any of the major voices on the left. Kos' commenters may engage in that, but Kos himself does not. Nor does Arianna [Huffington]. Ed Schultz talks tough, but he's never called for liberals to silence conservatives. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are flaming liberals -- but they would choke on air before actually threatening anyone with bodily harm. Both of them have said repeatedly that they regard that kind of thing as a grossly irresponsible use of a media soapbox. Every reputable left-wing leader or talker wholeheartedly agrees.

Furthermore, you don’t see Volvos and Priuses (Prii?) out there sporting "conservative hunting licenses," despite the fact that "liberal hunting licenses" have been a hot item on the right for years. We’re not the ones driving the huge surge in gun purchases, either. And most importantly: You don’t see us out there shooting up fundamentalist churches, crisis pregnancy clinics, conservative gatherings or cops.

You have to go all the way back to the 1970s to find anything like that kind of overt political terrorist violence coming from the left. But starting in the 1980s, we've had ongoing waves of it coming out of the right -- now including the nine violent right-wing attacks on innocent Americans since Barack Obama was inaugurated.

I agree that it’s time to dial this down. But since it's the right wing who gathers power by whipping up people’s fear and anger -- and it's the right wing (and only the right wing) that's now actually taking up arms and killing people -- then all I have to say is:

You first.

#9. What about that guy who shot the recruiters in Arkansas -- isn't that proof that the left wing is just as bad as the right?

False. I mean, really, really false.

Abdulhakim Mohammed's assassination of two military recruiters was an act of Muslim terrorism, no different than 9/11 or the London subway bombings or Richard Reid and his amazing explosive sneakers. He didn't have a pile of Thom Hartmann books in his apartment. There have been no reports that his computer bookmarks linked to Firedoglake and Crooks & Liars. Near as we can tell, Mohammed was radicalized after being held and abused in a Yemeni prison -- and had absolutely no association with the American left at all.

Yes, he said that he did it because he protested the war. (I actually fielded a radio caller who insisted that his opposition to the war was de facto proof that he's a raving liberal.) But here's a news flash, kiddos: You don't need to be a progressive to think the war was a bad idea. It may come as a surprise to learn that there are a lot of people in other parts of the world who also think it was a bad idea. An absolutely shocking number of them are Muslims and/or people who've spent time in the Middle East. Go figure.

It's a sign of how far detached from reality the right wing is that it no longer can tell the essential difference between Muslim terrorists and garden-variety American progressives. We're not wrong to ask: Should people who are that thoroughly blinded by their prejudices be issued driving licenses?

* * *

This is terrorism we're dealing with. We can't afford to let ourselves be distracted by spin. We will not be able to respond effectively until we're able to deal in facts. The sooner we shoot down these myths, the sooner we'll be able dispel fear, think clearly and start having some real, honest conversations about the actual threats we face.

Pages

The big irony of this is that 2nd Amendment fanatics tell us that the reason they want to be well-armed is so that they will be prepared to go to war against the United States government if their dislike of the government drives them to that point.

The thing is, every U.S. soldier has millions of dollars of technology backing them up--give the right-wing all the high-capacity clips and assault rifles they want, they will still get slaughtered in open battle against the U.S. government.

That being the case, the only way the Right can win the war against the United States government for which it is perpetually arming itself is by using terrorism tactics.

Why does bcspace ignore the more recent and more successful acts of domestic terrorism?

The unabomber Ted Kaczynski wrote a manifesto while committing his acts of terror. In it he attacked Leftism: "Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.

Sound familiar folks? This has Droopy written all over it!

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a registered Republican and a member of the NRA, killed 168 people when he took matters into his own hands by fighting back against the evil government. Again, this is a common theme in Right Wing media. "The evil government is taking our freedoms, so we have to fight back any way we can!" McVeigh said his terrorism was in response to the government's role at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Olympic park bomber Eric Rudolph killed two people and injured more than 150 in 1996. He is a Right Wing nutjob who was involved in a series of anti-abortion, anti-gay bombings as well.

Jim Jones. Weather Underground.....Are there more left wing extremist groups given to terrorism that are close to our time? Oops! I think there are.

Fascism has always been a phenomenon of the right. Every postwar academic scholar of fascism -- Robert Paxton, Roger Griffin, Umberto Eco and onward -- has been emphatically clear about this. Benito Mussolini admitted as much. It's part of the very definition of the word.

KG has never read the 25 point program of the Nazi party.

bcspace wrote:Jim Jones. Weather Underground.....Are there more left wing extremist groups given to terrorism that are close to our time? Oops! I think there are.

Jim Jones was a religious nut, not a terrorist.

So of the left-wing terrorists and terrorist groups you have cited, how many people have they injured or killed? Let's count:

Weather Underground: zero injuries, zero deaths
Floyd Lee Corkins II: shot one security guard in the arm, zero deaths

Jim Jones was a religious nut, not a terrorist.

He was a darling of the Leftwing, everyone want to be seen and photographed with him or meet with him. Walter Mondale, Rosalynn Carter, George Moscone, Jerry Brown, Mervyn Dymally, various leftwing journalists, to name a few. Willie Brown, Harvey Milk, Art Agnos, etc. stuck up for him even when he left the US and his popularity was on the wane. The Democrat Party is a veritable who's who of cooks and nutty zealots who are consorted with without regard to common decency or public concern; all the ingredients for terrorism are in that party.

Weather Underground: zero injuries, zero deaths
Floyd Lee Corkins II: shot one security guard in the arm, zero deaths

So? Jim Jones, 914 casualties. Terrorism is terrorism and it breeds. It also doesn't have to plant bombs or commit mass killings to exist.

bcspace wrote:

Jim Jones was a religious nut, not a terrorist.

He was a darling of the Leftwing, everyone want to be seen and photographed with him or meet with him....

The murders (as opposed to suicides) for which Jim Jones was responsible were Democratic Congressman Leo Ryan, and three reporters from NBC News and the San Francisco Examiner. The fact that Jones murdered people on the left proves he was a Republican.

Kevin Graham wrote:9 Conservative Myths About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism

Right Wing Myth #2. "These terrorists are really left-wingers, not right-wingers. Because everybody knows that fascism is a phenomenon that only occurs on the left"

False does not even begin to cover the absurdity of this claim.

Fascism has always been a phenomenon of the right. Every postwar academic scholar of fascism -- Robert Paxton, Roger Griffin, Umberto Eco and onward -- has been emphatically clear about this. Benito Mussolini admitted as much. It's part of the very definition of the word.

This kind of thing is barely worth refuting, but its fascinating the old Popular Front hobby horse, moth-eaten and threadbare as it is, is trotted out now and then for another jog around the track.

Kevin's comment regarding Mussolini is patent nonsense. Benito Mussolini declared himself to be a lifelong socialist, and proudly so, and never altered that estimation of himself. Fascism was a heretical sect or schismatic faction (as was National Socialism) of a larger family of totalitarian collectivist ideologies that partook, depending upon ideological flavor, of class, internationalist, nationalist, and racist tendencies, present to one degree or another in all of them.

As to Kevin dropping the names of historians he's doubtless never read, a number of other distinguished 20th century minds disagree, and place fascism, National Socialism, and socialism/communism directly within an at least two century leftist tradition (dating, for modern purposes, from the French Revolution). These would include, of course, Robert Conquest, Richard Pipes, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, George Reisman, Paul Johnson, A. James Gregor, and a host of others.

While some strong doctrinal differences do exist between each system, the similarities are striking and salient, and the historical linkages strong.

1. Each is totalitarian in nature, and seeks to regiment and control society across a wide spectrum of human dimensions, political, economic, social, psychological, ethical, and personal.

2. Each is a form of collectivism manifested in various ways throughout a social order, including in the economic, social, political, and personal/ethical (mores, norms, traditions etc.). The individual is minimized and becomes only a functional cell in a greater organic whole.

3. Each venerates the state/and a political class/party/leader, each in its own idiosyncratic way.

4. Each is anti-liberal and anti-democratic, centering vast, if not complete political powers in a central state apparatus controlled by a single party.

5. All are viscerally hostile to free market economic relations and control such relations strictly either by direct expropriation of private property or by de facto nationalization through regulation and legislation (or a combination of several methods, as with democratic socialism/Fabianism etc.). Socialism tends to control directly through expropriation/nationalization, while Fascism tends to leave property in private hands while thoroughly controlling it through legislative, regulatory, or executive command.

6. Each sees the state and service within or to the state as the meaning and purpose for which man exists, and sees the state and or society as an organic whole outside of which there is no legitimate human meaning or teleology.

7. Each seeks to eradicate or substantially alter the structure and meaning of the family.

8. Each is viscerally hostile to traditional religion of the Judeo-Christian variety (revolutionary socialism to literally any form of religious devotion other than that given to the state or the Leader).

9. Each creates cults of personality around specific leaders/spokesmen.

10. Each is militaristic, aggressive, and focused upon the obliteration of all competing ideologies and assimilation of other peoples through military and/or subversive actions.

11. Each is a messianic or utopian ideology which seeks to collectively redeem, perfect, and/or correct all major defects of the human condition.

12. Each relies upon mass consciousness, mass psychology, and tribal us/them (oppressed/oppressor) group antagonisms to foment and maintain support.

Look, we could go on and on with this, but what should be eminently clear is that while there is a strong "family resemblance" between all these systems, and all though they have always been quite capable of fighting each other (as the many factions of socialism/communism have always done) over certain matters of doctrine (even minute ones), they all, together, have and always will combine against their common enemy - classical liberalism - known broadly today in alternate forms as conservatism and libertarianism.

Classic liberalism, the traditional family, religion and normative Western/Judeo-Christian moral teaching all are the enemies of the Left in all its manifestations, label those manifestations as one may.

Jonah Goldberg has gotten a lot of traction on the right for his argument that fascism is somehow a left-wing tendency; but in his badly argued, barely researched tome Liberal Fascism, he gets here by taking logical leaps that no college professor would accept from the greenest freshman.

That Kevin's never so much as cracked the covers of this book goes without saying, I have little doubt.

The worst, perhaps, is the way he conflates "fascism" with "totalitarianism." There is such a thing as left-wing totalitarianism: Stalinism and Maoism both qualify. But they were communist, not fascist, movements. It's only when totalitarianism happens on the right that we call it fascism.

This is Popular Front era disinformatzia that emanated from the Comintern (only after Hitler violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact attacked the Soviet Union) and was spread far and wide by countless communist front groups, useful idiots, and naïve, vacuous idealists some 70 years ago and only continues to exist today because of the existence of the same kinds of fellow travelers, useful idiots, and naïve, vacuous idealists as existed then, and centered mostly, as then, within the elite American intelligentsia: academic, media, and entertainment.

Anyone who's caught onto this game and seriously studied the relevant subjects in any depth understands quite well that for the Left, the "Right" is simply anything not on the Left. Anything opposed to the Left is (must be?) therefore, on the "Right." Hence, modern conservatism and libertarianism, being opposed to socialism in all its forms, is on the Right and, since Hitler, a National Socialist and a staunch ally of the Soviets from the very inception of the Reich, suddenly turned on and attacked the "Left" in Soviet Russia, he then became an opponent of the "Left" and was therefore moved to the slot marked "Right Wing" for purposes of polemics, ideology, and wartime propaganda.

According to this logic, Thomas Paine is a fascist. Thomas Jefferson is a fascist. James Madison is a fascist. John Jay is a fascist. Von Mises and Von Hayek are both fascists. Murry Rothbard is a fascist. Henry Hazlitt is a fascist. William F. Buckley is a fascist. Supporters of a small, limited government of strictly enumerated powers that exists by the consent of the governed in an environment of vigorous, multi-party debate, a free press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and vast educational resources under federalist system of representative democracy are fascists.


According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the U.S. is up 54 percent since 2000, with nearly 1,000 such groups active across the country right now. Fueled by bone-deep racism, an unnatural terror of liberal government, frustration over the economic downturn, and fears about America's loss of world standing, they tell us, the militant right is rising again.


Really? And when has this "militant Right" ever existed? Define it please, its doctrines, philosophy, and policy prescriptions.

Make no mistake: The right-wing radicals are angry, and there are enough of them out there to do some real damage. As noted, they're far more cohesive and better-connected than they've ever been. And they're only getting started.

Then I'm sure you can name some of them and describe what it is they have in store of us. Oddly, I can't think of the last time a conservative or Austrian libertarian did anything to anybody of a terroristic or violent nature. It always seems like...well...yes, it always seems like is actually always the Left caught rioting, breaking things, assaulting their political opponents physically, pillaging and plundering, shouting "No justice, no peace!" making and setting off bombs, spiking trees, subverting/mocking the rule of law, and trashing and destroying public spaces.

It never seems to be constitutionalist/fusionist conservatives, libertarians, or any non-leftists, non-socialists, non-communists, or non-progressives who get caught with their hands in this cookie jar.

Odd, isn't it?

Hey, droopy, time to man up:

viewtopic.php?p=704560#p704560