Most conservatives do not in any way support violent protest, murder, and terrorism to achieve their political goals. That is true no matter if we are talking about abortion, gay marriage, taxes, or opposition to President Obama or liberalism in general.
Most liberals do not in any way support violent protest, murder, and terrorism to achieve their political goals. That is true no matter if we are talking about the Iraq War, the environment, civil rights, worker’s rights, or opposition to former President Bush or conservatism in general.
A conservative may think abortion is murder, and yet be horrified by the murder of Dr. Tiller.
A liberal may think the Iraq War is immoral, and yet be horrified by the murder of solider William Long in Little Rock, Arkansas (I will assume that the killing was politically motivated, although we don’t know that yet. I do this out of fairness, since we all here at DL assumed the murder of Dr. Tiller was politically motivated before that fact was confirmed).
Yet there are individuals, groups of individuals, and whole organizations out there, on both the left and right, that do resort to political violence. They are called extremists. They are not representative of mainstream conservatism or mainstream liberalism. They are not representative of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.
Unless….
They celebrate it. Or show sympathy to it. Or if they instigate it. Or provoke it.
If political violence and the perpetrators of it are not condemned, shunned and shamed, then they are accepted, condoned and encouraged, whether by our silence or our consent.
That is what we here at DL have been arguing about during this months long debate over extremists.
Steve Newton thinks I am playing a game.
The game that DD and company love to play is this: conflate all political rhetoric with which they disagree with that of truly dangerous, nutcase, violent extremist groups, and then take any–any–violence committed by someone with superficially similar views and use that to vindicate your own particular form of hate speech.
Wrong. I am not playing a game. Like I said above, a person can think abortion is murder, even though I disagree with it. A person can think an economic stimulus package is tyranny, even though I think that person killed one too many brain cells in college, or at least missed one too many History classes.
The only time we connect our political opponents to the truly dangerous, nutcase, violent extremists is when they make the connection themselves, whether by instigating or provoking violence, or by celebrating or failing to condemn it when it happens. That is when I conflate, Steve. And that is not a game, it is a tragedy. For one would think in the 21st century, after the successful examples of the nonviolent protests throughout the 20th century, that political violence would not be celebrated or sympathized with by any American. Yet, on many conservative blogs yesterday, the death of Dr. Tiller was cheered. Several anti-abortion leaders explicitly or impliedly stated that Dr. Tiller deserved what he got.
A colleague of mine, Mike Lux, has written about the history of violence in politics, and yes, we progressives are to blame too.
There is no question that progressive-minded folks have also engaged in political violence. […] John Brown in the 1850s believed and fought for a violent slave rebellion, and occasionally leftist leaders in the 1960s went over the line and committed acts of violence. And anarchists assassinated William McKinley in 1901. [DD notes that environmental groups have also engaged in political violence over the last 20 years].
Having said all of that, though, it is also undeniably true that there is a dangerous and virulent streak of violence and fascism in American conservatism, now and throughout our country’s history.
Conservatives in the South who vehemently and violently defended and fought for slavery and Jim Crow are the most obvious example: From the vicious caning of political opponents on the floor of the Senate, to the fighting of the bloody Civil War, to the gunning down of hundreds of freed slaves in the reconstruction era, to the lynching of thousands of African-Americans in the 90 years after the Civil War, to all of the horrible violence of the civil rights struggles in the 1950s and 60s, the story of race relations in the South has been long and incredibly bloody. The North wasn’t exactly pure on race issues either, from the mass murder of blacks in Tulsa in 1921 to the rock throwing mobs of Chicago greeting Martin Luther King.
Racial violence hasn’t been the only from of political violence by those opposed to progressive change in this country either. Labor leaders have been assassinated; women suffragists and other progressive reformers have been tarred and feathered, and violently harassed. Tim McVeigh, the perpetrator of the country’s biggest single act of domestic terrorism was a far right-wing, militia activist. Sadly, the Tiller killing is only the latest in a long string of anti-abortion activists bombing clinics and murdering people.
Even more serious, though, is the kind of domestic political violence we have seen by certain politicians. […]
Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Pat Buchanan, George H.W. Bush, G. Gordon Liddy, and many other modern day conservatives happily and proudly worked for [the lawless Nixon administration]. It is no wonder that we see them today so blithely defending the violation of the Geneva Convention and our own Bill of Rights. These are political leaders who have no qualms about torturing people, either, which is perhaps the ultimate example of political violence.Just as political conservatives of an earlier generation had no problems aligning themselves with segregationists of the South while mobs were beating freedom riders almost to death, Bill Connor was sicking German Shepherds on children, and terrorists were firebombing churches with little girls inside them, there is a virulent strain of political conservatism today that is not troubled by political violence. Let us hope that progressives win the day over this kind of conservatism. If we don’t, I think it is safe to say we should fear for our country.
It is my hope too, and thus I will conflate as often as possible when warranted, when I think over the top political rhetoric has provoked or instigated violence, or when conservatives celebrate the results of extremist violence, or at the very least are silent or slow to condemn it. Because political violence has NO FUCKING PLACE in America. It is just that simple. No one, whether they are liberal or conservative, has any right to resort to violence to achieve their goals. NO ONE. So if I have to shame conservatives with their own words of instigation or encouragement, then so be it. And if that is to be considered act of unwarranted labeling to the likes of Steve Newton, so be it. And to be fair, my friends on the right are free to confront me and others here at DL with examples of left wing political violence. Because when I say political violence has no place in America, I really do mean it.
And it has already happened. You all remember my “Round Them Up and Shoot Them” remarks, right? Of course you do. It is the first response from the right whenever I make a post like this. Well, what did I do when confronted with my wrong and insane remark? Whether it was just hyperbole or not, it could rightly be interpreted as a call for political violence. So what did I do? Did I justify it? Or did I apologize for it, repeatedly?
Maybe there really is no hope for us after all. Maybe we humans are just a violent species, whose nature it is to destroy ourselves. And as a result, political violence, like all violence, will be with us so long as there is an us. And maybe we all should just resort to our baser instincts and have at each other in every violent way imaginable.
Or maybe we can find within ourselves a better angel.