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Eliminationist Rhetoric and the Culpability of Media Figures
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I had missed that, but it doesn't actually tie Marxist-Leninist groups to any bombings, just that they're considered terrorist groups by the feds, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI considered Marxist-Leninist groups to be terrorists for their ideology, without regard for their actions. All examples of actual terrorism taking place in that article were animal rights activists.
Edit: And "IED devices" really pisses me off.
If you go behind the comments, they have the exact some intent: get people riled up and buying your product. That's where I see equivalence. I'm not defending either side; pretty much the opposite. If someone is firmly on one side of the political spectrum, I would expect them to find the hyperbole on the other side more troubling than their own.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion folks, I'm off to bed.
really impossible to tell anyway, and that particular quote doesn't piss me off any more than calling her book treason. I won't harp on it anymore, thanks for the links.
But motive is only one part of a case. John Madden also gets people riled up so people will buy his product, but it's asinine to say he's anything like Ann Coulter.
I'm still not seeing the extreme hyperbole on the 'other side' that you keep talking about. So far there's Wanda Sykes stupid bit, a couple Michael Moore quotes, and a couple Bill Mahr jokes. (though I'd argue that Mahr isn't really all that liberal)
In comparison to:
If you don't find those remarks troubling, I just don't know what to tell you.
Wait, Savage thinks that the gays made the final episodes of Evangelion?
You do not want to go down this path. It does not make your case stronger.
What Ann Coulter said may or may not have been a joke. What some dipshit said about putting a boot up Conid's ass may or may not have been a joke. The clear difference is that one of these actions is not physically possible (putting a boot up somebody's ass) and is a common phrase to generally indicate anger or disfavor towards a person.
"I'm going to blow up your office building" is actually possible, it is actually something right-wing terrorists have done before, and it is not a common phrase to indicate anger or disfavor towards a person.
We're talking about right-wing pundits and media personalities who are claiming abortion doctors are mass murdering psychopaths who are committing genocide against innocent children, consort with pedophiles, are coated in the bload of the innocent and must be killed by God's command. You cannot compare this to someone on DailyKos saying "Man, Bush is Hitler!" and you cannot compare it to someone talking about how they'd like to boot Condi, literally or figuratively.
To think, I've been bating my breath all this time for nothing. C'est la vie.
Most people on your list were not media personalities and what we are accusing the right wing media figures of is not saying ridiculously partisan things. So you never actually read the interview, just the response interview.
Tell me, was she joking when she said
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Interestingly enough, she went to Cornell. I'm pretty sure that's quite the liberal university, but then again the nature of most universities is liberal. I thought going to university would make you more inclined to having an open mind. What the hell backfired so badly for her?
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
She's so ridiculous and over-the-top that she's essentially a self-parody, but she knows it sells because people like to hear how great they are for being racist, misogynistic xenophobes.
Either that or she is, as my dad used to put it, "just a bitch for the sake of being one". I wouldn't count that out either.
Nothing backfired. She's incredibly popular for her outspoken views, and thousands and millions tune in to either vehemently agree with her or to confirm their utter disgust of her.
She's playing things just fine.
I'm fully expecting for somebody to come in here one day with a crazy Youtube link where Glenn Beck starts gibbering about giggling voices in the drain and eating his notes on-stage.
Even if you could find an even somewhat prominent leftist or liberal advocating the killing of political opponents (which in the U.S., I don't think you can), you can't draw any equivalence at all between them and the right; the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs of the world are only the public tip of a very ugly iceberg, the entire purpose of which is to encourage tribalism and justify violence against political opponents. The left doesn't have anything close to this kind of an apparatus. Trying to claim a scattered few enviro-terrorists are similar in any way is so silly it borders on retarded, as is claiming that Spike Lee or Michael Moore are similar because they like to "rile people up" to sell books.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I don't agree that the quotes moniker used, for example, are intended to do what you're claiming they are. You'll have to prove Beck, et al's intent, which I haven't seen in this thread so far. You're making the leap from them saying "abortion doctors are terrible people who should be ashamed" to "go kill the abortion doctors!"
I wasn't responding yo you. No one had posted in the thread for a few hours, so I thought I was safe not quoting
It doesn't have to be restricted to Cable, but a bit more significant than some random jackass on myspace. Daily Kos, when it's actually written by Kos himself, for instance would count. The Nation, TNR, NRO, Weekly Standard &c. are all fair game. Not to mention nationally syndicated radio programs. You just aren't going to hear Michelle Norris go on a tirade like Savage or Levin &c. When your audience consists of 30 guys in the Quad it just doesn't compare to an audience of 30 million.
Well, I guess they don't all have medical licenses...
No, I don't have to show intent at all. I honestly sort of doubt Rush Limbaugh gives a fuck what the crazies who listen to his show believe; I think he just likes money.
The point is that this rhetoric legitimizes the craziest views that people on the right have, and puts them in a place mentally where they are much more susceptible to organizations that have less incentive than Limbaugh to maintain a veneer of decency. If entirely respectable journalists are telling you that all liberals are traitors, that Tiller is "monster" who operates a "death mill," or whatever, when you do meet someone who says "you know, what do you think we should do about people like that," it starts to sound a lot more reasonable to you.
Beck and Limbaugh and the rest aren't murderers, or really even legally culpable in my view. They are people who are willing to make their bones being the kindest, gentlest face of a movement that glorifies political violence. There is nothing similar to this on the left.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
What is this movement? How are Beck, Hannity, Coulter tied to that movement? You say they're not culpable, but then you said that they are the face of a movement.
They aren't saying they should be ashamed. They're saying they should be stopped.
Edit: Or rather, need to be stopped.
And that these groups - white supremacists, anti-semites, neo-nazis, neo-confederates, abortion-clinic bombers and other such hate groups - are so numerous and widespread that they form an entire subculture?
Because that would explain a lot.
Calling someone a baby murderer in a country where people think murderers deserve to be is like saying that you think that person deserves to be killed. If you say it enough with the right amount of vitriol to a receptive person without qualms about carrying out the deed and who takes your word as authoritative, how can you not see that you played a part in that person going off the deep end?
Hannity has connections with Neo-Nazi activist and radio caller turned radio host Hal Turner (one of the Pittsburgh shooter's biggest influences) that go back decades.
Coulter and Beck's rhetoric is already so extreme as to be indistinguishable from the militia movement and other right wing extremist movements.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Scott Roeder, similarly, got his start as a fairly normal anti-tax activist. Over time, his affiliation with increasingly extreme conservative groups led him to violence. Incidentally, we're now finding out that he also had fairly deep connections at Operation Rescue and talked to some of their higher ups frequently.
The connection all of these more mainstream figures have is that they legitimize these extreme views (and make money doing it.) It is one thing for a nominally reasonable person to see a podunk newsletter calling Tiller a mass murderer; when Important People with television and radio shows say the sme thing, the message starts to carry a lot more weight.
I mean, I could go on and on with the extremist groups who've been tacitly endorsed by these same pundits. Operation Rescue, the Minutemen, all sorts of wacky shit.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Well here's the problem, there are right-wing and left-wing terrorist groups in this country. As moniker said many times, no one is arguing that. I even linked to government report mentioning the high number of left-wing domestic terrorist groups in the country. Is the argument now, the right wing ones are worse?
So yes, none of these people sat Roeder down and said, okay, it is necessary and correct for you to murder this man. But they did everything to come as close to that point as they could, even now saying that he's a hero. The public conservative pundits under discussion are the relatively sanitized edge of this school of thought, which is all about tribalism and violence against perceived enemies. They reinforce the message of these actual extremist groups, and take their cues from them in their coverage.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I think the biggest point of this thread is that the extreme right is politically catered to by people with real power. The extreme left is pretty much ignored by anyone who matters.
No, the argument is that the right wing side has a network of media and activist organizations designed to systematically support and legitimize the view that political violence is justified. The pundits we have been discussing are the most public part of this network.
This shouldn't be that difficult to understand.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Thanks for the link.
Based on that article, the association seems about on par with Obama and Ayers, for example. The article takes the same tone as most right-wing articles about Obama and Ayers and Wright and ACORN and whoever else they tried to link him to.
Well, you said you weren't arguing intent, which is what the bold part is about, specifically "designed to." Now it seems that you are. From my perspective, you're shifting what you're arguing, which is why it's difficult to understand.
I was only saying that the right-wing articles (much like the left-wing article that was linked) treat them as an evil horrible whacko group. I'm not condoning them, merely comparing that both connections are fraught with allegations that don't have sources and shady sounding dealings that have pedestrian explanations as well.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It's not arguing intent so much as pointing out the structural nature of the media/political system and what it results in. If you have an apparatus set up in the MSM where you have media/authority figures presenting views on a given position, you are legitimizing them by the very fact that you're participating in legitimate political & media discourse. As such, when the views being presenting are political violence, it results in a problem when said views are being legitimized.
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