Three articles well worth reading today, on the subject of right-wing extremism, the Tiller and Holocaust Museum shootings, and what it all means. Disturbing stuff.
Paul Krugman:
Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Conservatives were outraged...
But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.
There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.
Eugene Robinson:
The thing is, though, that words have consequences.
There's profit for the pundits, and perhaps personal advantage for some politicians, in calling President Obama a "socialist" and calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a "racist Latina" and claiming that Democrats want to "take away your guns" -- in creating and nurturing a sense of grievance among those inclined to be aggrieved. But what about those who might not understand that it's all just political theater?
The Homeland Security memo made the assessment that "lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States."
Teacherken:
The Rush Limbaughs of the world should not be dismissed as comedians and performers - insofar as they continue to advocate or acquiesce in violence, so long as they lie on things like the President's citizenship, knowing as they must how their words will be taken by some whose elevators do not go all the way to the top, we should shame them, and we should make clear that those members of the Republican party who refuse to stand up to Rush Limbaugh are demonstrating that they are too weak, too mealymouthed to protect America from terrorists, foreign or domestic, and therefore should NOT be entrusted with the reigns of power.
If, for political purposes, Republicans will not denounce the bloviations of those that feed into this violence, then they legitimize their being called to account politically. They are cowards. And we should be willing to so identify them.
