The War On Dissent: The popular front

The dogs are being unleashed.

The thuggish element of the far right that has taken up residence with the mainstream GOP is being called into action on the home front. They are being sicced on anyone who questions George W. Bush's dirty little war. And with them, they are drawing in formerly mainstream conservatives likewise moved by the bonfires of jingoism.

Not all at once, but pack by pack: quietly, locally.

Listen to talk radio for awhile and you'll know what I mean.

The pro-war right is no longer satisfied merely to be at war. It has now shifted to a program of threats of violence and open intimidation in the hopes of shouting down anyone who dares to dissent from their agenda.

Indeed, the fact that we are now at war is the chief excuse they give for silencing any dissent, accusing those who would protest the war of "treason" and worse. As the body counts rise and the entanglement snarls, as all the well-laid fantasies of easy victory are sand-blasted into the desert, the bile is growing thick and venomous. The landscape is becoming dangerous.

And because it is largely occurring through the medium of talk radio (with a healthy assist from the Internet), it's falling under the radar of most of the mainstream press. Perhaps just as significant, this same talk-radio segment is particularly dominated by corporations with extremely close ties to the Bush administration.

The specter of genuine American fascism, as I've discussed previously, looms larger all the time.

I've been listening in, and even here in "liberal" Seattle, it's getting ugly.

A lot of the ugliness comes from the callers. Some can scarcely contain their violent loathing for all things liberal, but particularly for those they deem insufficiently "supportive" of the people whose lives are now in the line in Iraq.

The most common line of argument I've heard from this segment goes like this: The Iraqi army's unexpectedly potent resistance is being fueled by the media reports of antiwar protests in the United States, because it's inspiring propaganda for them. Therefore both the media and especially the protesters are directly responsible for the rising toll of American deaths. (Don't be surprised to see Ari Fleischer trotting out this line at some point too.)

No one bothers to point out to them that this is a classic case of projection, of blaming your political opponents for your own failings. The chickenhawks in charge of this administration's war plans clearly underestimated the will of both the Iraqi army and the general populace in resisting this invasion, a will that is obviously borne out of fierce (and natural) national pride and not government propaganda. (There is, unsurprisingly, scant evidence that the antiwar protests provide any more than brief inspiration, if any at all.) It was that miscalculation which has produced higher-than-expected casualties, at least from the perspective of the little armchair generals now manning the airwaves. Protests had nothing to do with it.

Of course, the reason that no one points this out to them is that the talk-show hosts encourage this kind of rhetoric. They not only agree with such callers, but then go on to opine with similarly outrageous smears of the motivations of the protesters.

More than that, they are now openly encouraging tactics of intimidation against antiwar activists. In some cases they merely encourage prowar supporters to show up at antiwar demonstrations and counter their voices -- which is, of course, a recipe for confrontation, particularly given the bellicose nature of the audience that will respond to such encouragement. In other cases, they appear now to be openly advocating violence.

According to a report whose veracity I'm currently trying to ascertain -- but which so far appears reliable -- one of the local Seattle talk-show hosts actually urged his audience to assault antiwar protesters. (The host in question, as well as his station manager, have so far not responded to my e-mails. If and when they do -- or if all attempts to reach them fail -- I'll identify them.)

If you see an antiwar protester talking to people on the streets, he reportedly said, you should walk up to them and not even talk to them, just hit them and knock them down. Then, when they get up, he said, knock them down again. And again -- until they "start to get the idea."

Listening to this same station, I myself heard another talk-show host opine that antiwar protesters don't deserve to be alive.

As I say, it's getting ugly out there. This is just a small sampling, but you get a flavor for what "conventional wisdom" is floating about right now. Put simply, it's this: Antiwar liberals are the enemy of the state, and are costing American soldiers' lives, and need to be silenced by any means necessary.

I listen to a broad spectrum of stations, but the AM airwaves these days are particularly dominated by conservative talk shows. In Seattle alone, there are three stations dedicated just to that format.

The granddaddy of these is KVI, which rose to prominence on the wings of Rush Limbaugh's dulcet tones, but which is notable as the home of other famed conservatives, including Michael Medved and the GOP's 2000 Washington state gubernatorial candidate, John Carlson. I've been on Carlson's show; to his credit, he's one of the few conservatives who seems genuinely concerned about the influence of right-wing extremists on the mainstream movement. (He also is perfectly aware of my own conservative background -- I used to edit his column when I was at the newspaper that first ran his column, the very Republican Journal American, and we chatted irregularly -- and he probably gives me more of a hearing than most other conservatives.)

And yet Carlson was one of the most prominent among the talk-show hosts who openly urged their audiences to show up at events involving Rep. Jim McDermott, the Seattle Democrat whose opposition to the war has of course been fairly prominent. [I happen to be among those unhappy that McDermott traveled to Baghdad and allowed himself to be used for Iraqi propaganda; but his steadfast opposition to the war has been otherwise mostly admirable, and he has in fact made numerous thoughtful points against the conflict subsequently.] Indeed, KVI generally has been in the fore of generating the meme that antiwar dissenters are "treasonous" and now need to be confronted and silenced.

The disturbing thing is the way this has played out in real life.

Weekend before last, at the Federal Building in downtown Seattle -- site of many a protest over the years -- a group of about 50 antiwar protesters gathered to voice their opposition to Bush's campaign. McDermott showed up. And so did several dozen of the KVI listeners urged on by Carlson and others.

They were not exactly peaceful about it. They mostly mingled with the antiwar protesters and then started getting into people's faces. A number of the confrontations were broken up by orange-clad "peacekeepers," who moved in and defused situations mostly by surrounding and separating the would-be combatants.

The pro-war bunch reserved most of their venom for McDermott. As he gave his remarks, a knot moved in behind him and the TV cameras and became boisterous, waving their KVI-issued "Support Our Troops" signs and shouting obscenities. It was clear they were hoping to drown him out. As McDermott's remarks went on, they became noisier and nastier, screaming epithets and threats at McDermott even after he had finished. A staffer I spoke with afterward said she was "frightened for my life."

Moreover, Seattle police -- who were arranged in a row before the doors in front of the building -- never moved from their positions. It was clear that if violence did break out, they would probably stand back and let it happen.

McDermott tried working the crowd and shaking a few hands, but that ended abruptly. One of the prowar demonstrators, evidently a veteran wearing a uniform festooned with numerous medals (though, having been at many a militia meeting, I have to say their authenticity may have been suspect), took McDermott's hand, leaned into his face and shouted: "Thanks for coming, traitor!" McDermott then left.

This little confrontation appeared briefly, with little further reportage, on one of the local newscasts, and the Seattle Times ran a short item on it, but otherwise the ugliness went unremarked -- as well, apparently, as the near potential for violence that fortunately had been defused by the "peacekeepers."

Oh, and did I happen to mention that KVI is a Clear Channel station?

Of course, Atrios has been reporting diligently on the underwriting of the pro-war campaign by Clear Channel, along with all of the relevant connections between the upper echelons at the radio giant -- not just at his blog, but in his weekly NY Press column too. Paul Krugman has addressed it as well.

The closeness of the corporation that is the leading progenitor of the pro-war element to the Bush administration is clearly cause for concern. (Clear Channel is in truth the poster child for reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, as well as the now-defunct cross-ownership prohibition.) It becomes cause for downright alarm when that activism begins translating into thuggish attempts at intimidation and outright threats of violence directed at elected officials.

There were indications of this element early on in the pro-war demonstrations, as I mentioned earlier (along with Atrios and numerous others). It was especially notable that the rhetoric was more anti-dissent oriented than actually pro-war or anti-Saddam.

Fortunately, this shifted somewhat; in most of the initial large (Clear Channel-sponsored) pro-war rallies, the dominant signs read: "Liberate Iraq." This, of course, is a perfectly appropriate sentiment for a pro-war rally, and represents fairly that side of the debate without any attempt to silence the other.

In the intervening weeks and days since, however, the clearly pro-war rhetoric has been receding to the background, and the anti-dissent jingoes are starting to froth their way to the fore.

And it certainly is not relegating itself to merely Clear Channel stations. It's widespread. The station on which the host allegedly advocated hitting dissenters is the quintessential MOR Seattle AM outlet -- probably the most popular news and traffic station in town, with talk-show hosts who run the gamut from not-very-sharp liberals to conflicted centrists to the usual brand of robotic talking-points conservatives. Apparently, though, the competition to keep up with the wingnuts is growing stronger.

As I suggested earlier, you can probably turn to nearly any talk-oriented station now and find this kind of rhetoric dominating the airwaves. And the signal couldn't be clearer: It's time to shut them down. Time to loose the hounds.

And perhaps what is most disturbing about this trend is another presence that underlies the pro-war rallies: the unequivocal support for President Bush. (These expressions often have a religious twist, as in "God Bless George W. Bush".) In effect, they are becoming the first wave in Bush's re-election campaign.

If that is so, and it is commingling with thuggish rhetoric and behavior, then we are heading for a potentially violent and nightmarish election year in 2004.