Coulter and the onset of fascism

Did you notice how everyone on the right tut-tutted when Ann Coulter called for retaliation against "ragheads" -- but still, she continues to appear on college campuses and cable-TV programs apace. So much for that phony right-wing "outrage" over "extremists in their own ranks."

In reality, Coulter has long been leading the race of right-wing nutcases to move the demarcation line for "beyond the pale," and this week she demonstrated again that there are really no such limits for the right. Every week, they move the line farther to the right, until before you know it, you're staring outright fascism in the face.

Media Matters directs us to the latest Coulter emission, wherein she shrieks like a harpy about conservatives' lack of "manliness":

Democrats have declared war against Republicans, and Republicans are wandering around like a bunch of ninny Neville Chamberlains, congratulating themselves on their excellent behavior. They'll have some terrific stories about their Gandhi-like passivity to share while sitting in cells at Guantanamo after Hillary is elected.

[...]

Patriotic Americans don't have to become dangerous psychotics like liberals, but they could at least act like men.

Why hasn't the former spokesman for the Taliban matriculating at Yale been beaten even more senseless than he already is? According to Hollywood, this nation is a cauldron of ethnic hatreds positively brimming with violent skinheads. Where are the skinheads when you need them? What does a girl have to do to get an angry, club- and torch-wielding mob on its feet?

Let's be clear here: Coulter is not "joking." She is seriously calling for "manly" conservatives to inflict violence on a college student who is in the United States legally. Moreover, she is calling for a similar kind of violence as an appropriate response to "unhinged" and "violent" liberals.

This is, of course, the logical outcome of this whole argument, gaining greater circulation even among ostensible liberals, that the left is becoming dangerously unstable -- because, naturally, the "sensible" response calls for even greater doses of "manly" violence.

Coulter first tested this new variation on an old meme during a college-campus appearance last month in Chicago, as Lauren Patrizi reported:

Ann addressed her supporters in the crowd with this statement. "You're men. You're heterosexuals. Take 'em out." She chided them further when they did not rise. Before you knew it there was about 25 students marching to the balcony to supposedly "take out" the protestors above. I saw a priest holding students back and deans and security warning the students to go back to their seats. Chaos erupted. Ann left after taking one question.

Coulter's vaguely jocular reference in her column to employing skinheads on the right's behalf is also significant, because it is a nod and a wink -- and, combined with insults about one's manhood, a nudge -- in the direction of a historical reality regarding fascists: street thugs, in the early stages of fascism, were an essential element of their rise to power. The SA Brownshirts -- as well, in Italy, of Mussolini's black-shirted squadristi -- were used by supposedly mainstream conservatives as shock troops who could intimidate socialists, communists, and Jews; this was the key factor in the Thyssen-Nazi alliance. Similarly, right-wing thugs like the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s served to intimidate labor organizers and various leftists. (This was also an important subtext of Coulter's quip that her "only regret with Tim McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.")

The tide of right-wing eliminationism has been rising steadily in recent years, led in large part by Coulter and her sycophants. It has now topped the brim and is on the verge of bubbling over into action.

I warned a little while back that one of the real differences between movement conservatism and fascism is that the former "does not yet rely on physical violence and campaigns of gross intimidation to obtain power and suppress opposition."

If Ann Coulter -- who has a predilection for seeing her "outrageous" remarks become standard right-wing talking points -- has her way, that difference will soon disappear. All that will be necessary is for those young, heterosexual, "manly" conservatives to start following her advice, and proving their "manhood" in the only way they know how.

But then, that's what those fellows down in Jamul were doing, isn't it?

Don't worry, though: Coulter could sing the Horst Wessel Song in English and call for a Final Solution to liberalsim, and her friends on the right would smirk and assure us that she's just joking. Oh, and get a sense of humor too, you unhinged, violent moonbats, wouldja?

Then they'd book her for another round of cable talk shows.