Spyhopping the Right.
David Neiwert is a freelance journalist based in Seattle. He is the author of Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community (Palgrave/St. Martin's Press, June 2005), as well as Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America, (Palgrave/St. Martin's, 2004), and In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest (1999, WSU Press). His reportage for MSNBC.com on domestic terrorism won the National Press Club Award for Distinguished Online Journalism in 2000. His freelance work can be found at Salon.com, the Washington Post, MSNBC and various other publications. He can be contacted at dneiwert@hotmail.com.
Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. Her lifelong interest in the social effects of authoritarianism have most recently led her to pursue the MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. She's also a student member of the Association of Professional Futurists, and member of the Accelerated Studies Foundation advisory board on social and cultural issues. For fun, she raises kids and travels. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.
Sara's recent series:
Cracks in the Wall: Parts I, II, and III.
Tunnels and Bridges: Parts I, II, III, and IV, plus a Short Detour.
Dave's recent series:
The March of the Minutemen
Intro: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Unhinged: Unhonest
Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
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Other books by Dave [limited availability]:
"The Rise of Pseudo Fascism": An essay
Available in Adobe PDF format here
Support independent journalism:
Suggested $5 donation
Original posts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.
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Choice essays:
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"The Political and the Personal"
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"Bush, the Nazis and America":
Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
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Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis
[PDF file]
[Suggested $5 donation]
[In HTML: Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X,, XI, XII, XIII, XIV and XV. See explanatory note.]
[Also available in HTML, and with art, at Cursor.]
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Orcinus Principium No. 1
Orcinus Principium No. 2
Why Orcinus?
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Bush and the politics of fear
Thursday, July 31, 2003
Here's an important assessment of George W. Bush's public speech that ran earlier this month in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Power of presidency resides in language as well as law
- Take a closer look at his speeches and public utterances and his political success turns out to be no surprise. It is the predictable result of the intentional use of language to dominate others.
Bush, like many dominant personality types, uses dependency-creating language. He employs language of contempt and intimidation to shame others into submission and desperate admiration.
...
Bush is a master at inducing learned helplessness in the electorate. He uses pessimistic language that creates fear and disables people from feeling they can solve their problems. In his Sept. 20, 2001, speech to Congress on the 9/11 attacks, he chose to increase people's sense of vulnerability: "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. ... I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight. ... Be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat." (Subsequent terror alerts by the FBI, CIA and Department of Homeland Security have maintained and expanded this fear of unknown, sinister enemies.)
Contrast this rhetoric with Franklin Roosevelt's speech delivered the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He said: "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. ... There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces with the unbounding determination of our people we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God." Roosevelt focuses on an optimistic future rather than an ongoing threat to Americans' personal survival.
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Bush's political opponents are caught in a fantasy that they can win against him simply by proving the superiority of their ideas. However, people do not support Bush for the power of his ideas, but out of the despair and desperation in their hearts. Whenever people are in the grip of a desperate dependency, they won't respond to rational criticisms of the people they are dependent on. They will respond to plausible and forceful statements and alternatives that put the American electorate back in touch with their core optimism. Bush's opponents must combat his dark imagery with hope and restore American vigor and optimism in the coming years.
Got that, Howard Dean?
I've always appreciated Mark Crispin Miller's The Bush Dyslexicon because it makes much the same point: That Bush's supposed mangling of the language masks a fierce, nearly sociopathic contempt for others, and actually reveals a master manipulator at work. But this piece also points out the effect of this manipulation on his audience -- and, moreover, how to hoist the White House occupant upon his own petard.
[A tip o' the Hatlo Hat to Jack Davis for the heads-up.]
1:32 PM
Spotlight
Passions aplenty
Patrick Giles writes thoughtfully in response to my post about Mel Gibson:
- I just followed a link from Eric Alterman's site to your story on Mel Gibson and THE PASSION. I don't have the original TIMES MAGAZINE story handy, but as I recall the woman quoted with Hutton Gibson in that story was not Mel Gibson's mother, but either Hutton's second wife or a companion. I believe the story states she is a Texan.
This is correct. The ABC News story that followed, which called her his mother (and whose language I matched in my own text), was incorrect.
- I also believe Gibson has made it clear his views are not synonymous with his father's. (Although that they are similar in some ways is evident from Gibson's own statements.) (Are sons responsible for their father's opinions?)
Good God, I hope not, since I'd be in serious trouble on that one myself. However, Gibson has made clear (in that Playboy interview and elsewhere) that his father has been a major influence on his thinking, which rather alters the matter of his innocence.
Specifically, Gibson eschews his father's naked anti-Semitism. But he embraces most other aspects of his belief system. This is somewhat akin to the John Birch Society's disavowal of anti-Semitism while embracing anti-Semites' conspiracy theories; instead of a secret cabal of Jewish bankers running the world, you have a secret cabal of "international" bankers (who all just happen to be Jewish) running the world. It only makes one's conspiracism slightly less vicious.
- It was interesting, when the TIMES story appeared, to see that brief, general surfacing of dismay over reactionary Catholic splinter groups -- this is an issue Catholics have been worrying about for years. Their groups -- Opus Dei is the most powerful, "the Catholic masons" as a nun who taught religion in my high school used to say (others called it "the Catholic mafia") -- have a real flair for drawing the disaffected to their side, and for gaining footholds in high places. Antonin Scalia is in Opus Dei; Louis Freeh, former head of the FBI, is as well (according to published reports). I suspect a reason Robert Hanssen, the spy recently caught, managed to function undisturbed for so long is that he, too, was said to be in Opus Dei.
Anyway, there is quite a good book on this subject, called THE SMOKE OF SATAN, that is worth seeking out. If nothing else, reading about (or, even worse, meeting) the extremists in the Church gives you a newfound appreciation for the good things our current Pope has done. But that so conservative and totalitarian a Pope can be considered a flaming radical Satanist by Hutton Gibson and his fellows should tell you how frightening these people really are.
Nonetheless, there seems to be a pile-on in process about THE PASSION. Do you really think Gibson's film will get a fair shake when it does appear? Really? How? Devout Catholics are figures of derision in popular culture (in a way, say, conservative Jews aren't--but Muslims are), and this movie, which is (even if it turns out not to be anti-Semitic) going to hit some very fearful, sensitive notes in its audiences, will most likely be attacked and insulted and made fun of no matter how good or bad, incendiary or illuminating, it is. The triteness and near-hysteria of most media coverage on religious issues is mortifying; name-calling seems to be the goal. That every report on the film I've read has oozed sinisterness, for example, is ridiculous: would this be happening if Gibson were making a movie about Cesar Chavez, or Dorothy Day (to cite two other Catholic figures)?
Everything connected to the movie carries a taint. But (for example), what if Gibson is reluctant to show his film to Foxman and the ADL because he feels they have made up their minds about it already? If he showed it, for example, to other Jewish community leaders before he allowed the ADL to see it, would that be that the calculated scurrying of a Jew-hater, or a shrewd move by a man skilled in movie marketing, who knows the movie's going to be attacked by some in the public no matter what its qualities actually are? (LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, a sublime film, is routinely mentioned in press reports as "offensive" when almost nobody who actually saw the film -- I should add the few who managed to see the film when it was in theaters -- found it to be so.)
For all we know, this movie could be an attempt by a Catholic to come to terms with one of the biggest tragedies of Christianity (and world history): its separating from Judaism in the first century after Christ's death and resurrection (when it became clear the majority of Jews were not going to follow their brethren into becoming members of the Jesus movement), and its turning on Judaism for thousands of years, until Pope John XXIII finally made putting a stop to Jew-hating being an option in Catholic life a priority of the Second Vatican Council. (Interestingly, reports of that Council say that then-Cardinal Karol Wotylja -- now the current pontiff -- was
one of the most forceful and insistent speakers in the Cardinals' debate on the resolution.)
We simply don't know who did what in the execution of Jesus in the same way we know that John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln or Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. The Gospels are not historical reports; they were written at different times by different people for different audiences. As decades of word-of-mouth testimonies stemming from eyewitness accounts sped the new religion across the Roman empire, some stories were no doubt created, some true ones told in new ways, and others forgotten only by one or two sects. (The postwar discovery of the NagHammadi texts -- numerous alternative "gospels" filled with Jesus quotes and actions foreign to the four accepted gospels -- suggests how various accounts of Jesus were; that some of the scrolls found at NagHammadi werre used for kindling before their value was realized also demonstrates how much more has been lost.) People constantly fall into this trap, on both sides of the argument, of saying they "know" who was "responsible" for Christ's crucifixion (from Opus Dei members and such on one side to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, who makes a fool of himself by doing the It-was-all-the-Romans'-fault line in his new book on the Vatican and the
Holocaust, on the other), when the point is not identifying who was responsible so we can be lousy to contemporary people we link to them but that this was an act of sacrifice that was the principal reason the guy was around in the first place. [Nobody ever attacks Christians for being "responsible" for Christ's death, even though His apostles and disciples deserted him when He was captured by the Romans and Judas, and the only people brave enough to stand by the guy until He was dead were a few of his women followers and (maybe) His mother and (an even bigger maybe) John.]
We still don't even know why Jesus was killed. Did that ransacking of the moneylenders in the Temple do it? (doubtful -- the Temple was a big, loud place); or was it simply that He drew an awful lot of crowds at a time when Jerusalem (a troublesome spot for the Romans at any time) was already packed with Jews in town for Passover, and He happened to enter in the manner (humbly, on a mule) and through the city entrance that the sacred scrolls had predicted the Messiah would take to enter and reclaim Jerusalem -- and this scared the temple priests and the Romans? Did the people who put Him to death want Jesus out of the way because they thought He was a troublesome political dissident, or a religious fanatic -- or maybe, really, who He said he was? (If you were running your town, how would YOU deal with a stranger who raised the dead, healed the sick, and made your neighbors not give a damn about you anymore?) At any rate, none of this should ever have had, and still shouldn't have, any impact on the people we live among today.
Whoever conspired to get Jesus arrested, convicted, not pardoned (despite custom), and crucified are long gone; to act out revenge fantasies and prejudices on people who share traits of suspects in the story (how come nobody beats up or denies equal opportunity to Romans?) is simply appalling, and inexcusable.
That this idea is starting, slowly, to sink in is becoming plain (at least in Christian societies); that we still have a long way to go before anti-Semitism is thoroughly discredited -- as is considering a person bigoted simply because he is a member of this or that religion -- is also, unfortunately, obvious. Progress in this area is fitful, and can come in unexpected ways. (My sister, who lives in North Carolina -- the only New Yorker in her little village -- says she was stunned at the locals' reaction to that first network TV telecast of SCHINDLER'S LIST some years ago: very few people had ever learned much about the Holocaust, and they were shaken to see people they had been taught to regard as all-powerful bankers and moguls and such living in poverty, rounded up like cattle and annihilated. A movie I could barely sit through without losing my temper had a powerful, salutary effect on other viewers.)
The urgent question is: how do we discuss all these issues, and cultural products related to them, without resorting to the same non-thinking, susperstition-and-prejudice bound language and actions of our forbears?
I am the last person to feel comfortable defending Gibson -- just for starters, the homophobia in BRAVEHEART and other films is disgraceful -- and some of the publicity shenanigans going on back-stairs on this film seem suspicious, but journalists and critics (and activists) should at least see the film and then offer only informed opinions based on the work at hand and not on the politics and (alleged) prejudices of its maker. Editors should take it as an opportunity to explore (rather than inflame) these still very powerful and pertinent issues. Judging by the coverage of this film so far, I suspect neither recourse will be appearing much when THE PASSION is finally released.
I think Patrick's caution about Gibson's film is well worth heeding. There's no point in criticizing a film we haven't seen yet. And I don't think my previous post did.
Obviously, there is at least a chance that the finished film will be a sincere appraisal of the crucifixion and will try to come to terms with Christianity's alienation from its Jewish origins. That would not, however, be a concern that Gibson himself has ever indicated an interest in. Rather, in interviews, he's talked about people and groups having to take "responsibility" for their actions.
Moreover, at least a few people have in fact obtained the shooting script, and their reports do not indicate that this is even remotely a subtext of The Passion. See, for instance, Paula Fredriksen's report in The New Republic from a scholar who in fact has reviewed the script, and is concerned that it may well promote an anti-Semitic worldview that condemns Jews spiritually for their role in the Crucifixion.
Again, this may not be the finished version. And it will be impossible to accurately assess the film until its release. Nonetheless, the indications prior to its release -- including particularly Gibson's semi-paranoiac defensiveness about its content -- are not encouraging.
Most of the time, debates over the religious content of films come down to a matter of personal belief anyway. And as I've said, Gibson obviously is entitled to his beliefs and his desire to make a film based on them.
However, what is clear is that the runup to the film's release is taking on increasingly political overtones, particularly considering Gibson's screening of the film for various right-wing heavyweights in the punditocracy.
Do I think The Passion will have a fair hearing? No -- but that cuts both ways. His supporters are just as unlikely to fairly consider the charges of anti-Semitism as are his critics to question them. Gibson himself has assured that it will become a political football, destined for a mosh pit in the culture wars.
I would love for a thoughtful assessment of Judaism's relationship to Christianity to proceed from Gibson's film. But when Robert Novak, Laura Ingraham and Katie O'Beirne are going to be weighing in, I despair of any likelihood of that.
1:11 PM
Spotlight
The whiff of fascism
Monday, July 28, 2003
I hate to keep sounding like a broken record, but the fascist motifs trickling their way into mainstream Republican politics (which is the focus of the "Rush" essay, of course) are starting to come fast and furious -- at a much faster rate, I'm afraid, than I think most of us anticipated.
I was especially struck by Michelle Goldberg's piece in Salon:
- Beautiful young shock troops for Bush
- Erickson was followed by Jack Abramoff, a powerful right-wing lobbyist and former College Republican chairman, who exhorted the next generation to fight hard, lest "the ascension of evil, the bad guys, the Bolsheviks, the Democrats return."
That equation -- evil = communist = Democrats -- was nearly axiomatic at the convention. Ann Coulter's latest book, "Treason," which tarred virtually all Democrats as traitors, may have been denounced by conservative intellectuals, but its message has pervaded the party. Gene McDonald, who sold "No Muslims = No Terrorists" bumper stickers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in January, was doing a brisk trade in "Bring Back the Blacklist" T-shirts, mugs and mouse pads. Coulter herself remains wildly popular -- Parker Stephenson, chairman of Ohio College Republicans, calls her "one of my favorite conservative thinkers."
One of the essential traits of fascism, you may recall, is the widespread belief that dissent is treason, "dissent" being anything outside the official party line.
- The room filled up again, though, when Warrior, an ex-WWF wrestler who has built a second career as a mascot for the right, took the stage that afternoon. Warrior -- that's his full legal name -- spoke at the Conservative Political Action conference in January, and has been one of the most requested speakers among conservative organizations ever since.
Dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, his long, dirty-blond hair pulled into a ponytail, Warrior explained why he'd left the world of wrestling. "When it became degenerate and perverted," he said, "I dismissed myself from pursuing it as a career anymore."
The speech that followed contained references to thinkers from Socrates to Tom Paine, and perhaps it would require a scholar of the classics to discern its meaning. "America was founded on that primary premise, that America would survive only as long as its people live up to their means," Warrior thundered.
"Knowledge of good and evil is the best fruit on the tree of knowledge."
The conservative movement, he declared solemnly, "needs people ready to actualize the entirety of their human potential."
One message that was clear was a hatred of nuance or ambivalence. To defeat the "pervasive degeneracy, ignorance and destruction of soul" that prevails today, he said, "you must live to judge and be ready to be judged ... extremism in defense of moral behavior is no vice." The saying "there are two sides to every story," he told his audience, "brings your loved ones closer and closer to tyranny and outright annihilation."
"Mankind survives by our leaders," he concluded. "All leaders are warriors. Mankind survives by its warriors. Our Republic will truly survive by them as well."
The notion of a nation under siege by enemies both within and without was nearly universal at the College Republican convention, and gave vehemence to its nationalism. Beneath the patriotic bombast lay two distinct currents: There was religion, that old Reaganite sense of America as the city on the hill, poised to lead the world from darkness. And there was resentment -- toward the whining of minorities, the carping of lesser countries, the life chances the students say are circumscribed by an economy made stagnant by welfare freeloaders, swarming immigration and affirmative action.
Some attendees were driven by spiritual conviction that seamlessly encompassed faith in two messiahs, Jesus and Bush. For the true believers, Bush is a man of wonder-working powers. Jason Cole, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Iowa, grew enamored of Bush when he heard his earnest, simple talk of God during the 1999 presidential campaign. Cole says he has little interest in working in politics beyond the 2004 election. "I do it," he explained simply, "because I love President Bush."
Hoo boy. It's all there -- the love of war and the war aesthetic; the identification with the charismatic leader, and the identification of that leader with a shared religious and political belief system.
Scary.
4:37 PM
Spotlight
W in the Desert Quicksand
Check out this excellent new blog:
- World in Conflict
It's edited by my old friend Paul deArmond (aka Warbaby), the Bellingham activist who has made a nice little career out of countering right-wing extremists in his neck of the woods with floods of information and well-organized opposition.
Check out especially this post by guest writer Danius Maximus, the pseudonym of a semi-retired political analyst:
- Bush in Free Fall
- The war in Iraq has proved to be only a temporary and rapidly evaporating help to Bush's political fortunes. The equation of support for war equals support for Bush has already vanished and his standing in the polls is now roughly the same as it was before 9/11. From here on out, Iraq is more likely to generate bad new for Bush than provide support for his presidency. All the same, Bush's political opponents will not benefit from passively waiting for things to get worse.
And Paul chimes in:
- The Iraq war is a quagmire that will produce bad news and keep the Bush administration on the defensive indefinitely. Bush may get a bump from occasional good news--the death of Hussein's sons, or maybe, someday, the capture or death of Hussein himself. But the Administration and its supporters are staking too much on the proposition that this would turn the situation around. Indeed, reporter Robert Fisk has argued that the death of Hussein may embolden the opposition to the occupation, since disgruntled Iraqis may conclude that they have little to lose by forcing the Americans out. And make no mistake about it--Iraqis have a good deal to disgruntle them. The persistent sabotage against the power grid and the oil industry is causing relentless suffering and hampering economic recovery, and the Bush Administration has no idea how to solve the problem. There is no reason to believe that attacks on American troops will abate, whether Hussein is dead or alive. The United States clearly does not have an adequate force structure, nor does it have any significant reserves to spare to shore up a deteriorating situation. Equally problematic are administration efforts to recruit other nations to provide troops. The bad news is going to drip drip drip. There is no better in the Iraq situation--there are only varying grades of worse.
4:18 PM
Spotlight
The other kind of terrorism
Here's another one that nearly slipped through the cracks ...
- Boisean charged in anthrax case: Man faces felony charges for 32 alleged threats
- Sandy Kevin Lamont Nanney, 38, is accused of mailing anonymous, threatening letters containing non-toxic powder. He is charged with five felony counts of threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction, and police said Friday that they expect to file 27 additional charges against him — one for each threat he allegedly sent to hospitals, businesses and government offices in Ada and Canyon counties.
The threats forced several offices and businesses to be evacuated in recent weeks and unnecessarily frightened employees, officials said.
When he was arrested and charged Thursday, Nanney admitted to sending the letters, Boise Police Lt. Mike Majors said.
Officers declined to speculate on Nanney´s motives or to disclose the written contents of the letters. “He had a message he wanted to deliver,” said Majors, who would not elaborate.
There is still no indication that this man was acting out of a particular kind of ideology, other than the fact that he wanted to send a "message." Certainly the fact that he moved to Idaho in the recent past indicates he may well be a right-wing extremist, but we don't know that yet.
What we do know is that he clearly had terroristic motives -- and indeed, he effectively terrorized important parts of the community, including hospitals.
Moreover, it is likewise clear that this is a case of "piggybacking" on the terrorism committed in October-November 2001, when an anthrax killer struck the East Coast -- which was itself a clear case of "piggybacking" on the terrorism of Sept. 11.
As I've pointed out numerous times previously, the white-supremacist movement has made it clear it intends to use such "piggyback" terrorism to further its agenda by worsening the public's fear about its security in a post-9/11 world. This kind of "lone wolf" behavior may not always be neo-Nazi- or Patriot-related, but even if it isn't, it fits in neatly with their agenda.
3:57 PM
Spotlight
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