A little more about fascism

I've mentioned previously that "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism" was something of a work in progress (I'm not even sure that will be its final title, though I'm leaning that way). I think I mentioned early on that I intended Orcinus to be more in the way of a genuine journal, being a place to post my thoughts as well as source material, along with news stories that I think are important. (This may explain why my posts have been spotty lately; I'm embroiled in a couple of other work projects that require my focus, so the blog has taken a back seat.)

Of course, the beauty of blogging (as opposed to a traditional journal) is the remarkable level of input you get back, and the sort of democratic effect of it all. My readers have in many cases helped shape my own thinking, in no small part because I've been blessed with very high-quality correspondents who keep me on my toes. Certainly they've provided me with a wealth of fresh materials in this endeavor -- which is, ultimately, to assess the relevance of fascism to our current conditions.

Among these have been my friend John McKay, whose responding posts at his own blog, archy have been exemplary -- to the point that I mostly can only nod in complete agreement with nearly everything he says.

However, I'm not sure that we can discard the term "fascism", as he suggests, if we want to be accurate about the ongoing phenomenon. Certainly its widespread misuse and abuse has rendered it impotent to a degree; but if we start calling it, accurately, American Fascism, then I think that gets the point across simply and unmistakably.

The chief drawback to this approach is that this kind of catchphrase eventually is going to be flung by people who don't understand fascism. The people making the argument that a real wave of fascism may be about to hit us need to be rational and logical, but I don't think that's going to be possible. Liberals do love to browbeat their opponents with the Nazi label, and these arguments unfortunately may be used as just such a club.

Nonetheless, I think Robert O. Paxton has it right in his essay "The Five Stages of Fascism," which appeared in the March 1998 edition of The Journal of Modern History:

We cannot give up in the face of these difficulties. A real phenomenon exists. Indeed, fascism is the most original political novelty of the twentieth century, no less. … If we cannot examine fascism synthetically, we risk being unable to understand this century, or the next. We must have a word, and for lack of a better one, we must employ the word that Mussolini borrowed from the vocabulary of the Italian Left in 1919, before his movement had assumed its mature form. Obliged to use the term fascism, we ought to use it well.

This essay by Paxton (who is Mellon Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus at Columbia University), you may recall, was brought to my attention by Christopher Skinner:

Paxton's approach allows a certain degree of reconciliation among thinkers, particularly between those who see fascism as an ideology and those who see it as a mélange of uneasy alliances. Paxton admits that he was, until very recently, a firm believer in the notion that fascism was not an ideology. But by suggesting a dynamic model that "begins at the beginning," Paxton reminds us that fascism is not unlike an elementary particle to which we must apply Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The more thoroughly we study a particular fascist movement at a given moment, the less likely we are to be able to judge the arc of its overall progress, and the more we study the ultimate impact of a movement, the less likely we are to examine its particulars. Many historians, for example, who study the "arc" of movements, have treated Nazi Germany as the touchstone for a "true" fascism. All other movements are seen as not fully "worked out," and therefore, not fully fascist.

Readers of the "Rush" series will recall that its exploration of the scholarly treatment of fascism more or less concludes with the views of Roger Griffin, whose insistence that fascism is an ideology is somewhat problematic in that it is a very static analysis, while fascism itself, as Mr. Skinner suggests, has behaved more like a mutagen, shifting shapes constantly while maintaining certain core animating impulses. Paxton's essay, however, comprises an important contribution to the literature, and offers a very useful model for moving beyond the swamp of merely defining fascism toward a practical understanding.

Paxton, as Christopher noted, offers a sort of middle pathway, identifying a central organizing principle -- "each national variant of fascism draws its legitimacy … not from some universal scripture but from what it considers the most authentic elements of its own community identity" -- that is closely akin to Griffin's "palingenetic populist ultranationalism", while at the same time constructing a five-step arc of motion for fascism that recognizes its essentially mutative nature.

Griffin, helpfully, does quote Pierre-André Taguieff: "Neither 'fascism' nor 'racism' will do us the favour of returning in such a way that we can recognise them easily." Paxton agrees:

… [O]ne can not identify a fascist regime by its plumage. George Orwell understood at once that fascism is not defined by its clothing. If, some day, an authentic fascism were to succeed in England, Orwell wrote as early as 1936, it would be more soberly clad than in Germany. The exotic black shirts of Sir Oswald Mosley are one explanation for the failure of the principal fascist movement in England, the British Union of Fascists. What if they had worn bowler hats and carried well-furled umbrellas. The adolescent skinheads who flaunt the swastika today in parts of Europe seem so alien and marginal that they constitute a law-and-order problem (serious though that may be) rather than a recurrence of authentic mass-based fascism, astutely decked out in the patriotic emblems of their own countries. Focusing on external symbols, which are subject to superficial imitation, adds to confusion about what may legitimately be considered fascist.

…[E]ach national variant of fascism draws its legitimacy, as we shall see, not from some universal scripture but from what it considers the most authentic elements of its own community identity. Religion, for example, would certainly play a much larger role in an authentic fascism in the United States than in the first European fascisms, which were pagan for contingent historical reasons.

… The great "isms" of nineteenth-century Europe -- conservatism, liberalism, socialism -- were associated with notable rule, characterized by deference to educated leaders, learned debates, and (even in some forms of socialism) limited popular authority. Fascism is a political practice appropriate to the mass politics of the twentieth century. Moreover, it bears a different relationship to thought than do the nineteenth-century "isms." Unlike them, fascism does not rest on formal philosophical positions with claims to universal validity. There was no "Fascist Manifesto," no founding fascist thinker. Although one can deduce from fascist language implicit Social Darwinist assumptions about human nature, the need for community and authority in human society, and the destiny of nations in history, fascism does not base its claims to validity on their truth. Fascists despise thought and reason, abandon intellectual positions casually, and cast aside many intellectual fellow-travelers. They subordinate thought and reason not to faith, as did the traditional Right, but to the promptings of the blood and the historic destiny of the group. Their only moral yardstick is the prowess of the race, of the nation, of the community. They claim legitimacy by no universal standard except a Darwinian triumph of the strongest community.

These last two sentences ring a particular bell in the current environment. Nothing could better describe the Bush administration's approach to governance, particularly to waging war, than as one in which "thought and reason are subordinated to faith." And the Bush Doctrine, boiled down, ultimately bases its morality on a belief in the superiority of American values, and argues for waging war essentially as a "triumph of the strongest community."

This is not to argue that the Bush Doctrine is fascist per se -- but rather, that it has enough elements in it to appeal strongly to the right-wing extremists who are increasingly becoming part of the mainstream GOP fold. It plays out in such manifestations as its utter disregard -- indeed, clear contempt -- for the United Nations and multilateralism generally, a stance that resonates deeply with the John Bircher crowd.

Likewise, the Bush administration and its supporters, particularly those in the "transmitter" crowd -- Rush Limbaugh and talk radio, Fox News, the Free Republic -- have begun deploying the very same "mobilizing passions" in recent weeks in countering antiwar protesters that Paxton identifies as comprising the animating forces behind fascism. Again, these kinds of appeal clearly resonate with the proto-fascist Patriot element that have been increasingly finding common cause with the Bush regime.

… Feelings propel fascism more than thought does. We might call them mobilizing passions, since they function in fascist movements to recruit followers in fascist movements to recruit followers and in fascist regimes to "weld" the fascist "tribe" to its leader. The following mobilizing passions are present in fascisms, though they may sometimes be articulated only implicitly:

1. The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual.

2. The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action against the group's enemies, internal as well as external.

3. Dread of the group's decadence under the corrosive effect of individualistic and cosmopolitan liberalism.

4. Closer integration of the community within a brotherhood (fascio) whose unity and purity are forged by common conviction, if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.

5. An enhanced sense of identity and belonging, in which the grandeur of the group reinforces individual self-esteem.

6. Authority of natural leaders (always male) throughout society, culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny.

7. The beauty of violence and of will, when they are devoted to the group's success in a Darwinian struggle.

Going through this list, it is fairly easy to identify these "passions" at play particularly in the debate over the Iraq war and the growing attacks on dissenters.

1. See, again, the Bush Doctrine. An extension of this sentiment is at play among those jingoes who argue that Americans may need to sacrifice some of their civil rights -- say, free speech -- during wartime.

2. This meme is clearly present in all the appeals to the victims of Sept. 11 as justifications for the war. It is present at nearly all levels of the debate: from the White House, from the media, even from the jingoist entertainment industry (see, e.g., the lyric of Darryl Worley's extraordinarily popular country-western hit, "Have You Forgotten?": "Some say this country's just out looking for a fight / Well after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right.").

3. This meme has been stock in trade of the talk-radio crowd since at least 1994 -- at one time it focused primarily on the person of Bill Clinton -- and has reached ferocious levels during the runup to the war and after it, during which antiwar leftists have regularly and remorselessly been accused of treason.

4 and 5 are, of course, among the primary purposes of the campaign to demonize liberals -- to simultaneously build a cohesive brotherhood of like-minded "conservatives" who might not agree on the details but are united in their loathing of all things liberal. It plays out in such localized manifestations as the KVI Radio 570th On-Air Cavalry, which has made a habit of deliberately invading antiwar protests with the express purpose of disrupting them and breaking them up. Sometimes, as they did recently in Bellingham, this is done with caravans of big trucks blaring their horns; and they are also accompanied by threatening rhetoric and acts of physical intimidation. They haven't yet bonded in violence, but they are rapidly headed in that direction.

6. Needs hardly any further explanation, except to note that George W. Bush is actually surprisingly uncharismatic for someone who inspires as much rabid loyalty as he does. But then, that is part of the purpose of Bush's PR campaign stressing that he receives "divine guidance" -- it assures in his supporters' mind the notion that he is carrying out God's destiny for the nation, and for the conservative movement in particular.

7. One again needs only turn to the voluminous jingoes of Fox News or the jubilant warbloggers to find abundant examples of celebrations of the virtues -- many of them evidently aesthetic -- of the just-completed war.

Again, the purpose of the above exercise is not to demonstrate that mainstream conservatism is necessarily becoming fascist (though that is a possibility), but rather to demonstrate how it is becoming hospitable to fascist motifs, especially as it resorts to strong-arm tactics from its footsoldiers to intimidate the political opposition. This underscores the real danger, which is the increasing empowerment of the extremist bloc, particularly as it blends into the mainstream GOP. The increasing nastiness of the debate over Bush's war-making program seems to be fertile territory for this trend.

More than anything, though, I think the exercise underscores just to what extent fascism itself is comprised of things that are very familiar to us, and in themselves seem relatively innocuous, perhaps even benign. More to the point, this very familiarity is what makes it possible. When they coalesce in such a crucible as wartime or a civil crisis, they become something beyond that simple reckoning.

Can fascism still happen in America? Paxton leaves little doubt that the answer to this must be affirmative:

… Fascism can appear wherever democracy is sufficiently implanted to have aroused disillusion. That suggests its spatial and temporal limits: no authentic fascism before the emergence of a massively enfranchised and politically active citizenry. In order to give birth to fascism, a society must have known political liberty -- for better or for worse.

Indeed, Paxton identifies perhaps the origins of fascism in America:

… [I]t is further back in American history that one comes upon the earliest phenomenon that seems functionally related to fascism: the Ku Klux Klan. Just after the Civil War, some Confederate officers, fearing the vote given to African Americans by the Radical Reconstructionists in 1867, set up a militia to restore an overturned social order. The Klan constituted an alternate civic authority, parallel to the legal state, which, in its founders' eyes, no longer defended their community's legitimate interests. In its adoption of a uniform (white robe and hood), as well as its techniques of intimidation and its conviction that violence was justified in the cause of the group's destiny, the first version of the Klan in the defeated American South was a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe.

I agree strongly with this. Adolph Hitler reportedly was a great admirer of the Ku Klux Klan, particularly its post-1915 edition, which was obviously modeled on the original as well, in its treatment of the races and glorification of the white race. Indeed, Hitler would mock American critics of his program against the Jews by pointing to this nation's own history of lynching and Klan activities.

The latter Klan was even more pronouncedly fascist in its character than the original, particularly in its claim to represent the true national character: "100 percent Americanism" was the organization's chief catchphrase. Its origins -- its first members were the mob that lynched Leo Frank -- were openly violent. Though this manifestation of the Klan -- which spread to every state, counted membership of up to 4 million, and elected seven governors, three U.S. senators, half the 1924 Indiana state legislature, and at one point controlled the political levers in Oregon as well -- petered out by the early 1930s, its spirit remained alive in such clearly proto-fascist organizations of the 1930s as the Silver Shirts of William Dudley Pelley.

It is this lineage, in fact, that helps us identify the Patriot/militia movement as proto-fascist in nature. Much of the political agenda, as well as the legal/political theories, espoused by the Patriots actually originated with the far-right Posse Comitatus, whose own originators themselves were former participants in both the 1920s Klan and Pelley's Silver Shirts. (The definitive text on this is Daniel Levitas' excellent The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right.)

It is worth remembering that before World War II, there were in fact active fascists openly at work in America, and they were not all German-American Bund members. Indeed, what's striking about groups like the Silver Shirts is just how ordinary-American their character seemed. (The similarities to the Patriot movement of the 1990s is also striking.) Pelley himself was a bit of an eccentric and slightly loopy, but the rank and file of his followers were often the same "100 percent Americanists" who had filled the ranks of the Klan a decade previously.

But fascism has always previously failed in America, and Paxton's analysis points with some precision to exactly why. Much of this has to do with the fact that fascism is an essentially mutative impulse for the acquisition of power -- it abandons positions as fresh opportunities for power present themselves. This is particularly true as it moves from its ideological roots into the halls of government. In the end, the resulting political power is often, as Griffin puts it, a "travesty" of its original ideology. Paxton describes it thus:

In power, what seems to count is less the faithful application of the party's initial ideology than the integrating function that espousing one official ideology performs, to the exclusion of any ideas deemed alien or divisive.

Paxton identifies five stages in fascism's arc of flight:

1. The initial creation of fascist movements
2. Their rooting as parties in a political system
3. The acquisition of power
4. The exercise of power
5. Radicalization or entropy

In the United States, as in France and elsewhere, fascism typically failed in the second stage, because it failed to become a cohesibve political entity, one capable of acquiring power (though as I just noted, there was even some danger of this in the 1920s as the Klan in fact obtained some short-lived political power):

The second stage -- rooting, in which a fascist movement becomes a party capable of acting decisively on the political scene -- happens relatively rarely. At this stage, comparison becomes rewarding: one can contrast successes with failures. Success depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of the liberal state, whose inadequacies seem to condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner. Some fascist leaders, in their turn, are willing to reposition their movements in alliances with these frightened conservatives, a step that pays handsomely in political power, at the cost of disaffection among some of the early antibourgeois militants.

In the 1930s, the ascendant liberalism of FDR effectively squeezed the life out of the nascent fascist elements in the U.S. This was particularly true because FDR openly shared power with the Right, appointing noted Republicans to his Cabinet and maintaining a firm coalition with arch-conservative Southern Democrats. The mainstream right thus had no incentive to form a power-sharing coalition with fascism. At the same time, liberalism gained a significant power base in rural America through the many programs of the New Deal aimed at bolstering the agricultural sector. This too may have been a critical factor in fascism's failure.

Significantly, Paxton points out that fascism in Europe took root in a neglected agricultural sector -- something that did not happen in the United States in the 1930s. Indeed, it gained its second-stage power in the crucible of organized thuggery against liberals:

…[I]t was in the countryside that German Nazism and Italian Fascism first succeeded in becoming the representatives of an important social and economic interest. The comparison between the success of rural fascism in German and Italy and its relative failure in France seems to me a fruitful one.

… All three of these countries experience massive strikes of agricultural workers: east-Elbian Germany during the postwar crisis in 1919-23; the Po Valley and Apulia in Italy in 1920-21; and the big farms of northern France and the Paris Basin during the two summers of the Popular Front; in 1936 and 1937. The German strikes were broken by vigilantes, armed and abetted by the local army authorities, in cases in which the regular authorities were too conciliatory to suit the landowners. The Italian ones were broken by Mussolini's famous blackshirted squadristi, whose vigilantism filled the void left by the apparent inability of the liberal Italian state to enforce order. It was precisely in this direct action against farm-worker unions that second-stage fascism was born in Italy, and even launched on the path to power, to the dismay of the first Fascists, intellectual dissidents from national syndicalism.

Paxton compares this to France, where fascism likewise failed:

… It was the gendarmerie, even with Leon Blum in power, who put down the agricultural strikes in France. The French landowners did not need the chemises vertes. The authority of the state and the power of the conservative farmers' organizations left hardly any space in the French countryside for the rooting of fascist power.

Fascism as a political force suffered from the same sort of bad timing in the United States when it arose in the 1920s -- conservatives were in power and had no need of an alliance with fascism, and there was no great social crisis. When one arose in the 1930s, the ascendance of power-sharing liberalism that was as popular in rural areas as in urban, again left fascism little breathing room.

And in the 1990s, when proto-fascism re-emerged as popular movement in the form of the Patriots, conservatives once again enjoyed a considerable power base, having control of the Congress, and little incentive to share power. Moreover, the economy was booming -- except in rural America.

Unsurprisingly, that is where the Patriots built their popular base. And importantly, much of that base-building revolved around a motif that created a significant area of common interest with mainstream conservatives: hatred of Bill Clinton.

To right-wing extremists, Clinton embodied the totalitarian threat of the New World Order, a slimy leader in the conspiracy to enslave all mankind. To conservatives, he was simply an unanswerable political threat for whom no level of invective could be too vicious. Moreover, he was the last barrier to their complete control of every branch of the federal government. These interests coalesced as the far right became an echo chamber for attacks on Clinton that would then migrate into the mainstream, ultimately reaching their apex in Clinton's impeachment.

Possibly this commingling had a moderating effect on the extremists. But it was mainstream conservatism that underwent the most dramatic change in this cauldron: It seemed to increasingly view the Left as an unacceptable governing partner. Following the hectoring lead of Rush Limbaugh, it has become increasingly common for conservatives to openly reject any hint of liberalism, and to demonize liberals as a caustic and ultimately unacceptable force in society.

When Bill Clinton's presidency ended, these attacks stepped up another notch. First there was the ludicrous caricaturization of Al Gore during the 2000 election. Importantly, it was in this election that large numbers of former Patriots -- many of them disillusioned with the movement after the failure of the "Y2K scare" to materialize, but still maintaining their attitudes about government, liberalism and conspiracies, and disenfranchised by Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign -- turned to the politics of the Bush team, which made all the right gestures to make them feel welcome.

Thus, even though the Patriot movement never even came close to achieving any kind of actual power -- outside of a handful of legislators in a smattering of Western states -- the absorption of its followers into mainstream conservatism successfully brought a wide range of extremists together under the banner of Republican politics, embodied in the defense of the agenda of President Bush and in the hatred of all forms of liberalism.

Then, after Sept. 11, the attacks on liberalism became enmeshed with a virulent strain of jingoism that at first blamed liberals for the attacks, then accused them of treasonous behavior for questioning Bush's war plans. Now we're seeing a broad-based campaign of hatred against liberals -- particularly antiwar dissenters -- that serves two purposes: it commingles mainstream pro-Bush forces in direct contact, and open alliance with, a number of people with extremist beliefs; and it gives the extremist element of Patriot footsoldiers who turned Republican in 2000 an increasingly important role in the mainstream party. Namely, they are increasingly starting to look like the "enforcers" of the Bush agenda, intimidating and silencing any opposition. In the process, this element gains power and influence far beyond what it could have had as a separate proto-fascist element.

In a sense, this turns the scheme of Paxton's second stage of fascism on its head. That is, the proto-fascists of the Patriot movement, rather than obtaining power by the ascension of their own political faction in an alliance with conservatives, obtain power through absorption, from within conservatism. Forming alliances first in hatred of Clinton and Gore, and then in defense of Bush's war, the conservative movement has, perhaps unthinkingly, allowed itself to be transformed from within.

It's difficult to say whether this absorption has mitigated the extremist impulses of the former Patriot footsoldiers, though it probably has. Certainly it has had the predictable effect of making a travesty of the Patriots' original ideology: those who once were rabid anti-government activists have become equally rabid defenders of the government of the Bush regime.

More important is the effect that the absorption has had on the larger Republican Party. Just as the Southern Strategy changed the very nature of the GOP from within, so has this more recent absorption of an extremist element transformed its basic nature. Now, positions that at one time would have been considered unthinkable for Republicans -- unilateralist foreign policy, contempt for the United Nations and international law, a willingness to use war as a first resort, a visceral hatred of even the hint of liberalism -- are positions it touts prominently.

Now its agenda aligns with the base impulses Paxton identifies as fascist, and which drove the Patriot movement: national identity uber alles; a claim of victimization; hatred of liberalism; reigniting a sense of national destiny and a closely bonded community; an appreciation of the value of violence; and of course, all of this uniting under the divinely inspired banner of George W. Bush, the Frat Boy of Destiny.

I've said it previously, and I'll say it again: These are dangerous times.

The more conservatives bond with their proto-fascist element; the more they attack liberals and escalate the violence against antiwar protesters; and the more that corporations like Clear Channel with ties to the Bush administration, and the White House itself, encourages this kind of activity, then the greater the danger becomes.
____

In reviewing the text I've written so far for "Rush," it's become clear that there are a couple of areas I still need to address in detail. Two of them are contained in the paragraph from Paxton I bold-faced above: the claim to representing the genuine community values that is becoming central to the Right's attacks on liberalism; and the central role of fundamentalist Christianity in any genuine American fascism. Third, I'm also planning to write a more detailed exegesis on Newspeak and its role in the ongoing scene.

These should appear sporadically over the next couple of weeks. Then, when they're done, I'll try to cobble all the text together into a cohesive whole, zip it into a PDF file, and then make it available for easy downloading.

In the meantime, blogging may continue to be sporadic at best. I'm taking a vacation later this week and will only have occasional Web access. But I'll do my best to keep my ear to the ground, and post important material as it comes along.

P.S. For handy reference, here are the links to the Rush series:

[Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and Postscript.]

Faith-based reconstruction

Following up on my recent post about putting fundamentalist proselytizers in charge of humanitarian work in Iraq, there's tonight's cover story in Salon, by Max Blumenthal:

Onward Christian soldiers [Premium content]

Officially, the Bush administration has taken no position on the campaign for converts. But foreign policy experts -- and even some moderate Christian groups -- are already warning that efforts by the conservative Christians to capitalize on the fall of Saddam could inject a decidedly religious tone into Bush's stated plan to democratize Iraq. And unless the administration takes a strong stand against that campaign, some say, the missionaries may provoke a deep, damaging backlash there and throughout the Muslim world.

Christian groups' proselytizing in Third World countries is nothing new, but critics of In Touch allege that the ultrapatriotic nature of Stanley's sermons render its plans to expand operations in Iraq dangerous and insensitive to the country's complex and fragile social fabric. Many Muslims worldwide have accused the U.S. of waging a "crusade" and consider the prospect of Christians proselytizing in Iraq a revelation of the U.S.'s nefarious agenda. In the past, anti-Islamic comments made by Southern Baptists allied with Stanley, like Jerry Falwell, have stoked the rage of the Muslim world and made life dangerous for Middle Eastern Christians and Western missionaries operating in the area. But Stanley and his compatriots remain fiercely committed to winning the souls of the Iraqi people, even if it undermines the work undertaken by U.S. troops and civilian administrators to win their hearts and minds.

It should be clear by now that "supporting our troops" is Newspeak for "supporting Bush's agenda" and little else.

The crime of committing journalism

Here is a brilliant and frightening essay, from New York Magazine writer Michael Wolff, who had the temerity to ask a common-sense question at one of the Pentagon's blow-smoke-up-your-ass Centcom briefings:

I was only asking

So the Rush thing. First it was CNN that replayed my question - the CNN view was, more or less, the liberal media view: a certain hand wringing about whether the media was being used. Then it was Fox, with its extreme, love-it-or-leave-it, approach to the war, which took me apart: I was clearly a potential traitor.

And then it was Rush.

To his audience of 20 million - pro-war, military minded, Bush-centered, media-hating - lily white-Rush laid me out. I was not only a reporter, but one from New York magazine. "New York" resonated. It combined with "media" and suddenly, in the hands of Rush, I was as elitist and as pampered (fortunately nobody mentioned the Ritz) and as dismissive of the concerns of real Americans as, well, Rush's 20 million assume the media to be. Whereas Rush, that noted foot soldier, represented the military heartland.

What's more, according to Rush, that great defender of the rights of African-Americans, I was a racist. Duh. A white liberal challenging a black general. It's a binary world.

And Rush gave out my email address. Almost immediately, the 3,000 emails, full of righteous fury, started to come.

Almost as disturbing was the distinctly thuggish handling he subsequently received from White House staff:

Clearly marked as the rabble-rouser of the get-out-of-Doha movement, I was approached by some enforcer types. The first person was a version of a Graham Greene character. He represented the White House, he said. Wasn't of the military. Although, he said, he was embedded here ("sleeping with a lot of flatulent officers," he said). He was incredibly conspiratorial. Smooth but creepy: "If you had to write the memo about media relations, what would be your bullet points?"

The next person to buttonhole me was the Centcom uber-civilian, a thirty-ish Republican operative. He was more full-metal-jacket in his approach (although he was a civilian he was, inexplicably, in uniform - making him, I suppose a sort of para-military figure): "I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don't talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning." And: "A lot of people don't like you." And then: "Don't fuck with things you don't understand." And too: "This is fucking war, asshole." And finally: "No more questions for you."

I had been warned.

Consider this piece essentially a supplement to the Rush, Newspeak and Fascism series. [More on that tomorrow, BTW.]

Ann Coulter in Iraq

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." -- Le Coulter

There's a potential disaster brewing in the Bush administration's apparent attempt to deploy some sort of "faith based" relief strategy in Iraq.

'Spiritual warfare' looms

Washington is trying to portray its battle as one of liberation, not conquest, but Iraq is about to be invaded by thousands of U.S. evangelical missionaries who say they are bent on a "spiritual warfare" campaign to convert the country's Muslims to Christianity.

Among the largest aid groups preparing to provide humanitarian assistance to Iraqis ravaged by the war are a number of Christian charities based in the southern United States that make no secret of their desire to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and win over Muslim souls.

It's been clear for awhile that, although the Bush administration so far has done reasonably well at keeping the War on Terror from inflating into a global Islam-vs.-the-West conflict -- which of course has been Osama bin Laden's agenda all along -- Bush has no clear idea on how to handle the reconstruction of Iraq.

Currently the plans for handling postwar duties is for the Pentagon to take charge. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is engaging in a turf scrum with Secretary of State Colin Powell over the matter, and appears to be winning. And Rumsfeld's plan moreover evidently consists of handing it over mostly to a handful of Iraqi exiles whose popular support appears to be mostly nonexistent, and getting the hell out as soon as possible. And it appears that indeed there will be an emphasis on "faith based" humanitarian aid:

Occupation Struggle Pits Pentagon Against Powell, Europe

The Pentagon recently vetoed as many as eight current and former State Department officials for key posts in the occupation administration, according to the Washington Post. Excluded were a number of former ambassadors and high-level foreign service officers (FSOs) with expertise in the Arab world.

Some sources said they were vetoed because they were "run-of-the-mill" and not "doers," while others revealed they were opposed by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who has supported Israel's Likud Party in the past and is said to consider some candidates to be too pro-Arab, a bias that neoconservatives believe is endemic to the State Department's Near East bureau.

Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld has also reportedly insisted that all relief and aid work come under the jurisdiction of ret. Army Gen. Jay Garner, the coordinator of the Pentagon's office of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance, who will report directly to the chief of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks.

So far, they haven't even been close to being up to the job:

Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions

The Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, headed by retired U.S. General Jay Garner, is to run Iraq in the initial post-war occupation phase. Its missions encompass reconstituting basic services such as electricity, water, sanitation, and medical care; screening the remnants of the Iraqi civil service for individuals acceptable for retention under a new democratic government; and coordinating humanitarian aid programs run by the World Food Program (WFP), UNESCO, the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and private aid agencies.

Difficulties with this arrangement, which is not yet even in place, are already apparent. Despite the efforts of the British forces in Basra, distribution of relief supplies--a duty of an occupying power under international law--has been a shambles. Looting has been rampant. Without the cooperation of the Iraqi public, the number of British troops in-country simply are not enough to create and maintain physical security. And this is for a city of only 1.3 million; Baghdad, which will be the responsibility of the United States, has 5 million people. Euphoria may dampen appetites for a short time, but clean water and nourishing food will soon be demanded.

Not only are there serious questions about whether they are up to the task, but one has to wonder how well this kind of naive evangelism is going to mix in such a volatile environment. More than likely the situation is going to chew them up and spit them out. In the process, there may even be some incidents of violence.

And this, of course, will play directly into the hands of those who wish to see this become a global war. People like Osama bin Laden.

The other kind of terrorism

Whatever happened to the anthrax killer? You know, the man who terrorized the entire country for the better part of a month?

At least Scott Shane at the Baltimore Sun remembers:

Tests point to domestic source behind anthrax letter attacks

Army scientists have reproduced the anthrax powder used in the 2001 mail attacks and concluded that it was made using simple methods, inexpensive equipment and limited expertise, according to government sources familiar with the work.

The findings reinforce the theory that has guided the FBI's 18-month-old investigation - that the mailed anthrax was probably produced by renegade scientists and not a military program such as Iraq's.

I guess the anthrax attacks must be another one of those "isolated incidents."

[Thanks to Alice Marshall for the tip.]

Isolated Event Watch

If anyone needed evidence of the FBI's political leanings, consider the matter of "isolated events."

Whenever right-wing extremists become involved in terrorist activities, it is usually only a matter of time before an FBI official declares that each is an "isolated event."

When an FBI agent is involved in chicanery of some kind or another, it also is determined to be an "isolated event."

Translation: "We have no intention of looking to see if this event represents a deeper and more pervasive problem."

Contrast this to the rhetoric that arises whenever anyone from the left -- whether it's eco-radicals or a center-left president -- gets crosswise with the law. Then we are likely to hear all about how the agency is investigating the possibility of broad conspiracies and nationwide networks and perhaps even international spying and terrorism.

With that in mind, there's the continuing saga of the recent arrest of GOP activist Katrina Leung and an FBI agent, both of whom were are various times involved in drumming up scandals against President Clinton. Both, it turns out, allegedly were at the same time spying for China.

Today came the announcement of yet another FBI agent being implicated in the case. [Link via Atrios.]

Toward the bottom, there's this:

In congressional testimony Thursday, Mueller called the case "an isolated event" and that ongoing changes at the FBI would ensure better oversight and management of intelligence sources.

Hm.

In case anyone else was paying attention, there was in fact a very similar case: Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent/Opus Dei member who was spying for the Russians.

Hanssen, you may recall, was also involved in ginning up scandals against Bill Clinton.

Now comes this case, where, once again, the agents were involved in concocting Clinton scandals (in this case, the phony "selling secrets to China" scandal).

But of course, there's no connection there, folks. Just move along. Nothing to see.

Lord knows the FBI will never get to the bottom of it.

Victory, sure, but not vindication

[Courtesy of the Propaganda Remix Project.]

It's no more a surprise that the prowar right is now in full gloat over the rather clear victory of American forces in Iraq, and the gleeful response of the Iraqi populace, than it is that these events occurred in the first place.

Anyone who didn't think the Americans would win was an idiot. Anyone who didn't think the Iraqis would be glad to rid themselves of Saddam likewise was not particularly astute.

Not, of course, that there is much evidence of any more than a tiny handful of such fools arguing for those positions before the war. So why does the prowar right now assume that the antiwar left held such beliefs? Perhaps because it makes a handy strawman?

Yet this assumption is really at the root of all the gloating that is spewing forth from the talk-radio airwaves and throughout the prowar blogosphere right now. It only goes to reveal how little they understood the mainstream liberal antiwar position, as well the utter vacuity of their own arguments.

Make no mistake: It's a wonderful thing that the Iraqi people are now free from Saddam's brutal reign. Indeed, I can argue that I and many others on the left have been fomenting for regime change in Iraq for considerably longer than those on the right who seem to be relatively recent converts to this cause. Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to ask where they've been all these years, while we argued that the Reagan and Bush regimes should stop underwriting their tyranny.

However, declaring war on a sovereign nation simply because we wish to oust the dictators in charge has, heretofore at least, never been the way Americans operated. If it were, we'd have gone to war many times over in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe.

That was, however, before the advent of the Bush Doctrine. The essence of the new, post-9/11 American foreign policy is now: America is in charge of the world now, because we are stronger and more powerful than anyone else. If we decide you are a threat, or an obstacle to our foreign-policy goals, we will remove you. Violently. And our entire justification for doing so will rest on the Sept. 11 attacks.

Or as the voice of the new proto-fascist America, Darryl Worley, puts it: "Some say this country's just out looking for a fight / Well after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right."

When the prowar right is all done gloating, perhaps, it will be time to ask them: OK, what next?

If the justification for invading Iraq was to liberate its people, great. As it happens, there are a bunch of other countries living under perhaps even worse oppression. They too are ripe for "regime change." Do we go there next?

Indeed, some of these nations not only are under totalitarian regimes that cruelly oppress their own people, they also maintain ties to terrorists, and moreover, they also own weapons of mass destruction.

Consider, for instance, China and North Korea.

Both meet the criteria for which we went to war with Iraq, and worse. After all, we know they have nuclear weapons. There's no reason to believe they're not capable of selling these devices to Al Qaeda or other anti-American terrorists. And the barbarities these regimes visit upon their own people make Saddam look like Barney the Dinosaur.

Is there any reason these two -- instead of Syria and Iran, neither of which has demonstrated WMD capabilities -- shouldn't be next in line?

The fact that they're not clearly demonstrates, once again, that the war on Iraq was never about liberating its populace or bringing democracy to a benighted nation. It was never about weapons of mass destruction. It was never about its supposed ties to terrorism and the events of Sept. 11.

No, the Iraq war was always primarily about establishing the Bush Doctrine, which in turn was nothing less than making manifest the agenda of the Project for a New American Century. (There's been a great deal written in recent months about PNAC; for a quick, reasonably accurate summary about its role in the Iraq war, try this, from the CBC: Reality Check: A New American Century.)

Just in case the prowar right wasn't paying attention the first time around, let's reiterate: The mass of opposition to the war had nothing to do with whether we would win. Opposition was always about what kind of nation we are -- and what we will become -- as we combat terrorism.

The Bush Doctrine is hardly anything more than Darwinist "might makes right" bullying, clothing itself in the language of an aggrieved victim. Many Americans were capable of seeing that. And they have a more traditional, and certainly more enlightened, understanding of what global citizenship really is about. They made up the bulk of the people out there marching against Bush's war.

So Bush has won his cynical little war -- one it's clear he chose because he not only could win it, he could sell it. (North Korea -- the far more clear and present danger -- is however a different proposition on both counts.)

That does not, however, vindicate the Bush Doctrine. Before that happens, we're going to have view the long-term results.

To date, the PNAC's plans still appear to be nothing less than a megalomaniacal scheme to rule the world, and in doing so turn nearly every other citizen on the planet into an enemy of America. The cheers for American soldiers in Baghdad would suggest otherwise, but then, the seething hatred for our nation nearly everywhere else in the Arab and Muslim worlds has multiplied as well -- we just aren't hearing about that on Fox News.

Moreover, the majority of those of us opposed to this war continue to do so because it still represents a dangerous and ultimately illogical brand of new American imperialism. It's easy to see that it has certain short-term benefits, such as liberating a handful of nations from their former oppressors. Its long-term consequences, though, are only now being reckoned. Which nation shall we go a-liberating next? Another with vast oilfields, perhaps?

The real danger the Bush Doctrine represents -- of inspiring a fresh round, perhaps even generations, of even more lethal terrorism -- has hardly subsided with the fall of Baghdad.

The gloating of the jingoes may drown out those fears for a day or two. But they will return.

Strangling dissent

The violence level edges up another little notch, today in Forest Grove, Oregon -- against a kid from a military family:

The thoughtful debate on war continues

On April 2, Larson was reading "Great Expectations" after school in the high school commons when he was surrounded by a different group of students. They got in his face.

"This time, their position was I hate America, and I should get out," Larson said. "One of them started strangling me. He had his hands pretty firmly around my neck. I couldn't breathe for a minute or so. Then he hit me with his belt, twice on the legs. `

"The only thing he said was, 'George Bush is your daddy,' which seemed delightfully random."

Only one student, a friend of Larson's, tried to intervene. Two more groups of kids swung by to badger him before he escaped the commons, but no one else touched him. While all this happened 40 feet from the school office, no administrators were on the scene.

Threats are not protected speech

Bryan Pfaffenberger has a post worth reading:

Have right-wing shock jocks violated the law by threatening antiwar protesters?

When challenged about the legality of such statements, right-wing columnists and editorial writers state that these statements are only made in "jest" or as "political satire," and that the persons making such statements are exercising their free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution. But it's not so simple. Although the various states and US Circuit Courts use varying standards to judge whether a threat constitutes a "true threat," a threat that is not Constitutionally protected, the threat must be considered in its context -- and, as will be seen, there are solid grounds for arguing that some of these threatening statements are illegal.

Of course, local prosecutors have to be persuaded that this is the case too. But it may be time for antiwar organizers to visit such officials and sound them out.

What needs saying

Paul Krugman says it:

The Last Refuge

For years to come, then, this country may be, in some sense, at war. And all that time, if Mr. Racicot and his party are allowed to set the ground rules, nobody will be allowed to criticize the president or call for his electoral defeat. You know what? If that happens, we will have lost the war, whatever happens on the battlefield.

No limits

A number of readers have written in to point out that yesterday's post about the Statue of Liberty wasn't exactly right.

Seems a number of right-wing wackaloons have in fact been agitating to return the Great Lady to the French.

One writes in to inform me that the topic has been a favorite of the Howie Carr show in Boston, on WRKO from 4-7 p.m. Reportedly, there were repeated calls last week.

Then there's this little site:

GiveItBack.org

There was a story about this site on a Pittsburgh TV station awhile back. However, what's clear is that this is more in the vein of yet another way to scam conservative half-wits out of their money and wasting it on a futile gesture.

Notably, it includes a link for "those who want to send a protest to France but do not want to send 'Lady Liberty' back', taking them to a page describing how "GIVEITBACK.ORG has recently legally acquired an authentic piece of the Statue of Liberty, which was removed during her renovations in 1982-1992! We plan on sending this symbolic piece back to France in protest." This by way of alternative. Such a gesture would certainly devastate the French.

In any case, another reader informs me that "it later turned out that the entire purpose of the site was to raise the domain name's profile so the owner could flog it on eBay (it turned into an ad for the name after a few weeks)...which he did. I think he made a sizable profit. Which just goes to show again that it all goes back to the money."

Fools and their money are soon parted, as are jingoes and democratic institutions.

In any case, it appears I was wrong: There are no limits to the small-minded idiocy of jingoes.

Border patrol

Finally, someone is taking on the Arizona militia border patrols, who heretofore have been operating more or less at will without any apparent concern from officials:

State Asked To Investigate Militia Groups

The organization spent the past two months collection 2,000 signatures which it will present to Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard next Tuesday. The petitions ask Goddard to conduct an investigation of the militia groups and it they're breaking the law, they should be arrested and prosecuted.

"Arizona has an anti militia law," says Allen, "Which spells out when and how civilians can make arrests and from out interpretation of the law, vigilante groups, civilian groups don't have a right to make civilian arrests."

One can only hope Goddard follows through on this.

If conservatives were consistent ...

`

They'd be demanding we return this to the French, too.

But then, even small-minded jingoist idiocy has some limits.

Hypocrisy watch

In tut-tutting John Kerry for suggesting we need a "regime change," Thomas Oliphant opines thusly:

It's also misguided to use the word regime, with an antidemocratic connotation, about the United States. President Bush heads an administration, a government. Popular votes and Florida aside, his presidency is the result of constitutional process and it is legitimate. Regime implies otherwise. It is used for dictators and authoritarians, based on its Latin root that is all about ruling, not governing.

It is touching to see Mr. Oliphant's tender sensibilities about the appropriate way to refer to the President extend so deeply on Mr. Bush's behalf. One wonders if such considerations were conventionally applied to Bush's predecessor.

A quick Google reveals 2,100 hits for "Clinton regime" -- many of them from such supposedly respectable voices as the Cato Institute, CBS News, and various Republican members of Congress.

And a search of the Boston Globe's own archives reveals that the phrase has appeared no fewer than seven times in the paper's own pages.

Over Tom Oliphant's strenuous objections, I'm sure.

[]Via the Horse, of course.]

A note on fascism

Apropos of the last post, but also as a footnote of sorts to the series on fascism:

The hallmark of fascist bullying is the willingness of those devoted to violence to use it upon those unwilling or reluctant to revert to it. "Our contempt for weakness" was a Hitler catchphrase. One expects to hear a form of it pop up any day now.

One of the thinkers on fascism who explored this facet of it in depth was the Norwegian Harald Ofstad. Here's his quick summary:

Anti-semitism is not at the core of nazism. Its core is that the strong shall rule over the weak, and that the weak are contemptible because they let themselves be ruled. Nazism did not emerge in Germany in the 1930's and it did not disappear in 1945. It is an expression of deeply set emotions which are still there, within ourselves and in our environment.

[Note: I also recently obtained the Robert O. Paxton essay on fascism which Christopher Skinner recommended. I've given it a quick scan and it's brilliant. I'll be digesting it further over the next few days and will report back; it certainly will be an addition to the "Rush" series.]

Just one question

We're already starting to hear a line of defense being trotted out by conservatives in the blogosphere regarding the increasing thuggishness of the pro-war element, particularly in its confrontational invasions of antiwar rallies, as well as the increase of actual violence and death threats (for the latter, see this latest example from Oxblog, via Atrios).

It runs something like this: These prowar marchers are only voicing their own First Amendment rights. What are you trying to do, shut them up?

Answer: Of course not. The prowar side should feel free to express itself. And its solely pro-war rallies are clearly in the spirit of the best kind of robust civil debate.

But many of these so-called pro-war demonstrations, as I've mentioned, are in fact devoted primarily to invading pre-planned antiwar rallies, many of them merely quiet, 30-person gatherings. They are loud, they are intimidating, and the rhetoric used by the pro-war marchers is vicious in nature.

One wonders about their alleged patriotism, and their devotion to First Amendment free-speech values, when their speech is primarily devoted to shutting up, shutting down, and generally intimidating the opposition into silence.

One wonders about their devotion to the very basics of civil society when they engage in bullying tactics. This includes invading peace vigils with loud trucks and obscenity-shouting prowar marchers.

One also wonders why a number of these invasive "pro-war" (which should more correctly be labeled "anti-dissent") demonstrations are in fact egged on by talk radio -- in some cases, stations with unofficial ties to the Bush administration.

All this wondering leads me to one question: Exactly what do these people think would happen if a large group of antiwar demonstrators appeared at one of the now-numerous pro-war rallies with the explicit purpose of breaking up the demonstration and harassing marchers?

What drives them?

Regular reader and letter-writer TruthToPower sends this missive:

Why are the pro-war forces so angry? They have the president, congress and most of the public on their side and we are close to winning in Iraq. Why then do they resort to threats and violence? If my side was batting 1.000 you wouldn't hear one word of complaint from me.

I think these people are just angry. They are angry because they are ignored and exploited by our system. Unfortunately because we are led to believe that we have the best society on earth many of us don't know know how to respond when it becomes clear that the system doesn't work in the interest of the average person.

Enter Rush and company. They bring out the absolute worst in people like this, the "angry white men" who think that a few black people at U. Michigan are responsible for all their problems. I also don't think we should discount the after effects of the 2000 presidential election. It showed that might makes right. You don't have to really win. You bully your way to victory and dare anyone to speak up.

Of course Bush could care less about these people. They are being used by the most cynical administation in modern history. Unfortunately they will keep them angry and confused so that they can invade Iran, Syria or God only knows where.

These are very ugly times.

I couldn't agree more.

I think that what makes them angry is the mere existence of liberalism and anyone who qualifies as a liberal. And ultimately what drives them is the elimination of liberalism altogether.

Certainly, they will never be happy until liberalism is an extinct species, and everyone in America thinks exactly alike -- that is, like them.

And you are right -- the turning point was the 2000 election.

I've commented previously on Justice Scalia's justification, revealed last year in an article he wrote for First Things, for the Bush v. Gore decision and his clear contempt of democracy for its tendency to "obscure the divine authority behind government":

These passages from Romans represent the consensus of Western thought until very recent times. Not just of Christian or religious thought, but of secular thought regarding the powers of the state. That consensus has been upset, I think, by the emergence of democracy. It is easy to see the hand of the Almighty behind rulers whose forebears, in the dim mists of history, were supposedly anointed by God, or who at least obtained their thrones in awful and unpredictable battles whose outcome was determined by the Lord of Hosts, that is, the Lord of Armies. It is much more difficult to see the hand of God—or any higher moral authority—behind the fools and rogues (as the losers would have it) whom we ourselves elect to do our own will. How can their power to avenge—to vindicate the “public order”—be any greater than our own?"

... The mistaken tendency to believe that a democratic government, being nothing more than the composite will of its individual citizens, has no more moral power or authority than they do as individuals has adverse effects in other areas as well. It fosters civil disobedience, for example, which proceeds on the assumption that what the individual citizen considers an unjust law—even if it does not compel him to act unjustly—need not be obeyed. St. Paul would not agree. “Ye must needs be subject,” he said, “not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.” For conscience sake. The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible.

As Dave Johnson suggests, it is clear that Scalia views proper government not as a product of democratic processes, but rather as a contest of wills in which God chooses the stronger and leads him to victory.

In light of the 2000 election, it is clear that this is how Scalia justified a ruling that, conceptually speaking, ran counter to virtually every position he had ever taken, particularly with regard to both states' rights and 14th Amendment equal-protections provisions. For him, it was more an exercise of the raw power he held by virtue of holding a seat on the Supreme Court, all in the pursuit of seating the person whom Scalia believed to have been chosen by God.

This bodes extremely ill for the 2004 election. Should a Democrat threaten to win, it is clear that the gang currently in power sees itself as divinely empowered, and seems likely to seek a way to justify any means, even extra-constitutional ones (as it did in 2000), to hold onto that. This would include unleashing the thuggery of the extreme right on the rest of the populace.

And it is clear that someone like Scalia would approve enthusiastically.

Cancel the elections

Everyone commenting on the John Kerry debacle has so far focused on the fact that Kerry has fought back admirably against the Republican attacks against him. And when the Republicans have been castigated, it has, for good cause, focused on the fact that they questioned Kerry's patriotism.

But there is a deeply insidious aspect to the Republican attacks. Take, for instance, the press release from RNC chairman Marc Racicot:

"Senator Kerry crossed a grave line when he dared to suggest the replacement of America's commander-in-chief at a time when America is at war. Critical analysis offered in the best interests of the country is part of a healthy democracy. But this use of self-serving rhetoric designed to further Senator Kerry's political ambitions at a time when the lives of America's sons and daughters are at stake reflects a complete lack of judgment."

Oh really? Does Racicot then believe that the elections of 1972, 1968, 1964, 1944, 1918, and 1864 should have been canceled? Because in each of those elections, the nation was at war. And the replacement of America's commander-in-chief was an open question that no one would have dared to challenge.

It could not be more clear that Racicot is suggesting that "replacing the commander-in-chief" is an unacceptable proposition during wartime, and even talking of doing so is nearly treasonous.

Racicot really needs to explain his remarks. If America is at war in 2004 -- which is clearly a possiblity -- will Racicot and the GOP suggest that anyone daring to challenge Bush has "crossed a grave line"?

I used to chuckle at the left-wing worry warts who suggested paranoiacally that Republicans intended to cancel the next elections. Maybe I shouldn't have.

Death to traitors

The threats keep coming:

Professor, recruiter face off at UMass

Eyewitnesses said the recruiter told adjunct professor Tony Van Der Meer and a student that they should be shot in the head for their antiwar views.

Of course, it was the professor and not the man who uttered the death threat who was arrested by police:

As the guardsmen packed up their literature and began to leave, Van Der Meer walked into the lobby. It's unclear what happened next, but a half-dozen students and Van Der Meer later said that one of the four guardsmen turned to Naro and the professor and said: ''You should be shot in the head.''

''No. You should be shot in the head,'' replied Van Der Meer, according to Shauntell Foster, a senior and a student of Van Der Meer's. Students Theresa Myrthil and Bethanie Petitfrere said they also watched the confrontation.

According to the police report, which did not record their words, the men were screaming at each other, nose-to-nose. An officer stepped between them.

The students said Van Der Meer never raised his hands or threatened the officer, and that the officer attacked Van Der Meer. In his report, the officer said Van Der Meer shoved him in the chest and told him to ''get out of my [expletive] face,'' and then elbowed him in the chest.

Three UMass-Boston police officers tackled Van Der Meer and wrestled him to the ground, several students said.

This is, unfortunately, consistent with police behavior in other situations in which "pro-war" protesters have threatened violence.

The specter of violence

Now come the death threats. From just up the road in Bellingham:

Unidentified caller warned he would shoot 2 protesters

The man first called the business line of the 911 dispatch office at 7:03 a.m. Friday. A dispatcher asked the man if he wanted to leave a message; he replied that he planned to shoot one male and one female protester. The call couldn't be traced.

He next left a message, also untraceable, at the newsroom of The Bellingham Herald, saying he planned to make national headlines by shooting two protesters at close range.

Then, at 10:20 a.m., he called in a similar threat to the registrar's office at Western. Campus officials said the call came from a pay phone.

KGMI radio station broadcast a recording of the man's 911 call on its morning newscasts. If caught, the man could be charged with making felony threats.

Fortunately, it didn't succeed:

Students stage anti-war 'die-in'

Before the speakers began, students circulated Red Square and handed out slips of paper warning students of a threat phoned in anonymously this morning to Bellingham police, Western Washington University and The Bellingham Herald. The caller said he planned to shoot a male and female protester at the march.

Western officials spread the word of the threat via e-mail and the university’s Web site. Students also announced the threat before the rally.

It didn’t seem to scare anyone away.

'What a cowardly, insidious, un-American attempt to stop free speech," said Alberto Mejia, one of the speakers, as cheers and applause filled the red brick square.

Of course, this is what we've come to expect from the so-called "pro-war" crowd. Indeed, in case there was any doubt about which element was responsible for the threat:

During the silence, the two dozen or so support-the-troops ralliers across the street started chanting "U.S.A." and one told the protesters to "stay that way."

One week ago, this same bunch -- only in a much larger contingent -- invaded a peace vigil in Bellingham, in much the same way we've seen confrontational campaigns to disrupt peace protests in other places:

Hundreds of pro-military truckers roll downtown in show of support

Note the bizarre slant of this story. It isn't until you read midway through it that you realize that this was not merely a pro-war demonstration -- it was an overt attempt to disrupt a smallish antiwar protest.

Interestingly, this appears to be much of the same crowd of in-your-face disruptors who were called out by KVI radio host Kirby Wilbur last week in Duvall:

"We had no idea it was going to get this big," said Bosman, who said he was inspired by a pro-war rally in Duvall he drove his rig through last Monday.

"There are a lot of people that feel the way I do," he said. "Sometimes, it just takes a little snowball to get things going."

No kidding.

In case there was any question that the intent of the "pro-war" crowd is not so much to support the war, but rather to attack antiwar protesters, the well-buried details should make it clear:

They blasted their horns down the Guide and through the city, escorted by Bellingham Police officers who led them on a route that included Squalicum Parkway, Roeder Avenue and Chestnut Street, where they turned north on Cornwall Avenue. Between Holly and Magnolia streets, they passed the building where the Bellingham chapter of the anti-war group, Not in Our Name, held an Anti-War Fair Saturday morning.

Two men in camouflage fatigues stood on Cornwall near Magnolia saluting the convoy. Three women held their fingers in the shape of a "v." Nearby, three Sehome High School students -- Katie Hoyt, 18; Ken Hoyt, 15; and Josh Hatfield, 14 -- played snare drums in the center of a crowd of anti-war demonstrators, creating a contrasting rhythm to the truck horns' steady drone that was so loud sidewalk conversations had to be yelled.

And unsurprisingly, a tinge of violence made its appearance;

There were a few scuffles as protesters from both sides converged, said Olise Olufunke, founder of the local Not in Our Name chapter and the organizer of another peace rally at that intersection Saturday afternoon.

Olise said a man berated her for her anti-war views and slapped her, back-handed, on the arm. She hopes to press charges, she said. And Cassandra Malec, who helped organize the morning's event, saw police officers drag away people who were trying to cross the street during the truck convoy.

Mark Polin said he backed his car out of a Cornwall Avenue parking space to join the convoy while holding a sign that read, "Support our troops, bring them home," out the car window.

"Some guy stuck his torso in the driver side window," said Polin, "grabbed the steering wheel, told me to get off the road, and tried to grab the sign. But another pro-war guy told him to get out of my car."

It seems inevitable that this is going to get out of hand, and at some point Americans are going to start killing each other over this war.

One wonders where that uniter-not-a-divider stands on all this. Given the way this frenzy is being whipped up by his propagandists in talk radio, I guess it's really not hard to tell.

[Thanks to Paul deArmond for the heads-up.]

Dissent is Treason

From Fayetteville, N.C., home of Fort Bragg, Special Forces, Delta Force, and the 82nd Airborne:

Activists encircle Market House

More than 100 people were there to support American troops, waving flags, holding signs and urging motorists to honk to show their support. Most drivers obliged.

"The majority has finally gotten vocal," said Sonja Rothstein of Fayetteville.

About 20 people were at the Market House to protest the war. They held signs and yelled "power to the people" at passing cars.

What this story doesn't really make clear is that the antiwar protesters were part of a weekly peace vigil of about 20-30 people who set up a relatively quiet regular group at the Market House. Last Wednesday, they were invaded by a confrontational group comprised largely of "Patriots" and bikers, their presence inspired by local talk radio.

Typical of the sentiments:

Rothstein and others on the troop-supporting side said that those protesting the war are a vocal minority that only seems like a majority because of constant media coverage. Mikele Haywood of Fayetteville said it is impossible to support the troops but not the war.

"It's all the same thing," she said. "The troops are over there watching us, and it's very disturbing for them to see any type of protest."

Haywood said protesting now that the war has started is akin to aiding the enemy, Saddam Hussein.

Chuck Fager of the Quaker House, who brought this to my attention, reports that the peace group is not going to be run off. He says police managed to keep things peaceful this time, but one has to wonder how long this can be sustained.

The War on Dissent: Southern Discomfort edition

War protesters say threats have become serious

Scott O’Bryan, a University of Alabama history professor and co-chair of the Tuscaloosa Peace Project, said the group has received six or seven e-mails and phone calls over the last few days from people unhappy with them.

One e-mail ended with, “And oh, yeah, get the hell out of my country you traitor." The message was sent by someone identifying himself as “Your Worst Nightmare."

One person told O’Bryan over the telephone that there were people in Tuscaloosa planning to “do certain things" to the protestors.

“It’s definitely meant to intimidate," O’Bryan said.

Also noteworthy was this remark:

Capt. David Hartin, Tuscaloosa Police Department spokesman, said officers will patrol more often during the group’s protests. He said the police can do little beyond that. He said charges could be filed against people whose comments to protesters rise to the level of intimidation or threats.

“If you’re following the national news, there are quite a few people who are expressing their disgust against people who are protesting," Hartin said. “People have their freedom of speech."

Translation: The cops may step in after a victimized protester has been assaulted, but don't count on anything beforehand.

Sounds like the good ol' days have returned to the South.

A thousand words

Touche'

Digby has a hilarious (and of course dead-on) response to the Rodney Lee essay:

7. Repeat steps 2-6 until the desired results are obtained and the idiot realizes that if you are going to fight back, it’s smart to fight the real enemy instead of invading a country that had nothing to do with attacking you. Keep doing it until he understands that it is stupid and counterproductive to rally everyone in the neighborhood to hate him with the same fervor as his attacker just so he can prove how tough he is.

Enter the militias

Another increment in the slow crawl to fascism that's occurring in the crucible of the War on Dissent:

Right wing militia claims it is targetting local anarchists

This source is not entirely reliable; the writer is an activist in the so-called 'anarchist' movement. Of course, this bias reveals itself in the headline; it's clear that antiwar protesters are the primary target of these militiamen.

However, the piece cites the militiamen's own Usenet and Web posts, which make the point clearly:

I can however tell you that we do believe in the first Amendment and the exercise of it by protestors, however we feel that some people/groups have stepped across that fine line between use and abuse of their Constitutional rights. To us they have yelled "fire" in a crowded theatre. We know the police are being harassed and baited into taking actions against these protestors that of course they will exploit in the media, police brutality etc. To this point these extremists have not succeeded in doing the job.

We feel it is past time to Eliminate this element from our society. we feel it is our Patriotic duty. At almost any other time their protests would not be a bother to us but due to the nature of our Countries [sic] current situation, and the fact that we have been watching the activities of this/these groups for over 6 months (and before they even started their Anti-war campaign) we know for a fact that the Anti-Government and Anti-American Ideals that many of these people have are Parallel to that of domestic terrorists.

'Necrotic State' also reports that at the now-defunct militia Web site where this appeared, Gun Policy Center, a banner headline earlier read: "The only good protester is one with a bullet in their head."

Of course, I'm sure the Wall Street Journal op-ed page would assure us that this is only intended for humorous effect.

[A tip o' the Hatlo hat to reader MJ for the tip on this.]

The heart of the meme

Reader Sam Hunting was able to track down the author of the essay describing how to physically assault war protesters. It seems it was written by a self-described comedic writer who goes by the name of Rodney Lee (but who also appears to write under the name Rodney Lee Conover), and he published and copyrighted it shortly after Sept. 11 and during the runup to the war with Afghanistan -- against which, you may recall, protests were nearly nonexistent. Here's the original:

The Daily Hump [Oct. 6, 2001]

Note that the wording in the version now circulating on the Internet has now been changed to add "and those who support terror" to the first sentence, which underscores that this line of "reasoning" is being adapted for use against those who would protest the current war with Iraq as well. This in turn makes self-evident the speciousness of the whole enterprise.

Hunting also googled the essay and found it popping up on 86 different locations, and a lot of them were talk-radio related. Kynn Bartlett writes in to note that no less a radio talker than Laura Schlesinger -- No. 2 behind Limbaugh -- recited this essay shortly after 9/11. And Ted Barlow writes in to note that he heard it recently in Texas: "It wasn't a right-wing talk show or a country station, either, just a regular pop station in Houston."

Indeed, it's clear that this essay was the one being read by an MOR Seattle AM radio talk-show host when my original e-mailer brought it to my attention. This host was Gary Ryan of KIRO AM, who I unsuccessfully attempted to contact about the broadcast. However, Ryan's station manager did respond to my queries:

Thank you for your concern regarding a statement talk show host, Gary Ryan made during his Sunday, March 23rd afternoon program in regards to actions toward war protestors.

Gary's statement was intended to use sarcasm to form a comparison between the attacks of September 11th, and a theoretical action taken against a protestor. In both cases innocent people were, or would be, victims of violence. He was NOT, however, advocating the assault of a demonstrator.

Mr. Ryan could be accused of poor judgement in his choice of words. However, he was merely presenting a "what if" scenario to make the point why would striking a protester be any different from two planes hitting the Twin Towers. Also please be reminded that opinions expressed by our talk show hosts do not necessarily reflect the views of Newsradio 710.

Finally we have talked to Mr. Ryan about his comments, and believe there will be no further controversies along this line. Thank you for you concern about this matter. We hope you continue to listen to Newsradio 710 KIRO.

The lameness of this response should be self-evident. Another reader, Jake Sexton of Lying Media Bastards and Stray Bulletins, addresses it well:

That particular "punch the peaceniks" email has been circulating since just before the Afghan war in 2001 in various forms. I don't see it as a call to action to beat protesters but as an example of two bizarre conservative behaviors:

-- Violent conservative humor. For some reason, conservatives can tell the most vile, violent jokes around, sometimes aimed at specific individuals, but among themselves, they seem to know that they don't really mean "shoot protesters in the face" when they say "shoot protesters in the face." I think they see it more as a a burst of anger, like someone saying "I'm going to kill you" to someone who's made them really mad. Or, they mean every word of it and try to justify it as "just a joke" to liberals.

-- The "discredit the hypocrites" debate. Conservatives seem to think that if they can find a hypocrisy in any non-conservative argument, then they have won the debate. This sort of smirking "proof" is frequently spouted on the internet: "If you're so for peace, why didn't you speak out when Clinton attacked Serbia? If you're so concerned about civil rights, why aren't you concerned about the Iraqis' civil rights?" and so on.

The problem with the analogy, of course, is that it's an analogy. Waging war is in no way similar to punching someone in the nose. A single activist defending themselves with the small destructive power of their own fists is not the same as wildly bombing a large region of land in which your attacker (in the Iraq case, your potential attacker) might be located, alongside thousands of people who are not your attacker. As I've said in my blog, I would fully support a team of skilled soldiers going into Iraq to punch Saddam Hussein's regime into submission. But when you start using guns and bombs that will kill many, many people who are not "the bad guys," then I have serious problems.

However, I have to say that claims of "humorous intent" have often provided cover for rhetoric that is clearly designed to promote a mindset in which violence is an acceptable and appropriate response, as is silencing the opposition through physical intimidation and verbal threats. Both Rodney Lee and Gary Ryan may have thought he was merely using "sarcasm" or "satire" to point up some liberal hypocrisy, but the scenario they suggest is openly violent, and it would not surprise anyone if someone in his audience who was less stable chose to act on his suggestion. But no one in the audience can tell for certain. It is frankly just as likely that either of the two considers the idea of assaulting peace protesters an appealing idea and is merely using the cover of the "hypothetical" to foment such acts.

That is why any suggestion of resorting to violence as an appropriate response to one's fellow citizens is simply unacceptable for anyone who works in the mass media. This is a longstanding ethical standard that dates back to the lynching era, when such nods and winks indeed encouraged very real violence.

Of course, the base line of the perpetuation of this meme points up a fundamental falsehood in the ongoing campaign to defend the Iraq war: The notion that Iraq is somehow responsible for the events of Sept. 11. As I've mentioned previously, I was among the first journalists to explore the possibility that Iraq was involved in 9/11, and certainly remain open to the possibility. But anyone who has studied the facts of the matter knows full well that the connection is far from being proven; and the mere possibility of it is not in any way an adequate case for war.

Not that the jingoes care about such picky details. They have a different agenda in mind anyway.

Correction

Many thanks to Greg Roach of Tacoma, who writes in to point out that I was mistaken about KVI's ownership in my post about talk radio. KVI is owned by Fisher Communications, not Clear Channel. Limbaugh, who is the station's talk-show centerpiece, is syndicated through Clear Channel, which was the source of my mistake.

Roach also points out that I neglected to mention that Michael Medved is no longer at KVI; he has since moved on to one of the Clear Channel stations that is practicing the all-conservative talk format, 770 KTH (which in typically Orwellian fashion calls itself "The Truth").

Roach was also kind enough to send in a list of Clear Channel's other stations in Seattle:

KFNK 104.9 -- The Funky Monkey
KJR AM 950 & FM 95.7 -- Sports and 70's, respectively
KHHO AM 850 -- Fox Sports
KUBE 93 -- Urban Dance

In any case, this was simple sloppiness on my part. My apologies.

Tracing hate to its source

I mentioned yesterday that a Seattle talk-show host had urged his listeners to walk up to protesters and hit them, knock them down, and when they got up, to hit them again until they "got the idea." (I'm still waiting to hear back from either the host or his manager to confirm that he said this.)

A sharp-eyed reader (David Croot) forwarded this to me. It's an e-mail that apparently is making the rounds -- he picked it up from a pro-war/pro-pornography (seems like an appropriate mix) blog -- whose author at this point is still anonymous:

With all of this talk of impending war, many of us will encounter "Peace Activists" who will try and convince us that we must refrain from retaliating against the ones who terrorized us all on September 11, 2001, and those who support terror. These activists may be alone or in a gathering... most of us don't know how to react to them. When you come upon one of these people, or one of their rallies, here are the proper rules of etiquette:

1. Listen politely while this person explains their views. Strike up a conversation if necessary and look very interested in their ideas. They will tell you how revenge is immoral, and that by attacking the people who did this to us, we will only bring on more violence. They will probably use many arguments, ranging from political to religious to humanitarian.

2. In the middle of their remarks, without any warning, punch them in the nose.

3. When the person gets up off of the ground, they will be very angry and they may try to hit you, so be careful.

4. Very quickly and calmly remind the person that violence only brings about more violence and remind them of their stand on this matter. Tell them if they are really committed to a nonviolent approach to undeserved attacks, they will turn the other cheek and negotiate a solution. Tell them they must lead by example if they really believe what they are saying.

5. Most of them will think for a moment and then agree that you are correct.

6. As soon as they do that, hit them again. Only this time hit them much harder. Square in the nose.

7. Repeat steps 2-5 until the desired results are obtained and the idiot realizes how stupid of an argument he/she is making.

8. There is no difference in an individual attacking an unsuspecting victim or a group of terrorists attacking a nation of people. It is unacceptable and must be dealt with. Perhaps at a high cost.

We owe our military a huge debt for what they are about to do for us and our children. We must support them and our leaders at times like these. We have no choice. We either strike back, VERY HARD, or we will keep getting hit in the nose. Lesson over, class dismissed!

The hounds of hate are now roaming freely.

They don't incite violence -- they just tell their listeners to beat people up

Following up on last night's post ...

Peace activists claim harassment

Wilbur said he had noticed peace activists holding a regular Monday vigil at the location. On his morning radio show -- at least Friday and yesterday -- the Duvall resident told his listeners to show up to give another side of the debate.

"Our intent wasn't to confront," he said. "It was to give the other side."

Oh yeah. Suuuure. They just happen to "give the other side" by screaming in people's faces and frightening them into silence.

But many of the peace activists -- who numbered about 20 yesterday -- said they were being intimidated. Yesterday and last week, the activists said, some people with "Support Our Troops" signs followed them down the street to confront them.

Wilbur denied the allegation. "How many of these people look violent? Do you think moms and babies in carriages look intimidating?" he said.

If they're screaming obscenities and calling people traitors, all while being backed up by male companions -- sure they do.

But then, Wilbur knew that. He just doesn't want to admit that he is indeed, as the peace-vigil organizer suggests, carrying out a vendetta.

Of course, this isn't only happening in Seattle. In Louisiana, there was this story:

Local protesters shout about the war

Along with plenty of American flags, several of the signs they carried demeaned the marchers: "Protesting this war while our troops are being killed is equal to treason," read one. "You should all be shot."

And of course, the talk-show host who inspired all this hatred is openly fomenting it:

Richard Condon, a morning show host for rock station KOOJ, said he wanted the hecklers to "put these goofballs in their place."

"This has been going on since World War I, and it's the reason they have the right to feel the way they do," Condon said, pointing at the peace protesters marching down Stanford toward LSU.

Despite that right, he concluded, "I think these son-of-a-buggers deserve a bullet in the head."

The charming thing about these cretins is that they will then heatedly deny that they are advocating violence.

Continuing along these lines, Atrios is running a "thug watch."

Quote of the day

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

"Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149
May 7, 1918

Obviously, Teddy hated America.

Wingnut fantasies come true

So, was Ann Coulter only joking?

Remember when she urged, regarding Muslims:

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Of course, we have been assured by no less worthy a source than the Wall Street Journal editorial page that Coulter's remarks are only for humorous effect, as it were: "Why would anybody even pretend to believe that Ms. Coulter ... wishes to convert all Muslims forcibly to Christianity?"

Why indeed.

Now comes this:

Plans Under Way for Christianizing the Enemy

Two leading evangelical Christian missionary organizations said Tuesday that they have teams of workers poised to enter Iraq to address the physical and spiritual needs of a large Muslim population.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, and the Rev. Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse said workers are near the Iraq border in Jordan and are ready to go in as soon as it is safe. The relief and missionary work is certain to be closely watched because both Graham and the Southern Baptist Convention have been at the heart of controversial evangelical denunciations of Islam, the world's second largest religion.

Gee, I wonder how well Graham's line about Islam being "a very evil and wicked religion" will work out there.

Maybe if they just name themselves the Ann Coulter Brigade ...

[A tip o' the Hatlo hat to reader TruthToPower -- who wants me to cry 'fascism' already. Sorry, not yet. But damn, we are getting warmer all the time.]

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.

Signs on the overpasses

Drove down to Portland this weekend to meet my new nephew. Mrs. Orcinus and the Princess and I all jumped in the car for the three-hour drive down, and were of course rewarded. It's always a little stunning to see a newborn and to be reminded just how tiny and vulnerable they are, and at the same time how much potential is there inside that quivering little bundle.

En route on Saturday, there were were crowds of pro-war demonstrators on the overpasses, especially in the Fort Lewis area, all waving American flags. I have no problem with these kinds of demonstrations, but there is an aspect of them that seems essentially dishonest.

The vast majority of the signs they held declared: "Support Our Troops." The unstated implication of these signs, of course, is that people who oppose the war do not support the troops.

This is fundamentally false. Many of those opposed to the war are indeed veterans and others (myself included) who simply do not believe an adequate case has been made for the war. They support our troops -- and do not wish to waste their precious lives for a war intended mainly for political purposes. As one popular antiwar slogan puts it: 'Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home!"

This is a common right-wing tactic -- wrapping themselves in a position that hardly anyone can refute, and thereby implying that their opponents are against essential homespun values. This is also why anti-abortionists like to label themselves "pro-life."

And then there were the "God Bless George W. Bush" signs -- in case there was any doubt about the political undercurrents at work here.

Of course, there also were the obligatory anti-antiwar signs, but most of them were content to use France as a shorthand for "antiwar." I'm sure if I had looked closer -- I was driving, after all -- I could have spotted worse.

More on this tide later today.

That shared worldview

Doug McGill at the McGill Report and Global Citizen went to a pro-war rally in Minnesota and observed the proceeedings. His report included this observation:

Representative Gil Gutknecht told the audience in his speech that “periodically the tree of liberty needs to be nourished with the blood of patriots.”

This actually paraphrases a Thomas Jefferson quote:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

And where did we most recently see this worldview promoted?

It was on the T-shirt Tim McVeigh was wearing at the time of his arrest -- and probably when he set off the bomb in Oklahoma City.