Right-Wingers Use Boston Bombing to Paper Over Their Own Extremist Terror

The right-wingers have been in full-on gloat mode since the capture of the Boston Marathon bombers -- not because it turned out that they were right about the nature of the perpetrators (they weren't), but because speculation that they might be right-wing extremists was wrong. Only wingnuts can convert a sigh of relief into an attack on their opponents.

The problem is that all they're really doing is attempting, yet again, to whitewash away the very real existence of violent extremists on their own side.

Leading the charge is William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, who published a post over the weekend titled "Add Boston Marathon Bombing to pile of Failed Eliminationist Narratives":

Yet there was a theory behind the madness, the Eliminationist Narrative created by Dave Neiwart of Crooks and Liars about an “eliminationist” radical right seeking to dehumanize and eliminate political opposition. It was a play on the over-used narrative of Richard Hofstadter’s “paranoid style” in American politics.

The Eliminationist Narrative was aided and abetted by an abuse of the term “right-wing” to include groups who are the opposite of conservatism and the Tea Party movement.

In the case of Sparkman, the accusations were just Another Failed Eliminationist Narrative. And the Eliminationist Narrative would fail time and time again:

James Holmes
Jared Loughner
The Cabby Stabber
The “killer” of Bill Sparkman
Amy Bishop
The Fort Hood Shooter
The IRS Plane Crasher
The Pentagon Shooter

We can now add the Boston Marathon Bombing to the pile. The wild speculation that there was a Tea Party or “right-wing” connection proved false.

Of course, it would always help if people like Jacobson managed to review the posts of the people he's attacking -- since neither I nor anyone at Crooks and Liars ever speculated in print that the perps were white right-wing extremists. Others did, however -- and frankly, we discussed it among ourselves. But we knew that it was irresponsible to speculate publicly until we knew more, and so we waited -- unlike a few progressives, and even many, many more conservatives. (More about that in a moment.)

The fact, however, is that the speculation about right-wing extremism's potential role was entirely rational, considering that in the past four years, there have been nearly 70 acts of domestic terrorism committed by right-wing extremists in the United States, compared to just over 30 such acts committed by Islamist extremists here. (I have prepared a report on this that Mother Jones will be publishing soon.)

And let's not overlook the OTHER terrorist attack that occurred in the same week -- namely, the ricin attacks on the White House and Senate, a case that is still officially unsolved, now that the original suspect has been released. However, considering both the targets and the fact that ricin has long been a favorite weapon of right-wing extremists, there is a high likelihood that one or more of them will eventually prove to be the source of these attacks.

Indeed, just in the past year alone, we've observed the following entirely successful acts of domestic terrorism, perpetrated by extremists animated by various kinds of far-right ideologies and their eliminationist rhetoric:

An Army veteran named Wade Michael Page walks into a Sikh temple and opens fire, killing six and wounding four

Two Tulsa men embark on a killing rampage targeting black people, killing three and wounding two

A group of Louisiana "sovereign citizens" kills two sheriff's deputies when they try to serve warrants

A Utah skinhead shoot six police officers, killing one, when they try to serve a warrant

A black man named Ray Lengend torches a Muslim mosque

An ex-convict tries to blow up a Wisconsin women's clinic because it performs abortions

We've also had a couple of unsuccessful plots broken up:

Seven member of a racist skinhead organization arrested for training to launch a terrorist race war

"FEAR" militia plot broken up when members are charged with murder of member and his 17-year-old girlfriend

Of course, the violence and terror emanating from right-wing extremism has not been limited merely to the United States. Easily the worst case in recent memory was that of Anders Behring Breivik, the right-wing Islamophobe who massacred a school-camp full of children in Norway because they had been "polluted" by liberal education, and also set off bombs that killed 8 more people in Oslo. 

Recall the eagerness with which media and right-wingers leapt to assume that this was a case of Islamist radicals. Instead, it turned out that Breivik was inspired by a bevy of right-wing American pundits who fueled his fanatical Islamophobia with their vicious smear attacks on Muslims.

That same eagerness to assume that Arabic radicals were the only kind of terrorists worth fearing was again on display after the Boston Marathon bombings, particularly among right-wing pundits and the wingnutosphere. The reactions ranged from a bevy of pundits spewing vile things about Arabs to even more appalling behavior by the mouth-breathing troglodytes who follow them.

As Tim Wise adroitly observes (and be sure to read the whole thing):

White privilege is knowing that even if the Boston Marathon bomber turns out to be white, his or her identity will not result in white folks generally being singled out for suspicion by law enforcement, or the TSA, or the FBI.

White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for whites to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening, or threatened with deportation.

White privilege is knowing that if the bomber turns out to be white, he or she will be viewed as an exception to an otherwise non-white rule, an aberration, an anomaly, and that he or she will be able to join the ranks of pantheon of white people who engage in (or have plotted) politically motivated violence meant to terrorize — and specifically to kill — but whose actions result in the assumption of absolutely nothing about white people generally, or white Christians in particular.

It turned out, of course, that the bombers were white Chechen Muslims, which basically threw out everyone's guesses and predictions. That has nonetheless not stopped right-wingers from scapegoating all Muslims for the act.

And it is this same powerful impulse to scapegoat minorities, liberals, and the powerless that fuels the violence that spews forth on a regular basis from right-wing extremists:

Right-wing movements attract people who are likely to act out violently because they indulge so overtly and, in recent years, remorselessly in the politics of fear and loathing: indulging in eliminationist rhetoric, depicting their opposition as less than human, and aggressively attacking efforts to blunt the toxic effects of their politics as "political correctness" -- or, in the case of both Anders Breivik and Andrew Breitbart, "Cultural Marxism".

Scapegoating is, as Chip Berlet explains, "the social process whereby hostility and aggression of an angry and frustrated group are directed away from a rational explanation of a conflict and projected onto targets demonized by irrational claims of wrongdoing, so that the scapegoat bears the blame for causing the conflict, while the scapegoaters feel a sense of innocence and increased unity."

Now, readers of blogs like Legal Insurrection will be forgiven if they are unaware of many of the incidents listed above, because generally speaking, they get short shrift in the media, and hardly a word about them thus appears in places like right-wing blogs. When they do appear in the media -- as in the cases of the Wisconsin Sikh massacre and Anders' Breivik's rampage -- they are addressed dismissively if at all at places like Jacobson's blog.

Jacobson, you see, has simply defined the problem away for mainstream conservatives: These extremists are not definably "right wing" in any discernible way, it seems, and therefore no taint exists. That's his rationale in claiming, in this weekend's post, that calling neo-Nazis and white supremacists right-wing extremists constituted an "abuse of the term 'right wing'". This was also his rationale in dismissing Anders Breivik's rampage as somehow unconnected with his American friends' hatemongering.

He explained it similarly when confronted with the reality that the neo-Nazi Sikh massacre perpetrator was a right-wing extremist:

Needless to say, the MSM and left-blogosphere have concluded the shooter was a white supremacist/neo-Nazi based on tattoos and being a former member of what they describe as a “skinhead” band — which they then obscenely generalize to be “right-wing,” a way of trying to link him to the political right. This is the age-old tactic. If Page was a white supremacist/neo-Nazi/skinhead, then he stood against everything the political right stands for.

Trust me on this, Mr. Jacobson, as a person who has attended their gatherings and spent time observing their ideology up close and personally: There is nothing remotely left-wing, or anything other than right wing, about the ideology promoted by people like the Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan and American Renaissance and a whole bevy of other hate groups out there operating in America today. The notion that they are not from the political right is simply risible.

It just depends where on the very real spectrum of right-wing thought each happens to fall. You see, the reason they call these people right wing extremists is that they begin with simple, perhaps even mainstream, conservative positions and extend them to their most outrageous and illogical extreme.

Conservatives are, for instance, skeptical of the power of the federal government to intervene in civil-rights matters; right-wing extremists believe it has no such power whatsoever, but it has been usurped by a Jewish conspiracy that is imposing its will on white people.

Conservatives are skeptical of internationalism and entities like the United Nations. Right-wing extremists believe the U.N. represents a diabolical plot to overthrow American sovereignty and impose totalitarian rule.

Conservatives believe that abortion is murder of a living being and oppose its use on demand. Right-wing extremists believe that this justifies committing murder and various violent crimes in order to prevent it.

Conservatives believe affirmative action is a form of reverse discrimination. Right-wing extremists believe it is part of a plot to oppress white people.

Conservatives oppose taxation, and tax increases in particular, on principle. Right-wing extremists believe that the IRS is an illegitimate institution imposed on the body politic by the aforementioned Jewish conspiracy.

Conservatives oppose increased immigration on principle and illegal immigration as a matter of law enforcement, and believe the borders should be secure. Right-wing extremists believe that Mexicans are coming here as part of an "Aztlan" conspiracy to retake the Southwest for Mexico, and that we should start shooting border crossers on sight.

You get the idea.

Moreover, the claim that right-wing extremists have nothing to do with the Tea Party is just flatly risible. I have two simple words regarding that claim: Oath Keepers.

But the conspiracist Oath Keepers are hardly the only extremist element that has been absorbed within the ranks of the Tea Party. The list is long, but it's headed up by the Minutemen who have become Tea Party leaders. Moreover, as I explored in an investigative piece for AlterNet, the movement became a functional extension of the Patriot/militia movement in many precincts, especially in rural areas, away from the television crews. You can see the video for yourself below.




Jacobson's limitations on what constitutes "right wing" are not only ahistorical, afactual, and fully at odds with reality, they're also predictably self-serving. So it's not surprising that, given his criteria, even his list of "failed eliminationist narratives" is fatally flawed.

Most of the examples he provides, notably the Bill Sparkman episode, were never discussed by me or by anyone at C&L as instances of right-wing violence, because we never considered them such. However, there are three cases here that we did describe as involving right-wing extremists. And you know what? We still do.

We realize, for instance, that the post-shooting narrative favored pretending that Jared Lee Loughner was somehow not a terrorist because he was mentally ill (a claim they for some reason do not make when it comes to Nidal Hasan, the mentally ill gunman in the Fort Hood shooting rampage). They also found other mitigating factors, such as Loughner's youthful liberalism, to claim that he was not a right-wing extremist, despite the obvious liberal-ness of his targets. However, none of that can overcome the reality that at the time he acted, Loughner was carrying out what he saw as a mission on behalf of his now-adopted right-wing beliefs involving a global monetary conspiracy. He was indeed a right-wing extremist, and other experts on the subject who have examined the record have reached the same conclusion.

Similarly, we found that the IRS plane bomber was indeed a terrorist, and that he was acting on behalf of the very same right-wing extremist anti-tax ideology we described above. And the Pentagon shooter, John Patrick Bedell, was acting out on his beliefs derived from Alex Jones's conspiracy theories -- and Jones, despite many efforts to pretend otherwise, is clearly a classic right-wing conspiracy theorist and extremist from the old John Birch mold.

Yes, we recognize very much that there is a significant difference between mainstream conservatives and right-wing extremists, as we've outlined above -- but those differences, frankly, keep diminishing, and the ideological distances keep shrinking.

We would love nothing more than to report that conservatives were bravely standing up against extremists on the right and doing their part as citizens to bring an end to their toxic contributions to our society. Believe me, as a onetime moderate Republican from a conservative state, I would love nothing more than to see mainstream conservatives stand up against right-wing extremism, as they once did in the 1980s when Idaho became one of the first states to pass a hate-crimes law.

But those days are long gone. There are still a handful of thoughtful and decent conservatives remaining who will stand up to confront this problem, but they are tiny in number and nil in influence. Instead, conservatism is dominated by the likes of Michelle Malkin and Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Beck and William Jacobson (not to mention nearly everyone at Fox News), who instead of taking the problem of right-wing extremism seriously, dismiss its presence, downplay its influence and spread, and otherwise look the other way while vociferously attacking anyone with the nerve to point it out.

Conservatives have instead made a cottage industry out of whitewashing away their extremists, most notably when decrying any efforts by law enforcement to confront the issue, and this latest effort in the wake of the Boston bombing is just the latest chapter.

In the meantime, of course, the tide is rising as the number of extremist groups in America reaches record proportions. And mainstream conservatives are aiding and abetting them -- first by pretending that they don't exist, and second by silently giving them a warm embrace into the ranks of the Tea Party. It bodes ill for us all.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

An orca video from last summer

I don't think I ever had the opportunity to post this video here from last summer. I prefer to let them speak for themselves. Hope you enjoy.

Here come the reviews

OK, it helps that some of these really nice reviews that are coming in are from friends of mine. But my friends are also brutally honest people who would tell me if And Hell Followed With Her sucked. Here's what they're saying instead:

Rick Perlstein at The Nation:

But trust me on this one. And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border is one of the best books you can read on one of the most crucial subjects you can study: how the toxic mindset of white supremacist, anti-government insurrectionist lunacy migrates again and again into the mainstream of American political discussion. And if that's not enough to draw you, here's a bonus: David wraps his lesson in a true crime story Joe Conason blurbs as “reminiscent of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” I couldn't tell you if that's precisely so; I've never read Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I can't tell you much about the crime story either: It's just that gripping and suspenseful, and I don't want to spoil it for you.

David Goldstein at The Stranger :

But the book is less about the crime itself than it is about the way the rhetoric, mission, and mismanagement of the Minutemen organizations made such violence almost inevitable. Minutemen organizers relentlessly insisted that they were merely about protecting the border. They fought back against accusations of racism, claiming they conducted background checks to screen out Nazis, white supremacists, criminals, and other dangerous elements. Forde's story exposes that lie.

Julie Muhlstein at the Herald in Everett (Scott North's newspaper) wrote up a nice profile of the book that is more an interview with the author than a review. But you may enjoy reading it.

I've also included, atop today's post, the video of Sebastian Wielemans' film A Cycle of Fences, which is a kind of accompaniment to the excerpt of Chapter 12, "Adrenaline Rush," that ran this weekend at AlterNet. If you've read the chapter, you won't be able to help laughing grimly.

'A Tragic, Dark and Sadly Crazy American Story': Why You Will Want to Read 'And Hell Followed'

The reviews for my new book, And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, are rolling in, and the praise is flowing -- especially from Susan G at Daily Kos:

Neiwert's insights after covering right-wing extremism movements, his gift with language, his considerable storytelling skills all combine to make And Hell Followed With Her a near compulsive—and frightening—read. His ability to combine the history of these various organizations with the more immediate crime, and his analysis of the mindset of those who spent their lives immersed in the delusions of the right wing, make this book an important one, one with implications that reach far beyond one woman, two deaths and one border town.

If you'd like a sample, AlterNet published the entirety of Chapter 12 at its website:

The Anti-Immigrant Paranoia That Drives Shawna Forde to 'Patrol' the American Border

You may also want to peruse the discussion of the book that occurred Sunday at the Firedoglake Book Salon (thanks to Brian Tashman for hosting, and to Bev Wright for arranging everything).

Finally, here's the audio of my interview with Steve Scher at KUOW-FM earlier this week:



I think you'll find that what they're saying is true: This book is a must-read, not just important but compelling as hell too.


Cross-posted from Crooks and Liars.

'And Hell Followed With Her': The West Coast Tour (so far)

Announcing the 'And Hell Followed' Spring Tour! Coming soon to a bookstore near you (if you happen to live on West Coast) ...

http://www.amazon.com/And-Hell-Followed-With-Her/dp/1568587252/

My book about the Minutemen and Shawna Forde will be released tomorrow at a bookstore near you (be sure to ask your favorite store for a copy). And I'll be signing copies at a number of stores in the Northwest early this spring. We're planning to expand later this spring to signings in California and elsewhere, but these are the dates we've lined up so far.

Tuesday, March 26
University Bookstore
4326 University Way NE
Seattle, WA 98105
7:00 p.m.

Wednesday, March 27
Elliott Bay Books
1521 Tenth Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122
7:00 p.m.

Thursday, March 28
Powell’s City of Books
1005 W. Burnside St.
Portland, Oregon
7:30 p.m.

Friday, March 29
Seattle Public Library, Ballard Branch
Secret Garden Books
5614 22nd Ave. N.W.
Seattle, WA 98107
7:00 p.m.

Thursday, April 4
Third Place Books
17171 Bothell Way NE
Lake Forest Park, WA 98155
7:00 p.m.

Saturday, April 6
Fact and Fiction
220 N Higgins
Missoula, MT 59802
2:00 p.m.

Friday, April 12
Village Books
1200 11th Street
Bellingham, WA 98225
7:00 p.m.

Saturday, April 20
Barnes & Noble
1315 N. Milwaukee St.
Boise, ID
4-7 p.m.

I'll also be making some radio appearances. I'll be on KUOW's "Weekday" show with Steve Scher on Wednesday morning, March 27, during the 9:00 a.m. PDT hour. I'll provide a link for that on the morning of the show.

 Also, I was interviewed last night on San Francisco's KGO AM by Pat Thurston, discussing the book's contents. You can listen to it here:

A nice review for 'And Hell Followed'

David Takami has written a nice review of my new book, And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, for the Seattle Times:

David Neiwert’s new book is a taut true-crime story told with a measure of gravitas, gripping as much for the grisly particulars of a violent murder as for the fascinating context of the anti-immigrant movement playing out along the U. S-Mexico border.

... Neiwert shows how credulous media members — especially local television stations and CNN’s Lou Dobbs — whipped up the hysteria with softball interviews of Chris Simcox, Jim Gilchrist and other Minuteman leaders. As the author astutely observes, the anti-Latino, anti-immigrant frenzy recalls historical racism in the American west, especially anti-Asian campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries.

... Though the incidents in this book occurred nearly four years ago, the circumstances surrounding the murders are still highly relevant. As the national debate on immigration heats up again, this is a must-read for those who seek a deeper understanding of the issues and emotions behind the rhetoric.

Some of you may have noticed that an excerpt ran this weekend in Salon:

Secrets of the right-wing conspiracy playbook 

The debate over immigration and the border is a classic example of how the extreme right manipulates real issues

And for those of you in the Bay Area, you may have heard me tonight on KGO-AM being interviewed by Pat Thurston. 

The word is getting out. I'll have more tomorrow.

 

 

Announcing 'And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border'

Longtime Orcinus readers are already familiar with the tragic case of Brisenia Flores and her killer, the Minuteman movement figure Shawna Forde.

Soon they will be able to read the full account of the story. It's titled And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, and it's being published by Nation Books. It will be on bookstore shelves (and on your doorstep, if you choose) on March 26, but you can order it in advance by clicking on the Amazon link above (or at Barnes and Noble or Powell's Books if you prefer.

The book represents several years' worth of work. Beyond covering the exploits of Forde -- including her trial and those of her cohorts -- the book also covers the entire story of the Minuteman movement, which I have been writing about continuously since 2005, including an earlier investigation of its fundraising activities.
You can read some of the results of my most recent investigative work on the Minutemen and Shawna Forde's role in the movement in the AlterNet article I wrote last year, which in many ways is a condensed version of much of the material in And Hell Followed.

However, as you'll see, there is a great deal more in the book, including much more detail, as well as the full story of what occurred in Arivaca that terrible night in 2009. The book opens with a recounting of how that night ended, with a 911 call to dispatchers in Tucson. You can hear that call here:




Of course, I have many people to thank for this book. But it is above all a project of the the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute. It's really an amazing, weird, twisted, and deeply disturbing story, one worthy of the Coen Brothers (and in fact, we are currently working on selling the film rights to the book). I hope you are as moved reading it as I was writing it.

Here's the advance praise, aka the blurbs on the cover:

From Charles Pierce:

There is no more dogged or more courageous chronicler of the radical American Right than Dave Neiwert. In this latest work, he has found a human tragedy that is both utterly heartbreaking and utterly infuriating. He is the polestar by which we navigate the great distance between what we claim to be as a people, and what we truly are. A devastating, and extremely important, book.

From Joe Conason:

In a masterwork reminiscent of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, David Neiwert tells the gripping story of a far-right underworld awash in criminality, racism, and violence -- except that it happened here and every word is true.

From Mark Potok:

David Neiwert’s latest book is a cogent and comprehensive look at contemporary border vigilante groups, built around that movement’s most infamous crime — the murder of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter by a deranged nativist leader and her followers. This important volume reveals the stark racism and violence at the core of a movement that claims disingenuously to be defending America against dangerous foreigners.

 More soon about my upcoming bookstore appearances in support.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Where did Dave go?

-- by Dave

Hi all. It's been awhile, hasn't it?

As many of whatever few readers I have remaining are probably aware, I've been running John Amato's blog Crooks and Liars for most of the past four years or so. Initially I cross-posted all my C&L work over here, but it wound up just being too much extra work at a time when I was overwhelmed with it. So gradually the cross-posting went away.

However, I stepped down as C&L's managing editor this past December and have now retired to the greener pastures of being a Senior Editor there. Lately I've hardly been posting at all. I wouldn't exactly say I'm retired from blogging, but I have taken a hiatus.

Much of what will be preoccupying my attention for the next several months will be signing and promoting my new book, And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, which is hitting bookstore shelves March 26. I'll have more on it here soon.

But I'm hoping to get back to blogging, too. What I really would like to do is get back to blogging here as I originally conceived it -- a sketchboard for larger projects, a chance to work out some long-form writing, plus the usual nuggets from subjects that interest me.

 Increasingly, a lot of that will be killer whale-related. This summer I'll be doing serious research on my next book, whose working title is Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us. It will be an abrupt departure from my previous work on right-wing extremists, but one that people who know me understand fully.

I'll also be going back and back-filling my old C&L posts, finally cross-posting them here. Just so the record will be complete. As you can see, I spruced the place up a few weeks ago. Hope those of you who enjoyed my old original blog of ten years ago will pull up a chair and join me from time to time.

Arizona Republicans Stand Up to Fight Evil UN Enviro Plot

Oooh, look out, people. The United Nations is coming to destroy your freedoms and take away your way of life.

Fortunately, we have the far-right Republicans of the Arizona Legislature out there on the front lines protecting us.

The same woman -- Republican Sen. Judy Burges, R-Hateful Old People (aka Sun City West) -- who sponsored Arizona's notorious birther law is back this session with SB 1403, a bill that would prevent Arizona from participating in any kind of legislation that would support the eeeeevil UN "Agenda 21" plan to destroy America through environmental laws.

As Laurie Roberts at the Arizona Republic reports:

“I appear before you to address a United Nations program that is designed to change our way of life, our heritage and our liberties as outlined and protected by our most precious Constitution,” she announced. “I testify to you against the seductive evils contained in the United Nations’ agenda for the 21st Century and more easily stated, Agenda 21.”

The Sun City West Republican has often been on the front lines during her eight years at the Capitol, battling conspiracies of both a global and national nature. So it is no surprise that she is back again this year with Senate Bill 1403, a proposal that appears to undo decades of environmental protections, limit citizen access to information about hazardous materials and in general leave people – the ones who don’t embrace tin foil for its millinery properties — scratching their heads.

Burges’ bill, simply put, would bar state or local government from abiding by any of the principles set forth in the United Nations Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.
Agenda 21, as it’s called, is a non binding agreement approved in 1992 during a UN conference in Rio de Janeiro. Basically, it’s a list of principles detailing how communities can better conserve natural resources.

But if you’re Burgess, it’s a plot to destroy America.

“The truth contained within this United Nations program depicts something sinister and dark,” she told her fellow lawmakers. “The plan calls for government to take control of all land use and not leave any decisions in the hands of private property owners. It is assumed by the backers of Agenda 21 that people are not good stewards of the land and the government will do a better job if it’s in control. Individual rights are to be given away to the global community as determined by a global governing body, not by local elected representatives … and folks, not even your state Legislature. Furthermore, the contents of the United Nations program reveal that people should be rounded up off their own land and relocated to human settlements close to employment centers and transportation hubs.”

Burges has trotted out this bill previously. As before, this bill would effectively preempt the state from enforcing any water-quality, air-quality, or other environmental laws. Which is just peachy, as far as today's Republicans are concerned. Even Richard Nixon would be rolling in his grave.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

NRA's Latest Outburst: Evil Mexicans Are Coming to Kill You!

I think it is now safe to assert that the National Rifle Association is now officially a far-right extremist organization. It began its final descent into this realm -- where it had been teetering increasingly in the recent years -- this week, and with this latest outburst, it's now official.

Earlier this week, there was the incident involving that Wisconsin chapter's lobbyist who dared utter publicly what the gun nuts have been telling each other all along about how the "Connecticut effect" will eventually "die down" -- at which national leaders went extra lengths to dissociate themselves from those crazies in Wisconsin, with zero credibility.

And now they've released this video (first to members only, then leaked onto YouTube) -- with a supporting op-ed by NRA chief Wayne LaPierre -- indulging in the most nakedly racial fearmongering you can get away with these days.

It seems that, according to the NRA, you need to buy a gun -- and not just any gun, but a freaking assault-style weapon -- so that you can defend yourself and your family from the horde of rampaging bloodthirsty brown Mexicans about to come pouring over our borders.

No, really. Watch this for yourself.

Matt Gertz at Media Matters analyzes LaPierre's accompanying op-ed:

Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are perils we are sure to face--not just maybe. It's not paranoia to buy a gun. It's survival. It's responsible behavior, and it's time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that.

Since the election, millions of Americans have been lining up in front of gun stores, Cabela's and Bass Pro Shops exercising their freedom while they still have it. They are demonstrating they have a mass determination to buy, own and use firearms. Millions of Americans are using market forces like never before to demonstrate their ardent support for our firearm freedoms.

That's one of the very best ways we can Stand And Fight.

Why have they been buying guns? Because the NRA has been telling them since forever that the end of the world as we know it is right around the corner. And sure enough, that black man in the White House is going to bring it about:

Meanwhile, President Obama is leading this country to financial ruin, borrowing over a trillion dollars a year for phony “stimulus” spending and other payoffs for his political cronies. Nobody knows if or when the fiscal collapse will come, but if the country is broke, there likely won’t be enough money to pay for police protection. And the American people know it.

The NRA is the only thing preventing a Mad Max-style apocalypse from descending upon our society, you see. Americans' real enemy, they warn, is our own government. And this is their response:

We will not surrender. We will not appease. We will buy more guns than ever. We will use them for sport and lawful self-defense more than ever. We will grow the NRA more than ever. And we will be prouder than ever to be freedom-loving NRA patriots. And with your help, we will ensure that the Second Amendment remains America's First Freedom.

This is functionally insurrectionist fearmongering, urging members to arm up so that they can defend not just against Mexicans, but their own government.

That's the same view that was being promoted this week from that same Wisconsin NRA chapter, via a "Patriot" news site called "The Reality News":

WAUSAU, Wisconsin— At a state conference this past weekend, the NRA helped distribute a newspaper that called for Wisconsin secession and a new civil war.

The article, which appeared in a Wisconsin-based conservative publication called “The Reality News”, was among the literature being distributed at the NRA’s Wisconsin State Convention on February 9th.

In “What Would Davy Crockett Say?”, author Karl P. Koenigs calls for liberating “our home country of Wisconsin.” If that doesn’t work, Koenigs advocates “a combo Civil/Re-Revolutionary War” to “restore the Rule of OUR Laws on our elected, non-elected and wannabe elected Republican and Democrat Federal servants through the refreshment of the Tree of Liberty by its natural manure.” The last part is a reference to the Thomas Jefferson quote that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

You can visit The Reality News site [WARNING: Extremist site] and see for yourself. The Wisconsin NRA figure responsible for the connection, Karl Koenigs, displays the typical far-right antipathy to democratic institutions:

ELECTIONS ARE NOT THE SOLUTION TO OUR PROBLEM; ELECTIONS ARE THE PROBLEM!

As he goes on to explain:

This is a most heinous disease that can only be cured by the constitutional De-Centralized power of our home country of Wisconsin restoring our “supreme Laws” on our Federal public servants within our borders; OR otherwise by a combo Civil/Re-Revolutionary War with the very same goal to restore the rule of OUR Laws on our elected non-elected and wannabe elected Republican and Democrat Federal servants through the refreshment of the Tree of Liberty by its natural manure. (sic)

That's what you call a classic call for violent insurrection.

Nathaniel Downes dug up some further writing by Koenigs, who it seems is also a member of the Oath Keepers (about whom we have written a great deal previously as a far-right "Patriot" organization) and the "Constitutional Sheriffs" (ditto), which unsurprisingly falls into classic Patriot-movement insurrectionist "small cell" organizing:

What YOU and a bunch of Patriots like you need to do is form a coalition to:

1. Form a base “Committee on State Sovereignty” (which is, at this point anyway and likely hopefully never, for secession).
2. Create a framework of communication “nodes” and a communications HQ which will be the Chairperson of the Committee.
3. There shall be a “node” in each State Senate and Assembly voting district in the State.
4. Each “node” leader shall procure 20 – 25+ callers who stand at ready to make calls to their State Senator and Assemblyman upon a signal from HQ to make very well timed and coordinated requests to sponsor and pass initiatives starting with the State Sovereignty Resolution.
5. Produce a very constitutionally crafted State Sovereignty Resolution with Arrest Provision. The Arrest Provision makes it “binding”, in every sense of the term and more than just “feel good” words that are more shallow than a politicians promise.
6. I would highly recommend using the Alternate State Sovereignty Resolution we are, altered for your state, because it is as Constitutional as you can get, no court can rationally argue against it, as it has largely been drafted by the authors of The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, Messrs. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and has been specifically drafted for NULLIFICATION of any unlawful Act of Congress or the Executive branch which usurps powers, size, scope or spending that exceeds the eighteen enumerated powers under Article I Section 8 of The Constitution in accord with the 9th and 10th Amendments. This version of State Sovereignty will specifically facilitate the defense to any Federal court challenge of any properly nullified Federal usurpation made by the State, specifically BECAUSE of the wording and the language. If anybody asks me I will forward a copy of ours to you.
7. The State Sovereignty Resolution shall have a provision for a delegation of Senate and Assemblymen to travel to assemble with all the other States; From the coalition muster a delegation of 2 – 4 persons who will be able to lobby, mostly together as is best, the State Senators and Assemblymen and provide valuable feedback from the happenings at the Capitol.
8. The State Sovereignty Resolution shall have a provision for a delegation of Senate and Assemblymen to travel to assemble with all the other States; After the Sovereignty Resolution has been sponsored and passed by at least one house, both would be better, then start working procuring sponsorship and support for the following companion legislative measures in support of and preparation for NULLIFICATION: http://youtu.be/bLjQzlMDX2I
9. All County Sheriff Departments shall be provided a course on The Constitution by The National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS) or by Michael Badnarik to ensure that they have a comprehensive understanding of what they have sworn an Oath to protect and defend against all enemies both foreign and domestic..
10. All State and Local Law Enforcement shall be provided and shall attend a Constitutional course by The National Center for Constitutional Studies or Michael Badnarik to ensure that they have a comprehensive understanding of what they have sworn an Oath to protect and defend against all enemies both foreign and domestic..
11. All State National Guard members shall attend a Constitutional course by NCCS or Michael Badnarik to ensure that they have a comprehensive understanding of what they have sworn an Oath to protect and defend against all enemies both foreign and domestic.
12. All County Sheriffs and their deputies shall join www.CountySheriffProject.org and www.Oathkeepers.org. Cost for dues shall come out of their own pockets, so that they are personally invested in the program and have financial incentive to know and be involved with these programs.
13. All State and local Law Enforcement shall join www.Oathkeepers.org. Cost for dues shall come out of their own pockets, so that they are personally invested in the program and have financial incentive to know and be involved with these programs.
14. All County Sheriffs Departments shall offer, facilitate and train Constitutional Militia in each corner and center of their county for a minimum of five units. All Militia members shall give the Oath to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic.
15. All Constitutional Militia members shall attend a Constitution course by NCCS or Michael Badnarik paid for by their respective county government.
16. Cities and towns shall contribute to facilitate and provide equipment and gear for their local Constitutional Militia volunteers.

After all of the above State legislative measures been enacted and engaged, then the State shall start nullifying all unlawful Acts of Congress AND the Executive branch and all associated usurpation, tyranny, coercion, mandates and Income and other taxation dating back to at least 1913 including all Acts that exceed the eighteen enumerated powers clauses under Article I Section 8 of The Constitution, pursuant to the 9th and 10th Amendments.

Result: Balance of the Union follows the same process, U.S. Government dissolved by 2/3rds which exceeds the eighteen enumerated powers, size, scope and spending WE THE PEOPLE granted them to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” (Source: Preamble of The Constitution).

STATE SOVEREIGNTY + NULLIFICATION = N.B.C.R. !

These measures are specifically designed to PREVENT an otherwise imminent combo Civil/Re-Revolutionary War to accomplish the exact same thing WE THE PEOPLE can do by peaceful resolve; RESTORE the RULE of Our Constitutional Laws on our elected, non-elected and wannabe elected Republican and Democrat Federal public servants, especially but not limited to the EIGHTEEN enumerated powers in accord with the 9th and 10th Amendments in The Bill of Rights. And to PREVENT WAR and Martial Law, following the collapse of the U.S. Dollar by PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.

This is your modern NRA, folks: The political vanguard of the armed Patriot movement. This is not a healthy development, but it does mean we are nearing the bottom of this organization's long rightward slide.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Immigration Ball Rolling, But GOP Has To Get Crazy Base Behind It

Sure, it's easy for Republican senators to get all collegial in the confines of their white-granite hallways and talk sweet nothings to the Latino voters who ran the other direction in the 2012 elections. Just wait till they get out and meet their base and try to talk the same sweet nothings to them. The word came out of the Beltway yesterday that a group of senators from both parties had cobbled together the outlines of a comprehensive immigration-reform bill, just ahead of President Obama's announcement of his own plan:

A bipartisan group of senators has agreed on a set of principles for a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system, including a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that would hinge on progress in securing the borders and ensuring that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire. The senators were able to reach a deal by incorporating the Democrats’ insistence on a single comprehensive bill that would not deny eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants, with Republican demands that strong border and interior enforcement had to be clearly in place before Congress could consider legal status for illegal immigrants.

As the L.A. Times story notes, this really is quite a sea change, especially considering the nativist spectacle to which we were treated during the 2012 Republican primary season:

The Senate plan is more conservative than President Obama's proposal, which he plans to unveil Tuesday in a speech in Las Vegas. But its provisions for legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants go further than measures that failed to advance in Congress in previous years — a reminder of how swiftly the politics of immigration have shifted since Latino voters' strong influence in the November election.

It's almost certain that this plan is well short of a progressive plan for immigration reform, but it is at least a start -- particularly given that a path to citizenship is now the preferred model for sensible Republicans, rather than the mass-deportation and self-deportation positions the GOP's nativist wing has favored for so many years.

Of course, simply whispering sweet nothings to Latinos after years of demonizing them is not going to be an easy sell to Latino voters, as Digby explains -- these are not going to be voters who lean conservative in any event. But that is exactly what the Republican base fears about Latino immigrants anyway -- which is why they are now in the opening stages of Going Completely F****ing Nuts on this issue.

Leading the charge, unsurprisingly, is none other than our favorite Anchor Baby herself, Michelle Malkin, who is now tearing out her voluminous hair and glowering in the general direction of Marco Rubio and John McCain, warning that "the solution to the problem" for Republicans, voting-demographic-wise, "isn’t to throw in the towel and tie enforcement-in-name-only to a de jure amnesty":

And don’t believe the hype from Rubio supporters that this warmed-over shamnesty proposal — another recipe for more illegal immigration, a bigger welfare state, and undermined sovereignty — is somehow new, improved and more enlightened.

Predictably, the white nationalists have chimed in in agreement, as well as the Tea Party faction, represented by William Teach at Right Wing News:

McCain, Bush, Lindsay Graham, and many of the others pushing Shamnesty in 2007 were saying the same thing, and the answer now is the same as then: these illegals, when they obtain citizenship, will mostly end up being Democrat voters, not Republican voters. So many of them are going to end up right in the social entitlement system. Just like happened in 1986 when Democrats talked Reagan into it, saying “just this one time”. And just like then, any deal will embolden future illegals to come.

That's who these Republican senators are going to be encountering over the next several months -- particularly as the media mouth-foamers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck get into the act. Then we'll see how they talk afterwards.
More significantly, even the passage of a Senate immigration-reform bill will mean nothing once it reaches the Tea Party-dominated House -- as Steve Israel observed this morning on MSNBC:

ISRAEL: It's all about whether House Republicans are willing to stand up to the Tea Party base. You've got a bipartisan group of senators left and right advocating a path forward. You've got the president of the United States, who will unveil his views on a path forward. What this comes down to now is will these House Republicans, who have pandered to their intolerant Tea Party base, who have fed into the extremism of that Tea Party base, are they willing to stand up to the Tea Party and do what's right for America? We'll see whether they're able to amass the votes to move us forward.

We wish them the best of luck. Especially considering that over in the House, they are currently moving in the opposite direction: As Devin Burghart at IREHR reports, efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship are picking up steam in the House Republicans' version of an immigration committee.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Just Another Isolated Incident: Arkansas Dem Staffer's Cat Slain, 'Liberal' Scrawled On Body

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Ardem at Blue Arkansas reports a horrifying case (with graphic pictures of the cat, may not be safe for children):

Last night, I got the most chilling phone call I have ever received. It was Jake Burris, Ken Aden’s campaign manager. Last night, Jake and his four kids had come back to their Russellville home. As they were getting out of the car, one of his children discovered their family cat dead on the front porch. One side of the animal’s head had been bashed in and an eyeball was hanging out of its socket. But there was something even more horrifying to be found on the corpse.
Written across the animal’s fur in black marker was the word “LIBERAL“.

It does make you wonder if the perpetrator of this act has himself one of those "Liberal Hunting Licenses", doesn't it?
Scott Keyes at Think Progress reports:

Pope County, where Burris lives, is a highly-conservative area of Arkansas. Aden has been running for the 3rd congressional district seat, currently held by Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR), since August 2011. He released a statement on the matter this morning: “To kill a child’s pet is just unconscionable. As a former combat soldier, I’ve seen the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. Whoever did this is definitely part of the worst of humanity.”

Ken Aden is a Blue America candidate, so go read more about him.
As Ardem observes:

This is terrorism. There’s no other word for it. A police report has been filed. Jake said the kids seem to be handling it okay. The one that discovered the cat was too young to be able to read and Jake had quickly gotten the others into the house before they saw it. Pope County is an insanely conservative area and the Aden campaign has been shaking things up even there and it looks like another right wing sociopath with a taste for violence has come crawling out of the woodwork in response. I asked Aden for a comment on the record:
“This is sickening. To kill a child’s pet…I’m at a loss for words…I’ve seen the best and the worst of humanity, but this is something else.”
Both Ken and Jake though made it clear that they weren’t going to back down on the campaign trail, both agreeing that caving to this kind of behavior would only make things worse.
“I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it.”, Jake said. “If I have to protect my kids I’ll do it without hesitation.”

Most of you know I've written at length about this kind of right-wing behavior, especially in my book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. Unfortunately, the book's publisher went belly up in the past year, and it's currently hard to obtain, though we are working on at least making it available in Kindle form.
In any event, I thought I'd include some relevant passages, all from the Introduction:

These incidents – the nasty personal encounters, the ugliness at campaign rallies, the violent acts of “lone wolf” gunmen – are anything but unique. If you’re a liberal in America – or for that matter, anyone who happens to have run afoul of the conservative movement and its followers – you’ve probably heard it. Anecdotally, hundreds of Americans have similar tales to tell – unexpected and brutal viciousness, coming from otherwise ordinary, everyday people, nearly all of them political conservatives, nearly all directed at their various “enemies”: liberals, Latinos, Muslims, and just about anyone who disagrees with them.
This kind of talk – voiced sometimes as inchoate rage, and at others as perverse “humor” – is not aimed at public discourse, but its very antithesis: threatening and intimidating and, ultimately, eliminating opponents. It does this by framing them as the Enemy, verminous scum, disease-ridden and disease-like cancers on the body politic who deserve not dialogue but simple purgation.
This is called eliminationism: a kind of politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas for the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination.
Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on some distinctive shapes. It always depicts its opposition as simply beyond the pale, and in the end the embodiment of evil itself -- unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus in need of elimination. It often depicts its designated "enemy" as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and loves to incessantly suggest that its targets are themselves disease carriers. A close corollary -- but not as nakedly eliminationist -- are claims that the opponents are traitors or criminals, or gross liabilities for our national security, and thus inherently fit for elimination or at least incarceration.
Eliminationism is often voiced as crude "jokes", the humor of which, when analyzed, is inevitably predicated on a venomous hatred. But what we also know about this rhetoric is that, as surely as night follows day, this kind of talk eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic results.
Two key factors distinguish eliminationist rhetoric from other political hyperbole:
• It is focused on an enemy within, people who constitute entire blocs of the citizen populace, and
• It advocates the excision and extermination, by violent means or civil, of those entire blocs.
Eliminationism -- and particularly the rhetoric that precedes it and fuels it -- represents a kind of self-hatred. In an American culture which advertises itself as predicated on inclusiveness, eliminationism runs precisely counter to those ideals. Eliminationists, at heart, really hate the very idea of America.
It has its origins, like slavery and war, in some of man's most ancient and most savage impulses: the desire to dominate others, through violence if necessary. However, in contrast, it goes largely unnoticed and largely unexamined, perhaps because it is a side of human nature so ugly we prefer not even to recognize its existence -- so much so that only recently have we even had a term like "eliminationism" with which to frame it.
The term's first significant use came from historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in his controversial text, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, where it appears extensively and plays a central role in his thesis that "eliminationist antisemitism" had a unique life in German culture and eventually was the driving force behind the Holocaust. In the text, Goldhagen never provides a concise definition of the word, but rather constructs a massively detailed description of the eliminationist mindset:
The eliminationist mind-set that characterized virtually all who spoke out on the "Jewish Problem" from the end of the eighteenth century onward was another constant in Germans' thinking about Jews. For Germany to be properly ordered, regulated, and, for many, safeguarded, Jewishness had to be eliminated from German society. What "elimination" -- in the sense of successfully ridding Germany of Jewishness -- meant, and the manner in which this was to be done, was unclear and hazy to many, and found no consensus during the period of modern German antisemitism. But the necessity of the elimination of Jewishness was clear to all. It followed from the conception of the Jews as alien invaders of the German body social. If two people are conceived of as binary opposites, with the qualities of goodness inhering in one people, and those of evil in the other, then the exorcism of that evil from the shared social and temporal space, by whatever means, would be urgent, an imperative. "The German Volk," asserted one antisemite before the midpoint of the century, "needs only to topple the Jew" in order to become "united and free."
Hitler's Willing Executioners is an important and impressive piece of scholarship, particularly in the extent to which it catalogues the willing participation of the "ordinary" citizenry in so many murderous acts, as well as in the hatemongering that precipitated them. And his identification of "eliminationism" as a central impulse of the Nazi project was not only borne out in spades by the evidence, but was an important insight into the underlying psychology of fascism.
The eliminationist project is in many ways the signature of fascism, partly because it proceeds naturally from fascism's embrace of what Oxford Brookes scholar Roger Griffin calls palingenesis, or a Phoenix-like national rebirth, as its core myth. And the Nazi example clearly demonstrates how eliminationist rhetoric has consistently preceded, and heralded, the eventual assumption of the eliminationist project – indeed, it has played a critical role in giving permission for it to proceed, essentially creating the cultural and psychological conditions that enable the subsequent violence.
Goldhagen's focus is almost solely the Holocaust and the virulently anti-Semitic form that took root in Europe prior to the Second World War. However, as a principle, we can see eliminationism playing a role in human history through the ages -- including its special role in American history and the shaping of American culture, right up to the present day.
I noticed this in part because, at the time that I read Goldhagen’s text, I was engaged in a historical research project involving the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and was struck by the similarity of what Goldhagen was describing regarding the buildup to Nazi power to both the rhetoric and the behavior of Americans not only during the nadir of that horrific episode, but over the course of the forty years and more that had preceded the event, toward Asians generally and the Japanese specifically.
But a familiarity with the darker corners of American history tells us the phenomenon has not been restricted to Asians. Eliminationist rhetoric, followed and accompanied inevitably by an actual campaign of often-violent eliminationism, has been a specter hanging over our most shameful episodes: the destruction of the native American people; the subjugation of African Americans, from slavery to Jim Crow, the “lynching era,” and “sundown towns”; and the nativist anti-immigrant campaigns of various eras targeting ethnic minorities from the Irish to the Germans to Italians, Asians, and today, Latinos. It lives today in the form of hate crimes and hateful rhetoric directed toward gays and lesbians, Muslims, and various minorities.
More recently the eliminationism has also come to be directed at not merely these minorities, but the “liberals” who are perceived as their enablers – antiwar activists, environmentalists, civil-rights guardians. Which means that the hateful rhetoric and its poisonous consequences are starting to spread.
I began observing this phenomenon back in 2003 at my blog Orcinus, almost as an offhand observation at first, but I asked readers to chip in and tell me their own experiences, as well as to link me to stories that fell into this category. It was like tapping into a high-voltage power line. Comments poured in to my blog, and there were as many if not more e-mails.
Incidents like these are difficult to catalog or quantify. Only on occasion (as in the Van Der Meer case) do matters ever reach the level of being reported in the press – indeed, it’s rare that police are even called or involved. But judging from the outpouring at Orcinus and elsewhere, it seems clear that, as far as many progressives are concerned, eliminationist rhetoric has so deeply infected the popular discourse that it is now almost pervasive, and indeed poisoning how we treat each other in our daily lives.
...
Eliminationism has become an endemic feature of modern movement conservatism – not bothering to argue the facts or merits of issues but to simply demand outright the suppression or violent oppression (and ultimately the purgation) of elements deemed harmful to American society. It is aimed not merely at Latinos and Muslims – the current major targets – but also its historical targets: blacks and Indians, gays and lesbians, Jews and other religious minorities. But perhaps most commonly and generically, and most casually, its target is the common liberal.
This kind of rhetoric doesn’t constitute actual discourse, but rather its opposite – it is, in effect the death of discourse itself. Instead of offering an opposing idea, it simply shuts down intellectual exchange and replaces it with the brute wish to silence and eliminate.
As we’ve seen from the preceding examples, a lot of eliminationist talk occurs on a small, personal level, often during chance encounters with other drivers or shoppers or diners-out. But it is not occurring in a vacuum. Much of this kind of talk in fact has been publicly encouraged by a steady patter of similar talk from prominent right-wing media and political figures. It's being promoted at the highest levels of movement conservatism, by everyone from media figures to religious and political leaders.
It can be heard not just in bizarre road-rage incidents and ugly exchanges among former friends, but from the very fonts of public information that are the mass media. Figures like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck routinely engage in it and inflame it with bogus stories -- nonsensical conspiracy theories and outrageously inflammatory misinformation – derived from fanatical far-right sources. What happened to Timothy Burke is becoming a commonplace because it’s being openly encouraged by major figures in the conservative movement, both in the media and in officialdom.
...
The problem with eliminationism isn’t that it is simply unpleasant or ugly or even uncomfortable discourse, which is what can often be fairly said of the left’s frequently charged rhetoric. The problem, as we already noted, is that it implies the death of discourse, as well as its dissolution into violence and the use of force.
These are not mere jokes, even when they’re presented as such. The humor in them – whatever might be funny about them – is entirely contingent on an underlying attitude about conservatives’ fellow Americans that not only demonizes them, but reduces them to subhuman level, prime targets for violent elimination. The people telling them and repeating them may think they are mere jokes, and perhaps in their own minds, they are. But they have a concrete real-world effect -- because inevitably members of their audience (particularly the more hate-filled and mentally unstable types) will eventually act them out.
...
It is by small steps of incremental meanness and viciousness that we lose our humanity. We have the historical example of 20th-century fascism to remind us of this. The Nazis, in the end, embodied the ascension of utter demonic inhumanity, but they didn't get that way overnight. They got that way through, day after day, attacking and demonizing and urging the elimination of those they deemed their enemies. They did this by not simply creating them as The Enemy, but by denying them their essential humanity, depicting them as worse than scum -- disease-laden, world-destroying vermin, in desperate need of elimination. But that kind of behavior has hardly been restricted to the Nazis; indeed, it has a long history in America as well.
This is why eliminationism is such an acute warning sign: It has historically played the role of creating permission for people to act out their violent impulses against its targets. More than any other facet of para-fascism, it poses the greatest specific danger of transformation into the real thing.
This is why there is a special quality to eliminationist rhetoric. It has the distinctive odor of burning flesh. And when it hits our nostrils, that is a warning we dare not ignore.