"...Overwhelmingly, though, political hate speech today comes from the left. It has increasingly become a habit of leftist argumentation to simply dismiss conservative ideas as evil or noxious rather than rebut them with facts and evidence." (
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe op-ed, Dec. 30, 2004 ) : sharp claims there. Contrast with quote from Bob Jones letter to GW Bush, congratulating Bush on the 2004 election : "Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing.
They despise you because they despise your Christ."
Now, contrast also with this (
John Derbyshire, National Review Online, Feb. 15 2001 ) : "Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past -- I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble -- recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an "enemy of the people". The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, "clan liability". In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished "to the ninth degree": that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed. (This sounds complicated, but in practice what usually happened was that a battalion of soldiers was sent to the offender's home town, where they killed everyone they could find, on the principle neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet -- "let God sort 'em out".) " - Oh my. Let's see : Bill Clinton moved to NYC, so Derbyshire was arguing for the death of everyone in that city, I suppose. Plus the death of all in Princeton, NJ ( or did Chelsea go to Yale ? ) and maybe everyone in DC - because of Hillary's presence there. That's a lot of people.
This is telling too : "Becoming Evil : Boston WTKK-FM radio's Jay Severin advocates genocide of American-Muslims ( April 2004, I believe ) - this is the advocacy of domestic terrorism. And not the mere targeting of civilians but the murder of over three million men, women, and children. Why shouldn't Jay Severin be arrested and charged, under the Patriot Act, with aiding and abetting US domestic terrorist groups which advocate such violence? [Scroll down towards the bottom of the Globe story for a transcript of the quote in context.]
James Waller has studied the process by which individuals and society come to commit mass atrocities", and it turns out that Jay Severin's call for the killing of millions of Muslim American echoes the method by which the Rwandan genocide was incited and organized, via radio broadcasts, and this is very dangerous according to new research that proves that all humans can be socialized to carry out torture and mass political violence :
( New Scientist, Nov. 24, 2004 ) "All humans are capable of committing torture and other "acts of great evil". That is the unhappy conclusion drawn from an analysis of psychological studies. Over 25,000 psychological studies involving eight million participants support this finding, say Susan Fiske and colleagues at Princeton University in New Jersey, US. The researchers considered the circumstances surrounding how individuals committed seemingly inexplicable acts of abuse in the midst of the US military's torture of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and 2004. "Could any average 18-year-old have tortured these prisoners? I would have to answer: `Yes, just about anyone could have.'", Fiske says.
Many forms of behaviour, including acts of cruelty, are influenced as much by authority figures, peer pressure and other social interactions as by the psychology of the individual, she says. "If we don't understand the importance of social context and accept that almost anybody could commit acts of torture under certain circumstances, then we are setting ourselves up for situations where Abu Ghraib [atrocities] will occur again," Fiske warns."
[ HATE GROUP RESOURCE : The Southern Poverty Law Center moniters hate groups and hate speech. They have a very informative map on the concentration of hate groups in the US ( active hate groups, 2003 ) ]
[ Note : the following has a few redundent text sections - I apologize for that and will clean it up as soon as I get a chance ]
One of the most telling traits shared by US Right and the Nazi and Stalinist political movements lies in their common use of eliminationist rhetoric. Dave Neiwert has chronicled this at length and written about the rise of what he terms Pseudo-Fascism" in America, and rhetoric advocating genocide, violence, and discrimination against selected groups is now heard on American radio - even in Liberal areas of the country.
The widespread unchallenged expression, and subsequent cultural acceptance, of such eliminationist rhetoric, especially though mass media, has been identified, by the historian James Waller - in his groundbreaking book " Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing" (Oxford University Press) as one of the key preconditions which has led to outbreaks of som of the worst genocides and cases of mass political violence in 20th Century History. [ example : "In the years up to 1994, many journalists allied themselves with Hutu extremists who planned and carried out the genocide. A magazine called Kangura, or Wake Him Up!, published screeds denigrating Tutsis as a subhuman race that aimed to destroy Rwanda, and urged Hutus to arm themselves. As the genocide got underway on April 6, 1994, the radio station RTLM filled the airwaves with vitriol, even broadcasting the names of individual Tutsis and their hiding places. Confirming the media's murderous role, the UN war crimes tribunal for Rwanda in December convicted key figures from the magazine and the radio station of incitement to genocide."
______
Here's some background on the Republican/Nazi association ( which Jeff Jacoby goes on to dismiss and so demonstrate considerable ignorance of, in his December 30, 2004 Boston Globe op ed ) : Regardless of "Bush = Hitler" comparisons, the historical association between the pre and post-WW2 Republican Party and fascist ideologies - ultimately - is far more important than the role played by George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, in helping to finance Hitler's rise to power, the pre-WW2 buildup of the German war-machine, and also in the illegal laundering of German war profits, via the Union Bank, after the US had entered WW2. ( here's a decent, short cover of that chapter of history by Christian Dewar )
Regardless of politically unwise "Bush = Hitler" comparisons, the historical association of significant elements of the Republican Party with unreconstructed Nazis, ex-Nazis, and Nazi sympathizers has been heavily documented : further, there is an unbroken chain of ideology and tactics tying these ideological movements to the extremist Christian Right in the US which now dominates most of the US Federal Government.
There are, further, many parallels between the methods used by the current Republican Party and those employed by Stalin and his Communist Party, according to a top scholar on Soviet propaganda : ""I have become more and more aware of the Stalinist tactics and mentality of much of the American Right..... Relentless insistence on unity, on the existence of an unprecedented and overwhelming external threat, and on the total moral depravity of political opposition were all integral to Stalinist propaganda, and they are a growing part of conservative rhetoric in the United States today.....[Hateful] rhetoric was the prelude to a terrific acceleration of state murder in the Soviet Union....when I read posts on right-wing websites and blogs such as Free Republic or Little Green Footballs, I am reminded strongly of the rage and rhetoric of the young Communist Party activists in the late 1920s....The drive to sustain the administration's alternative world, and the blind hatred and rage of many of President Bush's supporters, may well have disastrous consequences for America." [ Matthew Lenoe, author of Closer To The Masses. Stalinist Culture,Social Revolution, And Soviet Newpapers. Harvard University Press, 2004 ] An op-ed, by someone who knows a bit about totalitarianism, it reminds me of Metafilters 36201, 32747 24363....
"
Totalitarian methods for the repression of popular protest is becoming routine practice on the part of many large municipalities. ( see : "The Miami Model" : "The Miami Model...is several things: extremely violent police response to nonviolent demonstrators, embedded reporters behind police lines - and arresting and harassing "non-embedded" journalists...(and) mass arrests and an arsenal of "non-lethal" weapons.]...and it represents the next step in the criminalization and repression of dissent that is occurring in the United States right now." It is part of the newly emerging "Technologies of political control" which are rapidly consuming American democracy from within."
................
It may not always be politically prudent to bring this up - for the fact that the young and the foolish will render this association in terms of the divisive and imprecise "Bush = Hitler" slogan :
But the facts of the matter are clear - there is a deep and abiding association and affinity between 20th Century US Republican tactics and ideology and totalitarian ideologies - European Fascism , and with tactics and propaganda techniques also drawn from Stalinism as well . [ For more on the association of key Republican Party members with Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, and Nazi/fascist ideology, see here : Laszlo and the Librarian-Laura Bush letter to a Hungarian Nazi - "...The strongest glue that bound together the various sectors of the New Right's pro-Reagan coalition was anti-communist militarism. Jewish neoconservatives were even willing to overlook the long-standing tolerance of racist and antisemitic sentiments among some paleoconservatives. This led to some strange silences, such as the failure to protest the well-documented presence of a network of emigre reactionaries and anti-Jewish bigots in the 1988 Bush campaign. The neocons could not be budged to action even when investigative writer Russ Bellant revealed that one aging Republican organizer proudly displayed photos of himself in his original Waffen SS uniform, and that Laszlo Pasztor, who had built the Republican emigre network, was a convicted Nazi collaborator who had belonged to the Hungarian Arrow Cross, which aided in the liquidation of Hungary's Jews. (Pasztor is still a key adviser to Paul Weyrich.)" Further, see : " ( see: here, for discussion of the following, which was a posat I did on Metafilter.com )Re-emergent American Eugenics Movement looks to unfinished business - The Tennessee primary win of an avowed Eugenicist Republican Congressional candidate underscores the longstanding association of the Republican Party with a resurgent American Eugenics Movement deeply linked to Nazi racial ideology and championed by the Manhattan Institute and the Nazi-associated Pioneer Fund"
......................
One of the key distinctions to make - crucial, really - is this : unlike the more secular origins of the German Nazi Party, The GOP has recently come to be dominated by an extremist, radical form of right-wing Christianity ( the sponsors of which have extensive ties to fascist ideology ).
: Christian extremist totalitarian government IS a new thing, although it has the characteristics of classic fascism, especially in it's symbiotic alliance with big business.
So, the "Bush=Hitler" slogan may function as a distraction.
American Taliban plans theocracy - soon : Theocracy Watch reports on the religious right's takeover of the Republican Party ( also see : The Yurica Report ), which has become cult-like, and is now characterized by an ends justify the means moral relativism that condones dirty tricks and even violence in pursuit of Biblical "Dominion" ( see : Becoming what you hate : Nathan Sproul, case study in moral relativism on the Religious Right and also my essay, GOD OF ANYTHING GOES : Religious Right becomes amoral relativistic cult for Theocracy )
Importantly, some of the key backers of the rise of the "New Right" and the extremist Christian Right in the US were also the original funders of the two brothers who now run Diebold and ES&S :
Diebold and ES&S Ties to the Religious Right - A bizzare pattern of impossible anomalies This has long been known : the welter of financial ties of Diebold and ES&S to the radical religious right (with stakeholders currently, it seems, on the secretive CNP) and Bob Fitrakis notes : "Wherever Diebold and ES&S go, irregularities and historic Republican upsets follow." Howard Ahmanson was the original funder for Bob and Todd Urosevich's Data Mark,which became ES&S, Bob later left to head Diebold ,maker of HAVA Act mandated touch screen voting machines used in Ohio and Florida and elsewhere....Ahmanson is a Christian Reconstructionist (a form of Dominionism ) who has talked of imposing Biblical law on the US - including the death penalty for gays and drunkards - and is also a main funder of the Chalcedon Foundation
This extremist, cultish Christian faction is expressly anti-democratic. ( see Religious Right's takeover of GOP, further plans. Also see : Letter to my brother on the Religious Right, GOD OF ANYTHING GOES : Religious Right becomes amoral relativistic cult for Theocracy
One of the most telling traits shared by US Right and the Nazi and Stalinist political movements lies in their common use of eliminationist rhetoric. Dave Neiwert has chronicled this at length and written about the rise of what he terms Pseudo-Fascism" in America, and rhetoric advocating genocide, violence, and discrimination against selected groups is now heard on American radio - even in Liberal areas of the country.
The widespread unchallenged expression, and subsequent cultural acceptance, of such eliminationist rhetoric, especially though mass media, has been identified, by the historian James Waller - in his groundbreaking book " Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing" (Oxford University Press) as one of the key preconditions which has led to outbreaks of som of the worst genocides and cases of mass political violence in 20th Century History. [ example : "In the years up to 1994, many journalists allied themselves with Hutu extremists who planned and carried out the genocide. A magazine called Kangura, or Wake Him Up!, published screeds denigrating Tutsis as a subhuman race that aimed to destroy Rwanda, and urged Hutus to arm themselves. As the genocide got underway on April 6, 1994, the radio station RTLM filled the airwaves with vitriol, even broadcasting the names of individual Tutsis and their hiding places. Confirming the media's murderous role, the UN war crimes tribunal for Rwanda in December convicted key figures from the magazine and the radio station of incitement to genocide."
Overall, I think it is accurate to say this - to ignore the origins, associations, and stated intentions of both the Republican Party, the US right as a whole, and the extremist US Christan Right is to beckon, in willful denial, this scenario :
You will be conquered by Stealth and Deception : in the swift advance of a long-planned coup against secular society, to launch an American theocracy, "the Dominionists are succeeding in their quest for national control and world power" - Kathleen Yurica, founder of the Yurica Report which, like Theocracy Watch, monitors the American religious right writes "Since the writing and posting of my essay, The Despoiling of America in February 2004, there is more and more evidence that not only has a cultural war been launched, but that the plotters are winning it....First the hard right dominionists took over the Southern Baptist Convention with its 16 million members and a fortune in corporate businesses. Then they took over the Republican Party...they are moving to limit the power of the Supreme Court. Now there is evidence dominionists are trying to take over the U. S. military
....Americans and the mainstream media have been very slow in catching on to the fact that we are in a war -- a war that is cultural, religious and political, a war that uses stealth and deception and the rules of engagement written by the enemies to representative democracy. Unless Americans wake up, we could lose that war."
Here is one sobering window into one strategy of the extremist, Dominionist Christian right in the US :
FORCE Ministries - Armies of the Night : FORCE Ministries "IN 1998....the Lord began opening doors to the SEAL Team community and to military installations nationwide." : "[ Our] Defining passage : "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it." ( Matthew 11:12 NIV ) : An all consuming fire for Dominion. "They are My Special Forces Unit. They are called by My Name. They are called Kingdom Warriors. They are those I have been grooming since birth. They will be sent out against satan's hoard.