Unfortunately, Van Jones resigned from his position with the White House Council on Environmental Quality this past weekend. Van was one of the few movement progressives in a policymaking role with this administration and his loss will be felt across the board. We're sure that Van will continue his work fighting for a Green Collar Economy with the same spirit he showed when he delivered a keynote address at Netroots Nation 2008. He'll always be warmly welcomed at Netroots Nation in the future.
But it makes sense to talk about the larger problem that lead to Van's resignation. Carl Pope called it a lynch mob and the only thing he's wrong about is that it didn't start a month ago, it's been building since before the 2008 election.
It was during those McCain / Palin rallies during the summer of 2008 where this beast first reared it's ugly head. It was mostly reported on without calls for the McCain campaign to denounce that dangerous rhetoric.
After the election it escalated with the birtherism conspiracy and now it wasn't a few isolated cranks at a political rally. This conspiracy theory was being entertained by everyone from conservative activists to GOP Congressmen to well known journalists like Lou Dobbs. And of course it's no surprise that polls show a large plurality of the Republican party still believes Obama was not born in the United States. Yet in general the media didn't call out Republican Congressmen and journalists like Lou Dobbs for entertaining such conspiracy theories with strong racist undertones as serious matters.
Then came the congressional recess this past August where citizens and GOP activists turned out to disrupt town halls across the country. This action was clearly coordinated by conservative lobbying groups. During these town halls Obama has been called everything from a socialist to a communist to Hitler to a terrorist sympathizer to racial epithets. In at least one instance a man brought a gun to a rally and wished for his death. And the media lapped all this up and treated these town hall activists as "the other side" in a reasonable debate. They are not the other side. They are extremists disrupting respectable discourse, some of them with violent intent. But that's not what you heard and read in August unless you were watching Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann or reading pretty much any progressive blog.
And that brings us to this latest episode with Glenn Beck. You should check out everything else he's been saying. He has a long history of extremist rhetoric, and it is never challenged by any large traditional media outlet. So he has his followers dig up dirt on Van Jones and many reporters simply report on the accusations uncritically as if they are unimpeachable fact. Do they bother to talk with people like Eva Paterson who first hired Van? Of course not. Even now outlets like the Washington Post are calling this a "vetting lapse". It's shameful.
As events have unfolded over the past year the media has allowed their collective tolerance of outright racism, extremism, and advocacy of violence to grow. When comparisons of our President to Hitler can be freely thrown around as "the other side" of the debate or a nationally respected journalist can seriously consider a conspiracy theory on TV and not be laughed off the air or an extremist like Glenn Beck has any credibility whatsoever with his accusations we've gone to far.
And this isn't over. Here's Beck directing his twitter followers to dig up dirt on more Obama administration officials.
Later this year Netroots Nation is going to start talking a lot more about comprehensive immigration reform since this is one of the things we plan to focus on for Netroots Nation 2010 in Las Vegas. What we've witnessed to date is nothing compared to the hatred, extremist rhetoric, and racism that will surface during that debate. And those on the right know these techniques are effective, so they'll step it up. I fully expect Lou Dobbs to be on leading the charge with the entire Fox News family on this in the media. If progressives expect to win it's something we're going to have to take seriously and combat.
This incident with Van Jones largely took both progressive activists and leaders at organizations by surprise, there was little pushback or support for him while this was going on. Many organizations wrestled with statements and action (including us at Netroots Nation), would it help or hurt his cause? So I think it makes sense to talk about some of these issues and focus on what we can do in the future. Glenn Beck may go after more Obama administration officials, but as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow this will all happen again during the immigration reform debate.
We want to hear your thoughts on better ways to approach this problem in the comments below and join us via email and facebook to get involved in the fight.