We don’t need to wonder about this one. Eight hours ago four Pittsburgh police served a warrant on a kid in a neighborhood that I could walk to. The man, 23-year-old Richard Poplawski, opened fire with an AK-47 from an upstairs window, wounding all four. Local, State and transit police responded quickly, nonetheless, some of the wounded officers remained in the line of fire and could not be reached for hours. Four officers died from their wounds; Poplawski gave himself up at 11 AM.
Mr. Perkovic and other former classmates said they were surprised by this morning’s events. Mr. Perkovic said Mr. Poplawski was opposed to “Zionist propaganda” and was fearful that his right to own weapons would be taken away.
Another friend, Aaron Vire, 23, said he’d helped Mr. Poplawski and Mr. Perkovic with a radio show they’d broadcast on the Internet, discussing “girls and life.”
Mr. Poplawski had supported Republican candidate John McCain in the presidential election and had “very spirited debates” about Democratic candidate Barack Obama, Mr. Vire said.
Mr. Poplawski was opposed to Mr. Obama’s election, which he thought would result in the loss of his rights, Mr. Vire said.
“He wasn’t a racist but thought some of his amendments were overlooked,” Mr. Vire said.
Mr. Poplawski told him he bought his guns “because he felt the quality of life was being diminished,” Mr. Vire said.
“He said he’ll be ready if there’s ever an invasion of the United States and that he had stockpiled foods and guns for that eventuality.”
How is that “orderly revolution” going, Michelle? How about that laundry soap rebellion, Erick? This is what Glenn Beck’s citizen army looks like. People like Michelle Malkin fantasize about citizens rising up against the (Democratic) state. They stoke their followers’ paranoia with bullshit that, mostly, they know is bullshit, for ratings and a shot at political traction. Did they expect the American revolution?
In response to John’s famous Peak Wingnut post I pointed out that political irrelevance will hardly stifle rightwing victimology but feed it like CO2, manure and sunlight. I tend to call the relevant phenomenon ‘toxic victim syndrome’, or TVS. The feeling that one is a powerless victim has a corrosive psychological effect. It exempts self-appointed victims from normal moral standards. It justifies (in one’s own mind) an endless list of behaviors that an ordinary person would never consider.
Later I highlighted a psychological study demonstrating that people tend to believe insane conspiracy theories more when they have less power over their own life (say, political power). My conclusion stands.
[A]bout peak wingnut theory. Republicans (and Republican bloggers) will spend at least the next two years with about as much political control as a bug in a jar. You can make your own conclusions.
***Update***
It looks like I am the second person to cover the story on this blog. Oh well. Call my post nearly-on-site reporting.
I still do not know whether any of the police killed today are people I know [Edit: no]. I hope not, but at the same time that feels somehow selfish. Every one of them was somebody’s friend and family.
***Update 2***
Speaking of Dave Niewert, his post has more context.
***Update 3***
The Missouri Information Analysis Center must feel ashamed right now for writing a report smearing the upstanding citizens of the modern militia movement.
Jon H
It’s only a matter of time until some Glenn Beck listener blows up a Federal building. Let’s see. Last time it was about two and a half years after Clinton was elected.
The Grand Panjandrum
Dear Mr. Poplawski,
Yes you will lose your rights. You may get the needle and lose your life. But it will have nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Obama was elected President. It will be because you are a murderous criminal. Which, of course, makes it true. YOu know you can rely on Fox to always get it right.
Sincerely,
TGP
On a similar note have you noticed that Fox News has been running headlines that a Taliban leader in Pakistan is claiming responsibility for for the mass killing in Binghamton?
MoeLarryAndJesus
We’ll be seeing abortion clinic shootings and McVeigh-style bombings sooner or later. The batshit wingnuts are armed and angry and naturally stupid and violent. Sad to say this is only the beginning.
joe from Lowell
Ideas have consequences. Remember that one, wingnuts?
demkat620
Well, Fox News is currently running a chyron that asks whether Obama is helping or hurting America.
They have Angela McGowan on made up like a porn star practically screaming that Obama is hurting America.
It is going to be a very scary four years, at least.
GSD
I wonder if Malkin and Beck and the rest of web-wingnuttia will apply the same reporting standards and conclusions to this matter as they do whenever there is a report of a killing or killings carried out by a Muslim or an Arab.
If we can determine that this man was a Christian would it then be appropriate to deride Christianity as "a religion fo peace"?
-GSD
Brachiator
Yes! There is a certain constant of people who believe stuff like this, and they love to massage and rehearse their theories on late night radio call-in shows and wingnut blogs.
And sadly, some appear to have become unhinged recently. As long as a white guy was in charge, they could dampen down some of their fears. But no matter how measured Obama’s words and actions, the wingnut lunatic fringe can’t help themselves and project their deepest fears on reality.
Jon H
I suspect this kid’s emergent schizophrenia was mistaken to be increasingly fervent conservatism.
demkat620
@GSD: I bet you Malkin and Beck never mention this incident. If it doesn’t fit the narrative, it never happened.
harlana pepper
…
gbear
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
About a month ago a guy smashed a truck into the entryway of a Planned Parenthood clinic here in St. Paul. The clinic has since installed a couple of no-nonsense bollards in front of the entryway.
iluvsummr
@Jon H:
And what’s scary is that it’s going to be difficult to separate those who are clearly mentally ill and need help from those who are have outsize anger management problems. Too often it takes a criminal act for intervention to occur and people end up in the criminal justice system or dead instead of getting the medical attention they need. I can’t imagine what it must be like for a paranoid schizophrenic to listen to right wing radio and think "there’s the proof that the government is coming for me."
Mrs. Peel
If the wingnuts had their way, the 6 o’clock news would look like a continual loop of "Lord of the Flies" every night.
The defects of human nature are exemplified every frothy rant they spew out. They never miss a chance to prove that they are inherently evil and if left alone to fend for themselves, they will happily revert back to the savage roots of their lizard brains.
Mrs. Peel
That’s not a mistake. It’s one more symptom of the disease.
Scott
Time for the FBI to start cracking down on domestic terrorism. Not just the guys who commit terroristic acts, but the organizations that are pushing for more.
And no more fucking the cases up like they did (conveniently) for Ted Stevens.
Ash
What is it about conservatives that seems to make them more prone to totally go berserk? For 30 years almost liberals had no real political power. And yeah, the lefties opined about how much we hated the world for giving us so many rotten eggs, but it never amounts to homicidal rage. Is it upbringing? Something genetic?
joe from Lowell
Maybe it’s not a matter of conservatives going nuts.
Maybe it’s a matter of insane people being attracted to conservatism.
Something about the ideology of the modern right appeals to the criminally insane. The paranoia, and cultivated sense of persecution, most likely.
Saucy Knave
Of course the dipshits like Malking and Beck aren’t going to accept ANY responsibility when some fucking abject loser who couldn’t get laid goes on a shooting rampage.
It’s not their fault, gosh, why would anyone think they had anything to do with this?
John Cole
What it boils down to for me is that there are a lot of really crazy people out there standing at the edge of the precipice, and folks like Beck are winding them up and giving them a push.
No one made this lunatic do anything. He was clearly crazy. But the rhetoric being tossed out there in certain circles can inflame the already crazy to act. That is the problem.
Saucy Knave
If that kid who shot all those people at Vtech had a girlfriend, he wouldn’t have done what he did. He was jealous that he was a fucking loser with no friends and no girl, simple as that. He had serious issues about feeling persecuted and wronged by all the other kids, so he got even. Sound familiar?
Same thing with these fucking hillbillies; they all wake up every morning, feeling besieged on all sides by the gays, the liberals, the media, Obama, whoever. They are under attack! And their media enablers, Malkin Beck Limbaaaw, all help feed this paranoid into an already weak mind.
Beck keeps talking about people ‘rising up’…well, here ya go, Glen. He rose up alright, and killed 4 cops because Obama was going to take his phallic symbol from him.
Max
Any maybe that’s because conservative mouthpieces constantly stoke the fires of outrage, inciting their adherents to feel anger continually at incidents real and imagined. Mostly the latter.
No surprise that people who feel anger continually anyway are attracted to that message.
bdeevdad
That’s it. I’m making the GlennBeckBodyCount.com site vis a vis the Jenny McCarthy one if no one else will. Someone needs to call these assholes out.
Brandon T
@Ash:
Umm, the Weathermen? Granted, the militia-style right wing movement seems to be more effective at actually killing their enemies rather than themselves, but it’s dishonest to suggest those tendencies don’t exist among the left. I remember watching a clip with Ayers et al talking about how awesome it was that Manson’s followers killed "those capitalist pigs"…
Fortunately, it seems like the left was embarrassed enough by the incident that this hasn’t happened for quite a long time.
Scott
No one made this lunatic do anything. He was clearly crazy. But the rhetoric being tossed out there in certain circles can inflame the already crazy to act. That is the problem.
The other problem is that you can’t get Beck, Malkin, and the rest of them to stop. If you try, you’ll just make them and their supporters scream louder and target more "undesirables." Unless you can tie them directly to terrorist groups, terroristic activities, or specific threats, you can’t arrest ’em and you can’t make them stop encouraging others to kill other people.
Mrs. Peel
The prime target of their words is the "lone wolf". That way they have a buffer between their words and the havoc they are directly responsible for.
Jackie
@joe from Lowell: I would look it up if I could remember more about it. I heard an interview,when we were first getting to hear about the militia movement in Idaho etc. A psychology phD canidate went undercover and diagnosed a shocking percentage of the people at the meetings he went to as meeting various criteria of mental illness.
It makes sense. Think of the relief we all felt when other people affirmed our sense that the things the whitehouse was peddling were just plain nonsensical. For a while there I felt like I was the only sane person in the room alot of the time. If you are falling into paranioia, as part of your brain disease, it must feel good to hear other people tell you you aren’t crazy. And yes, your relatives can easily look at Mr Beck and say you aren’t any crazier. Makes their denial easier too.
AnneLaurie
Another plug for Mark Ames’ theory on ‘going postal’ as a response to the Reagan-izing of America:
Alabama murder mystery solved
The people in charge of America have spent the last 30 years preaching that money is the measure of all good things, that getting more of it is the supreme social virtue, and that violence in pursuit of money is not only justifiable but sanctified. Now "we" are trying to change the narrative, if only because there ain’t no more money, and the sociological ‘indicator species’ at the bottom of the food chain are… not taking it well. Too many men (almost always, men) have spent too many years suffering under the misapprehension that their personal griefs were essential to the smooth functioning of the universe. In these men’s damaged minds, ‘Nobama’ and the ‘demon-rats’ are not only trying to steal their weapons, we’re trying to negate their whole godly history of personal sacrifice by stealing their last manly tokens. And the idiot yammerers of the fReichtard/Talibangelical/Robber Baron Triangle are only too happy to encourage these sad souls to conflate their own failures with the inexplicable, probably satanic success of our "un-American" theories on tolerance, diversity, and support for the less fortunate.
Mnemosyne
Yes, the entire history of political violence in the United States dates to the Weathermen and not to, say, the Know-Nothings and John Brown. You’ve sure got your political history down pat.
/eyeroll
Max
The Weathermen were a radical leftist group that bombed government buildings, always with a warning that the attack was coming so that the building could be evacuated. I’m fairly certain they never actually killed any human beings, so "homicidal rage" doesn’t apply to them at all.
Ash
@Brandon T: As I said, in the last 30 years. Obviously extremists exist on both sides, but I was referring to the modern conservative movement.
Everyone was fucked up in the 70s anyway. Also, as far as I remember, the Weathermen, as ridiculous as they were, never intentionally gunned down innocent people.
Robertdsc-iphone
I’ve racked my brain for reasons why an Ak-47 would be useful in the 2nd Am. Defenders list of excuses, but I’m coming up blank. Why on earth would someone need an AK to defend themxselves or hunt with?
What kills me even more is the 2md Am. is sancrosanct, but not a peep is heard when Dubya & his crew mangle the rest of the Constitution.
Ash
Them negroes can’t be stopped by regular handguns, they just keep coming!
Brandon T
@Max:
I wasn’t arguing it was the same phenomenon. I was just saying that there are well known examples of leftist rage. Fortunately, no portion of the current democratic infrastructure of the US stokes it (and didn’t, even during the bush years).
I wouldn’t claim the Weathermen were particularly peaceful/nonviolent. They may not have (intentionally) killed anyone, but they trafficed in a lot of violent inflammatory rhetoric.
But I do think it’s interesting to theorize about why the most irresponsible partisan bombthrower on the left is Michael Moore, who presents his arguments in a sort of silly irreverent way, whereas the right has Limbaugh and Beck who rant about government oppression, naziism, and "threats to our democracy".
Jon H
"Everyone was fucked up in the 70s anyway."
Arguably a hangover from the fucked up and violent 60s.
dslak
@Max: That no one was killed was only a matter of chance, and they weren’t so circumspect about collatoral damage at the time.
joe from Lowell
Before my time. Weren’t they from the SixtiesMan?
There was something poisonous about a certain variety of left-wing politics back two generations ago, but 1) those days are long-gone and 2) the politics that appealed to the Weathermen were in no sense endorsed by Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Robert Kennedy, or anybody remotely connected with the Democratic Party. If you’d asked Bill Ayers in 1969 what he thought of Hubert Humphrey, he would called him the enemy.
As opposed to today, when the Beck/Limbaugh/Malkin message is actively embraced by most of the GOP. Bill Ayers and David Horowitz would have never been given a talk show in 1070.
SGEW
Yes, there was blind luck involved, but one must also note that the (surviving) Weather Underground members tried very, very hard to avoid injuring anyone. Intent matters.
Mrs. Peel
What would they have carried on about? The Battle of Hastings?
Brandon T
@Mrs. Peel:
You win the thread.
Andrew
Absolutely true, and I spent fifteen minutes trying to express that thought succinctly and getting bogged down in asides and whatnot, so thank you.
So, what’s the best way to combat this reckless winding-up? You can’t confront the winders – that just makes them louder and more shrill. The media is perfectly willing to amplify (see the fear-mongering "Obama gun grab" article the Pittsburgh Tribune ran three days before the shooting). Obviously these nuts have already been innoculated against argument emanating directly from liberals. The government can’t mollify or pacify them. Enforcement agencies are automatically suspect as accessories to the government.
How can you walk them back from the cliff’s edge when they are dead-set on ignoring everything you say and the people they listen to are incessantly egging them on?
joe from Lowell
The Normans!
United!
Can never be defeated!
Max
Brandon, let’s look at the quote you responded to:
And you replied:
So, yeah, you were arguing that it was the same phenomenon.
dslak
@SGEW: I think this is only true of some of them, not all. I think the larger point however is that the rhetoric of the Weathermen lended itself to violent actions on the part of others.
gbear
OT & probably considered spamming:
The Desmoines Register is running a poll today as to whether the state Supreme Court’s ruling regarding marriage was good or bad. Right now about 52% think it was a bad decision.
shirt
Several days ago, ed @ ginandtacos.com made an almost prescient posting about the thin line between sanity and conservatism. Give it a read.
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2009/03/30/the-fine-line-between-conservatism-and-insanity/#comments
Just Some Fuckhead
BOB’s been undercover at the Beck support groups. He says unlike the lefties terrorizing the blogs, the Beck acolytes are completely normal. They are simply nervous, afraid, angry and armed to the teeth.
wasabi gasp
Beck and Friends seem more than happy to knuckle down on folks who are about to lose all their marbles.
slaney black
As a former wingnut and recovering manic depressive alcoholic, I can offer some confirmation of that.
Funny how after a few months of not drinking and taking my meds every day, alla sudden I woke up one day and the Bush act didn’t seem nearly so convincing.
Would that this guy had the same mental health care I had.
Andrew
As someone else here said, that’s about as comforting as seeing someone pour gasoline all around your house and then, when the pyromanics show up, casually says "Oh, by the way, don’t light any matches!", and then walks away casually to establish his alibi.
Davis X. Machina
In the lifetime of the median American? (35 years) You’d not need a second hand.
SGEW
@dslak: Well, there was an original splinter group of the Weathermen that (allegedly) planned on detonating an anti-personnel bomb at a military recreational center (which would be, of course, outright violent terrorism). Luckily, however, th’ fools blew themselves up by accident (apparently) and the remaining cohort took the opportunity to disavow violence in their actions. The bombings that the by-then-rechristened Weather Underground committed were the ones that avoided injury, but the original malcontents never succeeded in carrying out any actual bodily violence against anyone before they crossed their own wires. So yes, it was a close call, and there was a lot of luck (and weirdness) involved, but the result was thankfully free of (innocent) casualties.
As to this:
I quite agree, and certainly admonish them for their actions. However, check it: the closest thing the left had to demagogues who provoked violent actions on the part of others was an actual criminal conspiracy who were far, far, far out of the mainstream of political debate forty years ago. The right now has major media stars and elected members of Congress.
In fact, comparing and contrasting the W.U. and the current hysteria-mongers is pretty illuminating, now that I think about it.
Brandon T
I suppose I’m sort of splitting hairs here, but what I was trying to say is that, while the Weathermen weren’t as physically violent as the militia types, you can’t just characterize them as bitching about rotten eggs. These were people who discussed whether white mothers bearing children were war criminals (since they were bearing more future white oppressors), how the victims of the Manson murders had it coming to them, etc. Verbally, they were every bit as inciting as the worst right-wingers. And they were ultimately motivated by concepts of leftist populism that still exist and are evermore ascendant: rage at the capitalist pigs (bankers), rage at an establishment government that did not rectify inequality as quickly as they liked and was "owned" by corporate interests, etc.
I’m sort of concern trolling, but I hear a lot of comments to the effect of "look what crazy things conservatives do, liberals could never do that", and I don’t agree. While the current left movement in the united states doesn’t support this rhetoric, it’s not inconceivable that it could. There’s nothing inherent in conservative or liberal thought that drives this–it’s all the circumstances of the movement and how irresponsible the leading voices are willing to be.
wasabi gasp
@Andrew: Maybe I should’ve put knuckle down in quotes.
In your analogy, I’d say Beck owns the gas station.
jcricket
I’d say about 99% of the wingnuts are not actually violent, but I wouldn’t call them particularly peaceful, and I think most of them are fighting-keyboard-kommandoe ™ types, with no intention or ability of doing anything being spittle-flecked outrage in the blogosphere. IOW, it’s all talk for them.
However, the problem is the 1%, who have either the inclination or abilities. Coupled with the wingnut leaders (Beck, Savage, Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, etc.) are actively fomenting the type of mindset and hatred that leads the 1% to act.
We’ve already had Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph and countless abortion/planned parenthood clinic bombings. I am seriously not surprised that the mainstreaming of extremist rhetoric, including now from elected politicians (Inhofe, Bachmann), is having a spillover effect.
Dave Neiwert talks a lot about the rise of the "lone wolf" (Eric Rudolph is an example). The extremist leaders stay out of the fray, but foment enough hatred and rage, along with tacit support (or creation of a support/supply network), that the "lone wolves" then find it easy to go out and act on what the leaders are suggesting. The skinheads/nazis in the US have been increasingly using this tactic (as opposed to the previous "let’s collectively plan a bombing" type activity which is easier to watch/break up).
Again – it goes back to the projection thing. If there are people you have to worry about in this country, it’s not the progressives.
Balconespolitics
Clearly this is good news for McCain.
Mnemosyne
Because I’ve started seeing it crop in a few threads, we should be clear that, yes, Virginia, there are violent left-wing radicals right here in the good old US of A. The Earth Liberation Front and associated groups have been running around firebombing people in the Pacific Northwest for quite a while now, and other extreme leftists do crop up from time to time.
However, you don’t see Keith Olbermann promoting wacky environmentalism the same way you see Glenn Beck promoting paranoid gun-nuttery. No one from ELF has a talk show, and you rarely see them walk into church services to try and kill themselves some conservatives because Olbermann and Maddow and Stewart have been telling them for weeks that conservatives are ruining the country and the only way to win against them is to fight.
That’s the issue. It’s not that there are violent conservatives. It’s that conservatives are being fed a steady stream of violent and eliminationist talk by the mass media. This is the kind of shit that got millions killed in Rwanda:
Andrew
@wasabi gasp: Yes, sorry. I took that one too literally.
It’s pretty much indisputable that, although right-wing and left-wing politics have their violent crazies, only right-wing crazies get representation in the mass media.
jcricket
Definitely true, and you see in other countries plenty of "leftist" militias or violent protest movements.
I think the biggest difference is how the actual GOP and mainstream Republican political figures are embracing, encouraging and fomenting the wingnut hate.
That’s very different from even the height of the protest movements in the 60s, I would argue.
WB Reeves
I posted this on another thread so I apologize in advance if this is bad form. However, someone above asked what can be done and I have a suggestion.
As someone who spent seven years field researching the far right, I feel confident in saying that the longer media pimps such as Beck, Hannity, et al continue to broadcast their incendiary rants, the greater the likelyhood that we will see some really catastrophic domestic terrorism ala Tim McVeigh as well as the lesser mayhem and carnage typified by the likes of Eric Rudolph.
What to do? The harsh reality is that not much can be done in the case of the lone psycho, given the huge number of guns already in private hands. I own two guns myself, neither of which were purchased from a commercial dealer. I doubt that there are more than a handful of households in my urban neighborhood that don’t possess at least one gun.
The only practical action that can be taken is to attempt to change the general political climate so that it doesn’t actively encourage lunatic extremism. Pandering to the paranoid fantasies of the violence prone fringe has to become a liability rather than an asset for our political and media bottom feeders.
My own experience has taught me that this can be effectively done on a local and even regional level. The community organization I worked with began by monitoring and documenting the activities of extremist groups in our state. This placed us in a position to likewise document the links between such groups and supposedly mainstream political and media figures. Publicizing such info was often enough to disrupt these links while at the same time marshaling public opposition against panderers and extremist alike.
The speed with which those who had made a good thing out of pimping for the wacko right abandoned their erstwhile buddies was both instructive and gratifying.
If we had similar locally based groups combined in a national effort today, we’d stand an excellent chance of stoping the hellish political/media/extremist synergy before it spirals out of control.
Mnemosyne
You’re missing the point, Brandon — they were people whose rhetoric was supported by the culture and the mass media at the time. There were all kinds of movies and books valorizing and romanticizing violent revolution and plenty of underground newspapers with a wide circulation. That’s what made them dangerous, not that they were running around spouting stupid things.
Saying, "The left is just as bad because the Weathermen were active 30 years ago" is avoiding the topic and trying to steer it away from the fact that people like Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin are inciting violence right now in 2009. It’s not about what Bill fucking Ayers did in the 1970s, and it’s ridiculous to argue that what’s going on right now is the natural outgrowth of what the Weathermen said and did so we can’t really blame the poor right-wingers when they start shooting people.
Hyperion
@Brandon T:
cue Norbizness…he IS the Left.
Brandon: this is stupid.
SGEW
@Mnemosyne: I think I have to call a pseudo-Godwin Rwanda rule on you. Demonization and violent behavior is one thing, organized genocide is another. Yes, there may be an historical, symbolic, and ethical thread that binds them; but the associations are way too extreme to be bandied about at this stage, I feel.
Brandon T
Anyway, I’m starting a pool on the first GOP politician to start using Beck’s "we surround them" rhetoric. Bachmann? Sanford?
binzinerator
@Mrs. Peel:
We both know that’s true. I once dated this girl about 20 years ago whose little brother became schizophrenic when he grew up. I found this out when I ran into her about 10 years after we broke up, I asked how her brother was doing. She told me about his schizophrenia and mentioned he had become ‘super conservative’. The shit she said her brother was doing and saying as a result of the disease, especially when he refused to take his meds, sounded exactly like a fucking conservative wingnut. A fundie conservative wingnut. ‘Super conservative’ is indeed a symptom.
@joe from Lowell
There’s no maybe about it.
J. Michael Neal
Yeah. I’m about to go off, man.
[/oblique reference to last night’s open thread]
Jon H
The closest thing to media-supported left wing radical violence is Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vaccination crusade.
Ash
@Jon H: What about the commie-loving bastion of sin that is Hollywood?! We all know what those Hollywooders are really out to do……….
Brandon T
Cerberus
@Brandon T:
(Take Bait)
Ok, fine. Sigh.
Yes, communist uprisings prove that yes there exists points of violent leftist actions, uprising, and terrorism against an existing state. However, communist uprisings also prove that leftists are notoriously slow in getting to the violence point. Hell, have you ever tried to organize a large leftist rally or even run a sotialist-anarchist meeting? It’s like pulling teeth.
Much like domestic violence and rape are 99% committed by men, so too are the domestic terrorists overwhelmingly born out of right-wing politics (the international ones too) and often need far less provocation and lately today’s prominent GOP figures seem to be making very overt calls for open revolution in a particularly worrying way. I might be wrong, but I don’t remember many other points where sitting US congressmen have called for armed open revolt and revolution and violence onto the other side and yet we’ve already had at least two such incidents with Bachmann and what’s his name who talked about the need for the GOP to practice Taliban style insurrection.
It is especially worrying after 8 years where political opponents were literally demonized as anti-American traitors conspiring with foreign enemies and where the Right were trained to defend actions like genocide and torture by the actions on behalf of the Bush administration and where literally every day an entire news program who demands absolute loyalty from its viewers continues to all but incite violence and has had multiple people like Beck go over.
There will be an upsurge in domestic terrorism and its also worth noting how much more played up and denounced the few rare cases of leftist terrorist are. We all know ELF and Weather Underground and they never killed anyone. Whereas, the right-wing actions of terrorism, most are never deemed as such. Abortion clinic bombings, the UU church shooting, lynching in Jim Crow South, militia, gay-bashing, trans-murders, unarmed black man executions by cops.
So yeah, a woman sometimes rapes a man, a black man kills a white man just for being white, a liberal-leftist in America commits terrorism but the statistics are such that trying to bring the two into equivalence is really an attempt to diminish the atrocities of one side, which may seem callous and cruel while the dead bodies are still warm from the how-many-has-it-been-in-only-the-last-year terrorist attack by a paranoid Rightist stoked up on right-wing radio cheerfully egging him on.
JWF
I guess when that maniac killed four cops in Oakland a couple weeks ago it was blamed on leftwing hate radio, MSNBC and the left’s general hatred for the police, right?
Oh, that’s right, it wasn’t. There was silence on the left back then.
Never mind.
I guess every time a cop gets killed we’ll have to assign blame to a media figure and political ideology. You want to play that game, fine. Since most police officers are murdered in urban centers, I blame the Democrats and failed liberal policies of the past four decades.
See how easy it is to react in kneejerk fashion?
MJ
Glenn Beck’s is a very strong supporter of Israel. So this guy doesn’t fit into what his so called army would look like. If you’re going to slime the guy by trying to connect him to a nut case with a gun try to make it fit a little cleaner.
Stoic
I read the same thing about the "Obama is gonna grab my guns" statement and thought, yeah, right wing radio memes coming to fruition. Three dead cops, three widows, how many kids without their dads.
I was at my regular barber a few weeks ago and the group of them were going on and on about taking out Iran because of the "nukes". I didn’t see the point of calling them imbeciles but after going to the guy for over 15 years, I’m not going back.
Brandon T
@Cerberus:
I really have nothing more to say. Having tried to organize vaguely leftist political groups for years, I have to say you’re correct.
calling all toasters
@JWF:
Oh, I missed the part where MSNBC hosts advocated revolution. Do help us out, dear.
Ash
@JWF: NO ONE is saying every psycho that goes on a rampage is doing so for these reasons. IN THIS PARTICULAR INSTANCE however, there is evidence from the shooter’s friends that he was a crazy right-winger who believe the propoganda about Obama and guns.
jcricket
Oy, don’t get me started. The dumbest, most wasteful bunch of people, books, articles, etc. on the planet are the anti-vaccine jihadists. The issue is settled, vaccines work, they save lives, they do 10000x more good than harm. Nothing the anti-vaccine nuts say is right about medicine, vaccines, the human body, immunity, etc.
They should be listened to less than flat earthers.
dslak
Shorter MJ: Anti-Semitism has never played a role in right-wing politics in America. How dare you!
WB Reeves
Sorry, but this is absolutely bassackwards.
The Weathermen were not populists, leftist or otherwise. Their strategy was based on the theory that white people in US, regardless of social class or status, had been bought off by US imperialism and therefore were as much oppressors as any plutocrat or politician (especially liberals).
They saw themselves as an auxillary of the Viet Cong operating behind "enemy" lines. Nuts yes. Populist no. As has been pointed out, this lunacy was never endorsed by any politician or media figure of note.
handy
@MJ:
You’re right, of course. We should be clear about how we classify our rightwing retard nutcases. I for one think Tim F. should issue an immediate apology and retraction along the lines of: "Not All Wingnut Extremists Are The Same: Glenn Beck Supports Israel." Who’s with me?
John Cole
Why the hell has this thread devolved into a discussion of the Weathermen? They haven’t been a threat to anyone since I was shitting in my diapers, and even then they were not that much of a threat. Disgusting assholes? Yes? Misguided? yes. Adherents to some bizarre beliefs? yes. Wholly ineffective at achieving their goals? Double yes? Is Bill Ayers an asshole? Signs point to yes.
But are they in any way relevant to what is happening in 2009? Not even remotely.
Laura W
@John Cole: Everybody’s pissy today. Site full of freakin’ Cancers.
Edit: Not me…I’m in a great mood. Thanks for the thread. Now I don’t have to hurt you good.
Mrs. Peel
Spoken like a true graduate of the Timothy McVeigh Finishing School.
Not to mention being too busy trying to distract eveyone with their shiny things to acknowledge it isn’t long after right-wingers name their "enemies" that we start seeing violence directed their way.
dslak
We’re trying to help David Brooks find the liberal equivalent of Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann before his deadline for tomorrow.
Ed Marshall
I like how the right wing thinks Israel is some some of magic negator of anti-semitism. They say something stupid about Jews and then start talking about how they heart Israel. If you don’t like Jews, why *wouldn’t* you like having somewhere to send them where they won’t bitch about your Christian agenda.
handy
@John Cole:
Yeah but Obama is BFF with Ayers. So it’s relevant. Or something.
I’m sorry, it’s hard for me to get my retard talking points straight. Let me listen to a little more Rush and Hannity and I’ll get back to you.
Mnemosyne
@SGEW:
I disagree (obviously). So many right-wingers spend so much time defending the words of Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Malkin, Coulter, etc. etc. etc. as "just entertainment" that I don’t think it’s at all beside the point to mention that hate speech in the mass media has led directly to genocide within the past 20 years. It’s not some distant story about the Holocaust — it happened recently.
Is the US going to explode into a race war where neighbors start killing neighbors if the right wing keeps on like this? Nope. But I doubt that Tim McVeigh is going to be the last guy to try and start one.
dslak
@Ed Marshall: Being pro-Israel also comes with the territory of thinking that any country whose interests diverge from those of the US also happens to be run by Nazis.
Ed Marshall
Why the hell has this thread devolved into a discussion of the Weathermen?
Because there is a brand of liberal who will never shut up about the dangerous Left. It’s a seriously annoying tic. It bothered this guy so bad he remembers seeing a clip of Ayers talking about how much he loved Manson. That clip doesn’t exist. There is a third hand account from a not disinsterested party that alleges that Bernardine Dohrn said something like that, but it animates him enough that he remembers *seeing* it.
Brandon T
@John Cole:
Guilty. Trying to be devil’s advocate, unsuccessfully.
Funny thing is, a number of my republican friends have tried to argue that the far-left is a much bigger constituency in the Democratic party than the far right is in the Republican party. Hah.
It’s a knee-jerk reaction. I blame it on having too many Republican friends. Sometimes you want them to be as rational as liberals, which to some extent requires you to think of lefties as as crazy as conservatives. Of course, both ideas are patently ridiculous when you examine the actual facts.
John Cole
Speaking of Rwanda- did anyone else see Marty Peretz’s anal cyst accuse Yglesias of Hutu power talk last week? That was all kinds of wingnutty awesome.
Mrs. Peel
It’s just another example of the same "look over there – shiny stuff" defense that the wingnuts have to fall back on. Kind of like when Mark Foley suddenly became a right wing revival of Gary Studds.
Corner Stone
Score!…Um, well, maybe not.
Corner Stone
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Brandon T
@John Cole:
You mean the allegations that "conservatives will survive like cockroaches after nuclear war" was supposed to be a cryptic reference to eliminationist rhetoric where jews/etc are referred to as cockroaches?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/kirchick/60272
Kirchick is an idiot. He’s around the same age as myself and Yglesias, and to both of us the "cockroaches/nuclear war" is totally unconnected to genocide. It’s such a transparent misinterpretation.
Mnemosyne
@John Cole:
Remember Rule 1 of conservatism: Projection, projection, projection. Anything they accuse you of is something they’re doing themselves. Most blatant case in point is Newt Gingrich getting hummers from his intern while impeaching Clinton for doing the same, but there are too many examples to could.
binzinerator
@Robertdsc-iphone:
Isn’t that one hell of an irony? The amendment the NRA and the wingnuts insist is sacrosanct because it protects us from government tyranny and abuse had no effect on preventing tyranny and abuse by torture, war crimes, warrantless eavesdropping and imprisonment without due process. In short the amendment that the wingnuts insist will protect the rights guaranteed by all the other amendments did jack shit when the government they led went Jack Bauer on those rights.
The past 8 years are powerful evidence for declaring the 2nd amendment obsolete. It doesn’t work. And it makes a powerful argument as to why the rightwingers are asshole authortarian liars who really don’t give a damn about those other amendments.
Davis X. Machina
You go into a comments thread with the history you have, not the history you wished you had.
I’m confused about how The Left (The Left™ is a registered trademark of norbizness, all rights reserved) can simultaneously be a bunch of blissed-out pachouli-scented pacifist weenies and a vast, secret, armed-and-dangerous threat to the Republic, at the same time.
joe from Lowell
?
What "left’s general hatred for the police?" Joe Biden sponsoring the 1994 crime bill? Community policing? The COPS program?
John Cole provided several links of prominent conservatives – including sitting members of Congress – pushing the "Obama gun grabber" line. So, any time you’d care to provide some links to Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, or Phil Donohue expressing "general hatred for the police," that would be awesome. You know, like how Tim F posted links to prominent conservatives saying the same things as the Pittsburgh cop-killer.
Likewise, any time you’d care to provide quotes from people who knew the Oakland cop killer, discussing his longstanding and passionate embrace of the message being propounded by liberal politicians and media figures, as the story Tim F quoted does, that would be equally awesome.
You’re the one whose knee is jerking here, JWF. You’re the one whose decided on a political narrative that makes you feel good, without any evidence to support it. Sometimes, "both sides are the same" simply isn’t true.
binzinerator
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You forgot paranoid. And resentful. And bigoted. And paranoid.
They like their paranoia.
gnomedad
@JWF:
Yes.
TenguPhule
And if you think this will stop the trolls and Malkins, I have a bridge to Nowhere to sell you.
Emma Anne
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t hold any brief for ELF, but if they are "firebombing people" it’s the first I’ve heard of it.
Dennis-SGMM
The real damage done is that it gives people who should seek professional help a rationale and a justification for their homicidal lunacy; "I’m not crazy, I’m a patriot."
LD50
And easiest of all is making no sense whatsoever!
demimondian
@Jon H: Unlikely. He was certainly paranoid, but the fact that he could arrange a multiperson radio show — however unsuccessful — argues against schizophrenia.
Wilson Heath
As someone who works in a federal building, this freaks my shit out more than a bit. Especially since I’m not on a coast.
Can’t these fuckers just self immolate to make their point?
MJ
It was a lame cheap shot and your reply to me was just the same. The guy simply doesn’t fit into the square whole Tim made for him. May be future attacks here on Glenn Beck will be better. Start googling for a Pro Israel gun nut you can blame Beck for.
Corner Stone
Nope, sorry. What happened over the last 8 years has absolutely zero relevance to how the 2nd amendment is interprated or applied.
They are in fact asshole authoritarian liars but that has no application to the 2nd amendment.
And I’ll thank you kindly for stepping the fuck off my Bill of Rights yo.
AnneLaurie
Paranoid Wingnut: Leftist MIND CONTROL!eleventy-one !
Tragically, their "point" is finding something outside themselves to blame for their unhappiness. The whole goal of the fReichtard media is to give sad little self-defined ‘luz3rs’ someone else to blame for their failures, which will always be a profitable market in a high-capitalist society where the luz3rs outnumber the winners by definition.
Jrod
So, the big examples of leftist terrorism are: the Weather Underground, who deliberately avoided killing anyone; the ELF, who deliberately avoid killing anyone; and the WTO protesters, who broke a bunch of windows.
Meanwhile, right-wing nut shooting sprees are on track to have at least a triple-digit combined body-count before the year is out.
And you know, I don’t agree with what the WU usually did, but you have to give them credit for not killing anyone in several dozen bombings, and for busting Tim Leary out of prison. That alone makes them a thousand times better than some jackass shooting up a place at random.
guest omen
@Jon H:
anniversary alert: april 19 is a sunday.
cosanostradamus
.
‘ Mr. Poplawski told him he bought his guns “because he felt the quality of life was being diminished,” Mr. Vire said. ‘
Wait’ll he gets a load of prison life.
On the "X-Files," there would be a robotic alien worm in his head that would come out of his ear at some point. In reality, it was just talk radio. We’re really way ahead of the aliens.
“He said he’ll be ready if there’s ever an invasion of the United States and that he had stockpiled foods and guns for that eventuality.” ‘
So, who’s going to invade the US by force, when they can just buy it up at bargain prices, the way the Chinese are doing right now? He should stockpile real estate.
Well, NY, it’s been a tough week. But everyone knows your heart is in the right, er, left place. Yer on my list of States who have adopted, or will soon likely adopt gay marriage measures. If your State is not on my list, your taxes will be going to lawyers, and our money will be going to other States. Auwe, PA!
.
guest omen
@slaney black:
Would that this guy had the same mental health care I had.
we need more community mental health clinics. and some kind of campaign encouraging ppl seek help. wonder if this can be worked into the stimulus package.
Jrod
If mental heatlth was part of the stimulus, that would only frighten these nuts away from it. Glenn Beck would be on TV saying that these so-called mental health services are just more sockalistic mind control, and the people who need them would never use them.
demimondian
@Jrod: WARF in Madison.
The man who died was a friend of my father’s.
Zzyzx
…and meanwhile on Free Republic, the meme they’re trying to spread is:
Evidence? Who needs that when you can rant pointlessly?
SGEW
@Mnemosyne:
This touches on my point, I think: the government sponsored radio stations in Rwanda were used as a method of instigating mass killings as part of the larger political goal of genocide. Broadcast eliminationist hate speech was a tool, not the cause nor the problem itself.
(Almost) nobody in the American political forum is actually calling for mass killings of anyone: yes, there are dog-whistles, and code words, and winks and nods, and general eliminationist-like rhetoric, but, contra to the Rwandan situation, it is not out there with the conscious intent of culture-annihilating crimes against humanity.
There is an order of magnitude difference between intentional nation-wide genocide and localized inchoate terrorism (which is, more or less, what Beck et. al. are husbanding along). I, for one, believe that there is a difference in culpable intent. Panic mongering hate speech that engenders violence against a democratically elected political regime or a suspect class is condemnable, utterly, and I am disgusted by the immorality and agog at the dangerous implications. However, I reserve a special place in my heart for condemnation of advocates of actual genocide (or other crimes against humanity and/or violations of jus cogens norms), and I am cautious about applying such absolute abhorrence to dipshits like Glenn Beck.
Hyperion
@Davis X. Machina: beat ya to it in #61.
Balconesfault
I’ve long argued that many of the radical liberals from the 60’s weren’t so much seriously predisposed to embrace liberal ideology – but were scared and mad about the chances of their being drafted to go fight in a war that even a lot of conservatives were admitting was stupid. (there was also the copious sex thing too)
War went away – an awful lot of these radical liberals quit being liberal. Which is why so many of them had no problem supporting the "Reagan Revolution" in their 30’s, and the "Gingrich Revolution" in their 40’s.
Thanks in no small part to FDR and the New Deal, since the 30’s there hasn’t been a lot of traction for violent leftism in America, outside of the Vietnam era. And of course, that’s what the New Deal was really designed to accomplish.
Hyperion
@Zzyzx:
MORE proof that it’s people who kill people, not guns!
gbear
They must have about a dozen readers left who’ll bother with crap like that.
LD50
It’s interesting how wingnuts abandon the whole concept of personal responsibility when it’s inconvenient.
Rainboskies
"Radicals" come in many shapes,sizes and colors: KKK,Black Panthers,Weathermen,Code Pink,Acorn,Manson,Taliban,etc,etc. Listen to Rap;watch a movie, turn on the TV, violence is everywhere around us. Maybe, just maybe, our "peaceful" society is just a make-belief. Citizens are feeling desperate. Check out a website called "Oath Keepers" this is a movement within Military that servicemembers sign pledging they willnot take citizens guns from them, will not "round-up" US citizens, will not force themselves into American’s homes, if told to do so by Superiors. The political winds are swirling folks. I think it’s gonna get worse.
Mike G
The past 8 years are powerful evidence for declaring the 2nd amendment obsolete. It doesn’t work. And it makes a powerful argument as to why the rightwingers are asshole authortarian liars who really don’t give a damn about those other amendments.
It is powerful evidence that having an armed citizenry doesn’t mean jack when it comes to protecting constitutional rights. You challenge the cops with your rifle, they come back with an armed-to-the-teeth SWAT team, and you’re in no beter position than your unarmed counterpart in the UK, Japan or wherever — your weapon isn’t going to stop the authorities from doing whatever they want.
An armed citizenry only becomes a deterrent to government action if a large number of citizens, more than law enforcement, the National Guard and US military can handle at once, are willing to initiate my-life-or-yours lethal engagement against the authorities.
Apart from Wolverines!-style rightard fantasies of foreign invasion, gun owners in large numbers aren’t willing to lay down their lives for the incremental chipping away at rights we’ve seen in the past eight years, especially when it’s sold with slick propaganda and fearmongering and the backing of the corporate media to a parochial population.
Asshole authoritarians may fight to the death if they feel their guns are threatened, but they don’t give a shit about Bush/Cheney warrantless wiretapping, abuse of power, torture and indefinite detention for scary brown people. In fact, many gun owners, more than the population’s average, seem quite keen on government oppression so long as it’s happening to Those People and not them.
Fulcanelli
I think the extreme elements on the right in the media, from Malkin and others on the web, to Hannity and Beck on cable and especially the goons of AM talk radio are coming dangerously close to the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater and nobody with any real authority and credibility to my knowlege is warning them and telling them to dial it back or face charges. Free speech, my ass.
The media barons love the ratings and the money that comes with it so they’re useless and won’t stop it untill it hits home, i.e. the wallet or their own ass. I really hope I’m wrong, but i think this cop shooting in Pittsburgh may be only the beginning and if, or better yet as, the economy tanks and jobs go away more each week it’s gonna get worse.
There’s an interesting, but not surprising post over at the GOS from a poster who claims her father who died in 2006 was an actual Nazi and he came upon her watching FOX News and this is what transpired:
I’m beginning to think that as the economy gets worse merely mocking the extreme wingnuts in the media who incite violence and even armed inssurection is not gonna do it and the government is going to have no choice but to take it to the next level. This could get even uglier.
Calouste
Btw, can any of the concealed carry advocates explain to me how concealed carry will limit shooting sprees when the gunman is wearing body armor or a bullet proof vest like they did yesterday and today?
Thanks.
Or shall we just go Mad Max and all go to work in body armor with three guns and 200 rounds of ammo?
J. Michael Neal
Why do you think I’m trying to date a gun nut?
Actually, the only thing I have against guns is that I’m a klutz, and kind of forgetful. No one in their right mind should trust me with one. In terms of lashing out, though, the only one I’m a danger to is myself.
Martin
Well, if those cops had a concealed carry permit, they totally would have been able to prevent this.
And 4 more cops for one more wingnut. Sounds like Beck is winning. There’s almost 700,000 sworn officers in the US. You think Beck has 175,000 sworn wingnuts?
kay
@Fulcanelli:
I think the economy + fear of Obama is a sort of perfect storm.
I followed the growth of the militia movement in the 90’s with some interest. I was both amazed and appalled when main stream media on the right began to fuel it (WSJ, I’m looking at you).
I never, ever, in my wildest fantasy predicted it would end in Oklahoma City. I was watching it build in a detached, look-at-the-crazies way, and not at all fearful, or even taking it seriously. Boy, was I wrong.
It’s tough, though. The militia people thrived on victimhood: they interpreted any request to cool the rhetoric as another violation of their civil liberties, and further proof of the Clinton/Reno conspiracy. They used it.
One of the insane rantings on the right is that Obama silences critics. I think the risk of requesting that Beck and Co tamp down the hysterics is that the request itself will then become a rallying cry.
It’s a real dilemma.
someguy
It said that a Ron Paul sticker is an indicator of possible militia ties, but I wonder why they left out McCain/Palin and NRA stickers.
joe from Lowell
This guy staged a domestic assault, then put on his body armor and lay in wait for the police to arrive.
Scum.
b-psycho
@Corner Stone: Exactly.
Besides, when the wingnuts sidestep the gun laws I’d rather the Left be able to fire back.
D-Chance.
Yaaaa-hooooo! We got us one!
And it’s a two-fer… we combine the perfect combination of boogeymen from Cole’s policemen to Timmeh’s white guy with a gun!
Pop the corks on those champagne bottles, boys, it’s time to celebrate! I’m sure Timmeh has already gone through half a box of Kleenex… not from tears, but from all the orgasms he’s had since finding out a white guy did it this time!
I wonder what kind of cigar he’s enjoying right now…
Bootlegger
@Calouste: Oh come on, don’t you know that gun battles in crowded spaces between untrained citizens will *surely* result in fewer casualties.
@D-Chance.: ??????
Wile E. Quixote
I love how people point to the Weathermen as an example of left wing terrorism in this country but forget about 100+ years of right wing terrorism performed by the KKK. Blowing up churches, killing civil rights volunteers, intimidating anyone who wasn’t a good white southern Christian, apparently all of that is water under the bridge or something or was just a bunch of good ol’ boys having fun because they were just beatin’ up on the nigras, jews and catholicks. The fact is that political violence in the United States is and has been overwhelmingly right wing.
Andrew
Is anything known about why he opened fire, aside from his fear of his guns being confiscated? What was the Warrant for?
I just don’t understand why anyone would need a AK47 in their home, Sorry I’m not from America (I’m Australian), while I understand that lots of other countries have similar gun ownership rates, your country seems to have a bad mix of irresponsible Media, Scaring the fuck out of the population, and assault weapons. I hear about these tragic stories way to often of late.
My thoughts are with the 4 Police Officers Families. I can’t even Imagine…
ImJohnGalt
Also, I have it on the highest authority that Glenn Beck points to Dancing Queen as ABBA’s best work, while this guy was of the opinion that Knowing Me, Knowing You is far superior. So clearly he couldn’t have been influenced by Mr. Beck’s eliminationist rhetoric.
Calouste
@Andrew:
Everyone has an AK-47 in the no-regulation, no-government paradise of Somalia. Therefore the way to ensure that the United States turn into a no-regulation, no government paradise like Somalia is for every citizen to have an AK-47.
Martin
Obviously, you need it in case the government comes to take it away. If you didn’t have it, the government wouldn’t have anything to take away, and you couldn’t defend yourself against their intrusion into your right to own an AK-47.
Duh.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
haha. Nice.
Corner Stone
@J. Michael Neal
Hell man, I’m on your side here. I’m a single dad with a small child so I’m all for someone putting it out there and making things happen since I have limited opportunities.
The girl you described in last night’s open thread sounds like Ms. Perfect to me. In fact, if you’ll tell me which Chili’s I’ll go and ascertain levels of possible interest {self-serving grin}.
TenguPhule
Chuck Norris will magically appear and kick them in the head. Then shoot them while they’re lying on the ground.
TenguPhule
What the fuck is wrong with you that you’d put Acorn in that mess?
Corner Stone
@TenguPhule
"There’s no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard, only another fist"
Corner Stone
Sounds like a Tuesday to me.
J. Michael Neal
I’m not telling you until she turns me down.
Corner Stone
Fair enough.
Bartenders and waitrii are hard. That’s a tricky area.
Delia
Here’s a new one. Five kids in a trailer park near Tacoma were shot by their dad who then went off and shot himself. No word yet on whether he thought anyone was trying to take his guns away.
Corner Stone
Or, IOW, good luck and I wish you well. Don’t go into it thinking she’s not down with you or she never will be. Just my thoughts as I’m obviously not Don Juan de la Nooch.
Mnemosyne
@Emma Anne:
Here’s an editorial by a professor in Washington state whose university offices were firebombed by a woman associated with ELF who’s on trial right now.
Here’s an incident in Michigan where a water bottling plant had firebombs placed in it, with the responsibility also being claimed by ELF. Here’s an ELF member who got five years for putting bombs outside buildings at Michigan Tech.
Unfortunately, it happens, though it’s mostly confined to the areas where confrontations between logging companies and environmentalists have gotten extremely contentious. Hopefully you haven’t been supporting them financially, because they are NOT good people.
J. Michael Neal
@Corner Stone: In my experience, they can’t be harder than women in general. I mean, literally, they can’t. The only two women I’ve ever dated asked me out.
Mnemosyne
@SGEW:
I understand your point, but I’m not sure what other response is possible when people dismiss the eliminationist rhetoric of people like Beck and Limbaugh as "just talk," even when they’re looking at three dead police officers or two dead people in a Unitarian church.
There is such a thing as "incitement to violence," and Beck is getting pretty close to making himself Example A.
Corner Stone
Hmmmm….
serr8d
This nut should’ve taken the lefty route: formed a violent radical ‘Underground’ terrorist movement, set off a few bombs in police stations, the U.S. Capital and the Pentagon, then he could’ve gone on to become a famous University professor and a ‘ghost writer’ for a major political goofball.
"Guilty as hell, free as a bird."
TenguPhule
Oh fuck off, well poisoner.
ELF has not firebombed anyone.
Property yes, people no.
Doesn’t mean anyone here supports them.
serr8d
This nut should’ve taken the lefty route: formed a violent radical ‘Underground’ terrorist movement, set off a few bombs in police stations, the U.S. Capital and the Pentagon, then he could’ve gone on to become a famous University professor and a ‘ghost writer’ for a major political failure.
"Guilty as hell, free as a bird."
TenguPhule
Yes, let us cite something that happened 40 years ago as the ‘lefty’ route. While we’re at it, can we round up all the rightwingers who own guns and preemptive execute them to stop them from taking the righty route of domestic terrorism? Hell, at least those examples of killers on the right are relatively RECENT.
JFCNTZYM, the trollfu is weak today.
wasabi gasp
@serr8d: Or the other lefty route: a Tea Party!
Calouste
@serr8d:
Yep, just like Ted Stevens. Released because the DoJ of a unitary executive President didn’t think it was necessary to follow the rules.
gwangung
Just unbelievably sloppy in their research, though. Firebombing a researcher for "genetic engineering", despite the fact that none of the research went to anything close to that.
Jrod
How many people did Ayers kill, serr8d? What’s that, zero?
Yeah, I’ll take a hundred Bill Ayers over one Tim McVeigh.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Oh fuck off, well poisoner.
ELF has not firebombed anyone.
Property yes, people no.
Boo-hoo. Plenty of people are still sending their money to PETA despite PETA giving grants to ELF.
Sorry, but people who are as big of fuckups as ELF are going to manage to kill themselves or someone else one of these days, so I don’t see any point in running around claiming that only right-wing groups are violent since that’s going to get thrown in our face eventually.
Mnemosyne
Back on topic, for our right-wing friends who are still a little unclear on the concept, Tbogg has a pretty good timeline of what we’re talking about when we say that people like Glenn Beck and Rep. Michele Bachmann have been inciting violence.
JK
Glenn Beck is a malignant media carcinogen and one of the most malevolent forces currently working in radio or tv.
Beck needs to be fitted for a straitjacket and given some anti-psychotic drugs ASAP.
serr8d
There’s no statute of limitations on murder. So, not counting the two who blew themselves up creating a bomb in a townhouse we have..
We’ll get him yet, it seems.
As far as Obonga, he is a known for his anti-Second Amendment arguments, and those of us who still value our constitutional rights have cause to worry. AG Eric Holder is just another moonbat who wants to reinstate the ‘assault weapons’ ban.
The anti-Israel views of Richard Poplawski are clearly leftist. Don’t settle on this as a ‘right-wing’ nutcase until you get more information.
Oh, but that’s just the way you lefty azzholes do things. Carry on, then. But remember: BHO is now responsible for what’s happening in America. NO MORE BUSH! IT’S ALL BARRY!
BARACKY LIED THE ECONOMY DIED
liberal
@serr8d:
No they’re not. Are you such a blithering idiot that you really don’t think there’s any such thing as right-wing anti-Semitism?
For better or worse, left-wingers usually don’t have gun fetishes. And very few of them supported John McCain.
Tim F.
I get it. The Turner Diaries is a left wing book now. That brilliant little nugget would inescapably make Ruby Ridge a leftie compound and Timothy McVeigh a leftie mass murderer. So why not cite that? Bill Ayers has only been brought up already by half the commenters on this thread. Go for the gold, Ringo!
By the way, “Obongo” is cute. I am not a guy to call spoof on a whim, but this speciment is either spoofing or one of the dumbest wingnutters that this site has ever seen.
El Cid
So, the rightists go around killing people now, and in comparison [right wing commentators, spoofs or otherwise] point to leftist bombers from the 1960s?
Jrod
According to your link, serr8d, the only actual evidence that Ayers and Dohrn were behind that bombing is a single man’s word. Oh, there’s more, but naturally Obama is working to keep it hidden and blah blah fucking blah whitey tape blah. Hell, maybe they did do it. Bombing to deliberately kill as many people as possible really doesn’t fit the Weathermen MO, but who really knows or cares. Even if Ayers was personally responsible for that bomb, I’d still rather have that than a McVeigh.
Left wing nutters blow up buildings and things, but don’t generally set out to kill anyone, and they are nearly universally condemned. Right wing nutters deliberately target innocent people, including children, and every single day there is enough right-wing hate-filled radio, TV, and internet to fill all 24 hours.
Both sides are wrong here, but which ones should we be most worried about?
El Cid
And more importantly generally haven’t been active since the 1960s, whereas white supremacists, paranoid right wing survivalists, and militia movement nuts remain active and rather actively encouraged and ’emboldened’ by conservative media and politicians.
On the other hand, it’s a fairly cross-ideological phenomenon for excitement-seeking extremists from all parts of the spectrum to eventually end up in shoot outs over a bank robbery or armored car holdup.
Tim F.
Checked out his blog. Dude is not spoof. In fact outside of politics he writes readable stuff. On politics, sadly, he’s Glenn Beck. By that I don’t mean a general nutzoid wingnut. I mean it sounds like Glenn Beck’s twin brother who maybe hasn’t read the Turner Diaries.
The real Beck, of course, fully understands the roots of his brand of ultrapatriot conspiracy theorizing and would recognize the Zionist references in a second. It brings a tear to my melodramatic eye that kids these days just don’t like to read.
RememberNovember
Sounds like one of Michelle Bachmann’s "Armed and Dangerous" crew. So this guy was afraid his right to own guns would be taken away and then he shoots people? WHere’s his NRA cheerleaders now? /headdesk. Stupid ppl shouldn’t own guns period. What about the quality of life the cop’s families’ have now? Bastard needs a shiv to the back of the head.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Because after all, it’s not like we have a standing military or national guard or other professional fighting force to repel the invading hordes or anything. It’s not like we can rain flaming death on any country that’s thinking about sending troops or irregulars over the border.
Jesus God, what the fuck is going through these people’s brains?
Svensker
@J. Michael Neal:
Come on, man, you can do it. Really, it’s all in your head. Speaking as a woman, guys mostly don’t need to be afraid to ask. Seriously. If you ask in a klutzy way and are a bit nervous and shy, if she’s the right kind of woman she’ll find that extra appealing — so sweet!
I’m telling you, you have nothing to lose. On the downside you could exchange your hideous isolation for humiliation. So? On the upside? Score and happiness!
Risks are low, rewards are great — go for it, dammit.
(I am vehement because am having the same discussion with my very shy son.)
TR
The 1960s are all they have. I can’t count the number of times they cried Chappaquiddick! every time a Republican scandal exploded in the last decade.
joe from Lowell
Read the fucking news, dumbass; the only "worrying" that needs to be done is by decent Americans, about people like you.
Svensker
@serr8d:
Oh go Cheney yourself.
Obonga?
Barracky lied, the economy died?
Your discussion points are so valid you’ve convinced me to become a Republican again…at that future point when hell freezes over.
Bob In Pacifica
Here is how it unfolds. The meme is already out there. Wall Street = Jews. And this collapsing economy was caused by the Jews. And they now control America through their puppet Obama.
And there are plenty of Jews in finance, along with Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, etc. They all worship the long green, though.
Glenn Beck can be a supporter of Israel (after all, he supports Israel against Muslims!) and still support
The Turner Diary mythology. In fact, it’s even more effective propaganda if he doesn’t explicitly say it and the dumb clucks connect the dots themselves.
These mass murders help fire up the general fear and paranoia of the country, which is just what the Nazis want.
LD50
You can understand modern American conservatism much better if you assume it’s basically nothing but a prolonged, obsessive rebellion against the 1960s. This is why, when faced with some wingnut shooting people last week, they instantly respond with some Weatherman doofus from 40 years ago, with complete seriousness.
R-Jud
@LD50:
Yes. Thank you. The 1960s is the big brick wall I have always run up against when talking with wingnut relatives– even those who weren’t yet born in the 1960s, (as well as those who happily participated in the sex/ drugs/ rock’n’roll, until their trust funds matured). And I think a large part of their freak-out about Obama is that, other than this coffee-klatsch connection to Bill Ayers, he isn’t culpable in any of that ’60s stuff, so he doesn’t fit their usual frame of reference for attack– he is not now, and never was, a DFH.
I’ve actually met Bill Ayers twice through work. I pointed this out to my wingnut aunt– also my godmother– and said "Do you think I’m an America-hating terrorist?"
There was a significant pause before she said no. Insanity.
Josh Hueco
@LD50:
I’d say it’s more like the 1860s.
joe
Wow, reading a discussion of a bunch of deranged Leftists engaged in severe projection is frightening.
Shiva
I’m becoming quite concerned about right-wing people who hate Obama so very passionately. The country is really in a crisis right now, "another September 11." 600,000 jobs lost every month is the "new normal". No one knows for sure how many more families will lose their homes. What really bothers me is that in this time of crisis, these right-wingers don’t care about the families who are suffering. They simply see an opportunity: for Obama to fail, and for the Republicans to make gains in the 2010 elections. This is one time when their entire country, including their neighbors and communities, needs some real help and compassion, and this is clearly something totally alien to the right-wing Fox News people. If America does pull through this extraordinary crisis, many on the right wing will be remembered as having let down their country in its time of need.
Svensker
@joe:
Gotta link?
CS
He was ranting about Zionists. That would make him a liberal, no? Did he call them The Lobby, like maybe a Kossak, or a TAPPED commenter? And, those fools smashing windows in London last week weren’t conservatives. Anyway, now he can be a hero of the left. They love them some cop killers, right, Mumia?
Tim F.
Another wingtard who does not know about the Turner Diaries. It is so sad when the children don’t read.
Jrod
It’s truly frightening to watch left-wingers project their obvious desire to go on shooting rampages onto the innocent right-wingers who actually go on shooting rampages.
Is that what you meant, Joe?
Fulcanelli
To all these pro-war right wing turd polishers: If you ain’t blogging on a military issue computer you’re a fucking coward and a bed wetting pussy. Bitch. – Fuck you from the land of the original Minutemen, New England.
News on Stormfront
Important News: Shooter in PA has ties to this Board(Stormfront)… http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=588087
wayne
You know, there are 2 sides to every one of these stories. Here’s one for you – absolutely true, too. I know the party involved.
My friend is an honest, law-abiding American citizen and family man. Former manager of business and residential properties in the Milwaukee area (I say former because all of this cost him his employment – and a lot more).
Due to the nature of his job, he has at time been required to evict tenants from various of the properties he was managing due to a variety of lease violations.
In our information age it was fairly easy for some of his former tenants and/or their friends – mostly from the inner city-to discover Brad’s home address and pay him and his family a visit to "demonstrate" their displeasure with him.
My friend isn’t a particularly large guy and he is a pacifist, i.e. he believes that he should not be subject to violence for doing his job or threats against his family by the disgruntled.
He also knows that Wisconsin State Law allows him to openly carry a firearm.
In doing so, he was able to deter further "demonstrations" against him and his family on repeated occasions. He has a legal right to this.
There are some here IN LAW ENFORCEMENT who do not subscribe to this view.
My friend was in his own FENCED IN back yard, planting a tree. As is usual, my friend had his firearm in a holster on his hip. He was not talking or otherwise engaged with anyone. Just digging.
Someone in his neighborhood, looking down on him from an upper apartment, saw him with the firearm on his hip and called the police. My friend suddenly found himself surrounded by police who burst into his yard and took him into custody at gunpoint. My friend surrendered without a struggle as he knew he had done nothing wrong.
Eventually (after several hours of negotiation between the police and the city attorney as to what crime he committed) they decided to charge him with disorderly conduct as having presented a threat to public order.
Eventually the city judge dropped the charges as no crime was committed in any federal, state, or city statutes. But, due to the nature of the charges (a potential gun crime) during the court hearings my friend lost his employment, and the city effectively destroyed his firearm by wrecking every part and surface of it.
The police also informed him that they didn’t care what the law said on this subject, and, that should they catch him with a firearm or should anyone ever inform them again that he had one anywhere in public in his home city that they would view him as a multiple offender of violent gun crimes and that he would be treated as such.
Dotar Sojat
Good Gaia, you people are just plain stupid.
Snuffy
Killings on the Wisconsin-Michigan line in July 2008. A 38 year old man prepared himself by dressing in camo. He fired 17 shots with a rifle at a group of 8 teenagers swimming off a bridge. Three teenagers were killed.