Birth of a Nation, Reprise 3
In a typically long and densely reasoned post, Chauncey Devega considers how the right wing uses fantasies of race war and conflict to further itself. A very small nugget:
In all, the Right-wing media apparatus feeds conservatives a daily diet of misinformation, distortions, and hate speech in which their foes are described as insects to be crushed, mentally defective, traitors, and people not fit to live. Such rhetoric is not harmless political theater: seeds do indeed bear fruit.
In September, the conservative website the Free Republic published a hypothetical scenario about how the American economy will collapse and “urban” riots by black people will need to be put down by white suburban vigilantes.
The right has nothing to sell but hate, but, sadly, hate sells.
Check the comments. One of the commenters thinks Devega may be overreacting to the fringe.
I’m inclined to disagree; the fringe may be at the edges, like the fringe on a rug, but it’s still part of the rug, woven from the same fabric.
October 9, 2012 at 11:10 am
thanks for the support–you always have kind things to offer up about WARN. I am really surprised that story didn’t more traction. The Right’s violent rhetoric is so common that it is now common place. That is what is so frightening.
October 9, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Great link and essay. It accurately describes it all, the Republican Party adaptation of all the tropes in “The Turner Diaries,” the premier piece of race hate fiction in this country. It’s all their — the stockpiling of weapons, the heroes, portrayed as patriots, who stand ready to revolt against the tyrannical government, the wish to destroy all the others who’ve allegedly made the society corrupt — the blacks and browns, ca;;ed “mud people,” government officials, those who intermarry, the elites. It just goes on and on. The entire survivalist moment, they call themselves “preppers” to try and distance themselves from the old designation which is associated with neo-Nazis, is all of the extreme right. There are no progessives or Democrats invited to the bunker. Instead, they fantasize about how they’ll have to defend their families, stuff and bug out home after society collapses from all the others boiling out of the cities to take what they have stockpiled. I agree with Mr. Devega. The fringe has become mainstream in the guise of the GOP and its media.
October 9, 2012 at 1:01 pm
The Confederate Party is rising again, as it has always threatened, and only a few are noticing it. It is–well, I don’t have the superlatives.