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Extremism in America


Guest Aloysius

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Guest Aloysius

Anyone writing a contemporary version of de Tocqueville's classic would have to include stuff like this:

 

Hal Turner, an intermittent internet radio talk show host and blogger, was arrested today by FBI agents at his home in North Bergen, N.J., on a federal complaint filed in Chicago alleging that he made internet postings threatening to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb.

 

Internet postings on June 2 and 3 proclaimed “outrage” over the June 2, 2009, handgun decision by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, further stating, among other things: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed.” The postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of these judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.

 

[...]

 

On June 8, 2009, law enforcement agents were directed to postings on a web site. The front page of the site contained an entry dated June 2, 2009, that was titled: “OUTRAGE: Chicago Gun Ban UPHELD; Court says ‘Heller’ ruling by Supreme Court not applicable to states or municipalities!” After describing the decision, a lengthy entry followed, which is contained in the complaint affidavit. In addition to proclaiming “These judges deserve to be killed,” the entry notes that it was the same 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that decided the case of Matt Hale, a white-supremacist who was imprisoned after being convicted of soliciting the murder of a U.S. District Court judge in Chicago. The entry further noted that the same judge’s mother and husband were murdered by a gunman in her home. The posting then stated:

“Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed.” The complaint charges that the posting was updated the next morning on June 3, 2009, with the following content:“Judges official public work addresses and a map of the area are below. Their home addresses and maps will follow soon. Behold these devils.”Below this headline, the entry listed the names, photos, phone numbers, work addresses and room numbers of the three judges involved in the handgun decision, as well as a photo of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago and a map. The photo of the building had been modified to include arrows and a label referencing “Anti-truck bomb barriers,” according to the affidavit.

More on Turner:

 

Turner was once a prominent activist in New Jersey's Republican Party. To area conservatives, he was best known by his moniker for call-ins to the Sean Hannity Show, "Hal from North Bergen." For years, Hannity offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner's occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants. Hannity also chatted with him off-air, allegedly offering encouragement to Turner as he struggled to overcome a cocaine habit and homosexual leanings. Turner has boasted that Hannity once invited Turner and his son on to the set of Fox News's Hannity and Colmes. Today, Turner lurks on the fringes of the far right, spouting hate-laced tirades on his webcast radio show. Hannity, meanwhile, remains mum about his former alliance with the neo-Nazi, homing in instead on the supposed racism of black and Latino Democrats.

It's amazing that a former Hannity devotee tried to get Posner and Easterbrook killed. I think it raises several questions: about the relationship between radio hosts and their audiences, between elite conservativism and its baser, more populist strains, and between virtual hate and real world violence.

 

Just some really scary stuff.

 

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Al, we've already talked about this in another thread.

 

So, you're a mod, and you can start anti-Hannity, anti-right threads

 

all day if you want to?

 

Nice.

 

Big time, huge cherry picking.

 

I guess I could post the stuff about the criminals who murdered, tried to murder,

 

U.S. presidents... and their political leanings.

 

But, typically liberal, you'll just wait and start the thread up again later.

 

Bah.

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So, you're a mod, and you can start anti-Hannity, anti-right threads

 

all day if you want to?

 

You're really become the saddest complainer around.

 

"Cal from Rural Ohio, you're up. What's on your mind, Cal?"

 

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You aren't?

 

How convenient.

 

Dude....

nope.....i dont whine an bitch about mods.....its their site. perhaps if all your posts weren't effectively the same thing, they'd hang around.

 

 

 

there's only so many "obama is a socialist" threads needed on one board.....

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but many examples. And the examples are building into

 

a serious case of disaster. Maybe if you would at least

 

LISTEN and TRY to respond without the little smartass

 

cracks to avoid serious discussion, you wouldn't be so unhappy.

 

Me? I'm great, except for my right wrist. dammit.

 

 

 

 

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Guest Aloysius
Al, we've already talked about this in another thread.

That thread was locked by one of the mods, so I started a new one.

 

I think it's an important subject. It's possible to be a conservative yet be concerned about people on the fringe right getting violent. After all, this guy wasn't targeting an abortion doctor: he was going after two prominent conservative jurists.

 

It's more than simply an argument about unjust tactics; it's about what types of arguments lead to deranged or angry people resorting to violence. That's why you've heard people like Justice O'Connor caution against vilifying judges.

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It's interesting that you refuse to look at both sides of the issue.

 

It happens to the LEFT AND RIGHT, that violence can be initiated by individuals

 

for whatever reason they may have.

 

You are attributing the occurence to ONLY those on the right.

 

Pitiful, and a waste of time.

 

Here is what I'm talking about:

******************************

Who Really Inspires Violence, the Right or Left?

By Selwyn Duke

Is the right responsible for inspiring murder, such as that of late-term abortionist George Tiller by Kansas native Scott Roeder? Some certainly seem to think so. For instance, the Friday before last Bill O'Reilly had as a guest on his show Joan Walsh, the editor of leftist news site Salon.com. She appeared because she had criticized O'Reilly for engaging in what she called a "jihad" against Tiller. Her thesis is that O'Reilly and, presumably, the rest of us who are passionately pro-life are culpable in Tiller's death.

 

 

Of course, this isn't a novel idea among the left. If there is any kind of violent incident perpetrated by someone ostensibly a rightist, they blame their political opponents for stoking the fires of hatred. You can just count on it every time, be it an attack on an abortion center, a Timothy McVeigh, or . . . or . . . well, actually, there aren't really all that many, are there? But don't bother ideologues with the facts.

 

 

Now, Walsh, a woman of mediocre intellect and lacking moral fiber -- she has lauded Tiller "the baby killer" as a hero -- has been beating this drum hard. In fact, on June 10 she published a piece titled "Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder?" In it, she seems to draw a connection between James von Brunn, the 88-year-old white supremacist who murdered security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns at the Holocaust Museum, and fairly benign commentary about the effects of political correctness. She wrote:

 

 

In a debate with Buchanan [Pat Buchanan] a couple of weeks ago, he told me that what was happening to white men was exactly what happened to black men -- he didn't give me any examples of lynching -- and that it was open season on white men. Wealthy Sen. Lindsay Graham suggested an average white guy like himself wouldn't get a fair shake from Sotomayor, and now even the new face of the GOP, Michael Steele, has said the same thing. If I were a marginal, unemployed, angry, racist white man right now, I'd be hearing a lot of mainstream conservative support for my point of view. Can that help create a climate for more violence? I don't know. I hope not, but I don't know.

 

 

No, Walsh doesn't know much. First, von Brunn isn't a rightist -- he is a "whitist." In fact, he is quite the opposite of a rightist many ways, as Bob Unruh reports at WorldNetDaily:

 

 

The Moonbattery blog revealed von Brunn advocated the socialist policies espoused by Adolf Hitler and used Darwinian theory to support his anti-Semitism.

 

 

And in statements that later were stripped from an anti-religion website, he wrote, "The Big Lie technique, employed by Paul to create the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, also was used to create the HOLOCAUST RELIGION ... CHRISTIANITY AND THE HOLOCAUST are HOAXES."

 

 

This probably would come as such a shock to someone as ill-informed as Walsh that she'd scarcely believe it; it's just too contrary to her dogma. Yet I could have guessed it. Those who have actually studied the history of Nazism and the white supremacist movement know that, from Adolf Hitler in the 1930s to his fellow travelers today, its ranks have always harbored hostility toward Christianity. The reasons are simple: Whether you view Christianity as merely an outgrowth of Judaism or the fulfillment of it, it is the second part of Judeo-Christian. Second, like the ancient Romans, the Nazis viewed the faith of "turn the other cheek" (counsel which, mind you, is misunderstood) as an influence that militates against manly virtue. Lastly, a lie doesn't find much acquaintance with the Truth.

 

 

Instead, white supremacists much prefer ancient Germanic pagan religions and even Islam. Just consider Hitler, for instance, and his dislike for the heroic Frankish (Germanic) warrior Charles Martel. What was Martel's sin? He halted the Moslem advance into Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D. Paul Belien addressed this misguided passion of Hitler's in the Brussels Journal, writing,

 

 

"‘Had Charles Martel not been victorious,' Hitler told his inner crowd in August 1942, ‘then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world.'"

 

 

The Nazis' dislike for Christianity was so great that, not surprisingly, they sought to destroy it. Leftists may scoff at a notion so contrary to their prejudices, but the evidence of this fact is now overwhelming. And of this evidence, perhaps the most compelling was uncovered by a Jewish attorney named Julie Seltzer Mandel, a woman whose grandmother was a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. I addressed her discovery in my piece "Hitler and Christianity," writing:

 

 

While a law student and editor of the Nuremberg Project for the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Mandel gained access to 148 bound volumes of rare documents - some marked "Top Secret" - compiled by the Office of Strategic Services (or O.S.S., the WWII forerunner to the CIA).

 

 

After scouring the papers, she published the first installment of them in 2002, a 120-page O.S.S. report entitled "The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches." Reporting on these O.S.S. findings in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Edward Colimore wrote: "The fragile, typewritten documents from the 1940s lay out the Nazi plan in grim detail: Take over the churches from within, using party sympathizers. Discredit, jail or kill Christian leaders. And re-indoctrinate the congregants. Give them a new faith -- in Germany's Third Reich." He then quotes Mandel: "A lot of people will say, ‘I didn't realize that they were trying to convert Christians to a Nazi philosophy.'... They wanted to eliminate the Jews altogether, but they were also looking to eliminate Christianity."

 

 

To this day nothing has changed. If you examine the writings of contemporary white supremacists, you will find much hatred for Christianity, affection for paganism and sympathy for Islam.

 

 

Now, I ask you: Which is better characterized by this description, the right or left? When answering, remember that those euphemistically-named censorship bureaucracies of the left, "human rights commissions," consistently silence those who dare criticize Islam, most notably Christians.

 

 

Getting back to von Brunn, we can ask a similar question: Given that he hated not only Jews but also George Bush and neocons in general, of whom is he more reminiscent, Newt Gingrich or, maybe, um, Barack Obama's buddy Reverend Wright? Bear in mind that Wright's serpentine tongue won him the spotlight again with that recent explanation we've all heard for why he is persona non grata in the White House. To wit: "Them Jews ain't going to let him [Obama] talk to me."

 

 

Now let's return to the matter of the impact of words. The Walshes of the world say that many of us rightists are responsible for inciting violence. In response, many on our side will say that there is only one person responsible for an act of violence, the perpetrator, be he Scott Roeder, von Dunn, Timothy McVeigh or someone else. As to these theses, the Walsh position is childish and contradictory; the rightist defense is incorrect and contradictory. Let's discuss the Truth.

 

 

In reality, virtually all of us understand that words can seduce, be they a lover's syrupy overtures or a hater's cynical appeals. This is why Edward Bulwer-Lytton said that "The pen is mightier than the sword." We treasure freedom of speech not because words are meaningless, but precisely because they're powerful. And we allow it despite and because of words' potential to inspire, for the pen of virtue remains eternally sharp, while the sword of vice's edge is always dulled by time.

 

 

So while we're right to deny responsibility for Roeder, it's not because, as many imply, that such a thing is impossible in principle; it's just that, in this case, we aren't responsible in the particular (I'll address the reason for this in a moment). And Walsh is right to imply that such things are possible in principle; her childishness lies in her silly implication that only the right is responsible for them in the particular.

 

 

Of course, it's quite reflexive for a person -- even a good one -- being tarnished by guilt by association to deny the reality of indirect culpability, but the reflexive is seldom beholden to reason It's also reflexive for dishonorable people such as Walsh to very cynically seize upon a violent event and use it to tarnish opponents, and, more ominously, to provide a specious justification for Fairness Doctrine-like legislation in the near future and hate-speech laws a bit further down the road. But whether or not the Walsh set actually believes their rhetoric depends upon the completeness of their detachment from reality.

 

 

To understand more deeply the fallacies here, consider the innumerable instances of leftist violence we've seen over the years. Would Moslem convert Carlos Bledsoe have murdered the army recruiter in Arkansas had he not been exposed to the anti-white, anti-Western and anti-Christian rhetoric that prevails in modern America? Would Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, have perpetrated his acts had he not been weaned on the environmentalist radicalism so prevalent today? Would all the domestic terrorists who firebombed fur stores and vandalized SUVs and research facilities have done so were it not for this ideological force? Would Colin Ferguson have targeted whites in the 1993 Long Island Railroad massacre had he not been assailed with anti-white rhetoric from the Reverend Wrights, Jacksons and Sharptons of the world?

 

 

Now, you can take issue with my examples; you can quibble about the particulars. But many other incidents could be cited, and the details aren't really the issue. The point is, would we really deny that the indoctrination people are subjected to influences their thinking? Are Palestinians born hating Jews? Do madrassah schoolboys have a gene dictating hatred for the West? As for Walsh, she may turn a blind eye to the violence authored by her ilk, but an affinity for relativism doesn't change reality.

 

 

Now we come to the crux of the matter: If rightist rhetoric can inspire others to violence just like the leftist variety, what determines culpability? Well, we must ask the only relevant question about that rhetoric:

 

 

Is it the Truth?

 

 

Sure, you may warn that a new resident in the neighborhood did time in prison for child molestation, and an angry mob may kill him. But did you do wrong? On the other hand, it's a different matter entirely if harm befalls someone after you wrongly and maliciously label him a child molester.

 

 

Thus, anytime you sound an alarm -- whether it contains the ring of Truth or that of lies -- it can serve as a call to violent action for some. But what should we do? Create a Fahrenheit 451 situation in which ideas are roundly suppressed and people are kept comfortably numb? No one wants that, and it wouldn't work anyway.

 

 

At the end of the day, one who speaks the Truth may inspire violence against livers of lies just as one who speaks lies may inspire violence against the tellers of Truth. But this isn't the fault of the Truth; it simply means that society needs more of it.

 

 

So the moral of this story is that we all can inspire violence with words, but not all of us speak inspired words. Evil may be done in the name of good or evil, but it is only those who speak the latter who have blood on their hands. Paging Joan Walsh.

59 Comments on "Who Really Inspires Violence, the Right or Left?"

 

 

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Going after Hal Turner is one sided, why didn't anybody go after those responsible in California who posted the names and addresses of the sponsors of Proposition 8, so that they would be targeted by hateful extremist left wingers?

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Guest Aloysius
Going after Hal Turner is one sided, why didn't anybody go after those responsible in California who posted the names and addresses of the sponsors of Proposition 8, so that they would be targeted by hateful extremist left wingers?

It's the pretty direct call for violence that makes Turner's actions criminal, not posting private addresses....which, if you've got a phone book or basic computer skills, aren't actually secret info. I agree that posting that kind of info isn't all that charitable a thing to do, but saying "here's the info, now go out and kill them!" takes it to a whole 'nother level.

 

Do you really think that those two situations are comparable? Or that Turner shouldn't be prosecuted?

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There was no direct call to kill by all right wingers.

 

I know none of us on the Brownsboard did.

 

Lame, Al.

Cal, have you condemned this guy and what he did in this thread? I haven't seen the other one but I don't think you've said ONE WORD opposing what this guy did here.

 

Why is that?

 

I sincerely don't understand why you can't engage the ideas here and why you can't be even a LITTLE balanced in your posts.

 

You are protesting what you perceive as right-wing vilification in this thread yet you vilify everyone who disagrees with you as a "lib" at every turn.

 

You say each side is guilty of fomenting violence yet you don't decry this SPECIFIC example Alo brought up and in fact, gloss right over it.

 

So, once again I ask you in all seriousness:

 

Is this the "online persona Cal" you talk about it or is it you?

 

Because once again your online persona seems like a hypocrite.

 

P.S. Can either you or your online you stop with the post reporting please? It's tedious.

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JUki -

 

1. The guy is a nutcase. All of us condemn it. But it is cherry picked to reflect unwarranted antagonism

 

against conservatives.

 

2. The criticism of us conservatives only posting what is negative about Obumbly may be warranted,

 

but so is, like Al's nonsense, the same thing on the liberal side.

 

3. You have rarely contributed much, and that's too bad, but I'd rather talk about violence by

 

ALL nutcases, and not cherry picking an unwarranted attack by either side.

 

4. Al came off for a long time like he was above that. Not any more.

 

5. If you don't like it, put me on ignore. It isn't that hard to do.

 

6. I just want a little more objectivity and sincerety around here,

 

by all of us. I can and HAVE bitterly criticized Bush. But there has been NO criticism of Otrauma here at all.

 

Ever. no matter who or what.

 

6. Read #5

 

7. I don't care if Al IS the lib's mod, trying to invalidate criticism of Obumbly by demonizing conservatives

 

with talk about what one violent nutcase did is bs.

 

8. And if you don't like that I think that, READ #5.

 

9. And, Juki, do not criticize me anymore today, because I have to go shoot some groundhogs because they will

 

eat our soybeans, and my right wrist hurts from typing.

 

10. And, Juki, be vewy, vewy qwiet, I'm hunting gwondhogs, you cwazy wabbit. (btw, READ #5) and have a nice day.

 

 

 

 

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oh, and Juki -

 

I don't want to enjoin Al's effort to diss conservatives. Of course I am repulsed by what the nutcase did.

 

But that is not the issue I want to discuss about Al's dissing conservatives post.

 

I want to discuss Al dissing conservatives by bringing up a bad cherry picked example, and trying

 

to generalize based on one freakin example.

 

1. Al, the lib's mod, knows better.

 

2. So do you.

 

3. Let me know when you get the nads up to criticize Al, too.

 

4. Read #5 above.

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