Incitement 1 - Limbaugh Incites Terrorism

Those of the far right have been inciting their lunatic followers (the McVeighists) to violence for years now, but the din of wingnut pundits has never been so loud or continuous as it is today. Some examples of what I consider to be incitement would be Bill O'Reilly's ruthless verbal attacks on Dr. Tiller which led to his death, Glenn Beck crying about how "we" need to "take our country back," and (in addition to his already vociferous and vile attacks on immigrants) Lou Dobbs's howling accusations that an illegal alien tried to assassinate him (thus inciting his gun crazy, xenophobic, racist followers to protect him). To me this all echoes the propaganda campaign that resulted in Kristallnacht; an increasingly vitriolic rhetoric composed of inuendo and belief, attribution of all negatives to the opponent even if the negative is a result of their actions, inventing facts to fit their argument, and inventing incidents that prove the guilt of the enemy. It doesn't take a lot of armed zealots to fuck things up in a big way.

So I will now begin a list of language that I consider to be an incitement to violence. Each post in this series will be named "Incitement #" and will link back to here. When I have time I will go into the past and dig up some specific language for the above examples as well as other examples.

We begin this series with the King of Hate:

...what's happening here -- this is an in-our-face weakening of our security, which means that if a civilian target is hit again, particularly New York City, Obama is toast. He's done. The American people will tolerate a lot, but not a grotesque mishandling of security based on a contempt for your own country. -- Rush Limbaugh 11-16-2009

This sounds to me like he's prodding someone out there to hit a civilian target. There are more McVeighists out there than we care to think about.

The Vaccination "Debate"

Let's ignore the hundreds of thousands of doctors and scientists who have analyzed millions of pieces of actual data and pay attention to the blathering of paranoid contrarians instead.

The Lou Dobbs Problem

The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.

- “The Mindscape of Alan Moore” (2003) via uncertain times

A Quick Note

I have this funny suspicion that some really big things are being done quietly or secretly at the moment and we won't hear about them until after the election. The "loans" to Detroit auto makers for instance, negotiations and actions in the Middle East that may run counter to civilized behavior (Bob Woodward intimated on Real Time with Bill Maher that we were assassinating a lot of people in Iraq), Secret Service involvement in rights violations (kidnapping and brutality at the RNC), and on and on and more than we can see right now. Is the gamble by our shadowy overlords (OSO) that by distracting us with the Palin/McCain implosion we won't see them ripping the last shreds of our ability to remain human from us? We've been so trained to view the world as if what celebrities do is the most important thing going on. So who are the biggest celebrities of the moment? Obama and Palin. Coincidence? Do you think only Palin is a pawn of OSO? Goshes.

By the way, I'm still bummed that Lieberman wasn't named as McCain's VP. They made such a cute couple.