This was not political extremism, nor the result of any sort of rhetoric (which can be found on both sides and which has been used for a very long time), nor even close to the organized terror campaign that Al Qaeda. He was just a disturbed individual.
Video embedded below.
Past related post:
Berman Post: Gabrielle Giffords (D) Shot in The Head
Berman Post: Jared Laughner Identified as Shooter of Gabrielle Giffords (D)
Berman Post: Jared Laughner (Shooter of Gabrielle Giffords (D)) MySpace Page Found, Now Removed
Berman Post: Arizona Chief US District Judge John Roll Confirmed Killed by Jared Loughner
Berman Post: Obama on Jared Loughner's Shooting Spree (Gravely Injuring Gabrielle Giffords And Killing John Roll)
Berman Post: All Legislation in Considered by The House Being Postponed Due to Jared Loughner's Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords (D)
Berman Post: Heart Wrenching Interview of Mother of Slain 9-Year-Old (Shooting Victim of Jared Loughner)
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
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if a Muslim organization had put out a poster with American politicians in the cross-hairs, and one had gotten shot, the reaction from people like Sarah Palin would be predictable.
ReplyDeletelikewise, Right-wing bloggers who want to dismiss Loughner as merely disturbed are being hypocritical, since they won’t similarly dismiss obviously unstable Muslims who, like the so-called “Patriots” of the McVeigh stripe, sometimes turn violent. (Zacharias Moussawi, for instance, isn’t playing with a full set of backgammon dominoes, and blaming Islam for him is bizarre).
it is irrelevant that Loughner may (at this point we can only say “may”) have been a liberal years earlier in high school. If so, he changed. And among the concerns that came to dominate him as he moved to the Right was the illegitimacy of the “Second Constitution” (the 14th Amendment, which bestows citizenship on all those born in the US, a provision right-wingers in Arizona are trying to overturn at the state level). Loughner also thought that Federal funding for his own community college was unconstitutional, and he was thrown out for becoming violent over the issue. Lately he ranted about the loss of the gold standard, a right wing theme. He obviously shared with the Arizona Right a fascination with firearms, and it is telling that a disturbed young man who had had brushes with the law was able to come by a semi-automatic pistol.. I don’t think we can take too seriously the list of books he said he liked, as a guide to his political thinking. They could just have been randomly pulled off some list of great books on the Web, since there is no coherence to the choices.
In fact, the right-wing Muslim crackpots and the right-wing American crackpots are haunted by similar anxieties, about a powerful government in Washington undermining their localistic ideas of the good life.
@Ian Dubrowsky - if a Tea Party leader said that they wanted someone to go out a shoot a politician, and then someone in the audience went out and shot that person, that would be a legitimate connection. There is no evidence to suggest he even saw Palin's map with targets on it; nor the maps with targets put out by Democrats. Military terminology has been used in political campaigns (even the word 'campaign') for a very long time. Loughner was just a loon.
ReplyDeletehaha "Tea Party Leaders" have basically done all they could to lead people to that conclusion without explicitly saying "go out and shoot this person", but even if they had its beside the point. In fact the guy who tried to shoot up the ACLU and Tides foundation in San Francisco has said that he was only trying to do so because Glenn Beck led him on to believe it was the right thing to do- fully aware that Beck himself never explicitly called for violence.
ReplyDeleteThey have fostered an enviroment of fear, paranoia and lies- which is the point of the TEA party- where for the Jared Loughners of the world to do violence is logical. Sarah Palin bears responsibilty just like radical Muslim Imans bear responsibilty for isolated acts of terrorism like this one- many of whom never explicityly advocate for specific motions of violence- I never even mentioned her map.
what is interesting to me about the episode is the hypocrisy of the reactions to it by people like Sarah Palin, and I guess yourself.
@Ian Dubrowsky - I assume you have apologized for the shooting victim making a death threat against a Tea Party leader (or the record number of threats against Palin). The logic is the same; there is no evidence he ever read any of your comments here at the Berman Post, but you are fostering an environment of fear that Conservative leaders and creating an environment where people will go out their and kill someone. That person is going to stop Conservatives from creating that dangerous environment by silencing them forcefully, all because of your comments that they may or may not have read...
ReplyDeleteSometimes crazy people are just that; politicians are not sending them secret messages that only they can decode.
Where is the hypocrisy?
your like this guy:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.salon.com/entertainment/comics/this_modern_world/2011/01/18/this_modern_world
the hypocrisy?- again, if the shooter was a muslim- i sinceley doubdt the same level of judicious parsing of guilt that sarah palin and you give Jared Loughner would still apply. Neither of you for instance dismiss muslim terrorists who act in isolated cells- like the times square bomber- as "just a loon"- especially when the whole ideological thrust of right-wing zionism today is to unfairly blame muslims for the actions of individuals- if you are feeling upset because you feel unfairly blamed, maybe you should ask U.S. Muslims how they deal with that.
inconveniently for you, There is no left in America for you to compare with any one in the level of prominence as a Sarah Palin. Palin has a long history of using violent rhetoric and then denying it.
Palin said of Julian Assange, “Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?” The US uses drone strikes against the latter.
When Assange complained that she was calling for his assassination, she claimed he had misquoted her.
Back in 2008, Palin repeatedly accused then candidate Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Obama had in fact denounced the terrorist past of the person Palin was using to smear him.
Palin whipped up her frenzied campaign crowds to shout “terrorist” at Obama, but then denied that she had heard them doing so.
It is not just Palin but also the candidates she endorses. Jane Hamsher points out that Giffords’s opponent in the last election, supported by Palin, “Held June Event to “Shoot a Fully Automatic M16″ to “Get on Target” and “Remove Gabrielle Giffords”. That site, like Palin’s own PAC site and lots of other right wing web pages around the internet is now being scrubbed of such material.
the TEA party is like our own American islamist movement- steeped in symbolism, falsehoods, lies and paranoia- with leaders who are pretty much the same. Both have to use over the top, violent rhetoric because they know if they actually engage in civil debate they will lose. It's why Rush Limbaugh complains that people are trying to "silence him", he knows that if he can't do his whole song and dance and actually has to engage with people- then he will lose- which figures because the only political party hated more than the democrats is still the republicans.
insofar as you personally bear responsibility for fostering such a climate, you know better than I do.