Announcing 'The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right'
By David Neiwert Monday Apr 06, 2009 12:00pm
I'm proud to announce today the publication of my fourth book: The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, by PoliPoint Press.
The book is an outgrowth of the work I've done over the years at my old blog Orcinus, where the chief subject since the very first post has been the intersection of right-wing extremism and mainstream politics. Indeed, anyone who's read my work over the years -- especially those Koufax-winning series on fascism -- will recognize at least some of the prose contained herein.
It's also probably worth noting that the subject of eliminationism encompasses all three of my previous books as well: In God's Country was about the Patriot movement, which I describe there as proto-fascist; Death on the Fourth of July deals with one of the main manifestations of eliminationist violence -- namely, hate crimes; and Strawberry Days was about one of the worst episodes of officially sanctioned eliminationism in the country's history. So The Eliminationists represents a sharpening of the focus into a subject I think is going to preoccupy many of us shortly.
Indeed, as this past weekend's events have demonstrated, the need to discuss this issue has never been clearer or greater -- and it may become even more so over the coming weeks and months.
The book is currently available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. We're still waiting for the books to work their way through the distribution chain and reach people's local bookstores.
Because of that, we'll have a chat here hosted by Digby on May 2, by which time the book should be on store shelves. I'll also be chatting at Firedoglake on May 16, and some undetermined date at Daily Kos.
We're also planning to run pertinent excerpts from the book here at C&L in the coming week or so. And in the coming weeks, I'll be hosting a series of other journalists who are similarly concerned about the issues the book addresses in live chats here at C&L.
And I'm looking forward to every bit of it.
(You can also read Tristero's lovely review over at Digby's Hullabaloo.)
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One Amazon Prime order coming my way!
You are clearly my fav blogger here, David. I look forward to reading your book.
Congrats on #4!
Sounds like a sequel to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pijy1CGqzfI
Any chance to have this on CD for us constant travelers?
Not a bad idea. I'll suggest it to the publisher. Right now the digital stuff is new to book folks, it seems -- I've been urging them to make it available on Kindle, but they're taking a wait-and-see approach.
If you're suggesting that I do a read-aloud version of it for CD, well, that would have to depend on demand. But fair warning: Just as I have a face made for radio, I have a voice made for newspapers.
now that's funny.
I look forward to reading this book!
I am curious what percentage of the right wing tv/radio hate merchants truly believe the garabage that comes out of their own mouths, and what percentage are doing schtick. For example- Glenn Beck's routine is so similiar to that of a televangelist, in his lies, his absurd crocidile tears, and paranoia-yet he gets viewers- It has to be an act..
Then there are the likes of Michael Savage- a rabid racist and gay basher who uses the microphone to spew his hatred. I think he's real..
This friggin friday!
there was a time in the recent past that I would have bought your book. The truth is, I'm on Social Security and I just can't afford to now. I have several books on the recent history especially since 9/11. Good Luck with your sales and get on that bestseller list.
when I'm done with it.
that, Ron.
Not to take any interest away from Dave's book, I was going to recommend another book to you. THE WAR ON TRUTH by Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed.
us on the other book you recommended. It was a goodie! (as long as we're talking books)
ron. if you don't have one open an Amazon account and put the book on your wish list and then remind me and although I don't make jack shit and am way behind on rent I'd buy a copy for you. As long as you agreed to pass it on to another person who can't afford it after you've read it.
I have an account but I would not wish for you to buy me a copy. I have been able to manage to pay my rent so far. Thanks anyway.
ron, we haven't remembered to get you a birthday present for several years. Let us get you an early or late one this year. I'll be happy to.
you all are being too nice. Thank you.
I think we are being just exactly the right amount of nice for someone like you, Ron. :)
Alright then ron, Looks like you'll be able to get a copy from some of the other commenters after they've read it anyway. I gotta get me a copy of it ordered today though! And I'll be sure to pass that on when I'm done with it too.
and urged people to steal it.
I did.
I am so going to turn you in. ;)
I'm not sure about the whole statute of limitations thing but I think 1972 or 73 is far enough back to cover me on this one.
Since you don't want to accept gift copies of the book, ask yer Library to order it!
I look forward to reading it David! Keep up the good work!
"The Eliminationists represents a sharpening of the focus into a subject I think is going to preoccupy many of us shortly."
So my question David is...
why do you think this is a subject that will preoccupy many of us shortly?
seems like you are taking Glenn Beck a little too serious! seems like you are predicting something....
seriously. They have a goal and will not rest until we stop them or they accomplish them.
It wasn't these people's agenda that nearly ruined your country over the past years, you know.
The right-wing grassroots are manipulated by other factions, and they lose every time they let themselves be fooled to vote for people like Bush, who has NOTHING to do with what they care about. These groups hated Bush as much as anyone after a while.
I pretty much regard this as a straw man. Take the heat off the Neoconservative elites who actually did get their agenda through, while blaming it all on, and demonizing some clueless suckers with a few Neonazi links on the fringe. Neonazis don't need any demonizing, since it's allready redundant, and the others who swallow the psy-op-like propaganda are pretty much a weak group. I'm trying to figure out if the people who push this so intensely is working on the same psychological operation desinged to split the power of the people so that the same stinking elitists can remain in power.
This is pretty much the same as BillO claiming the "far left" is behind Obamas politics when it's clearly not.
It's the people who pose as "moderates" and "serious" and who have their circlewanks in high places that screw things up. Deliberately. If this focus on fringe sub-culture elements leads us to take the eye of the ball, we are fools who rather want to focus and blame the weak misguided fools instead of the real criminals and quislings who have lead us towards the cliff.
There are useful idiots, and then there are the people who use them. Who should the booming progressive movement focus on?
This is part of the struggle for the soul of the progressive movement. I hope people can be wise about it.
You're right to some extent but look at it this way - if someone is swinging a hatchet(a tool) at you head do you immediately do a pyscho-anantsis of the guy or do you try to get the hatchet out of his hands. We need to remove the tools(aka:weapons) from the hands of those that you're talking about and then they can be properly dealt with.
There would be civil war before you could take guns away from a whole lot of Americans. I think it would make recruitment for these kinds of groups skyrocket and split the country down the middle.
I would think the goal should be to create less terrorism and conflict in these times, not more.
We have spent the past 8 years fighting against the fearmongering of the Neocons and every powerhungry government and war-profiteer on Earth in the wake of the "war on terror". Finding a new group to demonize and brand as terrorists is just as amoral and wrong, and has the same smell of manipulation.
The phony war on terror should end, and the progressive movement shouldn't feed into the fear, hate and stereotyping that allows it to live and prosper.
The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself, remember.
I repeat, there is a battle going on for the soul of the progressive movement. Is "our side" really better than the other? Or just better educated useful idiots?
the church shooting in TN and the shooting this weekend (which looks to have been committed by a guy in a white supremacist group.
Might have a little something to do with that.
there was also a Vietnamese American who freaked out also...for economic reasons?
sounds like a couple of shooting instances...all very terrible but.
why does David think that there will be more? I think everyone is on edge cuz of the economy, not because Obama is gonna take our guns!...
when the guy in Florida threw his children off a building or bridge. I told a friend at the time that we were going to see a lot more violence in the future. This last week end a man killed his 4 children and then took his own life in Wa. state.
The man killed his five children, not four, and then killed himself. But it's doubtful that it was for economic reasons, since both he and his wife were employed. According to neighbors and family members, he was a very controlling person who had abused at least one of his children in the past.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localne...
My concerns definitely predated the Pittsburgh shooting.
See more here, here, and here, and here.
Is it reaching a boiling point because of the coming economic depression...
or do you predict that Obama and Holder will introduce a new gun bill soon?
what's causing people to snap?
The powerlessness that people on the right feel right now, which is bringing about a real escalation in extreme rhetoric from normally "mainstream" quarters. For some right-wing authoritarians, the powerless is a nearly unbearable existential state. So we get them acting out in all kinds of ways.
Yeah, I'm a pro second amendment liberal and am aware of the personality type that you speak of and (seem) to be afraid of.
...and being wary of people who "love their guns too much" is legitimate. ...those kind of people scare me (a little)
but not enough to give up the second amendment.
(I'm scared of unstable maniacs who get behind the wheel of large suv's too.)
good luck with the book!
As you'll see from reading the book, I too am pro-2nd Amendment -- I grew up in an NRA family -- but I take a middle position that some gun regulation is not only reasonable but desirable.
...perhaps I should read it. ...while I still have a job and can afford it!
finding a middle ground in the gun debate (between "ban all guns" and "I need 50 assault rifles") would be nice. As someone who knows people in both groups I don't see that happening any time soon.
Education on both ends is the key....perhaps your book has some of that in it?
Certainly, some of the mass shootings are people who've lost their jobs or whose wives have left them, but a disturbing number have been people who, as Beck said, "fear for their country."
As one example, Milquetoast, Google the church-shooter manifesto. The guy is channeling Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity verbatim.
They hate liberals, they fear Socialism, they don't trust the government, they think someone is going to take their guns. These are all ideas that are pushed on a daily basis by Right-Wing TV and radio. And while many people may agree and never do anything, there are some who feel they're justified.
Goading people into violence and revolution is not innocent fun. I suspect there will be much more violence to come.
and seen families living in tar paper shacks, gone hungry until pay day, people that were beat day after day by their alcoholic daddies. I'm not entirely ignorant of this alternate American reality.
I can't recall any right wing radio/tv voice having anything positive to say about anyone other than GW Bush and friends...
The theme of right wing radio/tv hosts seems to be finding a different group of people each week to hate.
One week it's the gays, the next it's Muslims, the next it's athiests, the next it's "illiegal aliens" (i.e all Latinos), etc....
Liberals seem to have messages of hope and a desire to make things better- but the radical right offers only a vison of hatred..
and some times it's difficult to figure out just who is more radical these days.
...I don't know about you, but I'd rather have allegedly radical "messages of hope and desire to make things better", than anything the right has to offer.
Good for you, David! You will be on my "Drink a cocktail to" list tonight. In fact I have decided you'll be the only one on that list. :)
I'm very interested in reading the book and will put my order in today.
underestimate the American people's willingness to suck up crap for long periods of time.
then they were back when they used to beat up hippies and give em haircuts?
I thought they sissy-slapped them and gave them perms to simply die for.
be ordering one shortly. Thanks for the heads up Dave.
ABC: One month of gun violence claims 48 lives
04/06/2009 @ 8:19 am
Filed by David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
In the last month, 48 lives have been claimed in just seven mass shootings across the United States, according to published reports.
"What is going on with the gun rampages in America?" asked ABC's Diane Sawyer on a Monday episode of Good Morning America.
A shooter who killed 10 in Samson, Alabama in early March appeared to have a "spotless past," according to Alabama's NBC 13.
In Oakland, a 26-year-old parolee was shot down after he killed four police officers. After putting bullets in two motorcycle officers, he was killed later in the day at his sister's apartment, but only after shooting yet another two cops.
Six people were shot dead in an apparent murder-suicide at a home in an upscale Silicon Valley neighborhood, police said Monday, March 30. Police said the shooter used two guns, was a family member and was among those dead. Another woman was seriously injured.
A gunman in New York, who'd allegedly been fired from his job for poor English skills, walked into an immigrant center and murdered 13 before turning the gun on himself.
In Carthage, North Carolina, a town of just 1,800, eight people were killed in a nursing home before an officer charged in without backup and felled a rampaging 45-year-old.
In Oakland, three more police officers died after being called out to a domestic disturbance: apparently an argument that began over a dog urinating in a house. The gunman was allegedly "lying in wait" to ambush the officers.
Then, Washington state man shot and killed his five children, between the ages of seven and 16, then turned the gun on himself after his wife told him she was leaving him, in the third US mass shooting since Friday.
"These mass shootings come nearly two years after the massacre at Virginia Tech," said ABC reporter David Muir, speaking to Sawyer. "Two years after the Virginia governor and authorities urged lawmakers to close the gun show loophole where customers can buy guns, no questions asked."
Muir said on Friday night, 20/20 will air a special report -- "What if I had a gun?" -- that explores the status of firearms in American culture, how easy it is to procure deadly weapons at gun shows and how some children and teens react to guns when they think nobody may be looking.
This video is from ABC's Good Morning America, broadcast Apr. 6, 2009.
http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=15107
was VERY interesting. Thanks for the link.
A less partisan title might help your book reach a broader audience, but i suspect this is a more 'preach to the choir' type of book. For some reason, i can't imagine a right winger pining to hear someone explain why they are so full of hate. Kudos!
Well, I've always been a "let the chips fall where they may" kind of journalist. I actually do address this point in the final chapter.
So how often do you conduct interviews in a buffalo herd?
why do people on the left or right always think people who disagree with them is hate?Also hate crimes I don't get,when has a crime ever been committed out of love?
Either you are a troll or don't know how to find out what a 'hate crime' is.
A 'hate crime' is one that is committed not because the victim is known and hated for some particular reason but solely because the victim belongs to a group that is hated in general.
Killing police just because they are police would be a hate crime. Killing police who have come to arrest you would not.
Stealing a loave of bread to feed your starving family might be considered committing a crime as an act of love. And that definitly has happened many a time.
Tonight Beck is going to talk about FEMA camps. God only knows where he's going with that, but you can bet it'll be strange.
beck says the FEMA camps are bogus, he insinuated that in previous shows.
I guess I'll have a short wait before it turns up at the nearby bookstore or becomes available to order. I'm looking forward to reading it but I like my local bookshop. For your next feat perhaps you'll consider an illustrated book, something along the lines of an Audubon Guide to North American Nutbars. It would make it easier to spot them in the wild.
I ordered it. After you read it, I'll send it off to Ron.
very much. Will you hand deliver it? Please.
You may want to go to your local bookshop and place an order for it. They may not stock it otherwise.
But I always encourage people, especially those of us fond of bookstores, to use their favorite shop if they can. It helps spread word of mouth about the book, too.
Crooks and Liars is talked about on Beck's show tonight. I believe it was in regards to a post David posted earlier today about the kid who shot the policemen. Be sure and check it out David.
Do report on it, David. I wouldn't watch Beck if someone paid me. Thanks, PoP!
telling me they like an occasional bit of train wreck television. If you think of Beck's show as mid-air collision television (between Air Farce 1 and the Sanity 747) perhaps it might become more bearable.
Train wreck television is Flavor Flav and a mansion chock full o' ho's. Lunacy television is Glenn Beck. The thought of his crying dirtying up my already dirty house...nah, not for me.
Don't you think this would be the perfect theme music for Beck's show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2kxlZDOHeQ
And Beck's show is as stiff as the Miracles are in that video (dude's...where's your SOUL?!)
Is that the same guy we saw on Idol a couple of weeks ago? Wow. I mean WOW! What happened to him??
p.s. After further thought, I always loved that song and I think it's too good for Beck.
Hey, someone has to run to the front ever so often to see what the other side is up to.
The guest, said C&L is a very liberal website or left wing site, can't remember which. Beck said the left wanted to blame the right wing talkers for what the kid did, but that in reality the kid was just a white supremacist. Then the guest took it from there. This all takes place as soon as Beck takes his seat at the desk.
Better thee, than meeee. You are a better person than I, PoP!
I thought all left leaning sites were "far looney left" or "left hate sites" or some such. We've been downgraded! Downgraded, I say!
Unfortunately the book hasn't arrived yet...I'm on backorder though. As I gazed through the political section of the store, I was amazed at all of the right wing hate books: Morris, Levin, O'Reilly, etc. all in the area where Neiwert's book will be placed. These folks are pimping hate and the bigots are their whores.
Yeah, that is the wing-nut way of revisionism. flood the market with as many books filled with their lies, half-truths and inuendo, and then have rich guys buy in bulk to inflate the sales and force it onto the bestsellers list. If Daves book becomes a best seller it will do so on its own merits, something conservative book writers can't ever say.
The books I truly hate are the PIG guides, highlyh misleading books filled with all sorts of revisionism, especially the history books. I hate history books that deliberatly distort history in order to push a political agenda, it angers me to no end.
arrived from Amazon today. I look forward to reading it this weekend. I wish the publisher had done an HB release -- I hate paperbacks...
Thanks David.
We did it in paperback for reasons of accessibility. A lot of folks will pay $10-15 for a book they'd think twice about buying at $30. One of the things that really hurt Strawberry Days, I felt, was that it didn't come out in paper.
but usually the pub will issue an HB copy for library circulation or crazy biblios like me.....
I'm glad to hear it's in paperback; I can't afford new hardback books anymore.
Cost is definately a factor but I remember when i had a used bookstore for a while I had a number of people tell me they preferred paperbacks for reading because of the weight of the book. If you're holding it up a hard cover does get heavy after a while.
has the headline: Kentucky gun show features Obama-Hitler shirts and warnings to ‘prepare for Obama’s citizen army.’
Scary stuff out there.
So are they for citizens armies or against them? That seems to change with the wind with the nutties.
I pre-ordered the book, and was lucky to receive it last week. I've already started it, and it's hard to put down, as disturbing as it is.
Thanks for sounding the alarm, Dave...it's so badly needed.
A week ago I bough Bob Cescas book, I had to travel to Tuscon in order to find a copy Sierra Vista is a pretty Republican area. I just signed out on leave early this morning and am almost back in Los Angeles where I am certain I can find a copy, you can find anything in LA.
Perhaps the answer to this question would be clearer after reading the book, but who does the "American Right" refer to? I assume it refers to anyone that considers themselves right-wing but I am wondering if this specific term refer to a smaller group with right-wingers and I just am not aware.
Either way, does a title like this not alienate readers who lean right enough to label themselves right-wing? And I would think that this book would do more good in the hands of both Left and Right, as opposed to just the Left.
read the book. It is about how ideas from far-right groups - Birchers, White Power, militias, etc, have been adopted by opionion maker supported by major corporate media.
You can read the first 50 pages at Google Books, which will make you buy the book to read the rest.
In an effort to speed along the publisher's "wait and see" attitude for making the book available on Kindle, there is a link made available for that purpose on the main page. If anyone else wants it "Kindle-ized" or if you are buying the print version but would like to help us digital readers, would you also click that link to add encouragement? Many thanks in advance.
a C&L plug from Glenn Beck's show. Too bad they didn't mention you by name Dave, even though they were clearly referring to your post, it probably would have spiked your book sales a little.
... go on Colbert to get the Colbert Bump! (Or have you already and I missed it?)
Glad to see you published it. Something else to add to my professional must read list. Might even wind up on my race and ethnicity class readings.
Congratulations!
Hey David. Good luck with your book. I'll be looking for it, next time I'm in B&N.
I ordered my copy just now!
I'll be looking for your book, David.
I'm looking forward to the book. As someone who was directly affected by Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus when I was a kid, I'm acutely aware of how easily these groups can form and how quickly they can act out when they feel threatened....and it's worse today than it was then.
It's spooky how timely this is. Hope it's widely read, and I look forward to it.
radicalize the right when Daniel Bell published The Radical Right in 1963?
The radicalization took place in church.
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