John's already pointed out the recent inclusion of our book, Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane in a summer roundup of political books titled "Flame-throwing political books from the right and the left".

Naturally, we're grateful for the attention from the post. Books editor Stephen Levingston, who wrote the piece, was also kind enough to invite us to contribute an op-ed in support of the book, "10 fictitious Tea Party beliefs", a little while back. (Notably, Levingston also contributed one of the more notable nuggets of information we included in the book last year when examining the correlation of racist attitudes to anti-health-care activism.)

But I was frankly taken aback by the way it was all framed, notably this:

Yes, it could be a long, hot summer. But when does a swat from the left cancel out a snipe from the right? When do we reach a state of political imbecility where only the noise exists -- and all thought and reason have drained away? You judge. Here are the titles.

We're grateful that ours was the first title that followed. And the list included some other interesting contributions to the debate, including Markos Moulitsas' forthcoming American Taliban. But I was even more struck by the right-wing titles to which, apparently, we were being held up as the right-wing equivalent of the "flame-throwing" season:

THE BLUEPRINT: Obama's Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency

THE NEXT AMERICAN CIVIL WAR: The Populist Revolt Against the Liberal Elite

THE POST-AMERICAN PRESIDENCY: The Obama Administration's War on America

TO SAVE AMERICA: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine

THE MANCHURIAN PRESIDENT: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists

Excuse me, am I imagining things, or is the serious, factual, fully documented and completely transparent effort that we put into this book being equated, journalistically speaking, with a pile of conspiracist lunacy?

Maybe it's just me, but the entire right-wing list seems actually to prove the point of our title: these people are nuts, plain and simple.

They not only push beliefs that are provably untrue, they are clearly indulging in the kind of insurrectionist extremism that ultimately produces the kind of violent acts Over the Cliff details in abundance.

Instead of hand-wringing about whether both sides are just getting too extreme, it might be worth pointing out that it's actually only one side of the debate that's throwing flames and engaging in real extremism -- and the other side is being painted as extreme for simply pointing out that fact.

I don't know if this kind of false equivalency is actually Levingston's sentiments or just those of his editors, but it has become an all-too-common feature of the WaPo's approach to news: treat people who tell lies and people who tell the truth as merely opposing sides of an opinionated debate.

It's the fake culture of centrism that exists in newsrooms around the country. It's a product of a classic logical fallacy that is commonly adopted by journalists eager to escape accusations of "liberal media bias" -- namely, the argumentum ad temperantiam:

a logical fallacy which asserts that any given compromise between two positions must be correct.

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It's people like this who I most fear, because they are completely irrational, own guns, and embrace violence. It's also why I loathe Michele Bachmann and her ilk. They actually encourage this type of behavior.

Watch this exchange. This man starts out angry, but controlled. He's got a problem with our new "socialist-communist" health care bill, and he'll tell anyone within 50 feet about it. When pressed on specifics, he just rolls out of control, first shouting for death to the communists, then death to the videographer.

"Get out of here before I run you up with this flag and throw you to the river," he cries. "I fought for this country, you sonofabitch. What did you do?"

With all due respect for his service to our country, he seems to have a disconnect when it comes to Constitutional rights. Evidently free speech, which he is exercising liberally in this clip, is only acceptable when it's right wing free speech.

Part of me really dislikes giving any attention to these people. At the same time, ignoring them also ignores the fact that when mentally unstable people are stirred up and their anger ignited, it will not end well.

David Frum admits what most of the media ignores -- that Fox News works for the GOP -- but then turns it on its head.

Frum: "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox."

Frum has been outspoken against a lot of the tactics the GOP has been using since Obama took over office and even called the passing of HCR the GOP's Waterloo.

Jamison Foser:

The audience for Beck’s Friday night special were each given copies of two books. One of them was Cleon Skousen’s Five Thousand Year Leap. Skousen, who died in 2006, is one of the legendary cranks of the conservative world, a John Bircher, a grand fantasist of theories about secret conspiracies between capitalists and communists to impose a one-world government under the control of David Rockefeller.

There’s always been a market for this junk of course. Once that market was reached via mimeographed newsletters. Now it’s being tapped by Fox News.

...

It’s not a new message of course. In fact, big parts of it seem almost self-consciously copied from Peter Finch’s legendary declamation in the movie Network.

Of course, Finch was only pretending to be crazy. He was an actor performing a role. Then again – so probably is Glenn Beck.

But what about Fox News? What’s their excuse?

Frum seems to be under the impression that Glenn Beck's blend of stupid and crazy is some sort of departure from Fox's previously high standards. If only that were so.

John Birch is alive and well in the Tea Party movement. Beck is acting as a transmitter for all things crazy, but he was just the latest extension of what Fox News has always been. And for Roger Ailes, it's not about news, but ratings anyway -- and crazy brings ratings.

AILES: I'm not in politics, I'm in ratings. We're winning.

Here's my piece on everything Ailes said on THIS WEEK: It's very revealing. Ailes exposes Fox News' GOP philosophical connections

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Glenn Beck's eliminiationist jihad against the progressive movement took an interesting rhetorical turn yesterday, when Beck tried to claim that the "progressive road" leads to Communism and Nazism:

Beck: It's not about Communists. Never has been about Communists, either. Really hasn't. That's guy's a lunatic fringe. Just like the white supremacists on the other side. Right here! [Points to chalkboard diagram]

This side, up and down! Communists and fascists -- those people are crazy! This is about progressivism. And most people, they're in here -- when they say they are progressive, they don't think they're headed here. But progress -- baby steps -- you are moving toward something! You are moving toward one of these.

This is why they called George Bush a fascist. Because progressives know what's at the end of the progressive road -- Nazis or Communists! Someone has to control your life. Someone will be at the controls.

Communists would like it to be them. Nazis are rooting for their side. I'm not rooting for any side! I'm rooting for this side [points to right side of diagram]. Wrong side of the scale, guy!

Now, there's at least some reason to connect progressivism with Communism, since they are both left-wing phenomena and share at least some values. But Nazism?

Let's look at some real American Nazis -- say, the folks who come out in support of Sheriff Joe Arpaio:

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See anything "progressive" there? Actually, you do -- you see it among the pro-immigrant marchers the Nazis are protesting against.

But you'd have a hard time convincing anyone -- especially these neo-Nazis themselves -- that they have anything even remotely to do with "progressivism." Indeed, the very thing that animates them into barbaric bloodlust is the progressive movement -- that is, the desire to destroy it utterly.

As we've explained previously, in the context of Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent Liberal Fascism thesis -- which, of course, is the basis for Beck's lumping of fascism and communism together under the "end of the progressive road" -- what makes these people right-wing extremists is that they not only adopt right-wing political positions, they take them to their most extreme logical (if that's the word for it) outcome:

• They not only oppose abortion, they believe abortion providers should be killed.
• They not only believe that liberal elites control the media and financial institutions, but that a conniving cabal of Jews is at the heart of this conspiracy to destroy America.
• They not only despise Big Government, they believe it is part of a New World Order plot to enslave us all.
• They not only defend gun rights avidly, they stockpile them out of fear that President Obama plans to send in U.N. troops to take them away from citizens.
• They not only oppose homosexuality as immoral, they believe gays and lesbians deserve the death penalty.
• They not only oppose civil-rights advances for minorities, they also believe a "race war" is imminent, necessary and desirable.

And on and on. Every part of the agenda of the agenda of right-wing extremists is essentially an extreme expression of conservative positions. And that, fundamentally, is why American fascism always has been and always will be, properly understood, an unmistakable phenomenon of the Right.

Methinks Beck needs some better diagrams.

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Glenn Beck has a special "documentary" he's going to show his audience today on Fox News titled "Live Free Or Die," and what's evident is that the entire show is going to be predicated on expanding on Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent thesis in his bestselling book, Liberal Fascism, namely, that fascism is "properly understood" as "a phenomenon of the left."

What's apparent is that Beck intends to leap from this fraudulent beginning to the bizarre conclusion that the progressive movement has always produced genocide -- mostly by equating fascists with communists with progressives, which is part of the underlying illogic of Goldberg's thesis. It seems he will be promoting the conclusion that President Obama is leading America on a path to genocide as well.

Indeed, anyone who's been watching Beck's show the past year is aware that his continually building thesis about Obama -- that he is secretly a black radical Marxist/fascist/socialist/whateverist intent on creating a totalitarian regime in America -- is largely built on Liberal Fascism and its thesis. Beck has

had Goldberg on numerous times to promote the fraud. And his long-running attacks on the progressive movement as the "cancer" destroying the country -- which has been the entire point of Beck's show this week, including the conclusion that progressives may try to assassinate Obama if he moves to the center -- have been nakedly drawn straight from Goldberg's Planet Bizarro version of history. (The giveaway has been Beck's running insistence that Woodrow Wilson is at the root of this evil.)

Towards the end of yesterday's segment, Beck fretted that "the academic wing" of the progressive movement was going to attack him viciously for his "documentary." Goldberg notes that he's faced the same for his book -- though in reality, academics have been largely silent on the subject of Liberal Fascism.

That, however, is about to end.

I've already explained in some depth exactly why Goldberg's thesis is so profoundly dishonest, especially when it comes to the mountain of historical facts that contradict his claims, which he simply elides. But I'm not an academic -- just a journalist who has real-life experience writing about real American fascists.

Academic historians, in fact, have tended to shy away from tackling Goldberg's book, precisely because it is such an obvious work of propagandistic polemics, and his methodology so shabby, that they haven't considered the work (such as it is) contained therein to be worthy of academic consideration.

But because Goldberg's fraudulent thesis has now become conventional wisdom on the American Right -- and particularly among the Tea Party set, where signs equating liberals to fascists and Obama to Hitler have become commonplace -- many historians, especially those who have specialized in the serious study of fascism, have come to the realization that calling out Goldberg for his fraud is long overdue.

To that end, I began organizing last fall a series of essays from academic historians and political scientists critiquing Liberal Fascism. The essays are now ready, and this Monday, Jan. 25, they will be presented at History News Network.

In addition to my introductory essay, there will be essays by four widely acknowledged experts on fascism:

-- Robert O. Paxton, professor emeritus at Columbia University and the author of The Anatomy of Fascism.

-- Roger Griffin, professor of political science at Oxford Brookes and the author of The Nature of Fascism.

-- Matthew Feldman, professor of history at University of Northampton, and a co-editor of several academic texts on fascism.

-- Chip Berlet, senior researcher at Political Research Associates and the co-author (with Matthew Lyons) of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort.

Beck will probably believe this response from academics is inspired by his show today, but only in a purely accidental sense: It's been in the works for some months now, and was more inspired by the broad absorption of Goldberg's thesis as conventional wisdom -- of which Beck's constant promotion of it is a not-insignificant part. Let's just say the timing will indeed be serendipitous.

Incidentally, Beck gave us a little preview of the "documentary" on his Tuesday show:

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(Guest blogged by Nonny Mouse)

Love the age of the internet. A bit of Googling around with what fragments of what I could remember, and voila!

To watch it again after nearly 1/2 a century, though, was chilling, particularly the ending - the best and most concrete spelling out of what exactly 'freedom' meant. It's a word W seems particularly fond of spouting, and a word that too many Americans now wouldn't have the faintest idea of how to define, since just about every freedom this film warned us we were in danger of losing... we've lost. It's an eerily prescient film - but not in the way it was intended to be.I never realized it - but it seems the neoCons aren't Republican Nazis -they're actually Red Communists - and the Communist plot to take over America has finally come to fruition.

Comrade Mouse

Thursday Funnies.

Doris Goodwin Kearns was a guest on The Imus Show this morning and was putting the Roberts nomination and the Rove-Gate story in context with Lyndon Johnson's race against Barry Goldwater. As she was telling the story, Doris shared with us Goldwater's private feelings on losing to Johnson:

Download | play -WMP

Download | play -QT

Doris: What a way to win an election. Communists and C*&%-Suckers!

Imus was stunned that this mild mannered historian threw out the word so nonchalantly.

He then asked her if she was drinking. Doris didn't realized that she said something inappropriate for radio. Doris--thanks for the eye opener to get my day started.

I've been sick for over a week so I haven't been posting or reading as much lately, but suddenly I'm hearing rumblings about the possibility that the left could win over the teabaggers because they are angry too.

This tea party movement, this seething anger, is being driven and co-opted by Republicans. But at its core, the outrage isn’t ideological. It isn’t even necessarily anti-government. It’s just anti-this-government.

Those caught up in tea party hysteria are the kind of voters Ross Perot captured in 1992. Two years later, without Perot, these foaming, vaguely culturally conservative, middle-income voters went Republican.

But these voters, unlike their tea party activist manipulators, don’t give a damn about Edmund Burke, Ludwig Von Mises or Ayn Rand. They want jobs and a government that makes sense to them — that’s it. As long as Democratic candidates don’t explicitly agitate their culturally conservative sensibilities and can deflect the appeals Republicans make on those hot-button social issues, these voters can be won over with economic arguments.

Can we dispel that notion forever please?

Nearly 350 right-wing protestors crowded a New Mexico town’s busiest intersection yesterday to protest President Obama’s supposed anti-gun agenda and the “government takeover of our health care system.” While the event mostly looked like any other recent right-wing rally — complete with signs reading “replace the communists in DC” and “the sky is falling! A black man is president!” — what set this protest apart was that there “were plenty of handguns and rifles displayed.”

The local Tea Party and a group called the Second Amendment Task Force (2ATF, a reference to the ATF, which enforces gun laws) encouraged people to bring guns to the event in Alamogordo, NM, in order to “put a positive light on gun ownership,” said 2ATF’s founder Dan Woodruff. While the two protests were technically separate, they were planned together for the same day in adjacent locations. Otero Tea Party Patriots coordinator Don Omey said he was “proud” of the gun-toters. “That’s what we need to turn some minds around,” Omey said. Under New Mexico law, it’s legal for anyone over the age of 19 to open-carry a holstered firearm in most public places. And while there was no violence during the event, one protestor wearing a Tea Party shirt said his loaded gun was a “very open threat” to anyone who might “try to take over the country completely as a socialist communist [state].”

They want jobs for sure, but they think that any government which is led by a Democratic politician wants to destroy their freedoms and as we see, take away their guns. The tea party crowds are a FOX News/corporatist-led movement. What comes out of their mouths is mostly gibberish promoted by right wing talkies and not based in reality.

Has President Obama even mentioned anything about guns in the last six months? Michele Bachmann believes the GOP should be redefined by the teabaggers. Here's a hint for Michele. A good portion of teabaggers are made up of the farthest right-wing fringe elements in America. That includes the militia movement and white supremacists. They already are part of the GOP's base for the most part, only they want to take it as far right as possible. Since Gingrich endorsed Scozzafava, teabaggers and conservative bloggers distrust him so he's out there doing his best to suck up to them now, but Dick Armey already has his hands deep inside their pants already.

Phyllis Schlafly's How to Take Back America and Destroy it in the Process event this past weekend sure was chock full of nuts. What used to take place in the backrooms of the '90s militia-white power meetings is now on full display to America via the religious right and other assorted right-wing outfits. How sad this is happening to America at a time when the country and the world for that matter are struggling to get through the day. People are trying to find work, pay their bills and not go broke because of their lack of health insurance and now they are getting besieged by a stealth attack of Obama is Hitler garbage.

Lee Fang:

At the How To Take Back America Conference last weekend, conservative speaker Kitty Werthmann led a workshop called “How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists.” Announcing the panel in a column preceding the conference, talk show host Janet Porter gushed how Werthmann’s description of Austria in the 1930s is a “mirror to America” today — noting “They had Joseph Goebbels; we have Mark Lloyd, the diversity czar.” The room was packed over capacity to hear Werthmann, who grew up as a Christian in Austria and serves as Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum South Dakota President.

During her session, Werthmann went through a litany of examples of how President Obama is like Adolf Hitler. She noted that Hitler, who acted “like an American politician,” was “elected in a 100% Christian nation.” Although she failed to once mention Antisemitism or militarism, Werthmann explained how universal healthcare, an Equal Rights Amendment, and increased taxes were telltale signs of Nazism. Werthmann also warned the audience:

If we had our guns, we would have fought a bloody battle. So, keep your guns, and buy more guns, and buy ammunition. [...] Take back America. Don’t let them take the country into Socialism. And I refer again, Hitler’s party was National Socialism. [...] And that’s what we are having here right now, which is bordering on Marxism.

These freaks are preaching violence to the conservative base and it's sickening. Violence is spreading like wildfire in America (Just ask the Pittsburgh police after the Richard Poplawski incident) because of them even though they'll deny they had a hand in it like Bill O'Reilly did when Dr. Tiller was murdered. And there will always be a Juan Williams to defend their hate speak at every turn.

If you've forgotten how they operate just read this post and you'll cringe.

I think someone needs to alert the DHS about this since it falls within their guidelines on extremism. Watching Kitty speak just re-enforces the report and explains why the right freaked out over it when it initially became public.