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Well, we've known for some time that Pat Boone has gone wingnutty, but his latest column for the wingnutty WorldNetDaily is one of the most vile pieces of eliminationist rhetoric to come down the pike in awhile:

In time, it seems to happen to all older houses, no matter how well tended they may be.

All manner of parasites, vermin, roaches, rats, worms and termites find their way into the building. Long before they're detected, they infiltrate the walls, the floors, the roofs – and then chew their way into the structure, the supporting beams and the very foundation of the house itself. Silently, surreptitiously, whole communities of invaders make places for themselves, hidden but thriving, totally unknown by the homeowner.

Then, in time, tell-tale signs are seen. Little droppings, discolored trails, proliferating piles of residue appear in corners, on tabletops, little hanging sacs from ceilings – alarming evidence that the grand old dwelling has been invaded. Decidedly unwelcome creatures have made this place their home, and by their very existence will eventually destroy the house and bring it to ruin.

What can be done, when you learn that your house has already been invaded?

Well, the tried and true remedy is tenting.

Experts come in, actually envelope the whole dwelling in a giant tent – and send a very powerful fumigant, lethal to the varmints and unwelcome creatures, into every nook and cranny of the house. Done thoroughly, every last destructive insect or rodent is sent to varmint hell – and in a day or two, the grand house is habitable again.

I believe – figuratively, but in a very real way – we need to tent the White House!

For reasons only he can explain, the current occupant has purposely brought a whole flock of social and political voracious varmints with him into our House. He doesn't own it; he hasn't even rented it; we the people have simply given him the keys and invited him to live there for four years, making it convenient to serve us better, to carry out our expressed wishes for our country.

To the dismay of millions of us, this occupant seems to think we need an emperor. Even though all polls show that the majority of Americans don't want a whole new government-run health-care system, detest the trillions of dollars in un-payable debt he has foisted on us, question the whole "global warming" scare and disagree with him on many other issues, he boldly announces: "We're going to fundamentally transform America!" And he makes it clear that he is going to cram things down our throats whether we want them or not.

Boone then launches into a tirade based almost entirely on the Glenn Beck program (with a dash of Sean Hannity thrown in for good measure): A laundry list of the supposed Marxist radicals who have "infested" the White House, from Van Jones to Kevin Jennings. If you watch Fox, all this is familiar territory.

But what's disturbing about all this is that Boone seems to want the White House "fumigated" right now -- though he's vague on the details of just how we do that. What matters is the vile "varmints" Obama has let into his administration:

No, he wants people who think like this, in order to "radically transform America," as he has pledged.

And they will do just that, drastically … unless we act, decisively and powerfully. Our White House is being eaten away from within. We urgently need to throw a "tent" of public remonstration and outcry over that hallowed abode, to cause them to quake and hunker down inside. And then treat the invaders, the alien rodents, to massive voter gas – the most lethal antidote to would-be tyrants and usurpers.

We must clean house – starting with our own White House.

Tyrants and usurpers? A duly elected president? And when, exactly, does Boone foresee applying the "massive voter gas"? Because, you know, 2012 is quite a ways off still.

This kind of talk is an open invitation to violence; it creates permission for someone to act on this kind of exhortation, especially because it not only dehumanizes, it reduces people to the level of vermin, objects not only fit but desired for elimination.

If Pat Boone is any kind of gauge of the state of mainstream conservatism, I think it's safe to say these people have gone over a cliff and into a deep, yawning abyss.

Remember my discussion of this kind of rhetoric in The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right:

Continue reading »

Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show yesterday, via Media Matters:

You -- In 2008, in our presidential election, we had a, a, a war veteran, Vietnam War veteran, John McCain, against an elitist, five-minute career senator of a hundred and fifty days. That senator was running as a Democrat, and had actively sought the defeat of the U.S. military in Iraq -- had actively sought to undermine General Petraeus, who was the author of the surge that led to a turnaround in Iraq and a victory. And now that same man is dithering in Afghanistan while American soldiers -- not Bush soldiers, not Obama soldiers, American soldiers -- are dying. At record numbers.

The threat that people in this country who want to be free face is now within our own borders. That's the stark reality. We'll be back.

Obama and the liberals are, in the land of the Limbaughst, the True Enemies of America.

If only Limbaugh really were "just an entertainer." Then we could dismiss him as a clown. But "entertainers" don't have audiences of "dittohead" acolytes who absorb their every word as gospel truth. "Entertainers" don't make condemnations of half the country as being the "enemy within" and actually stand -- and actually stand a chance of the other half nodding its head in agreement.

This, of course, is how you whip up violence: You scapegoat, you demonize, you dehumanize, and most of all, you paint a target on people's backs and say they're they Enemy. And you can't help but suspect Limbaugh is perfectly aware of this.

I devote a fair amount of space in The Eliminationists to Limbaugh. For a lot of reasons. Obviously, he's been doing this for awhile. But he's also stepping it up quite bit.

PROMOTIONAL NOTE: I'll be speaking tonight in Mount Vernon, Wash., at the Lincoln Theater at 7 pm. I'll be discussing my book as well as the recent visit to the city by Glenn Beck.

[Warning: Naked self-promotion ahead.]

My book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right continues to attract a lot of interest, partly because it so clearly anticipated the current descent into madness of mainstream conservatives, currently drowning in a lake of right-wing extremism. I didn't predict tea parties, but I did warn that '90s-style militia wingnuttery was about to swamp the Republican Party, and I do explain how this is happening.

So this week I was the featured interview at Amanda Marcotte's podcast at RH Reality Check. We specifically focused on the way right-wing domestic terrorists have had a profound impact on women's reproductive rights. This is a brief interview; it starts at about the 8-minute mark and continues to the 24-minute mark.

And I was also featured as the live guest on Second Life for this week's episode of Virtually Speaking on BlogTalkRadio.

This is an hourlong session and fairly broad-ranging. It was fun for me because I've known Jay Ackroyd for over 10 years -- online (we useta post at the old Slate forum The Fray back in the day), but we only finally met in person this summer at Netroots Nation. We talk about posting at Crooks and Liars, among other things. I also get to talk about my favorite moment of the past year: Having been the guy who made Sarah Palin crazy enough to try to have McCain lie, thereby cementing her rep as a diva among the McCain campaign.

It's now been a full year since I've been at C&L. I think I'll celebrate by running the video that made Palin crazy, which occurred my first week here:

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Meanwhile, John Amato and I are ensconced in the writing process this weekend for our upcoming book from PoliPoint Press: Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane. (Due out next spring.) We'll have more details as we get closer.

In the meantime, I'd like to say thanks to the community of readers and commenters here at C&L for welcoming me so warmly and making me feel right at home from the start. It's been a blast, with lots more to come.

John Amato:

If you live in LA then please join me and a host of bloggers to hear David Neiwert talk about his explosive new book (and a timely one I might add) The Eliminationists: How The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.
There are rare moments in time when an author is in sync with the political surroundings that in habits our culture, but Neiwert is right on the mark.

As Digby states:

There times when a writer publishes a book at exactly the right moment and this is one of them. With violent mainstream rhetoric hitting peaks we haven't seen in nearly 40 years, the village is struggling to comprehend where it's all coming from and what it means. They haven't been paying attention. And because of that there are many people out in the country who are shocked by it too.

Here's the info:

Date: Tuesday, September 1st

Time: There will be a reception at 6 pm. The program will begin promptly at 6:30 pm.

Note: Please be aware that they are filming this event so the studio door will be shut at 6:30 pm sharp.

Location: 10536 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232
Please enter through the gate behind the building.

RSVP: Please RSVP by emailing ewagner-at -bravenewfoundation.org
Seating is very limited, so we will be taking a small number of RSVPs.

Parking: There is free parking on the streets on either side of our building.
Please do not park in the parking spots behind the building as they are reserved.

Well worth a half hour or so of your time if you've got it to spend.

I'll be hosting it and leading the Q&A section so be there or be square.

Heather: If you're not in LA for the BNF event---here's our own David Neiwert on I believe Jon Elliot's show talking about the theme of his new book, The Eliminationists.

Dave N.: A brief promotional plug. I'll be in California this week, putting in an invitational appearance at Brave New Films in Culver City on Tuesday. I'll also be in the Bay Area on Thursday, Sept. 3, speaking at 7:30 p.m. at Books Inc. in Mountain View. If you live in the area, hope to see you there.

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The always classy Coultergeist:

In the discussion with Coulter, in the first video below, Hannity brought up an old statement by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to Obama’s Chief of Staff: “Services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

Hannity showed that statement with the clear suggestion that it somehow indicated the current health care bill will include euthanasia, even though the statement was made in 1996 by someone who is not part of the Obama administration. Hannity went on to conflate the statement with the health care bill by (falsely) describing it as “taking seniors in a room and offering them end-of-life counseling.”

Coulter agreed. She added, “Totally ironically, Zeke Emanuel is on my death list. Hold the applause. I’m going to be on the death panel.”

Hannity, obviously stunned, said, “In other words, you get to pick who dies.”

“Right. I have a list,” Coulter answered. “Should I start with the ‘A’s?”

Was Hannity outraged that she spoke that way? Heck no. In a half-admiring tone, he said, “I can read the headlines tomorrow. It’s going to be Ann Coulter…”

It's not the first time that Coulter has fantasized about killing a person. She also wanted to put "rat poison in Justice Stevens' creme brulee".

Of course, Fox News remains blissfully unconcerned by providing a forum for Coulter's murderous impulses and fantasies.

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I wish Dave Neiwert wasn't on vacation from C&L this week, because I'm sure he'd have a lot to say about the mainstreaming of the ginned-up Birther controversy, particularly by one of his favorite whipping boys, Lou Dobbs. In the interim we'll have to settle for Eric Boehlert:

If James von Brunn weren't in a locked security ward at Southeast General Hospital in Washington, D.C., and awaiting trial for the murder of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the 88-year-old racist and neo-Nazi might have taken comfort from listening to Lou Dobbs' syndicated radio show or watching Dobbs on CNN in recent days. Von Brunn would have likely felt some sense of affirmation from Dobbs, as the host began belatedly championing the cause of so-called "birthers," the angry band of right-wing conspiracy theorists who claim President Obama has not released a valid birth certificate and, in some cases, flat-out assert that he was not born in America and therefore is ineligible to be president of the United States. (Here's a good birther primer; here's the official right-wing defense of birthers.)

Had von Brunn been listening, Dobbs would likely have "spoken" to him. Just a few months before opening fire at the museum, von Brunn, apparently a proud birther himself, had done his best to spread the word online about Obama's illegitimate rule: "What is going on??? WHERE ARE THE GOOD PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY - ARE YOU OUT THERE???" [...]

Dobbs has certainly taken some heat for his recent birther turn. (He's "effectively destroying his career with this stuff," birther expert David Weigel wrote at The Washington Independent.) But there's more to this story than Dobbs. And the phenomenon in play isn't just about a birth certificate. And it's also not isolated or accidental.

Because, yes, viewed in a vacuum, the movement seems like the nutty fringe. But viewed in a larger historical context, birthers share obvious ties to traditional right-wing assaults on previous Democrats, and birthers have all the marks of a GOP Noise Machine creation. The movement is about a larger, more sinister attempt to paint Obama as illegitimate, foreign, and suspect (i.e. not like you and me). To portray him as "a gratuitous interloper," as radio host G. Gordon Liddy put it. As someone who isn't who he says he is. As -- let's face it -- the Manchurian Candidate, with all the evil connotations that come with it. ("WHO SENT YOU???" von Brunn demanded to know of Obama.)

And it's about the disturbing role media figures like Dobbs play when they act as the bridge -- as the transmitter -- between the radical and the mainstream. When they legitimize the craziness, if only in the eyes of the crazies themselves. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted this week, "The home run for conspiracists of any stripe is when their ideas can leave the lunatic fringe and enter the mainstream."

There's really only one degree of separation between Dobbs mainstreaming the Birther movement and pictures of Obama as an African witch doctor. The media, in large part, has condemned this nonsense - Chris Matthews shaming that old fool Gordon Liddy today was painful to watch - but those who give it succor it sustain an extremist fringe who want to alienate the President as "the other," as illegitimate, as illegal. It plays to the beliefs of anti-government types and militia members and a dangerous element in American society.

As for Dobbs, who James Rainey picks apart here, CNN has a choice to make. Its own hosts have debunked this myth over and over. The network purports to call itself "the most trusted name in news." They can prove it.

For all the network's efforts to characterize itself as the real, unbiased cable news outlet, it continues to give Lou Dobbs a high-profile platform for obvious, unsupported madness. It makes Dobbs look like a loon, but more important, it's a painful embarrassment to CNN.

A network spokesperson distanced CNN from Dobbs' crazed radio show, and told Rainey, "On CNN, Lou is an independent reporter who covers stories that people are talking about, and often showcases issues that aren't being covered by the mainstream media."

For a network that keeps giving very large paychecks to a television personality who is misleading its audience with transparent craziness, this explanation needs some work.

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The right-wing pundits have been busy whipping a fresh batch of eliminationist rhetoric this week.

Leading the parade, as is often the case, was Ann Coulter, appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show on Monday:

Coulter: Well, apparently, this one random nut who shot Tiller -- I don't really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.

... I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don't want to impose my moral values on others.

... OK, their logic is, if you don't believe in abortion, don't have an abortion. If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, don't shoot an abortionist.

Coulter actually was just regurgitating this week's column for cable consumption:

I'm not justifying it, but I understand when you take democracy away from people, some of them will react violently. The total number of deaths attributable to Roe were seven abortion clinic workers and 40 million unborn babies.

... I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing men making difficult, often tragic, decisions be an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the shootings of abortionists?

Following the moral precepts of liberals, I believe the correct position is: If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, then don't shoot one.

As Fred Clarkson observes:

So that's four times in the past year and a half that she has coyly or not so coyly justified political assassination: Before prominent religious right audiences; in a nationally syndicated column, and on national television.

Meanwhile, as Blue Texan at FDL observes, Joe the Plumber was joining the parade with an open wish for the lynching of Sen. Chris Dodd:

Wurzelbacher has a reputation for being a blunt, politically incorrect speaker. Referring to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., more than once, Wurzelbacher asked, "Why hasn't he been strung up?"

...Referring to the Constitution as "almost like the Bible," Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: "They knew socialism doesn't work. They knew communism doesn't work."

The real prize, however, belongs to Col. Jim Ammerman, leader of the Full Gospel Chaplaincy. as Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action reports,

As noted in the Newsweek story, last fall - as the presidential election was heating up, retired Colonel E.H. "Jim" Ammerman, in the official September 2008 newsletter [ PDF of newsletter ] of his Department of Defense approved chaplain endorsing agency, published a letter which suggested, per the advice of a fabricated Abraham Lincoln quote, that four US Senators should be be "arrested, quickly tried and hanged!!!"...

The alleged crime ? - voting against a Senate bill that would have established English as the official language of the United States. Newsweek did not reveal the names of the four senators. But a May 20, 2009 Huffington Post story by Military Religious Freedom Foundation Senior Researcher Chris Rodda does: Democratic Party senators Dodd, Biden, Clinton, and Obama.

Continue reading »

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One of the identifying signs of eliminationist rhetoric, some of you may recall, is that it compares its target bloc of people to a disease (and the deadlier the better).

Last night, Glenn Beck did just that for his national audience on Fox News:

Beck: All right, now, if all of this sounds like a government out of control, go back to the progressive movement. It is not what our founders of this country intended. One hundred years of this movement, and the government growing while our rights are shrinking. I've been saying now for awhile, and it really has clicked in my mind, um, that it is the progressive movement, it is the cancer that is inside both parties. It's why you don't feel like there is a choice. It's why John McCain and Barack Obama, you're going, 'You gotta be kidding me, right?'

Yeah, whoda thunk? John McCain was secretly a progressive this whole time!

Later on, at the end of the show, Beck essentially admits he's been fearmongering the whole hour (which is nothing new for this show), but pretends his solution (following kooky constitutional theories to their always bitter end) is actually about being brave in the face of the fear he's whipping up out of whole cloth.

Boy, that is one special talk-show host.

Warning: Shameless self-promotion to follow ...

Digby's hosting a salon at Firedoglake today for my new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. Come and join us!

In the meantime, the reviews are starting to roll in, too. Elbert Ventura wrote a very positive piece in The American Prospect. (Eric Boehlert gave it a shout-out too.) And a couple of weeks ago, SusanG at DailyKos gave it a big thumbs-up too. (You might want to read my conversation with Susan too.) And then there were the thoughtful reviews from Tristero at Hullabaloo.

I was also on Air America last week with Jon Elliott. You can listen to the show below:

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Remember that DHS bulletin on right-wing extremism that got all the righties' shorts in a bunch? Let's quickly recall the bottom line of its assessment:

DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.

It's not talking about ordinary conservatives here, despite their evident wish to martyr themselves in defense of their right-wing brethren. It's talking about people like Stephen P. Morgan:

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. - A man suspected in the fatal shooting of a Wesleyan University student wrote in his journal that it's "okay to kill Jews and go on a killing spree," according to an arrest warrant released Friday.

... Police found Morgan's journal inside the bookstore, according to the warrant. Morgan's father identified his son as the man seen in bookstore surveillance photos and told investigators his son was a loner who kept a journal and was known to make anti-Semitic comments, according to the warrant.

The journal had an entry saying "I think it okay to kill Jews and go on a killing spree" and "Kill Johanna. She must Die," according to the arrest warrant.

And it's talking about people like Keith Luke. You remember him, don't you?

A man accused of a horrific rape and killing spree told investigators that he was "fighting extinction" of the white race and had stockpiled 200 rounds of ammunition to "kill 'nonwhite people' such as African Americans, Hispanics and Jewish people," according to a police report filed today in court.

After forcing his way into a home and raping a 22-year-old woman, the alleged assailant, Keith Luke, shot and killed the woman's younger sister, who tried to help her. Luke, 22, then allegedly turned his fury back on the rape victim, firing his gun through a white teddy bear that she clutched in terror, police said.

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Well, when he appeared in court earlier this week, he had carved a swastika into his forehead and defiantly smirked at the family and friends of his victims:

Continue reading »

One of the hallmarks of the militia movement of the 1990s was the way it inspired violence: by essentially loosing the moorings of their followers from reality by promulgating a toxic brew of conspiracy theories, right-wing historical revisionism, and a bevy of false "facts" and claims against government officials and liberals generally. Chief among these, of course, was the belief that Bill Clinton and the New World Order were coming to take their guns away -- which, of course, he never did, though he did manage to pass an assault-weapons ban.

So when we point out the toxic effects of the revival of this kind of irresponsible rhetoric, it's because there's a real history behind it. It's not mere presupposition to point out that fearmongering that promotes palpably false and distorted claims often brings violent results; we already are too familiar with this causal relationship from experience.

The difference between the 1990s and now? When I was hearing talk like this then, it was coming out of the mouths of the Bo Gritzes and John Trochmanns -- the leaders and fanatical ideologues who drove the militia movement.

Now, it's coming out of the mouths of people with mainstream media programs: Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter.

Media Matters has compiled a video documenting how rabidly the "Obama wants to grab our guns" meme has been broadcast to the True Believers of the American Right including Beck -- who reiterated his belief the Monday after the Pittsburgh shootings:

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Yesterday's Glenn Beck show on Fox News will probably go down as some kind of benchmark for broadcast insanity. The entire hour was devoted to exploring Beck's thesis that America is marching headlong into fascism. I'll have more on that later today.

But the most otherworldly moment came when Beck, near the end, introduced a segment featuring an actor supposedly playing Thomas Paine -- but Paine reading Glenn Beck's words. Um, OK. We've gotten accustomed to the incoherent and bizarre in Beck's shows, so we played along after a bizarre, rambling introduction about Paine being his great-great-grandfather.

The entire rant was disturbing by any reading, especially since it was essentially a call for an uprising against the Obama administration, via next week's "Tea Parties". But there was a really odd note early on:

In an unprecedented moment of citizen response not seen since December 7, 1941, millions of your fellow Americans will bring their anger and determination into the streets.

Eh? Not since Pearl Harbor Day? But really, he's not saying that the Obama stimulus plan is like Pearl Harbor, is he?

Yep:

Your complacency will only aid and abet our national suicide. Remember, they wouldn't dare bomb Pearl Harbor, but they did. They wouldn't dare drive two planes into the World Trade Center, but they did. They wouldn't dare pilot a plane through the most sophisticated air defenses in the world and crash into the Pentagon, but they did. They wouldn't dare pass the largest spending bill in history, in open defiance of the will of the people*, but they did!

OK, I think it's safe to say that Glenn Beck has now jumped an entire mountain of sharks, waterskiing atop a pyramid with Pinky Tuscadero and the gang.

And the craziest thing about this: Beck will find a way to top himself next week.

*[Um, not exactly.]

I've been around right-wing extremists long enough to know when they're making calls to action. And when it comes to these folks, this inevitably translates as violent action.

So Alan Keyes, in an interview with a reporter from KHAS-TV, filmed outside a fundraiser for the AAA Crisis Pregnancy Center in Hastings, Neb., said this:

"Obama is a radical communist, and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it's true," said Keyes, who ran unsuccessfully against Obama for the state's open Senate seat in 2004. "He is going to destroy this country, and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist."

These kinds of remarks are, as Andrew Sullivan suggests, deeply disturbing, and not merely for the gut-level emotional impact.

Already, if you look at the comments from the YouTube where it's posted -- as well as at a number of right-wing sites -- the remarks are being hailed as "the truth" and "telling it like it is."

This is classic right-wing eliminationism: Depicting the opposition as the embodiment of evil, intent on destroying the nation. For militia/Patriot types, this kind of rhetoric also becomes a call to action.