The Arizona shooting and the context of right-wing extremism

More on overdermination and political violence
In my earlier diary, "Influence and over-determination", I quoted from Jacob Weisberg at Slate writing about the obvious political context: To call his crime an attempted Assassination is to acknowledge that it appears to have had a political and not merely a personal context. That context wasn't Islamic radicalism, Puerto Rican independence, or anarcho-syndicalism. It was the anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic Populism that flourishes in the dry and angry climate of Arizona. Extremist sho...

Daily Beast, Newsweek piece contradicted by storys source, DHS statements (Daily Caller)
Read more stories from The Daily Caller Midterm Election most negative ever, study says Call to reinstate fairness doctrine after Arizona shooting not likely to result in action Daily Beast, Newsweek piece contradicted by story's source, DHS statements Democrats slam Boehner for missing Arizona memorial service FNC's Hume praises 'pep rally' atmosphere of Obama Arizona Speech, but adds parts 'most peculiar' It’s only been four days since the senseless Tucson shooting, but the blathering ...

This time, the people stood up
Now that we're all worked up, let me tell you about a Tea Party type up in Washington County, doing something radical. Mike Bassill is circulating a petition. He doesn't sound very angry, either, defying the narrative that's blossomed since Jared Loughner allegedly shot 20 people, including a Democratic congresswoman, in Arizona. There was swift stab at finding some right-wing link in Loughner, who seems simply to be disturbed. Since then, some progressive commentators have tried tying the gun...

Hillary Clinton Insists Giffords Shooting A Form of Extremism
DOHA, Qatar (AP) - The attempted Assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was apparently motivated by her assailant’s political views, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday, calling the lawmaker’s shooting “a form of Extremism.” Clinton said she believed the man accused of gravely wounding Giffords, Jared Lee Loughner, crossed the line from expressing an opinion to violent action, which she called a “hallmark” of...

Age of Healing Begins: 'Begging for Civility Out of Teabaggers is Like Trying to Convince a Treeful of Chimpanzees to Stop Mastu
Looks like Obama's got his work cut out for him.Palin is the monstrous Love Child of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, and she long ago crossed the line between hateful Rhetoric and incitement to violence. Palin was warned again and again that her violent imagery was getting dangerous, that she was stoking the flames of the fringes with language that insinuated a coup d'état was necessary. Pundits, politicians, and even the intended target of this weekend's attack all tried to warn her. Amazing ho...

The Plum Line: The right-wing narrative about Clinton, the Oklahoma bombing, and Obama
President Obama is heading to Arizona to commemorate the Victims of Saturday's events in Tucson, and Conservatives are already expressing concern about a replay of Bill Clinton's 1995 Speech denouncing "purveyors of hatred and division" on the airwaves in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. In a preemptive strike, Conservatives are already misrepresenting the history of that event, arguing that Clinton politicized the bombing for his own gain. At National Review, John J. Mil...

A Brief Remark On Sarah Palin
Jon Chait is defending her: Okay, it’s a little over the top for Sarah Palin to accuse her critics of “blood Libel.” But she does have a basic point. She had nothing to do with Jared Loughner. He was not an Extremist who embraced some radical version of her ideas. And her use of targets to identify districts Republicans were, um, targeting is not exceptional or prone to incite anybody. What’s happening is that Palin has come to represent unhinged Grassroots Conservatism...

Blame Arizona shooting on the shooter
It will be all too easy and popular to claim that the shooting in Arizona that killed six people was caused by the vitriol prevalent in American political discourse, but as usual the easy and popular explanation of this tragedy will avoid the truth, R. Lee Wrights, Libertarian writer, Activist and potential 2012 presidential Candidate said in a statement today. "As a father of two daughters myself, I am especially saddened by the Murder of a 9-year-old girl, and I mourn the death of all those ki...

Alert Captain Renault
pic via Bruce_Fulton at flickr.com The usual right-wing suspects seem to really have strong objections to any memorial service involving someone who isn’t right-wing. From Paul Wellstone to Coretta Scott King to Ted Kennedy and so it shall be in regard to the service for the Victims of the violence of Jared Lee Loughner (three name rule for all assassins). Because THAT is the first thing you complain about after a service remembering victims…not the victims, but how the Memorial Se...

Some Democrats seek to dial back overheated rhetoric on shootings
ANALYSIS: Some Democrats are calling for a cease-fire in a heated liberal campaign to pin blame for the Tucson, Ariz., massacre on conservative Speech and specifically on former Republican vice-presidential Candidate Sarah Palin. No evidence has surfaced that the shooting suspect, Jared Lee Loughner, was motivated by any Political Speech, left or right. News reports tell of a deeply troubled man who thinks the government orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, hates The Bible and was thrown out of coll...

Now here’s an assassination to worry about
Just a suggestion, but can’t we lay off the Holocaust comparisons? I suspect I’m not the only one who thought Sarah Palin was ill-advised to accuse her critics of “blood Libel.” Sure, her motto is “Don’t retreat, reload.” But still. Likening your sufferings to those of two millenniums of persecuted Jews, who were accused of using the blood of Christian Children to make unleavened bread, does seem a wee bit over the top. On the other hand, she didn’...

Tea Party Express fundraises off reaction to Arizona shootings
Stumble This! A leading Tea Party group is raising funds based upon public reaction to the Tucson, Arizona shootings. In an e-mail sent to supporters Wednesday, the California-based conservative group Tea Party Express invoked the tragic shootings of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and nineteen others, asking for donations to fight back against liberals in the media who cite inflammatory right-wing Rhetoric as a possible instigator for such violence. "Instead of prayers for the Victims and their...

The Politics of Insinuation
David Warren: While it did not quite rise to a blood Libel, the headline in Monday's Guardian (U. K.) did not fail for want of trying: "Gabrielle Giffords shooting reignites row over right-wing Rhetoric in U.S." Elsewhere in the Guardian, the distance was bridged. Consider this heading (over a piece by Michael Tomasky): "In the U.S., where hate rules at the Ballot Box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time: The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords may lead to the temporary hibernation of right...

Flashback: Unabomber had underlined, marked and well worn copy of Al Gores book Earth In The Balance
The establishment MSM has been feeding its own derangement over Sarah Palin and the loss of control of Congress this last November. They're using the Arizona shooting as an excuse to try and silence opposition to Obama's radical agenda while at the same time trying to sabotage the agenda of the new GOP majority. They're pointed at everyone on the right for inciting a lunatic - Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, yada, yada. However, the shooter ‘Did Not Watch TV. He Disliked the Ne...

The Arizona Shooting and Jihad: Immoral Equivalency?!
Few noticed a disturbing and remarkable comment made by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton yesterday. While taping a satellite television show for Arab women at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, Ms. Clinton compared the alleged psychotic killer in the tragic Arizona shootings, Jared Loughery, to Islamic Extremists. Her comments; “look, we have extremists in my country,  a wonderful, incredibly brave young woman Congress member, Congresswoman Giffords, was just shot by an extremist in ou...

Hit And Run Compares Arizona Rampage To…..Wait, Hit And Run?
Michael C. Moyhnihan produces a whopper of a tale, with all sorts of paranoid and incorrect blamestorming, hours before Obama told people like him to just stop it. Witness the insanity: The Assassin Who Would Save America from the Extreme RightIf political Rhetoric can inspire Murder, then it follows that those issuing warnings about the current “tone” in American discourse—those breathless invocations of “eliminationists” acting like “Brownshirts” and &...

Late Night: Try to Be Nice, And Look What It Gets You
It’s long been obvious that Conservatives conceive of “civility” solely in terms of point-scoring, because they are essentially sociopathic fuckwads. Oh, perhaps this is unfair. But as I was grouching about last night, “once you’ve gone ahead and, say, made excuses for state-sponsored Torture, if you want the benefit of the doubt, fuck you.” Honestly, one of the absolute minimum qualifications for entry into a Civil Discussion ought not to include an enthusi...

Obama's Bullseye
Last night, for his first time in office, Barack Obama sounded like the president of all Americans. Obama famously burst onto the national scene in 2004 with an address to the Democratic Convention in which he declared, “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America.” During his own run for the presidency four years later, he would echo this post-partisan theme. But the first two years of Obama’s presidency have been contentions ones. Wh

Political Rhetoric Quote of the Day
From Ann Coulter in a piece entitled "Liberals Now Seek a Ban on Metaphors": As for (Jared) Loughner being influenced by tea partiers, Fox News and Talk Radio - oops, another dead-end. According to all available evidence, Loughner is a liberal. Every friend of Loughner who has characterized his politics has described him as liberal. Not one called him a conservative. One friend says Loughner never listened to Talk Radio or watched the TV news. Throw in "never read books" and you have the ...

Hillary: Tucson shootings "a form of extremism"
SecState Hillary Clinton, who has been traveling in the Middle East this week, has reiterated her comments that the attempted Assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the deaths of six others were carried out by an "Extremist." In an interview with CNN while in Oman (full transcript available here), Clinton said that "when you cross the line from expressing opinions that are of conflicting differences in our political environment into taking action that’s violent action,...

Sec. of State Hillary Clinton on Jared Loughner's 'Extremism'
ABC's Luis Martinez Reports: In a sit-down interview with CNN’s Jill Dougherty, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked to explain comments she made on an overseas trip about Extremists and Jared Loughner, the man accused of shooting of Rep. Giffords and 18 others in Tucson over the weekend.    Read more about her initial comments, in which she called Loughner an extremist, HERE . Clinton explained on CNN that pursuing criminal activity connected to politica...

Hillary Clinton: Arizona Shooter Motivated By Extreme Political Views
No evidence, but what does that matter? thehill Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the Arizona shooter who killed six and injured 14, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D), was motivated by political views . In an interview with CNN Wednesday Clinton, who had recently referred to the shooter as an "Extremist," doubled down on her comments saying that the shooter was an extremist who acted on his "bizarre" political views. " Based on what I know, this is a cri...

Hillary Clinton: Loughner Motivated by Extreme Political Views
From The Hill: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the Arizona shooter who killed six and injured 14, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D), was motivated by political views. In an interview with CNN Wednesday Clinton, who had recently referred to the shooter as an “Extremist,” doubled down on her comments saying that the shooter was an extremist who acted on his “bizarre” political views. “Based on what I know, this is a crimina...

Obama to the nation: We can be better than this
Summoning the soul of a nation, President Barack Obama on Wednesday implored Americans to honor those slain and injured in the Arizona shootings by becoming better people, telling a polarized citizenry that it is time to talk with each other “in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.” Following a Hospital bedside visit with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the target of the Assassination, he said: “She knows we’re here, and she knows we love her.” In an electrifying mo...

President Obama in Tucson
President Obama spoke last night in Tucson at a ceremony on the campus of the University of Arizona.It was one of the more powerful addresses that Mr. Obama has delivered as president, harnessing the emotion generated by the shock and loss from Saturday’s shootings to urge Americans “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully” and to “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.” “At a time when ...