Right-wing blogger praises Giffords shooting, targets other politicians

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you think Jared Lee Loughner is just some crazy dude who acted purely out of his own derangement, and that the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence had nothing at all to do with it?

I think that's ridiculous, but, regardless, what's clear is that the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence are very real and very dangerous. And however much that socio-political context may have influenced Loughner, it is certainly influencing others, driving them to violence, as in Oklahoma City, and to more violence that may soon come.

Don't believe me? Let's head on over to Massachusetts for a rather alarming case in point:

Police in Arlington, MA this week seized a "large amount" of weapons and ammunition from local businessman Travis Corcoran after he wrote a blog post threatening U.S. lawmakers in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). In a post on his blog (which has since been removed) titled "1 down and 534 to go" -- 1 referring to Giffords and 534 referring to the rest of the House of Representatives and the Senate -- Corcoran applauded the shooting of Giffords and justified the assassination of lawmakers because he argued the federal government has grown far beyond its constitutional limits. "It is absolutely, absolutely unacceptable to shoot indiscriminately. Target only politicians and their staff and leave regular citizens alone," he wrote in the post.

Charming. (And, hey, I used to live in Arlington, Mass.!)

"We certainly take this as a credible threat," Arlington police Captain Robert Bongiorno told reporters, adding that "multiple federal law enforcement agencies" were involved. Authorities also suspended Corcoran's gun license, though he is currently not facing any charges.

That's the least they should have done. But -- here's the crucial question -- is he a conservative? Is this really an example of the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence in action (or preparing for action)? Looks like it:

Corcoran calls himself "an anarcho-capitalist" and while his blog has been taken down, based on his Twitter page, he appears to hold views similar to those of many in the anti-government libertarian wing of the conservative movement, like many tea party activists. Anarcho-capitalism is a radical subset of libertarianism, and is often referred to as "libertarian-anarchy." For example, echoing calls from many on the right, Corcoran tweeted, "it is unconstitutional for the Feds to even run a department of education."

Don't let the "anarcho" fool you. While anarchism is usually associated with the left, Corcoran's anarchism is very much of the right, where American anarchism is to be found these days.

He also appears to be a fan of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), re-tweeting a positive message about him in May: "Lefties: Before you start fringe-baiting Rand Paul, note that he's better on civil liberties than most Democratic senators. And Obama." He seems to dislike liberals, writing, "You so-called liberals make me laugh – you're all for free speech until someone disagrees, then it's 'report him!'" He also accuses the Daily Kos of "Stalinism."

Yup, he's a conservative, and pretty much all of this is mainstream Republican stuff these days. (And, yes, I admit, Paul has a decent record on civil liberties, and I myself have been critical of Obama's continuation of much of the Bush-Cheney national security state.)

Of course, to be fair, the vast majority of Republicans, and obviously all Republicans in Congress, and also probably most rank-and-file Republicans and movement conservatives, and probably even most Tea Party members, would recoil in horror from such violent extremism. But the point isn't that they would be against such violence but that their anti-government agenda and rhetoric, including the broad anti-government views that prevail in the Republican Party these days, including in Congress, have consequences and can mobilize their followers, or those who think like them, to rise up in violence against the "enemy" that they themselves have identified.

All it takes is one guy with a gun, but what we should realize is that there's an army of such extremists, with arsenals of weapons, preparing for action.

There's your fucking context.

The Arizona shooting and the context of right-wing extremism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Offering some of the best commentary yet on the Arizona shooting, Slate's Jacob Weisberg makes the crucual distinction between what may have been going on inside Jared Lee Loughner's troubled head, "politically tinged schizophrenia," and outside:

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 shouters didn't program Loughner, in some mechanistic way, to shoot Gabrielle Giffords. But the Tea Party movement did make it appreciably more likely that a disturbed person like Loughner would react, would be able to react, and would not be prevented from reacting, in the crazy way he did.

At the core of the far right's culpability is its ongoing attack on the legitimacy of U.S. government -- a venomous campaign not so different from the backdrop to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Then it was focused on "government bureaucrats" and the ATF. This time it has been more about Obama's birth certificate and health care reform. In either case, it expresses the dangerous idea that the federal government lacks valid authority. It is this, rather than violent rhetoric per se, that is the most dangerous aspect of right-wing extremism. 

Yes, yes, yes. As I've been saying all along, this isn't just about political speech. To focus on speech, which is what the media are doing (and what even prominent Democratic/liberal/progressive commentators are doing, including Bill Clinton) is to deflect attention away from what this is really all about, that is, the context behind the shooting, and behind right-wing political violence generally, the context of ideology.

That context is what Weisberg describes, and more. It is about anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic, racist extremism, combined with paranoid conspiracy theories of the kind spun by Glenn Beck on a daily basis. It is about warmongering and fearmongering, about scapegoating the Other, the different, about terror and torture, about a mythical alternate reality of delusion, about a refusal to deal with the world as it is, about a refusal to accept change of any kind unless it is change to some mythical past of right-wing supremacy.

And it doesn't just flourish in Arizona but all throughout America, in the hearts and minds of conservatives and in a Republican Party that has embraced the Tea Party and that is becoming ever more extreme in its outlook and ideology. Weisberg writes:

First you rile up psychotics with inflammatory language about tyranny, betrayal, and taking back the country. Then you make easy for them to get guns. But if you really want trouble, you should also make it hard for them to get treatment for mental illness.

True, "none of this says that Tea Party caused the Tucson tragedy," but "its politics increased the odds of something like it happening."

And it happened, as perhaps it was bound to happen. The right may not have directly caused the shooting, but it is certainly culpable.