I returned last night from my wonderful trip to Montreal- a trip that’s becoming a bit of annual tradition- and what was the big news of the last few days? Another right-wing extremist murdering someone, this time in the DC holocaust memorial museum. That struck me, because if I’m not mistaken, it was last week that another right-wing extremist murdered Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas. Who’s to die next week?
When the DHS put out the report about rising right-wing extremism on April 7th, it was met with ridicule of the highest order from all of the expected neo-fascist sycophants. Promptly it was touted as nothing more than an appaling and shameful measure to criminalize disagreements in political policy and practice. If I’m not crazy, murdering a person for providing a LEGAL medical procedure to women in need, isn’t politics as usual. Murdering a person whose job it is to guard a museum memorializing the Nazi Holocaust is not the way you discuss a difference in policy opinion. The conservatives are already defending their previous hate-fest on Napolitano, or at least trying to obscure their previous statements by further hating on the ‘left’, in an absolutely unprecedented display of ignorance. I’m left wondering the following.
The so-called ‘center’ has moved, with blinding speed I might add, to the right over the past 60 years, and at this exact moment of time I spend a great deal of my day worrying about my safety and the state of my life in the future. I never thought I’d live in a reality in which honest concerns about violent extremists would be an immediate part of my life. Retrospectively that was unintentional intellectual dishonesty, and exhibits such a tremendous amount of North American chauvinism that I should feel ashamed- but I fully acknowledge my situation now. I asked it once, but I will ask it again:
Who will be next to die? I fear I won’t have to wait long for my morbid question to be dutifully answered.
June 12th, 2009 at 11:25 am
But if you let the fear and the question of “who next?” get to you, then you will be paralyzed by it.
It’s a fine line between fear, vigilance, ignorance, and paralysis.
Be careful.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I suppose, but I meant not to imply that I think ‘I’ll be next’ (not to denigrate my personhood, but generally speaking, I’m a nobody). I think there is a tremendous social danger in choosing to ignore the precipice our delicate little society faces right now, with these extremists being only one component. I certainly don’t feel paralyzed by this fear, because that’s antithetical to my sense of self, but I don’t see how I can pretend this mounting problem is just an aberration that has no staying power.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I totally agree with your musing. I t is not an aberration. I fear its staying power and no organized pushback.These two murders happened in rapid succession with less outrage from the so-called liberal mainstream media than was required. There is something about this time and this reaction that takes me back the days of watching wackos in the Alabama and elsewhere beating people to death. But there are no more Freedom Riders, there is no public outrage and no protests against Rush and company. If the pushback is on the Net then so be it but there has to be a way to fight this wretched move to the extreme Right.
June 19th, 2009 at 12:55 am
It’s interesting, I wonder if such a movement is even possible anymore. I still posit, perhaps naively, that a movement towards a more just society can actually be created (and sustained) nowadays, but I’m worried that too many people think these people are more ‘fringe’ than they in fact are. Perhaps I’ve been reading too much of the Jacoby lately, but I fear the media has been totally complicit in playing down the true threat that this mounting guerrilla war is going to be.