Eliminationist Rhetoric
Jan. 12th, 2006 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI complain about the way the Right speaks of the left.
Then I see things like this:
That, my friends is one of a line of products (coffee mugs to baseball caps, hoodies and softball shirts) all sporting the same thing. I look at that, and wonder where the idea that such a thing is acceptable to wear in public might come from. It's right up there with Liberal Hunting Permits
For more on that, see this piece of Orcinus.
People will defend this, say it's meant as a joke (never mind that when the tables are turned and someone on the Left tries to make a point in the same vein, and obviously; to me at least, in a satiric vein, the people who were saying Liberals ought to be strung up like, "strange fruit," are all of a sudden calling out the FBI (Dean Esmay which was a response to this. The contextual post of Sadly No can be seen here)
But it isn't, it's part and parcel of an environment of active hatred. One person, maybe a whack-job. A lot of people, might be a group of whack jobs, but when the people they are attacking make up a large group, and the people who have bully pulpits are some of those who do the inciting, and those who claim this is the fruit of a few bad apples don't take those bad apples to task, in fact continue to pay them large sums of money and give them access to the airwaves... then I must assume that, at the very least they don't care if one group is actively inciting another to go out and abuse the other. I might even be justified in thinking they wanted such a thing to happen.
Perhaps they think it will intimidate the oppostition. Perhaps they actually want (as Coulter said) some liberal to be killed, so the rest of us will know it can happen and shut up.
For a list of those who've said such things, and the things they've said (and this politicians in office, former politicians, religious leaders, pundits and and the like. These are names. People who can't really be brushed under the rug with, "nobody listens to them," because people do; and in the millions. Some of the people who listen to them think them worth electing as Representatives and Senators (one of my favorites, if that's the right word) is Phil Grahm saying, "We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." and not in some back room, but in an interview with Mother Jones.
Or this gem from John Derbyshire, "Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed."
- National Review, 02-15-01
For more, go to Paperweight's Fair Shot
Then I see things like this:
That, my friends is one of a line of products (coffee mugs to baseball caps, hoodies and softball shirts) all sporting the same thing. I look at that, and wonder where the idea that such a thing is acceptable to wear in public might come from. It's right up there with Liberal Hunting Permits
For more on that, see this piece of Orcinus.
People will defend this, say it's meant as a joke (never mind that when the tables are turned and someone on the Left tries to make a point in the same vein, and obviously; to me at least, in a satiric vein, the people who were saying Liberals ought to be strung up like, "strange fruit," are all of a sudden calling out the FBI (Dean Esmay which was a response to this. The contextual post of Sadly No can be seen here)
But it isn't, it's part and parcel of an environment of active hatred. One person, maybe a whack-job. A lot of people, might be a group of whack jobs, but when the people they are attacking make up a large group, and the people who have bully pulpits are some of those who do the inciting, and those who claim this is the fruit of a few bad apples don't take those bad apples to task, in fact continue to pay them large sums of money and give them access to the airwaves... then I must assume that, at the very least they don't care if one group is actively inciting another to go out and abuse the other. I might even be justified in thinking they wanted such a thing to happen.
Perhaps they think it will intimidate the oppostition. Perhaps they actually want (as Coulter said) some liberal to be killed, so the rest of us will know it can happen and shut up.
For a list of those who've said such things, and the things they've said (and this politicians in office, former politicians, religious leaders, pundits and and the like. These are names. People who can't really be brushed under the rug with, "nobody listens to them," because people do; and in the millions. Some of the people who listen to them think them worth electing as Representatives and Senators (one of my favorites, if that's the right word) is Phil Grahm saying, "We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." and not in some back room, but in an interview with Mother Jones.
Or this gem from John Derbyshire, "Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed."
- National Review, 02-15-01
For more, go to Paperweight's Fair Shot
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 06:50 am (UTC)As for what would happen in an uprising, the gov't is going to do what it always does, say the uprising is rebellion.
Barring a complete break (a la the CSA) the uprising will be quelled.
At present there isn't the territorial unnity to cause such a break to have traction, without borders the only things that can happen are devolution (and the result of the civil war in Lebanon was anarchy, which was my point, anarchy is only present in absence of gov't, and not something people actually want, but rather something they endure, it leads to Hobbes war of all against all, and Tennyson's "nature, red in tooth and claw) or quelling.
Given the rhetoric on the right, should they actually try to kill all the "liberals" the result will be Stalin, or Lebanon. In either case they shant get what they expect, and a lot of blood will be shed, on all sides.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 07:16 am (UTC)Heh. Probably not. Didn't help, though.
Given the rhetoric on the right, should they actually try to kill all the "liberals" the result will be Stalin, or Lebanon. In either case they shant get what they expect, and a lot of blood will be shed, on all sides.
Hey, that sounds familiar...
Problem is, a fair amount of the folks in the top rungs right now are awfully fond of the notion that will alone is needed to achieve goals, and actual results don't matter. Some folks will just keep grabbing that electified muffin, no matter how many times they get zapped. When it's other folks getting zapped, well...why even think about stopping?
As for the social breakdown = anarchy, you might wanna listen to a certain masked insurrectionist, currently being played by Hugo Weaving: "This isn't anarchy, Evie. This is chaos." Lotta folks conflate the two. Society is not government, and can (and has, on many many occasions) get along just fine without it.
But I'm kinda derailing your thread. Sorry about that. In short, I agree with your initial thesis that armed liberals is a positive social good, and should be encouraged. I would also probably buy one of those t-shirts, especially if you make one with a IWW tag on it too.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 01:47 pm (UTC)I would love to know about some of these instances. Imo anarchy would inevitably lead to the bigger, meaner and better-armed guys running everything, human nature being the aggro monkey thing it is.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 03:00 pm (UTC)Examples please. Nation states, perhaps, can be done without, but the social contract <i>is</i>government. It may be small, but lack of rules/laws, is chaos. Where there is no limit to what someone can do, someone will act without limit. That will spread.
And, for all that it may seem that way, I am not advocating, per se, armed liberals (though I am not against it). What I am arguing against is the idea that the Right is no worse than the Left when it comes to eliminationist rhetoric.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-14 09:07 am (UTC)I think we're running into the classic term-definition problem that plagues human discourse. Are you talking about the "social contract1" between people that keeps them from killing each other when nobody's looking? Or are you talking about the "social contract2" between ordinary people and other people claiming to be their representatives and/or rulers that says "We'll do what you say, and if you hurt us, we'll ask you to stop, but not too loudly"? Because, for me, social contract1 is society, and social contract2 is government. Breaking down social contract1 results in chaos and destruction, usually replaced with whatever form of social ordering can reforge the social bonds needed to sustain society-at-large quickest. Unfortunately, the quickest solutions are rarely the best ones for the long term, and often people stop there. Breaking down social contract2, on the other hand, can (and often does) strengthen social contract1, because the manifestations of social contract2 tend to usurp the functions of social contract1 to the detriment of both sets of social assumptions.
More later, when it stops being as busy here at work. Thanks for the dialogue, though. Explaining my thoughts to other folks who disagree with me helps me to organize them more effectively.
Also, as far as What I am arguing against is the idea that the Right is no worse than the Left when it comes to eliminationist rhetoric goes, yeah, probably. The Right has a tendency towards more heavyhanded rhetoric than the Left, at least in the last several decades. Some of that's the influence of Fundie Xtianity on Hard Right culture, and some of it's due to the Hard Left getting pushed out of the political equation by the political managers who are running the DNC and most of the Left's political apparatus. The folks who push the Left political machine don't seem to, for the most part, believe in anything except getting into power and staying there, which tends to deflate harder rhetorical stances.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-17 10:22 pm (UTC)Lets take the first example you gave.
For a given group of people what they can do to others without social repurcussion varies, and it varies in relation to the understandings of the greater polity they live in.
Anglo-Saxons (like most Germanic people) had no legal problem with someone killing someone else out of hand, so long as the killer paid the price for the loss (with lesser costs if the damage wasn't fatal).
But if they killed someone in secret, hiding that they had done it, that was murder, and if discovered the murderer was an outlaw, and there was no price to be paid for killing him.
In Iceland it was rude, but not wrong, to kill a man's slave because one was angered with him.
In the South it was perfectly in keeping with the social contract (both of them) to abuse blacks for being, "uppity." If they go too uppity one could arrange to have them lynched. The greater social contract of the Nation was, nominally, against it.
It happens that at least once the larger social contract led to the Supreme Court taking initial jurisdiction of a criminal case (the only time it has ever done so) because they ordered a stay, pending appeal, of a conviction for rape.
Without the greater contract, things like lynching, and other demonizations of "the other" have nothing, other than the brute force of people acting in concert, to prevent it.
Look at the lifestyles in the high valley of New Guinea, where warfare was endemic, and no one dared travel outside the bounds of the land controlled by thier tribe, and perhaps the lands of friendly neighbors. To cross the whole valley was inconceivable.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-17 11:23 pm (UTC)As
As <ljuser =tnh> would say, show your work.
My understanding, and my experience, is that breaking the larger contract leads to a destruction of the smaller, save for a very small group which people can trust implicitly. Anyone outside that group is fair game.
TK