Agree or disagree, Berlet’s points challenge our sense of social appropriateness in civil discourse.
Also challenged is our honesty in evaluating information that reflects flaws in how we as a significant global society think and act.
| Chip Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates in the Boston area. For over 25 years he has written about civil liberties, social justice, right-wing groups, prejudice, systems of oppression, and scapegoating. Berlet is co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (Guilford, 2000) and editor of Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash (South End Press, 1995), both of which received a Gustavus Myers Center Award for outstanding scholarship on the subject of human rights and bigotry in North America. Berlet's byline has appeared in publications ranging from the New York Times and Boston Globe to the Progressive and Amnesty Now. He has appeared on ABC Nightline, the NBC Today Show, NPR's All things Considered, Democracy Now, and many other radio and television programs. |
“ … the shootings have created a new word floating across cyberspace: “becking.” To be “becked” is to be held up as such an evil and destructive person that someone, somewhere, will interpret it as a call to eliminate that problem through violence.”Berlet offers as an example the murder/execution of doctor George Tiller because of his performing abortions. See “Who Will Rid Me of This Troublesome Doctor?”: Bill O’Reilly, King Henry II, and George Tiller
Here is a sample of O’Reilly’s statements all the while he was making money “entertaining” viewers on Fox News:
- “In the state of Kansas, there is a doctor, George Tiller, who will execute babies for $5,000.”
- “For $5,000, ‘Tiller the Baby Killer’—as some call him—will perform a late-term abortion for just about any reason.”
- “Tiller has killed thousands, thousands, of late-term fetuses without explanation.”
- “No question, Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands.”
- “‘Tiller the Baby Killer’ out in Kansas, acquitted, acquitted today of murdering babies.”
- “This guy will kill your baby for $5,000, any reason. Any reason.”
- “If we allow Dr. George Tiller and his acolytes to continue, we can no longer pass judgment on any behavior by anybody.”
- “If we allow this, America will no longer be a noble nation.”
The people who “becked” Rep. Gabrielle Giffords began with a premise of dualism or Manichaeism, and then constructed a frame that uses demonization, scapegoating, and conspiracism to divide the world into a good ‘us’ and a bad ‘them’.Scapegoating can include a dominating central fiction of a dangerous powerful conspiracy against society.
Hannah Arendt explains that the target audience of the scapegoaters “need not believe all the statements made for public consumption, but they do believe ‘all the more fervently the standard clichés of ideological explanation.’ ”
Thus, would it be a surprising leap for a weak minded devotee of right-wing talk-show anger to conclude that if liberal Democrats are treasonous and evil, then they should be killed to save the nation?
| We use the term scapegoating to describe the social process whereby the hostility and grievances of an angry, frustrated group are directed away from the real causes of a social problem onto a target group demonized as malevolent wrongdoers. The scapegoat bears the blame, while the scapegoaters feel a sense of righteousness and increased unity. The social problem may be real or imaginary, the grievances legitimate or illegitimate, and members of the targeted group may be wholly innocent or partly culpable. What matters is that the scapegoats are wrongfully stereotyped as all sharing the same negative trait, or are singled out for blame while other major culprits are let off the hook. |
Most people first heard of Sean Hannity when he made frequent appearances as a guest host for Rush Limbaugh. More militant, more religious, and without any "baggage" that has dogged Limbaugh (like drug use, questions about military service, and multiple marriages), Sean Hannity has taken the nation by storm. His new book, Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism (Harper Collins, 2004), is itself evil, for if Hannity's philosophy is followed, terrorism will increase, despotism will continue, and liberalism will triumph. – Laurance M. Vance, 2004 review |
"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for."- Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95
"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him."- Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton
"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." - Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building." - Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02
Do we really think scapegoating (“becking” ) is not a significant factor in national violent thinking?
Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity on accused shooter's reading list – 2008, Knoxville Tennessee
UPDATE: Berlet interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now
Oh ... and these
ReplyDelete"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for."
- Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95
"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him."
- Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton
"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs."
- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
- Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02