July 30, 2008

The Tennessee Church Shooting, Right-Wing Hate Speech, and “Destructive Anger”

I’m going to do something out of character: post a number of items without comment (don’t faint!), save for a brief explanation to put in context a piece I wrote more than a year ago.

All of the following relates to the mass shooting Sunday at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, the speed (and relish) with which right-wingers jumped to the very wrong conclusion that the shooter was a Christian-hating atheist, and the revelation that the shooter’s real targets were liberals and gay people.

First up: For several days in May of 2007, DemocraticUnderground.com was ablaze over the news of the death of Jerry Falwell. As you might expect, there was some unabashed celebration here and there, but far more expressions of sheer relief, as well as complete ambivalence.

There was an equal (if not greater) number of pleas to stop what was perceived as “grave dancing.” Many such pleas were fraught with hyperbole, and yours truly finally got sick of being told how the only appropriate reaction was faux grief — and if that wasn’t possible, then we should all simply refrain from speaking ill of the dead (or: “If you don’t have anything nice to say…”)

I stayed out of the DU Falwell Wars, until I saw a post titled “Falwell hatred issue: It is about Civility. We need civility in a just society,” which contained this chiding admonition:

If we are going to build a better society, WE MUST HAVE A PLACE FOR CIVILITY. Destructive anger, which is basically what I think we are allowing to get the better of us, is not something that is consistant with making a Just and Progressive society. Destructive anger derails Democracy. It inflates and kills communication. It is human and happens, but it is a root of violence and is not healthy.

My response (which other DUers encouraged me to post in its own thread):

“Destructive anger”

“Destructive anger” is shooting two men to death as they sleep in their bed, and saying the only thing you’re sorry for is that you didn’t inspire more people to emulate you — since, after all, you’re not guilty of a crime, but only of “obeying the laws of the Creator.” (1)

“Destructive anger” is killing three people and injuring 150 more by bombing abortion clinics, lesbian bars, and the Olympics, because Jesus would condone “militant action in defense of the innocent.” (2)

“Destructive anger” is murdering at least 11 people, most of them gay, because “According to the Bible, homosexuals must die because they will never enter the kingdom of God.” (3)

Where do you think people get such ideas? Who do you think “inspires” them?

Preachers who teach that satanism, Nazism, and homosexuality all go together? (4)

Preachers who teach that “God hates fags,” and that God is killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq because America tolerates homosexuals (oh, and by the way, “Thank God for IEDs!”)? (5)

Preachers who teach that killing abortion providers is “justifiable homicide,” and that “sodomy is a graver sin than murder”? (6)

Preachers who teach that gays, lesbians, abortionists and other “sinners” were personally responsible for 9/11? Or that AIDS is not God’s punishment for homosexuals, but “for the society that tolerates homosexuals”? Or who warns that “If we do not act now, homosexuals will own America”? (7)

“Pro-family,” “pro-life” organizations (8) that continue to perpetuate the ravings of a universally-discredited psychologist (9) who advocates castration for all gay men? And tattooing, forced quarantine, and banishment to Molokai for all AIDS patients? And who once opined: “‘Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals”?

Religious leaders who call gay people “objectively disordered” and “intrinsically evil”? (10)

Preachers, syndicated columnists, and TV and radio commentators who insist that there is no such thing as a “hate crime,” and that it is in fact the Christians who are being persecuted… by “the gays”? (11) That “homosexual activists” are doing to “people of faith” the very same thing “Hitler began to build against the Jews”? (12)

The day Ellen DeGeneres brainwashes millions of gay people to into believing that heterosexuals are an immoral, degenerate, biologically-inferior subspecies whose very existence is a threat to the salvation of our souls — and when heterosexuals start losing their jobs, their homes, their civil rights, and their lives because of it — then you can lecture me about “destructive anger.”

Nobody killed Jerry Falwell. But Jerry Falwell killed millions of us — without spilling a single drop of blood on his own hands. His legacy is not one of faith, but of “destructive anger” and death — and it is a legacy which will last long after my bones, and yours, and the bones of your grandchildren, have turned to dust.

Until you understand that, you will never understand why many of us were relieved upon awakening two mornings ago to discover a world we were no longer forced to share with the one man responsible for coalescing such a diverse group of hysterical haters into a vast, indomitable force, for giving them an unassailable excuse for hating us, and for inspiring so many to dominate us, persecute us, beat us, murder us, drive us out of our homes, and attempt to legislate us out of existence.

Until you understand that, you understand nothing about “destructive anger.”

1 ) Benjamin Williams
2 ) Eric Rudolph
3 ) “Railway Killer” Angel Maturino Resendiz
4 ) Pat Robertson
5 ) Fred Phelps
6 ) Fr. David Trosch
7 ) Jerry Falwell
8 ) Family Research Council, American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, NARTH, Claremont Institute, Colorado for Family Values, Traditional Values Coalition, and many others
9 ) Dr. Paul Cameron
10 ) Pope Benedict XVI
11 ) Far too many to list
12 ) Rev. Lou Sheldon

With that, I’ll leave you to these writers, all of whom have something important to say. I encourage you to click every link, and read every word.

Who really killed those Unitarians? Was it the preachers who spread hatred and intolerance? The politicians who court and flatter them instead of condemning their hate speech? The media machine that attacks liberals, calls them “traitors” and suggests you speak to them “with a baseball bat”? The economic system that batters people like Jim Adkinson until they snap, then tells them their real enemies are gays and liberals and secular humanists?

If you ask me, it was all of the above.

You killed them, Pat Robertson. You killed them, Pastor Hagee. You killed them, Ann Coulter. You killed them, Dick Morris and Sean Hannity and the rest of you at Fox News.

The shooting began while the children of the church were putting on a musical based on “Annie.” One broad-shouldered church member blocked the bullets from hitting other people, and died. You don’t need to believe in dogma to be a hero. Remember that song from “Annie”? It probably got on your nerves like it got on mine. “The sun’ll come out tomorrow.”

The sun coming out. That’s natural. It’s one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. But a man driven insane, then programmed by society to kill people just because they’re loving and tolerant?

RJ Eskow
Monster: Who Really Killed the Knoxville Unitarians?
A Night Light, July 28, 2008

This morning I wrote (in “Monster”) that Sean Hannity et al. might bear some share of moral responsibility for the killings in Knoxville. Sadly for everyone concerned, that may be true.

This evening we learn from the Knoxville News that officers entering the home of murder Jim Adkisson “found Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by talk show host Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor, by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly.”

The presence of somebody’s books in a mentally disturbed person’s home does not make them accessories to a killing. But right-wing rhetoric toward liberals and humanists like those who attended the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church has been exceptionally violent for years. Liberal groups are often called “Nazi” or “Nazi-like” by O’Reilly (he even said that about our own Arianna Huffington). Savage says he’d “hang every lawyer” who tried to establish constitutional rights for Guantanamo prisoners, describes Obama as an “Afro-Leninist,” and said the folks at Media Matters were “brownshirts.” He describes Rep. Wexler as a “Nazi” and calls Nancy Pelosi a “Mussolini.”

As for Hannity, he said that “there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of ‘em is making sure Nancy Pelosidoesn’t become the speaker (of the House).” Think about it: “worth fighting and dying for.”

And that’s just a sampler.

Ann Coulter says liberals should be beaten with baseball bats and tried for treason (she’s not clear about the order in which these events are to take place.) Dick Morris says they’re “traitors” who should be decapitated.

I had a friend at Clear Channel (yes, I have a broad group of friends) who described some of these people as “entertainers.” Don’t you get it, guys? You use inflammatory images that equates your fellow Americans with violent enemies of the nation. Then you act surprised when a mentally ill person believes you and kills. You use the language of war and then say you’re not to blame when somebody enlists in your imaginary struggle.

Their next step will be outrage — outrage! — at the idea that they may be morally accountable for this action, the possible fruit of their rhetoric. …

If they found something I wrote in a killer’s home, I’d stop what I was doing and begin some serious self-reflection. I’d write about it, consider my errors, and try to make amends. Wouldn’t you?

RJ Eskow
A Murderer’s Bookshelf: Hannity, O’Reilly,
and Savage On Killer’s Reading List
A Night Light, July 28, 2008

“If the Left succeeds in gaining and retaining more power, the well-being of future generations will be at greater peril. I fear (our children) will inherit a nation that is less free and less secure than the nation we inherited from the last generation. It is therefore our job to stop them. Not just debate them, but defeat them.” — Sean Hannity

Dear Sean:

I found these words on page 11 of your book Let Freedom Ring. This book, and similar ones from your conservative colleagues Bill O’Reilly and Michael Savage, was found in the home of a man who read those words, internalized those words, and then loaded his shotgun. He took 76 rounds of ammunition with him to a place of worship — a place where he knew he could do his job to stop and defeat some liberals. At the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, Jim Adkisson, a fan of yours, killed two people, wounded five others, and left an entire congregation and country shaken by his actions. Actions prompted, as he testified in his own written notes, by the ideas contained in your words.

I don’t know if you remember me, Sean, but I worked with you in Atlanta in the early 1990s, right as you got your big break with FOX News. I was an anchor and reporter (under the air name Candace Petersen) at WGST, your last low level stop before hitting the big time. I remember your last night on the air before you left for the big leagues. I approached you in your office, a cramped back room that I’m sure resembles a hovel compared to your FOX digs. I asked if you, during your last show, would tone down your rhetoric against gays and lesbians — stop demonizing our community for just one night. You refused. You explained to me, as if I were a child, that to do so would be to let your audience down. They expected you to go on the air and rant about how liberals, minorities, women and especially gays and lesbians were ruining our country. You simply had to oblige.

Even though you explained it simply, I still didn’t understand. Your Girl Friday — your most trusted assistant on your show was a young lesbian. She admired you, for some strange reason, and you two were close friends, lunching together, spending time together outside of work. You didn’t seem to have a problem with this particular lesbian. She wasn’t the one you kept blaming on the air for the downfall of democracy. No, you had two different lives then — one on the air, where you performed your outraged conservative act and one in real life, where you enjoyed your lesbian friend and seemed like a decent, sane fellow. …

I hope you are not too far gone, your conscience too eaten away with greed, to understand the violent and vile object lesson that Mr. Adkisson has provided for us in Tennessee, because it’s a lesson you need to learn: Our words matter. Our words have power. …

Your book is rife with paragraphs bashing “the Left” — an enigmatic group of “liberals” painted so broadly that your label for them must be capitalized. These are the people to blame if anything goes wrong in the world. Terrorism? “The Left” didn’t hunt down the terrorists before they struck. War? “The Left” didn’t do enough to protect us from our enemies and have opposed our military readiness. Job losses? “The Left” taxed the corporations so much they moved overseas.

In your world, and the world you convinced Adkisson of, “the Left” is the bogeyman under the bed. … You have done this with your words, Sean — words of division, words of hate, words of war, and words of greed. …

Candace Chellew-Hodge
RDEpistle: Open Letter to Sean Hannity
Religion Dispatches, July 29, 2008

Adkisson acted on what the conservative talk radio has been advocating for years.

There is no dissent if you kill the dissenters.

Figuratively, by character assassination, misinformation and outright lies and now…literally. We’ve all heard it. Coulter’s “satire” about murdering liberals, G Gordon Liddys “head shot” show, Limbaugh’s disinformation and veiled threats and invocations of political violence against all those who disagree with him, O Reilly, Savage, the list goes on.

Even on these pages we have “conservatives” who relish violence against any diversity of opinion, in all its forms. We have all read the misogynistic hate and misguided machismo of these posts. One even advocated the “hanging” of Cenk , myself and others who opposed the Iraq war. Other “conservatives” have advocated violence in various forms against, among others, homeless, gays and the poor. Consider this gem of tolerence from conservative “pastor” Jerry Falwell:

But these things speak evil of those things, verse 10 [reading from Jude] which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Look at the Metropolitan Community Church today, the gay church, almost accepted into the World Council of Churches. Almost, the vote was against them. But they will try again and again until they get in, and the tragedy is that they would get one vote. Because they are spoken of here in Jude as being brute beasts, that is going to the baser lust of the flesh to live immorally, and so Jude describes this as apostasy. But thank God this vile and satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated and there’ll be a celebration in heaven.

MRFred
Shooting The Messengers: Gunman Targets “Liberals”
The Young Turks, July 29, 2008

I used to electronically converse with a born again Christian who used a retrospective definition of “Christian.” In his view, people who did bad things could never be Christians, because Christians don’t do bad things. That little loop of illogic seems to run deep through right wingers, whether they be Christian or other. So let’s talk about good old Mr. Adkisson, who just went berserk in that Unitarian Universalist (UU) church in Tennessee. …

Let’s talk about the hatred of liberals. And let’s talk about the fact that Mr. Adkisson’s personal library included The O’Reilly Factor, by the one and only Shilll O’Reilly; Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, by Michael (what gay pictures?) Savage; and Let Freedom Ring, by Sean Vannity. And let’s freely acknowledge that Mr. Adkisson appears to have been pretty deeply disturbed, and to have been deeply disturbed long before he ever encountered the literary talents of those three authors.

If you feed a disturbed person a distorted and angry view of a specific group like, oh, let’s say liberals, if you pound away day after day and hour after radio broadcast hour that this group is vermin, slime, devious, destructive of all that is good and pure, that they are, in fact, either destructively insane or the very embodiment of evil, do you not bear some speck of the responsibility for a madman violently attacking this group? Not even a smidgen of responsibility?

The endless portrayal of liberals as the root of all American evil serves the same purpose that portraying Jews in the same light served in Nazi circles. Dehumanize. Desensitize. Rev up the rage then rev it up some more until a good portion of the populace considers this scapegoat to be the source of not only all their own problems, of all the evil in the entire world. …

But you know that The Right is Never Wrong. Just ask them. Better yet, listen to the silence. Think that any of the rabble rousers are going to be up in arms about this demonization of liberals that played a role in directing the insane Mr. Adkisson’s rage in a specific direction, in a specific manner?

Think Fox News is all atwitter with outraged discussion of the fact that Mr. Vannity once said “I’ll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo — every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress.” (6/15/05 Hannity & Colmes). Is the Free Republic world aghast that Mister (I use the term loosely) Savage actually titled his poison-pen tome “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder?” …

No, I’m sure the Always Right will examine themselves thoroughly and pronounce themselves innocent once again.

After all, you don’t have to look too hard on the web to find Christians who are aghast that journalists keep portraying people like Eric Rudolph as “Christians.” As one blogger puts it (emphasis added):

Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian. Neither is Eric Rudolph. No, it is the media and left wing types who do all they can to make you THINK that they are Christians. … Eric Rudolph also rejected the Bible, and freely admitted that his decision to become a terrorist was influenced by anti - God philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche (of the “God is dead” fame)!

Except that Eric Rudolph’s own written statement clearly and unequivocally states:

I was born a Catholic, and with forgiveness I hope to die one.

Lee Russ
See What Happens When You Portray
Liberals as Dangerous and Insane Vermin?
Watching the Watchers, July 29, 2008

How is it that the same right-wing nuts that are championing the war on terror, you know the fight against the use of intimidation and violence to promote ignorance, intolerance, and hate, are at the same time filling people so full of ignorance, intolerance and hate that they are inspired to go out and commit violent acts against liberals? Apparently once we murder all the peace loving, gay protecting do-gooders the world will be a safer place for freedom and justice and flag pins for all.

And what about the lefties part of the blame? We have become so complacent in our comfy middle class consumerist lifestyles that we sit by and let this whole thing happen. We have turned acceptance and tolerance mixed with laziness into tacit approval of the preaching of hate and violence.

… This guy wrote in his suicide note exactly what he expected to happen. He planned to wander into this liberal church with a semi-automatic shotgun & 76 rounds, and mow down mamby pamby lefties cowering in their pews until the cops showed up and finished him off. In reality he got three shots off, including one into a man who moved in front of him to shield others, before members of the congregation wrestled him to the floor, disarmed and restrained him until police arrived and took him away.

I can’t even begin to fathom the irony here. This man’s motivation seems to have been frustration over being out of work and having his food stamps expire. Add to that minimal education, questionable mental stability, previous military service, and massive doses of talk radio brain washing. Who the hell does he think fought for social programs such as food stamps in the first place? UUs have been on the forefront of progressive social issues for hundreds of years, including the American Revolution, abolitionism, worker rights, womens suffrage, humane treatment of prisoners and the mentally ill, civil rights, womens rights, pacifism, social welfare, education, and more recently gay rights, immigrant rights, and environmental issues. …

Apparently thats whats really wrong with this country. To much trying to help each other out and being nice to one another. Once we kill off all the limp wristed liberals, life will be much better for armed, mentally unstable, ex-military out of work truck driver/mechanics everywhere. Then maybe we can all go out and tailgate Priuses in our jacked up SUVs, and with any luck we’ll take a few of them out too. …

Free speech is great and all, but why do we allow deranged lunatics to spew hate filled lies in a publicly funded forum? Let them stand in some park and rant on with the rest of the loonies. The last thing we need to do is broadcast it across the country just because it makes someone money (which lets face it is the only reason talk radio exists).

miscrms
Guns don’t kill people, talk radio does
PriusChat, July 28, 2008

The shooting in Knoxville has made me both sad…and angry. Sad because it is a natural reaction to such a horrific and tragic event. Angry because of the motive of the shooter, and the fact that the media (at least on websites, I have to confess I have not watched TV today) seems eager to bury that motive. The cynic in me believes that if this were an avowed atheist shooting up some fundamentalist megachurch, we’d see wall-to-wall coverage of the “religious hatred” in America, or some such nonsense.

Given that the shooting occurred in a church known for its progressive and tolerant worldview, many of us suspected a shooter with political motivations. We were right. But it is worth noting that the beloved late journalist Molly Ivins had us beat to the story, by a bit over thirteen years.

From her book, Who Let The Dogs In??, on pages 285 and 286 (truncated excerpt, so as not to violate copyright):

A large segment of (Rush) Limbaugh’s audience consists of white males, eighteen to thirty-four years old, without college education. Basically, a guy I know and grew up with named Bubba.

Advance the age a little bit, and you have our shooter. Now, listen as Ivins explains the appeal of Limbaugh and the rest of the angry right (side note: why do we hear endlessly about the angry left in the traditional media, but so little about the angry right?) on Bubba:

Bubba listens to Limbaugh because Limbaugh gives him someone to blame for the fact that Bubba is getting screwed…Because Bubba understands he’s being shafted, even if he doesn’t know why or by whom, he listens to Limbaugh. Limbaugh offers him scapegoats. It’s the “feminazis”. It’s the minorities. It’s the limousine liberals. It’s all these people with all these wacky social programs to help some silly, self-proclaimed bunch of victims.

Sound familiar, given the events of the last two days?

Steve Singiser
Molly Ivins Saw The Tennessee
Shooter Coming — 13 Years Ago.
DialyKos, July 28, 2008

Conservatism used to be an ideology — conservatives believed in getting government off of people’s backs, they believed in fiscal restraint and small central government, they believed we should have a humble foreign policy focused on watching out for ourselves and not trying to rule the world and they detested experiments in social engineering.

In the post-World War II era, it was a widely-loathed ideology and liberalism was dominant. Democrats were proud liberals who wanted to build a more just society and most Republicans were liberals who believed we should do so much more gradually and carefully than their opponents.

Beginning in the middle of the last century, conservatives abandoned any semblance of ideological coherence — when in power, they spend more on pet projects than liberals, are more interventionist in their foreign policy than their liberal counterparts and are all-too-happy to meddle in the most private affairs of the citizenry (think: opposition to birth control; Terri Schiavo). Conservatism gave way to “backlash” conservatism, which is, in practice, little more than an ideology of resentment. Thomas Frank, in a less tragic context, coined the phrase “conservative plenty-plaint” to describe it — a list of grievances, great and small, that are all somehow attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the supposed evils of liberalism.

It was a strategic choice, one that may be attributed to Joe McCarthy or Spiro Agnew or Richard Nixon, and it has consequences. As villifying the left became incredibly lucrative — Rush Limbaugh has a contract worth $400 million, Ann Coulter makes a fortune on her pabulum — the competition became fierce, and the charges against liberalism went further and further over the top.

David Neiwert calls it “eliminationist” rhetoric — putting forth the idea that one’s opponents are not simply in disagreement, do not simply have a different and competing political philosophy, do not just believe that their approach to solving problems is superior but are bent on destroying the country, the culture, even the family unit from within. And, more importantly, that they must be destroyed or exiled.

Consider the narratives we hear so frequently, from right-wing talk radio, to the right-blogs to Fox News. Liberals are traitors. Liberals hate the troops, stab them in the back, hate America. They are “anti-family”, they hate God. They want America to be destroyed by its enemies, whether Soviet shock troops or “Islamofascist” terrorists. …

[What went down in Tennessee is] certainly not isolated — just last week, a group of teens beat a Latino migrant to death. And why not? People like Michelle Malkin don’t make arguments about the costs and benefits of immigration; they paint a picture of an invading army bent on our destruction. They say that illegal immigration is part of a plot to “reconquer” parts of America — literally to annex the SouthWest. Abortion clinics are bombed, and providers are assassinated, and the bombers and assassins inevitably see the procedure as “killing babies” — who wouldn’t act to stop actual babies from being killed?

When people view themselves as facing an existential threat to their nation, to their very way of life, they defend themselves — it’s a natural reaction. It appears that Jim David Adkisson, unemployed, no doubt mentally disturbed, believed he was taking action to defend his country, his community. He did it because of “his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.” A picture-perfect summary of the back-lash conservative message. …

Of course, when one points this out one is immediately derided as an enemy of free speech, even if one never even suggests that this kind of speech should be regulated in any way. …

I’m not advocating censorship here, but at the same time, I think it’s important to note that inciting people to violence is not a protected form of speech. In Rwanda, the genocide of 800,000 people was spurred on by extremists on the radio — Rwanda’s Shock-Jocks…

Joshua Holland
Tennessee Church Shooting an Inevitable
Consequence of Shock-Jocks’ Hateful Rhetoric
AlterNet, July 29, 2008

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”
-Ann Coulter, August 26, 2002

“I’d hang every lawyer that went down to Guantanamo”
-Michael Savage, June 19, 2008

“In this recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he “did it,” even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate.”
-Ann Coulter, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, 1998

The definitive list is here (Special thanks to David Neiwert, who has been shining a light on this kind of rhetoric for years)

I’m not saying that everyone who reads a book by Sean Hannity is a potential mass murderer or that watching Bill O’Reilly leads ignorant alcoholics to try to gun down liberals any more than video games cause school shootings. What I am saying is that the constant eliminationist rhetoric of the right does push some people in that direction. I’m not advocating censorship, I’m advocating responsible speech. I love passionate invective as much as the next guy, but when you start seriously advocating killing people on a radio broadcast or a television show, you’ve crossed a very serious threshold and ought to be held responsible in a court of law.

The Rev. Paperboy
Civil Cold War turning hot?
The Woodshed, July 29, 2008

It is my hope that members of talk radio and their “Bash-’Em-in-the-Head Book Club” of authors are targeted in a massive lawsuit by wounded victims and families of the dead in the shooting. Talk radio and extreme right wing conservative authors certainly can be cited for shouting “fire” in a crowded building, which does not come under the protection of the First Amendment. In considering Second Amendment rights, which I support, legal restrictions concerning gun licenses for the mentally ill have been unpheld.

The beating death of a 25-year-old Hispanic man by three white teens in Shenandoah, PA., earlier this month also can be connected to the right-wing hate speech. The teens have been charged with homicide.

I know that conservatives I’ve formed friendships with and respect across Tennessee do not solely rely on talk show hosts and authors to form their opinions. And there are left-wing pundits who spew an assortment of derogatory messages.

But this shooting case in particular may indeed point to a unique characteristic in the extreme right-wing message that puts a sense of mission into the minds of some to wipe out those who believe differently.

If and when we come across people on either ideologocial side who are taking matters too far in their thinking, then we must correct them and demand of them some sense of mitigation in their anger. That’s our responsibility in the marketplace of ideas.

Tim A. Chávez
Hannity, O’Reilly, Savage and others should
address Knoxville church shooting with promise
to tone down rhetoric or face legal action
Political Salsa, July 29, 2008

What’s notable about this is the complete radio silence on the right.

Almost exactly two years ago, there was another tragic shooting at a place of worship — and they were all over it. Just look at this breathless, obsessively updated Michelle Malkin post.

The difference? The shooter in 2006 was a Muslim.

Blue Texan
Right Wing Blogosphere Completely Ignores
Domestic Terrorism In Knoxville
Firedog Lake, July 28, 2008

As I’ve said before, and will no doubt say again, this shit doesn’t happen in a void.

Melissa McEwan
More on Knoxville Church Shooting
Shakesville, July 28, 2008

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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