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Media sources like the Washington Post, CNN, and others have utterly failed in their coverage of right-wing extremism in recent years. Over the past year, as Sarah Palin and other Republicans suggested Obama was a terrorist, as it became commonplace for rightwingers to compare Obama to Hitler and the Nazis, the media snoozed. Coverage of yesterday’s Saturday’s Wacka-palooza in D.C. is a good example of this failure. The Post has repeatedly described these extremists as "conservative protesters", lending the extremists a legitimacy they do not deserve. There is nothing "conservative" about people carrying Confederate flags and wielding signs calling Obama a terrorist or a Nazi, when they’re not depicting him in a racist caricature. There’s nothing mainstream about a nearly all-white crowd repeating lies about how health insurance reform is a secret plot to give away care to illegal immigrants and using despicable, utterly baseless comparisons to rail against a black president.
The tea partiers, the town hall lunatics who proudly describe themselves as "terrorists", who call for the lynching of members of Congress and who have threatened to march on Washington, with guns, are not "conservatives". They are foaming at the mouth radicals. CNN posted this bland headline underneath one of the many absurd signs right wingers wave as they idiotically compare Obama to Hitler: "A protester uses a Nazi swastika to make a point at a Tea Party Express stop in Dallas, Texas." That protesters, and the many others waving similar signs, are making a point all right. They’re saying "look at me, I’m an unhinged extremist who thinks a modest attempt to make sure more Americans have access to health care is the second coming of Adolph Hitler." When will CNN, the Post, and the rest stop bending over backwards to avoid offending the radical right wing and start stating the obvious: the Republican party has made common cause with right wing radicals who are spouting outrageous, baseless claims that are apparently being taken seriously by some members of Congress? A radical, whether on the right or left, should be described as such. There’s nothing conservative about the radical right wing.
9 Comments
In the 1960s, they were called ultra-conservatives and right-wing reactionaries. There were even true moderate Republicans like Senator Lowell Weicker, Jr.
One thing that the left can do today is openly differentiate a right-of-center political spectrum. This will give cover to centrists and moderates to distance themselves from ultra-conservatives and extremists in the GOP. These voters help comprise the 72% of US citizens that want real healthcare reform.
yeah. reactionary is a good term for the protesters too. It would be nice to have a real left today–I’m not saying a distorted mirror image of the extremists on the right, but something different from what you rightly call today’s right of center reaching to perhaps center political spectrum
I think that a real left does exist now – it’s just that we don’t recognize it. Bernie Sanders (a real Socialist) is in the Senate representing the rational far left in American politics. Dennis Kucinich in the House is just to the right of that, representing the rational left wing of the Democratic Party. Up to the time of his death Teddy Kennedy occupied the place of the rational left wing of the Democrats in the Senate. The DLC wing of the party does not represent the totality of the Democratic Party, just its central position. What we sometimes fail to realize is the truth of the old Will Rogers statement: “I don’t belong to an organized party – I’m a Democrat.”
true–I was thinking of Sanders and a few others as exceptions as I typed my comment. To me, though, the fact that there is a handful of people on the left isn’t good enough. 90-95% of the Democratic caucus doesn’t qualify as left. I think the party, since Clinton at least, has presented itself as a sane version of what moderate Republicans used to be–somewhat liberal on social issues (though still not “left” on things like womens’ health, equal rights for LGBT people, church-state division) and center-right on the economy. I’d like to see the left have a real voice, but right now I don’t think they do.
sorry if I’m being defensive though–I don’t mean to dismiss your point–that Sanders and a few others do represent a “left”–you’re quite right
No problem – You’re right that the liberal wing has to raise its visibility and bring more people on board.
The left has been brow beaten for so long that we are afraid to stand up together. We let conservatives take away are name liberal. We let conservatives take away the left’s greatest victory – civil rights – bit by bit. Conservatives started by stopping the left from vigorously calling out racism. Then, they made us abandon words like affirmative action and quotas. Then, we did not challenge them on goofy ideas like reverse discrimination. They drove us away from morally just positions. We stood by and let Reganomics break the unions and destroy welfare for the poor and needy. We said nothing as they dismantled FDR’s New Deal, and the list goes on and on.
The left stands for that which is morally right for the greater good. Somehow, we lost our voice and we lost our way. Now, is the time to reclaim our voice.
The eight years of total control by rightwing officials enabled the ideology of ‘conservatives’ to be enacted, leading to the disaster that the rational had always foreseen for it. The reaction of vituperative nonsense that has resulted is rather like a tantrum, rather than acknowledgement of failure. The only really good result that can be weaned from the right is that those capable of rational behavior will leave while what remains is the fringe we saw Saturday on the streets, making dirty cartoons on the walls.
good point–liberal was made into a dirty word–people still seem ashamed to call themselves liberal. You’re also right that the left has failed to take credit for so many things people take for granted–Social Security, Medicare, the weekend, food safety, clean water, environmental protections, the end of Jim Crow laws (not that de facto segregation hasn’t become a reality too, sadly), women’s rights.