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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Political Terrorism of the Left and the Right
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
A man just shot 4 people, including the House Majority Whip at a practice for the Republican team of a baseball game played between Republican and Democratic members of Congress to raise money for charity. Here is information on the shooter, who was killed by police:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40280034
As always, we need to consider that gun violence, mental health issues (if this man had any, which I am not sure if he did), and economic insecurity, which he seems to have suffered from (not that is any excuse for violence) are all things that need to be addressed in US society. However, this man did appear to be targeting Republican lawmakers (In a separate news report, one congressman said he believes that he spoke to the shooter before the practice, not realizing the man's intentions. The shooter asked him if it was Republicans or Democrats who were practicing and upon learning it was Republicans had walked away.) I am pretty confident in calling this an act of political terrorism, although police have not yet labeled it so.
I am Social Democratic in my politics. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Primary. This guy volunteered for Bernie's campaign and his social media has many Bernie pictures. Sanders has expressed his disgust at the shooting and condemned all forms of violence on the Senate floor - so this has nothing to do with Bernie himself. However, my social media friends often make threatening comments about Trump and Republicans like the ones the shooter made in the past, and in real life my friends often wish harm upon the GOP and Trump, without directly encouraging anyone to violence.
I think Trump is a threat to democracy everywhere and I am disgusted by his policies, personality, past deeds, etc. However, I acknowledge that he is the President and I do not support violence against him or the GOP.
Granted, the far right has been engaged in terrorism for quite some time (the Oklahoma City bombing, the Charleston Church Shooting, for example), and terrorism of the left is nothing new in the US (there were anarchist bomb-throwers over 100 years ago, and the 1970s were rife with all kinds of self-styled revolutionary guerrillas planting bombs and robbing banks). The Unabomber was an environmentalist terrorist of sorts. It is often claimed that far-right terrorism (or, more specifically, terrorism motivated on the one hand by a paranoid fear of government or, on the other hand (and not necessarily related), by white supremacism, antisemitism, and/or Islamophobia) is more of a threat to public safety in the US than terrorism motivated by an extremist interpretation of Islam. I am aware of all that.
However, not only is the political climate particularly more toxic and paranoid than usual right now (and not only Trump, but the conservative movement's brazen flirtation with the far right going back decades has played a large part in that), but something seems new about this attack.
It is, I admit, one more disgruntled white man, impacted by economic and social changes that have made it more difficult for him to be the traditional breadwinner with a respectable working- or middle-class job, who takes out his frustrations through violence directed at the opposing political side (or, in cases other than this, on a scapegoated social group). I think that Republicans have done a lot to cause the economic damage that have brought men like the shooter to where they are (not that that is any excuse for his actions), but Democrats are largely responsible, too, and even Trump with his so-called agenda for the "forgotten man" will likely to little to help people like the shooter. Shootings like this, regardless of their political motivation, have a lot to do with threatened masculinity (look at his behavior towards his daughter), and specifically with threatened white masculinity. All this is nothing new.
However, despite all of the left-leaning baby boomers grumbling in the past about Reagan and Bush were traitors for Iran Contra, Iraq, you name it, and despite all the conspiracy theories that Watergate even before it inspired, I think that the way that the paranoid chatter on the older, crankier, more economically-focused left (as opposed to the younger, itching for a fight of its generation's own, intolerant of intolerance, more identity-and-environmental politics focused left, not that they are any better) has boiled over into violence this time is a sign that the politics of grievance and blame, of nostalgia for the security of the past (sometimes real, sometimes imagined), all too often associated with the right and its penchant for gun culture, is now potentially poised to bring the US into an era where many political differences are settled in actual physical conflict, if not straight out murder or terrorism.
What do you think?
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Well, you live in the US, I don't, so I can't comment from a first hand perspective.
However, from this distance it's seemed to me for some time that US politics has been becoming frighteningly polarised and that it was only going to be a matter of time before something like this occurred.
Beyond that, there's not much I can say.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Pangolin Guerre
Shipmate
# 18686
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Posted
A point of clarification - which I hope will not create a tangent - but since you raise environmentalist terrorists - environmentalism is not the exclusive purview of the left. There were Nazi environmentalists. There are environmentalists today who are on the extreme right, or, at least, extreme reactionaries (perhaps the better word), such as Pentti Linkola.
Posts: 758 | From: 30 arpents de neige | Registered: Nov 2016
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
stonespring--
FYI: AIUI, the Feds take seriously comments like your social media friends make. Even if the Feds don't find the comments on their own, someone might report them.
One small example: Early in Dubya's presidency, a local guy made a bumpersticker telling Dubya to go to hell, and put it on his car. He didn't offer to *send* Dubya there, but just told him off.
Some woman found it concerning, and called the Feds (either FBI or Secret Service). They paid a visit to the guy at his home. When they finally came out, one said that he didn't think the guy was dangerous--he just didn't like the president very much.
And that wasn't even an actual threat.
I just saw a news trailer, saying that Facebook has an AI to check for terrorist postings.
Word to the wise, FWIW.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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simontoad
Ship's Amphibian
# 18096
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Posted
yeah, wot GK said. Don't make threats. Don't wish people dead. If you find yourself doing these things, seek professional help. I am serious about this. Making threats and wishing people dead is aberrant behavior and we all need to take responsibility for out own mental health.
Then there's the whole availability of guns thing. That's just mad.
[ 16. June 2017, 12:27: Message edited by: simontoad ]
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Human
Posts: 1571 | From: Romsey, Vic, AU | Registered: May 2014
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
In the US in my lifetime a number of trends have been converging, to make things like this possible. The greatly-eased gun regulations. The increase of firepower in the guns you can buy (you can buy an assault rifle at Sears in Texas). The slashing of mental health support, getting you many more disturbed people who have no help. Even the cutting of benefits to veterans.
And there are a bucketload of things that are actually good: the greater awareness of the rights of women, black people, immigrants, people of other religions. The enormous increase in connectivity, so that you can now find people who believe just like you do even if you're a nut. Even though these things are arguably good, they make some people unstable.
All this, combined with an escalating political polarization over the last decade or so, has gotten us here.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
One small example: Early in Dubya's presidency, a local guy made a bumpersticker telling Dubya to go to hell, and put it on his car. He didn't offer to *send* Dubya there, but just told him off.
Interesting that your example was also a GOP president. I wonder how many of the people who burned or lynched Obama in effigy were investigated.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
I don't make threats online and I don't entertain the idea of any politician being harmed as a joke in private conversation. And the friends (by which I mean Facebook friends, not people I actually communicate with) who have said very distasteful things online about politicians have not threatened anyone. But there is a malice in the way some of them talk about Trump and the GOP that worries me. And it's mostly coming from people in their 60s and older. I guess the worst of the things said about Obama came from the same age group. That is why I am linking it to the grievances of - particularly male and often white - people who have not felt able to fill the economic role in family and society that they felt they are supposed to because of (they believe) the policies of their political opponents.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I have taken care, in referring to Lyin' Don, to only quote. He himself is the source of all the epithets, as he himself is the ever-flowing Twittery fountain of so many of his own problems. You may trust me when I say that I am very very creative indeed, and could be far more original. But to have a sword does not mean that you have to use it.
The current political climate is deplored by everybody -- I will spare you the links. But, as with the weather, nobody is going to do anything about it.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
It's a like a river which flows isn't it? Someone in a position of influence can direct more flow into a particular channel, and in extreme cases, actually form a new channel. There's a trajectory that is formed, a direction which makes certain things more likely.
Stephen Harper, before he lost the last Canadian election, as prime minister campaigning for re-election made speeches about Muslim face coverings, and banning them in citizenship ceremonies. One of his former cabinet members Kellie Lietch took up this idea and extended it to a "Canadian values test" when ran (and lost thankfully) for the Conservative leadership. News analysis has connected the ideas of these two to a statistical in increase in "hate crimes", which of course the Conservative party brass discount.
I do think there is something to the Zeitgesit (spirit of the times) which gets created. Another example:
The 21st century USA policy to torture people themselves, whom they'd declared had no rights as "enemy combatants", and also to contract out the torturing to third countries is also a Zeitgeist response to the idea that somehow the times were brand spanking (and waterboardingly) new after the Sept 11 attacks. Or were politically exploited to advance nefarious ends such as destabilizing Iraq, preferring a chaotic Middle East for purposes of oil, and continuing to fuck up Russia, which has been going on since WW2 with an Afghan acceleration under Jimmy Carter and the recently dead Zbigniew Brzezinski. But even Bush-2 is being marketted as a likeable persona now out of office for a spell.
Which, to digress a bit, leads me to suggest that the real analysis is not right versus left. It's follow the money.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
Getting back to my OP, do you think we are in for a new wave of terrorist attacks by "lone wolf" disgruntled everymen/women of the left who turn to extremism, as this man has appeared to? I am used to attacks by Jihadist extremists, by white supremacists and racists of all stripes, by paranoid antigovernment types, etc. I am guilty of associating the "random person grabs a gun and shoots the group s/he doesn't like" attacks with the right. I had associated leftist terrorism with the communist and anarchist armed groups of the past. But American gun culture, the vehemence of American cross-party hatred, and the culture of grievance in middle America and the shrinking middle and upper working classes - particularly among white men - seems to be things that know no party. I am worried that we will see copycat attacks and retaliatory attacks, and that a vicious cycle may be beginning.
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
Getting back to my OP, do you think we are in for a new wave of terrorist attacks by "lone wolf" disgruntled everymen/women of the left who turn to extremism, as this man has appeared to? I am used to attacks by Jihadist extremists, by white supremacists and racists of all stripes, by paranoid antigovernment types, etc. I am guilty of associating the "random person grabs a gun and shoots the group s/he doesn't like" attacks with the right. I had associated leftist terrorism with the communist and anarchist armed groups of the past. But American gun culture, the vehemence of American cross-party hatred, and the culture of grievance in middle America and the shrinking middle and upper working classes - particularly among white men - seems to be things that know no party. I am worried that we will see copycat attacks and retaliatory attacks, and that a vicious cycle may be beginning.
Of course there will be a more attacks. Guns, drugs, racism, no hope, broken governance, poverty, betrayal by societal structures. But the vast majority of the dead will still be brown people who live elsewhere. The thing we have to ask is why do we want things this way. We will continue painting it all black for a while; we probably will require riots and violence, perhaps features of revolutions, perhaps for the Baby Boomers to die off and the young people who wanted Sanders or Corbyn (we almost had real social democrats in Canada) to replace the devils wearing suits and ties with far too much money who enforce far too much inequality, and deflect by blaming those same brown people we're supposed to hate and kill. The will kill and we will kill. It all must be good for business.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
My Trump-supporting parents (sigh) blame the Julius-Caesar-dressed-as-Turmp performance in NYC and the Kathy Griffin photo with a severed Trump head for the shooting and other anti-GOP violence. And they accuse universities like Berkeley of not cracking down hard enough on violent antifascist and anarchist agitators that come from off campus (although some of them might be students). I don't agree, but I feel like a hypocrite decrying all the memes depicting violence against Obama and Hillary that circulated online, even if there was a racist and misogynist dimension to these that the anti-Trump violent images lack. Do my parents have a point?
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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simontoad
Ship's Amphibian
# 18096
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Posted
I think Griffith and Co. were over the top and damaging to the anti-Trump movement. The play was firmly in line with the tradition of staging Shakespeare's political dramas in contemporary political settings. However, I personally would not have cast Caesar as Trump only because it makes too much of the bastard. I would have let the play speak for itself, and had a couple of side-references to link into the current political situation.
Mind you, I am Audience. That is my role and my being.
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Human
Posts: 1571 | From: Romsey, Vic, AU | Registered: May 2014
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
.... he himself is the ever-flowing Twittery fountain of so many of his own problems. ...
Brenda, that little phrase gets a ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif) . Thank you.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
My Trump-supporting parents (sigh) blame the Julius-Caesar-dressed-as-Turmp performance in NYC and the Kathy Griffin photo with a severed Trump head for the shooting and other anti-GOP violence. And they accuse universities like Berkeley of not cracking down hard enough on violent antifascist and anarchist agitators that come from off campus (although some of them might be students). I don't agree, but I feel like a hypocrite decrying all the memes depicting violence against Obama and Hillary that circulated online, even if there was a racist and misogynist dimension to these that the anti-Trump violent images lack. Do my parents have a point?
I don't quite understand you. You are saying you feel like a hypocrite, pointing out past vicious and violent memes targeting Obama and Hillary?? You are surely not saying that because of the (undeniable and ubiquitous) sexist and racist components of those slurs, they were OK in a way that Trump's head on a pike is not.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
When Democrat politicians were threatened and shot, the rhetoric continued. When Republican politicians are threatened and shot, calls for the end of rhetoric and divisive talk issue forth.
Now, to the untrained observer, this would seem massive hypocrisy. Or fear.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
My Trump-supporting parents (sigh) blame the Julius-Caesar-dressed-as-Turmp performance in NYC and the Kathy Griffin photo with a severed Trump head for the shooting and other anti-GOP violence. And they accuse universities like Berkeley of not cracking down hard enough on violent antifascist and anarchist agitators that come from off campus (although some of them might be students). I don't agree, but I feel like a hypocrite decrying all the memes depicting violence against Obama and Hillary that circulated online, even if there was a racist and misogynist dimension to these that the anti-Trump violent images lack. Do my parents have a point?
I don't quite understand you. You are saying you feel like a hypocrite, pointing out past vicious and violent memes targeting Obama and Hillary?? You are surely not saying that because of the (undeniable and ubiquitous) sexist and racist components of those slurs, they were OK in a way that Trump's head on a pike is not.
I am not saying that at all. I was asking if the racist and misogynist content of those memes made them something you cannot compare with (because it is much worse than) the imagery of violence against Trump (or someone looking like Trump).
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Pangolin Guerre
Shipmate
# 18686
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Posted
In one of the more surreal news items today, I see that Ted Nugent is now calling for more civil discourse (it can't be called a mea culpa, because he denies saying things that are public record); he, who called for Obama to perform fellatio on Nugent's gun; who called Obama a mongrel; who called Hillary a vile cunt. He's going all Gandhi on us now that one of his own was shot. No one should be shot, but that strikes me as monumental hypocrisy. Stonespring, I'd quit the hanky wringing and remind your parents of the disgusting lack of moral fibre of their fellow travellers.
[ 18. June 2017, 23:24: Message edited by: Pangolin Guerre ]
Posts: 758 | From: 30 arpents de neige | Registered: Nov 2016
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Well I suppose if you want to calibrate slurs then it is worse, to denigrate someone for something they cannot help (like their skin color or gender or disability) rather than for something they are deliberately doing (voting to loosen gun regulations, let us say, or scoundrelly using public office to plump up their own purse). So if anything your case is better, not worse -- have at it.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
Interesting little factoid: Representative Steve Scalese actually voted to allow mentally ill people to possess firearms.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I am worried that we will see copycat attacks and retaliatory attacks, and that a vicious cycle may be beginning.
What do you mean "beginning"? The United States has decided to tolerate a large quantity of gun violence. According to the Gun Violence Archive the Alexandria shooting was the 154th mass shooting incident so far in 2017. There have been nine more since then. The reason we're noticing this one is that it a) involved rich and/or powerful people, and b) was probably motivated by politics. I'm not sure either of those factors should make that much difference, given the level of gun violence Americans are apparently willing to accept.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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simontoad
Ship's Amphibian
# 18096
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
My Trump-supporting parents (sigh) blame the Julius-Caesar-dressed-as-Turmp performance in NYC and the Kathy Griffin photo with a severed Trump head for the shooting and other anti-GOP violence. And they accuse universities like Berkeley of not cracking down hard enough on violent antifascist and anarchist agitators that come from off campus (although some of them might be students). I don't agree, but I feel like a hypocrite decrying all the memes depicting violence against Obama and Hillary that circulated online, even if there was a racist and misogynist dimension to these that the anti-Trump violent images lack. Do my parents have a point?
I don't quite understand you. You are saying you feel like a hypocrite, pointing out past vicious and violent memes targeting Obama and Hillary?? You are surely not saying that because of the (undeniable and ubiquitous) sexist and racist components of those slurs, they were OK in a way that Trump's head on a pike is not.
I think that it is incumbent upon everyone involved in a vicious and divisive political fight to primarily make sure that those on their own side are publicly condemned if they go too far. Let the excesses of the other side speak for themselves.
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Human
Posts: 1571 | From: Romsey, Vic, AU | Registered: May 2014
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simontoad
Ship's Amphibian
# 18096
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pangolin Guerre:
No backsies.
rofl
What you do with the other side's excesses is you mainstream it. What you do with your own is minimise and isolate the offenders.
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Human
Posts: 1571 | From: Romsey, Vic, AU | Registered: May 2014
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Observers have also noticed that Scalise has, possibly, the best health insurance available in the US today. His family will not have to declare bankruptcy to keep him alive. No one will have to gear up a Kickstarter campaign to pay off his doctor bills, or sign him up on GoFundMe. It is bad that he was shot, and no one would wish that on anybody. But he has spontaneously generated a lot of irony, and someday I hope he appreciates it. (Also, one of the Capitol police injured defending him? A gay woman. It is left as an exercise for the reader, to find out whether he voted to take away LGBT rights.)
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Interesting little factoid: Representative Steve Scalese actually voted to allow mentally ill people to possess firearms.
AFAIK the shooter was never diagnosed as mentally ill.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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