Since Liberals aren't identified as a unique ethnic class, invective can be hurled at them that would otherwise be recognized for exactly what it is. Hate Speach. Threaten to round up all the Liberals and Gitmotize them, and people may either scowl or chuckle -- but they don't see that these people are more than a little serious about that, and in the process a great many blacks, jews and latinos will be on the firing line first.
In this diary I reveal the behind-the-curtain story that help prompt my observation.
Some who responded to my diary here and on Democratic Underground were actually offended by the suggestion that Liberals may be facing discrimination that is comparable to what Blacks faced during Slavery, Jim Crow, Racial Profiling, Violent Gay Bashing or anti-semitism. Besides the obvious self-centeredness of presuming that one persons victimaztion somehow dimishes anyone elses, the fact is that the War on Liberals actually is developing a body count, as I stated in one comment.
On your broader point on the persectution of Liberals, I think we saw it happen rather violently at Kent State 36 years ago.But I think that we still see it everyday when people wear a Circle-Slash "W" t-shirt and get harrassed and cursed at, arrested like Cindy Sheehan - or fired for an "Air America" Sticker.
There's the case of the Federal Employee with the pro-Peace Bumper stickers being harrassed and forced to move his car by Homeland Security.
"Free Speach Zones". People tossed out of public speeches for the wrong signs and again, bumper-stickers.
Who was Eric Rudolph really targeting with the Atlanta Olymbic Bombing or his previous attacks on Abortion Clinics? What was the Oklahoma City bombing really about - especially considering it was inspiried directly by the "Turner Diaries"?
Just look at who the ACLU FOIA requests have revealed the FBI and NSA are spending thier time surveilling - instead of Al Qaeda?
Imagine if these same activities were occuring, harrasment, arrests, bombings, survellance simply because these people were part of a racial or ethnic group - rather than simply having a particular point of view, one which they have every right to have?
These events are far from an accident or coincidence, a new Jim Crow is coming - in fact, it may already be here.
In his book "Blinded by the Right", former Conservative Hatchet Man David Brock describes his gradual rise through the hard-core Neo-con circles, how he eventually reached a personal crisis point and began a radical shift in his own life and political orientation that eventual led to his founding of Media Matters, to help combat the exact same right-wing media spin and smear tactics that he himself had perfected during the "Trooper-Gate" years.
In the process he had ample oppurtunity to see many of our favorite Conservative pundits not only with their hair down, but sometimes their pants too.
If you don't know David Brock is openly gay, but that is a fact that he hid for many long years as he hurled word grenades at Liberals for the Moonie Times and later the Scaif funded American Spectator. Eventually he was outed, not voluantarily - and he found his relationships with his various Conservative friends changed little - at least on the surface.
It turns out the one of his best friends during this period, after his outing but before his eventual enlightenment was Laura Ingraham - whom he profiles in the book.
Though Gringrich, Limbaugh, and the Spectator already had substituted name-calling for reasoned conservative discourse, Ingraham and a merry band of imitators would bring Limbaugh meanness to millions of American television viewers, stigmatizing Gringichism as ignorant and inane. Laura also was a symbol of trouble Newt's revolution would have in establishing a broad-based appeal to women; she requently attacked feminisim for making women unhappy and resentful, while betraying those same qulities in her commentary. Laura's stock-in-trade was the politically incorrect sound bite. Showing up at one interview in a full-length fox coat, she mocked the "squealing baby foxes, which were cute when they were alive"
Yeah, she's a bitch - that much is clear. One who thrives on her bitchiness, but exactly how did this anti-feminist homophobe behave behind closed doors with opening gay comrade-in-arms Brock?
...of all the conservatives I had met since coming to Washington, I grew closes to Laura. For several months after we met in November 1994, we were inseparable companions. Laura drew me out of my shell; she helped me to relax and enjoy myself among the conservatives. She was amuch more prodigious networker than I was, and she was also a wicked gossip, befriending the likes of Rush Limbaugh and George Will, then repeating their often creepy confidences to me.
Considering what they often say On the Air one can only imagine what David Brock would find creepy by comparison.
Though I was now out of the closet, my socializing was still strictly confined to the conservative political orbit, and I had no romantic life. The more esconced I became in the conservative firmament, the more I felt that it would be easier for the conservatives to accept a nonpracticing homosexual.
So you see, Conservatives have no problem with Gay people - as long as they don't like, act gay - ever.
Laura took the place of a mate. We were out on the town virtually every night together, cohosted seveal parties and dinners at my home, and vacations in souther California with the Huffingtons. [Long before Arriana's split with her gay husband Michael and her own eventual disenchantment with the right] We shared a lot of laughs. Despite her public persona as a voice of Gingrichism, I also saw in Laura a glimmer of humanity, softness and vulnerability, buried beneath all of the role-playing. In candid moments, she confided she didn't believe much of what she was saying on the airwaves. Channeling into our politics our emotional problems [in Laura's case, the pain of a difficult childhood, and her tortured relations with men, whether married or not], we were both trapped in devices of our own making.
So for all you who always suspected that many on the right has been projecting their own inner demons on Liberals, Blacks and the rest of the world, your theories are now confirmed, at least in Laura's case. But how does a gay man become best friends with a rabid homophobe like Ingraham? Denial isn't just river in Egypt.
I hadn't known of Laura's antigay past at Darthmouth, where, along with her then-boyfriend Dinesh D'Souza, she had participated in the infamous outing of gay students, who were branded "sodomites," until I cringed as I read about her Dartmouth Review exploits in a 1997 profile in Vanity Fair. To make matters worse, I was quoted int the piece saying that Laura was unreserevedly accepting of homosexuality, which in my pressence she always had seemed to be.
Let me just stop to point out that Dinesh D'Souza is the author of "The End of Racism" a vicious anti-Liberal tract. (Ironically, If you Google "The End of Racism", the number one hit is a scatching review I did of the book ten years ago still posted on Geocities) According to D'Souza Racism will continue to plague us because of Liberals and the Civil Rights Act, and once we do away with both - things will be oh, so much better.
After reading the article I was chagrined and felt used but never confronted Laura about it, though Congresman Barney Frank, the openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts, did. At a black-tie gala at the Washinton Building Museum, Frank and his companion spotted Laura and me milling through the crowd. Frank approached us and proceeded to denounce Laura's history of gay bashing. I remained mute during the harangue, because I agreed with everything Frank was saying. He then turned to me and snapped, "And if you want to front her, that's fine." I was speechless, red-faced and humiliated. Of course, Frank was right, but I didn't have the courage or self-regard to do anything about it. Blithely, I continued to revel in the gossip-page glitz and heartless sarcasm of my right-wing fag hags--the Ariannas, the Lauras, and the Ann Coulters. {Brock had met Coulter during her Scaif funded behind the scenes work in support of the Paula Jones Case] At this point in life, this transparently empty right-wing circle was all I had.
It wasn't until much later that Brock finally rediscovered his missing spine and realized that Ingraham was role-playing with him, that she still harbored the same homophobic sentiments she'd expressed at Dartmouth and because he was a weapon in their war against the hated Liberals - they tolerated him and allowed him (limited) access into their inner circles, then trashed him behind his back on a regular basis.
To some extent the Naked Hate Speach we've seen coming from the right for the last decade and a half is merely role-playing as Brock mentions. And in some ways it's something much deeper, something driven by their own self-loathing - and like a classic bully they lash out at that which they fear may be a part of their own makeup, yet when those they attack finally stand-up and pop them in the nose -- they immediately collapse on the floor crying and whining, calling for the teacher to protect them from the mean, bad Liberal.
One of the comments on my original diary hit the nail on the head in to response to the issue of whether Liberal bashing is always code for bashing minorities, or whether sometimes the targets really are Liberals themselves.
.Good point about how codes aren't always in play. The people in charge on the right really DO hate liberals and liberal policies...and they ALSO use liberal as code for other groups.Here's a thought (drawing a little on Thomas Frank's ideas): The people who are really in charge on the right - the corporate plutocrats, the old-money elites, the people who dump the money into the right-wing foundations and think tanks and elections - really do hate liberalism itself, because liberal policies cut into their power. They may also actually be prejudiced, but it's not JUST prejudice - liberal policies themselves really are the enemy of those people. Consequently, the right-wing elites DO attack liberal policies directly (by promoting free-market fundamentalism, attacking unions, etc.). But they ALSO try to turn more people against liberal policies by linking "liberal" up with pre-existing hatreds and prejudices, so that people who actually do NOT benefit from conservative policies (i.e., the vast majority of us) will give into their worst instincts, indulge their prejudices, and blame "liberals" for their problems. The elites deliberately make "liberal" code for the groups people already fear, or feel threatened by. In some cases the fear or prejudice may already be there - the targets really ARE already very racist or sexist or afraid of homosexuals - while in other cases, the fear or dislike may be partially manufactured - e.g., the result of efforts to convince people that they can't get a decent job or make ends meet because of THOSE people (immigrants, gays, women, blacks, unions, whatever) all wanting "special privileges," THOSE people and their "liberalism" are the cause of your problems, not the corporate overlords, etc.... repeat ad nauseum.
I think a lot of the liberal-bashing we're talking about is part of the specific efforts by those who really benefit from regressive policies to "activate" and re-enforce pre-existing prejudices, and to manufacture new ones, and link them all to "liberalism" as a way to defeat policies they really do hate. It's just one part of a larger strategy.
Yes, absolutely -- the goal is Regression. Taking us back to the "Golden Era" of the '50s that Gingrich loves so much. As Justice Alito pointed out during his confirmation hearings, they want to take us back before the Supreme Court got so uppity and actually started to enforce the 14th Amendment in Brown V Board of Education and ended Segregation. These people to this very day -- see that as a mistake, one which they intended to incrementally undo while we Liberals pay them no real mind, cowed and tramatized (they hope) by their incessent attacks on our patriotism, intelligence and even - our right to exist in America.
But I think Americans are made of sterner stuff - and that ultimately once they're ultimate ends are exposed, these people are in for a rude surprise, don't you?
Vyan
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