Hate Speak 101
by Maureen Farrell
True or false?
1) Adolf Hitler said:
*The [Jews]s -- far too many of them -- are evil, pure and simple. They have no redeeming social value. They are outright traitors themselves or apologists for treasonous behavior. They are enemies of the [German] people and the [German] way of life.
2) KKK propaganda included the following:
"The thing I like about [omitted] is I think he hates [Blacks].
3) Joseph McCarthy said:
*The perverted [Communists] are attacking our children, our schools, our courts, and our borders.
*There is another more difficult aspect, however, which is how to identify [Communists], which is to say, those who are dedicated enemies of America and its purposes?
Don't recognize any of these quotes? Sadly, though slightly altered, they aren't relics from a less enlightened time and place. They cannot be pinned on Hitler, the KKK or Joseph McCarthy. No, these are charges levied against present-day Americans whose primary sin is rejecting the official version of how things are and how they are supposed to be. Here, then, for your consideration, are the original quotes:
"The Democrats -- far too many of them-- are evil, pure and simple. They have no redeeming social value. They are outright traitors themselves or apologists for treasonous behavior. They are enemies of the American people and the American way of life." -- Joseph Farah [LINK]
"The thing I like about Bush is I think he hates liberals." -- Ann Coulter [LINK]
"The perverted left are attacking our children, our schools, our courts, and our borders." -- Michael Savage's Web site [LINK]
"There is another more difficult aspect, however, which is how to identify the "hard" left, which is to say, those who are dedicated enemies of America and its purposes? . . .
Among the intellectual leaders of this left are Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Edward Said and Cornel West; among its figureheads, Angela Davis and Ramsey Clark; among its cultural icons, Tim Robbins, Barbara Kingsolver, Arundhati Roy and Michael Moore; among its political leaders, Ralph Nader and the heads of the three major "peace" organizations (Leslie Cagan, Brian Becker and Clark Kissinger); among its electoral organizations, the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party; among its elected officials Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-California) and Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio); . . . ." -- David Horowitz [LINK]
So, there you have it. Welcome to Hate Speak 101 -- where enemies are our No. 1 priority. Through these examples and others like them, a picture emerges: There is One True Way of Thinking; One True Party; One True Vision for America; and beneath some words, a palpable rumble of jackboots marching in unison. Given this, it's impossible not to wonder: Once all these enemies are identified, what do Horowitz et al suggest we do with them? Should Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and Tim Robbins be rounded up in cattle cars? Should these leftist enemies and their droogs be reprogrammed? How, exactly, shall good Americans enforce our National Group Think? Michael Savage has already expressed a desire to reinstate the Sedition Act, while Ann Coulter has already expressed her solution. "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors," she said. Perhaps Herr Horowitz has an idea more in line with our firmly ingrained motto of "home of the free?"
One could argue that this barrage is merely coming from far-right extremists, and that liberals have used similar tactics to shout down anyone who disagreed with them. And certainly, in its heyday, the left could be equally blind and abusive. The difference between then and now, however, is that in the past, one expected the pendulum to swing between liberalism and conservatism. And even if shifting social norms didn't do the trick, age and experience tended to make people more conservative. In the 1960s, for example, Neil Young was a totem for the counter culture, but by the 1980s, endorsed Ronald Reagan. Go figure.
Yet even so, Mr. Young feels the chill descending over America is something new and ominous. As he recently told the Guardian, "[A] lot of the people's civil rights have been compromised, and we don't know what's going on. If I keep speaking my mind, will I be deported? I'm not very happy with the state of things. Music is being banned, and we have people in control of the radio stations who are the same people in control of the concert halls. They're also tied into the [US] administration and are sponsoring pro-war rallies. It's not good. . . . Bush has polarized the country and is creating this breeding ground for an opposition. In the next couple of months, they'll probably make it unpatriotic to be Democrat. It's pretty crazy." [LINK]
One could also argue that Jews and Blacks have been wrongly hated for who they are, while liberals and Democrats are justifiably loathed for how they think. Yet, in a democracy, one assumes, there is more than one acceptable point of view. And, unless the Clinton years were but a dream, one also assumes that criticizing the president is part of a great American tradition. Yet though Bush repeatedly deceived and frightened the public into accepting a preemptive war (if not an impeachable offense ala lying about sex, isn't this gross violation of the public trust worth a peep of protest?) and the press dutifully complied, these days, anyone, including traditional conservatives, who stands up for truth and open debate, is often targeted or intimidated [LINK]. Meanwhile a frightened public is manipulated into betraying decency and democracy.
Does anyone besides David Horowitz honestly believe Michael Moore has sullied America's good name as much as corporations and politicians have? [LINK] Are charges levied against Halliburton somehow less serious than those hurled at the Dixie Chicks? [LINK] And though Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld both conducted business with the Axis of Evil [LINK], shouldn't we wonder how and why tax dollars are lining Halliburton's pockets in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq? As September 11 victims' families are forced to grovel for answers [LINK], the Bush administration continues to engage in a "cover-up" [LINK] and history buffs are treated to a sense of Bush administration déjà vu [LINK]. Meanwhile, what are we to make of reports that the US is planning to turn Gitmo into a death camp? [LINK]
It's difficult to know what's true anymore because in the midst of all this deceit and corruption, almost anything seems possible and the nature of America herself has changed. Re-read Dwight D. Eisenhower's speeches and you'll sense it immediately. The military/industrial complex he warned against is now upon us [LINK], and though presidential cronies are making a killing from perpetual war, it's un-American to notice. Then, too, in reading Eisenhower's speeches, the real face of compassionate conservatism shines through: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed," he said. "The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Though firefighters, police departments and other first responders are under-funded [LINK], veterans' benefits are being slashed [LINK] and 41 million Americans currently live without health insurance [LINK], the defense budget is fatter than ever. As Senator Robert Byrd recently asked "[W]hat is this binge we're on in defense spending?". . . here they are, asking for $15 billion over last year. And last year was 15 percent over the previous year. And the previous year was 10 percent over the previous year. What do we want all this for? We're already spending more than the other 18 NATO nations combined, plus the eight rogue nations! What are we gonna do with all this? What new worlds do they want to conquer now? We went through Iraq like a dose of salts. We were told by this president that Saddam Hussein constituted an imminent threat to our security. Bunk! That man couldn't even get a plane off the ground!" [LINK]
Of course Robert Byrd is repeatedly attacked for his insolence, but what would today's spin masters do about someone like Dwight D. Eisenhower, who clearly saw the dangers in the intermarriage between business and defense and "the disastrous rise of misplaced power" alongside threats to "our liberties or democratic processes?" Would Ann Coulter call Ike a girly boy? Would David Horowitz deem him a leftist enemy of the state? Would today's pundits claim that he just doesn't understand the threat our enemies pose? (How could any of us understand the nature of the threat, given that such reports are nearly always based on fabrications? [LINK], [LINK])
The irony in all of this, of course, is that those who moralize and consider themselves patriotic Americans are actually endorsing an amoral philosophy. Laurence W. Britt recently cited 14 common characteristics of fascism and if one considers Mussolini's definition as the "merger of state with corporate power," many of these hit close to home [LINK]. Though fascism may be an overused and oversimplified term, between Clear Channel sponsored pro-war rallies, GOP-orchestrated Dixie Chick campaigns [LINK], pundits who endorse group think, media consolidation and the repeated vilification of a virtually non-existent left [LINK], these are but a few signs that democracy and America's true character are under fire.
"What concerns me about American democracy" author and journalist Will Hutton recently told Bill Moyers is "the role of money" in politics and "the structure of your national debate." Arguing that every democracy requires heated open debate between the left and the right, Hutton expresses dismay that the liberals have "fled the field" and hints that the true American ideal is more along the lines of what Eisenhower envisioned. "My view is that Americans aren't that different from Europeans" he said. "That you, like us, believe in an idea of the social contract, that proposition of the social contract is absolutely fundamental to a good society."
"A social contract," he continued "is, everybody in a society coming together and insisting that the system works in a just and fair way . . . [T]hat everyone has access to health. . .That everyone has access to education. That everyone, at the starting gate of life, has the equal opportunity. And that all of life's hazards -- unemployment, growing old, having cancer, are taken care of by everybody underwriting it. That is a social contract. Is -- the values about mutuality, about fairness, about generosity, about kindness."
Hutton also rightfully believes that many citizens wrongly deem the social contract "coercive" and refer to it as a "socialist proposition" and that our sink or swim mentality has led to an odd phenomenon -- given that we don't complain about spending billions on corporate welfare or about huge crony defense contracts or about the Pentagon losing trillions of dollars, yet think that helping fellow citizens is somehow akin to Communism. This mindset leads, in Hutton's view, to "a kind of unbelievable world, in which poor people are seen as having poor characters, because they're poor." [LINK]
Lastly, Hutton bemoans the fact that few seem to be actively promoting equality, justice and other noble principles. "I also want American liberals to stand up for these ideas," he says. Of course, some do -- Michael Moore addressed many of these issues in Bowling for Columbine. But after watching Moore's movie, Hutton might want to read David Horowitz's take on why Moore is an enemy of the USA. At least then maybe he'll understand why speaking out for "mutuality, fairness, generosity and kindness" is tantamount to treason.
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Maureen Farrell is a writer and media consultant who specializes in helping other writers get television and radio exposure. |
