Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Another right wing extremist arrested for threatening an elected Democratic leader

One day after the FBI announced the arrest of Charles Alan Wilson for threatening the life of our own Senator Patty Murray, we learn the Bureau has taken another individual into custody for threats against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
A man arrested by the FBI for threatening U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was allegedly upset over federal health care legislation passed last month, two law enforcement officials said.

Gregory Lee Giusti, 48, of San Francisco, was detained today and will appear in federal court there tomorrow, said Joseph Schadler, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The charges against Giusti are sealed, he said in an e-mail.
You'll never guess where Giusti's eighty-three year old mother thinks he got his inspiration to threaten Speaker Pelosi from:
"Greg frequently gets in with a group of people that have really radical ideas and that are not consistent with myself or the rest of the family, which gets him into problems," Eleanor Giusti said. "I say Fox News, or all of those that are really radical, and he, that's where he comes from."
Right wingers will no doubt cry foul over these remarks, but Eleanor's comments are spot on. As I wrote yesterday, hate speech begets violent rhetoric, and violent rhetoric begets acts of violence.

Hate speech may be protected under the First Amendment, but Rupert Murdoch is under no obligation to broadcast it. Neither are the suits who control most of the radio stations that carry Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. Regrettably, they do it anyway, and it has serious consequences, as David Neiwert wrote in The Eliminationists:
All freedoms entail responsibilities, and when you do media work in America - and especially when you have a nationally prominent platform - you have not only the freedom of the press as your ally but a responsibility to the public as your burden. And chief among those responsibilities is to not abuse your power in a way that harms your fellow citizens or inspires others to harm them.

It is possible, after all, to use your megaphone to lie shamelessly. You can use it to smear the good name of public officials. You can use it to rewrite history. You can use it to intimidate the "little people" who don't possess the same kind of power. And you can use it to dehumanize others, turning them into potential targets for hatefulness and violence.

Eliminationists, as we've observed, never act in a vacuum. Someone specific almost always inspires them.
Several conservatives have expressed deep discomfort with the garbage that the Republican Noise Machine produces these days. Perhaps none have been more outspoken than David Frum, who presciently wrote last summer:
All this hysterical and provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence.

And indeed some conservative broadcasters are lovingly anticipating just such an outcome.
That column, (The reckless right courts violence) cites over a dozen examples of hate speech, many from Fixed Noise shows, like Glenn Beck's joking about poisoning Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

But it isn't just Frum who believes that right wing hate speech is toxic for the country, for conservatism, and for the Republican Party.

Senator Tom Coburn - who is as conservative as they come - recently told constituents at a town hall not to let FNC do their thinking for them:
What we have to have is make sure we have a debate in this country so that you can see what’s going on and make a determination yourself... So don’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody is no good. The people in Washington are good. They just don’t know what they don’t know.
Coburn described Speaker Pelosi as "a nice lady", according to the Capitol News Connection, which has audio of his remarks. When the audience hissed and hooted, the Senator would have none of it. “Come on now. She is nice... how many of you all have met her? She’s a nice person," he declared.

If Coburn's attitude was shared by the megaphone wielding media personalities who comprise the Republican Noise Machine, there'd be far more civility in American politics. But that's not going to happen. The likes of Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck would rather get a kick out of demonizing liberals and then disclaim culpability when their hate speech predictably inspires a fanatical follower to commit a crime.

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