Left Wing American Terrorists

I'm about a week late to this story, but I want to add something.

Michelle Malkin, always reliable muse of leftist bloggers everywhere, was quick to judge the recent bomb found in a Seattle Starbucks as an act of leftist anti-corporate terrorism. Fortunately, the brave men of Seattle do what they do best, protecting Americans, by successfully disarming the explosive device... er... old rusted out flashlight... left in the bathroom by accident by a homeless man.

But Ms. Malkin's "updates" to her post leave something to be desired.

David Neiwart of Orchinus takes her to task for her "reporting" of the story:

Red alert, everyone! Left-wing wackos are setting off bombs in Starbucks!

At least, that seems to be what Michelle Malkin was waving her arms about last week. Of course, the "MSM" was heavily criticized for not doing its job, as one of her readers put it:

Once again, left-wing terrorism and violence gets a pass in the MSM.

No doubt. Those rat bastards. Don't they know that we're in a war -- with the left?

...
Readers will recall that I've previously pointed out Malkin's handling of an arson case in Maryland which she and other prominent bloggers presumed to be the work of eco-terrorists; but when it turned out that these were race-related arsons, the subject went away quickly with a brief semi-acknowledgement of error. Likewise, Malkin waved all kinds of accusations about regarding the murders of a Coptic Christian family in New Jersey, and then quietly shut it down when it turned out not to be the work of Islamist radicals after all.

Anyone detect a pattern here?

A primary reason that Michelle Malkin and similar right wing pundits are popular to examine [as are leftwingers, btw] is because they offer an insight into the thinking of the culture of the rightwing. The fact is, there is left wing violence that's occurred- eco-terrorism, anti-corporate riots in Seattle, etc. But this behaviour is dismissed among much of the left, for the most part, as being counterproductive to building a power structure that advocates their points of view.

And the acts themselves are flares- distressing acts of vandalism and outrage.

But the right wing's terroristic faction... Now THERE is a force to be reakoned with. Timothy McVeigh killed hundreds in Oklahoma. And as this insightful piece in the Christian Science Monitor shows, Eric Rudolph, abortion clinic bomber, survived in rural areas by seeking refuge amongst a culture of sympathetic [arch-?]conservatives who identified him as the pariah, unjustly cast aside because of his anti-abortion beliefs, completely disregarding the fact that he had saught to kill himself.

The point is that the right seeks to marginalize the actions of the left while refusing to excommunicate their much more bold, much more... murderous... figures of violence on the right.

So they keep injecting this line, no matter what the circumstances may be, into this fear-addled society. And people believes it to be true. When the primary and constant message from the government is "This world is awful, and everybody's out to get us, and we can't, or won't, do anything to help you," [and when those messages increase in frequency while the polls in approval decrease] you can be assured that we live consistently bombarded by messages of fear.

And right-wing pundits want to lodge the left wing into those messages. Not only are you to be afraid of the world, and the government's incompetence, but look! Everybody you know who is not conservative wants to bomb you while you're getting a double-latte! You must fear and despise these people- they want to kill you!

It would be ironic, of course, if the right were, in fact, the same party sending out messages of elimation, as well. Wouldn't that just be the kicker?

If, while the right wing says that it's the Left that wants to kill them, the right was also saying that everybody on the left should be, literally, killed?

First we had a fifth-tier online columnist attacking Rep. John Murtha as "vermin" and a "traitor".

This kind of talk, of course, has become quite common in recent years, almost to the point that it is unremarkable. But to understand why it's noteworthy, we can leave it to Dean Esmay to explain what should be done with such "vermin" (via Glenn Greenwald at Hullabaloo):

When I say "treason" I don't mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the are dead, dead, dead.

No sympathy. No mercy.Am I angry? You bet I am. But not in an explosive way. Just in the same seething way I was angry on 9/11.

These people have endangered American lives and American security. They need to be found, tried, and executed.

Unsurprisingly, when Gavin at Sadly, No! decided to turn the tables on Esmay to see how he liked someone harboring execution fantasies about him, the result was rather predictable shrieking on Esmay's part. [Longtime readers will recall my encounter with the mendacious Mr. Esmay.]

Meanwhile, Brad R. at Sadly, No! took note of another right-wing blogger's execution fantasies, this time Dean Franks:

I'll make a deal with the Left: You wanna impeach President Bush? Go ahead. Knock yourself out. In fact, let's just go to the polls and turn the whole government over to the Democrats. You wanna run the whole show? Fine. Elect Howard Dean President. End all surveillance against possible enemy combatants, unless you can get a warrant based on probable cause. Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. Permanently kill the PATRIOT Act. Do whatever you want to do. I'm perfectly willing, at this point, to do it your way.

I mean, really, what's the worst that can happen? An American city goes up in nuclear fire? Well, it’ll probably be New York, Chicago, or LA. You know, a major city. I don't live there, nor do most Americans. So we'll be fine.

But here's the other half of the deal: If that happens, we get to march on Washington, drag you naked and screaming from your offices, and hang you from the ornate lampposts that line The Mall. Then, free from roadblocks thrown up by infantile political fools, maybe we'll get serious about defending the United States, her people, her freedoms, and her values, in an increasingly hostile world.

Hanging traitors from lampposts? Wasn't that the central fantasy of The Turner Diaries?

Anyway, Esmay, Franks and Co. aren't the only right-wingers giving voice to that old lynch-'em-high impulse: so is Bill O'Reilly:

Where does George Soros have all his money? Do you know? Do you know where George Soros, the big left-wing loon who's financing all these smear [web]sites, do you know where his money is? Curaçao. Curaçao. They ought to hang this Soros guy.

Ah.

Cute.

So basically, expect this kind of nonsense to increase over the next few years. It seems to be the trend. These guys basically think that if you don't agree with them, you should get the hell out, or be killed. And, on top of that, they're leveraging their thoughts against the left- imposing that system of thinking into their culture...

So this may be a problem for a long time to come after these guys lose power.

For a great movie reference, see the portrait of vigilantism that comes out of mass group-think fear in Fritz Lang's M.