Contributors

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Even West Point?

I've been taken to the mat many times on here for talking too much about conservatives. So has Nikto. Both of us have said many times that the far right in this country, which more or less dominates the GOP, is dangerous and should be taken more seriously. Now the premier military academy in the school agrees with both of us.

In a report entitled, "Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right," author Arie Perliger discusses the rise in attacks (since 2007) by people aligned with far right groups. He centers his paper on three key questions.

(1) What are the main current characteristics of the violence produced by the far right? 

(2) What type of far-right groups are more prone than others to engage in violence? How are characteristics of particular far-right groups correlated with their tendency to engage in violence? 

(3) What are the social and political factors associated with the level of far-right violence? Are there political or social conditions that foster or discourage violence?

Good questions to start and he does an excellent job of identifying the three key elements of the far right: a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement.

There's quite a bit to pour over so I'm just going to highlight some points that I thought were interesting and encourage everyone else to read the whole thing.

If there is one ideological doctrine about which there is almost full consensus regarding its importance for understanding the far-right worldview, it is that of nationalism. 

Yep. This is where I get my valid comparison to Nazis. I realize this ruffles many feathers here but no one can deny that the Right are more nationalistic than the left. After all, the left hate America, right? So how can they be Nazis?

More specifically...

In the context of the far-right worldview, nationalism takes an extreme form of full convergence between one polity or territory and one ethnic or national collective. Two elements are required for the fulfillment of this version of the nationalist doctrine. The first is that of internal homogenization, i.e., the aspiration that all residents or citizens of the polity will share the same national origin and ethnic characteristics. The second is the element of external exclusiveness, the aspiration that all individuals belonging to a specific national or ethnic group will reside in the homeland. 

It's always puzzled me that the Right can't see how collectivist they act on a daily basis. Everyone has to think like they do otherwise they are not pure. We've seen this with the GOP primaries in the last two elections.

So how is this manifested?

The first includes concepts that complement the rationale of internal homogenization throughxenophobia, racism and exclusionism. Xenophobia involves behaviors and sentiments derived from fear, hate and hostility towards groups which are perceived as alien or strange, including people with alternative sexual preferences, styles of living and behavior;  racism refers to the same sentiments, but based on racial grounds, such as belief in the national and moral significance of natural and hereditary differences between races, and the conviction that certain races are superior to others. 

Finally, exclusionism is the practical manifestation of these sentiments on the communal or state level. Practically, outsiders are excluded from specific spheres of the social, economic and political arena, such as the labor market, the educational system and residential areas. 

I don't think there is a better summation of the GOP today.



20 comments:

Anonymous said...

In other words, you're overjoyed that some idiot at West Point is employing your untermensch tactic. Just what we should expect from junk-science driven, fallacy loving ideologues like yourself. Was this guy part of the smear campaign attempted by the DHS?

I wonder, when can we expect to see similar reports from the author about actual left-wing terrorist groups like Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, Weather Underground, and various anarchists within the Occupy movement?

Anonymous said...

This interview with the author of that smear job clearly demonstrates the bias he let run rampant as he was writing.

Mark Ward said...

actual left-wing terrorist groups like Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, Weather Underground, and various anarchists within the Occupy movement?

What's the body count on those movements compared to the right wing groups?

Anonymous said...

More research on Arie Perliger is turning up some interesting stuff.

First, he is not the Director of the Combating Terrorism Center. He's just a member of the staff.

Second, he used to have his own web site, but it was deleted after this report came out. Is he trying to hide his bias?

Take a gander at his bio:

A Lady Davis Fellow in the Department of Political Science of Hebrew University and author of Middle Eastern Terrorism and Countering Terrorism in Urban Environment – The Case of Jerusalem, Dr. Perliger’s lecture in October entitled, "Explaining Religious Terrorism," covered the key factors that lead to the emergence of religious terrorism. In the spring semester, Dr. Perliger is teaching courses on "Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism," "The Radical Right in Europe and Israel," and "Israeli Politics."

This is a hard core leftist who focuses on blaming Israel and "the Right" for terrorism.

Anonymous said...

Finally, his "report" is just a retread of a discredited trope originating in the late-1930's and repeated in 1995.

Less well known than these two Red scares is America's "Brown Scare." In the late 1930s, political activists on the left warned that an array of far right opponents of President Roosevelt and the New Deal … constituted a fifth column composed of fascist brownshirts … (T)he ensuing moral panic facilitated a campaign of repression waged by the U.S. governemnt against the Far Right during World War II. In 1995-6, the moral panic over the militia movement blossomed into a second American Brown Scare.

The literature produced by the second American Brown Scare has had significant impact on academic analysis of the movement, and this poses a problem for continuing scholarship. The civil rights organizations that produced the narrative of 1995 conceived of themselves as political opponents of the militia movement, and these organizations made the legal suppression of the movement one of their central political objectives. That political objective has systematically shaped their reporting on the movement. Their analyses might serve as a primary source base for an interesting analyis of how the activist Left perceived the Far Right at the turn of the millennium. To use this literature as a primary source base in an analysis of the character of the militia movement itself is to allow the movement's opponents to define it.

Unfortunately, much of the scholarship on the militia movement produced in the last ten years has not broken free from the influence of the narrative of 1995. Too many scholars have relied on the reports and books generated by the Brown Scare as primary evidence of the character of the movement. Others who have avoided this first error have nevertheless allowed the narrative of 1995 to unduly influence their research agendas. Finally, even the best scholarship on militias tends to inappropriately conflate the militia movement with other movements on the far right of American politics and to overstate the influence of millennial thought on militia ideology…

The final academic legacy of the Brown Scare is an emphasis on the allegedly close association of militia groups with other far right organizations, such as white supremacist groups, Christian Identity ministries, common-law courts, and tax protest societies. The narrative of 1995 lumped all of these disparate far right groups together in the "Christian Patriot movement," a misguided simplification that has led a number of senior scholars to blur the lines between different groups WITH QUITE DIFFERENT WORLDVIEWS…

— Professor Robert H. Churchill, To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face; Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement (Emphases added)

Mark Ward said...

So, it's not a genetic fallacy when you do it.

What's the body count on those movements compared to the right wing groups?

Anonymous said...

When someone has a history of letting obvious bias color his judgement, then that is a reason to question his credibility, though it doesn't necessarily mean that he's wrong this time too. (The fallacy is that such a lack of credibility makes him wrong all by itself, which is your normal schtick.)

On the other hand, that he's recycling the exact same claims (in the exact same fallacious manner) which have proven to be wrong in the past does mean he's wrong about this.

His claim boils down to this: Group A is a member of Group B, therefore all of Group B is exactly the same as Group A. (He says "gun rights = Michigan Militia".) To put his claim in the form of a common logic example, he says, "Socrates is a man, therefore all men are Socrates." If you can't see the fallacy in that "logic" there is no hope for you.

(I haven't had time to research the answer to your question yet. If you have the answer, go ahead and post it.)

Juris Imprudent said...

What's the body count on those movements compared to the right wing groups?

Right wing groups? What right wing groups? You claimed that Joe Stack was a right winger even though most of his complaints sounded more natural coming from you than Limbaugh.

Mark Ward said...

I don't know either, NMN. It seems to me that the 90s chalked up a lot more than you might realize. Remember, we have to count the abortion clinic bombings. Further, there's a lot of hay made about the radical left. Where are they? And who is more heavily armed....the right or the left?:)

Anonymous said...

And what's the body count on abortion clinic bombings? And how many of those were carried out by actual "right wingers"? (Hint, the answer to both is a lot smaller than you may think.)

No I don't have the actual numbers off the top of my head.

Juris Imprudent said...

Joe Stack whined about corporate force as much if not more than govt.

Anonymous said...

And who is more heavily armed....the right or the left?

Why does it matter?

Mark Ward said...

I don't see many people on the left running around boasting about their armaments and saying that 1776 will commence again. Sure, there are a few WTO protesters out there but no one in the Democratic Party openly supports them. Now, take a look at the far right folks like Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. They are openly supported by many members of the House.

Anonymous said...

1776 will commence again

Are you insinuating that the people responsible for the violence in 1776 were terrorists?

Mark Ward said...

No. I'm stating for a fact that if people like Alex Jones rise up THEY will be terrorists, especially when you consider their right to bear arms is not going to be infringed.

Anonymous said...

Planning to murder 25 million Americans. Which "right-wing" conspiracy was this again?

Mark Ward said...

Ah, the reeducation camps meme. That one does keep you up at night, doesn't it?

Personally, I don't think we are going to have to worry about 1776 commencing again. I'd wager that most of those folks are pretty comfortable and, well, chicken shit.

Anonymous said...

So the FACT that the leader of this group which was planning to murder 25 million Americans is buddies with the President; the same President who is pushing to make it impossible to prevent such murder by disarming the "recalcitrant" population doesn't bother you a bit?

Please, explain (for the first time) what supposedly makes tyranny impossible in this country?

Mark Ward said...

Do you have any other corroborating sources to support this claim? How many people did Bill Ayers actually murder?

is buddies with the President

Oh, I see. Now the president wants to send us (or you, I guess:)) to reeducation camps and/or commit mass murder. Now, I understand the whole Hitler-Stalin paranoia!

Anonymous said...

Do you have any other corroborating sources to support this claim?

Will Bill Ayers' own words do?

"Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great county!"
— quoted in "Destructive Generation" by Peter Collier and David Horowitz.

(Note: I usually read this as "Guilty as sin, free as a bird", which is why it was hard to track down the source.)

Do you know the only reason Bill Ayers is not rotting in prison right now? It's because the Feds didn't get warrants for their wiretaps. That was his comment once the charges were dropped due to that mistake.

From what I have been able to track down, one policeman was killed by a bomb, three of his fellow terrorists were killed by bombs they were making, and two other policemen were killed in a Weather Underground robbery.

And Bill Ayers' recent thoughts on what they "accomplished"?

"I don't regret setting bombs," Bill Ayers said. "I feel we didn't do enough."
New York Times, September 11, 2011

Is that enough for you?

As for your silly accusations of "paranoia", perhaps you can explain what DHS is planning to do with more than 2 billion rounds of ammunition, including hollowpoint, which is illegal to use in war? (As best I can find, the military "only" uses a "mere" 70 million rounds a year in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Or what is happening with this Obama promise and if they're related.