A new nominee for stupidest right-wing thesis of the 21st century

John Phillips Avlon, a former editor of the New York Sun, speechwriter to Rudy Giuliani, and son of an (almost-exclusively) major Republican donor, John J. Avlon (my arithmetic says over $22,500 to Republican politicians other than Giuliani since 2002 vs. $2K to Alex Sanders, who likened himself to Strom Thurmond) has published yet another book saying that the problem is–equally– left- and right-wing extremists, who need to be marginalized.

Now, the problems with this thesis are manifold. It’s impossible to find any left-wing American extremists to compare with the Klan of the 1860s-1920s. Avlon probably doesn’t have the slightest clue that the African American section of Tulsa was bombed, or that the entire community of Rosewood was massacred. Nor has the right-wing ever been systematically targeted for mass blacklisting, harassment, and jailing as has occurred repeatedly ever since the rise of the labor movement.

These asymmetries do not create a justification for violence by persons of any political persuasion, but they explain the reality: the potentially violent left in the United States is microscopic (Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, chapters within the Animal Defense League, Crimethinc, the Ruckus Society,and Recreate 68, and Earth First!). Most of the concern over left-wing criminality is not over violence, but over computer hacking! They have damaged property, but they are clearly not trying to create mass casualties.

The potentially violent right is much larger and much deadlier (See Terror from the Right, which reports on 75 serious right-wing plots from 1995-2009, including many planning or carrying out mass murder). Interestingly, the report missed a plot by Kevin Patterson and Charles Kiles to blow up a propane plant in Elk Grove, California: “The resulting firestorm could have killed as many as half the people within a 5-mile radius of the plant…” (Reuters 5/22/02).

Again, not to justify violence, but the order in which historical events occur matters. The repression of the left began no later than the 19th century, with extreme violence directed against African Americans and the labor movement by the conservatives of that day. The bombing of Tulsa and the Rosewood massacre were later versions of conservative violence. Radicalism in the United Mine Workers, among other unions, followed decades of violent anti-labor repression. The point is not that the American left is peaceful. There are periods in history when it has been violent. But the violence has not appeared out of thin air. It has been a (misguided) response to repression.

What’s fundamentally different about left-wing extremism and right-wing extremism is that some very powerful people support the right-wing extremists as a means of terrorizing any potential opponent. Politicians like Michele Bachmann use their office to promote hate. Media barons, notably Rupert Murdoch, broadcast extremism not just for a few hour a day, but all day long. The Klan of the 19th and early 20th centuries didn’t just happen: it was created and sustained by elite members of society.

What’s fundamentally different about right-wing violent extremism today is that it is national. While it is generally intended to terrorize people of other political persuasions, it increasingly intends to inflict mass casualties without regard for who may be victimized. Patterson and Kiles planned to kill people in one of the most liberal regions of the country. McVeigh killed people in the conservative heartland, including many children.

Avlon thinks that the solution to angry people is to marginalize them. On C-Span, he (in effect) ridiculed a woman for saying that the 2000 election was stolen, something that roughly half of Americans believe. But marginalization is why people are angry. People who believe that Barack Obama is Kenyan need to be confronted openly, directly, patiently, and by right-wing leadership. They will not be so confronted, because right-wing leadership wants to harness their anger to seize political power back from the Democrats. There simply is no comparable situation on the left to this sort of blatant peddling of lies and the subornation of it by national leaders. The media ought to be doing a much better job of correcting falsehoods. But most journalists are so ignorant and so averse to confrontation that they are not up to the task. The angry people have already been marginalized by turning them into ratings fodder, rather than taking what they say seriously and either sustaining or disproving it. Marginalization does not work.

The hypocrisy in Avlon’s work is self-evident from the fact that he talks about “Obama derangement syndrome” and “Bush derangement syndrome,” but not “Clinton derangement syndrome” or “FDR derangement syndrome.” Certainly some criticism of Bush went over the top, but starting unnecessary wars, using the Pentagon to spy on dissenters, and torturing people tends to do that to a populace. None of the derangement against Obama had any substantive basis in fact, since it began before he had done a single thing as president and continues to be directed against things that he hasn’t actually done.

These are the facts about which Avlon is either clueless or is trying to get people to forget. As a member of the right-wing political elite, shame on him.