The most popular trope to excuse the right of all rresponsibility for decades of demonizing, violent and eliminationist rhetoric: "Both sides do it!"
Not so much:
This has been out there for a very long time for everyone to see. A tremendous tolerance for violent rightwing rhetoric has been built up--particularly by so-called political "moderates", "centrists" and the "objective journalists" of the so-called "mainstream media". This is what they've all grown accustomed to--and devoted themselves to making other accustomed to as well.
Gosh, who knew someone would end up getting killed! After all, they only talked about it all the time! There were tell-tale signs at all the rallies. They were carrying guns to political events all across the country. And their political leaders were sending out very clear messages, with no one else reigning them in.
I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.
What Democratic Senate candidate has done that? If both sides do it, then there must be at least one. Who is it?
And Giffords' opponent holding "Get on Target for Victory in November" and "Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office[.] Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly".
What Democratic congressional candidate has done that? If both sides do it, then there must be at least one. Who is it?
All these incidents are only on the right. There is nothing like them on the left. That alone is enough to refute the absurd "both sides do it" narrative.
But it's only the beginning.
These are not isolated incidents. They are highpoints of a vastly repeating pattern, that has hundreds of thousands of violent rhetorical echoes that have been there to report on for at least three long years now. And they are a perfectly predictable repeat of what the militia movement and others did the last time we had a Democratic President.
The media needs to stop lying about this. Democrats themselves need to stop lying about this. Both sides don't do it -- just as both sides were not equally responsible for the Civil War. Conservatives have clear-cut history of violent treason in our country. And they've just recently started to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of it--even as they continue to lie, and claim that it wasn't about slavery. It's true now, like it was true 150 years ago: Both sides don't do it. And America deserves a media and a political leadership that's not afraid to simply state the truth.
(I was about to write a diary based on the "Insurrectionism Timeline" from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, when I received an email from Marta Evry with this diary, doing just what I had in mind. Be sure to look at the scores of items from the timeline on the flip, following Marta's introduction.
- promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
"Becking" (verb)To use violent metaphors or make thinly-veiled suggestions of violence against opponents, while maintaining plausible deniability against charges of incitement"
The Coalition To Stop Gun Violence has built an"insurrectionism timeline". It lists hundreds of incidents of right-wing speech and of acts of violence clearly incited by such speech.
The timeline pre-dates the election of President Barack Obama, beginning after June 26, 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court embraced the National Rifle Association's contention that the Second Amendment provides individuals with the right to take violent action against our government should it become "tyrannical."
The timeline also unintentionally chronicles the "Becking" of America, in which right-wing media personalities and lawmaker employ violent metaphors or thinly-veiled suggestions of violence to demonize their opponents.
Yet Palin's defenders, and some in the mainstream media, have tried to claim Democratic lawmakers and media personalities are equally to blame for the toxic political environment because a diarist on the liberal website, Daily Kos, posted that Giffords was "dead to him" after she cast a vote against Pelosi as House Minority Leader (the diarist later apologized for the wording and took the post down).
Palin defenders have also quoted Obama as saying, "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight." during the 2008 campaign, and although I can find this quote plenty using Google, I can't it attributed directly to Obama.
Compare this to the dozens of incidents of right-wing "Becking" CTSGV has documented from the last two years listed below (and it's by no means an exhaustive list), and the violence that's resulted.
Our country is, in a word, well and truly "Becked".
