A commenter Ymar Sakar, who shows up on conservative sites from time-to-time (he has his own as well) used the phrase "verbal violence porn" to describe the disquieting, threatening statements one finds on conservative sites. He used the term disparagingly, almost challengingly, declaring that it is not going to be this kind of woofing that wins culture wars. He certainly didn't seem to be advocating they take it to a new level, but neither is he violence-averse. He writes some about martial arts and the history of warfare.
Without trying to mindread what he is trying to accomplish, it is worth noting that he has described the phenomenon vividly, and I think accurately. You can find people in comments sections everywhere who mutter darkly about revolution and what people won't put up with much longer. I can add that my mental-health crisis data over 35 years is similar: threats of violence with political overtones comes from the right more often. Much more.
And yet the violence does not seem to follow. In both the national experience and my mental-health observation, the actual violence comes more from those who vote with the Democrats. The whole broad picture deserves some attention. It is true that the most violent districts across the nation, especially black and hispanic areas, are enormously Democratic. Additional violence with a political or social spin - union, anti-globalist, campaign-office bombing, or church-targeting - also tends strongly to come off the left side of the debate. Note also that in any group the number of people who actually move to violence is small, so even in these violent, bright-blue districts, the great majority of people are not violent criminals.
And yet. The rhetoric from the dark corners of the right is much more violent. I don't think it's close. It comes in different flavors, some racist, some nominally libertarian, some paranoid, but it's not subtle.
What gives? Do the violent people on the left just not advertise it that much, leaving the comments sections to the extremely nonviolent white urban liberals? Or is the verbal violence porn from the right a sort of woofing - barking to warn off threats, with actual aggressive violence requiring a much higher threshold? Bullying might be a fair question to explore, but I don't think cowardice is. A lot of these guys - they do seem to be almost entirely male - have military and even combat experience, so I don't think they are Caspar Milquetoast types showing off.
I'm about as non-violent as a person can get. I've never been in a fistfight; my last wrestling match was pre-puberty. I own a pistol I have never fired; I have fired a shotgun but only at clay targets. Even the poisonous snakes on my property are safe from me.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time I think it's important for people to be willing to fight. I can't think of a single culture that has survived without a willingness to do so when the chips are down. There are people who count on our natural shame to keep us from fighting, and that's not right. Bullies should know the cost of their choices, and we should not be preparing ourselves, mentally or otherwise, to endure bondage rather than face danger.
Nevertheless, despite the dark rumblings we hear everywhere, I think we're nowhere near that extremity. No one who has never worked in a primary or considered running for office himself has begun to exhaust the possibilities for fixing our system from within. We're still looking for others to save us. The talk of literal violence is usually a way to blow off steam when we are intolerably frustrated. I think it would be better not to indulge in that release, but instead to seek a release in something truly effective.
I'd expect sane people who were planning a revolution to be relatively discreet about the details of their intentions. If they are simply signaling to each other, to encourage each other, then they might talk all day about the dictatorship of the proletariat or what should be done with the mine owners, and do nothing much, unless something major transforms the scene.
ReplyDeletePart of the frustration Texan99 refers to comes from the lie that implies that voting is both our duty and the extent of our duty. As she points out, the work happens before then.
The left is ideologically violent. Hence the red flag, the flag of blood and fire and revolution. Every successful and attempted Presidential assassination after Lincoln's was done by a person or persons on the left. This includes crazy people like Hinckley and the women who attacked Ford. (Ford??!!). No exceptions. This is true of non-Presidential assassinations, also, like Gifford's. ((She survived.) Most of the mass killings like Jim Jones, Columbine and Connecticut were also done by people from overtly liberal/left families. In the last few Presidential elections, every single act of politically oriented violence was committed by a Democrat, every single one. And then there was the SDS plan to arrest and murder 25 million people if they had a successful revolution.
ReplyDeleteStalin and Hitler were not aberrations, They typify leftism brought to its logical conclusion.
I think's a form of "woofing".
ReplyDeleteIt's a line that people will think about and talk about, but not be likely to actually cross.
Unless they don't have such a line in their mind; then they won't talk about it. They will do it.
"Stalin and Hitler were not aberrations, They typify leftism brought to its logical conclusion."
ReplyDeleteI have always heard Hitler described as extreme right. Extremes do tend to meet, you know.
The left is the anti-authoritarian wing, at least in its theory. So when its extremists go violent, they do so as criminals.
The right is the authoritarian wing, its violence is not classed as criminal so often. It is committed by duly appointed officials.
Hi AVI,
ReplyDeleteI stop by and read your blog at least once a week even though I rarely comment. After reading this article yesterday I have been thinking about it a lot and have decided to add my two cents worth.
I am a bit surprised to read that the talk of violence that you have firsthand knowledge of has been predominantly from the right. As a Christian and a social conservative I think my self-selection of news sources has tended to bias what I see and read. It does occur to me that I haven’t heard anyone make violent threats in person, it has always been via a web page or video.
I have not made any such threats nor do I have any plans to but I have to say that I take some of what I read very seriously. If the situation in our country didn’t seem so unstable to me I probably would blow this stuff off. However I think our society is becoming more unstable by the year and our current path is unsustainable. Once upon a time mass instability seemed unlikely, if not impossible, to me but I now find myself wondering what I need to do if law and order starts to break down. Should I be active or passive?
I have also come to the conclusion that the days when two sides in a debate could sit down and work out their disagreements is long past. In order to work out disagreements there has to be some kind of middle ground. From what I can see I don’t think there really is any more middle ground to speak of. The worldviews of the competing parties have such different foundations that I don’t believe they can be reconciled. There is no more American culture and no more common ground.
The idea of working out differences via discussion and debate seems very Greek to me and I think it has a lot of validity in a mono-cultural society. The same Greeks that gave us these ideas of open debate would not have debated anything with a Persian. I am worried that we now are at that point.
Thank you for the article and making me think.
Glenn
Earl, I always grew up with the idea that Nazis were extreme Right. In my early 20"s a well-read older gentleman suggested that both communism and naziism were left-wing, because they were state power, rather than individual power oriented. The extreme right, he declared, would be anarchy (of which he disapproved also). Many libertarians think that way. I'm not sure it's quite true in practice, but it's a way of viewing things. They were national socialists, after all, though that part waned throughout the party's run.
ReplyDeleteThen too, Stalinists tended to be pretty authoritarian. I don't think any of it breaks down neatly. Marxism and less so, socialism, are perhaps best understood as Christian heresies. Naziism was that plus tribalism.
Glenn, my live experience with politically threatening people is largely among psychiatric patients. some is left, more is right, more still is not classifiable. The other group tends to be union guys (or females defending union violence), which tends to political left now, even though they share cultural bits with the right as well. No actual violence I know of in NH, but still some threats.
SJ calls it woofing. I call it blustering. And as such, I don't see it as completely innocuous though it is mostly so.
ReplyDeleteThe difference in what I see and what SJ sees is in the point where action will take place. I don't think he's wrong, we're just going in different directions.
I see action taking place when these things that are 'threatened' actually happen (even if that actuality is only in someone's mind).
The problem that I see is that it doesn't take a large impersonal all-powerful government to push people over whatever "edge". A small town council can accomplish the same.
Oh well -- I don't really know where I'm going with this except that it's ringing a bell somewhere. I might be on to something but damned if I know what it is.
Alright, I actually pondered this for a few days, and here's what I came up with:
ReplyDeleteThere seems to me to be a key difference in what the current American right wing and left wing want (in general). The right wing wants the government to stop doing certain things, and the left wing wants them to start/expand functions (again, generally, there are exceptions).
Violent rhetoric/revolution rumblings don't make any sense if you want someone to start doing something. It makes much more sense if you're pushing for a "get out of here, stop messing with us" mindset.
On the left, the people I hear using violent rhetoric are almost invariably those who are very environmentalist (as in back to the earth get rid of the humans types), and again, they want something to go away.
My guess is there's also some tie in with the 2nd amendment, but I don't have a great theory on that.
Hello BS King,
ReplyDeleteI comment over at your blog from time to time. You make a good point and I hadn't thought about using a particular kind of rhetoric based on whether you want something to happen/go away. It's a good point.
From my experience, and it is certainly from the social conservative side, the current battle is over the 2nd amendment but the alienation goes much deeper than that. Here is a good example of one man's complaint regarding the current debate regarding the 2nd Amendment: Snell: Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned. That article got a lot of play on the right side of the blogosphere. Take notice of how much distrust there is. Mr. Snell gives reason after reason why he does not even trust the anti-gun people to debate honestly.
I can show you articles dealing with other parts of the Bill of Rights that have demonstrate a similar lack of trust. Freedom of speech, of religion, of assembly, of association to name a few are under pressure and have been compromised to one extent or another.
I am still thinking that there is no longer enough common ground, no more "American Way" that we all can agree on. I believe that is very dangerous. I guess we'll all find out together.
Glenn
I think it's basically reality checking. We have a history of violent revolution against tyranny, and traditions about what circumstances make this course obligatory. A lot of what I see in the way of references to violence are in the way of testing a proposition: "Is it time yet? It's going to be time, if this trend goes on much longer."
ReplyDelete(NB: I have no opinion - well, no informed opinion - about whether violent rhetoric is more common on right than left. My experience reading is that it's seen on both sides but that it is more generalized on the right - "If this goes on..." - and more personalized on the left - "These specific people should be beaten/killed/raped". But that is only my idiosyncratic impression.)
jaed - I recognise that difference, and think it is correct. I don't know how we measure that.
ReplyDelete