Remind Me, Who Is It That’s Unhinged Again?
I see the Brownshirts are getting restless for some hot string-up-a-liberal action, as evidenced by these murderous, lynchmob responses the NYT got from the Bush/Cheney inspired right blogosphere after running the spying on bank accounts story:
“Sic the AG on the NYT!!!!!”
“Can we have a class action lawsuit against the Slimes [sic] for endangering American lives?”
[…]
“Whoever it is, needs to spend the rest of his pathetic life in the slammer.”
“Indictments, arrests and imprisonments are very much in order here. Not to put too fine a point on it, but just how much treason is our president prepared to tolerate?”
[…]
“I can only hope I get to see the video of Sulzberger’s beheading! :)”
“If the government won’t act, perhaps some private citizens will.”
Apparently it’s fine with the Administration to threaten death to those people exercising their first amendment rights and doing their duty to inform the public of illegal actions by their government, but it’s not OK to protest peacefully against military recruiters.
This latest attack on the NYT is organised blogswarming just like so many times before. Look at the whole Kos/Armstrong debacle – how easily the US left blogosphere was divided and conquered by that storm in a teacup, negligible in the great scheme of things, but which has thrown elements of the left into conniption fits. “They lied! They made it up! There is no A-list! It isn’t true, and anyway don’t say anything about it!”
Of course they lied, it’s what they do, deal with it; and I don’t mean by fiskig every post and pointing out the inconsistencies – that’s fun, but nobody cares.
A lie is twice around the world before the truth has got its boots on, and all the pointing out the untruth won’t recall the lie.
I’ve always felt, and I’ve said this to many people, US bloggers and others, that this is an information war between truth and lies and you can’t fight it with voting, niceness and good intentions. It’s way too late for that.
American progressives are being wilfully blind if they think a congressional election (that’s already been decided) is going to stem the tide of the neofascist takeover of their country. If progressives are not prepared to get their hands dirty and use the Right’s own weapons against it, there’s going to come a point where they’re going to have to get up from behind their keyboards and physically fight for what they say they believe in, and I’m not sure anyone is really ready for that. Snark is alll very well, but I wouldn’t want to rely on satire as the saviour of democracy as we’ve known it.
“It’s Not Fascism…’ T-shirt available from Old American Century
