From the Restore Fairness blog.

As we continue to fight for immigration reform, one thing that we can be sure about is a right-wing attack. A preview of this came about in the days building up to the successful immigration march in D.C. when fringe right-wing groups like Numbers USA, The John Tanton Network and the Tea Party Movement started pulling out all the stops to counter the building momentum for immigration reform. Predictably, their approach mirrored the strategies they employed a few years ago, during the last big push for reform that took place in 2007 under former President George Bush.

A report by liberal advocacy group People for the American Way called “(Pre)Viewing the Right-Wing Playbook on Immigration” has pulled from years of expertise on the right to lay out a list of the key strategies that are traditionally employed to defeat immigration reform, followed by tools to retaliate against these irrational and unsound attacks.

One of the most common strategies employed by the right is an appeal to racial fear. This is carried out in a number of ways, including the positing of the “Brown” threat to a “White America,” and the outrageous portrayal of immigrants and their supporters as invaders and enemies of the United States. Inciting prejudice against Latinos, Rep. Tom Tancredo commented in November 2006-

Look at what has happened to Miami. It has become a Third World country…. You would never know you’re in the United States of America. You would certainly say you’re in a Third World country.

Not to be left behind, former Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan continued in the vein of this fear-mongering around the “immigrant invasion”. He wrote in 2007-

What is happening to us? An immigrant invasion of the United States from the Third World, as America’s white majority is no longer even reproducing itself. Since Roe v. Wade, America has aborted 45 million of her children. And Asia, Africa and Latin America have sent 45 million of their children to inherit the estate that aborted American children never saw.

It goes without saying that claims that America has been built by and for White people are historically incorrect and intensely racist. More importantly, this country continues to be shaped by immigrants and draws immense political and economic strength from its diversity.

Continuing in the vein of racial divisiveness is the idea that immigration rights advocates are themselves racist, a notion that has emerged in the post Obama election days. While television personality Glenn Beck has referred to President Obama as someone who was opposed to white people, he has generated the idea from numerous accusations of racism thrown at pro-immigration advocates during the 2007 push for reform. At that time, the radio host Michael Savage attacked the National Council of La Raza by calling it “the Ku Klux Klan of the Hispanic people.” He went on to say that it was “the most stone racist group I’ve ever seen in this country”.

Portraying undocumented immigrants as responsible for terrorism and crime waves, as well as positing them as “unclean” carriers of disease and bio-terrorism is one of the tactics that the far right has employed on both local and national levels during past debates around immigration. Such as when  Lou Dobbs claimed immigrants were causing an epidemic of leprosy in the country which was simply untrue. Or when during the debates over immigration reform, Rep. Steve King, of the House Republicans’ “Immigration Reform Caucus” extrapolated fictional statistics claiming that 12 American citizens “die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day”. If that’s so, then why is it that the President’s Council of Economic Advisers reports that immigrants have lower crime rates than U.S. citizens and that immigrant men ages 18 to 40 are less likely than other U.S. residents to be incarcerated.

While we hope that most of you would be taken by the impulse to laugh off these strategies as racist, rabble-rousing garbage, we must take note that such nativist fear-mongering has the power to garner significant support from many, especially within the current climate of an unstable economy. Work such as People For the American Way’s “Right Wing Watch: In Focus” series gives us the best tool to fighting these attacks – truly understanding the reasoning behind them, and countering them on their own territory.

Let’s fight racism on our route to humane immigration reform!

Photo courtesy of usatoday.com.

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Adapted from Blue Moose Democrat.

Earlier this week, I accused Glenn Beck of lying about what his critics say about him - of putting words in their mouth while ignoring their true criticisms. His new book is more proof of that. In it, Beck pretends to teach his audience how to "argue with idiots." These idiots are allegedly representative of progressives, only they say things that no liberal ever says, giving the reader a false impression of half the country's populace. From Media Matters:

In [the book], Beck is engaged in an ongoing argument with "the idiot," who comes armed with some truly idiotic statements, such as, "They may not be perfect, but France is doing socialism right -- we should be more like them," and, "Private schools aren't beholden to unions, but they should be closed because they're only for the rich." Beck fearlessly tears down these strawmen throughout the 300-page book.

In addition to lying about his critics and ginning up dangerous anger against forces that do not exist, Beck's new book asserts that Teddy Roosevelt is a bigger "bastard" than Pol Pot, and that Keith Olbermann is worse than Adolf Hitler. The biggest bastard of all, however, is Woodrow Wilson - because apparently if you dare to give women the right to vote, win a world war you didn't start, create National Parks, win a Nobel Peace Prize, stop powerful men from making money by exploiting the powerless (which brings someone else to mind), or simply express political opinions different than Beck's, than you have done more to harm creation than if you used"slave labor, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions" to kill an entire 21% of your country's population.

In his chapter titled "U.S. Presidents: A Steady Progression of Progressives," Beck treats us to his list of the "Top Ten Bastards of All Time." The occupants of that list, in ascending order, are Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe, Teddy Roosevelt, Bernie Madoff, Adolf Hitler, Keith Olbermann, Pontius Pilate, FDR, Tiger Woods, and Woodrow Wilson. That's right, in Beck's book, mass slaughter of millions of innocents makes you a less reprehensible person than the presidents who won both World Wars for the United States... In Beck's world, any progressive is an enemy, and any enemy is progressive.

Speaking of slave labor, it may even appear that Beck thinks American slavery was a good thing. The book asserts that the Constitutional tariffs on slaves were "a price tag on coming to this country," and that we should impose that fee on modern immigrants to show that we take pride in our country. (This particular point comes as no surprise given that Beck's literary hero, Cleon Skousen, was a man who called blacks "pickaninnies" and asserted that salves "in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains.")

Glenn Beck does not love America, Glenn Beck loves Glenn Beck. He does not love his neighbors who were created in God's own image; he wants to remake them in Glenn Beck's own image. His book, like his TV show, has some legitimate and talented humor, which is too bad. His entertaining showmanship only helps to mask his lies, arrogance, and narrow-minded hatred for over half of America's ever-changing population. He does not truly cherish the "republic" he claims to love so very much; he loves only an imagined Aryan paradise brimming over with his beloved "white culture." To Glenn Beck, that is the true "republic," and anyone who would dare be less than perfect in it is the worst form of animal imaginable.

Please, write to Beck's advertisers and gently refute his words with your libertarian friends and perhaps on your local newspaper's letters to the editor page, before he helps get another federal worker killed.

There's more...

Piggy-backing off what Charles posted earlier tonight, I'd like to point out that the anti-government murder of a Census Bureau worker in Kentucky comes on the same day that the House Republican Whip, Eric Cantor, said he"thinks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "is in another world" if she believes raucous anti-health-reform demonstrations could lead to violence -- and he says he hasn't personally witnessed racist comments during a summer of passionate town hall demonstrations."

Ignoring his comments about racism and focusing only on anti-government violence, Cantor is clearly oblivious to both recent history and to current events. An AP story on the Kentucky killing provides some historical perspective:

The most deadly attack on federal workers came in 1995 when the federal building in Oklahoma City was devastated by a truck bomb, killing 168 and injuring more than 680. Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for the bombing, carried literature by modern, ultra-right-wing anti-government authors.

A private group called PEER, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, tracks violence against employees who enforce environmental regulations, but the group's executive director, Jeff Ruch, said it's hard to know about all of the cases because some agencies don't share data on instances of violence against employees.

From 1996 to 2006, according to the group's most recent data, violent incidents against federal Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service workers soared from 55 to 290.

Ruch said that after the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, "we kept getting reports from employees that attacks and intimidation against federal employees had not diminished, and that's why we've been tracking them."

And as for current events, there's no way Cantor didn't hear about this incredibly bizarre story from a California health care rally just this month.

"California authorities say a clash between opponents and supporters of health care reform ended with one man biting off another man's finger.

Ventura County Sheriff's Capt. Frank O'Hanlon says about 100 people demonstrating in favor of health care reforms rallied Wednesday night on a street corner. One protester walked across the street to confront about 25 counter-demonstrators. O'Hanlon says the man got into an argument and fist fight, during which he bit off the left pinky of a 65-year-old man who opposed health care reform."

Some say that there's no reasoning with the fringe and that we should just ignore them. I agree that there's no reasoning with them, but if they're going to murder government workers in Kentucky like they did in Oklahoma 14 years ago or Memphis and Los Angeles 41 years ago, then there's no ignoring them, either. I have explored this issue in two recent entries.

There's more...

Fringe groups have a habit of not going away. They only get louder, angrier, and more violent. We cannot ignore them, but we can't muzzle them either. The point of this post is to generate comments and look for ideas: What can we as a nation do when our hysterical fringe gets out of control? What can we do to prevent 1968-style violence?

The fringe does not go away just because they lose their legislative battles. I'll use the Episcopal Church (TEC) as a brief example before turning to Glenn Beck and Co. In the 1970s, we revised the Book of Common Prayer and allowed for female clergy (including, eventually, bishops). In 2003, the question became gay bishops when New Hampshire elected Father Gene Robinson their bishop (you can read my 2008 interview with him, if you're interested). Our church also has a heavy focus on social justice rather than evangelism. So where are we today? After all this, many conservatives feel that their voices are not being heard. TEC may not be facing schism, but we have had half a dozen dioceses try to break away, and one former bishop claims he has established the true Anglican province in North America. The point is, instead of continuing to try and remake the church in their own image or make up false accusations about liberal Christians, the conservatives acted. They pulled away to create their own church, abandoning the institutions to which they had vowed loyalty.

When this happens on a political or social rather than denominational level, blood is shed. You can leave a church without leaving your home; you can't do the same with a country. In 1860, southern legislators and their libertarian base found themselves in the same place conservative Episcopalians find themselves in today: losing squabble after squabble before finally coming to the straw that broke the camels back. Racism was the national consensus, but slavery was not; pushed to a narrow-minded, ignorant, extremist cliff by the ban on the slave trade, the Missouri Compromise, Abraham Lincoln's election, and more, the fringe erupted.

The fringe doesn't go away. When people are scared for their lives, their quality of health care, or their home's security, they won't quietly retreat when the legislation they fear passes. Put yourself in their shoes - everything you love and hold dear is under attack! Violent minorities are running amok in your nation's once-proud cities; a tyrant is dismantling its military; health care is being taken away from the middle class to make sure the elderly die and babies are not born. Obviously this is all bunk, but some people believe it - and if you were one of them, would you just sit on your bed and cry? Or would you act?

This is not the mindset of most Republicans. It is not the mindset of the sizable chunk of this country that voted for John McCain. Remember, McCain wasn't invited to speak at the 9/12 Rally, nor were George W. Bush, Michael Steele, or Mitt Romney. It is, however, the mindset of a few million not on the far-right, but on the extremely-far-away-right. Today's fringe is not the many people who tell pollsters they disagree with President Obama, but the few people who bring Hitler caricatures and even guns to their rallies. Still, five men out of 300 can open fire on a crowd, and five million out of 300 million can do the same.

We must not confuse the crazy of the Glenn Beck crowd for the crazy of the Values Voters Conference. To do so would distort the problem, and thus its solutions. Robert Taft was not George Coughlin; Richard Nixon (as bad as he was) was not George Wallace, and Mitch McConnell is not Glenn Beck. This is a different crowd, and it deserves a different focus. As Frank Rich wrote in yesterday's New York Times, "Beck is not, as many liberals assume, merely the latest incarnation of Rush Limbaugh. He is something different. That's why he is gaining on his antecedents -- and gaining traction in the country's angrier precincts."

Some of these people are racist, some are not. Most, however, are scared. Most are paranoid. Most are uninformed and irrational, but believe themselves to be the most competent of all. Many are armed. And none will go away. When fear and anger are pushed to an extreme, as happens every time a fringe movement repeatedly loses time and time again, it comes to a head. The fringe has revolted before - Fort Sumter, the assassinations of the 1960s, and so on and so forth - and they will act again. Their actions will go beyond hysterical TV shows and fear-mongering protest signs. Something violent will happen. My point is this: We can't stick to just-business and pass health care reform, knowing we have both the moral high ground the support of the majority. We can't stick to just-business and look for the best economic path forward, knowing that the fringe can't stop us. We cannot ignore this movement - but nor can we muzzle them. That truly would be tyrannical.

I'm hoping for a lively comment section. What can we do about the Beck fringe? How should society as a whole react when its extremes get too full of themselves? What did we fail to do or say in 1967 that we can do or say now? Frank Rich says Obama "could help stanch the economic piece of this by demonstrating how a reformed government can at times actually make Americans' lives better." I'm not so sure - if one can ignore facts now, one can ignore facts in a better economy, too. So if Frank Rich doesn't have the answer, who does?

I've put two videos from the 9/12 Rally below the fold to demonstrate this specific type of crazy.

There's more...

Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.

We have detailed both here and here about how a far-right radio station owned by Bristol Broadcasting is holding a propoganda meeting in a church. They feature a panel of "knowledgable people" including a right-wing reporter, and a Doctor who is a huge contributor to Republicans who will present far-right-wing talking points as fact and will attempt to propogandize religous folks in Western Kentucky.

There's more...