Are Liberals being demonized these days or merely
dehumanized? The answer depends upon whose
eliminationist language you are listening to.
Plenty of it is being directed at Liberals these days.
I’m reading a book by D.J. Goldhagen called “Worse
than War: Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity.” It’s very interesting, I’ll give it that, the
quality of the analysis is generally very good.
It’s a tough read though, not for the feint hearted, the presentation is
very dense and the style is (faux) academic.
The sentences themselves can be grammatically maddening.
The victims of the various murderous eliminations of
the Twentieth Century are divided into categories and examined. Some are dehumanized; some are
demonized. Some can be rehabilitated;
some must be exterminated. Some of the
analysis describes the treatment of Liberals in America right now, although the
question of Liberals is not reached in the book. In my reading, Liberals seem to fall into the
category that Mr. Goldhagen calls “Heretics,” people who are demonized without
being dehumanized. Heretics are
“conceived of as not biologically different from other people, they, for some
articulated reason-usually in the grip of a pernicious religious or secular
ideology-willfully dissent from the hallowed creed and seek to harm you or
prevent humanity’s salvation.” P.
332.
(See what I mean about those sentences?)
The whole situation is comical for several
reasons. For one thing, what is a
Liberal in Twenty-First Century America?
The best definition might be anyone who does not completely agree with
the popular Conservative orthodoxy. For
another thing, somebody like me could turn that “Heretic” definition right back
on the Conservatives with approximately equal justification. (Without, I hope, resorting to eliminationist
rhetoric.)
As usual, nothing is simple. Quite a few ideologies are competing for
attention in America. It’s not a simple
question of “Right” v. “Left.” There’s
the Right of congressional Republicans, the Right of Senate Republicans, the
Right of the Christian Dominionists, the Right of the Tea Party, the Right of
the militia crowd, the Right of the Rand Paul/Ayn Rand Libertarians, and even the
slightly gentler Right of President Obama and most Democrats. Yeah, I said that.
What’s happening on the Left? The Left is far less vigorous but it does
encompass some activism and considerable diversity. Oh, excuse me, “diversity” is a code word, I
mean diversity of political opinion.
What most categorizes the current political debate
in America is that there is no debate.
There is only a lot of sloganeering and shouting across the chasm. Almost everyone claims to be protecting
democracy, or expanding it or something, restoring it maybe. To me the almost universal truth is that
democracy is suffering, at best, and, at worst, disappearing. Given the choice of voting for either one
side of a coin or the other side of the same coin, you get the coin no matter
who wins.
I am not, however, suggesting some kind of “they all
do it” argument. There is one important
difference between the modern American Right and the modern Left. The Difference is the degree to which the
Right embraces violence and eliminationism.
So far this comes in the form of violent language
and eliminationist rhetoric. There’s
very little of this on the Left, just some open mocking, and lots of sarcasm,
nothing as serious as what you find on the Right. The content of Right Wing media is bad enough
in itself, but what you find in the comment sections is frightening and
extreme. The writers of these fantasies
are not scholars, they are largely uninformed and they are, like most people,
of average intelligence. Somehow, from
someplace, they are being fed an agenda of fear, hatred and eliminationism.
A truly delusional world view is prevalent, a view
in which Liberals are actively conspiring to deprive people of their rights,
their freedoms, to take away their guns, or even their children, to put people
in camps for some reason, to turn the United States over to the United Nations
or some other international group, to put America’s black people in charge and
subjugate the poor white folk, really strange, unlikely stuff for which there
is no compelling discoverable evidence.
It’s all very “Turner Diaries.”
Some individuals, like Timothy McVay, have even taken this paranoid
novel as their blueprint for reality.
Faced with this perceived reality, how else can the
Right respond but with violence and extremism?
As Mr. Goldhagen says, “if a being willfully threatens all that is good,
the Volk, God, a world of justice and plenty for all; if a being is evil
incarnate, then it follows that one must eradicate the disease, squash the bug,
kill the wild animal, expel or slay the barbarian, destroy the threat, or
extirpate the evil. Not to do so would
be negligent folly, like leaving your young child in a bear-or devil-infested
forest.” p. 330.
Note that Mr. Goldhagen is not suggesting this as a
rational course of action, no, he’s just stating the position that has been
maintained by lots of groups in the recent past, right before they up and
killed a lot of their demonized enemies.
In each case, the pot-stirring that preceded the horror bore disturbing
similarities to the current anti-Liberal rhetoric.
Let’s hold this thing up to the light. Liberals, if they even exist anymore, are no
threat to freedom and justice, no enemies of liberty, nor of the family or the
American Dream. So maybe we can back up
on the word play here.
I don’t think anything like that is going to happen
though, not the backing up thing, I’ve given up already on anything like common
sense prevailing. This particular Genie
is hard to get back in the bottle. The
denouement, when it comes, may not reach the fever pitch of that episode of
Tutsi v. Hutu in Africa, but whatever it is, it won’t be pretty.
P.S. I read
that Bryan Fischer is afraid that “Homofascists” will soon treat Christians in
America like the Nazis treated Jews during the Holocaust. (Raw Story, April 12, 2013.) And Janet Mefferd, who evidently is some kind
of syndicated host on Christian Radio, has very similar fears, also couched in
Holocaust language. (From the blog,
“Brilliant at Breakfast,” which coined the phrase, “Holocaust envy.”) Point made!
