We should not be surprised at the incendiary language, shattered windows, spitting on congressmen, shouted racial insults and threats against Democratic lawmakers.
This is standard operating procedure for the right-wing. It is organized, not spontaneous. It is not unique to this year, this administration or the health care issue; it is typical of right-wing resistance to progressive efforts.
Entrenched power and wealth concede nothing willingly. The country and its leaders must not be intimidated.
Most Americans tend to think that government works much as we learned in school. Public spirited legislators debate the issues; reasonable disagreements are resolved by compromise; votes are taken and the majority rules; further disagreements go to the ballot box.
We are surprised when things seem to get out of control. But we should not be surprised. History tells us that -- far from being new or unusual -- this type of angry, hysterical rhetoric and false accusations are typical of right-wing attacks on virtually every Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt.
Predictions of doom dominated the weeks preceding Roosevelt’s first inauguration during which an assassination attempt on Roosevelt killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Throughout his presidency, Roosevelt was denounced and hated as a “traitor to his class” to the point that many business leaders would not speak the name of “that man in the White House.” The right-wing even continued their attacks on Roosevelt posthumously, charging that he had given away American positions at the Yalta Conference.
Harry Truman formulated the “containment” strategy that eventually defeated the Soviet Union, while he and his secretaries of state, Dean Atcheson and Gen. George Marshall, were attacked as “soft on Communism” by red-baiters like Sen. Joe McCarthy and many other right-wing Republicans.
Pres. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren, former Republican governor of California, and 1948 Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, to be Chief Justice of the United States. Soon after, Warren wrote the unanimous civil rights desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The right-wing denounced Warren as a traitor and called for his impeachment, as well as the impeachment of Eisenhower. Numerous right-wing officials vowed “massive resistance” to desegregation. The segregationist violence against the civil rights movement is well-remembered and well publicized.
Less well remembered are the vicious right-wing attacks directed personally at Pres. John F. Kennedy. Only days before his assassination, a Wanted for Treason poster directed at Kennedy was distributed in Dallas. On the very day of the President’s visit and assassination, the Dallas Morning News carried a full page, right-wing hate ad paid for by the local chairman of the John Birch Society. (After being excluded from the “conservative movement” at the demand of John F. Buckley, the John Birch Society was readmitted to the CPAC convention as a cosponsor just a few weeks ago.)
Pres. Clinton was hounded for the entire eight years of his presidency by false claims of financial improprieties related to the WhiteWater development. Less well remembered are other hysterical claims including false claims of multiple murders. As Hillary Clinton began her campaign for president, the old and discredited charges were renewed against her.
Pres. Obama, commendably, has made every effort to govern on a bipartisan basis. But bipartisanship is a two-way street. The right-wing has no history of bipartisanship. It has history of single-minded demands and unbending refusal to yield. It is a history of hate-mongering, racism, violence and threats of violence. In its political campaign tactics, it has perfected the art of cruel defamation to demonize its opponents.
The right-wing response to Obama’s offer of bipartisanship was the unruly disruption of congressional town halls around the nation by “Tea Party” “patriots.” The Tea Parties are financed by right-wing billionaire David Koch and coordinated by Republican political consultants. Koch and his entities finance Americans for Prosperity , an advocacy groups which, in turn finances the Tea Parties. AFP provides organizers for tea party groups in 29 states; it provides organization and transportation for tea party protests; it provided the buses supporting the spitting, racist demonstration attempting to block Members’ access to the Capitol just prior to the House vote. Tea Party websites like ResistNet.com brag that right-wing blogs are threatening civil disobedience.
Republican leaders initially denied connections with the tea parties and dismissed the repeated racist insults to the president as “isolated incidents.” Meanwhile, the tea parties built their own history of repeated incidents of racism, violence and threats of violence.
But by voting time last weekend, Republican lawmakers incited Tea Party hate and threats from the balcony of the Capitol itself. Before the vote, the protesters spit on Congressmen and called out racial epithets as Democratic House members walked arm-in-arm across the Capitol grounds to the House chamber. John Boehner had already called the impending passage of the bill “Armageddon.” He threatened neighboring Congressman Steve Dreihaus that if he voted for the bill (which he did) “he is a dead man.”
By the time of the final debate, Boehner himself was shouting “Hell, no” from the well of the House.
Dreihaus and at least 9 other Congressmen are now receiving death threats; pictures of Dreihaus and his children were published in a full-page ad in his hometown newspaper and a conservative group published his home address (with directions) on the internet. TPM . The Republican National Committee “Fire Pelosi” website depicts Madam Speaker in a fiery furnace.
Sarah Palin, on her blog, writes -- “Don’t retreat. Reload!” Right-wing / Tea Party web sites use increasingly aggressive language. They approve of bricks with right-wing / libertarian messages thrown through Democratic Party windows. An Alabama militia activitist takes credit, based on his blog posting headlined “To all modern Sons of Liberty: THIS is your time. Break their windows. Break them NOW.” He also wrote:
“They certainly do not hear the soft ‘snik-snik’ of cleaning rods being used on millions of rifle barrels in this country by people who have decided that their backs are to the wall, politics and the courts no longer are sufficient to the task of defending their liberties, and they must make their own arrangements.”
Another notes with pride that the actions have been picked up on CNN. Pat Dollard, The War Starts Here.
Americans of all political views should understand that the incitement, threats and violence is part of a pattern of right-wing defiance of popular will. Those whom Franklin Roosevelt called the “malefactors of great wealth” use corporate money, paid organizers and consultants and fiery orators to incite fringe elements to violence. As moderates have been driven out of the Republican Party, the remaining Republican leaders embrace fringe element tactics.
Change will not be easy. Entrenched power and wealth concede nothing willingly. The nation and its leaders must not be intimidated.