Sunday, January 9, 2011

Has the Radical Right Incited Violence? You be the judge...

In their own words, some choice quotations from Republicans inciting violence directly or indirectly against Democrats and progressives:


"People are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." - Palin-backed (losing) Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle in pre-election interview with Lars Larson


Obama is a racist with a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Glenn Beck, 2009. This sort of comment would get you fired at most jobs, probably escorted out with security. 


"This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture....I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist." - Beck on President Obama, sparking an advertiser exodus from his FOX News show 

"I have been nervous about this interview with you because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies. ... And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way." –interviewing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim U.S. congressman, Glen Beck's show on CNN's Headline News, Nov. 14, 2006


"I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out. Is this wrong?"

 - Glenn Beck musing about what he would do for $50 million.


"Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization...And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did. That's what Al Gore, the U.N., and everybody on the global warming bandwagon [are doing]." 
 –"The Glenn Beck Program," May 1, 2007  [This is more indirect, but if you hear night after night someone on television saying that public officials "on the global warming bandwagon" are really just on the verge of doing "what Hitler did" what would you do? If armed resistance does not follow logically from such a provocative leap of logic, then why not? 


"So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending the money on embryonic stem cell research. ... Eugenics. In case you don't know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. ... The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening." –"The Glenn Beck Program," March 9, 2009 


"Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution." - Glenn Beck


"[Obama's] new science czar, what is this guy's first name, Jones? Van Jones. Van Jones is a guy that was all caught up in the Rodney King trial and he was actually arrested. He was a radical communist. He hasn't shed that. He's still a radical. He is still a black nationalist. He is also now your green job czar. . . . Your country is being hijacked. They are using things like green jobs as a front. They are using health care as a front. In the context of Obama-style reparations, that's what they're doing. [Jones] is yet another community organizer. This is yet another black nationalist in the same way that Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a black nationalist. . . . America, you need to wake up, because this country is being transformed. It is way beyond socialism. It is into black nationalism." - July 23, 2009


"Reload." Palin's message to her followers March, 2009. She later backtracked a bit, making the rather strange comment: "It's telling people that their arms are their votes."


"It's not a time to retreat, it's a time to reload." - Palin at Tea Party Rally in Searchlight, Nevada. 


"You, sir, are a self-avowed communist." - Beck's response to Van Jones 6 months after Jones was forced out of the Obama administration by Beck


Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez [is a] "terrific danger" to the United States. "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop." - Republican Presidential Candidate Pat Robertson on "The 700 Club" (Whether you like him or not, Chavez at the time was an elected head of state.)


"[NPR executives] are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view." - Fox News Channel Chief Roger Ailes, November, 2010


"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." 
 -Sarah Palin, in a message posted on Facebook about Obama's health care plan, Aug. 7, 2009 [true, this fabrication was not directly threatening President Obama, but if such an outrageous claim were true (as 40% of Americans believe it is), then a logical response would be the sort of violent uprising against Democrats such as Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat who voted for this dreaded death panel system (and whose office was vandalized following this vote).]


"Our opponent voted to cut off funding for our troops," Palin lied on 10/7/08 at a rally. Her remarks clearly incited violence among her followers, one of whom called out "Treason!" At a similar campaign rally, one of her supporters called out "Kill him!" when John McCain mentioned President Obama's name. 


"I’m afraid this [Obama] is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country... He didn’t know that he had launched his career in the living room of a domestic terrorist?"  
 - Sarah Palin at a rally in Clearwater, Florida. "She was referring to a decades-old relationship with Bill Ayers, which she made sound contemporary and dangerous. Again, a logical conclusion among her followers would be to respond violently and pre-emptively to terroristic threats, making no distinction between those who are terrorists and those who support or harbor them (although she didn't know what it was when asked, she actually strongly supports the so-called Bush doctrine).


"America is now a socialist economy. The definition of a socialist economy is when 50% or more your economy is dependent on the federal government."
  - Christine O'Donnell; given the loopy math and the loopier misunderstanding of socialism versus communism of many of her followers, this sort of statement is inflammatory - wouldn't you resist a communist takeover of your country?




Oh, and one quotation to show the right has not reserved its weighing in on why we are having so many mass shootings:
"We took the Bible and prayer out of public schools. Now we're having weekly shootings. We had the 60s sexual revolution, and now people are dying of AIDS." 
 - Christine O'Donnell on Politically Incorrect [no, not on topic, but it is a goofy quote, isn't it?]

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