Patriot Games or Treason?

[Dover]

Current issue of Mother Jones:



Patriot Games - From blowhardery to nihilism to…treason?

IN THE FALL of 1964, not long after Barry Goldwater had clinched the Republican nomination for president, historian Richard Hofstadter penned an essay for Harper’s called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” It was an instant classic—not because it was so elegantly written, but because in just a few pages it described with deadly accuracy one of the major strains of our national dialogue.

“The paranoid spokesman,” Hofstadter wrote, “is always manning the barricades of civilization…Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse…He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised…Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.”

Oath Keepers, the group featured in our cover story, would seem the classic case in point. Its members are cops, sheriffs, and military men and women determined to resist the tyrannical orders they believe are imminent from the Obama administration. The fantasies they spin—a “globalist” leadership intent on declaring martial law, putting God-fearing Americans in detention camps, and asking UN blue helmets to keep order while it imposes health care reform and who knows what else—replicate almost exactly the fears far-right cranks have peddled for generations. Replace “socialism” with “communism” and you are pretty much back to 1964 (or 1934 or 1884, for that matter).

But what was true then is true now: Dismissing one’s adversaries as wing nuts is myopic, both intellectually and politically. Like it or not, the Oath Keepers, and the myriad other “patriot” groups now emerging around the edges of the Tea Party movement, are tapping into a real strain of popular anger. And who wouldn’t be angry? Unemployment for millions, bailouts and bonuses for a few. A health care reform plan supremely undersold by a Democratic establishment unconcerned with the battle for hearts and minds (see: Martha Coakley). A GOP controlled by pro-corporate nihilists.

But righteous anger is one thing. Manufacturing fear, dare we say terror, is another—and over the past year, we have seen cynical politicians and talk-show demagogues increasingly willing to traffic in it. It’s no longer just handfuls of militia types trading overheated conspiracy theories; it’s America’s most popular cable news network giving gobs of airtime to people who all but advocate armed insurrection.

MORE
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/editors-note

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Oath Keepers: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/oath-keepers-glenn-beck-tea-party-military

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Words like 'Patriot' or 'Terrorist' seem to do more to confuse the real issues than clarify.

[nemo137]

1. No, I think "terrorist" and "fifth column" are appropriate here.

That's not even getting into the issue of asking us to trust the judgment of people who though that Bush has "character."

[Blue_Tires]

2. agreed...

it's like they wiped their minds of the fact that Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and the rest ever existed...

[invictus]

5. +1

[Echo In Light]

3. Manufacturing fear = Manufacturing Consent

[nemo137]

6. There's a problem with that kind of analysis.

It removes the agency from the people in those movements by assuming that they're pawns of some large plot. There are genuine right-wingers out there, and some of them genuinely want a military coup. Claiming that this is some sort of power-grab (on whose part?) makes the same error that traditional Marxist analyses of fascism make - removing the element of human subjectivity and reducing everything to more or less pre-ordained actions.

[Echo In Light]

8. I suspect it's that institutional compartmentalization & disconnect that aids the schemers above

[nemo137]

9. Who are the schemers in your scenario?

[Echo In Light]

10. Big biz interests who have all three branches of our govt in their pocket

[nemo137]

11. And where does an oganized proto-fascist movement fit in your schema?

Are the Oath Keepers/Tea Partiers dangerous?

[Echo In Light]

12. Any group arising from deeply seated disinfo/propaganda can be dangerous

... this particular group though, no, I'm not that concerned at all. Social conditions would have to further deteriorate before various groups like that would likely attempt direct, strategized/organized violence.

[nemo137]

13. Minimizing it as disinfo or propaganda is foolish.

Denying the appeal of far-right and fascist groupings because they're swayed by dominant-group disinfo blinds one to the fact that those kinds of solutions are, in fact, appealing to worryingly large set of Americans. It may also be blinding you to the fact that there has been direct, organize RW violence already, notably last May's assassination of Dr. George Tiller, but also including an upswing in threats against IRS agents and judges and the legitimation of this violence by elected officials and other opinion makers. Claiming that this is divide-and-conquer disinfo is foolish to the point of being dangerous.

[invictus]

4. K&R

[TexasObserver]

7. Yes, the Oath Keepers are really just Oaf Makers.

They're the same right wing, racist, ACORN hating tea baggers they've always been.

Oaf Makers was invented less than a year ago, by a bunch of right wing nut jobs.

[troubledamerican]

14. Don't worry, the stock market will hit 36,000 and this 1990s boom will never end

and it can't happen here

[Odin2005]

15. A poster at another message board called this "authoritarian nightmare" politics.

"Follow me and I will protect you from your worst nightmares".

The last time the Western World had an Authoritarian Nightmare orientation folks in Salem, Mass. were burning "witches".