by Teh Nutroots | First off, I don't think Fox News caused Jim Adkisson to shoot those Unitarians. If Fox News didn't exist, I'm sure he'd have found other crazy rhetoric to justify the yowling demon inside him. I don't agree that Fox 'pushed him over the edge'---based on a certain amount of experience, I suspect he jumped. Hatred of others is the disease; Fox is just the symptom.
But Blue Texan has a point here about the side effects of the hatred right wingers have spewed over liberals for the last few years.. Self-justification and defensive posturing ain't going to rewind the Tennessee Valley tape. These pundits need to think about what happened at this church and own their part in it. Maybe he'd have chosen some other sort of target if not for the toxins they poured into the hole in his head. But then again, maybe not.
Jim David Adkisson, the right wing terrrorist whose rampage left 2 dead and 7 wounded Knoxville, was a fan of all three.
The vitriol these three have hurled at progressives over the years is sickening. Hannity wrote a book equating liberalism with terrorism. O'Reilly invited a terrorist attack on San Francisco. And Savage accused "the homosexual mafia" of "raping our children's minds."
What price individual responsibility now, Hannity, O'Reilly, and Savage?
Own it.
Memeorandum has more blogger discussion here.
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You might do well to read up on how violence by the radical right has occurred in the past. There is a history, and the history has a pattern.
Right-wing violence is part of a system of control, and it typically has economic motivations. It normally originates from elites, who establish conditions permissive for it. In some cases, they actively fund it.
Again, there is a history. Understanding history is the means to freeing oneself from the preconceptions that, as Santayana said, doom one to repeat it.
Posted by: Charles | July 30, 2008 at 09:23 PM