reflectivepundit

Media as Propaganda Vehicle for so-called Tea Party and Its Champions

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Tax Day was a big day for the so-called tea party and its creators and champions. With the exception of Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) and other hard-core right-wingers the tea partiers displayed a much gentler face than during the angry confrontations they sought in town hall meetings at the height of the health care reform debates. This is how Jessica Jellin reported on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer from the Washington tea party event: 

“Right now, Wolf, we're listening to the hip-hop sounds of the Tea Party rapper Hi-Caliber. And, as you can tell, this is a very calm crowd, a happy crowd. There's a lot made of some of the anger and upset during the protests during the health care bill's passage, very different kind of mood here, polite folks who are just here protesting the fact that there are, in their words, just too many taxes.”

Obviously, Congresswoman Bachmann did not stay on message to display a gentler face of the movement she promotes and, in some observers views, leads. As reported in the same CNN program, Bachmann unleashed another of her frequent outrageous outbursts.“We're on to this gangster government, and we are not going to let them have their way. They don't get to take over any more of our economy. We're done with that game. We're done,” she said. “And I say it's time for these little piggies to go home.”

It seems Representative Bachmann is unaware that the “gangster government” includes the Congress in which she serves and that therefore she is one of the “little piggies” that she says need to go home. Blitzer did not set her straight on this and merely mustered a benign comment: “That is pretty colorful language, I should say….”  His guest Alex Castallanos, a Republican strategist, justified Bachmann’s remark and threw in a government-mafia connection. “She's referring to a government that right now -- on all levels -- takes over 40 percent, nearly 50 percent of a country's wealth, of the money we all work for… Not even John Gotti took that much money from people. So that's what she's talking about the gangster government.”

Never mind that Fox News and the network’s stars Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck were involved in the creation of tea party protests and strive on what continues to be a symbiotic relationship, most of the rest of the news media were from the beginning and continue to be compliant propaganda vehicles for what is in reality the tea party wing of the Republican Party.

The Growth of Militia-Type Hate Groups and the Threat of Terrorism

By Brigitte L. Nacos

I can only hope that it was a ploy when the FBI—as reported by the Associated Press-- claimed the other day that the recent arrest of nine members of a self-proclaimed “Hutaree” Christian militia does not indicate a threat of violence by other extremists in the right-wing milieu. If you take a look at the Hutaree web site, you know that nothing is “Christian” about this group and those who leave their gross messages on the discussion board. But more disturbing is the notion that the Hutaree gang is unique in planning violence—in this particular case a plot to kill police officers to commence a war against the hated government and its agents.

One reason for the alarming increase in militant groups of this kind was and is the high and persistent unemployment, especially in the Midwest. But the election of the first African-American president in U.S. history was even more instrumental in the revival of these types of groups that had dwindled away during the presidency of George W. Bush after a high during the Clinton years. With Barack Obama in the White House, the right-extreme conspiracy theorists found an opportunity to add another twist to their long-standing anti-Semitic prejudices.  

As absurd as it is, the fanatic appeal to construe the U.S. Constitution along the lines of its original intent transcends these usual hate group settings and found its way into part of the conservative and Republican mainstream. This shift in particular, whether expressed by obscure tea party figures, populists like Sarah Palin, or members of Congress, provides the extremist fringe with a dangerous mantle of legitimacy.    

In the 1990s, the Internet was not as widely used as it is today. At that time, militia types met personally in their particular circles or at gun shows. That was the milieu that nourished Timothy McVeigh’s hate to a point where he planned and executed the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

Moscow Suicide Bombings: Different than London, Madrid or 9/11?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Seeing the horrific pictures of the Moscow underground bombings is remembering similar images of suicide terrorism against commuter systems in Madrid, London, New York/Washington, and elsewhere. If this week’s subway bombings had a particular shocking angle for Russians and people elsewhere, it was the fact that two women killed themselves at the heights of the morning rush hour in order to kill as many commuters as possible. Although female terrorists are far from being exceptions among terrorist groups of all stripes, they are still viewed differently than their male counterparts—as the exception to the rule. And that is precisely the reason why the leaders of terror groups recruit women for tactical reasons: Even the best security forces tend to be less suspicious of females than of males. That makes for a higher success rate of female terrorists.   

Given the greater shock associated with female terrorists, they and their deeds tend to receive extra media attention that the masterminds of terrorist spectacular crave. No wonder, then, that the lethal attacks in Moscow resulted also in mass-mediated speculations about these female bombers’ motives and, more generally, in explicit or implicit condemnation of the Russian government and perhaps even justification of terrorist violence in this context. 

In an op-ed article in the New York Times, Robert Pape of the University of Chicago and two of his students wrote the other day about the perpetrators of the incident:

“The bombers’ motives spring directly from their experiences with Russian troops, according to Abu al-Walid, a rebel leader who was killed in 2004. “These women, particularly the wives of the mujahedeen who were martyred, are being threatened in their homes, their honor [is] being threatened,” he explained in a video that appeared on Al Jazeera. “They do not accept being humiliated and living under occupation.”

In other words, using the justification of a late terrorist leader, these deadly terrorist attacks are the result of wrongheaded policies and actions of the Russian government and military. And this explanation is seen to transcend the particular case of Chechen women to cover Chechen terrorists—called rebels or separatists in most news accounts and opinion articles—and nationalists or separatists elsewhere who resort to terrorist means. According to the op-ed piece,

“As we have discovered in our research on Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, suicide terrorist campaigns are almost always a last resort against foreign military occupation. Chechnya is a powerful demonstration of this phenomenon at work.”

In almost all of these cases, terrorist violence has been carried out in the name of religious martyrdom, mostly of the jihadist variety or--in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka--a pseudo-religion in the sect-like organization. When more secular oriented groups commit copy-cat suicide terrorism, this comes down to competition or out-bidding in a society with various terrorist groups as Mia Bloom explains well in her book “Dying to Kill.”