Last month I wrote an article about the 1970s group, Weather Underground, which was published in Tablet magazine. It prompted a response from Daniel Greenfield, which appeared in FrontPage, a right-wing political website, edited by David Horowitz and published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Greenfield libeled me and targeted me, too, as “a stooge for a communist terror group that murdered Americans.”
You don't have to be an African-American, a Latino, a Latina, or gay to be the target of a right-wing hate group. If you speak your own mind, you, too, can be attacked by the radical right and its members who call for a civil war, a bloodbath and, in the case of Mr. Greenfield, “a reckoning.”
At the end of his rant, Greenfield writes that “A reckoning will come, not in academic papers or reviews, but in the crimes that have never been repented, and will therefore come again, until the tide of lies, blood and treachery bring down the same system that covered up the crimes of the Weathermen, and brings a revolution against the revolution.”
Greenfield sounds like the sort of person that U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee had in mind when she recently noted that “There are a lot of people who are living on the edge, who have mental disorders, who are stressed.” She added, “All you need is a trigger. And this president is that trigger for people who are unstable.”
For the record, let me say that I never was a stooge for the Weather Underground or for any other group, and that the only individuals who died as a result of the Weather Underground were three members of the group itself who accidentally blew themselves up.
Greenfield calls for a “revolution against the revolution,” though Horowitz’s organization, which calls itself a “battle tank," boasts that it is "geared to fight a war.” The David Horowitz Freedom Center website adds that “the political left has declared war on America and its constitutional system, and is willing to collaborate with America’s enemies abroad and criminals at home to bring America down.”
It is not the left, but rather Donald Trump and the members of his Republican Party who have declared war on the US Constitution and have collaborated with the enemies of democracy at home and abroad.
I have always thought of Marianne Williamson, who is running for president, as a person who doesn't minimize the dangers to democracy, but she did just that recently when she said that “a low-level emotional civil war” was being waged in the US. The bodies that piled up in Dayton, El Paso and Gilroy tell a different story. Our embryonic civil war is a lot more than low-level and way beyond merely emotional. On Townhall.com, a Trump supporter published an article with a title that read, “Why Democrats Would Lose the Second Civil War.”
The fact is that no one would win a second civil war. Everyone would lose. Civil Wars are devastating to everyone. Ours was and so has every civil war that has been fought ever since then.
Jon Soltz, the chairman of VoteVets, a veterans advocacy group whose members fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, urged Americans “Do NOT buy guns (or any weapons) to use against your fellow Americans.” Soltz added, “We are NOT in civil war.”
In the radical right his words are falling on deaf ears. Those who don’t already have guns are buying them and using them. No wonder than that Greg Sarris, the chairman of the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria, noted in July, “People are scared and frightened. The country is on the verge of a war between people of color and law enforcement, and the White House seems to be spurring it on.”
I’m scared, too.
I’m with American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote a poem titled “The Warning” in 1842 in which he predicted the coming of a time when “the vast temple of our liberties / A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.” Who hasn’t heard the contemporary warning? Who doesn’t fear that our liberties might become a mass of wreck and rubbish?
This is a long non-response to Daniels indictment of Jonah’s defense of his brainless criminal friends who murdered three fathers of nine children, which is why he doesn’t provide a link to the article whose author is the target of his smears. There are really no answers because the facts are so clear
Mr. Raskin is attacking a journalist as a hate group and describing criticism of his writing as being the “target of a hate group”.
This is dishonest, but unsurprising.
He fails to link to the actual article because it allows him to quote its conclusion while removing its context to make it appear as if he is being threatened.
The portion of the article that he quotes is preceded by the statement that, “The Left repeats the same patterns of crimes and follies, revolutions and oppressions, lies and reckonings, that destroy its utopias. Camelot falls again and again. Because it was always tainted. History can be buried. But the evil of a regime and a movement lives and rots within its soul.”
Omitting this section and failing to link to the original allows Mr. Raskin to misrepresent a critique of the corruption of his ideology as an external attack, rather than internal rot.
When writing about Mr. Raskin’s work, I linked to his article. Mr. Raskin has failed to link to mine when writing about it.
It is easy to see why.
Weather Underground and communist subversion aside, it appears there actually is a “reckoning” under way, roughly following J H Kunstler’s Long Emergency model, and quite possibly surpassing it. The stability of our current arrangements for almost everything will be sorely tested as the non-denominational climate patterns it all relies on morph into something much less accommodating. To say nothing of the political and social upheaval we (sic) manage to pile on top of it, as demonstrated here and everywhere.
I personally favor the “Slouches towards Bethlehem” literary allusion, but the general idea is similar.
Agree. The Great Beast is up and running straight at us….
Please let’s survive!
I must confess, Jonah, that I myself have suspected that you were a stooge for
The Velvet Underground.
Keep your head down, good brother.
They’re out there.
Thanks Louis. I heard the Velvet Underground was advertising for a “stooge.”
I think I’ll apply. Good benefits.
Just stay off social media and the civil war disappears! I tried and it works. Of course i may get struck by lightening or shot in a latino area walmart, but is ok (wont know what hit me).
What impact does everyone think that the inevitable (now,
Thankyou US Navy) confirmation of et visitation will have on these alt right folks?
That is good advice about staying off social media. I should have done that. Maybe I’ll learn. Thank you.
Major public communicators may have no choice, unlike those of us who arent in that position. Why is Podesta still on twitter, for example? Given the pizzagate crap he gets.
But, after leaving twitter and fb i felt calmer and engaged more regularly in doing my laundry.
Sheets, clothes and a windowsill.
Reminds me I have to take my laundry from the machine and hang it to dry in the sun. Bloody hot here this afternoon.
Hate groups have a superficial knowledge of those who are the focus of their hate, don’t care to be knowledgeable beyond what supports their hate, and do everything to repress views that are in conflict of their hate. The liberal left, on any campus in America, fits the mold, There is a well represented group right here in Mendocino County as well. There has been for a while. So let’s not get too sanctimonious.
Ha, ha, George. The correct answer is the reactionary right, on campus, or off.
I am trying to get beyond “Left” and “Right.”
A fool’s errand in my opinion. Too many born authoritarians (of both the dominator and good-follower persuasions) for that to happen. Best thing will be if global warming does in this putrid species before it can spread and infect the whole universe.
Ever had a cross burned in your yard? That’s what I thought…
As always,
Laz