The Violent Language of Right-Wing Pundits Poisons Our Democracy

By Jeffrey Feldman, Ig Publishing. Posted May 6, 2008.

The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Feldmann's new book Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy (Ig Publishing, 2008).

The emergence of a cohort of right-wing pundits who use violent logic, language and arguments in national political debate did not gradually take shape over a long stretch of time, but rose up at a starling speed in the lead-up to the national elections of 2004 and 2006. As the horrific extent of the Iraqi military occupation waxed and George W. Bush's popularity waned, a hitherto sarcastic right-wing punditry seemed all at once to step into a new rhetorical frame. Suddenly, with Bush's re-election in doubt, casualties spiraling out of control, and revelations of U.S. military human rights abuses popping up all over, right-wing pundits shifted their tone from critique to conspiracy. The shift is summed up best by the opening line in Dinesh D'Souza's book The Enemy at Home: "The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11."

As if that is not enough, D'Souza's book also accuses liberals of engaging in civil war with the rest of America and of harboring a violent dream that complements the terrorist goals of Osama Bin Laden, yearns for the destruction of U.S. military forces in Iraq and seeks the downfall of the United States. D'Souza's book filled mainstream bookstores, giving scholarly legitimacy to violent accusations of high treason against vast segments of the American population.

Violent language as a manner of speech amongst right-wing pundits reached a crescendo in the days leading up to the 2006 midterm elections. I remember flipping through TV channels one day, attempting to avoid pundits' violent rhetoric. But such language was everywhere. Anne Coulter joked about "nuking" Iran, Bill O'Reilly talked about the "war on Christmas," Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs spoke of the "invasion" and "conquest" of America by immigrants. I even came across a discussion of the "war against the war," in which an anti-war protest was discussed as if it was a war. Every political topic seemed clouded over by a right-wing pundit using violence language.

In the first few months after the 2006 mid-term elections, I penned several blog posts questioning whether the rise of violent rhetoric on the right might be a dangerous development that could possibly transform, through a sudden incident, into actual physical violence. Turning to the work of Hannah Arendt, in particular her masterful study of politics and violence, On Violence, I began to realize that the last significant violent turn in American political ideology and practice involved both the political right and the left. The late 1960s was a time, Arendt explained, where people increasingly believed that violence could actually produce controlled political outcomes. The result was an era in U.S. politics where a broad range of different political organizations and movements each took up violence, a product of the widespread acceptance of Mao Tse-tung's aphorism "Political power grows at the barrel of a gun." Arendt watched this moment lead to assassinations and mass chaos in urban centers, and thus argued that violence was problematic because it led to outcomes in politics that could not be controlled. Violence, she explained, drawing on a famous quote from Karl Marx, may be the birth pang of a new political body, but we would never say that labor pains were the cause of a birth. The same is true with violence, which occasionally happens at times of great political change but is not the cause of such change.

Arendt's thoughts on violence helped me to clarify several aspects of the trend in right-wing violent language that I was tracking in the media. First, I realized that the use of violent language was not accidental, but was the product of a shift in the political philosophy on which the right-wing punditry built their ideas. The shift was from a rhetoric of parody and burlesque to one of violence and accusation. Second, Arendt helped me to clarify exactly what role "violence" was playing in the worldview of the right-wing pundits. Most right-wing pundits see the power of the state as residing ultimately in the monopoly over violence, an idea that comes from the writings of German philosopher Max Weber. This, however, is not the political philosophy that guided the framers of the U.S. Constitution. In other words, violent rhetoric is not just a question of linguistic style, but a sign that a political philosophy in conflict with American deliberative democracy has captured the imagination of many right-wing pundits. Many factors have led to the emergence of violence among right-wing pundits, but the events of 9/11 seem central. In the wake of the attacks, right-wing pundits grew ever more convinced that the continued survival of United States depended on its willingness to use violence. The more violent language filled the airwaves of America's broadcast media, the more this new and disturbing logic of violence and power seemed to saturate public thinking. Lastly, Arendt's writing helped me to see that the American form of deliberative democratic politics itself was a form of government crafted as a replacement for earlier forms of rule by violence. In a discussion of American politics, the opposite of violence has never been nonviolence, but participation -- specifically, participation in deliberative democracy. The quintessential American town hall meetings that Jefferson imagined happening amongst small, mostly agricultural communities in rural colonial America were not just a system for accomplishing the needs of the people but a bulwark against tyrannical rule that resulted from a royal monopoly on all forms of power.

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Jeffrey Feldman is editor-in-chief of Frameshop and author of Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy (Ig Publishing, 2008).

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