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Violence on the Right: More Evidence
In my previous column I argued that radical, even violent rhetoric coming from the political right is more incendiary and aggressive than that coming from the left. I received a lot of angry e-mails claiming both sides deserved equal scorn.
Really? Well then, let's move beyond mere rhetoric to action - from talking the talk, to walking the walk. Before proceeding, again let me clarify that the overwhelming majority of conservatives neither engage in nor incite violence. However, it is almost always conservatives who use violence, even murder, to express political anger.
In 2009, David Neiwert published "The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right," a book detailing the language and actions employed by right-wing radicals. Mr. Neiwert continues to track politically motivated crimes committed by those expressing anger about taxes, abortion, racial minorities or liberals. I previously mentioned the May 2009 murder of abortion doctor George Tiller and tax protester Joseph Stack's crashing of a plane into an IRS building in February 2010. But readers might not recall other, similar incidents:
- In July 2008, after writing a manifesto complaining about how left-wing liberals are destroying America, Jim Adkisson walks into a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn., and shoots and kills two churchgoers.
- White supremacist Richard Poplawski, who claims President Barack Obama wants to take away his guns, shoots and kills three Pittsburgh police officers in April 2009.
- In July 2009, anti-tax zealot and Holocaust denier James von Brunn opens fire inside the national Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.
I don't have space for the rest, but Mr. Neiwert chronicles 18 incidents like this from the past 21/2 years - that's one incident roughly every 40 days - involving militia members, so-called "sovereign citizen" anarchists, white supremacists or anti-abortion radicals who killed or were caught plotting the murder of innocent people, local law enforcement officials and, of course, President Obama.
Now consider two incidents from last week, neither of which garnered much national attention.
On Jan. 17, a bomb later defused by authorities was found in a backpack at a Martin Luther King Day rally in Spokane, Wash. Also inside the backpack was a "Rally For Life" T-shirt from a 2010 anti-abortion event held in a nearby county. The next day, 200 sheet metal workers and painters union members burst into a Washington, D.C., hotel to protest a meeting of homebuilder executives whose companies benefited from nearly a billion dollars in federal tax breaks at a time when millions of Americans were losing their homes to foreclosure.
These incidents typify the glaring difference between how political anger is expressed by most on the left and the small but growing number on the radicalized right. Yes, sometimes environmentalists, Code Pink protestors or union members trespass or disturb the peace; what they don't do is try to kill their political opponents or innocent civilians.
Let me offer two final observations, and a challenge to my critics.
First, for decades, conservatives have insisted that culture influences action. Violent or sexed-up video games, television shows and movies, though fictional, are routinely blamed for contributing to drug use, promiscuous sex, illegitimacy, gang violence and other social ills. Yet somehow the daily rants by conservative radio and television personalities about tyrannical government, evil liberals and murdering abortionists, though not fictional, are wholly unrelated to the actions of a supposedly isolated, mentally disturbed few? Culture warriors want it both ways.
Second, imagine the reaction of Glenn Beck and his ilk had Muslim radicals, post-Sept. 11, shot police officers, killed churchgoers, bombed the Salt Lake City Olympics or flown planes into corporate headquarters. America would be put on Orange-level alert, and rightly so. Yet, despite an April 2009 report issued by the Department of Homeland Security warning that, amid rising economic insecurity and following the election of the nation's first African-American president, "lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat" in America, there will be no such alerts for domestic terrorism.
To my critics, I pose a simple challenge: Produce a comparable list of violent acts or attempted acts during the past two years perpetrated by those who support economic fairness, reproductive choice, universal health care, environmental protection, animal rights or any other liberal cause against corporate executives, pro-life organizers, small business owners or white evangelicals.
If you can, I'll retract this column and the previous one. Good luck.
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49 Comments so far
Show AllTouche!
Michelle Malkin tried to do this, and the results were truly pathetic. The worst she could come up with was some idiot spray-painting the words "KILL BUSH" on a wall somewhere, which of course is exactly the same thing as a national talk show host urging his viewers to shoot Democrats in the head, or a former vice-presidential candidate putting crosshairs on congressional districts.
I have a conservative friend that I have email debates with all the time. He strongly denied that there is ANY violent rhetoric on the Right. When I gave him a list of examples he said that those were just "isolated incidents" or that the perpetrators "weren't really conservatives" or that some cases on the list were "lies." He'd write, "When did that happen? I don't remember hearing about it!" (Yeah like I just made it up.)
He then turned around and said that the Left is FAR more violent than the Right. I asked for some examples and, of course, he talked about the Weather Underground from back in the 1960's. LOL. I asked for RECENT threats or acts of violence and he could not come up with any. But he was sure there was plenty of examples out there! He said he would research it and get back to me. I'm still waiting. :-)
The one I just love to hear when a right winger is confronted with facts is this: "Well, you can believe whatever you want to believe and I am free to do the same." I trace this approach back to fundamentalist preachers (they seem to have a lot in common with the fringe right) who for decades have denied reality and told their flocks that they could believe whatever they want to believe--as long as it agreed with the preacher's point of view. When a person accepts this approach as valid, no amount of evidence will ever convince them that there is such a thing as objective truth.
In recent times...
The UniBomber... But yes, the pickings on the Left for examples of violence are a bit thin compared to those on the Right.
---SWL
The UniBomber was a conservative fundamentalist ideologue against abortion, not a lefty.
grandma sue
I might have misinterpreted your post, TaxiMan, but if you would read the Unibomber's Manifesto, you would see that he was not a progressive by any measure.
He had almost equal disdain for both conservatives and liberals, and the one thing that he was most afraid of, and trying to stop, was unchecked progress in the form of technology.
In one of her many "I'm a victim" speeches when she defended her crosshairs on certain people she wanted eliminated during the election campaign (and apparently after since she left the poster up on her website until after the Tuscon massacre and attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gifford) as totally innocent and that crosshairs had been used by both parties, Palin said she and her children had received death threats. I never read either of her books, although I've read posted excerpts of the best parts of them, as well as her many rants against people saying all those bad things about her. Yet not once in all of them do I remember seeing anything about death threats to her or any of her children. And what real "Mama Grizzly" would not raise holy hell if one of her cubs were threatened?
It's just like all the right yelling that the Democrats had made death threats against Bush, but gave no particulars. These people simply have to say something, and it suddenly becomes fact. What's even worse is the deafening silence on the other side.
Is it a death threat to say I would like to see Bush and Cheney tried for war crimes and given the same punishment as Iraq's "war crime" president when found guilty, because I said that several times in comments on the internet. The irony here is that the Bible clearly says that we should leave vengeance up to God, and not take things into our own hands. Of course, I can't believe most on the right read the Bible, just the bits and pieces used by their leaders to distort the prophets' message. I also find that progressives, like myself, want a trial first. Even though justice may not be delivered in the end (ala mockingbird) our voice will be heard. Now that Habeas Corpus is caput, we can kiss that ideal goodbye.
Talk radio has been radical right wing for almost two decades. Talk radio is at least 91% radical right wing but it feels more like 100% radical right wing since the few liberal talk stations have very weak signals and in some areas of the country talk radio is actually 100% right wing flame throwers. The right wing always throws up this nonsense that NPR is left wing or the myth of a liberal controlled media so they need hate wing radio to counteract all the liberal controlled media. What a sick joke. Or wing nuts opine that there are no talented liberals for talk radio and that liberal talkers are boring. That's all bunkum. Most of these corporate owners are conservatives who have purged any liberal talkers as WABC 770 in NYC did. Their few remaining liberal talkers were doing well but were dropped in any case. The other factor is that Limbaugh became successful and so his modus operandi was slavishly copied and cloned all across the country. The hate wing radio(active) formula is nation wide, you can't escape it and it dominates cable TV, too. OK, you can escape it by not listening to the filth but go to any doctor's office, or any waiting room and more than likely, Fox News will be on the TV.
Other factors were the dropping of the Fairness Doctrine and Clinton's allowing of media conglomeration which means that 5 or 6 giant corporations control radio, TV and newspapers. Will the Internet be next?
"Will the Internet be next?"
If corporate America gets its way, yes.
JERZY: Excellent post! Note, too, that the demographic that largely listens to this crap is the same one statistically tied to violent crime. CD published an astute article on this subject over the weekend. That demographic is white males between the ages of 19-45, or something along those lines.
The omnipresent nature of these radio programs adds fuel to the internal rage held by many persons in this group, and likely presents the very sparks that ignite. It's a good bet that those who let loose on killing sprees were listeners!
Metaphorically speaking, if the person driving the car to a robbery counts as an accessory to a crime, why wouldn't similar culpability attach to the force that drives the already unbalanced (beyond the shores of reason) into acts of violence?
Two of my sources of information are NPR and the New York Times, both of which are castigated by the right-wing for being left-wing. Listening to NPR for a while every morning (before I retired, I heard an hour of it in the car, going to work), I have to conclude that people who make the claim of it being liberal don't listen to it. I hardly ever hear anyone interviewed who would be called a liberal, but I hear conservatives much of the time. That is fine, but I do not consider the network to be liberal.
I have been reading the NYT 5, 6, or 7 days a week (depending on how easy it was to get) since the summer of 1969, so I know something about it. As far as I am concerned, its editorials tend to be center-right. The Op-Ed page varies because they mix a few conservative columnists with a few liberal ones. They made William Safire respectable and now they are trying the same thing with David Brooks.
A liberal paper would not have published weekly editorials urging Janet Reno to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Clintons, or scathing editorials about the Monica Lewinsky business. A liberal paper would not have bought the crap that Judith Miller wrote justifying the invasion of Iraq.
The reason I continue to read it is partly because of the crossword puzzles, which I do Monday to Saturday (it's too hard to get it on Sunday, out here in the boondocks), and partly because of the articles behind the first page, dealing with things going on in NY and in other cities. They paint a picture of the nation that is not as ephemeral as it is portrayed in on-line media (I have not wasted my time watching TV more than a couple of times a year since 1957).
So, with that background out of the way, whenever I hear people saying the MSM are far to the left, I have to wonder which planet they live on - certainly not the one I am familiar with.
Mr. Schaller,
thank you for a fine article on right wing violence.
A small point - please refrain from calling sovereign citizens "anarchists." I have not heard them refer to themselves like this and I suspect that most of them would be ideologically comfortable with government if it did things their way - like enforce the Christian Bible as Law.
Most anarchists today are of the Left variety - even the ones that call themselves "post-left." You have a wonderful resource in your fine city called Red Emma's Books and Cafe on St. Paul that can illuminate the historical and modern anarchist movements quite well.
Most modern and historical anarchists have scathing critiques of capitalism and hierarchical social relations (politics and economics included under that broad mantel of "social"). The material on self described sovereign citizens that i have read indicates they are almost all right wingers, many are racist, and they are mostly looking for rhetorical excuses to not pay taxes or to make excuses for their failures in the marketplace they ideologically worship.
In addition, there is www.infoshop.org for info on the modern anarchist movement.
Thanks and have a great day.
That's too easy...
Politicians in DC are responsible for the bombing and mass murder of civilians everyday, too many to list. I know people will say that doesn't count but that would be a rationalization. The politicians are liberal, even neocons like the Republicans often support the agendas listed, not just Democrats, and they all try to achieve their political goals with an incredible amount of daily brutal murderous violence.
I win, retract your article.
sorry bud, you loose! not a good comparison but yes some merit.
Like I said in the comment, just a rationalization if you think it's a bad comparison.
"The politicians are liberal..."
Care to elaborate on that? What makes them liberal?
Tea Baggers and the Sturmabteilung are spiritual cousins.
Our government's violence provides the context for our "culture's" violence. This article is a myopic view of the problems we face.
Exactly, it needs to be said--it's our presidents who teach us that it's OK to act unilaterally, attack by surprise, shock and awe, stealth bombing and well, ya gotta accept some collateral damage. This country is way past its expiration date. We've become a culture of death, lead by psychopaths who kill (or have killed) innocents by the thousands. Kumbaya isn't going to cut it any more and the crazies are going to win. This too will pass.
I'd like to add to my other comment. There's so much hypocrisy and falsehood in this article, it's hard to know where to begin.
First, it would be easy to do what the author is asking. Take for example Seung-Hui Cho. His attacks were do to his rage against "the rich." This is the sort of rhetoric and anger I've seen on the left a lot. That's just one example but I just don't have the time to detail a list of others. Loughner actually had the Communist Manifesto listed as one of his favorite books on a profile somewhere and friends considered him a big liberal. So I guess that's another. Actually what about Clay Duke, he was angry about government budget cuts, another liberal cause! He also hated rich people and use a lot of left anti-wealthy rhetoric like Seung-Hui Cho. Wow, this is ridiculously easy. I'll stop there though.
But you know what, I don't agree with this whole premise. Another point is that there's a lot of crazy people out there and some are so crazy and mixed-up they lose it and "go postal." It's interesting that people used to associate this type of psychological breakdown with being a government employee and now people are trying to make it seem that people who don't like the government are the nutty ones. The bottom line is that you can use these tragedies as reason to hate people you don't agree with but that is another form of violent rhetoric actually. Remember the story before the first Gulf War of Iraqi soldiers killing babies which all turned out to be pro-war propaganda lies? Trying to convince people that a large group of a certain type of people are contemptible villians is the hateful rhetoric of a bigot. This article is itself hateful rhetoric. So, conservative people in general are more violent. Are blacks more likely to be criminals, are Jews cheap? The author wants people to look at Republican voters as violent horrible people, regardless of trying to preface his hateful rhetoric otherwise with the statement saying most conservatives aren't bad, it's just that it's more likely bad people are Republicans. I post a lot of comments about the murderous government on CD but it's more to point out the politics than the type of person responsible. And when the author says "conservatives" he's not talking about politics, he's talking about a type of person I believe. I'm not sure these wacko killing sprees are the responsibility of any specific politics other than the politics of people with very serious psychological problems which tend to just be confused nonsense. The violence during the 70's by liberals was the most clear cases of political violence in recent US history except for the isolated incidents of the Oklahoma City bombing or the Unabomber. The seventies violence was much more part of a consistent and widespread political movement. Nothing close has existed since. These are not political actions so trying to tie them to a political group is a political action itself and political propaganda and very violent and hateful propaganda at that. These are examples of crazy people going on shooting sprees.
And my last point ( for now ) is that this whole liberal vs. conservative, Dem vs. Repub perspective isn't the only political dynamic in the US today. I read Lew Rockwell and CD everyday. I agree and disagree with both. What I don't agree with at all is the propaganda in Fox News or Huff Post. So what about independent-minded progressives and libertarians vs. brainwashed msm morons? That's what we should be talking about no matter what the issue.
Ron Paul and Ralph Nader joining forces! ( On Fox News, ironically... but I originally came across it on a libertarian site. )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwIZ4syCFLc
Way to cherry-pick and distort the facts.
What's the weather like in your little bubble?
Seung-Hui Cho was mad at the world, mainly because everybody made fun of his speech impediment.
Loughner also read "Mein Kampf" which puts the kabosh on another one of your spins.
Face facts: there is no left-wing equivalent to the right-wing's violent aggression against its opponents.
I haven't read quotes of any of his friends calling him conservative, they all call him liberal. The point is he isn't either, he's crazy. The Unabomber and the Weathermen were political. Loughner is not political even though you want to turn the liberal vs. conservative politics into a violent argument, it isn't violent yet. There are no riots. There are few politically motivated domestic terrorist attacks. And personally I don't care about the whole argument because I think it's meaningless. I don't know whether I'm a liberal or a conservative or which I agree with because I think it's meaningless propaganda and I'm libertarian, individualist and anarchist. So who cares about any of this...
Ted Kaczynski was anything but political. He was anti-industrial-societal. He targeted conservatives and liberals alike. Read his manifesto.
You have some pretty hare-brained ideas; try researching them before printing them.
I have read his manifesto, it is very political. He goes on and on about liberals and their politics. What are you talking about? He's anarcho-primitivist. Publishing a manifesto itself is a political action! I don't even understand your comment. Sorry.
I should have guessed you were a libertarian.
I'm no fan of your ideology.
Where did you get "they all call him liberal"?
The left-leaning libertarian side can be appealing because it overlaps with liberals but the rest of libertarianism I'm no fan of either. There's plenty to like and dislike about libertarianism. My issue with a lot of libertarians is their silence on civil liberties all too often all the while still trying to justify failed economic libertarian policies.
' I don't know whether I'm a liberal or a conservative'
You're a conservative.
WILL C said:
"The bottom line is that you can use these tragedies as reason to hate people you don't agree with but that is another form of violent rhetoric actually. Remember the story before the first Gulf War of Iraqi soldiers killing babies which all turned out to be pro-war propaganda lies? Trying to convince people that a large group of a certain type of people are contemptible villians is the hateful rhetoric of a bigot. This article is itself hateful rhetoric."
This is right wing boilerpoint style meme all the way. The issue is not HATE, and the Left is not guilty of hatred. What's at stake is how language is used, and who gets to wield that power for what purposes. You are confusing those who point out what IS hateful, with those performing the acts! (Kind'a like blaming Julian Assange for endangering US overseas "operations" for pointing out the illegal and inhumane acts underway.)
Your attempt to conflate the crux of what matters with arguments about hatred is either misplaced, or smacks of a psy-ops-style deflection away from the evidence, itself.
As someone else related on this thread, the BEST the right can do is pull out events from the l960's or l970's to try to locate some example of violence utilized by the Left.
The Left teaches peace.
The right wants war and guns.
The Left teaches social justice.
The right defends the VIOLENCE bred by corporations on a daily basis.
Few in this forum see any of the last 4 presidential administrations as anything vaguely in the league of liberal, progressive, or what once was taken for the stance of the Democrats. That they all have blood on their hands and work in synch with the MIC is hardly proof that Progressives or The Left are violence-prone.
I'd hate to hear what you have to say about global climate change.
You take facts and bend them to suit your own false constructs. Nice try at spreading the hatred around...
My politics are libertarian which is considered rightwing but there's often debate about whether is makes more sense to consider it leftwing. Historically it was leftwing, that's why it is called classical liberalism. The meaning of leftwing and rightwing was turned on its head during the Progressive Era. The politics of people like me are very anti-corporatist and anti-war. In fact, the reason I am libertarian is because I come from a Quaker background and my ancestors for several hundred years have protested big government, war and slavery etc... My ancestors were major participants in the underground railroad but also opposed the Civil War. So try to fit that fact into simplistic political stereotypes. I was educated in small alternative schools by radical sixties peace activists, some of whom couldn't teach their scheduled classes because they were in jail every once in a while. Don't try to pigeonhole my politics. I am anti-tax because I am anti-war. Something else that people are too stupid today to understand. This article is hate rhetoric and the "left" or Democrats can be just as hateful as Republicans. I think Julian Assange is a hero if he's for real but I suspect there's the possibility of a psyops honeypot going on in that whole story. If you think the Democrats historically don't have blood on their hands you should really do some more reading on the history of big government left and war. They were much more pro-war than Republicans of the Old Right. The Old Right was non-interventionist. The Dems started the Cold War under Truman. I did just give examples like the ones in the article that twist the actions of a few crazy people to seem like they were based on a political movement but I think it is a ridiculous to try to do so. I don't know why you say I can't find examples when I just listed several.
You can't find any examples relative to the article.
Like most conservatives--and rest assured, you are a (very mixed up) conservative--you are cherry-picking data from historical examples that are often taken out of context.
For example, bringing up the Cold War as a result of "liberal" Truman and using it as an example of left-wing violence similar to that listed in the article renders it absurd.
What next? You gonna start telling us Jesus drove out the money-changers and use that as an example of left-wing violence?
Dear Thomas Schaller,
Grow up. Stop the silly nonsense.
Conservatives Deconstructed
by Joel Bleifuss
In These Times magazine, October 2003
Are they nuts?
Have you ever wondered about those ubiquitous conservatives?
Why do they support tax breaks for the rich when so many of their fellow citizens are in dire straits? Why do they applaud John Ashcroft and his post-9/11 curtailment of civil liberties? Why do they oppose laws that address historic wrongs and enforce constitutionally guaranteed rights? Why do they respond to a societal drug problem with incarceration and expanded prison construction? Why do they gut regulations that are meant to protect the environment? Why do they invest more than half of our tax dollars in the military? Why are they so meanspirited? In other words, why do conservatives do what they do? Are they nuts?
No, not according to a fascinating new study in Psychological Bulletin, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition." Conservatives do, however, possess certain psychological traits and motives that no one in their right (or is that left?) mind would want to share.
The study's four authors, John T. Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Frank J. Sulloway, write, "People embrace political conservatism (at least in part) because it serves to reduce fear, anxiety and uncertainty; to avoid change, disruption and ambiguity; and to explain, order and justify inequality among groups and individuals." To come to this conclusion the authors examined 88 different psychological studies conducted between 1958 and 2002 that involved 22,818 people from 12 different countries. They boiled that information down into a number of psychological attributes that are closely associated with people who are politically conservative.
Rigid and closed-minded
"Dogmatism has been found to correlate consistently with authoritarianism, political-economic conservatism, and the holding of right wing opinions," write the authors. Conversely, studies have found that conservatives in general have little tolerance for ambiguity. A fact that helps in decoding this statement that George W. Bush made in Genoa, Italy: "I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right."
Such thinking could explain why the Bush administration officials ignored those intelligence reports that failed to support going to war with Iraq. "[Conservatives'] intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic clichés and stereotypes," write the authors.
Numerous studies have also shown that conservative policymakers entertain less cognitively complex thoughts than their liberal or moderate counterparts. A study of speeches made in the House of Commons in 1984 found that "the most integratively complex politicians were moderate socialists." Their complexity of thought was found to be significantly higher than that of extreme socialists, moderate conservatives or extreme conservatives. Similarly, in the United States, a study of speeches on the floor of the Senate in 1975 and 1976 found that senators with liberal or moderate voting records exhibited significantly more complex thinking than their conservative counterparts.
That explains a lot, doesn't it. Bush again comes to mind. As he told a British reporter, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think."
Further studies show that conservatives have been found to shun new, stimulating experiences and to avoid situations where the outcome is uncertain.
The authors write that the fact that conservatives are "less tolerant of ambiguity, less open to new experiences, and more avoidant of uncertainty. may help explain why "congressional Republicans and other prominent conservatives in the United States have sought unilaterally to eliminate public funding for the contemporary arts."
From an early age, conservatives demonstrate a personal need for order and structure. One study has shown that conservative teens are more likely to say they are "neat, orderly and organized" than are liberal adolescents. The authors note that this desire for set rules correlates with the examples of mental rigidity mentioned above, and can be seen in the political realm when conservatives attempt to order their own and other's lives by advocating drug testing, core educational curriculum, controls on people with AIDS, and strict parental control of children.
Impulsively aggressive
R.A. Altemeyer, a psychologist who has extensively studied people with right-wing beliefs, has observed:
[Right-wing authoritarians] see the world as a dangerous place, as society teeters on the brink of self-destruction from evil and violence. This fear appears to instigate aggression in them. Second, right-wing authoritarians tend to be highly self righteous. They think themselves much more moral and upstanding than others - a self perception considerably aided by self-deception.... This self-righteousness disinhibits their aggressive impulses and releases them to act out their fear-induced hostilities.
George Will seems steeped in that fear. To illustrate that point the authors quote this passage from an essay by Will: "Conservatives know the world is a dark and forbidding place where most new knowledge is false, most improvements are for the worse." Psychological studies back Will up. People with right-wing personalities hold more pessimistic views and left-wing personalities hold more optimistic ones. And that pessimism and optimism appears to inform how conservatives and liberals view their fellow humans. A 1984 survey of "emotional reactions to welfare recipients" found that conservatives "expressed greater disgust and less sympathy" than liberals.
While this propensity of conservatives to be threatened and fearful does not appear to induce neurotic behavior, one study of dream lives discovered that Republicans had three times as many nightmares as Democrats, indicating that fear, anger and aggression might be a factor in the subconscious motivations of conservatives.
The authors speculate that this susceptibility to fear "may help explain why military defense spending and support for national security receive much stronger backing from conservative than liberal political leaders."
Afraid of loss
It has long been known that conservatives resist change while progressives accept change. Indeed, according to studies, this is the most common way that people from both groups self-define themselves.
"To the extent that conservatives are especially sensitive to the possibilities of loss-one reason why they wish to preserve the status quo-it follows that they should be generally more motivated by negatively framed outcomes (potential losses) than by positively framed outcomes (potential gains)."
Consequently, conservatives respond better to threats. In a study conducted five days before the 1996 presidential election, researchers presented voters with persuasive arguments that stressed either the potential rewards of voting ("it is a way to express and live in accordance with important values") or the potential losses from not voting ("not voting allows others to take away your right to express your values"). More generally, the authors suggest that "framing events in terms of potential losses rather than gains leads people to adopt cognitively conservative, as opposed to innovative, orientations."
Haunted by death
Of course, the greatest personal loss is death. Studies demonstrate that the people who most fear death are the most conservative. More generally, the fear of death and the resulting protective posture that such a threat engenders cause people to become conservative and to strongly "defend culturally valued norms and practices" and "to distance themselves from, and even to derogate, out-group members to greater extent." Similarly, the fear of death has also been linked to "system-justifying forms of stereotyping and enhanced liking for stereotype-consistent women and minority group members" and "greater punitiveness, and even aggression, toward those who violate cultural values." Applying that knowledge, the authors write, "High profile terrorist attacks such as those of September 11, 2001, might simultaneously increase the cognitive accessibility of death and the appeal of political conservatism."
While trying to retain the impartiality of scientists, albeit social ones, the authors warn that the available evidence indicates that governments can manipulate people's conservative tendencies by raising the specter of death. They write, "Priming thoughts of death has been shown to increase intolerance, out-group derogation, punitive aggression, veneration of authority figures and system justification."
That is what we have seen in the wake of 9/11 as public opinion and media coverage took a sharp turn to the right, setting the stage for pre-emptive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The authors acknowledge what has long been assumed by sociologists, economists, and political scientists: people adopt conservative beliefs to serve their own self interests. They agree that this helps explain the conservatism of "upper-class elites." However, the authors hold that the personal need to "reduce fear, anxiety, dissonance, uncertainty or instability" better explains why a vastly greater number of people who are not part of the elite, and particularly those who are disadvantaged or from low-status groups, "might embrace right-wing ideologies."
The authors also take issue with the common notion that people inherit ideological beliefs from their parents. A statistically significant correlation exists between the two, but it is far from overwhelming. The authors maintain, "Conservative ideologies, like virtually all other belief systems, are adopted in part because they satisfy various psychological needs."
Conservatives have not taken kindly to "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition." Will, perhaps fearing the truth, ridiculed the study in the Washington Post, making fun of the authors' academic jargon.
Yet this delineation of the psychological needs that motivate conservatives provides progressives with lessons on how they might communicate with a wider audience. For example, when speaking to the problems of the PATRIOT Act, administration critics could reach out to a conservative audience by emphasizing that the act presents a radical infringement on the Bill of Rights, and should therefore be opposed by all who value the precepts on which America was founded.
Being a conservative myself, I can attest that - for the most part - this analysis is quite accurate. This is also why I'v tried to get the Lefties to LISTEN to what conservatives are saying and to address their fears.
While I am a traditional (anti-war, free-trade) conservative like most of my family and friends, many of the descriptions fit, although their stronger effects are mitigated by 'common sense' - accurate risk-assessment, if you will.
Never rule out the power of paranoia when dealing with any kind of conservative - group-think can lead to disasterously wrong conclusions on their part regarding the real threat (which is why they react so violently). The survival instinct is very strong - and when these people think their very survival is at stake, they can be absolutely insane in their responses (and justifications).
I think familial influence is very important - my parents were quite aware of the shortcomings of a conservative mindset and worked to keep the worst features in check. However, being so aware of risk means that the 'Kumbaya' Lefties were considered NUTS as well as the sociopathic fascists (the ultimate in control-freaks). Control being largely an illusion, I've seen conservatives who find themselves in an out-of-control situation flip completely out of their minds - and it is scary. (Just keep them away from their guns when they get like this.)
It would have been nice if the more positive aspects of the conservative mindset were also included in this otherwise fair assessment. Traits like self-discipline, thrift, efficiency, generosity, honesty, and fairness are also strong in conservatives. It's not all bad - which is what I get from this post - but can be disastrous when carried to the extreme (which is likely to happen when others insist that 'nothing is wrong' and fears are unfounded).
Also, it has been discovered (of late) that there are some physical aspects to conservative actions/reactions - PET scans and studies of the amygdala (part of the brain that responds to threats and danger) illustrate marked differences in the way the brain signals are processed. Greater empathy can just as easily be a response as greater fear - hence the 'sense of loss' described here as 'fear of loss' might explain why conservatives have LESS sympathy for the unfortunate (or the victims of fate) because they feel the emotion more strongly than others and tend to distance themselves (dissociae) from it.
I thought that even traditional conservatives believed in fair trade when it came to outside the US. "Free trade" within the US I could remember them believing in. Please correct me if I'm wrong though. Thanks.
What are we even talking about here? I thought these "conservatives" were identified by opposing government. But the type of conservative in this article is authoritarian. Those can't be the same personality type we're discussing. Unless liberal politics has become the new establishment which would make liberals the conservatives who want to support the authority figures. And then conservatives would be the liberals for questioning authority. So then is this article about conservative liberals like people who support big government programs like national healthcare and other nanny state programs? I think liberal vs. conservative thinking is losing a lot of meaning and relevance these days. But then again, I'm a libertarian "conservative" and we tend to want to most radical change and question the establishment the most. Or am I then a libertarian "liberal"? Who cares...
WILL: You create a false dichotomy.
Conservatives DO support authoritarian governments; but if the right wing reactionaries they listen to manage to mangle their minds with lies... such things as Obama is a socialist--than naturally they will rebel against said government. To them, such a government would be inauthentic to the values they harbor.
How about reading an actual book on the topic before contributing a baseless opinion? Chris Hedges' "American Fascists," or John Dean's "Conservatives Without Conscience," are both excellent.
EZE: What is not mentioned is the link between the fear of death and the canard about hell and damnation. Many conservatives are religious fundamentalists, and their fear of death is closely related to their fear of sin and going to hell.
It's a shame that this area of potential research (and the analogies it raises) was overlooked.
No. It's the other way around - they find fundamentalism attractive because it embraces their fear of death. My family is atheist, so religion plays no part in our conservative mindset. I am not afraid of getting killed - faced death many times - but find death revolting, which is not exactly the same thing as 'fear of death' unless you use the old definition of 'fear' as being 'respect' - which is how I interpret it.
Also, SOME conservatives support authoritarianism because they want to know SOMEBODY is driving their runaway train (and the fast pace of modern society often translates into 'runaway train' for conservatives). I was taught to always question authority - that respect has to be earned. However, 'knowing your place' has a certain appeal to all people - knowing you have a place in society, that is, and that you will not be left out in the cold to fend for yourself in that hostile world. Probably why the military is so attractive to conservatives - not because of the heirarchy, per se, but because of the sense that everyone has a place, and the rules are fairly clear to and for everybody. (The sense of 'control' mitigates fear.)
EZE: You're posting GREAT stuff today.
The same Creator that designed marsupials sometimes consigns love among the unlikely. I qualify. Living out here in the wilderness my dating options are limited, and so I've been seeing (we take periodic breaks) a young conservative guy. One thing we both like is bike riding. I let him do the "man" thing by generally allowing him to lead. Since he's 11 years younger than I am, and has never given birth, he's sometimes faster (LOL). Anyway, one recent afternoon we came to a divide and therefore a choice had to be made. Now to the linear, non-ambiguous mind, the choice is a simple left or right number. (I failed 2 driving tests because the PREMISE of left and right does NOT come naturally to me. I actually have to touch my right hand, remind myself that's the one I write with, and THEN I can answer.)
Somehow I turned the other direction and he went into madness. I thought he was joking or parodying the matter, but he took it very seriously that I inadvertently went in the OTHER direction.
We've had arguments about the US forest service. Every time I see another patch decimated I want to scream, cry, or find a way to stop the landscape carnage. He says there are LOTS of trees, and that men need those jobs. I respond that instead of signs saying "Men Working," they might as well just say, "Men Killing," as so much work today seems directly related to annihilating something (or someone).
A mind like his is GREAT for carpentry and any work that requires exact, linear cuts. (I can't do any of that!) However, the ambiguity DOES drive him crazy and his father is exactly the same way. I often think that living in Gainesville and North Florida presents me with a political version of Dianne Fossey's experiences among the apes.
It has given rise to a comedic musical, "Born Again," which who knows, maybe one day will use humor to demonstrate many of the points you articulated in your post.
Right now we have rains that must resemble those that flooded Australia...
Gracias Siouxrose. Maybe conservatives can change. See Jake Sully in Avatar or some that move to San Francisco.
Thanks for posting this! It is very interesting - and very accurate.
"Yes, sometimes environmentalists, Code Pink protestors or union members trespass or disturb the peace; what they don't do is try to kill their political opponents or innocent civilians."
...or stomp on anybody's heads...
One other factoid: Pres. Obama has received significantly more death threats that any previous President or presidential nominee.
One estimate has Obama receiving 30 death threats every day.
http://tinyurl.com/nwbtb3
Another source states that death threats have increased 400% since Obama's inauguration.
http://tinyurl.com/5r7mfzz
The FBI seems to be more interested getting a young boy to build a bomb so they get credit of an arrest instead of going after the ones like Beck/Palin who are encouraging people to murder. 9 times in the last decade I have read horror stories of Christian "conservatives" running trucks and motorcycles into hospitals and health centers for women. Their excuse? They took them to be "abortion clinics". No arrest or nothing on them and they're free to terrorize. Beck has stated names on his show, & stated they should be SHOT IN THE HEAD and Palin indicates the same. All this begs a few questions that while I probably already know the answers to should be asked for everyone to think hard about.
Whose side is the FBI on?
Is the FBI on Koch's payroll?
What happened to the FBI of the old days?
Gosh I feel sorry for the conservative student that has to sit and listen to this man spew out such garbage and I am feeling sorry for myself thinking my tax dollars help pay his salary.
It's not that bad. We conservatives have taken a lot worse since the lunatic-fringe of fascists came to power. Besides, EZ had a good post in the comments above. As for that student - it would be good for him/her to learn about the problems conservatives have - how their thinking can be so easily skewed and get them ostrasized (the worst thing in the world for someone who is already fearful).