Is Hysterical Right-Wing Media Pushing the Unhinged Over the Edge?

[babylonsister]

Is Hysterical Right-Wing Media Pushing the Unhinged Over the Edge?

By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet. Posted April 11, 2009.

AlterNet readers had a lot to say about a recent article arguing that right-wing media may have fueled the Pittsburgh killer's rage.


Confronted with a wildly popular president prone to few gaffes, conservative media are having trouble coming up with ways to successfully smear Barack Obama's administration.

So, they have resorted to propagating insane conspiracy theories. Fox News is giving airtime to 9/11-truther Alex Jones, while Fox anchor Glenn Beck has spouted off about a "new world order” and mused about the existence of "FEMA-managed concentration camps."

The conservative media's embrace of paranoid right-wing ideas should serve as a mildly entertaining gauge of the movement's implosion. Except, Max Blumenthal points out in an article recently published on AlterNet, the legitimization of the uber-fringe may further unhinge mentally deranged individuals and spur them to act out their paranoid fantasies.

Blumenthal points out that Richard Poplawski, the 22-year-old Pittsburgh man who allegedly killed three police officers, was an avid Jones fan and was reportedly petrified that the government would take away his guns.

Blumenthal quotes David Neiwert, a veteran reporter on right-wing militia movements, who says: "It's always been a problem when major-league demagogues start promulgating false information for political gain. ... What it does is unhinge fringe players from reality and dislodges them even further. When someone like Poplawski hears Glenn Beck touting 'One World Government' and 'they're gonna take your gun' theories, they believe then that it must be true. And that's when they really become crazy.

more...

http://www.alternet.org/story/135981/is_hysterical_right-wing_media_pushing_the_unhinged_over_the_edge/?page=entire

[EmilyAnne]

1. My husband took a cab home from the airport Thursday night and had to listen to Bill O'Reilly the

whole way home.
He has never listened to this stuff and was blown away.
The entire show was anti-Obama and very fear based.
After the shooting here in Pittsburgh (in our neighborhood), he said that he can see how someone who already had mental problems would get terrified after listening to this stuff.
And this was just an average Thursday night.
And it wasn't even the most extreme if it (Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann).

He finally told the driver, "I don't know how you can listen to this stuff."
The guy's response was, "oh, you're an Obama."
"An Obama?"

[babylonsister]

2. Can you imagine people listening to the crap all day, every day?

It's mind-boggling. Makes me able to understand the concept of brainwashing, too.

[KharmaTrain]

3. It's A Pissing Contest...

The GOOP is a party without leadership and direction...other than down. Their "big tent" has fractured into little pup tents with big dogs barking from within...and all trying to both protect their turf and pretend they're still real tough. There's a power vacuum where the weak and corrupt party establishment can't control...has lost the moderates and independents and all that's left are the most strident "true believers"...and even they're bitterly divided.

As is said, chaos loves a vacuum and there are many trying to create the chaos and fill the vacuum. Rushbo leads the pack, but by no means is the leader. All across the hate radio dial, the venom spewers are all trying to out outrage one another to be heard about all the other spewers. They all see the vacuum and want to take their shot at filling it. They have no ideas...no real concept of issues other than talking points, thus their vebosity is all that matters.

Consider a lot of what we see as caged animals. Fortunately they're caged, but still dangerous...especially if you go to close to the cage.

[Berry Cool]

4. They got started early, too.

Remember how the argument of some of them that Obama couldn't be allowed to win the election was premised on the idea that if he won, there would be rioting and looting in the streets? On that very night, black people would break into white people's houses, throw them out and take them over...and as soon as Obama was in office, he'd pass laws declaring the white race inferior, and subjecting all whites to apartheid laws in which blacks lorded it over whites...

Of course, if he DIDN'T win, there would also be rioting and looting in the streets--the angry kind. And a race war. And all the white people would be killed.

Well...um, he won, and...no rioting, no looting, no apartheid. Maybe that made some of the milder crazies realize that some of this stuff was hyped up beyond all common sense. But others...they have yet to be dissuaded from the idea that Catastrophe is just around the corner...they are going to be on the bottom, and Someone Else Not Them is going to be on top...unless they Do Something. Something drastic.

The irony? Most of them are on the bottom already, but it's not black people holding them down...it's rich white people.

[steven johnson]

5. For people I know -- yes -- Too Much Fox News Fuels Paranoia

There seems to be a direct correlation between the number of guns people I know own and the amount of right wing media they watch and listen to. The more Fox News they can quote, the more Rush Limbaugh talking points they can quote, the more guns and gold they own.