With the talk today over the lack of civil discourse in our nation, its impact on the terrorist attack outside a supermarket in Phoenix, AZ, and Mark DeMoss announcing his intention to disband his "Civility Project," this book couldn't have come at a more appropriate time.
Author David Neiwert starts out with the story of David Adkisson, the man who went into a Church in Knoxville, killing three people, hell bent on killing all the liberals he could find. Three conservative books found in his home apparently aroused him to action. He refers to such books by his subtitle, "How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right," which he says lead to the title, "The Eliminationists." Events since then, leading to the death of a doctor in KS and the shooting of a Congresswoman in AZ, bear out his thesis and make this a worthwhile read.
Elimination has been a part of our history ever since settlers arrived in the New World. First, the Native American was eradicated by starvation, exposure, and murder. With slavery abolished, the freed African became a threat, especially to the chastity of white women (supposedly). A reign of American terror spread with lynchings happening every year for decades. Hundreds or thousands attended some of them, as entertainment. Next, whole communities of Asians were segregated and in some cases, massacred. That continued with the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.
The author's point is that not only has it always been with us, it never left us, and it has a chance to grow, especially through the talk of the radicalized right whose ideas, once considered extreme and irrational are now making it to the mainstream. Once radical talk becomes mainstream, it is not long before people take action based on such talk. And the radical right is doing the same thing that our forebears did to the American Indian, freed slave and Asian. They are creating enemies of anyone with a different political point of view until enemies take on the characteristics of non-humans. The eliminationist feels he has a legitimate reason for killing the enemy and becoming a hero, because you cannot be hero unless you have enemies.
The radical talk he describes is from the right and has two approaches to seizing power: seeing liberals as competitors rather than partners in citizenship and seeing liberals as objects to be eliminated. At the same token, Niewert does not see liberalism as blameless. To him, the liberal charge of fascism has been used so often and in so many circumstances, as to become meaningless. Liberal feelings of intellectual superiority also do nothing to enhance rational dialogue between conservative and liberal. A confrontational face-off will contribute only to a downward spiral of events and contention.
The incremental inroads of extremism are almost imperceptible and if allowed to continue will one day mean that democracy is lost and fascism, in an American form, has replaced it.
David Neiwert's writing is useful and presented in an interesting and compelling way. His historical insights are significant and are important to his argument of a growing intolerance and division in this country.
Don't eliminate this from your list of things to read. It's a calm and rational talk about hate talk.
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Top reviews from other countries
- Kindle CustomerReviewed in Canada on May 27, 2009
A cautionary view of a country on a precipice
