Your Nightly Wingnuts: RW Psychology Edition

As the RW seemingly goes more nuts every single day, and appears particularly deranged at this moment -- what with a popular librul in the WH and teabagging and the DHS report highlighting increased RW threats -- this seems like a good time to revisit Glenn Greenwald's classic 2006 post: John Dean and Authoritarian Cultism - a Review of "Conservatives Without Conscience" (2006). Glenn wrote:

... this examination of what has become the so-called "conservative" movement (composed of Bush followers, neoconservatives and hard-core religious conservatives) comes at the perfect time.

With 2 1/2 years still left for this administration, the true radicalism of the administration and its followers has become unavoidably, depressingly clear, and it is equally clear that this movement has not reached anywhere near the peak of its extremism. Dean's central thesis explains why that is so.

Dean contends, and amply documents, that the "conservative" movement has become, at its core, an authoritarian movement composed of those with a psychological and emotional need to follow a strong authority figure which provides them a sense of moral clarity and a feeling of individual power, the absence of which creates fear and insecurity in the individuals who crave it. By definition, its followers' devotion to authority and the movement's own power is supreme, thereby overriding the consciences of its individual members and removing any intellectual and moral limits on what will be justified in defense of their movement.

Dean relies on substantial social science data to illustrate the personality type that seeks out authoritarian movements. But his case is made much more persuasively by what one can visibly see unfolding before one's own eyes.

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And there is seemingly no limit -- literally -- on the willingness, even eagerness, of Bush supporters to defend and justify even the most morally repugnant abuses -- from constantly expanding spying on American citizens, to a President who claims and aggressively exercises the "right" to break the law, to torturing suspects, imprisoning journalists, and turning the United States into the most feared and hated country on the planet.

And as radical as the administration has become, it is clear that the administration has not even come close to reaching the level of extremism which would be necessary for its supporters to object -- if such a limit exists at all. If anything, on those exceedingly few occasions over six years when his followers have dissented from the Presidents's decisions -- illegal immigration, Harriet Miers, the Dubai port deal -- it has been not because the administration was too radical, extremist, militaristic and uncompromising -- but insufficiently so.

Bush supporters want more spying, much more aggressive actions against investigative journalists and even domestic political opposition, more death and violence brought to the Middle East, more wars, and still fewer restraints on the President's powers, to the extent there are any real limits left. To them, the Bush administration has not been nearly as extremist and aggressive as it ought to be in dealing with the Enemies. And that is to say nothing of the measures that would be urged, and almost certainly imposed, in the event of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil or in the increasingly likely event that our limited war in Iraq expands into the Epic War of Civilizations which so many of them crave.

Ultimately, as Dean convincingly demonstrates, the characteristic which defines the Bush movement, the glue which binds it together and enables and fuels all of the abuses, is the vicious, limitless methods used to attack and demonize the "Enemy," which encompasses anyone -- foreign or domestic -- threatening to their movement. What defines and motivates this movement are not any political ideas or strategic objectives, but instead, it is the bloodthirsty, ritualistic attacks on the Enemy de jour -- the Terrorist, the Communist, the Illegal Immigrant, the Secularist, and most of all, the "Liberal."

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It is a movement devoted to the destruction of its enemies wherever they might be found. And it finds new ones, in every corner and seemingly on a daily basis, because it must. That is the food which sustains it.

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... which leads perfectly into the top-down AstroTurf teabagging movement that perfectly fits into Dean's core, authoritarian thesis..

atrios has a Deep Thought: Tomorrow there will be a teabagging party in Love Park.

Olberman and Wolfe on Teabagging's Seminal Moment:

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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

John Cole: First They Came For…

Charles Johnson. Then they went after AJ Strata.

For the life of me, I can not imagine why any conservative would read that nothing burger of a DHS report that talks about pretty commonly known stuff (have these people whinging about the report never been to the SPLC or ADL website, for goodness sakes?), look at it and say to themselves “When they are talking about dangerous right-wing extremists, they are talking about me!” Too absurd for words. Unless, of course…

In other news, Glenn Beck rambled on about secession again today while the Texas legislature worked on a bill regarding their sovereignty. I’m sure you all remember that the right-wing extremist who just killed three cops in Pittsburgh was very concerned about those issues.

Just a coincidence, of course.

Daily Kos' JedL: General Beck moves from tea bags to secession

Somebody seems to have fond memories of the civil war:

You can’t convince me that the Founding Fathers wouldn’t allow you to secede.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact, and if a state says: ‘I don’t want to go there, because that’s suicide, they have a right to back out. They have a right — people have a right to not commit economic suicide...

...Texas says go to hell, Washington, which by the way has been said before. I believe it was Davey Crocket...it’s about time that somebody says that again."

Dave Neiwert talks about this kind of rhetoric is his new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right:

Not only has the village lunatic gained permission to continue wandering the town square poking everyone he dislikes in the eye with a sharp stick, but he gets to claim victimhood when the victims respond angrily. Unfortunately, in the process, the whole village is transformed, and not for the better.

Outside of the blogosphere, most media outlets have either ignored Beck's rise at Fox or handled him with kid gloves. But he's not some amusing little cry baby; he's radicalizing the mainstream American right in ways that aren't good for this country.

No one has ever accused Fox of being anything other than a front for the GOP. But at least then they weren't looking to tear apart the country. Now, barely three months after losing power, a secession-minded host is the face of their network.

Is there anybody at Fox willing to stand up to this nutcase?

Update by Jed (5:25PM) -- Uh, General Beck, Dallasdoc needs a word with you:

Davy Crockett died at the Alamo (46+ / 0-)

He was fighting to secede from Mexico, for Chrissakes, and it was 1836. Is Beck as ignorant of history as he is of everything else?

I know, I know ... simple answers to simple questions.

Yglesias: Richard Burr is Trying to Start Bank Runs

Via Chris Orr, some irresponsible talk from Senator Richard Burr, who really ought to know better:

During a speech on the economy last night, [Sen. Richard] Burr related his immediate reaction the week the crisis began.

“On Friday night, I called my wife and I said, ‘Brooke, I am not coming home this weekend. I will call you on Monday. Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take,” Burr said, according to the Hendersonville Times-News. “And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday.’ I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash.”

Thanks to deposit insurance, there’s no actual need for people to be worried. But Senator Burr’s effort to whip people into a panic could lead to runs and bank failures. That, in turn, will lead to people losing jobs. People could even lose their business through no fault of their own other than having customers who chose to take the words of a United States Senator seriously. I’m having a hard to imagining what Burr could have been thinking.