Extreme political rhetoric in the crosshairs

In the aftermath of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), a federal judge and several others on Saturday, the million dollar question seems to be what role the increasingly vitriolic and even violent political rhetoric in America’s political discourse may have played in encouraging such acts.

The shooting left Giffords in intensive care, fighting for her life, six others dead, including the chief judge of the federal judicial district for Arizona, and over a dozen wounded, allegedly at the hands of 22-year-old Jared Loughner and his 9 mm Glock.

The media and political partisans have been scouring the web for explanations and justifications for Loughner’s actions. He has been labeled a mentally troubled individual who acted on his own, or leftist lunatic, or a right wing radical, depending on the source one reads.

Many, including Giffords herself before she was shot, have noted that Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and a former GOP candidate for Vice President, targeted her district in the last election — literally. Her political action committee created a map identifying the 20 districts they were targeting, using rifle sites to mark those districts. That map has since been removed. Palin has also used other violent metaphors, including Tweeting that conservatives should not retreat but should “reload.”

But such metaphors are not limited to Palin or to conservatives, they have become quite common across the political spectrum. Partisans on both sides often use military terminology — wars, battles, ground game, attrition, etc. — to describe campaigns and policy disputes.

Messenger spoke to three sources for their views on the question: Has politic rhetoric ratcheted up to the point where it is encouraging violent reactions, at least by the most marginal among us?

The experts are Jeffrey Feldman, a professor at New York University and an author of such books as “Framing the Debate” and “Outright Barbarous.” He also runs the website Frameshopisopen.com. Feldman has a PhD in cultural anthropology. Messenger also spoke with Joe Munem, a political operative in Michigan working on Republican campaigns. And finally Messenger spoke to Gene Clem, president of the Southwest Michigan Tea Party Patriots group.

Messenger first spoke to Feldman in 2008 about the rise of extremist rhetoric in the presidential campaign accusing then-Democratic nominee Barack Obama of being tied to terrorists. Here is what Feldman had to say in 2008:

In a phone interview, Feldman argues that comments like Palin’s statement that Obama “pals around with terrorists” are a form of violent rhetoric. “But first,” he says, “it’s necessary to specify that ‘violent rhetoric’ is not just language that directly incites a person to commit an act of violence (e.g., ‘kill him now!’), but also rhetoric that frames political issues in terms of violent consequences (e.g., ‘liberals were responsible for 9/11′).

“So,” continues Feldman, “when Palin says that Obama is ‘palling around with terrorists,’ she is unfolding a much larger argument about Democrats being tied to terrorists, such that a vote for Obama will have all the violent consequences that terrorism brings as a public threat. As a result of repeating that phrase, the crowds called for Obama to be dealt with like a terrorist (e.g., death penalty).”

The Giffords’ shooting has raised a question about the First Amendment and its role in America, Feldman said.

“It (the First Amendment) was meant to protect people from being silenced by the government,” Feldman said. “I think that now we have a very different situation. The most powerful force of rhetoric is the privately held partisan media. How do we reign that in without violating the First Amendment?”

During the 2008 campaign, Feldman said the “alarming” thing about the rhetoric was that it moved the political opposition from being wrong to being a “mortal threat.”

And that rhetoric, Feldman pointed out, continued after Obama won the presidency. He pointed to frequent Republian references to non-existent “death panels” as an example of language and rhetoric that transforms one’s political opponents from merely being wrong to being a mortal threat to people’s lives.

Clem, the Tea Party activist, says that the rhetoric is not anything new. In the use of gun metaphors, such as the sights on targeted districts from the Palin PAC, it could well be a matter of miscued national language. He points out that gun metaphors have a very different meaning to some one in the upper peninsula than for some one in an urban area.

“Those things have been out there. That by itself isn’t what causes some one to do what was done in Tucson,” Clem said.

He talked about how his organization monitored the language on signs being brought into various rallies. He said things that could be racist or advocated violence were turned away. He also said that at one point a person showed up at a rally with his handgun on his hip, in plain view. While that is not illegal in Michigan, Clem said organizers asked the person to put his weapon in his car to prevent any misunderstanding about the tea party as being nonviolent as a political movement.

“One of the criteria has to be that people are good people, and not inflammatory,” Clem said. “If you use certain kinds of language you get certain reactions. If you use conciliatory language some people are more likely to listen to you.”

Regardless, Clem says the heated inflammatory language being used in politics are not responsible for the shooting incident in Tucson.

Munem, the GOP operative, agrees with Clem.

“Did that rhetoric somehow prompt this? No way,” says Munem.

Munems says the rhetoric flying around in politics is not anything new.

“I don’t think it’s any different than it ever has been in this nation. I think it’s easier to access,” Munem says of political rhetoric. “There’s always been hot rhetoric in politics.”

“I think there are people who do anything to discredit Sarah Palin,” Munem said. “In hindsight it probably wasn’t wise to use the rifle sights on her target map, but was it OK to target people she disagrees with? Absolutely.”

Other experts note that there are likely many other societal inputs into such behavior. Times of economic uncertainty, for example, tend to make those at the margins of society more vulnerable to messages of fear and more likely to personalize their focus on an enemy as a way of justifying their condition and finding someone to blame for it. That, psychologists say, can also contribute to driving someone like Loughner over the edge.