Author worries about rising use of ‘violent rhetoric’ in McCain stump speeches

Author Jeffrey Feldman (photo: Angela Radulescu via Flickr.com)

With only 13 days left to go before Americans cast their ballots for the next president, news media are reporting that supporters of Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona and vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska are shouting out epithets like “kill him” at the mention of Sen. Barack Obama’s name at rallies.

The issue has been steadily growing in the national media, and even drew a response from McCain in last week’s final presidential debate.

McCain: Let me just say categorically I’m proud of the people that come to our rallies. Whenever you get a large rally of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people, you’re going to have some fringe peoples. You know that. And I’ve — and we’ve always said that that’s not appropriate. But to somehow say that group of young women who said “Military wives for McCain” are somehow saying anything derogatory about you, but anything — and those veterans that wear those hats that say World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, I’m not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they’re great citizens.

McCain also took a stab at Obama for comments made by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. Recently the former civil rights leader issued a statement saying McCain and Palin were “sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.” Lewis drew a comparison between the rhetoric of George Wallace’s campaign for president in the 1960s and McCain’s rhetoric. McCain called the characterization “shocking and beyond the pale.”

Michigan native Jeffrey Feldman holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology and is a political blogger and author of the book “Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy.” He lives and teaches in New York.

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 embrace of that kind of rhetoric, Feldman says, makes the 2008 presidential race different from prior races.

“What is different is that in this race that we are seeing for the first time — mainstream, on the top of the ticket — all of the rhetorical tactics [that] the right-wing media has been using for the past four or five years. Essentially, what that means is that since Sept. 11, right-wing media has been dominated by a cohort of commentators who define pretty much every political issue in violent terms.”

Those violent terms, Feldman says, have included the portrayal of Islam as fundamentally dangerous and Democrats as unable or unwilling to protect America from terrorists. This is framing that occurred very early in the election season with a mysterious viral e-mail smear campaign against Obama.

Myth-busting site Snopes.com details and debunks the allegations raised by the well-circulated e-mails that assert that Obama was raised to be a “radical Muslim.” Snopes also deconstructs and debunks similar allegations from many other sources.

Regardless of debunking, the “rumors” about Obama’s faith continue to have legs, because, Feldman says, speakers in the right-wing media continue to push the theory, as do speakers who introduce the Republican candidates by using Obama’s middle name of Hussein, triggering a negative fear response.

“Now when our conversation gets weighed down by this type of violent rhetoric that instills fear and panic, that whole conversation breaks down; it stops happening…”

“To find that rhetoric, you have to go, you know, out of the light of day into smear campaigns going on in these e-mails that get circulated that were accusing Barack Obama of having terrorist ties, of calling him a Muslim in order to define him as someone who was threatening in the way that terrorists were threatening,” he says. “Of e-mails talking about him having ties to both black radicals, who were obsessed with revenge, and white radicals. All that stuff was out there, but it was not in the stump speech and then suddenly following the first debate — when it seemed like McCain was really starting to tank — all this stuff came into the main rhetoric.”

But why is the use and rise of this rhetoric so concerning?

“So McCain is essentially saying — and he is using Palin and his other surrogates to do this — McCain is saying in his stump speech: ‘I endorse all of the smear campaigns that were already out there. I now legitimize them with my status and my position,’” Feldman said, explaining that McCain is doing so by embracing the language of right-wing media pundits and operatives who have tried to paint Obama as a radical Muslim, and by failing to consistently contradict or challenge guest stump speakers who refer to Obama’s middle name, or not calling out those in his crowds who make statements like “kill him.” “So he is essentially saying to those people in the crowd: It’s OK to talk about these things now.”

That, Feldman said, gums up the political discourse of our country.

“Our democratic system is something I call a deliberative democracy,” says Feldman. “The basic idea is that we govern ourselves by looking at the world around us, having conversation amongst ourselves about what the problems are we need to solve, and then using the media and our own intuition to get the information that we need to know in order to solve the problems that are in front of us and then we pass that information up through this kind of great chain of being that leads from individuals walking around on the streets all the way up to influential senators and the president.

“Now when our conversation gets weighed down by this type of violent rhetoric that instills fear and panic, that whole conversation breaks down; it stops happening. People stop worrying about solving problems, and they start to obsess over defending the republic and the nation from these supposed threats that are presented by the political opposition …. And so they spread this concern over violent threats, which begin to take over this discussion and nothing gets done. The conversation just completely breaks down.”

Feldman says the conversation has been hijacked by fear-mongering related to the terror attacks of Sept. 11.

“In the 48 hours after 9/11, there was a real panic in this country, like something we had not experienced in a long time. It was a fear over people perceived of being Muslim in any way, shape or form,” says Feldman. “And it became a real bucket category.

“The smear campaigns that are smearing Obama as a radical Muslim are trying to invoke that fear that people felt right after 9/11. And essentially prey on that,” Feldman says. “So associating Obama with this big bucket concept is a kind of a standard propaganda technique. Which is why there is this really peculiar dynamic in this smear campaign against Obama in that if you actually read what gets said in these e-mails — they don’t say Barack Obama is a terrorist, but when people talk about reading these e-mails that’s what they talk about and so it’s fascinating that that big bucket category has been so remarkably successful.”

As Snopes.com shows, the viral smear e-mails assert that Obama is secretly a radical Muslim, tying him to the concept of terrorism.

“It’s acceptable in American politics, now. [McCain has] made it acceptable to protest being called a Muslim,” he said. “It has normalized the idea that it is bad to be Muslim.”

That also explains, Feldman says, why people feel empowered to shout “kill him” about Obama at McCain events. And while Feldman thinks McCain should confront those who shout such statements, he also thinks McCain has already robbed himself of the credibility needed to bring his supporters back in line.

“McCain and Palin’s real responsibility lies long before that person reacted in that way. They have a responsibility to respect a type of conversation that our political system depends on,” Feldman said. “The real moral lapse in those speeches happened when McCain made the decision to embrace violent rhetoric. It went clearly beyond the pale of what was acceptable in our discourse. In the context of a stump speech performance, yeah it might be great if John McCain, when he heard something horrible, would say ‘that is absolutely unacceptable. That is not how we do things in this country,’ but having already made the decision to take the discourse to this offensive level, it would be a meaningless thing for him to do because he has essentially already transgressed.”

“It’s acceptable in American politics, now. [McCain has] made it acceptable to protest being called a Muslim,” he said. “It has normalized the idea that it is bad to be Muslim.”

But Feldman believes that people have soured to this kind of rally event. “So that image is considered a danger now,” Feldman says. “A lot of people look on what happens in the rally with disgust and fear. I think what the polling [that will come out after the election] will show is that the violent rhetoric created … a real intensity, but it will be smaller than when he was talking about issues. People are turned off by it [violent rhetoric].”