The Tucson Shootings

Right-wingers were quick to contact us after the shootings with disavowals, shrill name-calling and the accusation that the shooter was a leftist. The vitriol continues and apparently is an organized effort---well, as organized as a movement that believes in "leaderless resistance"and decentralization along the lines of the Tea Party can be---that is hitting other blogs as well.

Some of the best writing on the subject has come from the People's World. I highly recommend Sam Webb's insightful piece and the Communist Party statement on the shootings.

What has been especially aggravating for me is that the media is picking up without question the line that all political speech must be dialed down, as if the left and the right are equally guilty here. No one can truthfully show that the left has engaged in a level of violence or violent rhetoric that even approaches what the right has done over the past two years. We are not, after all, a strident movement with guns and a gun lobby working for us, and the general feelings on the left have been ones of division and common sense as we try to sort out the mechanics of the present-day reality. Under such conditions stridency and threats have no place, even if we dealt in those terms. And we didn't pull the trigger in Tucson.

It also troubles me that Americans are forgetting about the assassination of Mr. Salmaan Taseer, the governor of the Pakistani state of Punjab, just one week ago. This was also a victory for fanaticism, and one which will have long-term international consequences.

Let us assume for a moment that our detractors are correct and that the Tucson gunman acted alone and without politics, that he was merely a deranged young man oblivious to specific political influences. Even if that were to be proven, it begs the questions of why and how there have been so many recent armed actions by right-wingers and why a growing number of conservative Americans (or so it seems) are foresaking conversation and discussion for violent rhetoric and violence. Moreover, it misses the point that there are a seemingly large number of deranged people amongst us who seem especially susceptible to this right-wing violent imagery and that so many of these people have relatively easy access to firearms.

The right-wing is playing a clever game by distancing itself from the acts of supoposedly deranged individuals as society seems to be dissembling and speaking as if such derangement and social decomposition are unrelated to one another. Only the left has visions of social recomposition and the programs to get us there.