This story was originally published at Salon.
A
month ago, when an armed man attacked the Family Research Council in
Washington, D.C., conservatives blamed the fact that the organization
had been labeled a “hate group” for
inciting the
attack. Never mind that the hate group label was intended to condemn
the sort of violence that the Family Research Council’s extreme
homophobic vitriol encourages. Tony Perkins, head of the FRC,
said that groups that labeled his organization a hate group should be “held accountable for their reckless use of terminology.”
But
now, when an offensive anti-Islam film promoted by a right-wing
Christian preacher is clearly to blame for violent riots spreading
thought the Middle East and appeared to have played a role in the death
of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, the far right in America
is
defending extremist
rhetoric against Islam and attacking the Obama administration for
condemning the inflammatory film. Blind to the diplomatic urgency of
quelling violence, let alone their own hypocrisy, conservatives
joined Mitt Romney in accusing the president of not standing up for free speech.
The
only way to square this circle is to understand that conservatives in
America are not free speech absolutists but rather apply the notion of
“American exceptionalism” to their own tribal superiority. In their
minds, blaspheming the religion of a billion of the world’s people and
sparking violent outrage is permissible free speech because, well, these
conservatives believe that Islam is an inferior and evil religion. As
Michelle Malkin
tweeted in
an exchange we had on the day after the Libya and Egypt attacks, “What
part of the centuries-old rallying cry “BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM”
don’t you understand?” (the caps are hers). Malkin then
pointed me
to a book by Bruce Bawer that argues that when we do crazy things like
contextualize the violence of a fringe few in the broader sea of a
billion peaceful Muslims who are horrified by such violence, we are
“appeasing” radical Islam and therefore surrendering our values,
especially freedom of speech.
But
such “American exceptionalism” applies extra special to fundamentalist
Christians within our own borders. Presumably these most exceptional of
the exceptional should feel free to
call gay
people criminals and child molesters who should all be deported, and
their right to free speech trumps the rights of others to label this
speech hateful. Those spewing the hate are simply “expressing their
beliefs” but those responding are being “reckless.” It doesn’t seem to
matter that, for instance, on this issue, the vast majority of Americans
oppose the extreme anti-gay rhetoric of the radical Christian right.
Attempting to restrict universal freedoms to select subsets of a
national community is about self-righteousness, not what’s right.
To
be clear, the violence perpetrated in the name of this video, or for
any other reason, is utterly unjustified and unacceptable. And the
filmmakers behind this film are not guilty of directly inciting such
violence. Yet to ignore the role of provocation in uprisings such as
these is not only to ignore basic facts but to dangerously abdicate any
role we might play, as individuals or as a nation, in choosing to either
enable such violence or end it. It is not impinging on free speech to
suggest we use our speech wisely and with attention to its impact.
Incidentally,
for those of you wondering about our other deeply held American values,
such as freedom of religion, the far right applies exceptionalism
there, too. They have been on a mission in recent years to cast the men
who created a secular government that explicitly separates Church and
State as deeply activist Christians who were mortified by Islam and
would presumably be more so now. In other words, our values may be
deeply held but they are not widely applied.
American extremists
wear our nation’s values like body armor to protect
themselves but wield
America’s values like weapons when attacking their enemies. To any sane
observer, such inequitable application of our nation’s traditions would
seem as irresponsible as actively fanning the flames of anti-Islamic
hatred while American lives and the lives of innocent people around the
globe are clearly at stake. But the far right in America increasingly
views itself as a nation unto itself, a chosen few within a chosen
nation, able to rationalize all sorts of hatred and ugliness while
condemning the same behaviors in others — which is dangerously akin to a
holy war, not one that the American right is fighting against but
actually starting themselves.
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