The Arizona Shootings: The Dangers of Blaming "Violent Rhetoric" (Haddigan)

EA's US Politics Correspondent Lee Haddigan writes:

On Saturday, in the southeastern Arizona city of Tucson, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the Democrat representing the 8th Congressional District was critically wounded in a shooting. There were other casualties, including the fatalities of a 9 year-old girl and Federal Judge John Roll, but inevitably media attention has centred on the more publicly prominent Washington politician. And, at least on the liberal side of the media, commentary has presented the attack as indicative of the consequences of "violent rhetoric" in American politics.

The Arizona Shootings: What We Know and Don't Know
US Video: Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on "Political Violence" (March 2010)

Before Friday, I knew little about Congresswoman Giffords. She won a close election in 2010, 49%-47%, to a Tea Party-backed candidate, and represented one of the twenty districts over which Sarah Palin infamously placed crosshairs in a campaign advertisement.

Last Friday, she gave a brief interview on Fox News, promoting her co-sponsored bill to cut the salaries of members of Congress by 5%. She represented the kind of bi-partisan attitude that we can sometimes forget exists in the modern, politically-charged atmosphere in Washington. A Blue Dog Democrat –--- to generalise, fiscally conservative but liberal on social issues –-- she emphasised that she believed the federal debt was the greatest threat to America's national security, a point that she places conspicuously as the central headline of her website. 

To highlight the fact that she was no rubber stamp for liberal policies in Congress, it should also be noted she voted against Nancy Pelosi as leader of the House Democrats on Wednesday. Her spokesman expressed her disapproval with the former House Leader by noting, “The congresswoman’s vote for Rep. John Lewis signaled her desire for courageous leadership and high moral standards at a critical time in our nation’s history.”

Giffords' website also included details of the "Congress on Your Corner" in northwest Tucson where the shootings took place. These are events that Rep. Giffords has held numerous times since taking office in January 2007, usually attended by 75 to 150 people who can “meet their congresswoman one-on-one and discuss with her any issue, concern or problem involving the federal government". And last Thursday, Rep. Giffords took part in the reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House, reciting the First Amendment which enumerates the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievance.”

So Congresswoman Giffords was hardly a bastion of the progressive movement. However, she had, however, angered conservatives in her District, which shares a 114 mile border with Mexico, by opposing SB 1070, the state's tough anti-immigration law. She also infuriated some on the right with her support for health care reform, with a gun being dropped by an attendee at a similar "Congress on Your Corner" in the town of Douglas in August 2009.

Now America faces a few tricky weeks that could define the future of political debate in the country for a significant period of time. Already the media are turning their full attention to the motives of the shooter, and their knee-jerk analysis, as absorbing as it can be, must be regarded sceptically. We won't know for weeks, if not longer, why this atrocity was committed, but already the media –-- especially the liberal print media --– are lining up to use it as an example of how vitriolic language from the right of American politics has inspired the political atmosphere that led to the massacre.

The general theme of the articles in the liberal press is that the assassination attempt on Giffords was the result of right-wing extremists fuelling anger in America with their "Lock and Load" style of confrontational debate. Many are citing Sarah Palin's infamous advertisement and the comment of Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-supported candidate in the  2010 Senate election race in Nevada, that voters needed to look to "second amendment remedies" --- a reference to the supposed freedom to own guns --- and that "the first thing we need to do is take [Angle's opponent and then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid out". As Giffords' father claimed immediately after the shooting, his daughter was the enemy of the “whole Tea Party".

Consider the comments included in this article, titled "Democrats lash out at inflammatory rhetoric following shooting", posted hours after the shootings: "Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the event was 'both a personal tragedy and a tragic reminder that we cannot remain silent when political rhetoric turns violent.'" Sen. Frank Lautenburg (D-NJ) weighed in with “America must not tolerate violence or inflammatory rhetoric that incites political violence." Paul Hemke, President of The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, added, "We...are deeply concerned about the heated political rhetoric that escalates debates and controversies, and sometimes makes it seem as if violence is an acceptable response to honest disagreements"

Understandably, emotions are running high in Arizona. And in a quite extraordinary news conference, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, visibly angry and shaken, claimed:

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

In the three-minute conference, Dupnik on three occasions blamed "vitriol" for causing the climate for the shootings.

I don't know the reasons why the gunman, alleged to be Jared Lee Loughner, targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. But I do know that the charge of all these figures that "violent rhetoric" was to blame, implicitly indicting the Tea Party, will have consequences. Already conservatives are expressing their outrage at the idea this was a politically-motivated event. In calling for civil discourse, and then implying that conservatives are not capable of it, the liberal media so far is only making the problem of "violent rhetoric" worse.

It is an association between a senseless act of violence and "vitriolic" politics from the right that liberals have made before, and one that does little to pass muster. President Kennedy's murder was initially blamed on the far right. The New York Times' lead article of November 23, 1963, lamented that “something in the nation itself, some strain of madness and violence, had destroyed the highest symbol of law and order", noting shortly after that, “from the beginning to the end of his Administration, he was trying to damp down the violence of extremists on the Right".

And Time reported the week after the assassination, in a warning that may well hold water in the weeks ahead for those who want to attack the Tea Party for the shootings, that:

The Jacksonville, Fla., Times-Union took defensive note of the wave of anger that, in the first hours after Kennedy's death, seemed to focus on the far right. The assassination, said the Times-Union, "must not be allowed to become the cause célèbre for a witch-hunt against those who, for reasons of principle and honor, have chosen not to follow the line of those in power but who have acted out their part as a 'loyal opposition'".

In essence, all those who have come out so far to blame "violent rhetoric" for the slaughter in Tucson have only added to the problem of divided and confrontational politics in the United States. The accusation will fuel resentment within the Tea Party against the liberal left –-- who enjoys being smeared as an accomplice to murder? –--- and only strengthen their resolve to vigorously promote the virtues of overthrowing the establishment in Washington.