Who is responsible for the murder?
Mohammed Hanif asks who is responsible for the murder of Salman Taseer? (And who is responsible for the multiple deaths and critical injuries in Arizona? Who is responsible for the attempted assassination of a Congressional representative and the successful assassination of a federal judge outside a Safeway in Tucson? The questions are related. It’s not just a single assassin in either case – it’s also a society, a culture, a discourse, a world view, a rhetoric, a climate, a mindset, and the people who help to create them.)
When Pakistan’s television anchors and newspaper columnists describe Salman Taseer’s assassination [as] a tragedy, they are not telling us the whole truth.
Because many of these very anchors and columnists have stated, in no uncertain terms, that by expressing his reservations about the blasphemy law, Salman Taseer had crossed a line on the other side of which is certain death.
This kind of thing isn’t harmless, nor is it without any effect.
The same Islamabad where Salman Taseer bled to death in the middle of a pretty neighbourhood played host just a couple of weeks ago to a Namoos-e Risalat (Dignity of the Prophet) conference which was attended by individuals whose party manifestos include the death by murder of Shias, Ahmadis, Hindus and Jews.
Were some of our prominent politicians not in attendance?
Do these same people not inhabit our government corridors, media organisations and security agencies? Do we not break bread with them at weddings and funerals?
The same thing, mutatis mutandis, is true here.
How do we fight this culture? In Pakistan, it appears it’s too late. In the US, the culture has Murdoch and all his might behind it. From what I can see, the Democrats believe you fight by yeilding to the deranged demands of the tea-party. Where is the voice of the non-deranged?
I’ve no doubt that the people responsible for the graphics for the Kelly campaign and Palin movement are righteously angry that their work is being unjustly implicated in the Gifford murder attempt. I hope that they will take a moment to wonder if maybe they shouldn’t have run with that shit.
Although I don’t think there is a direct connection between Sarah Palin and Jared Loughner, there are unmistakeable parallels between the political assassinations in Pakistan and in Arizona. Because as Ophelia suggests, we are also products of our cultures and society.
Who failed to diagnose the signs of Jared Loughner’s intentions, who put the gun in his hand, who twisted his mind so that he would shoot and kill a nine year old girl and a political representative, who bullied Jared as school, who were his parents, his friends, his work colleagues, his pastor, who made him hate America, who made him throw away his own future of a happy fulfilling life.
Of course Jared Loughner is to blame, it was his actions, probably premeditated, that killed and injured all those people. But his actions were not the actions of a rational person.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa and Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Who is responsible for the murder? http://dlvr.it/CxTYw […]
I appreciated this from Ezra Klein
Whoops. I used my default link!
That would be Ezra Klein
Disagree. The only parallel is that an individual took it upon himself to assassinate a government member. We DO NOT have thousands of people in the streets cheering the murder, we do NOT have political parties and religious leaders cheering this shooting and calling for more.
The only similarity here is what various posters want to see as similarity. The cause is NOT Sarah Palin, the cause is NOT Murdoch, not the Tea Party. This is sloppy thinking at its ‘best’, stereotyping groups one disagrees with broad brush motivations and sloppily conflating that with culpability.
An earlier post (previous topic) complained about the ‘climate of fear’, suggesting that somehow the GOP or the Tea Partiers, or Murdoch, (what next, the Masons?) has ‘created a climate of fear’ and somehow this was a cause.I’m not sure what they are suggesting here. That we should all buy into the (two) party line that the government is working for us and we shouldn’t be rocking the boat by going outside the Republicrat pattern of ying and yang?
For what it’s worth. that’s what political parties do as a motivator. Democrats preach fear of job loss, racist policies, ‘rich get richer’, reproductive rights, etc as a standard part of their rhetoric. Political active groups do.. ACLU (of which I am a member) and CCR point out erosion of our freedoms, environmental groups discuss various projected disasters (some more credible than others).
It wasn’t that long ago that there was a great deal of discussion about the the threats to our freedoms by the PATRIOT act, by warrantless wiretapping on citizens, by the complete disregard for human rights and international treaty in the GITMO situation and its associated practice of renderings. The Dems played these fears UNTIL they actually got a chance to do something about it… they supported renewal of PATRIOT, they protected ATT and other carriers from a lawsuit by the ACLU by pass a special post facto law supporting those actions. And since Obama came to power, the DOJ has continued (actually increased) its use of ‘national security’ to attempt to quash every investigation into illegal government activity and to protect torturers… even those of the Bush administration.
There is a certain irony in the fact that SOME of the rhetoric picked up by the Tea Party, some of the fears are just a variant of the fears discussed by the left a few years ago.
One aspect of the TP rhetoric is resonating (and this is viewed as frightening to the Repubs as well as the Dems) that the cozy system which has evolved is distorting and dragging down the country.
Jay,
I wish you would quote me properly: I said “there are unmistakeable parallels” not “here are unmistakeable parallels”. It may have been a mistake on your part, in which case fair enough, but a single letter does change the meaning of the entire quote of mine that you used to write your comment.
Also, may I add that I specifically said before that line that I didn’t think there was a direct link between Sarah Palin and Jared Loughner. Hence I think it is your quoting of me that is rather sloppy, not my thinking.
Sorry that was an error in mouse-clicking.
This is the saddest thing ever:
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_28c8e686-1ca6-5b3e-ab85-965bd22c68c0.html
Oh gawd…thanks, Egbert.
jay, you can’t possibly know that Palin/tea party rhetoric has nothing at all to do with this kind of thing. Nobody that I’ve seen is claiming to know that it was directly and exclusively causal.
The same thing, mutatis mutandis, is true here.
When you draw false equivalences in an effort to chisel reality to fit certain ideological prejudices, you do irreparable harm to scoiety in the long run.
There is absolutely NO equivalence between the events in Arizona, Sarah Pali,n evangelical Christians and the seething, violence racked, islamist Pakistan responsable for the death of Taseer.
When 14 young women were gunned down by “Marc Lepine” in 89 in Montreal, The Left blamed it all on lax gun control and red-necked ranchers and shotguns and such.
You know the drill
Marc Lepine’s real name was Khalid something-or-other ( forget now). His health-care card, his driver’s licence and his apartment lease all bore an Arab name. His father was an Algerian, serial wife-beater who’d put several women in intensive care before Canadian immigration authorities finally mustered the courage to ship him back to N. Africa. Marc Lepine’s mother was French Canadain, but about a year before those massaces took place, ‘Marc’ had returned to his father’s mosque, had become, according to some close to him, very “pious” and devotional.
But hey! It was all about those red-neck, gun-toting straight White males. That’s why Canda’s largely leftist media “assigned” Khalid the name ‘Marc’, because ‘Marc’ is a white name, a christian name, and seeings the massacre came on the heels of the Rushdie affair, it made the whole messy business so much more sanitary and so much more compatible with leftist prejudices.
There’s no equivalence, no connection and absolutely no similarity between the endless islamist-inspired bombings, assasinations and terror attacks in Pakistan and yesterday’s tragedy in Arizona.
I don’t agree, Sonia – and Loughner hasn’t yet been shown to be a pissed off Muslim.
I’m not saying they’re identical, but dammit, there are similarities – in both cases free political operation is threatened by an asshole with a gun. I’m not remotely saying things are as bad here as they are in Pakistan. I am however saying they’re a great deal worse than they were 24 hours ago!
Maybe you don’t get it. This just sucks. The House is the most accountable, the most accessible, the most “legitimate” branch of the US government. We can talk to our representatives! They’re like MPs – you can talk to them. That could slam to a stop now. It just sucks.
No one knows what was going on in his mind though if you read the bits of his writings on the web you see no coherency whatsoever, much less any political coherency (certainly nothing that I’ve read suggests Tea Party, even though they’re the ones we love to hate}. It is absurd to assign blame to a political philosophy when you are dealing with a completely confused mind. I don’t think I can emphasize this enough.
People in disorganized states can get all kinds of messages from all kinds of sources. But that does not make the sources culpable. As I’ve said before, once you go that road, the Motoons are incitement. I don’t know how old you are, or many of the posters here, but I came of age in the 60s when there was a lot of terrorist violence and a good deal of it at that time was a conscious act of the left.
Note the difference between this and the Taseer killing. That killer was not confused, he WAS following a political/religious philosophy and the motivators behind him actively and consciously supported his actions.
Smoking can cause cancer. Of course, no one is saying smoking causes cancer, only that it can. It is part of science to describe a probability of something causing something, however small, an effect is an effect.
What we’re trying to show here is that given the right conditions, then it is a matter of probabilities that something can occur. We’re saying exactly the same thing about religion or irrationality. Given the right conditions, then the probability of something bad happening can occur.
This isn’t only opinion and guesswork, there is method to our claims.
And we must note the striking similarity of the counter-rhetoric, where simply speaking out and confronting these concerns is called ‘confrontationism’, or ‘liberal rhetoric’, or ‘stridency’, or ‘aggression’ and so on. Counter-rhetoric is rhetoric, not rational argument. It’s used to smear and silence genuine concern and criticism.
Can we blame smoking for causing cancer? Yes we can, statistically, it’s a fact. It’s just not necessarily a direct cause.
Not a bit of it. The Motoons were in no way comparable to putting cross-hairs over people. It’s the rage boys who did the incitement in response to the Motoons, after the Danish mullahs went to a great deal of trouble to get them worked up.
It’s not absurd to blame a climate of opinion or rhetoric even when you’re dealing with a confused mind. He was unconfused enough to find Giffords, after all.
And it’s a rage boy who (possibly) did this in response to seeing a plainly allegorical (the cross hairs is hardly unprecedented, any more than a target is) symbol that every normal person realizes is allegorical. By contrast the Motoons were deliberately intended to challenge a deeply held irrational belief that was already associated historically with violence.
Don’t misunderstand, I support the publication of the Motoons, but I equally do not hold Palin responsible for this nutter who may or may not have even seen her page. That’s the way free speech works.
It may yet turn into an atheist bash…..
Well, Camels and Hammers has a video of Gabrielle Giffords talking about her fears and concerns, including the heated rhetoric from the likes of leaders such as Sarah Palin. I think it’s relevent and worth hearing in context of this thread:
http://camelswithhammers.com/2011/01/08/interview-with-gabrielle-giffords-on-prior-attack-on-her-congressional-office/
Here is a bit of Christian hate from Fred Phelps (if you can bare to watch)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/fred-phelps-thanks-god-for-the-arizona-shooting?awesm=awe.sm_5FEbb&utm_content=awesm-tweet-button-horizontal&utm_medium=awe.sm-twitter&utm_source=google.com
That’s not the way “free speech” works. For one thing there is a distinction between law and opprobrium, and we’re talking about opprobrium here. For another thing the Motoons were not comparable to putting crosshairs on people. Please don’t compare a death threat, however metaphorical, with challenging “a deeply held belief.” They’re just different things.
Sauder, as I told you, if you want to comment here you’re going to have to do it under a real name. You abused your anonymity, so you can’t comment anonymously any more.