To be fair - now a Right Wing Wingnut

Little Green Footballs reports:

 

Former Rudy Giuliani speechwriter John Avlon, author of Independent Nation: How the Vital Center Is Changing American Politics, has a new feature for CNN’s “American Morning:” Wingnuts of the week.

 

Here’s how Avlon introduces the segment:

We’re trying out a new segment on “American Morning” called “Wingnuts of the Week.” It builds on a simple premise – the far-right and the far-left are equally insane.

 

What’s a Wingnut? It’s someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of American politics – the professional partisans and the unhinged activists – the folks who always try to divide rather than unite. In our polarized two party system, they have disproportionate influence and too often define the terms of debate. With this segment, we’re going to try and take that power back.

Michele Bachmann come on down!

 

Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann first became nationally known in the late innings of campaign ’08, when she told Chris Matthews, “I am very concerned he [Barack Obama] may have anti-American views.” Undeterred by common sense or common decency, she followed that with a call to investigate all members of Congress for anti-American views. The media fallout made her, if anything, more beloved by conservatives. She was subsequently selected to be the master of ceremonies at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s Presidential Banquet. But the howlers have kept coming – recently put in a handy compendium by my colleagues at the Daily Beast.

 

This past week, in an interview with PJTV.com she took another leap too far, saying, “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter.”

 

Two things: First, the bemused reach for causality between pandemics and Democratic presidents is a great illustration of the Wingnut’s impulse to blame everything bad in the world on the opposite party. Second, she got her facts wrong. It was under the administration of Republican President Gerald Ford that swine flu last reared its porcine head.

 

But Bachmann’s had chronic trouble with facts, including a recent congressional floor speech in which she again confused a Republican for a Democrat, claiming that it was FDR who signed the “Hoot Smawley” tariffs that helped propel the USA from a recession into the Great Depression. The “Smoot Hawley” Act was signed by Republican President Hoover. To round out her week’s trifecta, Bachmann reached for an awkward metaphor when describing the generational theft of today’s unprecedented deficits and debt, saying “it’s the mother of all ironies ... that the kids who voted en masse for Barack Obama are the ones being fitted with shackles and chains.” The “irony” of slavery metaphors to describe the Obama generation? Really? Really.

 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

"He’s got Jew nationality and Jew loyalties"

Oh dear.

 

That's not Cynthia McKinney, it's a guy on a far-right antisemitic internet radio station asking McKinney a question of her after she agreed to be interviewed by them.

 

For those of you who don't know, Ms McKinney was a Democratic member of the US Congress and the candidate of the Green Party in last year's presidential election.

 

She is also a 9/11 conspiracy theorist (of course), apologist for the genocidal Sudanese government and compares herself to Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.

 

She also alleged, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that the US government executed 5,000 prisoners in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina and dumped the bodies in a swamp!

 

Clearly a woman with personality "issues."

 

Though possibly being a nutcase runs in the family. Her father's reaction to her losing the primary election for her congressional seat was "Jews have bought everybody. Jews. J-E-W-S."

 

But why is a darling of the Green Left agreeing to appear on a far-right radio station?

 

I suppose it isn't that surprising, or shouldn't be. It has been well recognised for many years that the supposed opposite ends of the political spectrum have a tendency to curve back in on each other, and despite their differences they uncannily resemble each other in many ways and on many issues.

 

Hating Jews and blaming them for everything is now one of those points of similarity.

 

I hasten to add that it is the far-Left that has joined the far-Right in promoting appallingly virulent antisemitism, though antisemitism (dressed up as faux concern for the Palestinians) does seem to be becoming increasingly common within the Left generally.

 

A very worrying development for those on the Left who reject such (ill)disguised bigotry such as Harry's Place, who have begun the Cynthia McKinney Descent Watch.

 

Little Green Footballs on the Right also points to the disturbing company McKinney is keeping these days - Wingnuts of the Week.

 

However, I am glad to see that even isolated Perth has its own Jew haters. Even better, some of them make little videos about how much they hate Jews and confess to assaulting them. What fun.

 

Both Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair have it.

 

Andrew observes "The genuine face of anti-Semitism, on our streets. I admire greatly the teenager who stands up to this bigot’s rants and physical threats, but am frightened by the incitement now given by “progressive” writers, broadcasters, publishers, academics, activists and cartoonists - and even by the UN - to such people to demonise Israel and hate Jews."

 

Tim notes an approving message about the guy's video on Stormfront:

 

Brandon gets out there in the streets to protest ill gotten Israeli grapefruits. He runs into two Jews, who take his picture without permission. Brandon then confronts them and a heated discussion/argument takes place. The viewer gets a glimpse into HOW our enemies operate.

 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous