In the USA, 24 hour talking heads on our cable news channels, social media and politicians using vile names to denigrate their opponents have unleashed a radicalization of certain personality types who glory in denigrating name calling that leads them to violence.
It appears the killer of Charlie Kirk was radicalized in some way by someone or some ideological group to assassinate the young leader of a conservative political movement in this country. He wanted to kill not just a man but a political movement with which he disagreed and hated.
The loose use of the terms of Nazi, fascist, dictator, king, oligarch and God knows what else, gives those Lone Rangers, radicalized by these words and what they mean, to take action. Kirk’s assassin saw him as a fascist. That was reason enough to do what he did thinking he was doing his country a service.
It’s one thing to feel passionate about your political opinions, its quite another thing to call your opponents by names that suggest they should be eliminated because these names are associated with the most vile and sick ideologies Europe has ever experienced.
My father fought during World War II to end Nazism and Fascism. He knew what it was and it isn’t anyone in the Republican Party. He would be sickened by anyone using those terms against their political opponents in this country.
My mother as an adult experienced Fascism and Nazism in her city of Livorno, Italy. Nazis in uniform were stationed in her city. If she were living, she would decry the flippant name calling of the President and others associated with him Nazis or fascists.
I’m impressed with the governor of Utah and his call to tone down the political ideology of vile name calling using names associated with the Holocaust which provoke the radicalized to take action as did the assassin of Charlie Kirk.
It’s all a part of the contempt for the sacredness of human life and the respect due to men and women created in the image and likeness of God. And the greater problem is that politics and political affiliations have become an idol replacing true religion and true morality.
1 comment:
I saw someone refer to our present environment as a “rage economy,” meaning that radical viewpoints are essentially monetized (and so incentivized) for influencers, podcasters, etc. That’s one side of the coin — mostly the “right” side as far as I can tell.
On the other side, we have the liberal radicalization that happens (seemingly naturally and unfailingly) in young people who then go to universities where the more radical expressions of that are solidified and honed in the liberal academic echo chamber.
What has seemingly been lost is the foundational idea that it is possible to simply disagree with other people without feeling personally attacked by that different perspective. I suppose that might be because in our times people’s identities are so wrapped up in their opinions that to disagree with someone is to undermine their perception of their very existence. We’re no longer able to differentiate between people are their opinions—so everything is black and white, good or evil. And all of this in a palpably existential way to the individual.
A solution would be to somehow relearn the fundamental idea of freedom of speech and opinion as the fundamental thing that we’re all agreed upon despite possible differences in every other sphere.
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