Progressive Book Club asked Jeffrey Feldman and some other fine minds to discuss Feldman's book, Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons Our Democracy, and in particular how its basic argument relates to the presidential campaign.

In Outright Barbarous Feldman analyzes the words of leading conservatives to show how the Right’s language of violence (intended above all to spread fear) is diminishing our public discourse and limiting the free exchange of ideas, and he points the way to a healthier civic discourse.

Jeffrey Feldman is the author of Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (and Win Elections). He is also editor of the influential blog, Frameshop (http://frameshopisopen.com), and teaches at New York University.

He is joined in this discussion by Susan Gardner, the executive editor of Daily Kos; Dave Neiwert, a freelance journalist basded in Seattle and an editor at Firedoglake; and Joe Bodell, a reporter at the Minnesota Monitor. Thanks to all for taking part.

Check back throughout the week for regular updates.

From: Dave Neiwert
To: Jeffrey Feldman, Susan Gardner, Joe Bodell
Date: Thursday, August 19,  2008

Hey, I kind of like “nurturing,” if only because I got called a “nurturing male” a lot when I was a stay-at-home dad. [I’m grinning here.] Anyway, I agree that we should probably only use it backstage … but conceptually it’s the direction I think we want our solutions to head. “Healing” might be the more appropriate concept in the current context, but either way it’s not the kind of word you want to be using in the process of actually making appeals.]

Speaking of the language we use, I wanted to talk a little about Jeff’s solutions, which are largely on the money. He recommends six key steps: stop using ‘war’ metaphors, revive expository journalism, invest in local media, increase citizen participation, introduce a rating system for political entertainment, and create new deliberative forum.

There’s only one thing I think is missing here, something that I saw as essential components within communities that were engaging in the difficult work of standing up to hate groups and hate talk from the racist right. I call it Standing Up: the effort that ordinary citizens have to take to oppose hate talk. (Though I suppose you could fold this under “increase citizen participation”.) 


As Jeff says, most of this is free speech. And the counter to bad speech, as always, is not suppression but counter-speech, good speech. When lies are told, it’s important for people to stand up and speak the truth. When violence and rage and division are urged, it’s important for people to stand up and be counted opposing it, and their advocacy has to be about not more violence or rage but about peace, reconciliation, and harmony – which are themselves open rebukes to hate speech. And it never hurts to point out just how harmful the former really is.

The classic example of this kind of organizing was the Not in Our Town grassroots work that popped up in various towns around the West in response to far-right hate talk and its poisonous effects on the community – organizing both against racist hate groups (from which NIOT has its origins) and related violent rhetoric.

In Montana’s Flathead Valley, for instance, a right-wing talker who constantly demonized conservationists as “eco-Nazis” out to “destroy our way of life” and broadcast their private home addresses on the air – resulting in homes and cars vandalized, schoolchildren being followed and terrorized, and actual physical assaults – finally inspired a similar community-based “Standing Up”. It wound up being the subject of a fascinating PBS documentary, The Fire Next Time.

And the critical thing about Standing Up is the kind of language that works: non-violent, but unmistakably firm and openly critical of the right. I think a lot of times when we talk about peaceful resistance we opt for meek language, and my experience is that it simply doesn’t work. I’m all for, ah, punching back rhetorically … though I realize that I just used a violent frame in explaining that.

-- Dave Neiwert


From: Jeffrey Feldman
To: Susan Gardner, Dave Neiwert, Joe Bodell
Date: Wednesday, June 18

I think some combination of Emerson's language of 'self-reliance' and Jefferson's language of 'participation' might be better all around than 'nurturing.'   A large part of what I am trying to do in OB is provide some language that is more grounded in American rhetoric, which is my larger project, while at the same time working within the major insights of the past five years vis-a-vis progressive deep framing.    But I don't like to use 'nurturing' or 'stern' in political speech.  I see those as laboratory terms that need to remain off stage to be useful.

Emerson is a great resource, and in many ways, this book sets me up to step deep into the project Emerson outlined.  It is no accident that non-violence emerges out of people reading the transcendentalists, but we should keep in mind that those ideas were fundamentally about the ideal citizen and how to get there.

-- Jeffrey Feldman

From: Susan Gardner
To: Jeffrey Feldman, Joe Bodell, Dave Neiwert
Date: Wednesday, June 18

Oh, I'm in perfect agreement with you, David, on calling hate speech "hate speech" -- plain, simple, immediate and clear. I think, though, that I have less trust in Americans' ability to follow a long explanation from Mussolini to now, not because there is a willful ignorance but because I think we all are overloaded with the time and effort in just trying to stay afloat economically and be decent human beings to each other while taking care of our families.

That's why (to circle back to my first communication), I was so struck by Obama's ability to defuse a media frenzy with a simple "calm down, calm down." That space needs to be made -- a pause for clarity and discussion -- before any explanation of the harm of violent rhetoric can be heard. A full-throated condemnation is definitely called for, but if it can't be heard above the din (as I think happened in the weeks after 9./11), it's tough. And I think it takes an instinctive ability to short circuit the crazy-making fear/revenge/hate talk, something the more deliberative elements were unable to do here after the terrorist attacks. Certainly there <I>were</I> sensible voices making the call to "settle down, settle down," but it didn't make it through the white noise background of bloodlust.

And just to clarify ... I know I'm bucking the conventional progressive wisdom with the observation that I really don't like the term,"nurturing," (although I like the idea, obviously). I think my vague yearning for the language of productive earthiness is more still in the search stages of trying to find some way to talk about basic survival that is not about violence, but plugs into our instincts that are on the same level -- surely if the prospect of violence triggers knee-jerk action, it seems a language of abundance tied to the food cycle that sustains us could also reach our reptilian brain in a calming down sort of way. But I'm still in the musing stage and this may be silly.

At any rate, I'll let others speak for a bit since I seem to be hogging the discussion. ;)

-- Susan Gardner


From: Dave Neiwert
To: Jeffrey Feldman, Susan Gardner, Joe Bodell
Date: June 18, 2008

No doubt my views are colored by my journalistic background in writing about the far right, but I think it helps make things very clear to people when you make the perfectly valid point that this kind of rhetoric does have a history in America and elsewhere, and it's a particularly ugly one. Because this is ultimately the talk of hate groups. Fascists. Nazis.

I know that Godwin's Law is automatically invoked whenever these terms come up, but for someone who's attended Aryan Congresses in Hayden Lake and militia gatherings in Montana, and interviewed everyone from camp followers (like Randy Weaver) to leaders like Bo Gritz, I can assure you that it is not an exaggeration to connect the rhetoric you hear in these quarters with the kind of talk Coulter, Limbaugh, et. al. engage in. They're in fact rather starkly similar – the latter being in many cases simply a stripped-out, scrubbed-down version of the former.

Look at Limbaugh's remarks yesterday about New Orleans blacks, contrasted to Iowa flooding victims:

 I want to know. I look at Iowa, I look at Illinois—I want to see the murders. I want to see the looting. I want to see all the stuff that happened in New Orleans. I see devastation in Iowa and Illinois that dwarfs what happened in New Orleans. I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property…I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street. I don't see a bunch of people doing everything they can…whining and moaning—where's FEMA, where's BUSH. I see the heartland of America. When I look at Iowa and when I look at Illinois, I see the backbone of America.

One formerly could read such rants at DavidDuke.com or in the pages of The Turner Diaries. Now it's being broadcast to mainstream America. Why don't we call it what it is – not just racist, but fascist?

Of course, I also understand the flip side, which is that the term has become nigh-useless through overuse and misuse. Now even Jonah Goldberg has completed the degradation of the term into utter Newspeak by associating it with liberalism.

But I think we need to be using terms that convey the very real threat to democracy that comes with this kind of rhetoric. Perhaps fascism isn't ideal because it suggests overkill, but that's the kind of direction where I think we are most likely to be effective.

I'm actually sympathetic to having our solutions be nurturing ones that use growth-oriented language. (I'll write more about that in a bit.) But I think there has to be a revulsion toward the current violent rhetoric, and exposing the roots of this can go a long way towards that as well.

-- Dave Neiwert

 
From: Susan Gardner
To: Jeffrey Feldman, Joe Bodell, Dave Neiwert
Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Joe finished off his excellent observations about habeas and Scalia with the question:

Can we talk about big ideas in such a way that it sticks with listeners?

Well, that's the heart of it, isn't it? It seems to me that one of the reasons violent rhetoric so easily hijacks the debate is that the language is so very, very vivid--we respond to metaphors of violence and war on a visceral level. I'm no neuroscientist, but in my own case, I'm certainly aware that my antenna immediately goes up and my brain seems to signal: Something to do with basic survival is being said here. Pay attention!" when presented with shock talk.

Sadly, it seems the language of violence makes use of a palette of primary colors while the language of reasons is limited to pastels. While I fully agree with Jeffrey's emphasis on returning debates to the principle of "rule of law," it is, I think, an uphill battle that we need to be aware of when we take it on. This is not to say we should avoid it; quite the contrary, it is a discussion we need to take control of for our very survival.

Take Scalia's "It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed" cited by Joe. Well, that gets your attention, doesn't it? Here's one of the most prominent voices in the land in a (supposedly) neutral branch of government declaring we're probably going to die because of this court decision. It takes hundreds of explanatory words -- beginning with, "No, it almost certainly won't cause more Americans to be killed" --  to refute that notion.  And almost certainly the case won't be stated as unequivocally or starkly because the language of reason simply doesn't speak with the authoritative certainty and menace that the right has mastered.

I don't know what the answer to this is. Positing the perfectly logical law enforcement tactics--which really willl keep us safer than invading countries willy nilly-- against the tactics of war just doesn't seem as linguistically <I>sexy</I>.  Urging adherence to the rule of law in the face of great national harm like that of 9/11 is obviously the right thing to do, both practically and ethically. But it's hard for it to get top billing in the marquee of the brain, I suspect, since the language of reason often pales when it tries to counter violent imagery and statements. (It also suffers from a tendency to go on too long and it reasonably often allows for exceptions, which tends to weaken its already softer tone, but that's another subject.)

In my own mind, I'm trying to find my way toward whole new areas of metaphor that are as close to visceral as violence and fear seem to be. I think the language of peace, calm discussion and reason could use some metaphorical pumping up--perhaps using gardening, farming, nature terms and examples? That's as close as I've come to thinking it through, but it seems there is a longing in human beings not only to be protected from violence (which the right plays on by offering counter-violence as protection), but also a yearning for growth, fertility of ideas, a harvest of mutual cooperation, harmony with the slow unfolding of seasons, that could be tapped as an alternate and powerful way to discuss the way we live in this world together.

-- Susan Gardner


From: Joe Bodell
To: Jeffrey Feldman, Susan Gardner, Dave Neiwert
Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

On that topic, I happened across this example early this morning -- although I haven't read many of the details in the Boumediene case, I find it difficult to make the jump that Justice Scalia does from "informing prisoners of the reason for their captivity" and "Americans will be killed."

Justice Scalia writes, "The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the Nation's Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." Justice Scalia's 25-page dissenting opinion concludes, "The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent."

Scalia reframes a debate about the survival and nature of a nation of laws as "Americans will be killed, so this is wrong.  Be afraid; be very afraid." I find it curious that the Guantanamo example doesn't match previous instances when Habeas was suspended, in that these prisoners were not living among the general populace at the time of their incarceration, but those with legal expertise can probably provide more insight on that point.

It seems that what's lacking in the Democrats' media and communications strategy is "the big idea" -- as Jeffrey noted previously, the good response from Rice that didn't quite make it to a discussion of "a nation of laws." In a soundbite society, it seems our leaders are afraid of sounding too wonkish, too deep in the nitty-gritty of policy to discuss the big ideas, to make Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Voter really think about big civic concepts. Can we talk about big ideas in such a way that it sticks with listeners?

From: Jeffrey Feldman
To: Susan Gardner, Dave Neiwert, Joe Bodell
Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Adding to the discussion, let me point to an examples of how two politicians--Gingrich and Giuliani--use violent rhetoric to hamstring the debate.

Last week, the Supreme Court restored Habeas Corpus to the detainees at Guantanomo Bay.  The basic logic:  America is a nation of laws, the fundamental basis of which is the right to know why and protest one's incarceration by the state.   Habeas has been revoked during past  wars when it was feared that enemies to the United States were living among the general population and needed to be removed without delay (Civil War, WWII).  In past cases, the court restored Habeas when the war ended. In this case, Habeas has been restored on the idea the initial perceived 'war' requiring Habeas suspension has since become a metaphorical 'war' used to maintain certain policies.  Thus far, context.

Now, what we can see in this court ruling is key civic question:   How long can a nation of laws endure if the fundamental right on which all democracies are based has been abrogated?  The answer is something to this effect:  So  long as that nation of laws is at war.  And we can debate to what extent we are at war, when it began, how it ended, etc. 

This is the point at which Gingrich and Giuliani enter onto the scene and use violent rhetoric to reframe the debate.

On Sunday, Gingrich went on Face The Nation and argued that Barack Obama's lauding of the restoration of Habeas could bring about the nuclear annihilation of American city (link). 

Giuliani then stepped into the fray by arguing that by advocating police work to track down, arrest, and try terrorists, Obama exposed America to terrorists seeking to destroy our way of life (link).

The first key point to note here is that both Gingrich and Giuliani are reiterating violent arguments first published in their best-selling books (Giuliani's Leadership, Gingrich's Winning the Future) in which they lay out the basic tenets of their 'Democratic-anti-terrorism-policy-will-bring-the-destruction-of-America' argument.   Second, broadcast outlets have a long record of amplifying these arguments through Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, FOX News affiliates news, and more recently, Joe Scarborough.   Third, in response to this argument, Democratic politicians typically become nervous that they will be branded  'weak  on defense,' putting out more and more bellicose arguments.

So there is the violent rhetoric trajectory right in front of us, put in motion this week by the same high-profile players that have been using it effectively since 2001.  A key civic issue enters the public arena.  High-profile right-wing pundits reframe the issue in violent terms.  The media and the left accept the frame.  Meaningful civic debate on the topic dissipates.

The steps of this episode summed up:

1) Habeas corpus restored - American debates a 'nation of laws'
2) Gingrich/Giuliani proclaim that Democrats hasten destruction of America
3) Major news outlets echo this argument
4) Democrats respond by saying they are "strong on defense"

But let's step back for a minute and see if Step 4 really went down like this--ask if Democrats really have learned something since 2006.

This morning on Scarborough, Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post tried to focus the debate on the actual topic Americans should be discussing.   Asked by Scarborough if the court ruling made America less safe in the face of terrorism, Capehart--not affiliated with any campaign--emphasized the civic debate:  the restoration of habeas is about Americans' belief that we are and should be a nation of laws.  Bravo,  Jonathan.

Then Susan Rice, an Obama campaign Foreign Policy advisor, sat in Scarborough's chair and explained that the McCain/Bush approach to terrorism was not actually strong, because it failed to catch Osama Bin Laden, and that a return to a police-work approach to terrorism would be a more effective way to protect the nation from terrorism.

OK!  Well argued, Susan Rice.  But--the one thing Rice needed to hit out of the park was the point about 'a nation of laws' that Jonathan Capehart left floating in the strike zone.  Why not?

Well, at a fundamental level it does not seem that the Obama campaign believes--yet--that the right uses violent arguments to tie up the debate.  It is more likely that the Obama campaign believes the right is using 'fear'--a much more vague and hard to define concept which leads communications strategists to try to push back with fear instead of controlling their own frame.  So Susan Rice left the debate straddling two issues, not quite wrestling control back from Giuliani and Gingrich who played the perfect Rosencrantz and Ginderstern.

What the debate needs is an aggressive assertion of the very point that Jonathan Capehart made, which is a point that we find in Chapers 2 and 8 of Outright Barbarous:  (1) We are a nation of laws and (2) we protect the nation by tracking chains of responsibility for crimes. 

When the debate is approached that way, the debate stays grounded in the very topic the nation wants to discuss, and stays focused on the problem we seek to solve.

-- Jeffrey Feldman


From: Dave Neiwert
To: Jeffrey Feldman, Joe Bodell, Susan Gardner
Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

I’ve been rereading Jeffrey’s book because it covers so many points so well and so accurately. I think the essential point is one that simply can’t be stressed enough – not just for progressives, but for every citizen who considers himself a member of a civil society: Violent rhetoric (and particularly its eliminationist variant) is not a form of discourse at all, but rather represents the very death of it.

You can see this simply in the effect of the rhetoric itself. Last week Michael Reagan, the right-wing radio talk-show host, went on the air and said this:

There is a group that's sending letters to our troops in Iraq ... claiming 9/11 was         an inside job -- oh, yeah, yeah -- and that they should rethink why they're                 fighting. Who -- we ought to -- excuse me, folks, I'm going to say this: We                 ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them.

Really. Just find the people who are sending those letters to our troops to demoralize our troops and do what they are doing, you take them out, they are traitors to our country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that, deal with it. But anyone who would do that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors -- that's what they are -- and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullet.

This kind of talk isn’t about the exchange of opposing ideas – it’s about simply wishing one’s opponents dead. And as much as the rest of us might wish the 9/11 Troofers would stick a sock in it when it comes to their cockamamie conspiracy theories, the idea of taking people out and shooting them is rhetoric that’s not merely anti-democratic, it’s flatly fascist.

So it was with some grim amusement that I read Michael Gerson’s Washington Post column today wringing its ink-stained hands over a Playboy humor piece penned by Al Franken that Gerson found much too much for his tastes. And he concluded:

        At the very least, politics should not actively push our culture toward vulgarity             and viciousness. This is not prudery; it is a practical concern for the cooperation         and mutual respect necessary in a functioning democracy.

You have to wonder where Gerson has been for the past 10 years as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and a host of other right-wing nabobs has been filling our airwaves and polluting our discourse with a real viciousness that goes beyond potty-mouth talk about porn, but open advocates the violent oppression and ultimate elimination of whole sectors of American society – particularly liberals.

Politely applauding, I would guess.

-- Dave Neiwert

From: Jeffrey Feldman
To: Susan Gardner, Dave Neiwert, Joe Bodell
Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2008

I don't think the long-term winning strategy is to create better arguments, but to create better citizens. 

That may seem outlandishly pompous and nostalgic, but it's actually just a simplified version of what John Dewey argued in the face of a similar crisis 80 years ago.  I think what we're seeing in the media is not just a product of the language individuals use.  It's a product of  successive post-WWII generations with civic education provided by for-profit media rather than progressive schools.  The only truly meaningful long term answer to this problem is education--a return to what Dewey described as a history-based orientation rooted in teaching skills for solving problems by analyzing evidence. 

In the short run, we are left with a question of tactics:  How do we not let violent rhetoric control the media, elections, and policy making?  That answer is a combination of disruption and persuasion.  The Obama camp is doing well at persuasion.  Obama,  for example, has already done what Kerry refused to do:  counter violent rhetoric smears with an appeal to democracy itself, instead of just refuting facts.  That is a good step and it persuades people on both sides of the aisle (or on in all slices of the pie).  But there also needs to be greater coordinated disruption--more effort to undermine the monolithic media narrative that thrives on this kind of dynamic.  That means going to citizen and local media, and then leveraging it into the news cycle. That is happening in spurts, but with greater awareness I think it will happen even more.What remains, then, is getting civics back  into schools and returning to a system that pumps out class after class of students dedicated to problem solving and analysis.

I guess this makes me a Neo-Dewian in the face of Neo-Conservatism.

-- Jeffrey Feldman


From: Joe Bodell
To: Jeffrey Feldman, Susan Gardner, Dave Neiwert
Date: Monday, June 16

Susan brings up a great point worth reiterating:  the issue with the violent language Jeffrey details in Outright Barbarous is as much about demeanor as it is about the actual language.  The frames that pundits and reactionary leaders like Dinesh D'Souza, Wayne LaPierre, and the inexplicably ever-present Pat Buchanan use to inculcate fear in their listeners are not just violent in nature, but delivered with that teency bit of bloodlust. Watched from an academic distance, it's frightening to anticipate how effective these messages can be -- but it's equally inspiring to see an effective counter in Sen. Obama's willingness to tell the media to just settle down.

The thing I found most fascinating about the figures profiled in Outright Barbarous was not any special insightfulness (although Jeffrey demonstrates plenty of it throughout the book), but rather the bald-facedness of it all -- although I'm sure Ann Coulter has moments when she is not cracking violent jokes at the expense of liberals and Democratic leaders, you wouldn't know it when her writings and TV appearances are catalogued with an eye for such rhetoric. When taken together, all the instances Jeffrey cites in his book imply an easily identifiable and frighteningly simple premise for these pundits:  "Cause fear of the unknown and fear of Democrats, and we win."

It would be easy to read the first few pages of each chapter and despair for the future of a country in which such figures are given such a large amplifier.  But in offering thoughts on response frames, Jeffrey has provided rhetorical tools to disarm the violent fervor he identifies in the right wing. Calling Wayne LaPierre's rhetoric on gun availability what it is -- a call for a vigilante society -- is a great first step.  The next step -- reminding readers that faith in the strength of laws instead of firearms -- is the tool that turns depression into hope for the future of America's great political discussion.

I do have a question, however, that might be worth exploring in this space: the prescriptions Jeffrey provides on how to restore our political dialogue to a more effective state seem more appealing to progressive readers than they would be to their conservative counterparts.  Are progressive arguments the key to de-clawing violent right-wing rhetoric, or is the key to make arguments that have appeal across the political divide?  Is there necessarily a difference?

--Joe Bodell


From: Susan Gardner
To: Jeffrey Feldman, Dave Neiwert, Joe Bodell
Date: Monday, June 16

Thanks, all, for the opportunity to participate in such a discussion, particularly at the launch of such a wonderful endeavor, with such a stellar cast of thinkers!

It's been an interesting experience these past couple of weeks, reading Jeffrey's book at the same time that the desperate Republican Party began to try to formulate a strategy against Barack Obama. I think because I was more aware of the rhetoric, thanks to Outright Barbarous, I was also paying very close attention to the response. And while I did hear what Jeffrey's referring to in his first post here on the subject ("right-wing pundits have joked about assassinating a Democratic candidate for president, lumped that candidate with the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, and suggested that the gestures shared between the Democratic nominee and his wife might be secret terrorist signs."), I also detected hopeful signs in how the Obama campaign chose to respond.

First and foremost, of course, was the decision to create a website specifically geared toward debunking smears, most of which have a violent subliminal background to them (he's a secret Muslim, Muslims want to wipe out the U.S., therefore ... well, just follow the logic.) This move ties in with what Jeffrey advocated in his post:

It is public participation, civic education, and a return to public and local media that lights a path out of our dilemma.

The Obama campaign's commitment to the new media and its interactive ability is part of that "public participation" that is so vital to deliberative democracy. The founding of a website calmly and rationally disproving absurd assertions is certainly "civic education," and using the most public of all mediums is "lighting a path" at its best.

But beyond this concrete move, there is something less tangible, but more heartening in the long run, in operation--namely, Obama's demeanor. Not only does he keep his cool under fire, showing an ability to display firmness without over-the-top anger, he verbally commits to toning things down. Several times in the past couple of weeks, he's sent a direct message to "simmer down" or "calm down." Most recently, in the media frenzy surrounding questions about his vice presidential choice, he came out and told the press to "settle down." It's pretty unlikely, he wryly pointed out, that he's going to wage a campaign for president without a running mate. All in due time, he said.

Coming after eight solid years of fear-mongering hate speech designed to scare th