Sidan eg driv reklame for Jim Goad for tida (ikkje utan atterhald: Han er
også ein særing, som nett har kome ut av fengsel dømt for konemishandling,
og han har ein del prosjekt som i beste fall er merkelege), legg eg ut eit
viktig kapittel frå "Redneck Manifesto", slik at folk kan lesa sjølve:
Hate Explains Everything
What's So Bad About Hatemongers, Gun Nuts, and Paranoid, Tax-
Resisting Extremists?
by Jim Goad
So what's the truth? Are the militias malicious? The experts will
tell you that they are. But despite their millions of dollars of top-
flight research, they can't come up with better explanations for WHY
they're malicious than these: HATE and PARANOIA.
That would be sufficient, if there were nothing to hate and no
reasons to be paranoid.
HATE SPEECH is the most Orwellian concept to emerge from the
twentieth-century twilight. It is especially deceptive because it
hides behind a Happy Face mask. Most people want to be on the side of
love, right? Like all dangerous ideas, the notion of hate speech
sounds good until dismantled piece by piece. The first problem is
with the term's vagueness. Hate speech, apparently, has become
anything they hate. Through relentless exposure to well-meaning, soft-
suds imagery, otherwise intelligent people have been brainwashed to
believe that "hate" is a satisfactory explanation for any human
action. Reducing complex sociopolitical struggles to a matter
of "hate" is as simplistic as blaming it on "sin," but they fall for
it.
A Manhattan lawyer who describes himself as "America's leading
expert on the militia movement," writes that he hugged his three-year-
old kid the night of the Oklahoma City bombing. He told Junior that
it happened "because they hated too much."
For now, let's accept the premise that one hundred sixty-eight
humans died in Oklahoma City because people "hated too much." I think
it's a silly and reductive proposition, but let's accept it. Now
answer these questions, if you'd be so kind:
Did a federal sniper shoot Vicki Weaver in the face because he hated
too much? Did our government conduct the Tuskegee Experiment with
syphilis on black soldiers because it hated too much? Does our
justice system ignore a quarter-million jailhouse rapes a year
because it hates too much?
Did LBJ lie about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, causing the deaths of
60,000 Americans and nearly a half-million Vietnamese, because he
hated too much? Did our tax dollars recently finance over 200,000
corpses in El Salvador because our government hated too much? Did
116,708 Americans die in World War I because our government hated too
much? Did 54,246 Americans die in the Korean "conflict" because our
government hated too much? Did "our" government never come clean and
admit that these wars were all useless wastes of human life that only
benefited the wealthy because it hated too much?
Did the U.S. government intern Japanese citizens in concentration
camps during World War II because it hated too much? Did the British
police drag IRA members from their beds, drop them from helicopters,
apply electrodes to their genitals, drug them, and insert blunt
objects in their anuses until they fainted because they hated too
much? Do Israeli police shove ball-point pens inside the urethras of
Arab political prisoners because they hate too much? Did Stalin and
Mao each kill more people than Hitler did because they hated too
much?
I'll expect your answers next Monday morning.
America's first hate-speech law was 1798's Sedition Act. Barely
twenty years after the Declaration of Independence advocated
overthrowing the British government by force, the United States made
it a crime to advocate overthrowing the government by force. Meet the
new boss, same as the old boss. It became a punishable offense to say
or publish things that could "excite popular hatreds" against
government officials. So maybe all this chest-thumping about "hate
speech" has less to do with racism than it has to do with criticism
of government. That's the hate-speech uproar deconstructed.
So now hatred is the enemy that the experts fear. Like all objects
of fear, it's something they don't understand. The problem with
most "experts" on hate is that they seem truly bewildered as to what
causes people to hate. They're aware that hate surrounds them, but
they don't know why. They don't appear to be people who've ever had
much legitimate cause to feel burning, frustrated hatred in their
lives. People in Northern Ireland know what it's like to hate. Blacks
in America know the feeling. But the experts scratch their heads and
ask for more federal grant money to solve the problem.
Some of them actually want us to spend millions of dollars to
research what causes human hate. They implore you to fight the hate.
They want you to kill it, squash it, suffocate it, exterminate it.
Blind as bats, they entirely miss the point that the problem isn't
hate, it's human nature. Especially when human nature rubs elbows
with wealth and power.
Why do people hate? It's a natural human emotion, not some sinister
aberration. Just as love comes from satisfaction, hate comes from
frustration. Hate is as useful as love, and it often works a hell of
a lot quicker. Hatespeak is usually more honest than lovespeak, and
it's always better than doublespeak.
Some things seem worthy of hate. People hate being told lies,
especially when they might die because of those lies. People hate
when others are indifferent to their situation. People hate when they
realize they're being robbed and can do nothing to stop it.
HATRED comes from powerlessness, whereas DISDAIN-the sort that
highfalutin media yogis show for the redneck rabble-rousers' ethno-
geo-ideological world-is more often reserved to the cushier classes.
Poor people hate, while the affluent show disdain. The powerful have
always regarded the powerless with a supercilious contempt that could
very rightly be called hate. So they're in no position to act holy
about so-called hate speech.
How can you protest your oppression (perceived or actual) and sound
lovey-dovey about it? The MOST important type of speech to protect is
hate speech, because it often contains desperate truths that would
lose their urgency if expressed calmly. Most revolutions throughout
history could hardly be called acts of love.
You know what I consider hate speech? Words or phrases that are
dangerous falsehoods, such as "friendly fire." That's hateful to me.
Peace with honor. Collateral damage. Pacification programs.
Peacekeeping actions. National security. Vital interests. Bald-faced
lies that get people killed.
When D.C. powermongers accuse Montana pitchfork-bearers of terrorism
and make a garish media parade of it, they should really wipe their
own dirty asses first. When government PR-puppies wag fingers and
preach that "with free speech comes responsibility," they should
check their own words.
The government never flinched from infecting Americans with hate
speech whenever "vital interests" were at stake somewhere on the
other side of the planet. My brother had never met a Vietnamese
person until the feds armed him with an M16 and told him to go murder
them. When he came home on furlough and talked about how he wanted
to "kill gooks," it wasn't the Klan who put that idea in his head, it
was his Army officers. At six or seven years old, I remember seeing
The Green Berets with John Wayne and being convinced of America's
meritorious mission in Vietnam. Was I influenced by hate speech?
Probably.
Maybe they're brainwashing everyone to love each other because they
realize we'll all be fighting over the same loaf of bread.
Excerpt from The Redneck Manifesto, by Jim Goad, copyright 1997.
Available for $15.40 from http://www.Amazon.com/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 11-07-02 MET DST